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shran wrote:those phasers are better spent on the ventral surface of the orbiting ship rather than on the lander. Orbital bombardment is far more effective. what is referred to in the previous post is the total lack of decent landing troops in Starfleet.

Phasers on the upper surface of the pod would be useful - you can't guarantee that orbital support or a shuttle CAP will pick up all raiders, so you'd need AAA integrated into the base itself.

Lighthawk wrote:The real question is "What would it take for Starfleet to build up a ground force that would need such a base?"

A major injection of sanity would be a good start. Fortunately the Dominion seems to have provided this - since the loss of the Odyssey Starfleet has gone from rarely deployed SMGs to decent rifles, an RPG of some type, and a half decent light reconnaissance vehicle. There's still a long way to go, but they're at least making progress.

alexmann wrote:Not much, they have most of the technology all they need is to put it together. They could do it in a couple of years max.

Technology is the least of their problems - implementation and training are far more serious issues. The rifles were in at least limited service fairly quickly, going by the fact that Voyager had them, but it took four years for them to deploy RPGs and another four to get the Argo ground component into service. They still have no mortars, no sustained fire support weapons, and no heavy vehicles. More importantly, training up a decent ground force from scratch will take far longer than simply producing the equipment for it.

Personally, I prefer and idea like Graham's, as seen here. Using a whole pod, much less something GCS saucer-sized, both requires extra technology to be stable on the ground (static SIF's, tractors, etc., etc.) and also means a hell of a lot more casualties with each lucky shot.

It's also probably more capable and IMO looks cooler. It's subjective.