Cloaks. The Feds really should have them. And how is it the Feds don't have them but it's all cool for the Romulans to have them? There's hardly parity there is there? Cloaks are not invincible. But they are a pretty handy piece of kit in a troubled galaxy where villains and evil-doers abound. This became very pronounced during the Dominion Wars when bolting on a few old cloaks would've made a difference when they were losing ships by the legion. And the Romulans surely would've been game for giving the Feds a bit of leeway when they had stepped into the fray. They both want to win don't they?
Well, it would certainly make things too easy for our heros episode to episode, especially if it was one that could pass threw matter.
But as I recall, it had a perfectly sensible in-verse explination: the Romulans, as part of a peace accord of some sort, had a stipulation the Federation couldn't develop or use a cloaking technology. Considering how edgy the Romulans are about everything, even down to their own citizens, it makes sense.
Boarding parties and the warp core. Seems that the warp core is a very, very vulnerable piece of kit...that doesn't take much to well get to......explode. It has no forcefield, no permanent security detail. It just stands there..like a stressed out, pulsating horizontal vein...completely undefended for any hotheaded jamoke to simply waltz on in there and blow up at their leisure. And the crew don't handle boarding parties all that well culminating in that episode where a bunch of Ferengi goofballs take the ship and enslave the crew at a canter only for the kids to save the day. A fun episode but stuff n' nonsense really.
To be fair, though, Engineering always has personnel around doing something, so it's hard to sneak in there 'cause you have to walk passed who nows how many Engineering personnel, but make your way around an oddly layed-out floor that also has catwalks going up where there also might be personnel looking down at you. I agree, however, about how easily they seem to be taken by intruders, considering as I recall, all Starfleet personnel recieve basic hand-to-hand combat training; the worst thing that one of them ever did was spill coffee on Picard. By accident.
But sometimes it was out of their hands. In "Q Who?" a Borg silently beams into Engineering and it's only because Geordi keenly hears him that he even notices. Then in "The High Ground" a terrorist flashes in fast with an explossive, and was armed as I recall and shot down one or two personnel -- they were taken by surprise. But it's also rather
stupid that the sheild modulation frequency is
RIGHT THERE on the big wall display for anybody to see. All you have to do is waltz by it and nobody might see you -- it's like a connecting cooridor hall that passes by it (anybody have hte blue prints to verify that?).
I have to say, though, a force field is kind of a good idea. Anytime a ship is on red alert or yellow, or personnel are just gnerally put on alert because of a tense situation in or out the ship, a level three force field should be erected inches from the core (leaving no room to transport between it and the core, unless it was a bomb and somehow they got threw the field).
Promiscuous use of time travel. We've seen Kirk and Co travel around the sun, we've seen old Alexander visit his younger self and Worf, among various other incidents of easy time travellin' escapades. Why doesn't the Feds send a little scoutship into the future and gain a little discreet insight on something like the Dominion War where billions of lives and the AQ's very existence are on offer? Starfleet is really exemplary in sticking to its principles, that's for sure.
Who says the Federation doesn't? We know they have a time ships and a temporal investigation unit. For all we know current and future investigators work with each other to prevent events. Some numbnut slingshot around the sun and change something? Fix it.
