Star Trek: Prometheus Class Long Range Escort | Ship Breakdown
Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2020 8:10 pm
Daystrom Institute Technical Library
https://www.ditl.org/forum/
Perhaps power needed for warp travel is proportional to frontal area instead of overall mass or volume? Essentially a single larger hull requires less power than three separate smaller hulls for the same warp speed (all else being identical)McAvoy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:16 am To this day, I just can't figure out a in universe reason for this ship. Woukdnt it be better to have three Defiants instead? All of the mechanical seperations and the physical parts where they have to duplicate each system for each section.
The only thing I could think of is that when all three sections dock, the systems are connected and enhanced. Like the three sections make the ship faster and with powerful shields. Like one section has a main warp core and the other two act like super chargers. So the ship is faster as a whole getting to one place as opposed to for example three Defiants.
That works assuming you were building many of these ships. Like a lot of them. It's the same argument with a Galaxy's saucer section. Take one undamaged on off another until the original is repaired. Though I do like the idea of a different saucers for the Galaxy. But that is for another time.Coalition wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 8:17 amPerhaps power needed for warp travel is proportional to frontal area instead of overall mass or volume? Essentially a single larger hull requires less power than three separate smaller hulls for the same warp speed (all else being identical)McAvoy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 30, 2020 3:16 am To this day, I just can't figure out a in universe reason for this ship. Woukdnt it be better to have three Defiants instead? All of the mechanical seperations and the physical parts where they have to duplicate each system for each section.
The only thing I could think of is that when all three sections dock, the systems are connected and enhanced. Like the three sections make the ship faster and with powerful shields. Like one section has a main warp core and the other two act like super chargers. So the ship is faster as a whole getting to one place as opposed to for example three Defiants.
It could even be an wartime need to allow smaller shipyards to produce larger ships. (The component ships would be built separately, and kept combined in actual combat operations)
Of course, you have the problems where when the ship separates you have to armor the exposed area (instead of just internal bracing/decking), plus even though the separated ships have access to full strength shields, they have ~1/3 the recharge rate. Similarly, if one ship out of a multi-ship squadron has a power deficit, others cannot aid it (while a larger ship has a larger power budget)
To me the best version of the Prometheus would be where the component ships are built at multiple yards, but then combine into a single ship. If the single ship takes damage to one of the engineering sections, another Prometheus-class ship's engineering section (where that other ship took damage to the saucer section) is changed over. This gives you a single ship that is in perfect shape, and one ship with a damaged engineering section and a damaged saucer section.