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Seems to me that, for the most part, the Navy is stationed where you expect trouble. They aren't sitting around to defend the home ports. Similar with starfleet - ships aren't sitting around at Earth, they are off patrolling the Neutral zone and stuff to try and stop trouble before it gets to Earth.

Of course that falls down somewhat; we can get away with not defending New York because we actually know where the threats are almost certain to come from. Whereas in Trek, brand new baddies pop out of nowhere and threaten Earth on a more or less yearly basis.

This supports my earlier argument. Starfleet seemed to have an awful lot of old a/o obsolete ships which were still operational to be pressed into service during the Dominion War; in addition, quite a few ships of the "Frankenstein" kitbashed variety seemed to be produced realtively quickly and cheaply. If all these ships were avaailable, why not use them to protect the Federation's core worlds, and free up your more capable, current-model ships for exploration and interception.[/list]

Yeah but then to get to earth they have to pass through quite bit of our territory.

But if they do get through there might not be enough time to recall enough ships to defend major planets.
I'm not saying there should be massive battlefleets in orbit of Earth, Vulcan, etc. But there should be some sort of defenses.

About ship locations: I don't think that it makes a lot of sense to put the most advanced ships too far from the core. That's just me. I'm cautious. It might work just dandy if your Enterprise is at the right place at the right time (usually so ), but if they're off bothering the Borg and the Kelvans show up, they are a LONG ways away from the trouble spot. If they were at least close to Earth, they could respond equally fast in any direction.

However, of course that is not what we see very often. The Dominion War shows ships overwhelmingly on the border much at the expense of the core. But two things about that. Someone mentioned that that was kind of a special case , and also where WAS the most advanced ship in the Federation (canonically, now)? Near the core, putting out "brushfires"! Even the Enterprise-D generally moved closer to the core as more and more threats emerged.

In general, it makes the most tactical sense (at least to me) to keep your most high-value assets close to home, where THEY can be protected. The resources to fully protect a Federation "Battleship" away from a base (I'm talking escort ships, too) would pretty much remove any advantage of having her near the border.

But that's just my take on how to use a class of "superships" Writers tend to disagree

I think explores should be way out exploring ships like enterprise should be around the Klingon Romulan boarder and the rest of the ships are spread out everywhere.

The problem is the 180-degree difference in Starfleet's wartime and peacetime stances. During a peaceful period, Starfleet's primary goal is exploration, contact, etc., which requires ships to be far afield. Unfortunately, in the case of a swift aggressive move against the Federation, those ships will be TOO far afield to assist in time.

We can't recant Starfleet's expressed goal of being primarily a peaceable organization. That's why I say keep those older ships and less-than-successful classes as a line of defense for the core worlds; they may not be as effective as the most up-to-date classes, but they're certainly better than a handful of unmanned drones around Jupiter...

There are very few powers who are in the position to attack the Federation.

We could see the Klingons or Romulans coming and anyone esle is far enough away that we would have time to react.

Being able to see them coming does not nesasarilly (dear god, I screwed up that spelling) mean we would be able to muster enough ships to stop them breaking through the border defenses. And if they do break through, there are very few ships to stop them.

The time to get from the boarder to the core would be months or years from most places. More than enough time to assembel a fleet.

Enough time to recall enough ships to make a difference? As in say, TMP? Or in First Contact? Ot TVH?...

There never seemed to be many ships in the TMP era. In first contact they did make a decent stand and remember the Borg are far faster than almost anyone.

First contact and TVH wouldn't have really mattered what happened. Even with a large fleet they would have been screwed.

But if they had fleets already stationed around the core worlds you could respond far quicker without having to weaken your defenses on other fronts.
If an enemy fleet breaks through, and you have to pull ships off your borders to deal with them, then you have further compromised your defenses as your enemy now has less ships to deal with on the borders.

Or at least delay a swiftly moving enemy until your capital ships can arrive...

Rochey wrote:I suppose you have a point. But weapons progress with armour, so unless weapons technology became stagnant it should still be structurally fragile.

I have to agree with Rochey. Since TOS, Treknology hasn't really advanced THAT much over the years. Especially since in the same battle are a couple of Prometheus class ships. Now even if these ships were refitted to the max and upgraded to the limit of there capacity the design is still two hundred years old, and they should have been blasted out of the sky as quick as a Miranda class in one of the great of the DS9 fleet battle sequences. Also, if this was such a critical battle for the future, wouldn't they send there most powerful ships? I wouldn't think that was a hodge podge battle group like they had at Wolf 359, which was an emergencey and where they took what they could get.

This would lead me to believe that the Enterprise J couldn't be more than a generation or two beyond the likes of the Soverigen, and we still saw what seem to be "conventional" weapons being used. But this would also lead one to believe that at the time, all the powers in the Alpha and Beta quadrents would be stagnent.

Are the writers running out of original ideas?

Mark wrote:
Are the writers running out of original ideas?

Yup.

They ran out of ideas the moment they started up VOY.