When did I use the term or suggest money? I used resource intensive (and loss of life). Which can resonably assume many things, such as equipment, materials and personnel. The whole modern day equivalent was in relation to tactics where big guns on big ships has been replaced by smaller ships with better weaponary and in regards to the number of people killed when one ships were sunk.
I used 'money' as a term merely to illustrate that SF sees things a bit differently when it comes to resource use/expenditure.
But granted, I probably jumped the gun on the modern day equivalent because I skimmed that particular part.
One problem I have with this is that the Federation still needs miners for all sorts of materials. So you have a whole load of logistics, just to get the materials. And it can't be as simple as replicating either, otherwise they wouldn't bother with the miners. There might be a limit as to what they can replicate and how much they can. If those energy resources are finite for instance? what would that do 100, 200 years down the line. What they going to do then, put a windmill on every ship for power when the power resources run out?
The Federation is also heavily reliant on recycling.
And with the amount of space we are talking about, there probably won't be shortage of anything anytime soon. Its very possible that most of the resources that might be an issue for lost ships such as Voyager to find SF actually has artificial sources to draw from.
To that end, we've seen SF using Solar power as means to powering subspace communications and other technologies in STIV (at a time when the whale probe effectively shut down most of everything else).
Per Voyager, they can recycle energy itself (so I don't think that energy as such is an issue for them - actually its implied that there's an abundance of it).
As for needing miners for minerals... that really depends on what minerals we are talking about.
We also witnessed a Dilithium Mining asteroid in 'Author Author', but we also know that SF was able to re-crystalise the used Dilithium crystals and even make synthetic ones. So its entirely possible that their reliance on 'new' or 'fresh' resources is extremely minimal and used as a potential supplement but not as a main source.
I never said about the construction of more Miranda and Excelsior class vessels, you've again put words in my mouth. New classes would have to be developed, as the Miranda was over 100 years old at this point (although probably been refitted several times, there will be a time when enough it enough. This is seen in the episodes of ST with the Sabre, the Steamrunner, the Prometheus and even the Intrepid.
Again, I merely pointed out the unlikelihood of construction of more Miranda/Excelsior/Ambassador type ships as a mere reference. It was not intended to put words in your mouth.
And I also agree that there is likely a time frame within which SF is producing a certain class of ships (say, 10 or 15 years if they don't have new designs).
For reference purposes only... one of the reasons behind SF having lots of older designs from the 23rd century could have been due to no new designs.
TNG was more or less a 'turning point' in terms of technologies and designs - plus new threats- which probably prompted SF to come up with more classes.
I never mentioned anything about the capabilities of the Enterprise-D. I have no idea why you have mentioned this. Also compare that the Defiant was officially an escort, but in reality was built to be a warship (the Search Part 1), when comparing to other ships it would have more weapons and better shielding.
You mentioned that the Defiant which was unofficially a warship never defeated 3 ships at once.
My example was to illustrate that yet another warship (which was incidentally much larger) essentially failed to do the same.
Also, just because the Defiant was a warship, doesn't mean it had more weapons or better shielding than say an Intrepid or Galaxy classes.
For one thing, the Defiant has only 4 forward facing pulse phaser ports and 1 top phaser strip (plus 3 torpedo tubes for all we know - 2 forward and 1 aft) Compared to the Galaxy and Intrepid class, it's full of blind spots in phaser coverage, and the Intrepid beats it when it comes to torpedo tubes (if the Defiant has 3 of them).
Possibly, but there are limits to the upgrades one drone could have done in such a small amount of time.
Borg nanoprobes from the 24th century have a wide range of capabilities and work rather fast... 29th century nanoprobes would probably do the work a lot faster and better.
Where is the evidence for that. Could that not be the direct result of battles with the Hirogen? learning from past mistakes? Having been on one of their ships? Studying the abandoned ship for a while?
If we go by on-screen evidence only, the Voyager crew had little to no reason to expect to see the Hirogen ever again after 'Endgame' events.
There is a possibility of course the crew could have found some options... but they were in contact with SF when Barclay opened up the micro-wormhole transmitting all of their data to them.
By the time the hyper-subspace technology was applied, and with advances happening in the AQ, its very likely a countermeasure could have been found very fast.
umm... 1st of all, in the first battle, the borg got the access codes from Tuvok. giving them a huge advantage, yet the tactical cube could not just blow up Voyager. Also I am sure 7 of 9 was not actually particpating in the battle. wasn't she connected to unimatrix zero? she got a status report after the battle from chakotay and paris, and was asked to go back in there. In the second battle, she went to unimatrix zero to talk to her 'boy friend' saying she had wasted their time together. This excluded her from the second battle and helping with repairs and keeping the warp drive online in between the battles (for the majority at least).
And lastly, don't critise if you can't quote properly. There were several instances in your post when you assumed or frankly just made stuff up.
The battle vs the Tactical cube where the Borg acquired access codes from Tuvok was in the second attempt (well after that initial combat where the away team got onboard and was assimilated).
Its not that the Tactical cube couldn't just blow up Voyager... the queen was simply toying with the crew and saw the ship as annoying. 7 was part of the first battle and to my knowledge the subsequent ones (she went back to Unimatrix 0 after the first battle, then again after the second one when the cube got the access codes and crippled Voayeger, and finally during the third battle [when the Sphere joined Voyager] in the end to find Axem as Unimatrix 0 was shutting down).
Finally, I was not making things up. I was bringing up things for reference sake... and if you were the one who assumed they were there for another reason, then that's your fault (but admittedly, it was also mine in part for not illustrating it better, and I apologize for that).
P.S. Regarding the Defiant defeating 3 Dominion attack ships... it was mentioned sometime during the Dominion war as part of one of Bashirs boasting in Quarks (start of an episode I think - but I cannot recall which one - to that end, in terms of eliminating those Attack ships, the Defiant Pulse phasers seemed to do that in just a few shots per ship - so it has the ability to dispose of them quickly - the matter of staying in a fight long enough to dispose of 3 of them depends on shields and piloting).
