So Several times in TNG we see the Galaxy class go toe to toe with "inferior" enemies and come off worse, suffering hull breaches and shield failures and all sorts that a "top of the line" starship shouldn't do. However, could this be by design rather than bad luck? The Galaxy class is peak Starfleet focus on Exploration rather than countering military threats and so has huge areas for crew relaxation and diplomatic meetings but lacks in the military department. Also at the time of the Enterprise-D's launch, the Federation was in the middle of a long period of relative peace (the Khitomer accords were holding and the heroic sacrifice of the Enterprise-C helped keep peace with the Klingons.

As the 'modern' trek goes on we see less focus on the exploration/family/science side of things and ships becoming more powerful and more streamlined. Voyager for example has more and more powerful phaser and torpedo tubes, then the E has 16 phaser banks to the D's 12 and 24 decks to the D's 42, and of course the Defiant is deliberately overpowered in order to try and counter the Borg threat.

However, I'm starting to think this is a deliberate design. The OG Enterprise and the Exclesior knock the crap out of any ship or God-like being they come across as starfleet knew they'd have all sorts of bad guys to take on whereas the Galaxy class is a peaceful diplomatic ship for entertaining.

I'm just interested in whether there's more than just production stuff going on and whether the Enterprise D in universe is undergunned by design rather than by accident.