Prometheus-class multi-vector assault mode: why?

[lord Martiya]

I think we're all wondering about that: why? Why the writers ideated the multi-vector assault mode, and why, in-universe, the Federation built that?
Feel free to dispute me, but my guess is they got the idea from Riker's stand against the Borg Cube in TBOBW, where he managed to give the Cube many problems with an attack from the separated hulls of the E-D. After that, the engineers (and, out-of-universe, the writers) decided it was a good idea.

[Temujin]

I think we're all wondering about that: why? Why the writers ideated the multi-vector assault mode, and why, in-universe, the Federation built that?

Out of universe, the writers watched one too many episodes of Voltron and other crappy anime.

In universe, well:

Feel free to dispute me, but my guess is they got the idea from Riker's stand against the Borg Cube in TBOBW, where he managed to give the Cube many problems with an attack from the separated hulls of the E-D. After that, the engineers (and, out-of-universe, the writers) decided it was a good idea.

Having just rewatched BOBW, I'm inclined to agree with you. But overall it does fall into the Federation's obsession with overly complicated technological solutions. For Christ's sake, these are the people who put freaken touch pads on dumbbells.

[Gramzamber]

I suspect it might have to do with encounters against Jem'Hadar attack ships, where some light bulb after reviewing the Odyssey's loss for instance reasoned that small, high powered attack ships would do better against larger ships.
While anybody with any sense would then say "okay, build more Defiants" perhaps someone thought that a larger ship splitting up into smaller ones would gain an element of surprise.

To be fair, we subsequently see mass-produced Defiants (two in that very episode) and the Prometheus never appears again.
It wouldn't be the first time the military has engaged in a costly experiment that yields no real benefit after all.

[Uraniun235]

"So in this story, some Romulans are stealing an experimental starship. It needs to have a gimmick. Any ideas?"
"How about one that splits into different starships to fight?"
"I love it! Let's do it!"

[Stark]

Since almost nobody fires at more than one target at once, there's probably an advantage to be had. It's not the only crazy idea Starfleet tried after all.

[Coalition]

I posted an idea on Spacebattles that illustrates several problems with the multi-vector attack mode. Short version is that comparing two ships, one with, and one without MVAM, the one with the mode will have more surface area to protect (requiring more mass for armor, or existing armor will be thinner), more shield surface area to power, and if one section runs low on power, the other two sections can do squat about it.

Now what it can do is charge up all the shield generators, and make an infrastructure raid. It separates into the component parts (defenses are only expecting one ship from the signature) and hits three separate locations simultaneously, while the defender was anticipating more time to get ready. The other option was that it was a prototype datalin platform. The three sections would test the systems before spearating to make sure the system appeared to be working, then separate for real. Repeat multiple times, until the datalink capabilities are understood, then transmit the data to Starfleet HQ, using encrypted comms.

That would have been something the Romulans could have used, where one ship is cloaked, and feeding targeting data to its squadron buddies. The cloaked ship is behind the enemy lines, where it won't get shot, and its buddies have excellent targeting data for their own attack runs.

My suggested tactics vs a vessel using MVAM (assuming both vessels are otherwise identical): Hit all the targets with an equal spread of weapons in the first pass. Whichever one has taken the most damage, focus on it until it is destroyed. Keep your beams available for if the others expose a shield facing for any reason. When one section has been destroyed/severely damaged and your ship is starting to take damage, leave the area. Both sides repair, but the damaged/destroyed section will be harder/impossible to repair.

Return, repeat, then beam the surviving enemy female crew members into your Holodeck, and tell the crew that you are having a live action hentai night. (this part is mandatory)

[Stark]

Nice fanfiction! The idea they build a full-size heavily-armed warship as a datalink testbed is fucking hilarious. Needs more shield facings so we know you're talking about bridge commander!

[Uraniun235]

Maybe Prometheus was a project advanced by secret high-placed Imperial infiltrators to further weaken the Federation for future conquest by wasting resources on ill-advised gimmicks!

Return, repeat, then beam the surviving enemy female crew members into your Holodeck, and tell the crew that you are having a live action hentai night. (this part is mandatory)

"and then i'm gonna capture all their women and i'll subject them to tortuous, sexual debasement in my anime death tentacle rape holodeck! "

Someday you're going to look back on this post (or other remarks like it), and you will cringe, and you will wonder why you ever thought that was funny. Maybe you'll have even graduated high school by then.

[Connor MacLeod]

It's a gimmicky combat method. It's not the first time Trek has tride gimmicky, or even that Voyager has (Batmobile armor, anyone?)

It probably would have been better had the ship been designed as some sort of carrier. Have smaller warships ("Fighters") designed to be ferried into battle attached to the mothership. The "parasite" attack ships (borrowin ga term from Weber's books) are sublight only, designed as attack platforms. Depending on how big the "mothership" is the parasites could be small warships in their own right (runabout or maybe a bit smaller than the Defiants, perhaps)

IF you wanted to get gimmicky they probably could devise some way of using beamed power (like with those Cardassian satellites) and/or transporters to re-arm or re-charge the attack ships.

[Manus Celer Dei]

Out of universe, the writers watched one too many episodes of Voltron and other crappy anime.

Voltron is like the exact opposite of the Prometheus.

[Crazedwraith]

It's a gimmicky combat method. It's not the first time Trek has tride gimmicky, or even that Voyager has (Batmobile armor, anyone?)

Nitpick: Batmobile Armor was the finale episode, several years after Prometheus.

And in-universe, it was presumably an extension of the Galaxy saucer separation but also maybe a testbed for inter-ship coordination software for fleet combat? Consider that even on Autopilot Prometheus as capable of taking on Romulan Warbirds.

Given that and the all decks holodeck. Its possible Prometheus was the testbed for a lot of whacky ideas all in one.

[montypython]

To be honest considering all the crazy real-life military hardware that's been tested over the last several centuries (e.g., leather cannon, mast-mounted turret-equipped ironclads, Nazi-superweapons, Davy Crockett Nuclear recoilless rifle, etc.), Starfleet testing something seemingly outlandish doesn't seem quite so bad.

[Temujin]

Out of universe, the writers watched one too many episodes of Voltron and other crappy anime.

Voltron is like the exact opposite of the Prometheus.

True, but it doesn't take a genius to simply reverse the concept, though for the average Voyager writer it was probably a breakthrough on the level of Archimedes' eureka moment.

[Jeremy]

Super anti-Borg ship with spiffy mini defiant fighters?

I wanted to see a Defiant hauler at some point... well I guess I just wanted to see some major multiple Defiant action on a Cube.

Yeah that would be nice, all those Pulsed Phasers rending holes in Borg shields while a big cruiser hangs out back and snipes with its superphaser. Well, I better stop before I start drooling.

[Gandalf]

How often is the Federation at war? MVAM is pretty fucking useless en route to or during Survey Mission #24608. Better to keep it as one big ship as opposed to a few smaller ones.

However, it allows for greater manoeuvring around other ship's firing arcs or some similar battle advantage.

[Uraniun235]

Well, given that they retconned in the Cardassian War that had allegedly been taking place for years during and prior to TNG, it seems like they've been pretty heavily embroiled for quite a few years by the time Prometheus was seen.

[Temujin]

Super anti-Borg ship with spiffy mini defiant fighters?

I wanted to see a Defiant hauler at some point... well I guess I just wanted to see some major multiple Defiant action on a Cube.

Yeah that would be nice, all those Pulsed Phasers rending holes in Borg shields while a big cruiser hangs out back and snipes with its superphaser. Well, I better stop before I start drooling.

I remember seeing a fan version of a ship that was essentially a scaled down version of the Defiant (about half size). Coupled with something the size of a Galaxy or Sovereign, it would be a perfect equivalent of a Star Fleet Battles PF and PF Tender.

[Stofsk]

Well, given that they retconned in the Cardassian War that had allegedly been taking place for years during and prior to TNG, it seems like they've been pretty heavily embroiled for quite a few years by the time Prometheus was seen.

I thought it was prior to TNG, not during. What did 'The Wounded' say about it?

[Gramzamber]

And in-universe, it was presumably an extension of the Galaxy saucer separation but also maybe a testbed for inter-ship coordination software for fleet combat? Consider that even on Autopilot Prometheus as capable of taking on Romulan Warbirds.

Couldn't they do that just by slaving a few Defiants or Novas together on the same network?

[Nathaniel]

There do seem to be a couple of possible advantages to having a Prometheus instead of say three Defiants (assuming that each chunk of the Prometheus is roughly equivalent to a separate ship). That's not to say that these are actually the reasons for using it or that they are consistent with the use of the ship in universe, but they are possible reasons why starfleet might want to use a MVAM.

Most importantly, the enemy suddenly has a much bigger problem gauging what your forces are capable of. If you're a Cardassian legate and you're told there's a trio of federation warp signatures (and it often happens in trek that it's possible to detect a ship and identify what race it belongs to without knowing what kind it is exactly, see Sisko's little trick at the battle of Chintoka for example) heading towards your sector you have effectively no idea if you're going to have a battle with three ships or nine. You also have no idea if you're going to get hit in one place or three. It makes the Feds lot less predictable and so harder to counter.

There's also the possibility of sneaking around in ways that a trio of individual ships couldn't so easily. Say you're in a Prometheus trying to attack an enemy base of some kind. On your way to the target you stop off at a nearby gas giant, (or a comet, or a nebula or whatever it is that can be used to hide a starship this week) and leave some of your ship behind. All the enemy sees is one ship is coming towards them so they put their main force at you to find only 1/3 of a prometheus while the other 2/3 goes behind their backs and boots them in the nads before they can get back to defend themselves.

It's also possible that it's faster when the ships are together. In the episode we hear that the Prometheus is the fastest ship in starfleet, but IIRC it's not clear whether that was the ship while it's all together or if the different sections are all as fast individually. It certainly wouldn't be inconsistent with what we see elsewhwere. It's does seem to be the bigger ships ships like the Galaxies and Intrepids that can reach the highest speeds (warp 9.8+) while smaller ones like shuttles, runabouts (stated to be warp 5 max), the nova class (warp , and even the Defiant (~9.5) are slower. By using the ships like this Starfleet gets the best of both worlds, independent ships as well as a super fast response force.

It's impossible to tell if or why it would work like this, but it's not inconcievable that there would be such advantages.

[Uraniun235]

Well, given that they retconned in the Cardassian War that had allegedly been taking place for years during and prior to TNG, it seems like they've been pretty heavily embroiled for quite a few years by the time Prometheus was seen.

I thought it was prior to TNG, not during. What did 'The Wounded' say about it?

Peace treaty was signed "nearly a year" prior to that episode. Which means that through all of seasons 1 and 2, there was supposedly a war going on with the Cardassians.

Captain Picard then recounts how, as captain of the Stargazer (which, if I remember right, was several years prior to taking command of the Enterprise[/i), he was sent to offer a truce to the Cardassians.

[Wing Commander MAD]

Super anti-Borg ship with spiffy mini defiant fighters?

I wanted to see a Defiant hauler at some point... well I guess I just wanted to see some major multiple Defiant action on a Cube.

Yeah that would be nice, all those Pulsed Phasers rending holes in Borg shields while a big cruiser hangs out back and snipes with its superphaser. Well, I better stop before I start drooling.

I remember seeing a fan version of a ship that was essentially a scaled down version of the Defiant (about half size). Coupled with something the size of a Galaxy or Sovereign, it would be a perfect equivalent of a Star Fleet Battles PF and PF Tender.

So I'm not the only one who upon reading that immediately though SFB/SFC pseudofighters and the pseudofighter tenders. For those unfamiliar, a PF is a cross between a fighter and a frigate, primarily used by powers that used energy intensive heavy weapons like plasma torpedoes, mainly Gorn and Romulans, that weren't economical/feasible to mount on the smaller fighters used by other powers (Federation, Klingon,Hydran,Kzinti). It's main advantage over fighters being that they could operate somewhat independently once they reached battle via their tender and did not have to return to the mothership to rearm. Basically think Defiant sized (maybe a bit smaller) ships, lacking warp drives and really only having the combat essential systems (weapons,shields, basic sensors) operating in squadrons of about 2-6 ships. Far more capable than fighters, packing firepower and survivability comparable to a frigate, but at a fraction of the cost.

Anyways, it was mentioned earlier that all Trek powers seem to only fire at one target at a time. That combined with the fact that their shielding seems based on one big bubble that covers all arcs, although IIRC they can reinforce certain arcs, would make the whole multi vector attack feasible. After all, a hit on any one facing depletes all shielding around the craft. This is opposed to a more sensible n-sided polygon where, each face would be its own shield system responsible for a particular arc. They should be able to generate such a field, as they obviously can generate planar energy shields as evident by the numerous examples of forcefields blocking hallways and doors. Whether the reason for not using the more sensible system is technical inability or ineptitude (more likely IMOH) is unknown. That said transforming ships is a stupid approach to exploit that tactical deficiency

[Jeremy]

Corvettes which use the Tender for higher warp.

The Bubble probably allows a lot of the shield strength to be put into one spot where a the n-sided polygon has only one projector per side, weaker to one face but stronger to massed volleys.

That might be a reason why the erratic firing pattern of the the Star Fleet armada in First Contact achieved less than the combined effects on one face that Picard directed.

[Temujin]

So I'm not the only one who upon reading that immediately though SFB/SFC pseudofighters and the pseudofighter tenders. For those unfamiliar, a PF is a cross between a fighter and a frigate, primarily used by powers that used energy intensive heavy weapons like plasma torpedoes, mainly Gorn and Romulans, that weren't economical/feasible to mount on the smaller fighters used by other powers (Federation, Klingon,Hydran,Kzinti). It's main advantage over fighters being that they could operate somewhat independently once they reached battle via their tender and did not have to return to the mothership to rearm. Basically think Defiant sized (maybe a bit smaller) ships, lacking warp drives and really only having the combat essential systems (weapons,shields, basic sensors) operating in squadrons of about 2-6 ships. Far more capable than fighters, packing firepower and survivability comparable to a frigate, but at a fraction of the cost.

Actually, like shuttles, they did have warp drives. However their speed was limited, and if I recall, they couldn't disengage by going to 'high' warp.

[Jeremy]

Did they have any models for this thing?