Except where it did, the whole point of the Cali Class is its a joke as the idea of a hero ship. It's a badly designed, second line workhorse ship which putzes about basically handling the paperwork and box ticking which happens after the "real" hero ships do the exciting work, and it's all couched in terms to make the poor sods responsible for this work to feel a bit better about their titles and missions "Second Contact" etc.
"Our" Hero ship, the Cerritos is getting the ever loving snot beaten out of it by the Texas Class run by the evil on them, and at the moment of seeming defeat, here comes the entire class of silly ships (complete with their own colourschemes and spins on surface finish) with their own clearly and equally colourful and eccentric crews, many of which get a second or so of screen time, suggesting that it's also a place Starfleet dumps a lot of their misfits.
And then our silly, jokes of a hero ships step up to the plate and save the day between them.
1) It gets Jack Quaid to list 25 Californian Cities in lightening quick time seemingly in a single breath.
2) Subverts expectations by showing that even the jokes can have their own time in the sun and can do heroic acts when truly called on.
We've also had this whole class referenced and built up over some four seasons by this point, wondering if they're as disfunctional as the Cerritos or not.
It's very different from a sudden reappearance of Riker with 50 of the same ship as a Deus Plot Machina.
I don't thank you got my point, or I wasn't clear in making it. Nothing you state makes in universe sense. It fits thematically (and doe this beautifully), but doesn't make any sense in universe. It's not immersive to the universe.
Picard scene while nowhere even remotely as thematically powerful or connecting, does at least make some sense in universe. Ideally (meaning it rarely happens) I would like both.
LD attack happens, with almost no warning, ship flees, gets taken out of warp eventually and the ship is very quickly surrounding by numerous California class ships. For this to make in universe sense. They would need to know where they are going to come out of warp (they don't), and they would all need to be either centrally located, or located at equal distance from the point they come out of warp. And a reason no other class of ship is in similar range. And there is nothing in the story to indicate this...
Thats what I mean that it makes no rational in universe sense.
In Picard, Riker has lead up time. Thus he has time to gather at a central location a group of ships. They know the location they are going to. Thus a target. And the show has given us the reason why one type of vessel, both in brief dialogue and in the larger story background. Episodes mention Starfleet resources already stretched thin, by their spending so much time building an armada that gets destroyed, and make several references to losing one of their hubs for ship construction. This provides a reason that already deployed ships are not part of the response, and gives a logical reason why Starfleet uses one class of ship in this. When major hubs are removed, you typically focus on streamlining your line of products to make manufacturing as streamlined as possible (we only need to see how the Coronavirus has impacted whole sectors of production to see examples of this).
Thus Picard's scene in universe makes far more sense then Lower Decks (they do both fail at both fleets arriving in the nick of time).
Now all the show needed was part of the Captain's log mentioning being diverted from a major event that a host of California Class ships were providing aid or recovery in, that was happening nearby. A very easy fix. to give a rational reason why a mass of California ships would be in position to provide aid to the event that the Cerritos was in.
