VERY important distinction, here. The Doctor and Data were recognized as sentients. NOT Photonics and Androids. All those EMH Mk. I's are still in slave labor.
So to avoid having another player control our characters, we have to pay for an item, and dedicate an inventory slot for it? Why not charge the people using it?
So I just did the math. If you triple count every cross faction shuttle, (IE 2 Cross faction freighters become 2 Rom, 2 KDF, and 2 Fed freighters) you get 298 ships. I'm not going to say this was done intentionally. It likely was collected automatically rather than having Intern Ted sit down and count them. But it would be…