system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Trek] Why does Starfleet insist on putting the bridge on the most venerable part of the ship, namely the very top deck and dead centre. One phaser strike and the whole command staff are gone in one go, wouldn't it be better to you know have it 50 decks lower and not in the saucer at all?
gpt
For one, it's not all that vulnerable.  It's still behind shields that take an ungodly amount of destructive force to breach.  Not an unimaginable amount, but it's really quite a lot.  To boot, once the shields are gone, no part of the ship is really that much safer than any other.    
And building on that, for two: Starfleet isn't in the business of getting in fights.  It's not a Navy, and their ships, with a few notable exceptions, aren't built for war.  Given those strong shields, the only conceivable need to bury the bridge deep in the bowels of the ship is that you're trying to fight people with very powerful weapons.  This is a failure mode for the Federation, not a primary operating stance.  Thus it's not something that's going to be a primary motivation in starship design.