Hello all, Ric here with another Starfleet vessel from the late 24th century, following on from my
previous, the Prometheus class! It only really had one main appearance, but did turn up in several
other episodes and always struck me as cool, in a gleefully 8-year old, Power Ranger’s Zord kind of
way. Somebody make a variation with a plastic-looking laser sword or something.
The Prometheus class was designed by Rick Sternbach
and rendered by Adam Lebowitz and Brandon MacDougall. The vessel itself was to be appear as
an incredibly advanced ship and as such took the profile of the intrepid class and threw in some
Sovereign style to create the look. From there, the
idea of the multi-vector assault mode, where the ship splits into
three, contributed to its design and placement of nacelles and the inclusion of more
familiar elements such as the shutter-style hangar bay on the rear. The angular vessel was very much
made to look more aggressive while its interiors had the white, unblemished look of a fresh-of
the-factory-floor gleam to them, befitting a new prototype.
Alongside the USS Defiant, the Prometheus class was one of only a handful of Starships that was
designed with little in the way of exploration and diplomacy in mind. Starfleet’s policy on creating
battleships is basically, “we do not do that”, yet here stands a vessel that very
much fits the profile for a combat ship,
designed as such from the ground up. It just so happens to be the most advanced
vessel of its time. If you have watched the other videos in this ship series,
you know that I said this about the Sovereign too,
which was true at the time of its launch but the Prometheus followed only
a few years after, born from the same drive to produce top-of-the-line vessels.
Unlike the Sovereign and Akira, which were amazingly well armed, the Prometheus lacked the
facilities to act as an effective exploratory vessel, although it does
possess advanced sensor systems, but that is kind of a given for
a Federation vessel. The design work began in 2365 after the USS
Enterprise NCC-1701-D recounted its encounter with the Borg and spurred on Starfleet’s
development of newer ship classes, a common origin for many of the ships of that came out of the
2370s. However, the designs of the Prometheus were
more advanced and experimental than those of the other designs on the drawing board of the time and
when the Borg made their advance in 2366, the Prometheus was nowhere near ready,
still in the design phase. At this time, the multi-vector assault
mode even was planned to split into five vessels, but this was too resource intensive for even the
advanced Prometheus. When the Borg steamrolled through the fleet of Wolf 359, Starfleet made a
difficult choice to shelve a bunch of designs and focus down on producing fewer lines, for it had
spread its development too thin which had postponed the launch of many new ships.
Alongside designs like the Luna-class, the Prometheus was shelved for a time, the many
experimental technologies and requirements being the cited reason. It would not be until the early
2370s that the design continued making use of the developments ushered in on other projects.
Unlike other ships designs, which were of course classified but not secret, the development of the
Prometheus class was heavily restricted to top secret.
It featured the advancements of bioneural technology as seen on
contemporaries and the ablative armour systems developed for
the Defiant class. Additionally, it had regenerative shielding, like the
smart-system designed for the Nova class. The biggest experimental technology at play was, of
course, the Multi-Vector Assault mode which was a combat orientated development on the Saucer
Separation system on many other ships. However this saw several improvements over that system,
such as the inclusion of dedicated warp drives for each segment, nacelles, a computer core,
deflector and indeed, almost everything needed to mark each section as an individual vessel. This
allowed the Prometheus to stack the odds in its favour in combat, and coordinate attack patterns
among its sections and each part could be coordinated from the main bridge.
Speaking of the command centre, the bridge was very uncluttered
and well-lit for a vessel of this era, providing clear views to all monitors from every
station. Even the helm and ops stations were recessed into the floor to allow for
an unobstructed view of the view screen. The nature of the multi-vector assault mode meant
that that ship featured an unprecedented level of automation and the entire ship could
be operated by a couple of officers, albeit not effectively,
plus things like damage would have to be repaired by the crew. Each deck also featured holoemitters
that would project the Emergency Medical Hologram to any location, expanding the automated feel
of the vessel. The first of the line
was launched in 2374, the USS Prometheus NX-74913 although its hull displayed
NX-59650. It was launched on stardate 50749.5 from the Beta Antares Ship Yards in the Antares
Sector and at this time, only 4 officers were trained to operate
the vessel in its entirety. It had a crew of 144 people and was 15 decks tall. It
was a length of 415 meters, Width 170 and a Height of 113
metres with a mass of 850,000 metric tons. The ship was also the fastest vessel of the time,
exceeding the Sovereign in speed and matching the Intrepid in consistent cruising velocity. This was
attributed to its numerous warp cores, the main one
located in the main hull while four others were spread throughout the constituent parts to provide
independent power supplies when it was in is assault mode.
When assembled, the Prometheus had a maximum warp factor of 9.99, but even more impressive in
my opinion was the fact that it could maintain a cruising speed of warp 9.5
much like the Intrepid class. This made the Sovereign’s title as the fastest ship
ever produced a short lived crown, as 5 years later, its top speed was beaten. However, that
is not to say the Sovereign was now obsolete, far from it.
The Prometheus class’ high level of technology and experimental systems took their toll on the ship
and it was expected to have an operational time of only 1 year before extensive maintenance was
needed, it was built to travel fast to an area, take care of a threat or
complete its patrols, then return to an installation.
This gave it the mission profile of a “Deep-space advanced tactical escort”,
effectively a combat response ship; a battleship. “GASP?” Sorry, not a battleship, wink, wink.
Speaking of, its armaments included 13 type-12 collimated phaser arrays, and 3 mk95 Direct-Fire
Photon torpedo launchers, although it seems remiss to not included quantum torpedo launchers so I
assume these were just dependant on payload.
Alternatively, non-canon stories have them fitted with Defiant-style pulse phase-cannons,
which does not seem out of the realm of possibility either. It
also retained a small number of auxiliary craft, although not many,
because why would it realistically need them? It had 2 shuttlecraft and
4 shuttlepods. This lacks any worker bees, which is probably
because it was not to spend too long away from a spacedock.
By 2377, the Prometheus itself had entered full service and was assigned to the defence of the Sol
system and two more Prometheus vessels had been launched, the USS Cerberus, USS Hercules. And
can I just say, can you think of a more appropriately named vessel than the Cerberus,
the three headed guard dog for this class of ship? The vessel was also seen in the
battle of Procyon 5, which was set in the 26th century,
and apocryphal tales tell us that this is because the fleet was constructed
of temporal agents and displaced vessels from the timeline, so it’s still up in the air if the
Prometheus class actually persisted into this era. Because of the mission profile of this class
however, we never really see a fleet of them, unlike the
Sovereign, which is continually developed as its all-rounder state allowed for the justification of
more ships. The Prometheus was designed to do one thing, and to do it well. Respond to a threat
and neutralise it. In this regard it is similar to the Defiant,
but if the Defiant was a powerful battle axe, the Prometheus was a longsword. Its level of
advancement was even target by the Romulans as a prize to learn Starfleet’s greatest tactical
developments, but fortunately they failed in that hijacking attempt. Finally, the Prometheus,
for all its tricks, was not expected to function for long
periods away from the fleet, so you were not likely to ever see pushing
that final frontier, most likely, they would be idling
in spacedock until needed. Thank you for watching this
video on the Prometheus class, I’ve been Ric and I’ll see you next time.
I often hear youtubers saying things like, I have changed my microphone, or my setup, or software,
let me know how this all looks and I think to myself as a casual viewer,
“you did? I was not looking and cannot tell.”
But here I am, saying that this is the first video I have made on new software and a
completely new PC. The theme seemed fitting to cover this vessel on my new supped- up work PC,
so I guess… I hope it came out well? Thanks again, and goodbye!