Cardassian Sensors Brilliant?

[All Seeing Eye]

Ive been watching re-runs of DS9 and what ive found quite astonishing is the fact the Stations sensors have absolutely no problem detecting cloaked Romulan ships and thats WITHOUT using anti-proton beams. Take fore example the episode where O'Brian keeps jumping forward through time, Dax finds no difficulty at all in detecting the Romulans Warbirds Quantum Singularity on sensors and determining that its circuling the station, now take for example the episode where the Tal Shiar and Obsidion Order send a task force to destroy the changelings, the station sensors have no trouble detecting the Tetryon emissions of the cloaked ships approaching the station.

Is it me or is this bonkers? cloaked Romulan ships are usually undetectable and yet on countless occasions DS9 somehow detects them every single time, it baffles me why the Dominion even bother to scan using anti-proton beams when they can just scan for Quantum Singularities or Tetryon emissions.

Anyone else find this bad quality writing?

 

[Photon]

Problem was the Warbirds (& Keldons) were practically on top of the station b/4 the sensor warnings went off.
Of course in Visionary, you have Romulans on the station and a QS moving about the station and couldn't figure out why...duh

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Photon said:
Problem was the Warbirds (& Keldons) were practically on top of the station b/4 the sensor warnings went off.

I would have to say your wrong on that one, Ops contacted O'Brian and told him to come to Ops so its safe to assume they must have contacted O'brian after at least a minute of trying to work out what the Tetryon emissions were, then you have to take into account how long it took O'Brian to get to ops from the promenade and THEN he was stood there at least a while telling them he didnt know what they were and its clear on the screen that the ships are still moving towards the station therefore they were detected at quite a huge distance from the station.

 

[Timo]

I must say I like the idea that a cloak is not a cloak is not a cloak. There are specific weaknesses to the various different kinds, and special tactics to compensate for the weaknesses.

Generally speaking, Romulans have always greatly worried about the effectiveness of their cloaks. They are always tinkering, always using all sorts of "silent running" modes aboard, and still wary that somebody would see through their cloaks. Klingons readily accept that cloaks are imperfect, and merrily rush into combat with a vessel that can be semi-detected, sometimes raising shields and arming weapons while the cloak is still up.

Romulan cloaks seem to have a weakness in being unable to hide the quantum singularity power source. That wasn't a problem until "Face of the Enemy", though, because their enemies didn't know about the QS power system and couldn't recognize the telltale signs. By the time of early DS9, Romulan cloaks could indeed be argued to be somewhat outdated. But they'd still be sufficient for the operations we witnessed.

In the end, the attack in "Visionary" was a complete success, only retroactively foiled by time travel. The attack in "The Die is Cast" theoretically succeeded splendidly as well, only it hit thin air and failed due to treason. So the ability to see the quantum singularities at close impulse ranges must not be considered a crippling tactical shortcoming after all. Just because a submarine's periscope might be spotted by a keen pair of eyes and a bit of luck doesn't mean the sub wouldn't be a deadly weapon against the convoy...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nebusj]

Fire said:
Is it me or is this bonkers? cloaked Romulan ships are usually undetectable and yet on countless occasions DS9 somehow detects them every single time ...

I believe you'll find that this claim is logically indefensible without a full statement of what Romulan ships were active around the station and when they were around.

 

[nx1701g]

Fire said:
Take for example the episode where O'Brian keeps jumping forward through time, Dax finds no difficulty at all in detecting the Romulans Warbirds Quantum Singularity on sensors and determining that its circuling the station

If I remember correctly though there was supposed to have been a phase variance or some technobabble reason why it was detected.

 

[Ezri]

Photon said:
Problem was the Warbirds (& Keldons) were practically on top of the station b/4 the sensor warnings went off.
Of course in Visionary, you have Romulans on the station and a QS moving about the station and couldn't figure out why...duh

That was strange too. The warbird was only really found out with an alternate time line with the station destroyed by one single warbird when the station was taking beatings after beatings from countless number of enemy ships in other episodes .

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Ezri said:

That was strange too. The warbird was only really found out with an alternate time line with the station destroyed by one single warbird when the station was taking beatings after beatings from countless number of enemy ships in other episodes .

That one is easily answerable, the station was during night time hours so there wern't as many crew on duty and plus the Romulan Warbird decloaked and made a sneak attack, by the time ops realised what was happening the Warbird had already hit critical systems before DS9 could raise shields.

 

[Ezri]

Fire said:

Ezri said:

That was strange too. The warbird was only really found out with an alternate time line with the station destroyed by one single warbird when the station was taking beatings after beatings from countless number of enemy ships in other episodes .

That one is easily answerable, the station was during night time hours so there wern't as many crew on duty and plus the Romulan Warbird decloaked and made a sneak attack, by the time ops realised what was happening the Warbird had already hit critical systems before DS9 could raise shields.

Did not a number of times when DS9 was under attack the shields collapsed allowing the enemy to beam over. With shields down, you can beam over and without shields you can destroy. Without shields the station is easy pickings as one warbird can destroy the station a fleet of enemy ships could not even damage the station with the shields down.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, the station was upgunned gradually, but only "Way of the Warrior" marked the installation of the final, invasion-fleet-repelling defenses. And the Romulans in "Visionary" caught the station pants down: there was no alert in place, and thus no shields, when the Romulans started hammering. And probably the first thing they took out was the main reactor, or shield generators, both of which are rather exposed when the shields are not up.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Jono]

Ezri said:

Fire said:

Ezri said:

That was strange too. The warbird was only really found out with an alternate time line with the station destroyed by one single warbird when the station was taking beatings after beatings from countless number of enemy ships in other episodes .

That one is easily answerable, the station was during night time hours so there wern't as many crew on duty and plus the Romulan Warbird decloaked and made a sneak attack, by the time ops realised what was happening the Warbird had already hit critical systems before DS9 could raise shields.

Did not a number of times when DS9 was under attack the shields collapsed allowing the enemy to beam over. With shields down, you can beam over and without shields you can destroy. Without shields the station is easy pickings as one warbird can destroy the station a fleet of enemy ships could not even damage the station with the shields down.

Not every time the station was attacked was it to destroy the station. The biggest battles are actually over control of the station. Your goal is therefore to disable and not destroy, plus you try to do with by doing as little damage to the target as possible since you want to use it for your own purposes.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

rofeta said:

The biggest battles are actually over control of the station. Your goal is therefore to disable and not destroy,

Now THAT! is an excellent point!