The Prometheus Problem... 

"Look, we had a few extra Novas and a prototype Intrepid saucer. The engineers wouldn't shut up until I let them bolt them all together into one ship and after seeing the results, I called in a favor with the Romulans to get rid of the abomination! How was I supposed to predict that somehow, against all odds, an outdated EMH would appear out of nowhere, corrupt the modern EMH, and take the ship back?!"

The fundamental issue is that everyone asks why is Prometheus but nobody asks how is Prometheus.

The Prometheus, when the engineers answer, Because we can.

I think the key to remember about the Prometheus is less why she was designed and more when she was designed. To me, the prometheus is the perfect answer to "Am I facing 1 Cardassian Galor Cruiser or 3 Dominion Strike Fighters." Because while a medium cruiser could easily punch above its weight against cardassian designs the swarm nature of the Jem Hadar fighters necessitated coordinated attacks from multiple angles. The prometheus as a platform offers both. A way to outmaneuver a set of vessels that would just as happily ram you as fire weapons and then the ability to fight as one vessel with larger shield and weapons projections against the cruisers your enemy fields.

OK, now you've got me imagining a Prometheus-class starship named the USS Theseus, and people commenting on how many times each section has been replaced, and whether it really counts as the same ship.

I'm still convinced that the Prometheus was strictly a Technology Demonstator.

You are looking at it the wrong way. It's a Treaty Breaking ship. If a Treaty restricts the number of ships in an area, then you can "skirt around" those Restrictions by bringing a Prometheus class ship.

Remember this class of vessel is more than the multit-vector assault mode. In "Ship in a bottle" it is clearly stated that she is a test bed for a ton of starfleet cutting edge technology ( anybody remember regenerative shields) she not just a typical cruiser. She is a top of the line next-generation cruiser, far ahead of anything the other powers would have for a long time. She does serve a purpose putting out fires on the outer limits of federation territory, where getting a collection of vessels together could take days or weeks. Now you don't have that problem, this thing is the fleet, or wing, or squadron or how ever you want to classified it. And other then the Akira class is my favorite class of starfleet vessel

Meanwhile me with my Star Trek Online Prometheus: oh you out number me?....... Now you don't.

Multi-vector Assault Mode is a logistical extension of a feature almost never used. Otherwise I liked the concept of the Prometheus, almost like a hot rod Sovereign. Fast, well protected, and powerful.

A prometheus sans multi vector and all the costs and volume that would free up would be a really solid basis for a mid sized cruiser class.

“Because it would fucking rule”-The Prometheus design team, simultaneously, every time the one Vulcan on the team questioned the latest new idea. On a side note... yeah for all the questions the Prometheus raises I think its still not as bad as the Texas, with the context of the Texas being a disaster for all involved. Literally.

I’m fairly confident that you’re severely underestimating the basic proficiency of the Prometheus, simply based on the Voyager episode. Three Sabers would never take down a Romulan Warbird that quickly, plus the way you’ve described it doesn’t seem to track for me with the description the computer gave to the doctor. As for the utility of the Multi-Vector, there are other possibilities. Starships tend to intensify the shields facing their attackers. In theory by hammering a shield from multiple angles you could prevent them from reinforcing any shields, or even better take advantage it the enemy already has reinforced one shield

Something else I could see with multi-vector assault is maybe a defensive function for if the ship gets attacked by a squadron of smaller, more agile attack craft that can out-maneuver the Prometheus. If it’s too big to dogfight with these attack ships, by splitting into its three component parts, it can now maneuver on par with them

The Prometheus class is the most anime starship that has appeared in Star Trek and that Starfleet ever made. I mean, if they wanted to make a Star Trek anime... this would be the ship they would need to choose. Like, if this thing was charging at you... you start hearing "The Witch from Mercury" or some other anime battle theme.

You are missing two important aspects about this ship... It's in the name... Multi VECTOR attack craft. It basically can flank it's own opponent. It almost doubles it's weaponry and you do not need a massive warp core for skirmishing, you can redock to recharge. it is also a ship that reinforces itself and the entire crew of a single ship will be a veteran crew of three ships that work together closely during an engagement. The cooperation and coordination of the separated vessels will be second to none. So basically what you have is a larger vessel of decent combat strength that can deliver more surface area weapons in three parts as it splits into 3 highly organized and cooperative crews. Each vessel will split will full Energy banks as well as the ability to recharge off of their own warp cores. Each will be able to flank an opponent. each can reinforce the other. If one takes critical damage, the vessel itself is not lost. You have multiple ships for rescue if one ship is downed. You have 1/3 less chance of losing a veteran crew f the ship is heavily damaged. You can create fully intact vessels in hours if you suffer losses in battle by pulling sections from surviving ships. You can send in sections for upgrade and repair while maintaining full mission capability... hell, you can have refit sections fly to you, dock, and fly back the same section for refit. You have numerous tactical advantages having 3 warp signatures for 1 ship, or 1 warp signature for 3 ships. You can guarantee survival of one section by sacrificing the other two. You can have a smaller crew for 3 vessels as the crew from one splits off for skirmishing without sacrificing mission capability. It is an incredibly versatile ship idea.

Prometheus is ideal for deep raiding missions where it can use its long duration high warp abilities to penetrate deep behind enemy lines and then split apart to hit multiple lighly guarded rear area targets or simply confuse the hell out of whoever is fighting it.

An issue that is often overlooked is the command structure. Normally a captain and XO command a vessel, one on the bridge and one in the combat information center. But now you need 3 commanders for each section and 3 XO’s. And then they join back up and the extra staff are redundant.

Prometheus also has ablative armor, type 11 phasers, and can run with a tiny crew supplemented with holograms. The ship is used in the 29th century according to enterprise.

As a tactical cruiser, I really like it. Regenerative shields type 10 phasers and ablative armor. All the good tech starfleet has come up with for their combat focused ship and bringing it forward on something bigger and meaner than a Defiant or Saber while being much much faster than both. As for the multi vector it does make me ask why not just use a saber swarm.

Here is a scary thought explored in Internet chatroom RP years ago: The Prometheus is a subscale prototype and is intended to be built in a 2x and 3x size. A 3x Prometheus would be a volumetric equivalent to a Galaxy with room for a fighter wing and a regiment of Starfleet Marines as well.

It was an early concept for Fleet Formation. A Shelby creation. Applying the saucer/battle section strategy from Best Of Both Worlds. My idea is that it is intended to swarm a Borg ship, 10 Prometheus’ become 30 targets. Then whatever ships survive can replace lost sections with other ships.

My personal thoughts are that it was clearly a prototype - it appears around a year into the Dominion War (perhpas less) and is undergoing shakedown and field testing before it's stolen. Given only a few officers were trained in it and all of them were casualties, it's likely it's development was set back, and it probably did not get operational before the end of the war. Timeline-wise it probably started off as something for the Anti-Borg fleet, where you had a ship able to throw out significantly more volume of fire, and the Borg have hsown issues being able to adapt to large amounts of weapons fire coming in from more angles. So perhaps mroe but not necessarily high power attacks at different frequencies would be useful. It's weaponry seems considerably potent - it heavily damages at least one Romulan D'Deridex in combat and forces two pursuing Starfleet ships chasing it at warp to drop out of the fight. Then again likely most of those shooting it were doing so at lower power as they hoped to recover the ship intact. My personal canon is that it was a prototype/testbed ship that was taking longer in development so wasn't given priority by the Borg attack at the beginning of the Dominion War, and wasn't fully launched/completed it's shakedown until after the War was over. Given it's not seen in further 'canon' crowdshots it might not have seen mass production or the prototype version was considered a testbed. It seems even more adaptable with an extremely low crew requirement. A bridge crew on the primary section is able to operate all three units at full combat effectiveness. I can see a lot of the automated technology being the most useful thing that comes out of it. We don't know exactly how many crew it would be expected to have for a mass production model, but likely not that much of one. So my personal canon is that it was a ship deeloped as part of the anti-borg wave of ships, was harder to make work so only had the prototype operational by the end of the Dominion War, which saw the end of it's real necessity for further production. So development may have ceased or only a very few units were made. Given ti's status as a very strange pure combat vessel that was likely hideously overengineered and a maintenance nightmare, after the Federation became mroe isolationist after the Romulus Supernova it probably was mostly put into mothballs or decommissioned. Though it may have been a big part of advancements in automated tech to help lower crew requirements for ships.

Interesting design. My biggest negative about it is the nacelles of the "wedge" section. I always thought an incorporated nacelle design like the Defiant had would have been much better for many reasons.

The Prometheus is an awesome ship end of discussion.

It's like the navy wants to build a new destroyer leader (or light cruiser) for the destroyer squadron, what they ended up was meshing the whole god damn squadron into the destroyer leader itself lol.

I enjoyed the Prometheus class. It was nice to see something new and different. A very cool tactical vessel that can create 3 targets or support craft. That would come in handy in a variety of situations. Thanks for another awesome video!

I like the idea of this being a pursuit ship. Picards emergency saucer separation in Encounter at Farpoint would have gotten the SF engineering core working to make what he did safer, faster and more reliable with extra features… but really they needed a concept ship to push those features and show their value. The result is a ship that can chase down opponents, and when they are cornered instead of one ship, it splits into a Wolf Pack and swarms its target. Fast separation and reattachment would be needed to make the most of small windows of opportunity to pounce on a ship, or recover each section and go back into pursuit, using the combined ships power to chase down a target.

Cheers. I see promethus. Like the galaxy class . It can split but but you wouldn't want to do it to often. . Combined she is more powerful I think I read she can only do a year , before refuel/ resupply. She guzzle fuel

"Come the 25th Century, we don't really see the Multi-Vector concept"? Oh just multiple Ships attacking as one in the Picard Season 3 finale. Good catch

I always looked at it as three Defiant class like ships that otherwise functioned as single ship with range. Also the episode showed that AI controlled attack pattern in action. It was also equipped with the latest tech. For something described as an experimental it’s fine. As a class it is a one trick pony.

The attrition argument is even better when you consider you can probably recover the damaged section and repair it, but you don’t keep the rest of the ship occupied with nothing and give it a replacement, while you fix the original to slap on someplace else.

Here is the main issue with the modularity for wartime repair/swaps. To do that effectively, you would need to have the module sections ready in reserve for all possible losses. To do that you would need spares of all three modules, in other words, entire ships in reserve. So, it would be useless since the damaged Prometheus class ship would be just rotated to the rear, and a new one would just be sent forward like any other ship.

From the Voyeger episode it originated, I got the impression that it was designed around the idea of perfectly exploiting weaknesses in enemy shields. It looked like the computers were executing precisely coordinated attacks from multiple angles, in order to put the target's shields under maximum stress.

I love the Prometheus class and it’s a great example of Starfleet thinking outside the box

I believe that a true artist in the prose once described this ship as "the most deviantart, self insert fan fiction spaceship ever designed"" And... yeah, fair.

Ugh this hurts because Prometheus is one of the best Voyager Episodes IMO. I honestly wish the idea of holographic operatives was explored more in ST. I like the idea of Prometheus but the problem is that it seems to be fully automated which makes it absolutely moronic to be used against the Borg. If the Prometheus could be split into 3 manned and crewed ships prior to a battle to allow 1 ship with X firepower to become 3 ships with X/3 Firepower...that's actually a really cool ability in certain situations. The Dominion War actually proved that Carrier Doctrine was beginning to take hold in the ST Universe.

To defend the Prometheus a bit, one thing I think we're all forgetting is that Riker in one of the first successful battles against the Borg used the saucer separation feature to confuse and rout the Borg. Prometheus was obviously designed during the anti-Borg campaign of Starfleet so they probably pushed the concept so far in the hope that separation tactics would continue to be effective against Borg, particularly Borg that are not being overseen by the Queen and are just running on Drone algorithms that can be easily lead and confused.

The Prometheus class is a design that will continue on

I like to think that the Prometheus was a testbed for the saucer separation system for the Galaxy, and underwent a major rebuild/redesign, etc post-Wolf 359 to extend the concept vs Borg. This could explain the two registries - lower registry is the testbed, higher registry is the basically entirely new ship that we see in Voyager. With the Nebula Prometheus slipping in between those two groups, and the decision to officially name the ship Prometheus came soon before launch (causing confusion on the registry to be displayed) following the loss of the Nebula-class ship. And despite it being a cool looking ship (I have the basic and Hestia in STO, and the Eaglemoss XL), the MVAM seems rife with issues in actual major combat - like what happens if the middle section gets destroyed. If nothing else, using your example, a Prometheus vs 3 Sabers discussion, if you lose a Prometheus section, the entire ship might be basically out of action after that battle until it gets replaced; if you lose a Saber, you still have two Sabers in the fight after the battle. It's basically the reasoning for why the CL154 program never got past sketch stage with the USN - 2-3 fleet destroyers provided similar firepower, but preserved firepower better with ship losses. I feel like if the class was to go into mass production, it'd be ditching the MVAM and going through the resulting internal redesign (let's call the redesign the Hestia-class ;) ). Looking at my XL Prometheus, is seems like there might be a pair of ventral phaser arrays that could engage directly aft., but aside from those four tiny arrays dorsal/ventral there does appear to be a massive lack of aft weaponry. Maybe they decided it was maneuverable enough it didn't need much aft weaponry? Or perhaps if it needed to worry about aft firepower, split into MVAM instead?

Using the Prometheous as a patrol ship is inspired! Personally, I think of the multi-vector assault mode as a workaround to the carrier problem Star Trek has as a small starfighter just doesn't have the omph needed. Granted, a better solution would be to have a carrier filled with something like the defiant, but as a test bed it's not bad. Cheers

This is a really interesting take on an otherwise-overwrought and extremely silly design. I'm really enjoying your deep dives.

I found the Prometheus class to be a very interesting and intriguing concept with so much potential. With it being built during the dominion war, it could have been the federation answer to deal on with the swarm tactics of dominion fighter craft as well as let it do Hunter killer missions against isolated and larger enemy vessels.

Captain Freeman: Please don't upgrade the Cerritos to break into three pieces for Second Contact.

I wonder if the Prometheus was another anti-borg ship that, due to its complexity, didn't make it to full scale production at the same time as the other ships. The multi-vector assault idea was an attempt to "swarm" the Borg with too many targets for them to focus down, all with different shield and phaser modulations. Thus, the Prometheus wouldn't be quite as good against the Dominion in a straight up, near peer engagement.

In normal operation you have a medium tactical cruiser, in MVA mode you instantly have a small wolf pack

I shall add Ahhbabbbabaaaah to my lexicon for describing cool things happening

Ultimately it depends on where the writers would take it. But I see some tactical potential if the depiction of the technology is pushed in that direction: 1. Deny shield foucusing: A separated Prometheus can force a ship to maintain all sections of its shield at equal strength, weakening the overall shield strength. 2. Deny protection of damaged sections by maneuvers: In the same vein, if a section of a ship is damaged and loses shields, you can't turn it away from the separated Prometheus like you could with a single ship. 3. Triangulation: If the Prometheus has approrpiate sensors on all sections, you could separate them to spread out and effectively increase the size of the sensor by using it as a sensor array. That could help pinpoint weak signals and pursue hidden ships. There are sensor probes for that, but you could argue that there are sensors too large to fit on a probe. 4. Supply runs: If the Prometheus had the ability to send out just one section (we haven't seen configurations where two sections remaind docked and only one is sent out), you could send them out for resupply while maintaining a strong presence with the remaining two sections. So besides force projection, logistics may also be a factor. 5. Redundancy: Arguably, a Prometheus could loose 2 of its 3 warp cores and still limp home. The massive redundandcy by having 3 instances of each already redundant system would make it very resilient in long range missions. That alone could justify the cost. The damn thing could probably stay in warp while shutting down a warp core for maintenance, same for nacelles or any other system. 6. Exchanging parts between ships: If there is a group of Prometheus, you could use that for one of two purposes: A: Give up damaged sections of multiple ships to create a smaller group of fully intact ships. B: Distribute the sections of a damaged ships between ships in better shape to carry them while they are repaired with onboard means to avoid the loss of a ship. This could be more effective than towing, because there is direct physical access to the docked sections. So there are reasons to have this design, If the writers decided to accentuate those aspects in the depiction of combat and missions overall.

Starfleet has its tech advantage because it uses its science and engineering advantage and sometimes prototypes fail. It's worth bearing in mind that the reason DS9 has the Defiant was that basically it was a big gun they had lying around as a failed prototype that could add some beef to the station so these prototypes can have their uses even when they fail. More specifically I could see a prometheus being a long range escort vessel since if you send a couple of them with an oberth then you've got a small squadron if shit turns sour. It's also a ship (3 ships) that could be piloted by two holograms. In a war when you're taking huge casualties, or when you're out in the sticks on a long range escort mission that's huge.

I have always thought that this is a ship that was designed by a committee of scientists, instead of an actual, qualified, military ship designer. Basically, it suffered from Star Fleet's naive insistence that they're non-military organization. The moment that they needed to design a proper military cruiser, they didn't put any thought into what makes a good military cruiser.

🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and very well informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter on the Prometheus class Battle Cruisers, But I myself have never seen it to be truly all that great in a true Battle scenario especially considering it has no rear defenses of any kind on it as whole or any section of it and making each section on its own as more vulnerable to be disabled or destroyed!.

I imagine its primary responsibility would be a rapid response vehicle. As a unit it would cruise at high speeds into a situation, effectively get three relatively large starships into a situation to cover something like an older _Miranda_ or _Oberth_ in trouble out in the middle of nowhere. Outside of that she could act as an extension of the _Intrepid_ plan as a long range surveyor. You could have her coast out to a region and have the saucer act as a bit of a mobile base as the other two study around her.

Prometheus's design ideas are neatly explained by one thing that was happening with Star Fleet fleet design at this time: Swarm tactics. The battle of Wolf 359 saw Star Fleet get its butt handed to it, and part of that issue wasn't just the ships, but also the tactics used in the fight, approaching the cube in predictable waves all on one side. Next time they engaged the Borg en masse they had switched to a swarm tactic, making it harder to hit the ships, making adaptability harder. The new ship designs helped, but so did the swarm. The fleet fought the borg for hours in that fight before the Enterprise arrived. Also, in the Dominion war, the Dominion also liked to use swarm tactics with their fighters. Star Fleet would have learned from that further in post battle analysis, and started integrating it more into their own doctrine. Finally, we see in Picard the use of computers to coordinate fleets of ships rather than individual ships controlling themselves. Obviously it was a problem in Picard, but you could argue the beginning of that started with the Prometheus's ability to control all three parts of itself simultaneously. One other point, we've seen Star Fleet show the ability to use separation mostly for utility purposes at this point (keeping civilians safely away, evacuating the ship), with limited combative use. It makes sense they might want to more thoroughly test the possibilities that separation could provide to determine if it does make sense to use more widely, or what edge situations it would be a good option for.

LOL. That intro was the best.

The only ship in the fleet that has been manned by two EMHs, I found the banter between the two very funny while the Prometheus beats up the big piñata that is the D'Deridex class Warbird.

Prometheus splits up for battle. Upper section is destroyed. Lower section and wedge section: Well...crap.

They would have to have extra captains on standby for the other two sections.

Fun fact: in STO, later "Advanced Escorts" like the Hestia class forgo the Multi Vector Attack system in favor of having a built-in Riker Maneuver system. So in at least one future timeline, Starfleet acknowledges that the multi vector attack system isn't very useful. Many of the other advanced technologies, including its stupidly fast warp drive that could cross the galaxy in one tenth the amount of time Voyager could (I actually did the calculations, at Warp 9.995 it would take the USS Prometheus seven years to cross from the Delta Quadrant back to the Alpha Quadrant had it taken the same route as Voyager, vs Voyager's 70 years), made it into the production versions of the ship.

The Prometheus was, like the Defiant, a research iteration based on the losses to the Zankethi, Klingons, Borg, and the threat of the Dominion. In the late 23rd century Starfleet launched the Constellation class, to be a fast response ship. However because they didn’t utilize shuttles or other small craft in a fighter role until the runabout and inspiration from the Marquis and Romulan/Reman tactics a single ship could be overwhelmed relatively easily like the Ambassador class Enterprise-C was or how a fast strike delivered a mortal blow to the Stargazer at Maxia.

As a combat ship the Prometheus is indeed of questionable use, but as a deep space explorer it actually makes much more sense. As a combined vessel it can move fast into unexplored space and then, when they find multiple interesting phenomena, planets, civilizations etc. they can split up and analyze/explore their projects and merge afterwards and move on.

Could we get an episode on Starship Combat at FTL (Warp Speeds)? I know that most combat is done at velocities

Mentioning Multi-vector Assault Mode, that's a paddlin', using Multi-vector Assault Mode, that's a paddlin', dreaming of using Multi-vector Assault Mode, that's a paddlin', trying to say Multi-vector Assault Mode in a badass way, ooh you better believe that's a paddlin'.

I could see Scotty written all over it. The sheer scope of the automation, it hasn't been seen since the NCC1701 on the way to Planet Genesis. Warp coasting ability that reduced wear on the engines while going high warp. Scotty was also told stories about separation and reintegration of the saucer section. The reports about how the separation was instrumental against the Borg may have something to do with the design.

can the top and bottom of the ship reunite if thev middle part d is distoyed in a battle.

The Prometheus has been my favorite ship since it debuted on Voyager. 🤣🤣🤣🤣 So my understanding for the Prometheus being realized is it was trying to do what they failed in doing with the Defiant. The Prometheus was not designed to fight the Dominion, it was supposed to be a long range tactical vessel to fight the Borg. Remember the Defiant was initially designed to do just that except they tried to put too much power into one little ship. I imagine as the flaws of the ship became apparent, the engineers began looking at other options which lead them down the path that you talked about, revisiting the separation concept. When looking at how the Borg go about assimilating a ship through the TNG lens, which is the only time StarFleet would have observed the action at this point, then separating the ship would have been one of best defenses against assimilation. The Borg appeared to only have one tractor beam so if the ship is caught it could separate itself and attack the cube's tractor and cutting beams. Then they could go on the offensive and suddenly a cube is fighting three targets instead of one. A tactical fighter would also explain the heavy forward facing firepower. Give it a faster turn radius, especially when separated, and rear weapons wouldn't be all that necessary. Also I don't believe the power levels would drop as dramatically when separated. I would expect a defiant style warp core used in the saucer section, possibly all three sections but I like to imagine they developed a special pillar style core that ran through the middle of the stardrive as usual but could then split in half. 😆 Either way I don't believe the power levels of the separated sections would be that of a Saber class. I feel they would be closer to that of a Defiant class if not on par. As far as the MVAM not being used farther into the future, perhaps the build process would have been too complicated to make it a standard feature on classes that didn't necessitate it. And for alien species we can just assume they hadn't been able to perfect the technology. Considering the Romulans needed to steal it instead of seeing them develop their own is enough proof of that.

This could be the actual replacement for an aircraft carrier in space. The ship doesn't launch fighters, rather it breaks apart to become the fighters.

I like the ship slightly more then I dislike it, but I think you explained why my brain has never quite excepted it. Like Mr Plinket always say's "You didn't see it but your brain did."

I mean...go for it? This thing is so easy to beat that I'd be jumping for joy if I had to face a whole battlegroup of them.

And next, the stealth battlship carrier explorer. [cue 10-year old squeal.] LOL

I imagine the torpedoes can fire forward to hit aft . Torpedoes can be guided Im pretty sure the dominion battle ship could fire backwards. Promethus had four torpedo batteries. But it appears to be 12 photon and 4 quantum torpedoes or ( tricobalt ) 3 2 3 top 3 2 3 bottom. But i imagine you could maintain continuous salvo fire with phasers . And i believe they added defiant class phaser canon . ( fix forward) Admiral ross had one for his flag flag ship at the battle of cardassia i believe. Uss cerberus . ( flagship)

Question, when the ship is split it has different phaser rays correct that we can't see. Well, if the ship was not to split, couldn't it route those phaser arrays that are hidden in the other sections that can't be seen or used? Couldn't we route their power to the main outside phaser Banks? The 10 phaser banks on the outside?

Prometheus is that "3 midgets with shotguns in a trench coat meme" except its 3 Defiant's here. I would actually give it props because it solves an issue with defiants and that is that they have to be used together to get the full usage out of them, here they are just together. Also in case of mass production you could even easily solve the loss of a missing section by just holding them in supply ready to just replace. Its a good concept for a "ganking " ship that the defiant didn't fully manage to fill fully. And hey if all else fails you can just use two sections to take out enemy ships kamikaze style. I also wanna say that this is underestimating the firepower and durability of the class as seen on screen, i think these are not just small destroyer level warp cores given the output we seen on, it also ignores the benefits of their impulse mobility these have for evasion and just for confusing enemy targeting systems, even if the phaser output was smaller there is something to be said for power of just keeping constant fire on target from multiple sources keeping a constant strain on shields,etc. That is also one of the points of the design, to attack from multiple vectors and when attacking heavy ships this can be devastating especially against less experienced crews/commanders as it can paralyze their command ability

My dream has always been a ship that combines all the one-off technologies we saw in Star Trek. A Prometheus class ship with the built on vector assault mode, phase cloak, temporal shields, chronoton torpedoes, the works! Combine everything in one Rogue ship. Actually that was the idea for the show: A Starfleet officer, with the most advanced ship in the fleet goes rogue with his crew. Giving him the multi vector mode would just be a way to level the playing field when he's gotta take on the whole of Starfleet. And the idea for the show is he revisits all the places where this tech was lost, kind of picking it up and incorporating it along the way. I think that there's so much cool stuff you could do narratively that it may just get you by the inherent silliness of a ship designed like this. I mean you could have each section have like it's own default captain when they separate and let's say middle section decides to go even more rogue. Then they gotta get the middle section back under control while dodging Starfleet in their more vulnerable state. Or if say Starfleet was able to use a computer virus to take over 2 of the sections and shut them down while the last section had to work to get the other 2 back up and running before the escorts arrive. Just so many things I can think of to do with it.

How are the separate sections going to warp, if the ship has only one navigational deflector?

point of the prometheus is its a LONG RANGE tactical vessel - so you dont have to send out 3-4 ships - but ONE - one where there is very few crew cause of heavy automation, as we've seen in the episode.

I'm just waiting fpr multiple Prometheus class ships to split up at once then accidently get jumbled when recombining.

It might do well in search and rescue missions where speed is important in reaching a destination and having multiple ships scanning an area is important as well

My head canon for the Prometheus is that Starfleet wanted a ship to eventually replace the Cheyenne class, but it needed to be "better" so the Starfleet Corps of Engineers basically threw EVERYTHING at the wall, and came up with the Prototype USS Prometheus. Once Starfleet got it back from the Romulans(and after some tests) they determined that the ship, while extremely capable, was over complex and not as efficient as it could've been. So if/when the class is actually put into production it'll be a more reasonable version, likely sacrificing the full multi vector assault mode for a more typical two section separation maybe the forward wedge section, with the the divide between the lover sections being eliminated and a simplified warp core.

While I don't disagree with any of your points I do have two counters, the first being more fact-of-the-matter and the second being more gut intuition. First: The point you make about cost effectiveness of the ship vs how important it's place in Starfleet is immediately makes me think of the good ol' NCC1701D, a Galaxy class ship. The Galaxy class ship was for all intents and purposes a badass can do everything and anything ship, but in the long run it was so overly complicated and difficult to build that Starfleet only made six Galaxy class ships before the Dominion war broke out and only four more that we know of after the war broke out (Which may have just been bare-bones versions made only to fight with the anticipation of being refitted for general use after the war). Only 10 of the hero ship of TNG were ever built, yet we still love and respect everything it can do. My second counter is simply this, and keep in mind this is the 10-year old inside of me typing this. Ignoring the fact that the class didn't exist at the time of it's launch, how much better would the Voyager crew have faired if they had a Prometheus class ship instead of an Intrepid class ship being stranded in the delta quadrant?

I've often wondered if a more cost effective version of this would have been something like a slightly upsized Cheyenne class, but it somehow docks 4 Defiant class ships. Basically a carrier for "tactical escorts" to increse their speed and range. The mother ship would also allow for more luxurious crew quarters and recreational facilities to give people a break from the spartan accommodations on the Defiant class ships.

Something I'm thinking with the Prometheus is that it probably has a higher operational radius then smaller Destroyers. It can fly together over long ranges and patrol the borders or something. Then, when engaged it can split up. I feel like this makes the Prometheus a potent ship to project the federations influence pretty far. Further then a squadron of sabers could.....

Something I don't see mentioned is that the Prometheus is the M5 project from TOS without the personality issues. If it is cheap enough to build in quantity you technically only need one person per ship for a whole fleet of these things if all you need is a QRF of some type.

My head canon for Prometheus is that everyone realized that the multi vector assault mode was overly complex, inefficient and plain silly, and the production model does away with it. I always remember Prometheus being described as far more powerful than portrayed here, though I can’t cite that off the top of my head, but as a heavy escort in one ship I think Prometheus is actually a great idea

I feel like it was an offshoot of the idea that each section of a starship could be like, modular, which could really ease things like repair and refit. Someone did a huge line of cocaine and went "Ok but what if each section was a starship too" The Prometheus IIRC was a direct Borg response as well, where a lone ship was easily immobilized and crippled. It's also, essentially, 3 defiant-level attackers that can combine to form Voltron. You can do a lot with the power of 3 overtuned, compact warp cores. I think you're underplaying this around the 7:50 mark. These are 3 POTENT warp cores. I'd propose that fully assembled, the Prometheus has energy generation and firepower well within the same class as a SOVERIGN. This is as close as Starfleet gets to a purpose built warship. I think you're right in that the Prometheus did not have the tech to fully support its concept at the time it was built. Now, fast forward to 2410 though...

i always saw the prometheus as a force multiplier ship . she can be a cruiser when needed or a attack wing all on her own , with her automation she also needed less crew or you could have a coordinated crews if there is a issue with the automation systems

I would make the Beta section the primary target so the ship can't recombine in a fight. I doubt the saucer section can connect to the lower Gamma stardrive. It's a mess. I would have thought sending out drones to swarm the target would be a better solution.

Something to also bear in mind is crew compliment. The Prometheus offers a a squadrons worth of firepower and tactics for the crew cost of a cruiser so even if it gets destroyed you lose far less trained personnel then a squadron of Sabers or a pair of Intrepid.

The Prometheus feels like it was part of a greater testbed program rather than an isolated development. I can see Starfleet starting work on a bunch of experimental designs (mostly in the destroyer and light cruiser size range) in the years leading up to the Dominion War, stuff that was designed to test some tactical concepts. Sort of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what stuck, and the Prometheus was one that happened to be finished in the opening months of the war; I'd expect others to have been finished and tested, but I also don't think all of them would have been.

Weirdly I think the Prometheus concept makes more sense for long-range scientific and exploratory missions. The combined form streamlines certain departments compared to three individual ships and in split form you can cover more areas of interest.

As Alnarra said i think its designed for when your facing either the Galor or a trio of Dominion bugs, Either way you can chase them down but if you engage the trio of buggies, you have them able to get behind you because your speed isn't used in the dog fight role destroyer ships can do in trek, so you catch up, split before engaging and each piece can engage and either hold off or disable a different target. You do also have an extra two torpedo tubes for harder targets only when the extra torpedos would help which i suspect would be rare... get a spread in each loader perhaps 3-4 in 6 launchers might even take down minor bases or installations, where 4 tubes might just not be enough. Which also makes me wonder why they didn't stuff a couple of extra tubes in there like the Akira was designed to have all over, but focused in a forward direction for knocking out escaping ships or siege on larger installations. For the weaker enemies, i think runabouts from a large galaxy class would be better lol I think Its made for a good border jump to chase down those raiding parties and dealing with them before they reach the safety of a starbase, But after the war that kind of ship just wasn't needed for the federation.

I like to think of it as a way of sending a well integrated squadron out to a troublespot fast, and either take on whatever they find, have enough surviving an encounter gone bad to get home and report, or to have one module deal with say rescue operations while the others provide guard duty. With the phasers, I'm not convinced a bigger reactor would help much more though - it seems unlikely that phasers would be able to handle the full dump of power from a large reactor core easily, so with the sublight nature of phaser combat you probably don't really need that big a warp core even for the punchiest phasers you can install in something that size. Only catch is - if the centre section is disabled/destroyed, can the top and bottom modules still get home in one piece?

3:37 I would say that you send a Prometheus-class if you want something hunted down. We have seen that in "Enterprise" decoys have been deployed by bounty hunters. So instead of falling for a decoy and your target getting away you instead "split up" the ship.

like a few other people said and I agree with you on, Prometheus is a good niche ship, especially during wartime. A great prototype class but long term too niche to be trying reliable. When technology becomes more efficent and miniatures enough that its seperate pieces can be reliable then a ship like the Prometheus class would be a great tool in the fleet. When the Prometheus was built however its basically the exclesior of its time at best, even if the sovereign is more the ship to take up the excelsior's oringal role, yes I know the variants exists lol

The ability of the Prometheus classes ability to split apart into properly functional sections does give a few other tactical options that I can think of: Given how popular ramming your enemy with a damaged ship has shown to be with this ship you get 2 pieces that can be rammed into ships and blown up while still giving you a third section to act as the escape lifeboat for the whole crew. I guess if the ship was being chased down by enemies it might be able to split and run getting some of the crew to safety (Perhaps more up to all the crew if you can manage to spoof/block their sensors enough and get one the sections away cleanly with all the crew on it.) Thirdly (because it feels better when things come in three's) When assigning ships their mission you wont always know if your single strong ship or a small squadron would be the optimal choice this ship allows you to adapt on the fly rather than carry on with a mission that your ill suited for due to poor ship assignment. Although to get that flexibility you have to sacrifice being better than your equivalent tonnage of single ship or squadron. (Being a Hybrid build as it is)

I always thought it was a failing of the enterprise. D that they didn't use the saucer and start drive as independent ships more often you know. Think about it diplomatic mission somewhere that they go and they park the saucer in orbit for a month or two's worth of negotiations and the star drive goes off and explores a nearby anomaly and then they come back and meet up and then they move somewhere else. And you know it's saucer long-term study on a nebula and the star drive is off doing something different. That is a use case for the separation that I would have loved to have seen flushed out

The Prometheus has a problem with the warp nacelles: They don't have direct line of sight to the other side of the ship!

Would you rather have quality or quantity? Prometheus: Why not both?

you mentioned the enterprise D's ability to split up. there are images of stations like the jupiter station, that are essentially bundled together saucer sections, but bigger. my head-canon is, that the engine section of a galaxy class or similar ship can be used to deliver a federation space station. might be worth a look. being able to transport space stations after they are manufactured is a huge asset. of course, doesn't solve anything with prometheus, although the wedge section could be seen as a small space station? sacrifice maneuverability for additional firepower and a local permanent presence (while keeping the ability to GTFO in emergencies).

I think the Prometheus is okay for what it is. Interestingly, like its namesake, it brings about new concepts, ideas, and tech, but ends up getting punished for it. As for potential future uses, we do see in one timeline the class enduring till the 26th century. So, who knows what developments it can bring when the logistics catch up with it.

I oft wonder, if the sections are each as powerful as a Jem'Hadar bug ship, the separation at least was probably set up to do ststem or sector patrols during the war. But, it's a case of too much, too soon, because your force projection with these costs too much. And the Federation had to cover parsecs of territory against incursions. That's my first thought.