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Captain Seafort wrote:

Teaos wrote:But then you have a power issue. Big ships have such huge power that their shields and beam weapons are powerful. Smaller ships wouldn't have the power to penitrate the shields of a Galaxy that well.

That assumes that the shields are equally powerful in all directions - they aren't. From "Peak Performance" the Hathaway, despite being an 80-year-old piece of junk, was able to breach the Enterprise's aft shields when the Enterprise was distracted by Worf's sensor ghost, showing that either the ship angles its shields, or the aft shields are weak. Further evidence of weak aft shields is show in "Preemptive Strike" when Ro's Maquis ship was able to slip through a weak point between the nacelles.

Not to forget the Picard Manoeuver. If a ship detect TWO ennemy ships, it will focus its shields on the first, far away one, leaving itself vulnerable to be destroyed by a constellation class starship..

Wait a second. It always have been a totally illogic manoeuver/explanation..

How do you focus shields on ships? In that manuver the ships in in the same direction so they would be equally powerful for both ship positions.

I suppose you could just put more power into whatever is generating the shield at different points of the ship.
Of course, that depends on wether there are shield projectors on different points around the ship. If it's generated some other way then I have no idea.

Shields have been shown it be projected in parts. Such as Foward and rear shields. I also dont think it is also just a case of putting more power into them. I think they would have a upper limit depending on the hardware behind them.

It would definately have an upper limit, you can't put unlimited amounts of power through anything. That idea was just a bit of guesswork.

Of course even if the cardassians are strategically, tactically or technology behind the federation, the cardassian morality and cultural nuances might make the cardassians more dangerous in a wartime situation....................

They do have a very diciplined and structured societly. In some ways thats good in others bad.

They also seem somewhat more inherently warlike; but while it might affect the TYPES of technology they create, I don't think that the Cardassians' culture or tendencies has much of an effect on their LEVEL of technology...

A very diciplined and structured society is good for the military but it can hamper technological improvements over the long run.

Which is esactly what seems to have happened to the Cardies...

If a certain cultural perspective or dominant policy predominates research, then other areas of research may be relegated or neglected, as it the time, these peripheral areas seem unimportant or irrelevant to the main goal, but in fact,these relegated areas when combined with the primary research concern, may in fact greatly augment it, for example the united federation of planets, specifically starfleet, may have a higher level of military technology than more belligerent races such as the klingons or cardassians, simply because the federation attitude to research is more holistic and they are able to combine different disciplines to supplement their weapons research,for example to improve target acquisition etc

True - the obverse is also true. In our own planet-wide history, for example, nothing has stimulated scientific and technological advancement as much as war (or the possibility of war) has.

However, this seems, for whatever reasons, to break down in the 'Trk universe. Using the example at hand, the Cardassians have always appeared to be a more warlike species than (current) humans. However, Cardassian tech has always been shown to be lacking compared to the Federation. Even in cases where the Cardassians have developed something novel, that development has been shown to be flawed and/or unreliable - e.g., the Dreadnaught [missile.]

But the more advanced technology gets the more branches it gets. If you only focus on those that are specifically war like you may reach a point were you slow right down in advancement. The Federation who focus' on all of the branchs may make a break through in a none war related one that cross's into weaponary somehow.

By the way guys, i might be a wee bit confuddled here, but (random point alert!), oh this bears little bearing to the posts but..... re: the galor, its been described as 'top of the line' but also somewhat derided, could this mean 'top of the line......for the cardassians' or that the sub-classes/upgrades or whatever of the galor, differ quite widely in capabilities?

That migth mean it is top of the line for a mass produced ship also. You can't build the best if you are building lots. Maybe they choose quanity over quality.