Firing while cloaked. What happens

[Peregrin Toker]

Mike, you should do a big-giant-list of engineering mishaps and things to watch for in scifi shows.

Actually, he has made one.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Ess ... ering.html

[Superman]

Actually, the reason that ships cannot fire while cloaked is because the self destruct mechanism is tied right into the "fire while cloaked" button. It cannot be disabled and all cloaking ships have it.

[kojikun]

Actually, he has made one.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Ess ... ering.html

Thats hardly a big giant list of things that scifi films fuck up.

[Peregrin Toker]

Actually, he has made one.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Ess ... ering.html

Thats hardly a big giant list of things that scifi films fuck up.

Such a list would probably be a hundred pages.

[EmperorMing]

The ship appears to simply have insufficient power to do this.

It has never been attempted in an episode, but that's the explanation they give us.

If that was the case though couldnt you get around it by loading a low power weapon onto the Warbird?

Load her up with 100 megaton bombs. She makes a run while cloaked and drops it 5 miles from the enemy ship with a 5 second fuse. A Warbird should have enough spare power to open a cargo hold or release a bomb clamp.

I have always wondered why no one has used a zero-power self-guided seeking weapon like a *missile* while cloaked...

[Darth Wong]

I have always wondered why no one has used a zero-power self-guided seeking weapon like a *missile* while cloaked...

In Star Trek, it takes a lot of power to launch torpedoes for some reason. Apparently, there's a fancy antimatter loading system, and they don't believe in carrying more than one type of warhead (you'd think some nukes would come in handy for those occasions when the system is not working properly).

[EmperorMing]

I have always wondered why no one has used a zero-power self-guided seeking weapon like a *missile* while cloaked...

In Star Trek, it takes a lot of power to launch torpedoes for some reason. Apparently, there's a fancy antimatter loading system, and they don't believe in carrying more than one type of warhead (you'd think some nukes would come in handy for those occasions when the system is not working properly).

That's exactly what I had in mind; *nukes* or some really exotic thermochemical warhead to arm it with.

Oh wait, I forgot; these last two items are not advanced enough...

[BenRG]

In Star Trek, it takes a lot of power to launch torpedoes for some reason.

A small possibility: Instead being launched by some kind of thruster or chemical reaction, a photon torpedo launcher uses an electromagnetic induction coil. I'm not sure what the power usage would be for those, but at a rough guesstimate, the torpedos always leave the tube travelling over 100m/s faster than the launch vehicle.

[HappyTarget]

A small possibility: Instead being launched by some kind of thruster or chemical reaction, a photon torpedo launcher uses an electromagnetic induction coil.

Yes, that's the likely reason, but still, why not have the torps in box launchers and have them use their impulse thrusters to provide inital velocity. System is passive, requireing only the launch order from the ship. Then the trops use their own engines to provide speed boost. This system should easily work as cloaks are described in canon, as it takes virtually no power from the generating ship.

[EmperorMing]

You know, it would be just *too* simple to adapt the 20th century cruise missle idea for a weapon in ST...A self-contained package with very *low* power requirements to launch.

[Sothis]

Maybe (aside from the Scimitar of course) the reason cloaked ships don't fire is as it was in 'Face of the Enemy'- cloaked ship fires, enemy ship will know where the shots were fired from, returns fire and destroys you. Or alternatively fires torpedoes about the place, sets them off, and the cloak ships get battered by the energy wash. Now, where is that blasted cat? I can hear one mewling outside...

Edit: turns out next-door's cat has been stuck in the garage for who knows how long, poor thing , musta snuck in when the builders came round.