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- Mar 29, 2019
Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier
- Thread starter Snorlaxative
- Start date
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2022
woah Musashi can't do that shit EVERY week
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- Feb 14, 2023
Well, I had time to think about the Prometheus since then. I still maintain that the design is relatively sound - if the boat came without the capability to split into 3 parts. If the Prometheus was just one ship rather than a system of ships, the thing would be more dangerous than the Sovereign-class and cheaper, too. It has a comparable amount of hardpoints/weapons on a smaller footprint and profile. Which is a rare enough combination as it is.
The problem with the boat is the multi-vector-assault-bullshit. It can split into three, and each have their independent power source, sensors, computers, life support, engineering spaces, secondary systems and so on and so forth. If one of them is damaged sufficiently enough or even destroyed, you can't join the ships back together into the original configuration. Why Starfleet thought that was a good idea is anyone's guess, but it isn't what any reasonable engineer would do. Their task is to reduce the amount of structural failure points as much as possible.
That each part is weaker than the sum is just icing on the cake. In the default state, the Prometheus is an impressive ship. If its split up into three, well... there goes the tactical advantage you hoped you'd have. They gave up objectively absolute staying power to give an enemy commander three smaller problems to think about. There are situations in which that trade is useful, but those are not the norm. Usually that'd include technologically inferior opponents that you want to overwhelm as quickly as possible and where the risk of damage to one, two or all parts of the Prometheus is manageable or at least minimal. That also means, it's not as useful against peer opponents with similar (or in certain aspects superior) technological sophistication or larger engagements with more participating ships. There the boat will be singled out and ganked, because it represents a numerical advantage over the opponent that can and should be removed quickly, not a technological one.
If this thing faced one Romulan warbird and thought splitting into three is smart, because there are two cloaked warbirds nearby, just wait. The Prometheus will be assraped by the three warbirds, and probably faster than if it had stayed in the default configuration. At least in that state, you can be sure that one of the warbirds will be destroyed and a second one severely damaged, before Prometheus itself is taken out.
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- Mar 5, 2021
Long. Sleek. Cruising confidently toward the biggest, swirling wormhole you’ve ever seen. Increase thrust. Let’s see what happens.
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- Jan 2, 2024
Joining back together isn't necessary as each ship have impulse and warp capability. So each ship section is capable of getting the fuck out of Dodge and back to friendly territory. Unlike other ship classes like the Galaxy where their saucer [lifeboat] sections are incapable of warp travel and impulse for long distances.
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- Feb 14, 2023
That's actually arguing for my point: the mode makes no sense under most circumstances, and the ones where that mode does make sense aren't what the Federation usually does: overwhelming lesser technologically advanced species with layered force. Like, this Prometheus-stuff is fucking confusing. They built what essentially is a first-strike weapon, despite them never doing first strikes and that behavior is historically documented enough to be consistent. So, my brain is like "what the fuck" when thinking about this boat.
I swear to god, the Prometheus grinds my gears and tingles my autismo-senses enough to be perpetually angery about it.
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- Mar 7, 2021
If Starfleet threw Prometheus class ships all over the front line, 1 is it better to lose one-third a ship instead of the whole ship and 2 with enough of them couldn't segments from different ships rejoin as needed?
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- Jan 2, 2024
The idea of a ship being modular and or having hard points for modules is a sound and proven concept. As seen with the Galaxy for internal modularity, Miranda and Nebula for external modularity and hardpoints for mission pods, Prometheus could've been that concept taken to its logical conclusion.
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- Feb 14, 2023
Okay, here's the thing that really fucking complicates shit. The three parts are not identical. Read that again: the three parts are not identical. I assume that a lot of the internal components are standardized and interchangeably to a degree, making them identical to a good degree. You have two parts with two warp nacelles each, which are (hopefully) of the same manufacturing model. That means you have at least two identical warp cores. There are other systems, which I hope are interchangeably in terms of parts the same way. Just look at this shit:
The internal and external layouts of the three individual parts are different in each case. So, you have to train the crew manning this clusterfuck accordingly. You have to split your senior staff and the rest of the crew essentially over three different ships and as an additional complication, they need to know how to operate this thing when it's in its default mode. Sure, you can automate that a lot, and a larger degree of automation to achieve a higher degree of autonomous operations in the MVA-mode was an underlying design criteria.
But the Federation doesn't fully trust automated systems and AIs, and they want to have human oversight. So, instead of one ship with one internal command hierarchy you have three command hierarchies plus a fourth one to coordinate between the three. That makes OOBs frankly a bit complicated. I'd leave that problem to the expert: Janeway. She'd figure this shit out before she's done with ther coffee and decides that she should be in charge of the overall command of the boat and its composing parts, no matter what, and she'd find some obscure clause in Starfleet legalese to make it work.
Now, one could argue that this is still the case in any OOB with more than one ship. And it is true, except that the administrative overhead is of a different nature and has been factored in since... well, forever. The Prometheus takes that admin overhead and shoves it into the ship, rather than having sitting that somewhere else, e.g. a dedicated flagship or a designated squadron leader. This is the kind of shit apparently nobody in Starfleet thinks about. But I do and it drives me nut-
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- Dec 13, 2022
Babylon 5 was absolutely a character in itself. I would guess that more than half of the episodes are about life on the station and people struggling to deal with such a densely packed and dynamic society. Even the space war episodes have plenty of dialog about goings on in other parts of the station. B5's physical attributes are brought up all the time. We're even told its weight in the first season's intro (2.5 million tons).
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- Mar 7, 2021
I think the respective segments are identical. What I'm asking is if you send twenty Prometheus class ships to the front, why can't you recombine the respective A, B & C segments as needed, as some are destroyed or put out of service? Would multi-vector assault mode work with intentional disposability?
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- Jan 2, 2024
Standardization of parts and plug and play will ensure every part of the Prometheus will fit onto another Prometheus. Federation isn't a "file parts to fit" civilization.
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- Feb 14, 2023
Segment A can only fit where segment A is supposed to fit. Segment B can only fit where segment B is supposed to fit. Segment C can only fit where segment C is supposed to fit. But what you can do is take segment A from a ship where the other segments are too damaged to properly fit again and use that for another ship which has lost segment A.
Unless Starfleet was clever and stupid enough to close that option off for a multitude of reason they might have to prevent such strictly speaking kitbash configurations. It could be related to cybersecurity or slight modifications the crew did to the systems or some unexpected incompatibility individual to one ship but which doesn't exist in another, shit like that.
I'd say it's complicated and Starfleet was dumb enough to build it that way. The multi-vector-assault nonsense sucks ass, because it produces too many vulnerabilities to be justifiable.
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- Oct 9, 2023
It would still be better to have two dedicated ships for proper roles. The lore gets weird depending on what time line you follow but almost all of them agree a combat dedicated ship requires fewer crew.
Its a rule of cool over practical design.
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- Dec 27, 2014
So it really does have a bowling alley and its not something the polywater-intoxicated Lt. Riley just made up.
Anyway, those blueprints are fucking cool.
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- Dec 15, 2022
I award you 5 Trek points for knowing what SFB and FASA are.
These are both games that were dear to my heart and I still play SFB online almost 30 years later. And just for everyone's info Star Fleet Battles is still in production to this day making it over 45 years old. It's two creators are 75+ and still partaking in the community and making new stuff for their player-base.
https://www.starfleetgames.com/
How many other board games can say that? Trek truly does inspire people, no matter what shit the modern progressives shove into it fans always stick around for the good stuff and nothing can dim their fervor.
plus this!
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- Dec 13, 2022
Speaking of Trek TTGs, does anyone know much about Prime Directive? I had a look at a module recently and it seemed a bit linear, but I don't know anything about the rules.
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- Jan 11, 2017
Yup. Me bawling my eyes out every time at the end of Sleeping in Light is as much for the station dying as it is for Sheridan.
I think the difference is mainly that nobody really gives a crap about the fictional tech in Babylon 5 the way trekies obsesses about nonsensical contradictory technobabble crapped out by coked-up TV writers on a deadline. It has enough verisimilitude to get the story from A to B without being too obviously contradictory to whatever the other guy wrote for last week's episode, which is all it needs.
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- Mar 11, 2020
Brother, I can't tell you how much of my teenage life was spent obsessing over these games (along with Battletech).
I was a bit too young to enjoy FASA Trek when it was still being published, so I had to acquire used copies whenever they showed up at my FLGS. I honestly haven't played an RPG in like 25 years, but I've continued to be fascinated with FASA's take on Trek and continued acquiring books over the years. I don't usually collect physical objects, but I've got almost all of the printed FASA Trek material at this point.
I also still have my 90's era SFB and F&E boxes in a bedroom closet, but I can't imagine ever having the energy or patience to play them again, even if I could find other players. In my old age the idea of playing them is more appealing than the reality of it, lol.
Sadly, from what I can tell the simplified Federation Commander game hasn't been enough to bring in fresh blood, and the age of the average SFB player is probably in the mid-50s at this point. They've also completely failed to get their miniature lines back online after Shapeways' print on demand service collapse, which is a bummer. I'm skeptical that the company itself will survive much past Steven V. Cole's eventual passing.
If you're not familiar with Star Fleet Battles, Prime Directive is the RPG set in that game's Star Fleet universe, which is a variant timeline originally based on the original series only (due to SFB's weird license agreement with Paramount). So no Next Generation or DS9, but also unique races. The game universe diverges wildly from screen canon, with a "General War" consuming all known powers, allowing the "Battles" of the setting's name.
The "Prime Directive" title itself has nothing to do with the Federation's non-intervention laws, but instead refers to the "Prime Teams" players will be part of. These are essentially special forces style landing parties operating in wartime missions. It's an RPG designed by wargaming neckbeards, and it shows.
The original version was released in the 90's, and uses it's own D6-based system. I've honestly never run the game but have read through the rules a few times. It's very old school, and crunchy. They still sell it in PDF format, but hasn't been updated since the 90's.
Later, they made two newer versions of the game that adopt the same background but use other game engines. This includes both a GURPS and D20 games, which I believe are both still for sale in print and PDF format, although I'm unsure how recently they've been updated.
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- Jan 2, 2024
Lot of people actually did and still do give a crap about B5 tech, including NASA. Who had designed the civilian construction Starfury variant seen in the beginning of B5: Thirdspace TV movie. As Babylon 5 was one of handful of sci-fi TV series to use real Newtonian physics for the Earth Alliance and to varying degrees for the other alien species.
Star Wars used to be like this but the EU writers had got completely retarded on trying to explain what the tech is, how it works and trying to make it realistic during the 2000s.
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