This is one of the reasons I tend to shy away from SF RPG's. Players are far, FAR more pragmatic than any SF writer could ever be. I mean, seriously, what self respecting PC would go on an away mission in what is, for all intents and purposes, a track suit? No armor? No night vision goggles? So on and so forth. Given ST level technology, an away team could carry a truly frightening level of offensive and defensive capabilities.
True. The standard gear of Star Trek officers is sometimes fantastic, but kinda uneven. Tricorders that can scan everything at any range the plot desires, phasers that can stun, kill, disintegrate and turn stones into heaters... But no personal force shields or anything. But the Jem'Hadar have genetically inbuilt cloak and seem to be bad at exploiting this most of the time!
Heck, look at the original discussions in this thread about evacuating the Romulan home world. The Romulans fielded 2 HUNDRED star ships. According to Memory Alpha, the older style Romulan Warbirds could carry a crew of 1500 plus officers, crew and troops. So, figure 3-5000/warbird if we're cramming people in there for an evacuation. That means they could ferry a million people with this one fleet. I'm going to assume that this fleet wasn't the entire Romulan fleet, only the Zat Vash (or however it's spelled). Why did the Romulans need any help evacuating their homeworld if they could field this kind of fleet on their own? And, never minding that, why are Romulans living in squalor if they have the capabilities of fielding this size of a fleet? If you have the production capabilities to build a fleet of this size (and remember, this isn't the only Romulan fleet out there), you can certainly rebuild your planets to have paved streets and actual houses.
For Reference:
D'deridex class
I wouldn't be certain that this wasn't basically the Romulan Fleet. Or at least a significant portion of it. The Zhat Vash are supposed to be a secret organization, even within the Tal'Shiar they were more a rumour than a known fact, according to the two Tal'Shiar representatives at Picard's vineyard. My guess is that the Zhat Vash, as part of the Tal'Shiar, simply tells the Romulan Empire / Free State / Republic that there is a huge threat for them, and they send what they have available. They might know that it's because of Synths building some kind of doomsday device or beacon to call a doomsday device, but they might not know the Zhat Vash has been fighting such threats for the entire time. They aren't "property" of the Zhat Vash or anything - it's just that the job of an intelligence service is to inform the government of threats, and when they name an urgent one, the military will be send out to meet it.
But of course, this is also 14 years after the Romulan Supernova. So the ship we see now might not represent what they had back then. 2375, the Dominion War ends, the most costly war in the recent history of the Alpha (and Beta) Quadrant. 2379, we have the events of Nemesis that throws the Romulan Empire in disarray as its political leadership is murdered by Shinzon, who also dies. The Supernova is 2387, 12 years after the Dominion War and 9 years after a chaotic political situation. It's quite possible that the Star Empire wasn't really in a good shape for quite a while.
The other thing to consider about the Romulans is - they have the presumably best cloaking tech in the quadrant. Yet, they constantly tip-toe around the Klingons and the Federation and constantly try to manipulate events. Even when the Klingons are still hostile to the Federation, they carefully probe their options. In at least two alternate timelines (
Yesterday's Enterprise and the
All Good Things Future), the Romulans get eventually steamrolled by the Klingons (in case of Y
esterday's Enterprise even though they started the war by attacking the Klingon colony, so they clearly overestimated their own abilities...).
Chances are, their forces cannot compete with either of the two. They do not have a numerical advantage, they could launch strikes that hit hard, but they can't hold any territory against their enemy numbers. They are strong enough that anyone attacking them must be willing to sacrifice a lot, but not strong enough to win against a determined foe.
Anyway, one of the logistical challenges of ane evacuation is that you don't just need ships. You need a place for people to live. That means shelter, food, water, sewage, education, medical supplies. And I suspect that a Warbird is not equipped to deliver or produce that in significant amounts.
Cloaks are great for subterfuge and stealth attacks, but not so great if you need raw numbers.
