posted
I've been doing some re-reading of Masao's Starfleet Museum articles as part of a project I'm working on. And there's one strange inconsistency that's bugged me...
In "Balance of Terror," it seemed that the Romulan Bird-of-Prey's only (or at least primary and only truly effective) weapon was the plasma cannon, which required "enormous" amounts of power. Thus, it makes sense that a weapon requiring such power couldn't be fired while the ship is cloaked.
However, later stories seemed to take it as a hard and fast rule that any cloaked ship is incapable of firing any weapon until the cloak is deactivated. This, of course, became the major plot point in Star Trek VI, and to a lesser extent Nemesis as well.
I wonder, though... just how much power does it really take to push a photon torpedo out a tube? Can that really require so much power that it's either power to the cloak, or power to the torpedo tubes? I could understand phasers and disruptors, since those are a more continuous drain of firepower. But projectile weapons like torpedoes (or missiles, for Masao's ships) seem to be a rather strange limitation.
Can anyone think of a reasonable excuse for why standard photon torpedoes couldn't be fired at all while the cloak is engaged? I got nothin'.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
I thought it was an intrinsic property of cloaked things that they couldn't fire or have shields. Otherwise, one could simply gain spare power by replacing the power plant. Probably the cloaking field cannot properly interact with the other necessary fields or phases associated with shields and weapons.
If it was explicitly stated that the weapon required lots of power and prevented cloaking, it may have just been a conjecture, since cloaking was very new then.
posted
Considering episodes in which a cloaked vessel jumped to warp, I find it unreasonable that it could not fire its weaponry since I would think jumping to warp and maintaining warp speeds would take alot more energy than firing weapons. But then again, I might be wrong.
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posted
Perhaps the cloaking system interferes with targeting sensors? It's been a while since I saw any episodes w/cloaked ships in so I don't know if this has been ruled out. It may be that it's possible to track the approximate location of an enemy vessel, but not with sufficient accuracy to guarentee a hit, in which case firing would only give away the presence of a cloaked vessel.
Even if that was the case though, it's hardly an insurmountable problem (multiple torpedo launchers, stealthed remote sensing platforms, etc.)
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Amasov Prime
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posted
Could have something to do with the cloaking field. The torpedo could "interrupt" it and make the ship visible. General Chang's BoP's nose was visible for a moment when he fired a torpedo, so maybe the Klingons somehow managed to reduce the cloaking field disturbance to a point where it is nealy impossible to detect that disturbance.
Interestingly, no one really seemed to bother that the Scimitar could fire while cloaked.
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posted
Well, the Scimitar was already a ridiculous �bership anyway. Anyone else remember one member's sig line from a few years ago? It said something to the effect of "Shinzon was the ultimate fanboy: he grew up in a cave, has zero sex life, and built a starship with fifty torpedo launchers."
Amasov, I like your idea of weapons fire disrupting the cloak. That might be a reasonable explanation... although there may have been a brief tactical advantage (assuming all the R&D didn't go up in flames with Chang's ship), as Federation (and everyone else's) sensors got faster with the response time, the enemy could more quickly pinpoint the source of the fire and nail them.
That could also explain why shields would be unavailable while cloaked... they'd also interfere with the cloaking field... or maybe vice versa. Remember that silly scene from Generations, when the Klingon Kleavage Klan went ka-boom? (Again, there's also the exception of the �bership Scimitar.)
Therefore, with the combination of those two factors, it generally made sense for any commander to want to decloak and raise shields before opening fire.
So I guess the rule Scotty quoted would be, in full, "A Bird-of-Prey can't fire while cloaked and remain effectively cloaked after firing." (Since the Enterprise obviously didn't detect Chang's ship after it fired.)
I thought of an interesting ambush tactic to get around those limitations, though... if you've got a bunch of ships, say five or more, each one could remain cloaked, fire a single salvo, and break off in evasive maneuvers before firing again. The number of ships would compensate for each one's low rate of fire due to the frequent maneuvers required. Of course, it would only be useful in limited situations.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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posted
But the Scimitar was long after Changs BoP. Also, it seemed to be able to fire with out giving away it's position, which seemed to be more of a worry to the E-E's crew.
Aside: why did they not just use a series of wide phaser beams to sweep the area around them, instead of wasting all of their torpedoes (another reason i've only seen this dumb movie once).
All in all, I think that Mirror-Asamov is right - you don't want to give the game away by telling everybody where you are if you cant use your shields. I suppose that the field does not prevent firing, but the use of a field that distorts space to such a degree would preculde the use of shilds. Of course that previous statement is kind of contradicted by the fact we know a cloaked ship can travel at warp (Erm, that DS9 episode with the cloaked Cardassian / Romualan fleet. Either 'The Die is Cast' or the one before. I forget. It was one of the bes t though.) Enough for now - I needs me sleep. Nighty night.
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posted
In Nemesis doesn't Troi use her psychic abilities along with the ship's sensors to find the Scimitar. It makes you wonder why this technique was never used before since it would pretty much negate all cloaking technology unless there's a way to hide brainwaves.
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posted
I think it's an early technical limitation that was unnecessarily continued. As a rather weak analogy, It's sort of like early biplanes not being able to fire forward because the bullets would hit the propellars, then having all planes not be able to fire forward for the rest of time!
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posted
My take on it has followed the "if you're cloaked, you don't have sields" approach. If you can get a lock on that ship while it's cloaked but unshielded -- blammo! That's my rationalisation for the continued restriction in later eras.
--Jonah
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Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Ginger: Actually, the way they handled the firing in Nemesis was blind aiming of the phasers, and once they hit the Scimitar, they'd launch torpedoes to hit it with the heavy firepower. It was actually quite sensible. But as Shinzon said, they were still "too slow"-- not all the torpedoes hit the target.
There are plenty of precedents for cloaked ships traveling at warp. The Cardassian/Romulan fleet is one, but we saw the Defiant doing it many, many times. Heck, we even saw it in "Face of the Enemy," with the warbird that Troi was on. Come to think of it, they cloaked the Enterprise while it was making its Warp 9 getaway in "The Enterprise Incident" way back in TOS.
Therefore, I conclude that it's not directly a question of how much power a ship has available that determines when the cloak can be used. So we're back to Amasov's suggestion, that it's the shields and/or weapons that disperse or disrupt the cloaking field and make it unusable.
Of course, this is all just so much rationalization. I was thinking exactly the same thing as Masao.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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quote:Originally posted by Mars Needs Women: In Nemesis doesn't Troi use her psychic abilities along with the ship's sensors to find the Scimitar. It makes you wonder why this technique was never used before since it would pretty much negate all cloaking technology unless there's a way to hide brainwaves.
Because TNG is the absolute worst representation of telepathy/empathy in all of sci-fi. Might as well call it magic.
Consider- Troi can sense the emotions (and her mom the thoughts!) of a person tens of billions of kilometers away just by looking at visual representation of said person on a viewscreen?! Assinine. The less we see of that crap, the better.
As to the cloak, it's possible that it's the shields that are easily detectable and so pointless while cloaked...also consider what the 'ol "weapons lock" really is- an enemy ship hitting your vessel with some form of targeting beam just prior to attacking- also easily detectable, and a ship's computer (or Vulcan) should be able to instantly plot where the beam is coming from.
What should work, but is almost never seen, is cloaked mines. A Romulan ship should be deploying cloaked mines in a ship's path...possibly even sensor-jamming bouys that would allow the cloaked ship to de-cloak and fire with impunity.
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I think we're just making things unnecessarily hard on ourselves. Why consider the "no firing when cloaked" a solid rule, when basically every time the rule is quoted, it's called an optimistic guess (ST3, ST6, "Contagion")?
I don't think there's any insurmountable technological problem with firing when cloaked. Rather, the issue is doctrinal: a cloak is meant for hiding, and firing is the antithesis of hiding. Shielding and running are not. The Feds, inexperienced in cloak warfare, may attempt to assign technological reasons to the fact that the enemy follows a doctrine of stealth. They are then fooled into thinking they could be right whenever the enemy does refrain from firing while cloaked, or does uncloak when engaging in battle.
That said, cloaks no doubt are degraded somewhat when one fires high energy things through them. Sometimes this doesn't really matter. Other times, perfect stealth is vital, and partial cloak really is no better than no cloak at all (as the Romulans found out in "BoT" already). It depends on the exact technology, and on the mood of the captain that day.
quote:What should work, but is almost never seen, is cloaked mines.
Well of course they're never seen, they're CLOAKED. Duh.
Seriously though, I imagine cloaked mines are as much a danger the deplyer as the deployee (a new word is born! huzzar!) as such not the sort of thing you want to dump in your wake if you have a mind to turn around anytime soon.
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