Would it really be so bad if...

[Deepcrush]

Then the privite sector guys can work on board with SF personel. I'm not handing over a ship to them.

[Captain Seafort]

Why not? For scientific missions you'd be better off with a multitude of independant, privately-run organisations than a monolithic government department. Government agencies do alright when a huge amount of coordinated resources need to be thrown at a single problem, but the low priority stuff would never get done. Take "Force of Nature" for example - in a Federation with privately-run scientific organisations the Herakans could have simply hired someone to conduct a detailed long-term survey of the corridor. Without that option they resorted to terrorism and suicide bombing.

[Deepcrush]

Ok, I concede there are times when a smaller privte group may be better off. I would still want someone from SF there to watch over them.

[Captain Seafort]

Why? You don't have US Navy officers aboard every ship registered in the US, why should there be Starfleet officers aboard every Federation ship?

[Deepcrush]

If the ship is going to be dealing with things that may call for the involvement of SF or the UFP. There should still be someone there with voice of the UFP, even if its just one of the crew trained in UFP protocols.

[Captain Seafort]

If a ship is specifically tasked with exploring beyond the boundaries of the Federation, then I concede that an official observer would probably be a good thing. These situations should, however, be the exception rather than the rule - most scientific missions would be conducted in known space, and so such an observer would be unnecessary.

[Deepcrush]

Seems like a good balance.

Seafort, you are going to be my Chief of Affairs.

[Teaos]

No my big problem with Deep and many others ideas is they are just pulling stuff out of their arse.

You wish to increase ship production but there is nothing pointing to the fact that they are able to do that.

Or they say they just replace Standard ships with pure war ships. But that not only drops the science capability of the fleet but also has to few warships to be truely effective.

[Sionnach Glic]

How does it have too few ships to be effective? If we go by Graham's number of 7000 ships, that'd give us a military fleet 3500 strong. You could easily garrison each planet you control with a couple of ships and still have plenty left to patrol borders and act as a reserve force.

[Teaos]

You still reduce the science capability of the fleet and having a defence force that is spread thin.

[Sionnach Glic]

You still reduce the science capability of the fleet

An acceptable trade-off. There's still more than enough left to get exploration and science missions done.

and having a defence force that is spread thin.

As I pointed out above, it is far frome "spread thin". You can adequately defend every planet, patrol your borders and still have a reserve group of ships standing by.

[Teaos]

An acceptable trade-off. There's still more than enough left to get exploration and science missions done.

Reducing the science and exploration will bite you in the arse latter. You can get away with it on the short term but not as a rule of thumb.

While you may have a ship on every system it would take you much longer to pull together groups to fight fleets.

[Sionnach Glic]

Reducing the science and exploration will bite you in the arse latter

How?

You can get away with it on the short term but not as a rule of thumb

Why?

While you may have a ship on every system it would take you much longer to pull together groups to fight fleets

How?

[Teaos]

How?

The less you put into science and exploration (S/E from now on) the less you get out of it. You gain less knowledge, you gain less space, you gain less everything.

Why?

Because while reducing S/E over a few years during a war just makes sense if you do it forever your progress slows down.

How?

How does having fewer ship spread over the same amount of space leave you less able to pull together ship and fight fleets? Are you really asking that question...

Fewer ships spread over a larger distance will take longer to assemble...

[Sionnach Glic]

The less you put into science and exploration (S/E from now on) the less you get out of it. You gain less knowledge, you gain less space, you gain less everything.

There are still 3500 ships out there on science and exploration missions. The whole thing isn't going to suffer detrimentaly like you're suggesting.

Because while reducing S/E over a few years during a war just makes sense if you do it forever your progress slows down.

Not being able to inspect the spatial anomaly of the week is hardly going to be a major problem. Dumping the mult-role ships and turning the remaining science ships into pure science vessels will make up for it. Particularly now that they don't have to get pulled into combat zones.

How does having fewer ship spread over the same amount of space leave you less able to pull together ship and fight fleets? Are you really asking that question...

Fewer ships spread over a larger distance will take longer to assemble...

Except it's not fewer ships. Starfleet probably only had around that many combat-capable vessels originaly. And it's not spread over a larger distance, as they'll be watching the exact same amount of space as they were originaly.