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A quick question about the Prometheus class ships. Unlike the GCS, where the saucer section is not warp capable but the Engineering section is, aren't all three sections of the Prometheus capable of warp speeds? That would suggest that the Prometheus has three warp cores, three pairs of warp nacelles, (at least) three separate impulse engines--all in all, an enormous amount of space and mass taken up on the vessel, as well as a presumably extraordinary amount of resources in production. And to add insult to injury, judging from the pictures of the separated Prometheus I've seen, fully a third or more of those components are non-productive, wasted space and mass unless the sections are separated!

It makes far more sense to remove the impulse drive components and the warp nacelles that aren't functional during "normal" operations, remove the docking clamps and separation mode, and devote that space and mass to mounting extra quantum torpedo magazines, extra launchers, and more phaser banks. Possibly leave the three M/AM reactors in place and use them as extra/backup power sources during combat operations. The end result would be an extremely powerful warship with a massive armament loadout and enormous power generation capabilities by UFP standards.

IIRC the next generation Prometheus is supposed to get rid of the Multi Vector Assault Mode (I think that's what MVAM stood for?) in favor of increased offense and defense.

I think that only the main Engineering section thingy has a M/AM reactor, unless all of the M/AM reactors are of the Defiant's type -- entirely possible as well.

You can power a warp drive off a fusion reactor, but it's horribly inefficient that way IIRC. And anyway, the forward sections have small warp coils built in, so they're not trying to hit any speed records anyway.

I have heard from somewhere it was a science vessel, perhaps from the episode.
Since it had no problems taking out a Warbird on its own says otherwise.
And Federation is not idiotic stupid to devote research on making science vessels in times of war. Prometheus is clearly a warship. To bad we didn't see her in full action.

Crayz9000 wrote:I think that only the main Engineering section thingy has a M/AM reactor, unless all of the M/AM reactors are of the Defiant's type -- entirely possible as well.

You can power a warp drive off a fusion reactor, but it's horribly inefficient that way IIRC. And anyway, the forward sections have small warp coils built in, so they're not trying to hit any speed records anyway.

It sounds like you're saying that the Federation designed a ship with MVAM, all three sections warp capable, and then made the warp drives so underpowered and inefficient that their enemies can outrun the ship if it uses the MVAM.

Not to mention that if powering warp drives off a fusion reactor is that difficult, then aren't the various sections going to have a hard time powering shields and weapons off those same fusion reactors?

I don't really know, I was only thinking aloud.

You could put a couple dedicated fusion reactors, one on each warp coil, anyway. But whatever. I think that using Defiant-type quad M/AM reactors would work better, given that those are compact but produce a helluva lot of power.

Offical sources put the Prometheus at having three of everything for the warp flight.

Now, offical sources also say that the Prometheus was a sucessful test bed in that it showed the weakness in the seperation. The creator of the ship IIRC said that Starfleet altered the design, increased its size 25%, and removed the multi vector assault capabilities. It still retains the four warp engines as well as three M/AM cores. It removes the undeeded docking sections, the added armor between the sections wasting space, the undeeded extra impulse, the undeeded 5th and 6th warp engines, etc... There aren't any more outward facing launchers or phasers, however with more power the outward facing arrays have more power. The launchers also have more torpedo stocks for longer sustained fire.

Basicaly they cramed something like the Sovereign MK-1 into something the size of an Intrepid. Pure combat and nothing else. This is supposed to be the production run Prometheus type, by offical sources.

All three ships had warp nacells must mean each also had M/AM reactors.
How fast the ship went, I don't have a clue. But a Nebula did catch up to it only to be disabled later by Prometheus phasers.

Hmmm... match up between the Prometheous and the Sovereign perhaps in order? Would be interesting, especially if as Alyeska says, the Prom is meant to be a Sovvie in a smaller package