Firing phasers

[Nakita Akita]

I have been watching the series, of course start to finish, but I have a question.
On the Defiant it seems that they can fire the phasers through the shields!
I didn't think this could be done.
Do they mention the ship having this capability?
(My DVDs are sort of scratched so sometimes I miss dialogue or 1/2 episodes etc.)
Also I was watching last night and it seemed that they had to de-cloak to fire weapons.
How can they fire through the shields but not while cloaked?
Was this intentional or was there just a writing error?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Isn’t that true for almost all spaceship combat we see?

Probably has to do with modulation frequencies.

 

[Sophie74656]

I would assume they can fire through their own shields since they know rhe frequency.

 

[UssGlenn]

All ships can fire weapons through their own shields, it's transporters that you can't beam through your own shields (though they screw that up often). A couple prototype ships have been able to fire while cloaked but it's not standard. I would assume that the energy signature of a charged weapon can easily be detected through a normal cloak, and it's a lot of trouble to cover it up.

 

[Tom]

Yep, shield modulation frequency, see Generations.

 

[Tom]

All ships can fire weapons through their own shields, it's transporters that you can't beam through your own shields (though they screw that up often). A couple prototype ships have been able to fire while cloaked but it's not standard. I would assume that the energy signature of a charged weapon can easily be detected through a normal cloak, and it's a lot of trouble to cover it up.

That, and its power drain to have the cloak running and fire phasers at the same time. Chang's ship in ST6 was firing photon torpedoes, so maybe the energy drain was less to fire those.

 

[MacLeod]

Yep, shield modulation frequency, see Generations.

If there was only a way to modulate the frequency randomly so as to prevent a lucky shot with the correct frequency.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

I'm not aware of anything in canon that says shields have to be lowered for phasers to be fired, though for a ship like the Defiant and her pulse-phasers then the shield geometry could easily be designed to open up gaps before the phaser emitters. Since pulse-phasers aren't multi-directional like on the E-D and Voyager the weapons blast only goes in one direction so it would be a simple design feature to include--but like others have said then phasers and shields could be set to the same frequency to allow them to fire whilst fully shielded.

 

[UssGlenn]

I've never thought that ships needed to do anything special to fire weapons through their own shields. In Generations the Klingon torpedos have the correct shield frequency but they still cause a visible disturbance when passing through the shields. Conversely, torpedoes and phasers fired outward pass by the shield bubble without disturbing anything. Similarly, shuttlecraft can exit through shields IIRC. This makes me think shields are a one way affair, except with regards to transporters.

 

[Nakita Akita]

Well it seems that I flunked phase modulation all levels and forgot to sign up for shield generation and modulation classes completly.
I'll just have to keep my day job washing dishes at Quark's.

 

[Prax]

They fire through the shield like ww1 fighter planes fired their machine guns through the propeller.

 

[Tenacity]

If there was only a way to modulate the frequency randomly so as to prevent a lucky shot with the correct frequency.

modulate all you want, as soon as geordie's point of view so much as flicks pass the right display the klingons have the new frequency.

 

[MacLeod]

modulate all you want, as soon as geordie's point of view so much as flicks pass the right display the klingons have the new frequency.

Yes but they had to wait to he looked at a specific screen to get that frequency but if you set it to randomly modulate at to a new frequency at say 0.5 second intervals. The Klingons wouldn't have time to set their weapons to the new frequency before it changed again.

 

[Nakita Akita]

Yes but they had to wait to he looked at a specific screen to get that frequency but if you set it to randomly modulate at to a new frequency at say 0.5 second intervals. The Klingons wouldn't have time to set their weapons to the new frequency before it changed again.

But what if Geordie modulated the bussard collector to resonate to a psi-frequency of
-00000.0009376? The Klingon ships could never modulate to that frequency!

 

[Draculasaurus]

Maybe a ship's phasers shift frequency in a specific pattern while firing and the shields match the pattern.
Just like noise cancelling headphones.
They could just have the computer produce random patterns and voilà.

 

[saladdays]

I don't hate Generations, but the whole shield modulation thing always threw me for a loop, especially since they had previously established in TNG that you could rotate modulation. You would think that would be the first thing the crew would have tried when the Bird of Prey was penetrating their shields. I mean, I guess you could say that the likelihood of perfectly matching frequencies was so small that no one thought that that was the reason, but still...

In any event, I've always assumed phasers, torpedoes, etc. were developed to be able to penetrate a ship's own shielding without any problem.

 

[TheSeeker]

You would think that would be the first thing the crew would have tried when the Bird of Prey was penetrating their shields.

Absolutely. They just wanted a new ship for the next movie so the big D was sacrificed by conveniently overlooking this point.

 

[saladdays]

Absolutely. They just wanted a new ship for the next movie so the big D was sacrificed by conveniently overlooking this point.

Yeah. I don't technically have a problem with the destruction of the D, but they could have done it in a number of different, better, ways.

 

[UssGlenn]

Would it be better or worse if the Klingons knew they were only going to get one chance? They send a volley of torpedoes that hit several critical areas, then the shield modulation changes so they can't shoot any more. It's too late for the D however, underscoring just how vulnerable unshielded ships are.

 

[tomswift2002]

Maybe a ship's phasers shift frequency in a specific pattern while firing and the shields match the pattern.
Just like noise cancelling headphones.
They could just have the computer produce random patterns and voilà.

I don’t think that was normal protocol. I remember Shelby telling Data to change the shield frequencies in “Best Of Both Worlds”.