United Federation of Planets Profile: Part 2

Author's note: Well this is part two. I hope you enjoy this. If you have any problems or see anything I've done wrong, please let me know

==CAVALRY==

Name: Argo

Armour Type: none

Cavalry purpose: scouting

Classification: All terrain ground vehicle

Speed: 200 km/h

==LOADOUT==

The Argo class buggy is a four wheel drive vehicle designed for exploration and recon on remote alien worlds with harsh terrain. The off-road tires and soft suspension were augmented by light duty anti-gravity generators that allow it to perform well on soft sand or soil and make sharp turns at high speed. Captain Picard usually drove one on away missions after having nine beers with Miles O’Brien.

Not a front line vehicle, the Argo’s greatest asset is the battery of sophisticated scanners and forensic equipment on board; it is a science machine after all.

Armaments: Phaser cannon

The craft features a rear mounted phaser cannon that while powerful is only intended to provide covering fire and is operated by one of the passengers.

Defence: None, though future incarnations of the vehicle will likely have either light armour or shield generators installed

Name: Venture

Armour Type: Deflector shield

Cavalry purpose: Reconnaissance

Classification: Long range scout

Speed: Gravitational escape velocity

The Venture represents a new breed of shuttlecraft designed around engineering lessons learned from the old Runabout line. It is designed for long ranged, detailed scanning where a full sized starship might be impractical or unnecessary.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Pulse Phasers, Photon Torpedoes,

Pulse Phasers are a type of phaser weapon which encases phaser energy in a magnetic field. While shorter ranged than beam phasers, it also does more damage per volley.

Defence: The Venture is protected by a durable hull as well as deflector shields; potent electromagnetic energy fields that protect the craft from both ballistic damage and direct energy attacks.

Name: Danube Class Shuttle

Armour Type: Deflector shield

Cavalry purpose: Skirmisher

Classification: Runabout

Speed: Gravitational escape velocity

The Danube were a robust and versatile shuttle class; able to perform a variety of missions outside the means of most craft their size. They acted as cargo carriers, scouts on long range missions and even proved some use fighting against Maquis fighter craft.

Though not as sturdy as the Delta Flyer class, the Danube class is very fast and highly agile. Though rarely used in head on combat, their speed and high power payload lets them act as mobile defense platforms and guerilla attackers.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Phaser arrays, Quantum Torpedoes

==ARMOUR==

Name: Delta Flyer

Armour Type: Deflector shield

Speed: Orbital escape velocity

Classification: Heavy duty Shuttlecraft

Basic description:

Starfleet has very few dedicated ground vehicles. Hence the role of an armoured craft to support ground offensive falls to the Delta Flyer shuttle class. Robust, hardened against dangerous environments and weapons; the Flyer can handle more than the average UFC shuttle. It is rated not only for atmosphere but can also travel under water; even at the bottom of vast oceans under great pressure.

The craft was also able to enter high radiation environments as well as survive for a time in environs ravaged by reality bending phenomenon.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Type 3 Phasers, Pulse Phasers, Quantum Torpedoes,

Defence: Deflector shields,

Unimatrix shield—Invented by commander Tuvok this is a specialized form of shielding which protects the craft from phenomena ranging from but not limited to black holes, different layers of subspace and tears in the fabric of reality.

Immersion shielding—This is a form of shielding designed to allow the Flyer to operate underwater at great depths or in the atmosphere of gas giants.

Additional factors: Like most Federation craft and vehicles the Flyer possesses a degree of versatility. It possesses a bio med for most medical situations, has an onboard replicator and if need be can hold comfortably up to five passengers and a pilot.

==AIRFORCE==

Name: Intrepid Class Starship

Type of Aircraft: Long range exploration Vessel

Fighter or Bomber: Both

Armour Type: Deflector shields/Ablative armor

Weapon Type: Direct energy weapons

Classification: High speed assault ship

Basic Description:

The Intrepid class is part of a new era of shipbuilding by the Federation, keeping the cutting edge of new technologies, massive weapons development as well as state of the art scanning technology and scientific research facilities.  Its multi-mission design was backed up by a main computer processor capable of simultaneously accessing 47 million data channels and sustaining 575 trillion calculations per nanosecond in operational temperatures from 10 to 1790 Kelvin.

As one of the few Starfleet vessels rated for atmospheric flight and orbital takeoff, the Intrepid is equipped with anti-gravity generators as well as impulse engines and lifters located at stress points in the ship’s superstructure. The Duranium hull has been reinforced with ablative armour plating; giving the ship some measure of protection from direct energy attacks in the event of shield failure.

Finally, even though it is half the size of a galaxy class starship it has nearly the same power output from the warp core.

Armaments: Pulse Phasers, Phaser Arrays, Quantum Torpedoes

Spatial charges—Specialized explosive devices which are designed to phase into interdimensional space beneath our plane of existence and detonate. They can be used as missiles or planted as mines and time bombs.

The effect of spatial charges are highly controlled. At certain settings spatial charges can bathe an area of up to five hundred kilometres in deadly radiation and explosive gasses. More controlled blasts can rip apart starships and space stations without releasing deadly radiation clouds.

In scientific situations, specific detonations can release radiation particles which illuminate rare phenomena such as dark matter and even shut down wormholes and dimensional rips in the fabric of space time.

Tricobalt devices—High powered explosive devices made from unstable artificial radioactive metals; they were not standard issue on Starfleet ships until very recently. These devices possess a very high kinetic impact yield, greater even than quantum torpedoes. Devices like these have known to be powerful enough to make tears in subspace. Their downsides include lengthy build times compared to other Federation warheads and are destructible in flight.

Name: Defiant Class Starship

Type of Aircraft: Escort Vessel

Fighter or Bomber: Both

Armour Type: Ablative armor

Weapon Type: Direct energy weapons

Classification: Warship

Basic Description:

The Defiant Class is probably Starfleet’s only dedicated starship that is nominally a warship. It has no onboard science facilities and it’s the only starship where the crew can’t bring family along. Also from a distance it looks like it should be hunting down Serenity on behalf of the Alliance.

Of any Starship in the fleet is has the largest power plant output to ship size ratio. While the first rundowns of the Defiant class were fraught with frustration and mechanical failure by now they’re an essential part of the Starfleet armada; handling high danger missions that would shred any other starship and serving as escorts and security vessels in peacetime.

Variant: The original ship of the line, the USS Defiant is the only ship in Starfleet to possess a cloaking device. See Klingon Bird of Prey.

Armaments: Pulse Phasers, Phaser Arrays, Quantum Torpedoes, Tricobalt devices

Name: Klingon Bird of Prey

Type of Aircraft: Long range combat cruiser

Fighter or Bomber: Both

Armour Type: Deflector shields/Ablative armor

Weapon Type: Direct energy weapons

Classification: High speed assault ship

Basic Description:

Warbirds of varying models and classes have served the Klingon empire for over a hundred years; the craft proving to be rugged, reliable and able to take on a variety of missions. The Birds of Prey assigned to Starfleet are a mix of older but still powerful and robust ships usually owned by private individuals or the noble houses.

The Klingon Empire At Large has few ships to spare for the conflict but overall these ships will make a difference.

Armaments: Photon torpedoes, disruptor arrays,

EMP projector—A Bird of Prey is capable of projecting an electromagnetic beam onto targets for a variety of reasons. This weapon is able to disrupt magnetic fields, transporter scramblers and knock out computer and AI systems as well as overload unprotected power systems.

At the cost of range the weapon was able to spread out its area of effect.

Defence: Deflector shield—See Intrepid class

Cloaking device—One of the Klingon’s great tech advantages, originally stolen from erstwhile Romulan “allies” more than a century ago, the Empire takes great pain to keep the secret of these devices hidden.

The cloak is a stealth system which hides the ship from most passive and active scans. While the cloak is activated, the ship is unable to communicate with other cloaked ships or fire its weapons. When the cloak is activated or deactivated there is a two second vulnerable period where the ship is not fully cloaked but can’t fire its weapons. A concentrated tachyon pulse can reveal a cloaked vessel but these pulses are very narrow and need to be deployed in a net over millions of kilometers to catch a single ship.

Sensors and scanners however are unaffected by the cloak, enabling Birds of Prey to be excellent scouts and first strike cruisers.

Additional factors: Most Klingon Birds of Prey have weak shields compared to federation vessels of similar engine core output but compensate for this with stronger weapons and greater speed overall.

Name: Vesta Class Starship

Type of Aircraft: Multi-mission Explorer

Fighter or Bomber: Both

Armour Type: Deflector shields/Ablative armor

Weapon Type: Direct energy weapons

Classification: Variable role combat craft

Basic Description:

The Vesta class came out as a modular state of the art starship which could be used to field test the newest and most experimental technologies. It possesses a variety of weapons and technologies that other starships won’t have; depending on its success those weapons and devices will be either scrapped or installed on every ship in the fleet.

While not as fast as the intrepid, it makes up for this with the ability to serve as a support vessel or be supped up to fill various combat roles.

Armaments: Quantum Torpedoes, Tricobalt devices, spatial devices

Transphasic Torpedoes—a rare and highly experimental technology from the 25^th century, the Transphasic torpedo is able to blow up a Borg cube with a single shot. There are some limiting factors to the availability of this weapon; the first being that Starfleet doesn’t want the weapon stolen by the Borg or use it often enough that they adapt to it. The second is that the transphasic torpedo is relatively hard to manufacture compared to the quantum or photon torpedo. In extenuating circumstances the Transphasic torpedo may be spread out among the rest of the Ships in the fleet.

Mark XII Phaser cannons—Upgraded, high powered phaser arrays designed to change adaptive frequencies very quickly as an anti-borg weapon.

Quantum field Focus controller—Part of Starfleet’s new slipstream research initiative, in addition to helping the ship go beyond the limits of warp speed could also serve offensive and defensive functions. If the ship was heavily damaged and the controller was still online, power could be rerouted through the device to create either a singularly powerful deflector shield or a very powerful singular phaser beam. Either power could not be used as the same time though.

Defence: Ablative armour, Deflector shield,

Multidimensional wave function analysis module—This goddamn mouthful of a contraption allowed the Vesta-class starship to detect inter-dimensional rifts in subspace and temporal distortions in space time up to 23 light years away, and it also emits a multidimensional graviton shield which in theory can reverse the effects of a dimensional worm-hole e.g. a worm-hole absorbs light and matter, but with a Multidimensional wave-function analysis Module matter i.e. a starship would be pushed away from the event horizon

Name: Federation Attack Fighter

Type of Aircraft: High speed assault vessel

Fighter or Bomber: Fighter

Armour Type: Deflector shields/Ablative armor

Weapon Type: Direct energy weapons

Classification: Raider

Basic Description:

The basic design for the Attack fighter ironically came from the anti-Federation group, the Maquis. The Maquis used small, fast ships to wage a guerilla campaign against larger, more heavily armed Cardassian warships.

When the Dominion war rolled around, the Federation had learned from the Maquis regarding fast moving vessels and how to maximize their use.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Phaser Arrays, Pulse Phasers, Quantum torpedoes

Defence: Deflector shield, Ablative Armour, Speed

==MISC AIR==

Name: Type 11 Shuttlecraft

Type of Aircraft: Transport

Fighter or Bomber: Fighter

Armour Type: Deflector shields

Weapon Type: Tachyon Pulse

Classification: Scout

Basic Description:

The Type 11 was a proven model of shuttlecraft which had seen about a decade of service around the time of that dismal movie, Star Trek insurrection. What stood it out from most shuttlecraft was the modular nature which allowed it to be fitted out for multi-mission profiles such as scouting, stealth and even function as a submarine craft.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Tachyon Burst—A controlled burst of subatomic particles which would disable enemy shields and allow the shuttle time to escape.

Phaser array—Normally not aboard the shuttle but as the mission dictated they could be installed onboard.

Name: Argo Type Shuttlecraft

Type of Aircraft: Transport

Fighter or Bomber: Fighter

Armour Type: Deflector shields

Weapon Type: Phaser

Classification: Scout

Basic Description:

Counterpart to the Argo Buggy, these shuttlecraft could be remote controlled from the buggy itself and were intended mostly for planetary exploration into areas where transporters were not feasible.

==LOADOUT==

Armaments: Phaser Array

==DEFENCES==

Name: Self Replicating mine

Type: Area Denial

Armament: Anti-matter explosive

Defence: Self Replication

Special: Good against capital ships

During the dominion war, self-replicating mines helped to blockade the Bajoran Wormhole against the Dominion’s seemingly endless fleets. Each mine has a built in replicator, thrusters from a class one probe and several photon torpedoes worth of explosives. To further give nightmare to enemy warships, each mine is built with a miniature cloaking device which stood up to some of the Dominion and the Cardassian’s best scanners.

To make up for their small size, mines close in on enemy ships and then detonate en mass, making short work of the heavily shielded and armoured Jem’Hadar attack ships. Due to the fact that the mines keep replicating using pieces of destroyed mines and chunks of damaged enemy ships there is almost no way to disarm the mines without destroying the entire field at once.

One possible weakness in the mines is using an antigraviton beam to isolate a mines from their brethren and disarm them; this is slow going however as the Federation routinely dispatches hundreds of thousands of mines in a given area of only a few hundred kilometers.

Name: Pattern Scramblers

Type: Area Denial

Armament: none

Defence: none

Special: blocks enemy teleportation

A device built by a number of spacefaring powers of the Alpha and Beta quadrants; these devices use selective energy focus to scramble the pattern of a transporter. The result is that what is supposed to be teleported has its matter put together in random patterns. To quote Miles O’Brien, it’s “messy.”

Pattern scramblers can be programmed to hinder only enemy transporters and leave allied transporters unmolested.

Name: Deflector shield

Type: fortification

Armament: none

Defence: Self Replication

Special: non-lethal

Deflector shields can be built to cover cities, townships and if enough power is drawn upon, whole sections of a planet. Federations shields are usually non-lethal to the touch and block both transporters and scanners; though they do not block line of sight observation.

Again, the size of the defense shields is directly proportionate to the amount of power the Federation has available.

==SUPPORT==

Name: Replicator

Armour Type: none

Classification:  Fabricator

Bonus: Mass production and logistics

The Replicator is one fundamental technology that not only changed society in the Federation but also the nature of space travel. Simply put, a replicator is a machine where you insert matter and the inbuilt computer rearranges the molecular makeup of that matter to form something new. The most common use for replicators is for food production; though with the right programming replicators can easily manufacture complex technologies in seconds.

Portable units given to combat units allow a ground force to make their own weapons, food and spare tools for months and possibly years; something which the Dominion would put to the test for units trapped for months without resupply. Naturally more complicated and molecularly dense objects take more energy to replicate; a basket of French fries is easier to replicate than a working phaser rifle.

Larger industrial replicators can produce objects as large as shuttlecraft in a matter of seconds while most starships have onboard replicators that work with transporters to act as impromptu mining equipment.

 Name: Tricorder

Armour Type: none

Classification:  scanner

Bonus: detection

Nearly universal across the Federation and their allies, the Tricorder is a versatile, infinitely upgradeable handheld scanner which can be linked up to almost any technology from replicators to weapons. Incorporating several sensor clusters, the tricorders featured multi-channel communications assemblies, and multiple databank modules. Encompassing visual displays and graphic touch pad interfaces, the tricorder of the 2360s provided easy means for on the spot archive retrieval, the recording of away mission events, and constant scientific measurements including biological, geographical or meteorological.

Models could be rigged to perform passive scans, lock into constant scan mode, detect subspace phenomena, energy dampening fields and be customized for a variety of roles and purposes.

Name: Universal Translator

Armour Type: none

Classification:  linguistic tool

Bonus: Diplomacy

Space is vast and language inevitably follows the diversity of life. Thus the Federation has universal translators built into ever com badge and every tricorder. Within minutes of hearing a new language, Starfleet personal and their allies can speak that language with total fluency; much like Adam Douglass’s babel fish.

It might not seem like much but speaking the local lingo can really shave time off in building an alliance against an invading army of assholes.

==LEADER PROFILE==

Name: Admiral Kathryn Janeway has a reputation for hating the Borg and sanity equally; that reputation is well deserved. She is a woman who has always favoured high risk, high reward strategies in everything she does, from navigating the Delta Quadrant to making dinner. When she’s not guilt tripping like a Jewish mom and breaking rules like captain Kirk, she usually spends her time engaging in bondage sex.

You will learn to fear the riding crop, mortal.

Achievements: Even as a child, she showed great aptitude in math and science; Janeway would push herself to get a doctorate in quantum cosmology. Early in her career as a science officer, Janeway rescued several crewmates from a patrolling Cardassian warship; heavily influencing her decision to switch from science to command. So great was her aptitude that she was considered by Jean Luc Picard as a candidate for officer’s commission.

It was in the Delta Quadrant that Janeway would truly make a reputation for herself; fighting not only the Borg and dozens of hostile alien empires in a dynamic, politically unstable section of space but she would do it with absolutely no hope of any kind of aid or backup from the Federation.

Post Delta Quadrant, Janeway was put in charge of the Full Circle Project; an ongoing exploration effort which would make Starfleet trans warp capable and greatly expand their range across the galaxy. During this time her victories were diplomatic rather than military; overseeing first contact efforts, inducting new members into the Federation as well as helping to decide what polities were not fit for integration with the Federation. Also during this time she would start to clean up many of the diplomatic fuckups she herself was responsible for during her time in the Delta Quadrant.

Personality: Janeway is a classic risk taker, gambler and go getter. She is a first believer in the idea that who dares, wins. That said, she is also deeply concerned with the lives of those under her command is not a believer in strategies of attrition or endless wave attacks. Indeed part of the rationale behind her usually high risk strategies is to end a conflict as quickly as possible in order to minimize casualties in the long run.

She is more than willing to break rules when they cease to be beneficial though she will not ignore the advice of veteran commanders without first giving it thought.

And as much as she hates the Borg, she’s been willing to make deals with them in the past when there was no other alternative; so at the end of the day she’s not going to be the pickiest person when choosing allies. Though if she’s going to make a deal with the devil, her first priority is to make like John Constantine and fuck the devil out of his due.

==X-FACTORS==

Adaptive creativity—70/100: Janeway pushes herself and the people under her to the limit. She is never satisfied with any given technology, strategy or state of being. She is highly resourceful and adaptive, having survived for years without any kind of aid or support.

Tactics— 60/100: She greatly favours precision strikes, commando raids and aggressive attack. In a great number of ways, she can be compared to the highly aggressive General Patton.

Strategy—70/100: Janeway is mostly concerned with blowing up an enemy’s logistics and infrastructure rather than engaging their armies in costly attrition battles or exterminating them outright. Her main limiting factor in this area is that she is only human.  

Intuition—60/100: While not prescient, Janeway has a gambler’s instinct and isn’t afraid to retreat or run like a damn coward if things go south.

Audacity—90/100: Whether it’s the buffet table or the start of a battle, Janeway is going to be leading from the front and will aggressively go out of her way to steal enemy technology and use it against them. .

Psychological warfare—50/100: Blunt and straight forward, Janeway is good at betraying people who are likely going to betray her but doesn’t really want to be feared and doesn’t try to intimidate or strike fear in others.  And as fucking corny as it sounds, she really would prefer it if everybody got along. After the main war is over, she does her best to try and reconstruct.

Intelligence—60/100: She possessed top marks at Starfleet and is an expert on quantum physics or the 24^th century version. As such she’s a scientifically literate and capable commander who knows the limits and frustrations of her tech crews and engineers.

Experience—45/100: Janeway has been around for a lot of years and seen many strange things, even once been the plaything of an omnipotent god like being. However she only has a single human lifespan to draw upon.

Discipline—67/100: Janeway is dedicated devoted and does not let her emotions get the better of her.  She doesn’t fight for honour or personal glory, but for her crewmembers. That said, she is truly only human.  

Leadership—70/100: Janeway has about the same level of respect and command a general in our world would get if they were good at their job and didn’t engage in Iraq war level fuckups.  The Klingons lower this a bit in that they tend to be more individualistic, while races like the Vulcans lower the score due to their superhuman discipline.

==ARMY X-FACTORS==

Morale: 75/100—While the Federation is tired of war, they did emerge as the victors in several recent conflicts and their soldiers are well trained and well disciplined.

Logistics—80/100: The only thing the Federation can’t build in situ are starships; replicators allow them to build everything from shuttlecraft to weapons to food. Each starship additionally is designed to operate for ten years without resupply or repair barring extreme structural damage. Score is boosted by their ability to either hack enemy power supply or hook into allied power systems.

Espionage: 70/100—The Federation is surprisingly good at espionage. Not only do their transporters and borrowed Klingon cloak systems give them an edge, but through surgery and special affects they’ve planted spies in the other major powers of the Quadrant for years at a time without discovery and frequently engage in major Men-in-Black style recon on pre warp worlds. The only downside is that they’ve never encountered stronger mind readers than simple telepaths.  

Discipline: 75/100—Discipline is high as Federation troops are chosen on very strict criteria and are strong in all fields; martial, academic, scientific and athletic. So no Kyle Chris type bastards in this army.

Overall intimidation: 30/100—The Klingons might be scary but overall the Federation army doesn’t really seek to frighten others. If you’re not scary then you can make alliances easier and people tend to think you’re helpless because of it.  

Reinforcement rate: Medium

For its population size, The Federation’s ground army is rather small. Simply put their military doctrine does not benefit from massive standing armies and they increase their fleet size by increasing automation on their starships.

Their numbers are bolstered by Klingon and Andorian Volunteers.

==VICTORY GAINS==

Technology gains: Very High,

One of the reasons that the Federation was able to survive is their capacity to leapfrog their enemies technologically. They will actively steal enemy tech and they have a large scientific contingent to help reverse engineer tech.

Biological gains: Medium

The Federation does not really gain from biology much, though these are changing. Their medical knowledge is vast and their starships are just beginning to incorporate biological elements to increase performance. So in the future it’s conceivable that biological gains could rise.

Allies/Mercenaries: Put bluntly the Federation are some of the best friends you can get. Wherever they go, standard of living improves and old glass ceilings regarding prejudices against race, gender and faith fall apart. Basically the Republican Party hates them.

They don’t believe in water boarding or torture and they hate futile gestures of war. They play to win; not to cause harm or indulge in revenge like that shitty movie Into Darkness.

Through the Ferengi they can buy mercenaries to shore up their strength.

==PAST ENEMIES==

The Klingon Empire: For centuries, the Federation and the Klingon Empire were at war both hot and cold. First contact was violent, precipitating in a five year war which the Federation almost didn’t win. At first, the Klingons made great inroads into Federation territory before the Federation leapfrogged them in technology and tactics; beating back the Klingons and shattering their fleets.

After two or three troublesome centuries, the Empire and the Federation became fast allies. Briefly they would become enemies in the 24^th century under the reign of chancellor Gowron, but the Federation would use superior tactics to beat back the Klingon fleets until Gowron’s life was terminated by General Martok’s hand the war was ended.

The Romulan Star Empire: Originally a xenophobic, isolationist power; the empire would transform into an expansionist, xenophobic power. The Romulans for centuries held a tech advantage over the Federation which still to this day has not been closed.

The Romulans rather than directly attack the Federation have worked through espionage and subterfuge to ignite war between the major powers of the Alpha Quadrant; using automated drone ships to attack various powers to ignite conflict. This had the opposite effect as the Federation was able to band together with various states across the galaxy for protection against Romulan expansion.

The only open war between the Romulans and the Federation was inconclusive though destructive on both sides; with cold war espionage games being played for centuries which make our own cold wars look like an episode of Dora the Explorer.

The Dominion: Easily one of the Federation’s deadliest enemies, the Dominion were a theocratic, despotic power run in secret by a race of shape shifters called the Changelings. The Dominion has the distinction of being the only power in four hundred years to launch a successful attack on Earth, capital world of the federation.

The Dominion possessed almost limitless cloned armies, powerful starships and the founders were the ultimate espionage units; able to fool nearly all Federation scanning technologies. They imitated high ranking officials in no less than three major powers and sowed war and disharmony to weaken all the major powers in the alpha quadrant.

The Federation won by a few factors, they were able to close the Tech gap with the Dominion somewhat. Second they were able to outdo the Dominion at the espionage game and manipulate the Romulan Empire to declare war on the Founders.

Either way, it came down to the wire when the Federation cut off Dominion reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant. The cost to the Federation was high in terms of people and ships lost, but ultimately they were poised to play a greater role in the Alpha Quadrant than ever thanks to a weakened Klingon empire and multiple devastated polities in the Quadrant who needed humanitarian aid.

The Borg: The only threat that even comes close to that of the Dominion, the Borg are an expansionist, totalitarian hive mind of cybernetic which nearly saw the destruction of the Federation. Though the Borg didn’t put the same resources towards conquering the Federation, a single ship was almost able to invade earth twice.

The Borg rapidly adapted technologically and Starfleet had to scramble madly just to stay alive. A time traveller from the future pushed Federation tech far enough to get a fighting chance but the hostilities are ongoing and the Borg are poised to resurge stronger than ever.

The Undine: A powerful biological race from an alternate universe called Fluidic Space, the Undine were highly advanced and fueled by a blind psychotic hatred of anything that wasn’t them. Years ahead of the Federation or the Borg, the only thing stopping a total invasion of the Federation was that captain Janeway years ago had shut off all contact with fluidic space.

As a result, the Undine sent forth a legion of Shapeshifting members of their kin to sabotage the Federation from within and they very nearly succeeded. However as a result, The Federation was able to devise an advanced form of nanotechnology which could kill the Undine when deployed as a WMD. Though the rapidly biologically evolving undine are currently working out ways to adapt to said nanotechnology.

Additional Factors:

The Prime Directive—This is the Cardinal rule of Starfleet. Essentially it boils down to the idea that intervention in a species below a certain tech level is forbidden. Some captains have adhered to this more strictly than others but for the most part even Kirk followed the Prime directive most of the time.

While the Prime directive will be nearly impossible to adhere to under PC circumstances, for the most part Starfleet will try to leave alone primitive species if possible. Only under dire circumstances like a Tyranid fleet or a Deathstar approaching will they arm primitives with modern weapons to fight against invaders. Such actions will not be taken lightly.

Mixed Species Strategy: During ship to ship combat, members of the Federation are equally able to fight in mixed race crews as well as monolithic units. During the war with the Klingons, ship units would fight in either standard Federation battle formations or in strategies and formations unique to certain member worlds. The result was that the Klingons could never quite guess what battle formations or strategy the Federation would adopt.

This practice has been resurrected as of the time of the Dominion war.

Fun fact: Riddle me this, what’s the difference between the Federation council and the Citadel Council?

When Captain Picard ran into a singular, planet sized machine that was poised to literally wipe out the galaxy, the Council told him to get his ass in gear.

When Commander Shepard told the council of a fleet of giant death machines out to wipe out all life in the galaxy, they told him to get fucked.

I rest my case.