Firing on a cloaked ship
- Thread starter Vanyel
- Start date
To be honest I was wondering actually how come the asteroid never passed through the internals of the Enterprise-D when it phase cloaked it's way through.
I doubt the air inside the ship would have been eliminated due to this passage because the entire crew/machinery/environment inside the Enterprise-D was phased out, and the asteroid was not.
Also, ships moving at Warp speeds are apparently not intangible.
Interstellar bodies still have to be avoided.
Very slightly off-topic, perhaps, but I've always been bugged by the assertion that ships can't fire while cloaked.
It was explained very simply in 'Balance of Terror' that the Romulans' mega-weapon used so much energy that they would have to become visible to use it, not having enough power to do both.
I like to think that Kruge's Bird of Prey in STIII used that same sort of weapon. It's a big green energy blob that comes from a sealed (not torpedo tube, obviously) weapon. Federation shields have advanced since BOT, so it merely knocks the ship for a wallop instead of disintegrating it.
Fast forward to The Undiscovered Country - Chang's Bird of Prey is using Federation photon torpedoes, as part of the plot point - they were framing the Enterprise for firing upon Gorkon's ship, after all. Photon torpedoes don't require the massive energy surge that the Romulan (disruptor?) weapon does, after all, so naturally, it can fire while cloaked!
Long story short, it rather irks me that ships can't fire while cloaked in Trek, as it should be possible given the frameworks we've been given.
It was explained very simply in 'Balance of Terror' that the Romulans' mega-weapon used so much energy that they would have to become visible to use it, not having enough power to do both.
I like to think that Kruge's Bird of Prey in STIII used that same sort of weapon. It's a big green energy blob that comes from a sealed (not torpedo tube, obviously) weapon. Federation shields have advanced since BOT, so it merely knocks the ship for a wallop instead of disintegrating it.
Fast forward to The Undiscovered Country - Chang's Bird of Prey is using Federation photon torpedoes, as part of the plot point - they were framing the Enterprise for firing upon Gorkon's ship, after all. Photon torpedoes don't require the massive energy surge that the Romulan (disruptor?) weapon does, after all, so naturally, it can fire while cloaked!
Long story short, it rather irks me that ships can't fire while cloaked in Trek, as it should be possible given the frameworks we've been given.
^ I always assumed that Romulan and Klingon ships had this limitation because the types of weapons they preferred to use were incompatible with the "fire from concealed position" strategy.
Think of it like guerilla warfare. The one thing most guerillas know is that RPGs and recoiless rifles cannot be fired from indoors. Why? Because the backblast will usually kill the person that fires it and anyone in the room with him when he pulls the trigger. So if you're fighting in an urban environment, you cannot fire rockets/recoiless rifles from an enclosed space. You can, however, fire all kinds of OTHER things from an enclosed space; ordinary grenades, machineguns, sniper rifles, etc. But if your the type of person whose idea of combat involves "hit them with six or seven rockets and then run like hell," you probably won't bother using those types of weapons anyway, so you learn pretty quickly how to fight outdoors where "run like hell" is more feasible anyway.
Romulans and Klingons apparently use much larger and more powerful weapons that deliver crazy damage in a short amount of time; even if they don't destroy your ship on the first shot (actually, it seems they won't even do it on the tenth) a single blast will knock out so many of your primary systems to immediately put you on the loosing side even if you somehow manage to fight them off. They don't need to be able to fire while cloaked, they just need to be able to get in the first good shot before you have a chance to open fire.
Think of it like guerilla warfare. The one thing most guerillas know is that RPGs and recoiless rifles cannot be fired from indoors. Why? Because the backblast will usually kill the person that fires it and anyone in the room with him when he pulls the trigger. So if you're fighting in an urban environment, you cannot fire rockets/recoiless rifles from an enclosed space. You can, however, fire all kinds of OTHER things from an enclosed space; ordinary grenades, machineguns, sniper rifles, etc. But if your the type of person whose idea of combat involves "hit them with six or seven rockets and then run like hell," you probably won't bother using those types of weapons anyway, so you learn pretty quickly how to fight outdoors where "run like hell" is more feasible anyway.
Romulans and Klingons apparently use much larger and more powerful weapons that deliver crazy damage in a short amount of time; even if they don't destroy your ship on the first shot (actually, it seems they won't even do it on the tenth) a single blast will knock out so many of your primary systems to immediately put you on the loosing side even if you somehow manage to fight them off. They don't need to be able to fire while cloaked, they just need to be able to get in the first good shot before you have a chance to open fire.
One might also throw in the idea that the weapon in "BoT" required supervision from the launching ship, in the style of today's SARH missiles.
I mean, what we saw (and heard described in dialogue) was a vast yet thin cloud of plasma - moving at warp speed and tracking the target! To get a plasma cloud to do that, one might need to do more than just give it an initial push. Perhaps the mothership projected a warp field that propelled the plasma cloud? Such a field would negate the effectiveness of the cloak, as the warp field would still be visible to sensors and would point directly at the firing ship. So one could just as well drop the cloak, and then rely on the overwhelming first-hit firepower of the weapon like described above.
Actually, it wasn't.
We learned that the Romulan "submarine" was short on fuel on her homeward journey, and that this was related to her maintaining the invisibility, and further to her ability to maintain said. So we had an indirect reason to think that cloaking would consume a lot of power. We also heard Spock speculate that cloaking would in theory call for a lot of power. But later episodes proved this to be untrue: a "suitcase-size" Klingon cloaking device was even seen cloaking itself without the need for an external power source in one DS9 episode. And indeed Spock originally suggested that the Romulans had gotten around the power requirements issue somehow, and not necessarily by simply providing the required power.
In contrast, we never heard anybody speculate that the Romulans decloaked whilst firing because they didn't have power to keep both the cloak and the plasma mortar going. That's pure fan speculation - and quite possibly untrue. Kirk merely says this decloaking maneuver is "perhaps necessary when they use their weapon", and seems to be right about that, but the reason for the necessity is never revealed.
Spock also originally speculates that the cloak may hinder the ability of the Romulans to see out. We don't know if he was right or not, but it's an interesting idea.
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, what we saw (and heard described in dialogue) was a vast yet thin cloud of plasma - moving at warp speed and tracking the target! To get a plasma cloud to do that, one might need to do more than just give it an initial push. Perhaps the mothership projected a warp field that propelled the plasma cloud? Such a field would negate the effectiveness of the cloak, as the warp field would still be visible to sensors and would point directly at the firing ship. So one could just as well drop the cloak, and then rely on the overwhelming first-hit firepower of the weapon like described above.
Actually, it wasn't.
We learned that the Romulan "submarine" was short on fuel on her homeward journey, and that this was related to her maintaining the invisibility, and further to her ability to maintain said. So we had an indirect reason to think that cloaking would consume a lot of power. We also heard Spock speculate that cloaking would in theory call for a lot of power. But later episodes proved this to be untrue: a "suitcase-size" Klingon cloaking device was even seen cloaking itself without the need for an external power source in one DS9 episode. And indeed Spock originally suggested that the Romulans had gotten around the power requirements issue somehow, and not necessarily by simply providing the required power.
In contrast, we never heard anybody speculate that the Romulans decloaked whilst firing because they didn't have power to keep both the cloak and the plasma mortar going. That's pure fan speculation - and quite possibly untrue. Kirk merely says this decloaking maneuver is "perhaps necessary when they use their weapon", and seems to be right about that, but the reason for the necessity is never revealed.
Spock also originally speculates that the cloak may hinder the ability of the Romulans to see out. We don't know if he was right or not, but it's an interesting idea.
Timo Saloniemi
KIRK: "We know their Achilles heel, Mister Stiles. Their weapon takes all their energy. They must become visible in order to launch it."
And a later line by the Romulan commander:
COMMANDER: "No. No, he's shrewd, this starship commander. He tries to make us waste energy. He has estimated we have only enough."
It's true that the fact was an assumption, but it appears to be one the writers wanted us to believe.
^ And there's also the frequent lines by Romulan centurians vis a vis the cloaking device, "It consumes much power, Commander."
That's two extremely high energy systems competing for the ship's limited resources. Assuming that Scotty's "simple impulse" means the ship is basically propelled by some type of FTL reaction drive, it's no wonder they'd be worried about fuel.
Now, the adoption of Klingon designs makes perfect sense in this context, since the Romulans may have lacked the resources or technology to build sophisticated matter/antimatter reactors. The more powerful Klingon designs may be necessary to use the more effective cloaking device that is invisible even to the tracking sensors that were used in Balance of Terror. Power should also cease to be a problem when used with Klingon weapons, and presumably this is exactly why Starfleet needed a copy of that old cloaking device.
I know it's sacrilegious of me, but if you assume the TNG universe is some kind of alternate reality triggered by the time travel events in TVH (Scotty's little rendezvous with Doctor Nichols, maybe?) then you could say that the TMP timeline as we know it uses a different type of cloaking device than the one in the TNG timeline, so the latter 24th century reason is somewht different. The reason they can't fire while cloaked in the movies is that:
1) Only the Romulans have the more advanced Mk-II cloak for their warbirds; and we never had a conflict with the Romulans in the movie era.
2) The Klingon bird of prey is actually is a different class but same type of Bird of Prey as seen in Balance of Terror, with the same basic limitations; the main weapon takes all their energy and consumes fuel at a fantastic rate.
As for the alternate timeline idea (YMMV):
Early development of transparent aluminum somehow magnified the consequences of the Post Atomic Horror (which may or may not have occurred in Kirk's timeline) and set back Cochrane's warp flight by nearly twenty five years. Because of this, Earth entered the galactic stage in the middle of the 22nd century (instead of the end of the 21st century in the TMP timeline) and therefore didn't come into conflict with the Romulans until AFTER their early cloaking experiments had been completed. Where in the TOS timeline those expriments came to a crashing halt in the 2130s when Earth Starfleet carpet bombed the research center with nuclear warheads, killing the entire research team and absolutely everyone who ever thought the project was a good idea.
If you think about it, this explains alot of the discrepencies between TNG and TOS. The differences account for their both being completely different timelines that share certain features but not all.
That's two extremely high energy systems competing for the ship's limited resources. Assuming that Scotty's "simple impulse" means the ship is basically propelled by some type of FTL reaction drive, it's no wonder they'd be worried about fuel.
Now, the adoption of Klingon designs makes perfect sense in this context, since the Romulans may have lacked the resources or technology to build sophisticated matter/antimatter reactors. The more powerful Klingon designs may be necessary to use the more effective cloaking device that is invisible even to the tracking sensors that were used in Balance of Terror. Power should also cease to be a problem when used with Klingon weapons, and presumably this is exactly why Starfleet needed a copy of that old cloaking device.
I know it's sacrilegious of me, but if you assume the TNG universe is some kind of alternate reality triggered by the time travel events in TVH (Scotty's little rendezvous with Doctor Nichols, maybe?) then you could say that the TMP timeline as we know it uses a different type of cloaking device than the one in the TNG timeline, so the latter 24th century reason is somewht different. The reason they can't fire while cloaked in the movies is that:
1) Only the Romulans have the more advanced Mk-II cloak for their warbirds; and we never had a conflict with the Romulans in the movie era.
2) The Klingon bird of prey is actually is a different class but same type of Bird of Prey as seen in Balance of Terror, with the same basic limitations; the main weapon takes all their energy and consumes fuel at a fantastic rate.
As for the alternate timeline idea (YMMV):
Early development of transparent aluminum somehow magnified the consequences of the Post Atomic Horror (which may or may not have occurred in Kirk's timeline) and set back Cochrane's warp flight by nearly twenty five years. Because of this, Earth entered the galactic stage in the middle of the 22nd century (instead of the end of the 21st century in the TMP timeline) and therefore didn't come into conflict with the Romulans until AFTER their early cloaking experiments had been completed. Where in the TOS timeline those expriments came to a crashing halt in the 2130s when Earth Starfleet carpet bombed the research center with nuclear warheads, killing the entire research team and absolutely everyone who ever thought the project was a good idea.
If you think about it, this explains alot of the discrepencies between TNG and TOS. The differences account for their both being completely different timelines that share certain features but not all.
But "Face of the Enemy" also works in the generic terms of the original submarine analogy: "silent running" requires care, no matter what your fuel reserves or engine output.
We've seen all sorts of "fire" emerge from under a cloak: ersatz Starfleet torps (ST6), standard-looking Romulan disruptor bolts (ST:NEM), transporter beams (many an infiltration-themed episode plus ST4), shuttlecraft (ST:NEM)... It's pretty damn difficult to invent technological reasons for an inability to fire cloaked when there's so much direct evidence for the ability! Thus it sounds like a much better idea to concentrate on the tactical reasons for not firing from under cloak.
Timo Saloniemi
We've seen all sorts of "fire" emerge from under a cloak: ersatz Starfleet torps (ST6), standard-looking Romulan disruptor bolts (ST:NEM), transporter beams (many an infiltration-themed episode plus ST4), shuttlecraft (ST:NEM)... It's pretty damn difficult to invent technological reasons for an inability to fire cloaked when there's so much direct evidence for the ability! Thus it sounds like a much better idea to concentrate on the tactical reasons for not firing from under cloak.
Timo Saloniemi
But in TUC it was clearly stated the Klingon conspirators had gotten around that basic issue (and personally, I like to infer it still came at a price based on Uhura's comments about looking for the ship's ion trail - the cloaking shield still had gaps in it), whereas in NEM the Scimitar was conveniently overpowered. 
I'll admit I don't consider NEM all that reliable in some tech areas.
I'll admit I don't consider NEM all that reliable in some tech areas.
My theory, written out in more detail above, was that the Bird of Prey in TUC didn't have to uncloak because it was using Federation torpedoes (to frame the Enterprise) instead of the energy weapon used in TSFS and TFF, hence no power requirement concerns.
I like to think the non-physical torpedo used in those two movies were the same weapon used in Balance of Terror. Federation shields/screens have advanced since BoT, hence the reduced effectiveness (see TMP's line about 'new screens').
The TUC novelization does suggest that the Enterprise's torpedo system produced a small neutrino surge when active, raising the possibility for the saboteurs to have somehow gained access to it and used it against Gorkon's ship. This fits in with Chekov's line about how only a cloaked ship could produce a surge "that large." I tend to view it more as an issue with the energy the firing system uses than the torpedoes themselves, since there's no evidence that the Kingon movie torpedoes are plasma-based like the BOT weapon and it's been consistently shown since TWOK that Fed torpedoes are enclosed weapons (which presumably may be true of the Klingons and other powers as well).
As for TMP, that's one aspect I tend to disregard as well. The novelization does flesh it out a little better than the film but I still think it's a silly circumstance, and it's a repeat of the torpedo problem in "The Changeling."
As for TMP, that's one aspect I tend to disregard as well. The novelization does flesh it out a little better than the film but I still think it's a silly circumstance, and it's a repeat of the torpedo problem in "The Changeling."
Well, plasma or not, they certainly aren't physical. There's no torpedo tube or any other orifices on the TSFS or TFF ships - they fire from some sort of 'closed' emitter. I admit that my notion that the BOP used the same weapon as BOT is mostly a flight of fancy, but I claim for evidence the fact that the BOP was originally supposed to be a Romulan ship before the script changed. If the original plan for the Romulans to be the antagonists of TSFS remained intact, it would probably be readily assumed by most of us that it was the same weapon, for continuity's sake.
Compare to TUC's Bird of Prey - Federation-style torpedoes in use, for the purpose of framing the Enterprise for the attack on Gorkon's ship. Also serves as an accidental explanation as to why they can fire while cloaked - torpedoes carrying their own payload don't have the absurd energy requirements that the plasma-disintegrator-volleys do. Fanon to the extreme, I admit, but I think it knits things together nicely.
What aspect do you disregard? I was referring to Sulu's line about the 'new screens' holding against the V'Ger strike. You disregard that? For what reason? I don't see what problems would arise from a throwaway line about a technological advancement in defenses, continuity wise...
In "The Changeling," Nomad hits the Enterprise and Spock states that the blast is roughly equivalent to 90 photon torpedoes (I think that's right - I'll look again tomorrow 
), and then says the ship can withstand three more such attacks before the shields fail completely. That'd require a minimum of 360 photons to disable the shields on a Constitution class ship, let alone damage the hull itself. At the time the episode was made, a lot of details about technical aspects hadn't been nailed down yet, including the composition and relative strength of the photon torpedoes. Looking at it from a more modern perspective and going by what's been established in later series, Spock's statement seems pretty silly.
In TMP, a single V'Ger projectile was enough to completely destroy (or assimilate, whichever you prefer) a Klingon vessel with one blow and was immune to normal Klingon weapons, including their torpedoes (which look exactly like the effect seen in TUC) and it seems highly unlikely that the Klingons would have gone in unshielded against V'Ger. The Enterprise is later able to absorb at least one such projectile with heavy damage to the new shields but the ship otherwise intact, which I view as a repeat of the "Changeling" error. One could always argue that the projectiles that hit the Enterprise were not at full strength, and that's possible, but there's no way to determine that. So assuming, for the sake of discussion, that there was no decrease in force (maybe the Klingons tried hailing too?), there's no way the Enterprise should have survived. The "new" shields wouldn't have been enough to protect them, because V'Ger is more powerful. If they were that powerful, the Feds could have owned the Klingons, Romulans and anyone else who was an immediate enemy. But of course the movie would been over rather quickly if they'd been disintegrated. 
I'd disagree about the modern BOP lacking a torpedo tube in TSFS or TFF; I think perhaps the modeling details might have been slightly different (I can't recall exactly at the moment), but the effect in TFF seems pretty clearly intended to be a torpedo. The TSFS effect seems a little more like the disruptor bolt effect (used on ships like the Vor'Cha) according to the TrekCore screencaps, but it's harder to judge without the motion naturally.
), and then says the ship can withstand three more such attacks before the shields fail completely. That'd require a minimum of 360 photons to disable the shields on a Constitution class ship, let alone damage the hull itself. At the time the episode was made, a lot of details about technical aspects hadn't been nailed down yet, including the composition and relative strength of the photon torpedoes. Looking at it from a more modern perspective and going by what's been established in later series, Spock's statement seems pretty silly.In TMP, a single V'Ger projectile was enough to completely destroy (or assimilate, whichever you prefer) a Klingon vessel with one blow and was immune to normal Klingon weapons, including their torpedoes (which look exactly like the effect seen in TUC) and it seems highly unlikely that the Klingons would have gone in unshielded against V'Ger. The Enterprise is later able to absorb at least one such projectile with heavy damage to the new shields but the ship otherwise intact, which I view as a repeat of the "Changeling" error. One could always argue that the projectiles that hit the Enterprise were not at full strength, and that's possible, but there's no way to determine that. So assuming, for the sake of discussion, that there was no decrease in force (maybe the Klingons tried hailing too?), there's no way the Enterprise should have survived. The "new" shields wouldn't have been enough to protect them, because V'Ger is more powerful. If they were that powerful, the Feds could have owned the Klingons, Romulans and anyone else who was an immediate enemy.
But of course the movie would been over rather quickly if they'd been disintegrated. I'd disagree about the modern BOP lacking a torpedo tube in TSFS or TFF; I think perhaps the modeling details might have been slightly different (I can't recall exactly at the moment), but the effect in TFF seems pretty clearly intended to be a torpedo. The TSFS effect seems a little more like the disruptor bolt effect (used on ships like the Vor'Cha) according to the TrekCore screencaps, but it's harder to judge without the motion naturally.
As far as Nomad and the '90 photon torpedoes', I think we can assume things have changed since that episode and TMP in terms of shield tech/torpedo destructive capability. Shields and phasers have definitely changed in TMP - 'new screens' and phasers that are routed through the warp engines, so a disconnect between 'modern torpedoes' and 'ninety torpedoes in use X years ago' is expected.
The effects of the torpedoes the Klingons used in TMP can be explained by the fact that they were using actual photon torpedoes. Those were Klingon cruisers, not birds of prey, and they weren't part of a script and ship design originally intended to accomodate Romulans instead of Klingons, etc. As far as the Klingons not being able to shield against V'Ger... well, those were Klingon shields. They didn't have the fancy new Starfleet shields, created as a response to the new Romulan disruptor plasma blob weapon...
But in any case, you speak of the Enterprise's survival against V'Ger in terms of 'power', e.g., the Enterprise should've have survived because V'Ger was more powerful. Power requirements aren't everything. A point-defense system on a modern military ship protects itself from enemy missiles by tracking and shooting them down mid-flight with relatively basic gunfire, something that requires less 'power' than the offending missile. Offense in defense isn't a pure pitting of energy levels. We don't know what sort of offense V'Ger launched and how the Enterprise screens worked. If I may milk my fanon notion that the Enterprise screens were a response to the Romulan weapon from BOT a little more, I'd suggest that V'Ger was attempting to 'scan' the Enterprise in the way it did Ilia - a sort of scanning that necessitated breaking down the ship and its constituents to the basis of particle and energy levels. This destroyed the original, of course... in practice, this may not be a terribly different process to what the Romulan weapon wreaked on its targets - total disintegration, according to Spock. Hence, when Starfleet invented a shielding technology against Romulan disintegration, it fortunately stumbled upon a defense against V'Ger's scanner as well. There's still the issue of raw power at play - the Enterprise couldn't resist another attack - but things aren't necessarily as simple as 'who has more power', and the fact that the Klingons succumbed more easily to the weapon can say as much about defense tech as power levels.
It's more the opposite. In TSFS, the torpedo 'mouth' is seen as a sort of nebulous, TV-dead-channel-static energy field emitter that spits out the torpedo; in TFF, there's a more solid apparatus, even less torpedo tube-like, that emits the salvo. The emitter in that movie even sticks out, convexly, from the hull, rather than being a recessed 'tube'.
The effects of the torpedoes the Klingons used in TMP can be explained by the fact that they were using actual photon torpedoes. Those were Klingon cruisers, not birds of prey, and they weren't part of a script and ship design originally intended to accomodate Romulans instead of Klingons, etc. As far as the Klingons not being able to shield against V'Ger... well, those were Klingon shields. They didn't have the fancy new Starfleet shields, created as a response to the new Romulan disruptor plasma blob weapon...
But in any case, you speak of the Enterprise's survival against V'Ger in terms of 'power', e.g., the Enterprise should've have survived because V'Ger was more powerful. Power requirements aren't everything. A point-defense system on a modern military ship protects itself from enemy missiles by tracking and shooting them down mid-flight with relatively basic gunfire, something that requires less 'power' than the offending missile. Offense in defense isn't a pure pitting of energy levels. We don't know what sort of offense V'Ger launched and how the Enterprise screens worked. If I may milk my fanon notion that the Enterprise screens were a response to the Romulan weapon from BOT a little more, I'd suggest that V'Ger was attempting to 'scan' the Enterprise in the way it did Ilia - a sort of scanning that necessitated breaking down the ship and its constituents to the basis of particle and energy levels. This destroyed the original, of course... in practice, this may not be a terribly different process to what the Romulan weapon wreaked on its targets - total disintegration, according to Spock. Hence, when Starfleet invented a shielding technology against Romulan disintegration, it fortunately stumbled upon a defense against V'Ger's scanner as well. There's still the issue of raw power at play - the Enterprise couldn't resist another attack - but things aren't necessarily as simple as 'who has more power', and the fact that the Klingons succumbed more easily to the weapon can say as much about defense tech as power levels.It's more the opposite. In TSFS, the torpedo 'mouth' is seen as a sort of nebulous, TV-dead-channel-static energy field emitter that spits out the torpedo; in TFF, there's a more solid apparatus, even less torpedo tube-like, that emits the salvo. The emitter in that movie even sticks out, convexly, from the hull, rather than being a recessed 'tube'.
While it is clear that the BOP was firing Federation torpedos (in order to better frame Kirk and crew for the attack). The problem here is Valeris' response to Kirk. He asks how many other ships (BOPs that can fire while cloaked) are out there. Valeris answers, "Just the prototype." This would infer that the BOP can fire its standard plasma bolt while cloaked (although the cloak is imperfect given the ion trial it leaves and the quick view we get of the BOP as the bolt leaves the BOP).
Just a thought.
One possibility is that Chang's BOP could "fire while cloaked" because they could time their fire with Federation sensor refresh intervals if you take in account DS-9's "Trials and Tribbulations". Each time the BOP fired, the cloak became briefly overwhelmed by the energy output but because it was between the sensor cycle just wasn't picked up.
I think if a cloaked ship didn't have that advantage then it would be an easy target for return fire if it should fire high-powered weapons like phasers, torpedoes, and disruptors. Power availability on a small BOP would still be an issue though
I think if a cloaked ship didn't have that advantage then it would be an easy target for return fire if it should fire high-powered weapons like phasers, torpedoes, and disruptors. Power availability on a small BOP would still be an issue though
I've been toying with an idea regarding the multiple warp cores talked about on the STXI threads. What if Chang's BOP had a second dedicated warp core just for weapons?
I always wondered why they just didn't have big ass batteries that could fire a few rounds while the ship was cloaked. It wouldn't need to fire many at an unshielded starship.
