People seem to be forgetting how absurdly huge space is. And in all three dimensions.
Unless there is a mitigating circumstance where a task force is absolutely necessary, ships (especially the larger ones) would be far apart from each other.
But let’s say Starfleet has a ridiculous amount of ships. Some absurd number we know they don’t have. Like a billion ships. If you were to evenly space (hah) them out over the most canon chart we have of The Federation, there’d still be tens of lightyears between one ship and the next.
And that’s just if we limit the ships to Federation territories. If we account for ships doing many exploration missions in far-flung areas thr distances become even more enormous.
People seem to be forgetting how absurdly huge space is. And in all three dimensions.
Unless there is a mitigating circumstance where a task force is absolutely necessary, ships (especially the larger ones) would be far apart from each other.
But let’s say Starfleet has a ridiculous amount of ships. Some absurd number we know they don’t have. Like a billion ships. If you were to evenly space (hah) them out over the most canon chart we have of The Federation, there’d still be tens of lightyears between one ship and the next.
And that’s just if we limit the ships to Federation territories. If we account for ships doing many exploration missions in far-flung areas thr distances become even more enormous.
But ships travel at the speed of plot! If the writers wanted to, they could have back up ships there in an hour.