I hadn't looked at Dark Star's website in a while when I came across the below. Is the below accurate? If they could 'STUN' a large section of a Planet then why the hell wasn't this method used virtually every time they encountered a hostile species? Stun half the planet [if this is correct] and mass transport enemy combatants.
[and please don't give me a technobabble answer of special shielding, wrong environment blah, blah, blah because we never heard of such a thing in dialog]
Dark Star Wrote
In an era of starships capable of firing on ground targets with pinpoint accuracy, sending combat troops to die on enemy fields might seem wasteful. This is even more true when you consider that, even in the 2260's, the weapons of a Federation starship could be set for a large-scale stun effect on the surface below ("A Piece of the Action"[TOS2]). One can just imagine a grand army of soldiers on a vast plain ready to meet any foe . . . except for the wide beam of light that comes down from the sky and sends them all into blissful slumber. (Granted, the Federation is not in the business of pacifying hostile populations, unlike the Empire (which pacifies its own).)
Nevertheless, there are times when ground combat is required . . . one doesn't always have a starship at one's disposal, and there are things even a starship cannot do. Thus, although we haven't seen much of it in the starship-centric canon, we've seen enough ground combat in Trek to get the gist of the Federation's techniques and technologies. While we're at it, we'll also take a look at the Federation's neighbors and adversaries to see what's common in regimes which enjoy a rough technological parity with the Federation.
