[Major Tom]

The battle at Wolf 359 had about 40 federation ships engage the Borg, and it was hinted at that this loss of vessels was a major blow to Starfleet. However, DS9 had hundreds of starships lost per engagement but starfleet did not collapse (plus making the borg threat look silly). I could believe that there were hundreds of vessels in Starfleet, as the universe is large, but wouldn't the stability of the Federation suffer with virtually every ship at one part of their territory? The attrition rate of the Federation, Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans was enourmous. It turned into a battle of numbers (i.e., "we lost 400 ships, but destroyed 1000 of theirs" as in DS9) instead of a battle of wits (i.e., "we were heavily damaged but their ship was crippled" as of TOS and TNG).

Wolf 359 was thought of as a major battle in Starfleet history, as all other battles hinted at in the series also revolved around only a handful of ships (the Cardassian war mentioned a few individual ship battles, Klingon/Romulan battles like Khitomer were between less then a dozen total vessels, even in the alternate future with the Enterprise C there was a battle between 5 ships at the end). During the Klingon Civil war, the task force set up under the command of Picard was of around 20-25 ships, all that could be spared to guard this very important region of space. TNG kept ship numbers at reasonable rates and still kept battles interesting, especially when it was down to the attrition of 1 vs. 1.

Even B5 had limits on fleet size, as when the Alliance went to liberate Earth, the Earth Defense force had about 30 or so Destroyers guarding Mars, which is a pretty strong force in that 'universe'. DS9 would have been a lot better had they copied more of the good aspects of B5 instead of just the premise and go on weird and detracting tangents.

[ September 10, 2002, 05:00: Message edited by: Major Tom ]