Would the Scimitar be of Interest to the Empire?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-01 02:36pm

namdoolb wrote:well, it's interesting that the events of ST6 capitalised on a weakness of the cloaking system that neither Star Trek nor Star Wars cloaks have dealt with.

Every engine has emissions, when those emmissions leave the ship they cease to be cloaked. By simply following the emmissions to source you can locate the cloaked ship.

Naturally. But a SW cloak is double-blind; nothing gets in or out, and it creates a very large cloaked "bubble" around the ship, so it's a theoretically perfect insulator wall; it can be maintained for a while (although you obviously want to coast as they were doing in VOTF, rather than running your engines under power) without heating up the interior too much.

A ST cloak is different; it does not create a large bubble around the ship, it is a one-way cloak, and they expect to be able to use it without detection even when accelerating under power.

Obviously not for use in a cluttered battlefield. (it's notable that only 3 ships were present in ST6 when this was used, and the Federation ships at least were largely motionless) However, the site provides no rationalisation of how SW cloaks could prevent this, I'd be interested to hear how you would rationalise SW ships to be immune to this tactic.

Who said they would be? Cloaks are rarely used in SW, and when they are used, the object under cloak is not performing combat maneuvers. Besides, the large bubble-area allows some measure of insulation and dissipation that is not possible with ST cloaks, particularly since they don't try to use them while maneuvering.

As for why the feds don't use those torps commonly... Expense? Difficulty of modification? Dangerously indiscriminate? (there's every chance the torp could lock onto the emissions of the ship that fired it)

Weak excuses at best. Not only does this take place in a universe where different kinds of ships have all manner of unique "signatures", but they can simply design tracker drones that do the same thing, attaching themselves to the target vessel and broadcasting its location. If one goes awry and attached itself to your own ship, it's no big deal, but if one finds a cloaked ship, it's sayonara.

Publius · Post by **Publius** » 2003-01-01 04:06pm

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the Enterprise located General Chang's Bird of Prey by firing a photon torpedo modified to track the cloaked warship's plasma exhaust.

This method of detection would be wholly unable to locate an Imperial warship with a functional cloaking shield. According to The Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology (p. 102):

Imperial cloaking fields copmletely absorb all incoming sensor scans and block all the host ship's emissions and reflected energy. In short, the cloaked ship is rendered invisible to both sensors and the unaided eye.

and

Perhaps the greatest disadvantage is inherent in the "double-blind" nature of the shield. Because all incoming energy is absorbed and all of the host ship's emissions are blocked, the cloaked ship's scanners and communications are equally impaired; crew members cannot peer beyond the cloak's shroud, and so visual navigation is impossible.

With an active Imperial-style cloak, a Star Destroyer's ion exhaust would not escape through the cloak, but would rather remain within the confines of the shield. As such, no modified torpedo would be able to track the exhaust; it, too, would be cloaked.

Publius

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-01-01 05:38pm

namdoolb wrote:well, it's interesting that the events of ST6 capitalised on a weakness of the cloaking system that neither Star Trek nor Star Wars cloaks have dealt with.

Every engine has emissions, when those emmissions leave the ship they cease to be cloaked. By simply following the emmissions to source you can locate the cloaked ship.

Obviously not for use in a cluttered battlefield. (it's notable that only 3 ships were present in ST6 when this was used, and the Federation ships at least were largely motionless) However, the site provides no rationalisation of how SW cloaks could prevent this, I'd be interested to hear how you would rationalise SW ships to be immune to this tactic.

As for why the feds don't use those torps commonly... Expense? Difficulty of modification? Dangerously indiscriminate? (there's every chance the torp could lock onto the emissions of the ship that fired it)

Baffles and they just don’t use their engines much while cloaked. The three ISD's in Vision of the Future where only using them for station keeping, which would have kept emissions low.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2003-01-01 06:54pm

NecronLord wrote:a trade federation core ship can sit on a sol type's surface with little difficulty IIRC,

Umm, say again?

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2003-01-01 07:16pm

While the cloak keeps energy emmissions within and keeps them out....matter can pass through as demonstrated by the small fighters they used to keep an eye on thier surroundings in VOTF....
It might be possible that particle emmissions could pass through...though by no means certain.

Keevan.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-01-01 07:22pm

Keevan_Colton wrote:While the cloak keeps energy emmissions within and keeps them out....matter can pass through as demonstrated by the small fighters they used to keep an eye on thier surroundings in VOTF....
It might be possible that particle emmissions could pass through...though by no means certain.

Keevan.

As has been said before, it's mostly likely that you simply keep the emissions low enough that they dissiapate by the time they're out of the cloak.

beyond hope · Post by **beyond hope** » 2003-01-01 07:40pm

namdoolb, the answer to your question is right in ST 6: the bird-of-prey is gving off detectable traces of drive plasma specifically *because* it's firing while cloaked. The cloak would ordinary make detecting those emissions impossible, but the bird-of-prey doesn't have the power to fire and maintain the cloak perfectly at the same time. Thus the "sidewinder" photorp they used to destroy Chang's bird-of-prey wouldn't work against other cloaked ships, because the weakness of that ship isn't there.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-01-02 12:04am

beyond hope wrote:namdoolb, the answer to your question is right in ST 6: the bird-of-prey is gving off detectable traces of drive plasma specifically *because* it's firing while cloaked. The cloak would ordinary make detecting those emissions impossible, but the bird-of-prey doesn't have the power to fire and maintain the cloak perfectly at the same time. Thus the "sidewinder" photorp they used to destroy Chang's bird-of-prey wouldn't work against other cloaked ships, because the weakness of that ship isn't there.

Unless the vessel normally holds the emissions within the cloak, which would palce a time limit on how long it could have it up, drive emissions are always going to be floating out past the cloak.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-02 12:14am

beyond hope wrote:namdoolb, the answer to your question is right in ST 6: the bird-of-prey is gving off detectable traces of drive plasma specifically *because* it's firing while cloaked.

Do you have any evidence for this speculation besides wishful thinking?

Spock said that all vessels dump drive emissions, cloaked or not. He said this would work. He did not say that he expected this vessel to be unusual in this regard thanks to its ability to fire on the move.

And precisely why would its ability to fire on the move mean that it dumps plasma from its propulsion system (note: unrelated to weapons) in a manner that ordinary cloaked ships don't?

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2003-01-02 12:30am

Darth Wong wrote:
beyond hope wrote:namdoolb, the answer to your question is right in ST 6: the bird-of-prey is gving off detectable traces of drive plasma specifically *because* it's firing while cloaked.
Do you have any evidence for this speculation besides wishful thinking?

Spock said that all vessels dump drive emissions, cloaked or not. He said this would work. He did not say that he expected this vessel to be unusual in this regard thanks to its ability to fire on the move.

And precisely why would its ability to fire on the move mean that it dumps plasma from its propulsion system (note: unrelated to weapons) in a manner that ordinary cloaked ships don't?

and Uhura said "it has to have a tailpipe somewhere"

true, this fact would allow any heat seeking weapon to successfully target a Star Trek cloaked ship. The best use of a cloak is similer to a WWI or WWII submarine. More like a WWI sub really, since it wasn't until late in the war the German subs could reliably kill ships submurged. They would come near a ship submerged detirmine its origin and destination and surface to sink it with their deck guns. Many german captians felt it cowerdly to attack a ship with out warning. Once the German leaders had declared unresticted submarine warfare, they begin to make more use of their torpedos. before that torpedos were used to attack protected convoys and warships. The restrictions of Star Trek cloaks are similer to this era of submarine too, since it takes alot of power to maintain a cloak. This means its is better to run with it off until you intend to sneak up on a target(that is after you have located it).

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-01-02 05:44am

Ender wrote:
NecronLord wrote:a trade federation core ship can sit on a sol type's surface with little difficulty IIRC,
Umm, say again?

ICS wrote:Pg. 18 : Manufacturer: Hoersch-Kessel Drive Inc. (basic Core Ship); Baktoid Combat Automata (droid-army contol core)
Model: /Lucrehulk/-class modular control core (LH-1740)
Dimensions: diameter 696m; depth (when landed, minus transmission mast) 914m
Max. acceleration: (linear, in open space) 300G
Power: reactor peak 3e24W; peak shield capacity 6e23W
Armament: 280 point-defense ligth laser cannons (8 kilotons per shot max.)

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Star.html
Mikes Stellar Radiation Calculator

Being generous and using 700M * 700M the profile of the ship is 490000M^2

At an altitude of 1M

3.045E+13 Watts max radiation absorbtion.

3.045E+13<6e23W It would need to use it's engines to remain in place, but it can sit happily on the surface of a sol type star (provided no-one looks out of a window.

FX · Post by FX » 2003-01-02 11:02am

Has anyone thought that the Empire would want to add an ST style cloak to their electronic warfare suite? Starfighters mainly use the naked eye as their main sensor when attacking capital ships, with the cloak that sensor has been jammed.

If nothing else ST cloak your anti-fighter ships, and have "flack from nowhere." The psychological effect of not being able to see the ships that are hunting you would also be a serious bonus.

Lastly, under heavy jamming a cloaked vessel could silence her guns and be nearly undetectable, allowing it to repair, and reset it's shields. After a time of silence it could then return to the fight, making it seem as if reinforcements had arrived.

As for the ST cloak still needing to release drive gasses, a warp drive can produce a less than warp 1 field. Doing so would allow the vessel to move without needing to vent drive gasses. The source I have for this is the TNG tech manual, so it may be untrue.

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-01-02 11:14am

FX wrote:Has anyone thought that the Empire would want to add an ST style cloak to their electronic warfare suite? Starfighters mainly use the naked eye as their main sensor when attacking capital ships, with the cloak that sensor has been jammed.

The empire already has cloaks. And starfighters cannot attack a cap ship without a cap ship of their own providing the big guns to take out the shield. Kinda defeats the purpose of cloaking the fighters.

If nothing else ST cloak your anti-fighter ships, and have "flack from nowhere." The psychological effect of not being able to see the ships that are hunting you would also be a serious bonus.

The effect would last for about a one second. After that, the fighter pilots would know there's a ship there. Again, defeats the purpose of a cloak.

Lastly, under heavy jamming a cloaked vessel could silence her guns and be nearly undetectable, allowing it to repair, and reset it's shields. After a time of silence it could then return to the fight, making it seem as if reinforcements had arrived.

Exactly how long do you think it takes to repair ships?

As for the ST cloak still needing to release drive gasses, a warp drive can produce a less than warp 1 field. Doing so would allow the vessel to move without needing to vent drive gasses. The source I have for this is the TNG tech manual, so it may be untrue.

Oh goodie, more technobabble to try and explain away problems. Here's a hint: if there's ANY kind of propulaion going on, there WILL be waste heat.

Dumb newbie. *Poke*

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-01-02 01:50pm

The major use would be if the empire could make the Xerrol nightstinger (IIRC, the invisibe bolt sniper rifle from VotF) tech work on turbolasers and a superlaser. A ship that can fire when cloaked and not give away it's location would be very useful. A death star even more so.

FX · Post by FX » 2003-01-02 02:32pm

The empire already has cloaks. And starfighters cannot attack a cap ship without a cap ship of their own providing the big guns to take out the shield. Kinda defeats the purpose of cloaking the fighters. icon_smile.gif

The fighters don't get cloaked, the cap ships do. In many novels it is stated that EW jamming has removed all use of sensors except visual systems, An ST cloak would remove that detection system without needing to blind yourself using a SW cloak. This would not be a replacement of a SW cloak it would be an enhacement to existing electronic warfare.

If nothing else ST cloak your anti-fighter ships, and have "flack from nowhere." The psychological effect of not being able to see the ships that are hunting you would also be a serious bonus.
The effect would last for about a one second. After that, the fighter pilots would know there's a ship there. Again, defeats the purpose of a cloak.

You are assuming that pilots won't be worrying more because they can't see the source of the flak. They can zero in on it's location from the trails of bolts, but if it silences it's guns every pilot will be seriously worrying about where it went and how far away the ship is now, and not be as focused on his sortie.

Lastly, under heavy jamming a cloaked vessel could silence her guns and be nearly undetectable, allowing it to repair, and reset it's shields. After a time of silence it could then return to the fight, making it seem as if reinforcements had arrived.

Exactly how long do you think it takes to repair ships?

It depends on what type of damage you have sustained. If it is system ionization it could be done quickly say a few minutes time by grounding boards and rebooting systems. If it is physical holes in your hull that would be impossible. I used the wrong word when I said repair, jury-rig or bypass would have been better. I was thinking of restring power lines to shield emitters and replacing fried boards, not putting on hull patches.

As for the comment about using the warp drive, the problem was that being discussed was about detecting drive gas exhaust, NOT waste heat. All vessels cloaked or not should be able to be seen as hot or cold spots in space, but that isn't the detection method being used in the discussion. We are talking about finding the ship by looking for the gas pushed out of the engines to propel the ship like a rocket. If you switch to a non reactant based drive like warp drive this method of finding a ship is no longer an option.
Please read more carefully next time.

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2003-01-02 02:39pm

namdoolb wrote:well, it's interesting that the events of ST6 capitalised on a weakness of the cloaking system that neither Star Trek nor Star Wars cloaks have dealt with.

Every engine has emissions, when those emmissions leave the ship they cease to be cloaked. By simply following the emmissions to source you can locate the cloaked ship.

Obviously not for use in a cluttered battlefield. (it's notable that only 3 ships were present in ST6 when this was used, and the Federation ships at least were largely motionless) However, the site provides no rationalisation of how SW cloaks could prevent this, I'd be interested to hear how you would rationalise SW ships to be immune to this tactic.

As for why the feds don't use those torps commonly... Expense? Difficulty of modification? Dangerously indiscriminate? (there's every chance the torp could lock onto the emissions of the ship that fired it)

It can't have been coz they were hard to make. If Spock and McCoy can make one while underfire then it can't be that hard. The Only problem would be that if you fired an indescriminate homer like that if you miss the Torp could end up coming for your own tailpipe

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-01-02 03:20pm

FX wrote:The fighters don't get cloaked, the cap ships do. In many novels it is stated that EW jamming has removed all use of sensors except visual systems, An ST cloak would remove that detection system without needing to blind yourself using a SW cloak. This would not be a replacement of a SW cloak it would be an enhacement to existing electronic warfare.

Name ONE instance where a Trek cloak was able to be put on a tiny one man fighter.

You are assuming that pilots won't be worrying more because they can't see the source of the flak. They can zero in on it's location from the trails of bolts, but if it silences it's guns every pilot will be seriously worrying about where it went and how far away the ship is now, and not be as focused on his sortie.

Rebel pilots in ROTJ weren't worried about where enemy fire was comming from. They continued flying to their targets.
WW2 era bomober crews just flew through flack w/o worrying exactly where it was coming from. They continued flying to their targets.
A turbolaser bolt is just as deadly coming from a completely visible vessel as from a cloaked vessel. And given the sheer number of anti-starfighter weapons on SW cap ships, the cloak won't matter at all.

It depends on what type of damage you have sustained. If it is system ionization it could be done quickly say a few minutes time by grounding boards and rebooting systems. If it is physical holes in your hull that would be impossible. I used the wrong word when I said repair, jury-rig or bypass would have been better. I was thinking of restring power lines to shield emitters and replacing fried boards, not putting on hull patches.

When have we ever heard of SW ships needing to do this. Guns continued to fire throughout the entire battle of Endor.

As for the comment about using the warp drive, the problem was that being discussed was about detecting drive gas exhaust, NOT waste heat.

And what do you think drive gas is? Its WASTE HEAT.

All vessels cloaked or not should be able to be seen as hot or cold spots in space, but that isn't the detection method being used in the discussion. We are talking about finding the ship by looking for the gas pushed out of the engines to propel the ship like a rocket. If you switch to a non reactant based drive like warp drive this method of finding a ship is no longer an option.

Warp drive is "non reactant"? ROTFLMAO. What do you call anti-matter, if not a reactant? Matter/anti-matter reactions do produce waste material and that material has to go somewhere.

Please read more carefully next time.

Please think next time.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-01-02 03:48pm

Darth Servo wrote:
FX wrote:The fighters don't get cloaked, the cap ships do. In many novels it is stated that EW jamming has removed all use of sensors except visual systems, An ST cloak would remove that detection system without needing to blind yourself using a SW cloak. This would not be a replacement of a SW cloak it would be an enhacement to existing electronic warfare.
Name ONE instance where a Trek cloak was able to be put on a tiny one man fighter.

There is an episode of DS9 where there is a cloaked romulan shuttle

That could probably be fitted to an assault gunboat. Wheter the fire when cloaked version can be miniturised to that level is an unknown.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-01-02 04:01pm

FX is talking about using fractional warp drive to move at sublight, which is the only explanation for the feeble performance of impulse drive in concert with the stated ability to reach large fractions of c.

However, even if we presume that this is being done, warp drive has an enormous energy requirement compared to impulse drive, so you trade off impulse emissions for a vastly increased heat signature, which means you'd better be dumping something, or you'll be cooked in no time. I don't see how this will make you any less visible.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-01-02 04:02pm

Darth Wong wrote:FX is talking about using fractional warp drive to move at sublight, which is the only explanation for the feeble performance of impulse drive in concert with the stated ability to reach large fractions of c.

However, even if we presume that this is being done, warp drive has an enormous energy requirement compared to impulse drive, so you trade off impulse emissions for a vastly increased heat signature, which means you'd better be dumping something, or you'll be cooked in no time. I don't see how this will make you any less visible.

You forget though they can reverse the polarity of the quantum warp tetryon manifold shifter and dump the energy into a subspace domain

Darth Servo · Post by **Darth Servo** » 2003-01-03 11:08am

NecronLord wrote:However, even if we presume that this is being done, warp drive has an enormous energy requirement compared to impulse drive, so you trade off impulse emissions for a vastly increased heat signature, which means you'd better be dumping something, or you'll be cooked in no time. I don't see how this will make you any less visible.

You forget though they can reverse the polarity of the quantum warp tetryon manifold shifter and dump the energy into a subspace domain

[/quote]

Very funny.

Even if that was intended to be serious, wouldn't subspace sensors pick it up?

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-01-03 11:49am

Just a little FYI as to cloaks, detecting them, and firing while cloaked. It was mentioned several times in TNG that cloaking devices and sensor technology were constantly being upgraded to make them better then the other. That means the Romulans were constantly adapting their cloaking devices so the Federation couldn't detect them while the Federation was constantly upgrading their sensors so they could detect them. Older cloaking devices were useless once new sensors were used.

Adapting this to the ST:6 example of firing while cloaked AND finding a cloaked ship is relatively simple. First and foremost the weakness of finding cloaked ships by searching for their tail pipe would QUICKLY be found out by both the Romulans and Klingons. They would imediately take steps to remove this weakness. This could involve altering their ship designs or changing their cloak designs. When it comes to firing while cloaked it is entirely possible that the newer and stealthier cloaking technology prohibited firing while cloaked and using shields while cloaked.

The Scimitar merely proves that it is possible for cloaking technology to be more advanced then sensor technology from time to time. No doubt given time the sensor technology would surpas the cloaking technology.

Now, what does the Scimitar have the Empire might be interested in? It has a different type of cloaking device. They have transporters. They also have a wonderful super weapon that can kill the people on a planet with a seven minute warm up and it leaves all the buildings and installations intact. The Empire would jump instantly at the opertunity to get their hands on this ship.

That and it also has warp drives, a very nice tactical FTL system that doesn't have the same limitations as Hyper Drive.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2003-01-03 12:36pm

Ummm what would be the point of a weapon that takes SEVEN MINUTES be of value...use some other agent instead

And Warp has no real advantage simply because it's that much slower...the GE would look at it as some garbage transport.

As for the cloaking field...the RE would like to peruse it...but the GE would regard it as antiqutated.

Alyeska · Post by **Alyeska** » 2003-01-03 12:49pm

Ghost Rider wrote:Ummm what would be the point of a weapon that takes SEVEN MINUTES be of value...use some other agent instead

You mean the fact that it can kill every person on a planet after a seven minute warm up AND leave all of its buildings, structures, and installations intact is useless? It takes an ISD 1 hour to BDZ a planet. This thing can capture an entire planet totally intact in seven minutes.

And Warp has no real advantage simply because it's that much slower...the GE would look at it as some garbage transport.

(cough)interdictors(cough)

Warp Drive is an extremely important TACTICAL drive system. It is not affect the same way in which hyper drives are. For that mater is requires much less power to run it so its possible that you could put warp drives on something like a Tie-Fighter so they can escape an interdictor ambush even after their mothership has left. It also means that ISDs would not have to worry about being caught by the rebells in gravity wells. Warp Drive would certainly interest them.

As for the cloaking field...the RE would like to peruse it...but the GE would regard it as antiqutated.

Pure assumption. On the visual aspect this cloaking device is far superior to that of the Empires. It can totally hide the object visually yet you can still see through it and fire through it. It would make Imperial fighters much deadlier against its enemies. Its also possible they could make a hybrid cloak system between ST and SW cloaks that uses the advantages of both while negating both sides disadvantages.

Post by **Ghost Rider** » 2003-01-03 12:51pm

Biowarfare works much better than a weapon that take seven minutes of warm up time.

Assumption that interdiction won't work on WARP...danken.

Assumption that ST cloaks are better than SW cloaks...

Shall we continue?