Can you activate a tractor beam when cloaked?

[Timo]

I do recall it being said in BOT that the Romulan ship had to decloak to fire the plasma weapon, and Spock says that the energy cost of cloaking is enormous.

Why should we believe Spock? Kirk later argues that the energy cost of the plasma weapon is enormous, and that is as valid an explanation for their need to decloak as any.

Even without the power consumption issue, we've seen in several eps ("Tin Man," "Face of the Enemy") that the system's energy allocation has to be monitored very carefully to completely conceal the ship; if this balance is upset, the ship can be detected as an echo. Both these instances are on warbirds as well, which presumably have some of the best cloaks in the galaxy.

We could argue that the Romulans are primadonnas in this respect. Their doctrine calls for maximum stealth, so their ships (and those of their allies, as in ST:GEN and possibly as regards the Defiant) have extensive automation and personnel in place to ensure that nothing interferes with the cloak. In contrast, Klingon ships have been shown to maintain viable shields while cloaked ("Redemption"), and to power up their weapons under cloak without yet being observed ("A Matter of Honor"); their doctrine here seems to be more "Russian Navy", with emphasis on power and speed even at the cost of stealth.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

Perhaps both Kirk and Spock were correct, and both systems caused a large power drain.