Cloaking Devices and The Pact

[Turtletrekker]

These physical laws are absolutely fundamental, they cannot be broken - just as 2+2 cannot equal 5.

"2+2 cannot equal...." Thanks a lot. You've just shattered my entire world view.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Isn't cloaking technology on the verge of becoming a dead letter? Given how much energy slipstream drives use, they're almost certainly incompatible with cloaking devices -- you can go really fast, or you can be invisible, but not both at once. Once other races work out slipstreaming, cloaks won't be useful for anything other than lurking about. I suppose you could still launch a sneak attack with cloaked ships at traditional warp velocities, but there's the risk the other side can see through it, whereas if you use slipstream you know exactly how much warning the enemy will have.

About slip-stream:
In 'Zero sum game' (the latest book in the trek lit universe) it is established that, as per the federation's best estimates, the other major powers in the quadrant shouldn't be able to develop slip-stream tech on their own in less than 10 years.

It is further established that, in light of the losses starfleet suffered during the borg genocide (40% of starfleet destroyed, among others), if any power develops slip-stream sooner the federation will become a second-rate power in less than a year.

Given these, I don't think the writers will give slip-stream to anyone else for the foreseeable future.

About cloak:
The same book establishes that, historically, the romulans wielded a power disproportionalte to their numbers due to their cloaks.

About slip-stream capabilities vs cloaks capabilities:
As per the book, cloaks DO retain their advantages - relating to being pratically undetectable, surprise attacks, etc.

Slip-stream allows you only to escape if you're outnumbered. A starship at slip-stream can still be seen, blockaded against, shot down, etc.

I just wanted to say that I agree with pretty much everything you've said here.

 

[rfmcdpei]

^Exactly. Entropy is fundamental. No matter how miraculously advanced your technology gets, you're still gonna have waste heat. The only way to harness that heat is by doing work, which will generate more waste heat. Entropy can only be reversed locally at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere in the system. The total amount of waste heat in the overall system is always going to go up.

But a ship in vacuum is essentially a closed system. You can't take away its heat in exchange for more heat "somewhere else," because there is no "somewhere else" -- all the equipment you have is right there on the ship itself. So the only way to deal with the heat is to radiate it out into space, which makes you detectable. Unless you have some kind of a wormhole connecting you to another dimension or another place so you can dump your heat into...

(blink)

Hmm. Romulan ships have singularities in them, don't they?

EDIT: No, that won't work, since matter falling into a singularity emits radiation and therefore heat.

Hasn't there been suggestions that Romulan cloaks work better at sub-light speeds than at warp? At sublight speeds a starship could coast and not expend power on its engines, whereas warp requires constant energy input.