posted
TPTB should have left the Bird of Prey and Kruge as Romulan villians (and equipment) as originally envisioned for Star Trek III. Klingons and cloaking device don't mix. Klingons are warriors, they don't go sneaking around cloaked. It's cowardly, all this hiding.
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: What should work, but is almost never seen, is cloaked mines.
You mean, apart from in the multiple DS9 and ENT episodes that revolved around exactly this idea?
Two instances among hundreds of stories. Besides, neither involved ships deploying mines in combat with other ships- mines were used exclusivly to defend stationary positions (in orbit of said positions at any rate). The closest we ever saw was Janeway leaving torpedos behind as mines against the Krenim- it shows it can work: add in some guideance systems (like the DS9 mines) and viola!
quote:Originally posted by Reverend:
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.
Well, that leads to the old "can Romulans detect their own cloaks" debate. Considering their power structure, I'd think they must be able to- to avoid the enivetible coup attempt.
On the other tenticle, we also never saw Starfleet wide up and use toropedo as depth charges (somehow Kirk manages this with phasers in BoT, but that's bad effects).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Yeah depth charges would be good weapons, but then it would lead to many slow battles since neither side would be willing to attack without knowing for sure that there are mines.
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posted
...But if they knew for sure that there are mines, they would go to battle at full speed?
I don't think we have ever seen good evidence of space mines that weren't cloaked. It's not as if those in DS9 "Sons of Mogh" were detectable by sensors or anything, I mean.
But mines just aren't the thing to be used in "hot" combat. If it's a straightforward pursuit thing, then there's no advantage in the forward ship dropping camouflaged ordnance when visible things would have a far greater pursuit-discouraging effect. If it's complex maneuvering, then a camouflaged explosive is useless, and a camouflaged device that launches a homing weapon (a "Captor mine", which I think all Star Trek mines are anyway) is unnecessary overkill when a visible homing weapon would be just as good or even better.
Mines are area denial and ambush weapons, to be used when the deploying party is NOT present at the battlefield. If both sides decide to attend the battle, then weapons that have some but not all of the qualities of mines are preferable.
As for depth charges, the dramatic problem with "Balance of Terror" was that Kirk couldn't have any dedicated anti-invisibility weapons aboard because he wasn't supposed to know about the existence of invisibility technology. The regular weapons had to serve.
Agreed that torpedoes would have better matched the visuals we got - but the ideal solution IMHO would have been for Kirk to fire phasers without any silly "proximity blast setting". He should simply have ordered the beam swept in a "search pattern", so that it would occasionally lick the Romulan ship and cause all that plaster to fall. Too bad the neo-TOS couldn't alter both the visuals and the dialogue.
quote:I don't think we have ever seen good evidence of space mines that weren't cloaked. It's not as if those in DS9 "Sons of Mogh" were detectable by sensors or anything, I mean.
Oh, I dont know about that. Consider all the regions of space where "sensors will be useless" (or at least minimalized). If I were the paranoid type (like the Klingons/Romulans/Tholians likely are), I'd be mining any nebula capable of hiding a ship.
Sure, mining a whole nebula is impossible, but a little goes a long way with deterrent!
I'd have had the Romulans mine key areas of their side of the Neutral Zone- for decades. Maybe the Preator's power lies with knowing where all the cloaked stuff is at any given time.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Well, that leads to the old "can Romulans detect their own cloaks" debate. Considering their power structure, I'd think they must be able to- to avoid the enivetible coup attempt.
Wasn't there an episode of DS9 where the klingons were mining the border of Cardassian space? I sea, to recall it being a specific plot point that they indeed couldn't detect their own mines as a Vor'Cha damn near blew itself in two after blundering into one.
posted
But by the same token, there was that scene in "Way of the Warrior" where that gigantic Klingon fleet decloaked around DS9. There was no way they could have maintained that formation without knowing where their ships were.
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posted
It wouldn't have been difficult for the ships to have prearranged attack positions set up prior to cloaking and decloaking. Cloaked ships can receive messages as well, so that is another possibility. They could even have been following a standard attack pattern that is a function of target size and fleet size, though that doesn't sound very Klingon-ish...
OnToMars
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posted
Or ships have encoded transponders that allow discreet information to be transmitted between friendlies, but not to hostile ships - which might be a piece of equipment lacking in your run of the mill mine (though I wouldn't see why).
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posted
I figure a mine would not have transponder "friendly ship" capability- after all, a mine could be captured (like that one on Enterprise was inadvertedly) and then all that transponder intel would be in enemy hands.
Also, it's possible that diffrent houses use mines to protect their discreet holding from rivals.
A good question is "Can the Klingons/Romulans detect each other's cloaks?" Probabaly not (as a general rule) but I'd imagine that there's a tech-race between the two empires to always get one step ahead.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
There's a dozen ways that a fleet of cloaked ships can stay in a pre-arranged formation without too much trouble, especially when these things are most likely auto pilot most of the time. It's all down to syncronisation and a little forethought.
The only problem I can see with cloaked mines is preventing them from detonating each other. The solution to that could range from short range "pings" that let all the mines around them know to keep away, then there's the slightly tricky method of getting them to hold a specific point in space reletive to a pre-determinind point of reference, be it local or stellar. On the other hand you could have them networked via a web of narrow beam transmissions that keep them at a fixed distance from each other, a web which could double as a triggering mechanisum if a ship interrupts the beam.
As for Romulans & klingons being able to see each other, clearly they can't as has been demonstraited on a few occasions. The one that jumps to mind is from early TNG when the E-D was facing of againt a Warbird when a bunch of Klingon cruisers decloaked, surprising the Romulans.
I think the bottom line is that if any one with a cloak can see through everyone else's then one captured ship means the cloak is rendered useless, or worse a liability.
posted
One could either assume that cloaks have certain "frequencies" of vulnerability and that Klingons can choose to tune Klingon cloaks so that fellow Klingons can (partially) see through them; or then assume that nobody can see through properly working cloaks, not even Klingons through Klingon ones.
And actually, those could be one and the same thing; a cloak that leaks out on a certain frequency isn't working properly...
But the accident in "Sons of Mogh" where the Klingons mined themselves wasn't because they ran into one of their own mines. It was (as far as the dialogue tells) because a mine being laid detonated close to the laying ship - a classic accident in the real world, either because the mine is faulty in general or because its "safety timer" (which keeps it inert for a certain time or distance beyond deployment) runs fast.
So I'd say a cloak is a cloak: you don't see through it even if it is a "friendly" cloak. Unless you deliberately degrade it in a specific and hopefully super-secret way that the enemy still might find out.
posted
Considering that cloaks have been shown on rare occasion to be "tune-able," my guess is that each military would have a system where they choose a specific frequency at random to be open for a masked transponder signal (that probably would be designed to blend in with background radiation). This wouldn't even have to be fleet-wide, just something used by specific task forces or for specific locations, depending on the circumstances. And since it's not hard-wired in, then it's something that could constantly be changed when circumstances required.
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Amasov Prime
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posted
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.
At that point she already had some mental connection to the Viceroy through the "mindrape". Since he was the second in command, he probably knew about Scimitar's course and speed. I have no clue why that rape should have increased her empathic abilities to a telepathic level, but you could ask John Logan.
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: 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.
What about ablative armor? Quite effective, even if shields are down. Besides, starships during the Dominion War didn't have shields anyway.
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