What would Jim Kirk & co do

[Thorin]

Are you seriously trying to tell me that you think the Romulans are stronger because they only have one type of ship? They all have the same flaws. It takes only one person to get find out this flaw and exploit it and the entire Romulan fleet is down. Anything maneouvrable can get out of the way of its lethal disrupters and cause it a lot of damage.
Unless the Warbird was a jack of all trades and actually the best in all trades that the Romulans could conceive, it is without doubt, an absolute certainty, that having only one type of ship is not a good idea.

[Captain Seafort]

I'm saying that having a single-design fleet is nowhere near as great a disadvantage in Trek as it would be for a modern navy. Its key problems are it's lack of manoueverability and presumably being available in much smaller numbers than Starfleet or the Klingons. Smaller, more manoeuverable vessels would certainly be more difficult (though not impossible) to hit, but they would also be able to deal a lot less damage (the Defiant-class excepted).

[Captain Picard's Hair]

The one power that's built oodles of ship types has, until recently, tried to make all of it's most powerful ships do-it-all explorers and didn't even have a proper warship! Then, nobody but the Federation really has all that many ships (that we've seen). Don't ask too much of the Star Trek producers.

Another question is, where are the older ships in the Romulan fleet. Not only have the Feds recalled old hulls like the Mirandas, but the Klingons had some K'Tinga's running around getting blown up in the Dominion war. The Cardassians... pretty much their only design is a fairly old one! Given the precedent set by the other powers, one wonders where the old Romulan ships are. Of course, the D'Deridex isn't up to the standard of newer Federation ships or the Negh'Var, either...

[Reliant121]

I would think the Tal'shiar would use older designs for intelligence missions much like the Miranda is often used for Information Warfare.

[Grundig]

I always got the impression that the UFP could afford to forego a dedicated battle fleet because their multi-purpose cruisers were generally stronger than the enemy ships they'd expect to fight.

Also, the UFP were philosophically very devoted to keeping the peace, so I bet their constituency would question aggressive military designs.

Of course, then the BORG came into the picture, and that didn't really change much. That's when I start to think that Starfleet is too unwilling to set aside their peaceful goals. I mean, we should have seen some real effort on their part... Maybe even some covert weapons development - There was the cloaked and phased vessel that Riker helped to test, and some silly modifications to their current weapons technology, but I just think they under-reacted in this case.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

I always got the impression that the UFP could afford to forego a dedicated battle fleet because their multi-purpose cruisers were generally stronger than the enemy ships they'd expect to fight.

As others have said, if the Federation did build a dedicated battle fleet with the tech advantage this implies, they could have a fleet that would wipe the floor with their AQ rivals!

[Jordanis]

I always got the impression that the UFP could afford to forego a dedicated battle fleet because their multi-purpose cruisers were generally stronger than the enemy ships they'd expect to fight.

As others have said, if the Federation did build a dedicated battle fleet with the tech advantage this implies, they could have a fleet that would wipe the floor with their AQ rivals!

Of course, the thought of the Federation uber alles would completely horrify any and all decisionmakers in it.

[Mikey]

Of course, the thought of the Federation uber alles would completely horrify any and all decisionmakers in it.

Which is why the Federation mires itself in self-imposed parity.

[Deepcrush]

A big problem for the UFP is that they are always looking for the next big excuse as to why they can't act on a problem. I give credit to starfleet for lasting as long as it has. But, the lack of drive to stay ahead of ones enemies is a major flaw that the UFP seems to fan.

[mlsnoopy]

I got the impresion that SF has allways tryed to produce the most powerful ships that it could. Take Soverign it is equiped with most powerfull phasers torpedos shilds and I doubt that power supply could support more weapons and defences. But weapons take up very small amaunt of space. What you do with it. You put comfortable crew quoters and laboltories on your ships.

[Thorin]

I got the impresion that SF has allways tryed to produce the most powerful ships that it could. Take Soverign it is equiped with most powerfull phasers torpedos shilds and I doubt that power supply could support more weapons and defences. But weapons take up very small amaunt of space. What you do with it. You put comfortable crew quoters and laboltories on your ships.

Take out luxury quarters and put in another warp core. Take out the labs and put in another warp core.
You have three times the power supply so if weapons don't take up a lot of space, you can put in three times as many weapons. If weapons do take up a lot of space, taking out the luxury quarters (the power supply thus not being the limiting factor), provides more room for more weapons.

[mlsnoopy]

And the warp core is the weak link.

[Grundig]

Boy, sounds like that would be fun to blow up. What a powder keg, man!

[Sionnach Glic]

I think Thorin also meant to add:
"And put some damn safety systems on those things!"

[Thorin]

I think Thorin also meant to add:
"And put some damn safety systems on those things!"

It's merely a superficial point, because whenever we talk about warpcores, we always imply those safety systems