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Crazedwraith wrote:

NecronLord wrote:
A few more 24th century examples here

That's hilarious according to Voyager polarising your hull can a) be used to increase your sensor visibility and make it more likely a downed shuttle be found or b> be used to hide yourself from enemy sensors and approach undetected.

one bit of technobabble, two completely opposite uses.

[trektard]Obviously you polarize it one way for stealth and one way for obviousness, duh![/trektard]

While I can't think of any reason why you'd want that as a feature in a system the primary purpose of is to strengthen your hull (somehow), modern day ECM can do just that.

Batman wrote:While I can't think of any reason why you'd want that as a feature in a system the primary purpose of is to strengthen your hull (somehow), modern day ECM can do just that.

Maybe it wasn't the intended feature but turned out to be occasionally useful and deemed to be worth keeping (or deemed not problematic enough to be worth loosing the whole strengthened hull aspect).

My point was it IS entirely possible for a system to both be 'YAY! Big Honking Target' AND 'Nobody Here, move along' in the real world, so something like that happening in Trek (intentional or otherwise) is hardly unbelievable.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

Circa 2365

Is that a Federation toilet on the second level?

NecronLord wrote: A few more 24th century examples here

In 2375, Tom Paris attempted to polarize the Delta Flyer's hull after it had crash-landed in order to make it easier for the USS Voyager's sensors to find them. (VOY: "Once Upon a Time")

In 2376, Voyager's hull was polarized in order to mask their approach towards the errant USS Equinox. (VOY: "Equinox, Part II")


:/

Oh, Voyager.

"Year of hell" comes to mind, where Voyager had to go to warp without the SIF field. Since the ship had been completely shot up by the Krenim, there were bits of hull literally falling off. In "The Disease" it was shown that the field could be temporarily extended to protect another ship if it was docked, though it did put Voyager at risk.

It seems that the whole polarising hull has one effect when used on a starship, and the opposite when applied to a shuttle

EnterpriseSovereign wrote:"Year of hell" comes to mind, where Voyager had to go to warp without the SIF field. Since the ship had been completely shot up by the Krenim, there were bits of hull literally falling off. In "The Disease" it was shown that the field could be temporarily extended to protect another ship if it was docked, though it did put Voyager at risk.

It seems that the whole polarising hull has one effect when used on a starship, and the opposite when applied to a shuttle

I thought it was the deflector dish being offline that caused Voyager to slowly disintegrate?

No, I'm reasonably certain that it was the SIF being offline (combined with massive battle damage to her hull) that made VOY come apart at Warp.
And the navigational deflector's job is to keep stuff from hitting the ship, NOT to keep in one piece during Warp travel. There was an incident where timely reactivation of the nav deflector prevented space debris from (further) crippling the ship in 'Year of Hell' so maybe your thinking of that.

Prometheus Unbound wrote:

NecronLord wrote: A few more 24th century examples here

In 2375, Tom Paris attempted to polarize the Delta Flyer's hull after it had crash-landed in order to make it easier for the USS Voyager's sensors to find them. (VOY: "Once Upon a Time")

In 2376, Voyager's hull was polarized in order to mask their approach towards the errant USS Equinox. (VOY: "Equinox, Part II")


:/

Oh, Voyager.

Positive polarization makes a ship more detectable.
Negative polarization makes a ship less detectable.
And Neutral polarization reverses entropy, quantumizes everything in sight, makes cracks in singularity event horizons and permanently suppresses higher brain functions (hence the survival of Neelix for the entire duration when a sane crew would have spaced him five minutes after meeting him)

Eternal_Freedom wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:
That's hilarious according to Voyager polarising your hull can a) be used to increase your sensor visibility and make it more likely a downed shuttle be found or b> be used to hide yourself from enemy sensors and approach undetected.

one bit of technobabble, two completely opposite uses.

[trektard]Obviously you polarize it one way for stealth and one way for obviousness, duh![/trektard]

Or its actually the same principle being used for active cancellation of enemy sensor pulses, which we can actually do with modern aircraft radars, and the polarization of the hull is just creating a medium to broadcast it somehow.

Sea Skimmer wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:

Crazedwraith wrote:
That's hilarious according to Voyager polarising your hull can a) be used to increase your sensor visibility and make it more likely a downed shuttle be found or b> be used to hide yourself from enemy sensors and approach undetected.

one bit of technobabble, two completely opposite uses.

[trektard]Obviously you polarize it one way for stealth and one way for obviousness, duh![/trektard]

Or its actually the same principle being used for active cancellation of enemy sensor pulses, which we can actually do with modern aircraft radars, and the polarization of the hull is just creating a medium to broadcast it somehow.

Do you honestly thing they thought that through?

Most likely not. Just because they hit on something that looks like it would actually work and even has real-world precedence of a sort essentially by random chance doesn't change the fact that they did, though.

Some ships also appear to have double-layer hulls for at least certain areas like Engineering. The E-D for example was shown to have that in BOBW. Presumably that was why it was able to survive for MUCH longer against the Borg's cutting beam than other Starfleet ships. The inner hull was apparently more heavily armoured than the outer one: once the shields went down the outer hull was pretty quickly breached, while the inner hull lasted long enough for Data to shut the Cube down.

How does one envision armor is actually supposed to work in trek to begin with? Start there, and then you can decide whether they are armored or not (EG like Sea Skimmer's ideas.)

Voyager flying itself apart in YOH is something that always bothered me.

Was Voyager just cruising around at impulse speeds for weeks? How did Voyager cover 20 light years in 3 weeks without warp drive. Furthermore Voyager had 5 days without any Krenim attacks (was after the timeline changed reducing them to a pre-warp civilization) and they didn't manage to do anything to repair the SIF?

Furthermore in Part 2, it is heavily implied that they were traveling at warp after they left their nebula. So a Voyager that is practically falling apart can travel at warp, but a relatively intact Voyager can not?

Gah!