Some thoughts on Star Trek:
The Battle Bridge is located in the neck of the Galaxy class starships, in the part that locks into the saucer section. This doesn’t seem THAT much safer than where the normal bridge is, but supposedly that portion of the neck is one of the most ruggedly built parts of the ship (since it has to hold the whole saucer section onto the rest of the ship). Me, I’d stick it nearish to Engineering, but whatever. On an unrelated note, I was highly amused to find that modern warships have battle bridges, but they’re called “Combat Information Centers” (IIRC), and ARE located deep in the guts of the ship. The Captain sits on the Bridge, the XO sits in the basement, was how it was explained to me when I was 11 and visiting Pearl Harbor.
The Galaxy class wins more battles than it loses, even counting the USS Yamato (which has the dubious distinction of being destroyed on screen twice in the same season) and the USS Oddessy (and honestly, the thing was effectively forced to fight without sheilds, had been heavily damaged fighting multiple enemy ships, and then was rammed in a kamikazi attack by one of the enemy ships. FIND me a non-cube-shaped ship that would have fared better in the ST universe.
I think the USS Galaxy actually shows up later in DS9, taking and dishing out severe punishment but surviving while fighting the Dominion. In the DS9 episode “Sacrifice of Angels”, we see a pair of Galaxy class starships bulldogging their way through a Cardassian formation, knocking down ships left and right with phaser broadsides at point-blank range :eek:
We see a number of Galaxies doing various things on DS9, for example, I think the USS Venture (a somewhat more heavily armed version of the Galaxy) is the flagship of 9th Fleet. Most Galaxies that we’ve seen destroyed were lost either because their sheilds were rendered ineffective (USS Oddessy, USS Enterprise) or else were lost in non-combat situations (USS Yamato) There’s various fanwank speculation about whether the Galaxies shown later in DS9 have extra hull protection, because they have a slightly different color scheme, or if that’s just a quirk of the CGI they used on DS9. In case you’re wondering, there is much fanwank amongst Star Trek fans.
And there are liability lawyers in the ST universe. They were all tragically lost in a suspicious (some would even say contrived) series of transporter accidents soon after they graduated law school though. 
As for Independence Day, the big saucer ships didn’t really take all that much damage from the air-to-air missiles fired by the fighters. If anything, the humans should get slapped on the wrists for thinking the missiles would have done much of anything to the ships. The only time an air-to-air missile had any success was when it was flown directly into the ship’s superweapon before it was about to fire (presumably releasing all that energy inside the ship instead of it being focused on Area 51)
Oh, and the Dune sheilds didn’t only make high-velocity projectile weapons useless (they did use short-range low-velocity dart guns), but they also made beam weaponry (somewhat common, at least in the militaries of the early DUNE books) VERY dangerous. If you fired a laser and hit a sheild, you (and possibly the sheildbearer, I can’t remember) would find youself at the epicenter of a subatomic explosion, which is presumed to be an impressive sight to behold from afar. (Ethilrist has beaten me to this point, I see)
