- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
The Galaxy-class saucer seperation is a rather neat idea but it really is more of a liability and the exact way how it works is weird as fuck, given that the piece with the civilians isn't warp capable. Now, what I could see work is to have a ship like the Galaxy class, that travels to some planet, ditches the saucer section that stays in orbit, which then acts as a forward base to explore the planet via shuttlecraft (basically repurpose the captain's yacht for that) and teleporters or as a sort of mobile ambassy for starfleet, while the other section continues to explore the vicinity of the star system. Would make sense why the saucer looks like a giant space resort, too.
it makes sense for a case like farpoint, saucer stays behind where it's safe, battle bridge goes in. thing is most situations aren't happening in a way you can prepare for it, and once the whole ship is stuck in it there's no point in separation anymore, and even if you plan ahead it's usually much more sensible to call in backup/other ships than separate.
that's why it never bothered me much that they hardly used it, since it was highly situational to begin with (probably the reason the design got abandoned later on, iirc galaxy class the the biggest star fleet ever built, and then went back to smaller, more specialized vessels). same as the captain's yacht really, how often is a captain going on a lone cruise instead of taking a regular shuttle or transporter? and most captains won't use it as an escape pod either. nice concept, that's all.
as for test cases, sometimes you want to have a prolonged real life test case, and during peace times when you're not on a clock to constantly crank you machinery working on concepts or just another ship doesn't make much difference. least of all you'd need to built it at least once to see where the issues are and how feasible it is - there's probably quite a few prometheus concepts that never went farther than the drawing board.
the only waste would be the planning (usually done by a handful of people anyway), any scarce resource you can just re-use afterwards, especially with 24th century recycling tech. rest gets dumped somewhere to collect rust like we already do, but with advanced automation you could just have some drones dismantle it over time and re-use that as well.
Or better still, don't put fucking families on a ship that is supposed to be exploring the 'unknown,' so you don't even need to get civilians away from the danger in the first place...
it mainly was flying around in starfleet territory, there wasn't much unknown besides some spaces here and there, but not completely out of reach to have backup ready if needed (same reason saucer separation doesn't mean your completely fucked with only impulse). also flag ship to show how much star fleet can wave it's (galaxy class big) dick around, and bringing your family along works much better for diplomacy. but the galaxy class still had firepower and armor/shields out the ass, it might be a flying cruise ship, but not one you want to start shit with.
the reason it got in all kinds of shenanigans (which honestly were still few and far between, how often was the enterprise in real danger?) is because it's a tv drama. and even if we take that at face value, that's still a few and far between all the mundane stuff that would happen day in day out we don't see because it's pretty boring. there's a reason we hardly ever saw a nightshift episode. picard and the funky bunch have to sleep at some point...