Duskofdead wrote:So just to clarify.... are you suggesting, like Rochey does, a relatively small core of dedicated ships in role-critical areas (i.e. warships near the core, explorers near the far borders) and the rest of the "meat" of the fleet multi-roling? I operate under the assumption that a) The Federation is rather vast, b) the Federation is constantly expanding, c) until the development of transwarp technology or something equivalent, the time requirements to "cross" any significant portion of the Federation will be in the realm of months, or years. With those assumptions in mind, single role designs across the board make sense only in a scenario where we can assume a substantially greater capacity to produce and field ships in significantly higher numbers than was seen through TNG and DS9. In other words I agree with you it would be a smart decision assuming a science ship is always going to be in reasonable range of a warship for protection, and a warship is always going to be in reasonable range of facilities for resupply, and a science ship will always be in reasonable range of needed research projects or interstellar phenomena. My impression of ship numbers and distribution in canon is that this is not presently feasible, short of moving to substantially smaller (and more numerous) ships.
I'd make them all single-role ships, with point exploration done by heavy cruisers with a few embarked diplomatic/scientific supernumaries, and science/colony/transport ships following them. The follow-ups would all be armed of course, but only to the extent of being able to scare off pirates, not being powerful cruisers in their own right.
For instance, if we see Voyager fight a certain ship and last in battle for 2 minutes on one occasion, and fight an identical ship losing shields in 18 minutes several seasons later, someone could put forth the "hard canon" argument that Voyager upgraded its shields by 900%. However I think that level of hardliner canon embrace makes a LOT of the show not make a lot of sense. Some latitude must be retained for differences of circumstance (i.e. maybe Voyager dodged or evaded better in the 2nd battle, etc.) which may perhaps not have been very explicitly detailed in the on-screen canon.
"Hard canon", as you put it, is simply a case of accepting
everything you see as canon. In your example that means Voyager lasted nine times as long in the battle.
Why the ship lasted longer is where speculation comes into it. The shields might have been improved by an order of magnitude. Unless we have other canon to suggest this, however, it's more likely that more nuanced factors were responsible - better evasion, a less skilled enemy, a less powerful enemy due to it operating at extreme range or having suffered damage, pure luck, any number of factors. These all come under the heading of "hard canon". What matters is that in-universe answers are being looked for, rather than "the producers had more money the second time".
