defiants cloak

[Sandoval]

The Federation agreed to not develop cloaking technology to prevent further hostilities with the Romulan Empire. They saw that as a better option than continuing down the path towards war with (at the time) their most powerful adversary.

Seems simple enough to me.

Of course it is simple to understand the WHY. I wasn't questioning that.

I was just observing that it was a huge tactical disadvantage.

Is anyone refuting that then?

Stating that one organisation having invisible ships is a huge tactical advantage seems so obvious as to be virtually redundant.

 

[Keith1701]

I agree.

 

[judge alba]

but then is it really a advantage having the cloak? i mean you have to decloak to fire weapons and in those brief seconds your uncloaking mr feddie has dusted you.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Then again everybody makes a fuss about Zefram Cochrane, while non-humans just shrugged their shoulders and went "Eh. It's been done before!"

This always bugged me.

 

[Timo]

Why? From what we see and hear, Cochrane is a big thing for humans. Not so much for nonhumans - the only such to express admiration is Spock in "Metamorphosis", and he's merely reciting the known facts of human admiration of the character.

No doubt Andorians worship their warp inventor, too. Or if the story behind Andorian invention of warp was less enticing and glamorous, they might worship their inventor of phasers, or transporters, or artificial gravity. Many cultures would have those, while others would have gained access to those technologies from their interstellar neighbors, or oppressors, or victims. Humans just happen to be one of those cultures where there's a single known native inventor of warp, and apparently of transporters as well. (Although the latter might simply have been building on previous Vulcan research.)

Sounds pretty natural to me. Everybody has their heroes and villains; no need for everybody to have the same ones.

you have to decloak to fire weapons

It never made much sense that this would be the case. Of course, after you have fired weapons, you have revealed your position (because weapons fire itself isn't invisible in the general case), and it makes limited sense to remain invisible then. But you should still be able to squeeze out the first shot unseen.

It's just that Trek weapons don't tend to kill with the first shot. Unless the target is unshielded... But that happens fairly rarely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Bread]

Why? From what we see and hear, Cochrane is a big thing for humans. Not so much for nonhumans - the only such to express admiration is Spock in "Metamorphosis", and he's merely reciting the known facts of human admiration of the character.

No doubt Andorians worship their warp inventor, too. Or if the story behind Andorian invention of warp was less enticing and glamorous, they might worship their inventor of phasers, or transporters, or artificial gravity. Many cultures would have those, while others would have gained access to those technologies from their interstellar neighbors, or oppressors, or victims. Humans just happen to be one of those cultures where there's a single known native inventor of warp, and apparently of transporters as well. (Although the latter might simply have been building on previous Vulcan research.)

Sounds pretty natural to me. Everybody has their heroes and villains; no need for everybody to have the same ones.

you have to decloak to fire weapons

It never made much sense that this would be the case. Of course, after you have fired weapons, you have revealed your position (because weapons fire itself isn't invisible in the general case), and it makes limited sense to remain invisible then. But you should still be able to squeeze out the first shot unseen.

It's just that Trek weapons don't tend to kill with the first shot. Unless the target is unshielded... But that happens fairly rarely.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo makes a good point.

Grisson got knocked out with one shot, I always found it a bit odd that Enterprise, in the same film, fully automated and battle damaged, wasn't similarly destroyed when the BoP fired on it over Genesis.

Same in TWOK, Enterprise got hit unshielded by Reliant, I guess the convenient plot device was at play!

 

[Saquist]

Even tough we like to think of them as world devastating weapons Trek is surprisingly terrestrial in fire power. Outside TOS TMP didn't do any vaporizations unless you count the Grissom and it's possible that the ships hull just wasn't up to taking the hit. They covered the plot device pretty well by calling it a lucky shot.

But in the 24th century vaporizing lesser ships is quite common.
Enterprise vaporizes a fighter force with one phaser array
The Borg Cube vaporizes a flight of Mars Defense ships
A Romulan Warp Bird Vaporizes 3 Vulcan cargo ships.
Enterprise Vaporizes large sections of Borg Cube
Enterprise Vaporizes a large Space Drone with phasers.

Then the host of asteroids that have been vaporized by torpedoes from VOY, TNG to DS9

It's plays pretty even.

 

[Satyrquaze]

Timo makes a good point.

Grisson got knocked out with one shot, I always found it a bit odd that Enterprise, in the same film, fully automated and battle damaged, wasn't similarly destroyed when the BoP fired on it over Genesis.

Same in TWOK, Enterprise got hit unshielded by Reliant, I guess the convenient plot device was at play!

Course, it also helps that Grissom was substantally smaller than Enterprise (and therefore had a lot less superstructure provided the two ships were made of the same materials), and was a apparently a scout/science vessel as opposed to being a 'Federation Battlecruiser'.

EDIT:
Also, the OPs question was best answered in post #2.