then why do you only get it for doing specific things? shouldnt any mission that requires TIME to complete give you a TIME based currency?

because they want you to be bored to tears doing the same two missions every day?

Not quite. They want you to buy C-points to avoid being bored.

If you could get and refine as much Dilithium as you want then buying an x.5/+1 ship out of the C-Store at every Tier would be a lot less attractive an option, wouldn't it?

Everybody's going to do the Episodes. Thats the way you level. Most other missions (Explore, Dailies, etc) are what you will use to gain Dilitihium.

Either you are shockingly naive or missing the obvious...

There are two distinctions of Dilithium, only one is used to trade with - Refined Dilithium

You have a limit on what you can refine of 8,000 per day which is being used for almost EVERYTHING ingame and with the attempt to tie Dilithium into the C-Store Cryptic have a conflict of interest in making sure players cant get access to Refined Dilithium.

Making the leveling process faster but unable to get ships or equip them encourages using the C-Store to BUY your ships rather than rely on a fluctuating C-Point vs. Dilithium market.

Cryptic did this same stuff with endgame gear marks only being available through 1 - 2 missions a day. Now they are doing the same stunt with Dilithium which will have a much more destructive effect on the playerbase. The concern that Cryptic get it right is fully justified given their history AND how much the future of STO is riding on this change.

Your sig sums it up well.

Because DL(my new abbreviation for dillithium) ISNT really a time based currency, regardless of what we're being told. If it truly were, then we would get DL for any mission, not just dailies.

The quotes come from a podcast interview, so there arent any written quotes I can give you. But that interview said both that it was a time based currency and that you could earn it the way you wanted. I believe it was either Trek Radio or Priority One; whichever one recently interviewed D'Angelo.