That would be seriously awesome.
USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!
- Thread starter Vektor
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That would be seriously awesome.
What, this again?
Don't listen to him!! He doesn't quite understand the concept of having two ships for the price of one!
Besides, the hull separation hull lining that you have is beautiful.
You mean one ship that splits into two less powerful ships AND costs more than just building two ships. It's a silly gimmick. Otherwise, the Navy would use it. Haven't seen too many sea going ships that split in two.
Anyone that thinks MVAM is a good idea has never played a really deep strategic game like Star Fleet Battles. One large ship will almost always tear apart 2 ships half it's size.
Anyone that thinks MVAM is a good idea has never played a really deep strategic game like Star Fleet Battles. One large ship will almost always tear apart 2 ships half it's size.
The only time I've seen that done outside TNG is the Disco Volante, the villain Largo's ship in Thunderball. The front half of the boat is a hydrofoil. The silly gimmick was to allow the families of the TNG Enterprise to serve aboard a ship of the line. Splitting into two ships supposedly was for their safety, but I'm not sure if it was ever done but once or twice in the entire series run.
This. A million times this.
i always had a problem with this idea of the saucer detaching to allow the families to escape to safety in a combat i mean if an enemy attacks the saucer only has impulse engines (as far as i know anyway) to escape so it wouldn't get very far.
Thus is the battle section is crippled then the enemy can still attack the saucer.
Unless you know your going into battle then you could leave the saucer parked somewhere safe.
But this rises the question to my mind of why did the odyssey (i think that was the ship name) in ds9 drop off its non combatants at ds9 rather then just park the saucer?.
my inuniverse theroy is it was intended for that purpose but then starfleet thought it a bad idea and never carried over to many other ships, but left the option there for the galaxies.
but that i guess is a discussion for another thread
i always had a problem with this idea of the saucer detaching to allow the families to escape to safety in a combat i mean if an enemy attacks the saucer only has impulse engines (as far as i know anyway) to escape so it wouldn't get very far.
Thus is the battle section is crippled then the enemy can still attack the saucer.
Unless you know your going into battle then you could leave the saucer parked somewhere safe.
But this rises the question to my mind of why did the odyssey (i think that was the ship name) in ds9 drop off its non combatants at ds9 rather then just park the saucer?.
my inuniverse theroy is it was intended for that purpose but then starfleet thought it a bad idea and never carried over to many other ships, but left the option there for the galaxies.
but that i guess is a discussion for another thread
It all seems good until the engineering hulls gonna blow, so you gotta choose between the saucer or a escape pod.
I know which one I'd rather be in.Or even just to survey two planets in the same systems seems to make sense.
I'd love to see this ship separate though.
In Peter David's novel series New Frontier they tried to remedy this by installing warp drive on the Galaxy-class Excalibur-A.
I've got no guess as to the fictional reason, but real-world was likely due to the (in)availability of the 6-foot Enterprise-D for filming; only the six-footer was able to separate, but that model was likely being refurbished by ILM for its upcoming appearance in Star Trek Generations.
The weird thing is that two of the times the Enterprise saucer was separated, it explicitly made or was intended to make a long interstellar journey. In "Encounter at Farpoint" it beat the battle section to Farpoint despite having started off going in the opposite direction at Warp 9, and while the saucer is supposed to be able to sustain warp speeds separating at warp was treated as being unusual and it was still a considerable distance. In "Arsenal of Freedom" the saucer is dispatched to a starbase which has to be several light-years distant (at a minimum, and it should be much further given no one's noticed that planet before) without even starting off at warp. The other two times it either is unclear what happened ("Best of Both Worlds", where it got away from the Borg cube under its own power) or it promptly crashed into a planet, rendering the FTL question moot.
Personally, I would assume that the saucer has its own warp engines, possibly powered off its fusion generators. While it would obviously be much slower than the battle section unless given a starting boost, it could still be enough to get away. The warp engines might be those two big sets of glowing blue panels. I know some people think they're botanical gardens, but then there would be no reason for them to glow, and having big windows would be bad for the plants anyway. On the other hand, Federation warp engines always glow blue.
Personally, I would assume that the saucer has its own warp engines, possibly powered off its fusion generators. While it would obviously be much slower than the battle section unless given a starting boost, it could still be enough to get away. The warp engines might be those two big sets of glowing blue panels. I know some people think they're botanical gardens, but then there would be no reason for them to glow, and having big windows would be bad for the plants anyway. On the other hand, Federation warp engines always glow blue.
Librarian, time to invoke my favorite heresy: impulse engines are FTL. They have to be.
It's not canon, but the TNG Tech Manual has implied that impulse engines do generate a subspace field (to reduce the mass of a vessel), and the saucer can coast at warp for quite awhile after separation before gradually dropping back to sublight.
But ideally, I think saucer separation is really supposed to be performed when the ship isn't moving at all and before combat actually begins. The saucer would then be nowhere near the battle theatre and well out of harm's way--under ideal circumstances.
But ideally, I think saucer separation is really supposed to be performed when the ship isn't moving at all and before combat actually begins. The saucer would then be nowhere near the battle theatre and well out of harm's way--under ideal circumstances.
^Exactly. The warp-speed saucer separation in "Farpoint" was an emergency measure to get the saucer away quickly so the stardrive could do a 180 and face down Q. The fact that they repeated the maneuver in "Arsenal of Freedom" was because it was cheaper to reuse the footage from the pilot; La Forge had taken the Enterprise safely away from Minos, so there was no real reason for him to replicate a dangerous maneuver before going back to fight. And the saucer didn't need to escape in BOBW because that was part of Riker's plan. So really, we've never seen a saucer separation as intended "by the book".
As to the Odyssey not separating, that's due to the real-world fact that at the time, the six-foot Enterprise-D model was likely being refurbished by ILM for its appearance in Generations.
As to the Odyssey not separating, that's due to the real-world fact that at the time, the six-foot Enterprise-D model was likely being refurbished by ILM for its appearance in Generations.
Grandeur's saucer section is capable of functioning as a fully independent starship in its own right. It has its own M/AM core and is high-warp capable (though not as high as the drive section), and it has a respectable complement of armaments including the Wyvern canons on the bow (though they are much less powerful when separated). I suppose it could be thought of as similar to an MVAM configuration but it's really more of a set of distributed capabilities than an operational "mode."
librarian, the saucer did not beat the star drive to farpoint. specifically la forge tells riker that the enterprise arrived but without the saucer. riker beams up to the enterprise and meets picard in the battle bridge's ready room, watches the video, and then when the saucer arrives picard has him do the rendezvous.
Still, the saucer didn't arrive more than a few minutes after the battle section, and in "Arsenal of Freedom" it is explicitly sent off to the nearest starbase from a sublight start. There's no point at all of doing that if the ship can't considerably close the distance by itself. At sublight speeds you're taking a minute or two off a rescue ship's travel time.
The point is taking the saucer out of the combat zone.
Well, when you think about it, we really aren't all that advanced.
I've heard of many reports where UFOs split into multiple smaller objects. Assuming they exist, there must be a reason for the ability to do this, and their creators must be advanced enough to the point that having this ability has benefits that outweighs the risks.
And we don't know how much more (if any) it would cost to make all of the necessary systems for separation, but being sufficiently advanced, it might be a lot less expensive then we might imagine.
I will grant that it might take more time to design, and take more time with the prototype, while all the different sections are under construction, and the engineers will need to make sure everything will dock correctly, but being able to design and analyzed the vessel in 3-D, while she is under construction, or something to that nature, would probably cut down on errors, despite the added complexity.
Maybe if the Navy were more advanced enough, maybe they would make a battleship that could split into the equivalent of a pair of light cruisers, so while the two sections are joined, they would be a match for any ship of the line, and when separated, they become better suited for patrol. If one ship finds one ship of interest (say a pirate vessel), one ship can give chase, and the other can fence in the vessel in question.
Then again, it would be much harder to make a sea-going MVAM vessel, since you have to deal with things such as buoyancy. You don't have to worry about a ship capsizing in space.
i always had a problem with this idea of the saucer detaching to allow the families to escape to safety in a combat i mean if an enemy attacks the saucer only has impulse engines (as far as i know anyway) to escape so it wouldn't get very far.
Thus is the battle section is crippled then the enemy can still attack the saucer.
Unless you know your going into battle then you could leave the saucer parked somewhere safe.
But this rises the question to my mind of why did the odyssey (i think that was the ship name) in ds9 drop off its non combatants at ds9 rather then just park the saucer?.
my inuniverse theroy is it was intended for that purpose but then starfleet thought it a bad idea and never carried over to many other ships, but left the option there for the galaxies.
but that i guess is a discussion for another thread
I do agree with hull separation being less effective if both sections aren't capable of FTL travel. I was really disappointed that the Odyssey class apparently doesn't have this ability.
I even included this feature in my own version of the Enterprise-F! I felt that both sections having at least warp drive was an essential element for the next-generation SOTL, but nobody at Cryptic paid me any heed!
In fact, if a tiny vessel like the Delta Flyer can have QSD, then there is no excuse for the saucer section not to have it to, especially now that the Federation has had 20+ years to work with it!
i always had a problem with this idea of the saucer detaching to allow the families to escape to safety in a combat i mean if an enemy attacks the saucer only has impulse engines (as far as i know anyway) to escape so it wouldn't get very far.
Thus is the battle section is crippled then the enemy can still attack the saucer.
Unless you know your going into battle then you could leave the saucer parked somewhere safe.
But this rises the question to my mind of why did the odyssey (i think that was the ship name) in ds9 drop off its non combatants at ds9 rather then just park the saucer?.
my inuniverse theroy is it was intended for that purpose but then starfleet thought it a bad idea and never carried over to many other ships, but left the option there for the galaxies.
but that i guess is a discussion for another thread
It all seems good until the engineering hulls gonna blow, so you gotta choose between the saucer or a escape pod.
Or even just to survey two planets in the same systems seems to make sense.
I'd love to see this ship separate though.
The above two reasons are probably the original reasons that hull separation was invented in the first place, IMO.
My in-universe explanation is that even though you gain agility by loosing the saucer, you also loose the primary and auxiliary fusion generators housed in the primary hull, so that leaves your ship with less power, and your weapons and shields won't hold out for as long.
It is also possible that the saucer was docked to make the ship bigger, to make her look potentially more intimidating, and hopefully, maybe make the Dominion more willing to talk (as opposed to acting like a proverbial bee's nest, which in the end they sort of did. So much for that idea!).
