Eh I would say there's some difference between registry numbers and flight logs. Like I said I don't know TNG very well, I'm sure there were some instances where they pulled it out of a console. Identifying craft isn't the same as knowing it's mission specs, just knowing what is and isn't friendly fire purposes.excalibur wrote: I was basically point out that regardless what purpose a Federation starship is for, it's name and registry would be in a database that all ships would have so it can be identify. We've seen it before in episodes where they immediately identify destroyed or lost ships. Also remember, Starfleet is both a faux military organization. They have pretty good record keeping on who does what in the fleet. Seriously, In Voyager, they were able to check their database for the Equinox, a ship that was lost in the Delta before they were.
Though even Equinox would be a bad example, as has been pointed out before, they have to rely on Janeway's memory for ships that were lost. We don't get the impression Equinox was on a list of Voyager's Most Wanted after Tuvok did a thorough search of the database and found every missing ship from a 50LY radius of the badlands, for example. Over the five years since that question was first asked, that doesn't seem like a tall order. Or no, not Tuvok. Tom. Definitely Tom. Even with the crazy fleet numbers DS9 inflated it to.
