Quite amusing and insightful.
There is more amusement in the entire thread at Giant in the Playground.
The Federation is a bloated, corrupt communist bureaucracy. The directives are conflicting and often ignored in favor of getting things done or employing the teeming mass of unemployed. Safety regulations are ignored, especially in engineering where jury rigging due to inefficient parts manufactured by hand to give the population a 'job' failing constantly, and 'red shirts' are basically drafted into the service to give them something to do and suffer from a lack of basic weaponry and armor, not to mention the callous treatment at the hand of the 'lifer' officers who honestly couldn't care if they survive.
Technology is advanced but actual understanding of how it functions and efficient use of it is starkly limited due to being manufactured from crap components and restrictive, often times retarded, directives, and a relatively small number of people who know how it works and jealously guard their jobs and knowledge. The poor parts result in infamously lethal working environments - the panels are so under safety regulations that they actually have been known to *explode* during use under stress, killing those nearby. The power transmission systems throughout the ship and its completely unsafe dilithium crystal reactor are known to be death traps to the rest of the galaxy, who stopped using them for safer but less out-put systems that have a smaller chance of randomly killing the users in power surges under duress. The Federation continues to do so due to mining deals worked out with various corporate interests and the fact that the power generated gives their weaponry a distinct edge in combat, as well as powering stronger than usual shields. The equipment is more valuable than the replaceable crew for the most part, and the Star Fleet is fully satisfied with its lethal performance.
War is common despite the proud declaration that the Federation has no warships and is always peaceful in intent. They meddle constantly in affairs to make the outcome in their favor, especially on less advanced worlds, with loose rationals. They get by the 'no warship' clause by having a 'science fleet' that is bizarrely heavily armed for mere exploration vessels.
The corruption of the Star Fleet has resulted in a laissez faire style of captainancy in their ships - a ships captain can get away almost anything short of starting an actual war as long as it looks good and profits the Federation. Acts of piracy, treaty violation, and sexual indecency are fairly common. Bridge crews often conspire to cover up or edit reports to the central command. As a result, Federation ships are infamous for bringing disaster in their wake.
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Read Nano-Plasm
© 2005-2008 Stephen Clarke-Willson, Ph.D. - All Rights Reserved.
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