The Sisko - The Commander

[Madner Kami]

Science Fiction writers don't understand scale.

Also, on the other hand and to be fair: Space is big and I mean unfathomably big and the Federation occupies a not insignificant part of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. Traveling from one side to the other does take quite a bit of time and given the numbers we know of, it could very well take almost 9 years to travel between the furthest two points within the Federation at Warp 6 (Picard casually mentions an extend of 8,000 lightyears in First Contact).

Of course this does clash with what we see on screen, because you shouldn't be able to casually travel to Quonos or, heck, even think about the Klingon Invasion of Cardassia. They're literally on opposing sides of the Federation and even though, depending on the exact map used, the Federation is much more elongated corewards than "wide", you'd still be looking at 2,000 to 3,000 lightyears of distance at the very least...

Either way, just try to consider how incredibly huge the volume the Federation occupies is. You're looking at billions of cubic lightyears. Starfleet could have a 100,000 ships and you still would be more likely to score a lottery-win, than just randomly meeting a Starfleet ship...

P.S.: I don't subscribe to the notion, that Picard was refering to cubic space occupied. Because if it would, then the Federation would be laughably small. You'd talk about a Federation that is 20 by 20 by 20 lightyears in extend. For comparison: Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Sol, is 4.2 lightyears away. The next closest (which is not part of the Alpha Centauri-triplet), is Barnard's Star, at almost 6 lightyears...

[Nobody700]

Too be fair I saw the Wolf 359 thing not a disaster cause of sheer resources, but that over 20 ships were destroyed in one moment by a single invader. It was the perception of loss, alongside losing so many crews who were experts. They didn't lose 20 ships, they lost 20 crews, crews that were needed for other jobs that will be hard to replace. Plus remember, the Federation fought in the Cardassian war... and it was a war so minor to the Federation that none of the crew of the Enterprise save one was on, and that no one really talked about until it became an issue. The Federation is USED to minor conflicts, and not a major foe. Outside of Romulans, the Federation had no real rivals since the Khitomer accords. Now, they're shaken and burned by a new threat so vastly superior to them that one ship almost destroyed Earth.

Twice.

[CharlesPhipps]

Science Fiction writers don't understand scale

They do but choose to ignore it. One of the reasons they keep trying to introduce Transwarp is to deal with the issue but they don't ACTUALLY want to deal with the issue. They just want to be able to have the protagonists go wherever they want for the story.

[McAvoy]

Too be fair I saw the Wolf 359 thing not a disaster cause of sheer resources, but that over 20 ships were destroyed in one moment by a single invader. It was the perception of loss, alongside losing so many crews who were experts. They didn't lose 20 ships, they lost 20 crews, crews that were needed for other jobs that will be hard to replace. Plus remember, the Federation fought in the Cardassian war... and it was a war so minor to the Federation that none of the crew of the Enterprise save one was on, and that no one really talked about until it became an issue. The Federation is USED to minor conflicts, and not a major foe. Outside of Romulans, the Federation had no real rivals since the Khitomer accords. Now, they're shaken and burned by a new threat so vastly superior to them that one ship almost destroyed Earth.

Twice.

39 ships actually. Out of 40. Still. But of mystery what ship survived.

In the context of the time, 39 ships was a huge deal because we barely saw more than two ships at the same time.

Shelby did say the fleet would be back up to strength in a year which sounds about right in any case.

The thing about how the Federation is portrayed is not only the size of the territory but the sheer amount of resources they could have. 150 member worlds along with colonies and resource worlds. The manpower alone even if we are talking even if we are talking about like 0.1% of the population or each would would number in the billions.