Possible but IMHO quite improbable. Yes, I think the comma is there, too - the "which" refers to everything previously said, not narrowly to the shortcomings of the ships. But no, I don't see Starfleet adopting these policies.
And there's no need for it to. In "Minefield", we saw Starfleet perfectly willing to speak face to face, and Romulans utterly unwilling. This would be likely to remain the case in open warfare, too: Earth policy would be to negotiate, but the Romulan policy would be not to, and the Romulan policy would automatically triumph over the Earth one, because all it takes is refusal to turn on your camera.
Likewise, Earth would have a policy of taking prisoners, by ample precedent both from the real world and from ENT, but Romulans would have a policy of not getting captured, by inference from other Trek spinoffs. And eventually this would force Earth to change its policy, when every "captive" turned out to be a suicide bomber, every "surrender" a preamble to a destructive scuttling. Earth need not ever stop hailing Romulans visually, but Earth would need to stop trying to board Romulan ships at some point.
These two already established Starfleet policies negated by their Romulan counterparts explain some of the faceless enemy stuff. Drone warfare and general misdirection helps further there, again established in ENT. Ground warfare with exclusively Reman troops only helps if Earth somehow learns that these are not the real Romulans, though - but this might happen, too.
As for the capabilities of Archer's ship, it's remarkable that we never saw a ship or a shuttle in ENT that would have been incapable of holding a prisoner. Indeed, the small craft seen from the inside in the show were generally vehicles for prisoner transports first and foremost - if not by the in-universe design, then by the dramatic role. We saw bounty hunters, evil authorities, agents on a mission, criminals of all sorts, and basically all of them took Archer captive! Doing so is easy in the ENT universe. So consistency with the TOS universe would have to come from the enemies of Earth in wartime being better prepared against capture than Starfleet in peacetime. Which isn't all that exacting a requirement, really.
Timo Saloniemi
And there's no need for it to. In "Minefield", we saw Starfleet perfectly willing to speak face to face, and Romulans utterly unwilling. This would be likely to remain the case in open warfare, too: Earth policy would be to negotiate, but the Romulan policy would be not to, and the Romulan policy would automatically triumph over the Earth one, because all it takes is refusal to turn on your camera.
Likewise, Earth would have a policy of taking prisoners, by ample precedent both from the real world and from ENT, but Romulans would have a policy of not getting captured, by inference from other Trek spinoffs. And eventually this would force Earth to change its policy, when every "captive" turned out to be a suicide bomber, every "surrender" a preamble to a destructive scuttling. Earth need not ever stop hailing Romulans visually, but Earth would need to stop trying to board Romulan ships at some point.
These two already established Starfleet policies negated by their Romulan counterparts explain some of the faceless enemy stuff. Drone warfare and general misdirection helps further there, again established in ENT. Ground warfare with exclusively Reman troops only helps if Earth somehow learns that these are not the real Romulans, though - but this might happen, too.
As for the capabilities of Archer's ship, it's remarkable that we never saw a ship or a shuttle in ENT that would have been incapable of holding a prisoner. Indeed, the small craft seen from the inside in the show were generally vehicles for prisoner transports first and foremost - if not by the in-universe design, then by the dramatic role. We saw bounty hunters, evil authorities, agents on a mission, criminals of all sorts, and basically all of them took Archer captive! Doing so is easy in the ENT universe. So consistency with the TOS universe would have to come from the enemies of Earth in wartime being better prepared against capture than Starfleet in peacetime. Which isn't all that exacting a requirement, really.
Timo Saloniemi
