cloaking question

True, but when would you cycle that on and off? And what would be the advantage of only having the detector on at certian times than others? I would want that puppy on full time regardless of peace time or war, that way any cloaked vessel would not have such an easy chance to sneak in. Its sort of the "got caught with the pants down" thing. Clinton knows all about that!! :D

RFBurns
 
Perhaps the device uses much energy or blocks other sensoring methods, stuff like that. Of course if it had no drawbacks, I let it switched on all the time.
 
A small spacecraft have less mass that a bigger ship (a carrier), Its about the power required to Cloak a ship, a fighter like the dragon have a lot less mass that a Carrier. so a cloaking device would require a lot less power to cloak it that a Carrier (that to cloak would require a lot more power do to its mass, power that its used on the engines, shields, etc....)
 
Another cloaking question: What are the reasons that weapons can't be fired while cloaked? Is that given anywhere? I'd really like to know for a story I'm writing.

The explanations I'm currently using are these:

Energy weapons can't be used because the power drain of firing while also having the energy drained by the cloak would be too much for the fighter's systems.

Missiles can't be used because going from within a cloaking field to outside would cause a shift in the energy patterns that the missile warhead is using to track its target, causing the missile to lose its lock.

Best, Raptor
 
Visual cloaks use an array of anti-graviton emitters to create a visual 'shield' of photons and other electromagnetic emissions -- this forced grouping of particles would certainly mean that missiles and guns cannot be fired straight <G>
 
Thats a good point, but if you think about it, the ordinary photon isn't too related to the blasters we see in the games.

Also for another spin on things, think about the Bird of Prey in ST6. Fire whilst cloaked. What a great weapon :)

Hmmm, the Romulan Birds of Prey. Really nice ships from the original series. All in all, the Warbird is one of my favourite ships...and it cloaks :)
 
Don't bring Star Trek into a discussion of WC tech.

To fire while cloaked, you need some sort of graviton/tachyon gun, which would be difficult to make and be very impractical for most situtations.
 
... except the Photon Blaster!;)

I was thinking, though, that the change in gravitational field around the fighter would cause your guns to... not fire forward. :)
 
Im sure somebody would find a way to fire thru the field either by manipulating the field around the guns or modifying the guns to fire thru it.
 
You blow up the other way too, either way you're screwed. :)

What does this tell us? Don't fire when cloaked.
 
Well, you can always adjust the gravitational fields around the ship to allow a little opening for the gunport to protrude, thus being able to fire.

After all, they're going to be able to see the fire anyway, so exposing the gunport just prior to firing won't make much of a difference.

Meson, I'm not 'bringing' ST into this at all, just giving my opinion on other workable types of cloak. Do you see any other major show/book that uses cloaking as much as ST?

I don't think so. Besides, everyone brings other universes into it. I'm sure you would have at some point in your life. :)
 
Originally posted by Meson
Don't bring Star Trek into a discussion of WC tech.

To fire while cloaked, you need some sort of graviton/tachyon gun, which would be difficult to make and be very impractical for most situtations.
Click to expand...

The "cloak" field would be much like a shield field, operating at a certian frequency. Much like depicted in ST (yes have to bring ST into this for explanation) in the movie "Undiscovered Country", they show a Klingon Bird of Prey able to fire while cloaked. In the movie "Generations", the Bird of Prey was able to fire right thru the Enterprise's shields by matching the frequency of those shields. They simply "tuned" the torpedo to match the shields frequency and it passed right thru. I would say the same thing would have to happen with weapons being able to fire thru a cloak field. Since cloaking involves bending light, that field would probably be stronger than deflector type fields. But if there are devices that can detect cloaked ships, whats the point in being cloaked to begin with? About the only benefit from that situation would be to have missles loose their lock, but that could also be overcome by putting the detector devices in the missle themselves, then cloaking would be totally useless.

RFBurns
 
Umm... that doesn't make sense at all. Matching the 'frequency' of a cloak wouldn't have anything to do with the gravitational fields that would prevent you from firing.

TC
 
The shroud device is a frequency based cloak -- (PAPA1 and DELTA6, IIRC)... the complete visual cloak's gravity-altering field would mean that you wouldn't physically be able to fire a weapon straight.
 
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