The Original reason why you couldn't fire while cloaked

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2003-02-02 02:43am

Darth Fanboy wrote:How does it "jam" a radar? Stealth aricraft today use special paints and designs to make themselves invisible they don simply "jam" the wave. Its not like a radar wave can pass through a cloaked ship just because you couldn't see it.

Shield can jam radars, period. For once, they just don't treknobabble us to death, they just say what the shields do, not how the fuck they do it

( not surprising, it was in TOS - "Assignment : Earth" IIRC

) .
BTW cloaked ships in modern trek do something like bending EM rads around them, and probably retaining their own IR heat into their cloak bubble.

If not radar then what about Infra red? If the other ship is giving off heat then wouldn't one of those scans pick it up Or maybe even Geordi's damn visor.

Actually older Klingon warcruisers gave off some sparse gamma or X-ray rads ( the ep in which an old cruiser, the T'Ong, reawakes her crew after a 80-years cryosleep, mentions it ) , but by the time of TNG it had been fixed. IR seem too obvious even for the Feddies.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-02-02 04:30am

Simon H.Johansen wrote:
Sektor31 wrote:I wonder why they didn't think of dedicating a reactor to cloak and another reactor to weapons. :roll:
Yes, that's somewhat of a mystery. After over 1000 years of that problem, the Romulans must look somewhat stupid for not getting that idea.

The Romulans look stupid every time they come up with a ship design. *coughcoughValdorecoughcough*

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-02-02 06:00am

Sektor31 wrote:I wonder why they didn't think of dedicating a reactor to cloak and another reactor to weapons.

Because then you have a bigger power signature the cloak must mask. It's probable that a cloak always is going to require a certain percentage of a ships output, rather then any absolute amount of power.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-02-02 06:06am

Darth Fanboy wrote:How does it "jam" a radar? Stealth aricraft today use special paints and designs to make themselves invisible they don simply "jam" the wave. Its not like a radar wave can pass through a cloaked ship just because you couldn't see it.

Actually it makes sense. But it wouldn't be correctly called jamming. Shields work by absorbing energy. What is probably happening is the shield is absorbing the radar pulses the same way it would a phaser beam or torpedo blast. With nothing being reflected back at the radar site the site would be blind to the presence of the ship. That's how out current day RAM works, it absorbed the radar pulses and converts the energy into heat.

There sensors likely make use of the various frequency gaps to operate while shields are up.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2003-02-02 07:37am

Sea Skimmer wrote:
Sektor31 wrote:I wonder why they didn't think of dedicating a reactor to cloak and another reactor to weapons.
Because then you have a bigger power signature the cloak must mask. It's probable that a cloak always is going to require a certain percentage of a ships output, rather then any absolute amount of power.

Not only that, you're burning up fuel at a substantially greater rate.

Typhonis 1 · Post by **Typhonis 1** » 2003-02-02 02:28pm

Wait there is the problem that with the cloak up shields are DOWN

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-02-02 04:02pm

Enterprise seems to have change our preceptions of cloaking tech. In TOS: Balance of Terror, they say that they have never heard or seen anything like thid, yet in Enterprise, we see a cloak and here them talking about it. Also, why didn't they keep the captured Suliban ship they got at the start of season 2? None of this makes sense.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-02-02 04:16pm

Admiral Johnason wrote:Enterprise seems to have change our preceptions of cloaking tech. In TOS: Balance of Terror, they say that they have never heard or seen anything like thid, yet in Enterprise, we see a cloak and here them talking about it. Also, why didn't they keep the captured Suliban ship they got at the start of season 2? None of this makes sense.

B&B's writing is much like the Necronomicon: the longer you try and wrestle with it to find some shred of continuity, the better the odds that you will be driven hopelessly mad. In fact, it makes me wonder whether, when properly translated, the original "Al-Azif" doesn't have passages like "inhibit the phase-variance on the meta-dynamic pulse modulator conduit causing a cascade anti-tachyon effect which... <ad nauseum.>"

What Trek desperately needs is a new producer to take over and restore some semblence of continuity.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-02-02 04:20pm

No truer words have ever been spoken.

TheDarkling · Post by **TheDarkling** » 2003-02-02 04:25pm

Admiral Johnason wrote:Enterprise seems to have change our preceptions of cloaking tech. In TOS: Balance of Terror, they say that they have never heard or seen anything like thid, yet in Enterprise, we see a cloak and here them talking about it. Also, why didn't they keep the captured Suliban ship they got at the start of season 2? None of this makes sense.

They sent the head Suliban home in it but they did keep the one they captured in season 1.

Admiral Johnason · Post by **Admiral Johnason** » 2003-02-02 04:54pm

I think from now on, we should totallt disreguard all Trek info that comes from Enterprise. BTW Darkling, I like the picture of Thor. I am a big fan of SG-1.

Knife · Post by **Knife** » 2003-02-02 08:10pm

A few thoughts,

1. What kind of power would you use to power the cloak. Maybe the sensitive equipment of the cloak can not take warp power so instead relies on fusion and/or impulse power.

IIRC, weapons and shields in ST are powered by the impulse and/or aux fusion power generators and not the warp core. If the cloak sucks up all the secondary power from the impulse and/or fusion power then there might not be enough left for weapons and/or shields.

ON can always place more fusion generators onboard for more power, but that also increases the size and mass of the ship that the generators are trying to move and cloak. So I guess a proper balence must be maintained.

2. What exactly is a cloak. Does it bend light, is it the holo screen mentioned earlier, what is it? Frankely the hologram idea would not work with the know instances. Any hologram would be obserable in IR and would betray the ship. Any starship should have some sort of IR sensors. The idea of bending light seems to be the answer to the question that fits the episodes but another idea might be a different type of shield that works on the same principle of ST shielding but if "fined tunned" to stop lower powered beams of energy that are used as sensors. Normal ST shields don't stop visable light and comm signals, only high power energy like in weapons. Maybe a cloak is specialy designed shield that stops lower powered energy from penetrating it.