How do you prepare Starfleet?

[Crazedwraith]

I'd scrap and sack the entire fleet and start over. Seriously.

Which would leave the federation defenseless. If you want to do that just leave starfleet operation untill you've finished trainling/builiding your new navy then fire/transfer them.

[HRogge]

I think a good way might be a "light" approach...

- keep Star Fleet, in the end it will become your police/research fleet.

- Ask the personals in Star Fleet who would like to fight for the Federation in a real space navy ( some people might be just sticking to the "peaceful exploration", it might be counterproductive to place them in a warfleet ).

- evaluate what kind of ships could make "good" warships. Intrepids might make good scouts, Defiants are designed as warships, Nebula-Class ships can be easily refitted, ect.

- see if you can do some small tricks to enhance the power of standard ships without sending them to a drydock. A photon torp with a fusion warhead might be replicable onboard a ship (no antimatter necessary), so you could afford to fire huge volleys of the for example.

- start a new space navy from scratch...

after this you can sit back and let the engineers designing other real warships. Just don't forget to get the people which designed the Defiant... they might be the only designers in StarFleet engineering with the experience to build warships...

[Typhonis 1]

Ontop of what has been mentioned

hmmmm reintroduce the concept of STAIRS to federation ships a way to move between decks that only requires muscle power

Allow Starfleet to hire civilians for base work to free up personel for deep space duty ,how many jobs that Starfleet has could be filled by hiring a civilian?

look into old fashion tehnology for ideas ,air tight doors manual overide systems that work independent redundant systems, ergonomic weapon designs, good old fashioned bdy armor