Sunnyside wrote:True. They may have considered deep space ops to dangerous while war was going on.
How could sending a ship to exlpore a completely different area of space than the war is happening in be construed as dangerous?
There are no enemies in that direction.
However what it shows is that they were doing these diplomatic and archeological things instead of participating in the war.
Actually, it shows that the ship was used for one diplomatic function, the importance of which was never stated (IIRC), the ship being deployed to mediate a disagreement over a
vital planet, and the captain stating he wanted to go look at some ruins.
Though usually the captains we see are charged with going out and exploring, hence they have a lot of leeway in how to go about that.
Except, we routinely see captains taking on missions that have
nothing whatsoever to do with their current mission. All without contacting Starfleet.
I can't honestly see a captain in wartime at any point in history just saying, you know what, today I feel like taking my ship and going to investigate some ruins.
Neither can I.
This is becuase real life militaries are
smart.
Or rather he could if he had been charged with studying things inside federation space.
Except we never heard of him being ordered there. It seems more likely, and more in keeping with Picard himself, that it was his own idea to go there.
Are those ships currently cataloging new species in the Galapados?
So, if a warship was sent out to catalogue new species in the Galapagos, this somehow makes them a multirole ship? No, it dosen't. It means they're carrying science personel who have been assigned to the ship to research such thigs. The ship itself dosen't change, ergo it is still a pure warship.
And again the Galaxy was still a warship, it just had other roles in addition.
I never mentioned the Galaxy.
Fair enough, but at that point in time starfleet was pulling out pretty much everything with a photon torpedo tube in the area. And nobody denys that, like the multirole Galaxy, the Sov was the strongest ship in its time.
You seem to keep missing the point that
they wanted to get rid of Picard for that battle.
The fact that they didn't just throw him onto another ship is just down to their stupidity, but the point stands that they wanted Picard as far away as possible.
And they didn't send him off to look at some interesting ruins, they sent him on a military mission.
I think you just didn't come back to edit this, but there was that little spat with the Dominion.
Correct, I forgot to come back to that.
But my point that they would be unwilling to risk one of only two ships of that class in a war still stands.
I brought that up because, while denying any sources outside of the big screen that I brought up, he claimed a valid reason for not seeing Sovs fight the Dominion was they hadn't been developed in RL yet. But they had.
What happened in real life is completely irrelevant.
But you must admit not seeing them in those big panning shots is strong evidence they weren't there. Also you'd think a ship like that would tend to stick out a little.
Why would they stick out? You would be looking for
one ship in a fleet of hundreds. And the fighting we saw on screen was hardly the full extent of the war. It's possible they were fighting elsewhere.
We can't see inside in cannon I suppose, but we can at least see profiles.
And do we see the contents of thse shuttlebays, too?
When your shields are down, your ship is about to be destroyed, after which your home planet will be destroyed, I wouldn't call deploying fighters a waste of time.
You are thinking from an inteligent perspective, when you need to be thinking from Picard's perspective.
He would
never throw away lives if they had no hope of victory (which he didn't), that's why we never even saw him deploying armed shuttles.
Because the whole point is the shuttlebays are there for non miltary missions.
Transporting personel to and from the surface is a non military mission. Does this mean it would be a complete waste of time to have one on a dedicated warship?
Nope.
If that landing pad was designed for classes of helicopters that aren't for a military purpose, and then the captain was told to go do whatever he feels like I would consider it something of a multirole ship.
Transport helicopters count as non-military. Does this mean that a ship carrying them suddenly becomes a multirole vesel? Nope.
And plenty of 18th century captains had full authority to do pretty much whatever they liked. Does this make warships of that era multirole? Nope.
If a large dinning hall was added in order to entertain foreign dignitaries I would start considering the ship somewhat multirole.
Er, warships
do have large dining halls. And I could quite simply grab a foreign dignitary and sit him down there. In fact, they did just that during WW2. Does this make these ships multi role? Nope.
Uh what. Most modern warships are sitting around waiting for a battle, training, actually being part of an action, or maybe a little publicity.
I guess you don't realise that a lot of ships patrol the seas for smugglers and such?
Hell, the Irish navy spends most of its time chasing Spanish fishermen out of our waters. This hardly makes them multirole, even though this is a non-military mission.
I know of none going out on extended missions to study humpback whales or what have you.
And even if they did, it wouldn't change what the ship is designed for, which is war. It would simply mean they have the specialists aboard for such studies. Again, this does not make them multirole.
And yet in that short time it was established that the Prometheus was designed primarily as a warship.
True, but do you mean to say that the fact that no one ever said 'the Sovereign is a pure warship' means it is a multirole vessel? Despite the fact that we have seen precisely zero evidence of multirole capabilities?
A pure dedicated warship yes. However others sacrificed gun decks or manuverability for speed or commercial cargo capacity.
The onese that sacraficed gun deck for maneuverability were
smaller than equivelant ships. That's where we get terms like 'frigate' from.
And armed merchantmen are hardly military craft.
True, but some classes sacrificed combat capability for it.
These were usualy ships dedicated to holding slaves or plunder. This would hardly make them multirole.
My knowledge on these details is a little scetchy. But I do believe a range of such ships were designed with transport or non military roles in mind. Certainly some of the smaller ships were as they were built for non military roles and simply militarized when needed.
Yes, things like 'frigate' and 'battleship' were usually classed acording to size, due to the fact that no two ships were ever the same.
And how does the existance of non-military ships support your claim that ships of that era were multirole?
The Sov, however, looks like a Galaxy on a diet. And looks like all the other ships that you agree are built for multiple mission profiles.
*sigh*
I'll say this again:
The mere fact that the ship is designed moronicaly is
not proof that it is a multirole ship. I could find dozens of military ships that
look like non-military ships. Does this mean they can't actually be military ships? No.
Not neccesarily.
What?
Lets say you can have a grand total of 10. You start off with 7X and 3Y. Is it possible to increase Y without decreasing X? No.
So it
is nesecary if you plan on fitting more machinery into the same sized hull.
They would have gained some space back when they didn't force the torpedo weaponry to be purely internal,
A lot of the torpedo weaponary
is internal. And it has a lot more of them than the Galaxy does.
and they may have miniturized some things.
Proof? The machinery looks just the same as before.
And they could have saved a lot of space if they just told crew to suck it up and leave their families at home.
Except for the fact that the quarters apear to be the same size, so they wouldn't gain anything except getting all the civies out of the way.
It's just that I'm saying it's a 7-9 allowing it to take on the role of the Galaxy.
Of which we have no proof.
While others want it to be a 1 or 2 taking on the role of a large Defiant.
Of which we have proof.
At best, the ship may be somewher around 3 or 4, simply due to its size, allowing it to acomadate diplomatic functions with ease.
a year or two to get the bugs out and still get in on the major battles.
And why would they risk such an important ship when the Federation is no longer on the brink of destruction? Hell, they may have been stationed to defend Earth the whole time.
And the design was obviously pretty much figured out in First Contact (which was before the war).
What makes you say that?
And when have you heard of a major power making a ship designed purely for war and then holding it back?
Yes, for defence of their HQ.
And this is a war where they're already comiting Warships that they class as science ships!
And why would they send one of only two powerfull warships into battles which were already being covered by major fleet elements?
It's quite likely they were stationed to defend Earth or other important planets in the case of an attack.
Of course I'm not saying the Sov can't fight, but that starfleet might have held it back because they'd want a top of the line explorer to do what Enterprises do once the war is out.
Yeah, they're definately going to hold back two powerfull ships of a type which they have already showed they were desperate enough to deploy.
And so held it in reserve.
Or as a defence unit.
That would depend on why the designers added it.
For transporting personel on and off the ship, which is likely what the Sovereigns shuttles are for. This hardly makes it multirole.
You mean like escape pods?
Yes. As a redundant escape unit.
suppose shuttlecraft as evacuation devices would be useful if you had a very specific sort of emergency. The kind that will destroy the ship in a few minutes, giving you time to use the shuttlecraft, but that cannot be fixed, and that would not also destroy the shuttlecraft.
Or in the event that all power goes out. We've seen many times that it's quite easy to knock out several systems on a ship with one hit that dosen't even affect the area in question.
But we know from cannon that shuttlecraft/runabouts are very frequently used for scientific, diplomatic, and exploritory missions.
Such as where?
All I've ever seen them used as is for transport, or in an emergency.
And even if someone came out and said what the ships purpose was you'd find some reason to dismiss it.
Wrong. If Picard came out in the next TNG film and said 'this ship is commonly used for science and exploration, due to its multirole capability' I'd happily accept that the Sovereign is a multirole ship.
But no one ever said that, nor did we ever see evidence on screen.
Oh wait, like you did with the RL designers and writers.
If Rick Berman said 'by the way, Picard is two hundred, and the Federation controls a million galaxies' would you count this as canon? No, becuase clearly canon goes against this statement. The words of people who worked on the show are not canon, that is why I ignore them.
Your only evidence to the contrary is that the ship has more weapons than a Galaxy.
No, it isn't. Although it is quite an important piece of evidence, as you cannot fit twice as much weaponary into the same sized hull without decreasing the amount of non-military equipment.
Though it still has nowhere near the weapon density seen on actual starfleet pure warships.
Wrong, its armaments are quite consistant for such a ship. And much of the space may also be filled with torpedoes.
Nor does it have their look.
Irrelevant. The Defiant looks nothing like the Prometheus, by your logic this would mean that one of them must not be a military ship.
And you really must admit the thing looks like a Galaxy type ship.
So? The aesthetics of the ship are completely irrelevant.
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