sunnyside wrote:Again a couple issues. My impression of the delta flier was that it was built, as somewhat mentioned already, using borg tech. It wasn't standard issue at all and starfleet simply didn't have the ability to make such a thing during DS9 (possibly that stuff is part of why future Janeway had access to super awsome destroy everything while being indesutructable tech).
It couldn't have been that special given that Voyager was able to build it in a few days, without external support. They may have incorporated ideas of Tuvok's and Seven's into some of the systems, but they were still limited by the single-ship industrial base they had available.
Anyway as for ground support I don't think that's something starfleet has as one of it's goals. They generally aren't trying to do the occupying force thing. I think the situations that came up in the dominion war may be a bunch of firsts for starfleet. And even if they did get into a war typically supressing ground forces can be acheived by a cap ship from orbit. Ground actions only happen when you're trying to keep facilities intact or trying to route out insurgents without "colateral damage".
Orbital bombardment can only destroy, it can't capture. Capturing territory is what wins wars, not outright destruction. Ultimately, therefore, the only way to win a war is to get boots on the ground, clearing out your opponent street by street, house by house, and room by room, not by lobbing multi-megaton bombs at them from orbit.
Also I'm not so sure it's fair to apply "common sense" to trek with fighters while denying cap ships some. The reason stuff is so close in Trek is because they want that "wow" factor for general viewers. It's right in the tech manuals they give the writers (that explain to people who have been writing for Scooby Doo previously what phasers and transporters are). They're warned never (or rarely) have characters say things about range becuase stuff that seems reasonable would later be a problem for the special effects guys who like having all the ships in the same shot.
That's probably why they have these point-blank slugging matches, but it doesn't change the fact that typical combat distances in Trek are measured in kilometres.
Finally on control panels. In Trek most ships employ some varient of fly-by-wire you use the panel to tell the ship what you want it to do and the computer tries to make it happen. At the slow speed point blank stuff we see on the show you could maybe use a joystick. But if the other ships started actually using their impulse engines "realistically" a human simply couldn't react fast enough when you're zipping around at 50,000+ meters per second.
When have we ever seen impulse engines deliver those sorts of speeds? Sure at warp you need precise course changes, but at sublight, in the sort of dogfights we're talking about, the extremely fast reaction time of joysticks (like the E-E's in Insurrection) vs typing out a precise course change on a keyboard makes them the better choice.
