Saucer Seperation for Galaxy Class

posted on December 26th, 2008, 2:11 pm

Saucer Seperation is no military attack pattern or something like that. a splitted galaxy is far less effective in combat then a combined one (taken from the Galaxy Technology Book).

You mean the TV series lied? I'd take the series over books anyday. If a combined Galaxy is better than a seperated one, then the Prometheus MVAM is useless, since it's just an automated Seperation.

If the Seration isn't in as a Special Ability, how exactly could it be in?

posted on December 26th, 2008, 3:01 pm

by the way, the prometheus was an experimental ship and the whole design was based on the idea, so its optimized for that.

posted on December 26th, 2008, 3:29 pm

the saucer seperation was included as a giant "escape pod" for the 800+ civilists on the Galaxy. unlike other Starfleet ships like the Intrepid or the Sovereign the Galaxy was some kind of giant city, its often missunderstood that it had a real star fleet crew of above 1000, many of them were civilists, thats what the saucer was there for, to evacuate them in case of an emergency. The saucer is close to unarmed, cut of from its primary power core it only had the fusion engines supporting a perimeter shield system, impulse engines AND weapons? nope.

what crazy idea drove the storyboard authors to make the prometheus MVAM a "superweapon" is beyond my imagination even my mobile phone can calculate 3d vectors for attacking 3 vessels, thats not much of a trick. and putting 3 power cores in one vessel to make them real combatant vessels seems like a waste to me. one could argument with modern electronic warfare mechanisms, like ECM and stuff like that. at the end of the day i think the prometheus is probably an effective tool of war - its powercores are just damn expensive!

The Prometheus will be in as a map object (and something you can get through neutral buildings in as future features). The Galaxy Seperation might be in as an emergency effect, but we do yet lack teh technology to do that as we like to. But its on todo

posted on December 26th, 2008, 4:38 pm

atm from what i've seen ships with seperation can not be limited due to the loophole with the seperated parts

posted on December 26th, 2008, 6:19 pm

Part of a singal player mition or cenimatic prevowe if they are brot back. or some other plain not yet bro9t to light.

posted on December 27th, 2008, 1:40 am

@Optec

I disagree. Riker's order to separate the saucer proved very effective in the rescue of Captain Picard from the Borg even though the Borg were aware of this tactic.

Not only that, but the stardrive section got a boost in maneuverability and speed when separated. Even Worf said, "the Enterprise can be a formidable ship when relieved of its bulk."

It's true that the saucer was used for emergency situtations, but it was also intended for combat otherwise it wouldn'
t have a battle bridge.

Though the saucer may seem underpowered; it's still better to have two ships vs one in a tactical engagement.

posted on December 27th, 2008, 7:28 am

I agree with Optec on this one. They only used that separation as a tactic to rescue Picard, and they only used it because the Borg knew the Saucer alone wasnt a threat and so focused on the other part. A fact they then used to kidnap Picard from the cube.
Fact of the matter is, as Optec said, that they thought of the saucer as an escape pod, while the drivesection could engage the enemy long enough for the saucer to escape.
If your arguing that the drivesection of the ship is a stronger ship than the whole Galaxy, well then I have to point out that ships phasers fire from the saucer section. So while it may be able to fire torps, it doesnt have main phasers. BTW those same phasers can not be used while the ship is seperated due to the fact that the saucer section doesnt have any energy core of sufficient power.
As for fighting 2 vessles instead of one, well that is an advantage, but only if the 2 ships are strong as a single unit as well. If Galaxy was to do this more often, sooner than later the saucer would be destroyed as it only has weak shields and very little weapons, which means most of the ships crew would die as well and I dont think StarFleet wants that And that is exactly why the Galaxy only did this once in a combat situation and that was a special case.

posted on December 27th, 2008, 8:36 am

You make some good points but I'll let you in on a little tip. There is a phaser strip located on the Cobra Head of the Galaxy Stardrive Secition, and the Saucer Section is still armed with the primary Type X phaser array provided with power from the impulse engines, fusion reactors, and auxiliary systems. I'm sure any good captain would order reduced power to non-essential systems, replicators, and life support during combat or emergency situations.

posted on December 27th, 2008, 9:19 am

You make some good points but I'll let you in on a little tip. There is a phaser strip located on the Cobra Head of the Galaxy Stardrive Secition, and the Saucer Section is still armed with the primary Type X phaser array provided with power from the impulse engines, fusion reactors, and auxiliary systems. I'm sure any good captain would order reduced power to non-essential systems, replicators, and life support during combat or emergency situations.

Thanks for the tip, now allow me to retort. Main phaser arrays are located on the saucer section, if there are more phaser arrays on the stardrive section I dont know, but the ship looses significant firepower with the loss of those phaser arrays
And as I said b4, the Saucer section simply does not have enough power without the warp core to power those phasers sufficiently. So while a good captain might rerout power to phaser arrays, that still doesnt put away the fact that they dont have the warp core to power them any more.

posted on December 27th, 2008, 10:26 am

1st point. 2 ships are better then one, vene if they are weaker then the ship they would make when combined, strenth in numbers

2nd Point and optec and fleetops staff i would really like you to read this.  The galaxy class in my opinion should be produced in a ship yard, not a warp in feature that you get with special credits, the stars of for somthing special, like avalon, descent, heck through in the promethiues.  But the steamrunner and galaxy need to be built in ship yards, same with nebula class.  Now continuing with this, before the soverign, the galaxy class was the most advanced federation starship, yet its stats are horrible, why i belive even an excelsior has more power than it, it should be just as powerful as a defiant, with good sheilds, it was the flagship before the soverign, it deserves to be a more powerful ship.

3rd point, ship seperation......idk i would like to see it, but im not sure how much use it would be.

and if you guys want to do somthing different hears an idea for a bit of creativness for the galaxy, remeber the excelsior, well that became the excelsior II, so you could update the galaxy to galaxy II, hey remeber the enterprise d from all good things? yeah 3 engines, just a thought..... 

 

posted on December 27th, 2008, 11:01 am

yep the Galaxy was the Federation Flagship, but its no war-ship. its combat performance was not that good (how many did you see explode in the dominion war) and it even had major flaws in its shield harmonics so it had to be upgraded with additional shield generators (the dominion war refit).
The Galaxy is a very rare vessel, there only exist a hand full of operating Galaxy vessels and another 6 or 8 as spaceframes, which had been rapidly assambled to make them combat-ready for the dominion war, but most of their interior was still empty (scientific labs and the like). as Fleet Operations takes place on the steps to the 25th century, Galaxy Class vessels are no longer produced, but there are still some flying arround in the Federation, thats why you can warp-in them.
Steamrunners have been in mass production for arround 3 years, but with quite low numbers, thats why you can get it only via Warp-In.
The old Excelsior will come in one of the future patches as a newe Warp-In vessel for the same reason

posted on December 27th, 2008, 8:04 pm

The Galaxy class where made to have a long shelf life. They are supposed to be around close to the duration of the Excelsior class.

More: the Excelsior class is near are at the end of shelf life.

I don't know if it would be a good idea to put the Excelsior class back in the game other then a map object.

posted on December 28th, 2008, 12:33 am

its combat performance was not that good (how many did you see explode in the dominion war) and it even had major flaws in its shield harmonics so it had to be upgraded with additional shield generators (the dominion war refit).
The Galaxy is a very rare vessel, there only exist a hand full of operating Galaxy vessels and another 6 or 8 as spaceframes, which had been rapidly assambled to make them combat-ready for the dominion war, but most of their interior was still empty (scientific labs and the like). as Fleet Operations takes place on the steps to the 25th century, Galaxy Class vessels are no longer produced, but there are still some flying arround in the Federation, thats why you can warp-in them.

As far as I remember, not a single one was shown blowing up during the war (Oddyssey died before it started, and that was a kamikaze to the Deflector/Warp Core area, that would kill a Sovereign in seconds and meant nothing in regards to the Galaxy's power/weakness). I don't remember anything about a War Refit, unless you mean the USS Venture. Plus, why does everyone say how many Galaxy's there are? No-one knows and no-one ever will (at least, not canon).

Why would they stop building Galaxy's as early as the 25th century?

posted on December 28th, 2008, 12:50 am

optec thats y i said, galacy 2, make it a redit, a ship of war, like the one from the end o all goods things, make it like that galaxcy class

[Anonymous]

posted on December 28th, 2008, 6:01 am

Last edited by Anonymous on December 28th, 2008, 6:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Alright, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty cannon all you had to do was ask. The Galaxy Class operated without a loss during the Dominion War. The USS Galaxy fought at the first battle of Chin'toka, and although she took heavy damage from Cardassian orbital weapons platforms she continued to fight. Galaxy wings 9-1 and 9-3 simply blew away a Cardassian Galor while the Enterprise D caused moderate damage to a Galor in, "Wounded." It's fair to say the Class received a significant weapons upgrade during the Dominion war, and if it's the 25th Century it's safe to assume their weapons have received another major refit.

The Galaxy Class was also still in full production at Utopia Planetia shipyards in 2371, and arguing that it's no longer built because it's the 25th century doesn't hold water because the Interpid Class is still being built. By the 25th Century, the Intrepid Class will have been in service for 30 years. The Vor'cha, D'Deridex, and Negh'Var are still built had shipyards to. See my point? So the Galaxy should be produced at the shipyards too. I rarely get a Galaxy Class with the warp in feature making it nearly useless. There's no point to request assistance when I can build 3-4 Sovereigns in that time and I might not even get a Galaxy Class after all that.

Also, the phaser array on top of the Cobra head is also a Type X phaser array, the most powerful phaser array of the TNG era. It was powerful enough to destroy a Klingon K'Vort Class Battlecruiser in a few well placed shots. So you have two ships after saucer separation; both armed with Type X phaser arrays. From the TNG technical manual, "One phaser array is mounted on the "cobra head" of the secondary hull while a photon torpedo launcher is mounted on the ventral aft of the saucer." You do the math. It was the largest and most powerful ship of its time fending off a Borg Cube while the rest of the Fleet was destroyed.

Saucer separation

"The Galaxy-class Enterprise is capable of saucer separation and subsequent re-docking, used sometimes for leaving the civilian population behind when the stardrive section goes into combat,[2] as seen in the The Next Generation episodes "Encounter at Farpoint",[5] and "The Arsenal of Freedom",[6] for the additional combat advantage of having two separate vessels instead of one, as seen in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II",[7] or as a lifeboat[2] as seen in the film Star Trek Generations.[8] The Enterprise is the only starship seen in any of the television series to perform saucer separation."

Indeed, the destruction of the Enterprise D and the USS Odyssey was shocking, but the Galaxy Class redeemed itself during the Dominion war. At the end of Star Trek Voyager, a Galaxy Class engaged the Borg sphere and another was seen escorting Voyager home. I don't think StarFleet planned on retiring the ship anytime soon since they kept Mirandas and Excelsiors around for a hundred years.

Besides, the statement that Galaxy Class starships are no longer being produced is just made up fanboy nonsense in an attempt to conjure up a history for the Galaxy Class.

I base my evidence from what I see on screen, what's on screen is canon, and they were still being built and in active service in the late 24th century.

The point is that we love the Galaxy Class and we love saucer separation so we would be most appreciate if somehow the saucer separation feature would return in Fleetops in some fashion.