Design a more rational TNG fleet

[Ithekro]

When preparing for the Borg, Starfleet decides to do Wargames. Picard and his crew find these to be annoying due to that not being their primary mission and Starfleet has, at least up to that point, been capable of dealing with things with their usual Academy training. Riker was a clever tactician is noted in his record. The crew does acknowledge that the Borg are an issue, having faced them already. But Starfleet thought they had more time, at least another year or two, to prepare. With that time, and the Borg not assimilating Picard, would Starfleet have won? Possibly. The Enterprise by itself was figuring stuff out and surviving long enough to evade and report findings. The problem was because Picard knew all that stuff and gave the Borg an advantage over anything Starfleet had at that time. The Borge had shown no prior interest in such things, so that was a surprise to Starfleet and they didn't react to it quickly enough to save the fleet at Wolf 359, but the Enterprise still managed to work around the problem and came up with a solution.

 

[Unicron]

Speaking solely for myself, I've always preferred a more broader and multi-mission fleet than what we've traditionally seen in canon. I have no issue with Starfleet building dedicated warships, given the long history of conflict between the Federation and the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians etc.

I do however agree with the approach taken by some sources like Jackill and SotSF, where the ratio of true combat vessels like battleships and dreadnoughts is much smaller than that of cruisers, frigates and other classes that are more flexible in mission roles. I also agree that, in the context of things like burying the hatchet with the Klingon Empire and the Romulans isolating themselves for half a century, it would make sense for Starfleet to devote fewer resources to the traditional military budget and free up more of them for exploration and expansion. I think it's one of those things that could be modified as needs dictate.

The Excelsior class is kind of an interesting example, as FASA treated it as a battleship designed in direct response to newer enemy models in addition to being a testbed for the next generation of technology. Some later sources have assumed the Excelsiors were downgraded into more of a heavy cruiser role in the TNG+ era, with Jackill using them as as replacements for the older Constitution family. Which seems quite plausible to me.

I also like that the FASA RPG allowed for both the Klingons and the Romulans to have their own exploration branches alongside their military departments, although it might be far to say the Romulan one is more similar to the Starfleet model. The Klingon Diplomatic Corps is responsible (among other things) for recruiting holdings into the Empire without necessarily using military force, in circumstances where that would be more prudent.