I have to wonder if Riker's fleet was mostly holograms to fool the Tal Shiar. He shows up with a bunch of identical ships (easier to copy and paste) and as soon as the Romulans leave he heads back home. All those alleged ships he had and yet he couldn't leave some of them for support? Didn't make much sense.
If they were, we would have been clued in. Also, it would repeating the trick that Jurati had just used.
But the fact that he immediately left with his fleet makes me think he was hiding something. All those ships and he couldn't spare a few to stick around? What if the romulans came back?
Why would he have not told Picard they were just a bunch of holographic ships, if that’s what they really were?
Repeating Picard's trick would have been a great character moment: the apprentice showing he knows the master's tricks... We can pretend it did happen, and Riker had pity on the old man and didn't tell. Or we can accept it did not. Timo Saloniemi
I just don't see huge epic space battles being set up like WWI dog fights. Or massive groups of ships clumped together right next to each other in a face off.
So far no confirmation either way. WWI might well be our context here, but with our eye on the seagoing fleets. Clumping together of massive fleets was indeed the one and only way to win sea battles back then, with ships sprouting all sorts of guns with all sorts of effective ranges, and the side bringing the greatest number of those guns to said range (meaning the shortest one of the lot) automatically winning. In a Trek fight, the guns of all ships count, too, not just the biggest and longest-ranged of the biggest ships: it's pre-dreadnought fighting at its most brutal. Fighting at long ranges might be simply technologically impossible because of targeting challenges or whatever. But it might be merely tactically inadvisable, only relevant in one-on-one fights which often do involve great distances and warp speeds. Timo Saloniemi
Bit difficult when the head of the Tal Shiar fleet is the Starfleet head of Intelligence. They would have a good understanding of Starfleet's capabilities...
...But were fooled by the multiplied Sirena. What to make of that? "Advanced Synth handheld doodad makes more convincing fakes than Starfleet holotech"? Timo Saloniemi
He could still leave a squadron behind to support Picard, or even just a picket. Feels odd to just leave them there.
Only when things don't make sense...at least in my case. All those ships and they couldn't have left one or two behind in case some type of support was needed?