The carrier/parasites you're describing is almost exactly what is described for the Romulan patrol in the novel Final Frontier (which has nothing to do with ST V) except that those parasites don't have a warp drive at all, being set in the Captain April era, when Jim Kirk was a little boy whose only command was a Sunfish on the lake, facing the dangerous prospect of having his cheeks inhed and being called "Yeemee" by relatives.
RE the Prometheus class itself - I didn't mean to imply that they'd remain high on the production schedule after the war, but neither do I think immediately stripping Starfleet back down to prewar defensive ability would happen - not with the kind of casualty figures shown in the Dominion War while they were scrambling to gear up. Public outcry would be huge, even if the peaace-at-any-price political leaders tried to push it. Given that mothballing is not particularly an option, where would YOU deploy a ship that has essentially dropped all but the most minimal of science capabilities for combat utility? Border patrol or commerce protection are about the only options, aside from using its speed for long-range mapping expeditions, giving systems as good a scanning as possible (or the loals will allow) and making as many peacfule first contacts as possible (with the option of high-speed flight or force if they prove impossible) to pave the way for mor detailed scientific and diplomatic missions to follow.
Granted, that would fit with the traditional mission of Starfleet, but again, they just put down the last shitstorm from poking their noses into the gamma quadrant, will they really want to go stirring up more possibly hostile polities immediately? It probably wouldn't be long, but five years or even a decade of rebuilding and working out exactly where things now stand with the other major players in the alpha and beta quadrants would be entirely sensible. On the third tentacle, sending out one or two long-range explorers that can be pointed to to say that they're still doing the peacful exploration thing while the rest of the fleet quietly sorts itself out and gets the half-trained wartime crew replacements up to speed would also make good political sense - one of the scens that impressed itself on me from... well, probably a Voyager fic, since it's too much like continuity for it to have been canon, was where someone from the crew was taling with someone who'd been in the Donimion war, after semi-regular contact had been achieved for a while. Whoever it was said that Voyager had been a kind of mascot for Starfleet crews during the war, reassurance that even while things were going to hell there was still a Starfleet ship out there, 'boldly going' as in the traditional dedication speech.
- CD
What, you think Samuel L. Jackson isn't going to survive the zombie apocalypse?
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
RE the Prometheus class itself - I didn't mean to imply that they'd remain high on the production schedule after the war, but neither do I think immediately stripping Starfleet back down to prewar defensive ability would happen - not with the kind of casualty figures shown in the Dominion War while they were scrambling to gear up. Public outcry would be huge, even if the peaace-at-any-price political leaders tried to push it. Given that mothballing is not particularly an option, where would YOU deploy a ship that has essentially dropped all but the most minimal of science capabilities for combat utility? Border patrol or commerce protection are about the only options, aside from using its speed for long-range mapping expeditions, giving systems as good a scanning as possible (or the loals will allow) and making as many peacfule first contacts as possible (with the option of high-speed flight or force if they prove impossible) to pave the way for mor detailed scientific and diplomatic missions to follow.
Granted, that would fit with the traditional mission of Starfleet, but again, they just put down the last shitstorm from poking their noses into the gamma quadrant, will they really want to go stirring up more possibly hostile polities immediately? It probably wouldn't be long, but five years or even a decade of rebuilding and working out exactly where things now stand with the other major players in the alpha and beta quadrants would be entirely sensible. On the third tentacle, sending out one or two long-range explorers that can be pointed to to say that they're still doing the peacful exploration thing while the rest of the fleet quietly sorts itself out and gets the half-trained wartime crew replacements up to speed would also make good political sense - one of the scens that impressed itself on me from... well, probably a Voyager fic, since it's too much like continuity for it to have been canon, was where someone from the crew was taling with someone who'd been in the Donimion war, after semi-regular contact had been achieved for a while. Whoever it was said that Voyager had been a kind of mascot for Starfleet crews during the war, reassurance that even while things were going to hell there was still a Starfleet ship out there, 'boldly going' as in the traditional dedication speech.
- CD
What, you think Samuel L. Jackson isn't going to survive the zombie apocalypse?
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows