Romulans and the Cloak

[SFRabid]

When this came up a few months I was confused, thinking they only could cloak mines during ENT. It was pointed out that the ship also cloaked and when I watched the episode again I saw it for myself. For quite a while I could not figure out why I thought only mines could cloak. Last night I started reading "The Good That Men Do" again. First time I bailed out 1/3 of the way through. There is was, a passage about Romulans working on cloaking technology and only being able to cloak small devices but not large ships. The writers of the book tried to explain it away saying the prototype ship that could cloak was destroyed and the advancement in technology lost. I don't buy that either.

 

[Praetor]

A Future Guy did it.

 

[Omega_Glory]

The only tracking the Enterprise could get in BOT was a vague reading of motion. They had to spread their fire out hoping to get a hit, rather than shooting at a specific target. Tracking was pretty poor really. It would be akin to standing off 400 yards from a large tract of woods (many acres); hearing a sound from that area; and firing multiple rifle shots blindly at the general area of the sound. As I said, pretty poor tracking for combat.

And both Kirk and Spock were surprised, genuinely surprised at the cloaking device.....not what you would expect if the technology was known to exist in the Romulan space navy.

Maybe Enterprise should be considered an alternate timeline.....or Starfleet really is a lame organization. Sometimes its really hard to reconcile what these "writers" do.

stuff that may have been officially secreted away in some back place might not be known to all line officers unfortunately...

but while yes they had issues with targeting they pretty much knew exactly every move that ship was making..

SPOCK: I have a blip on the motion sensor. Could be the intruder.


SPOCK: Blip has changed its heading. And in a very leisurely manoeuvre. They may not be aware of us.


SPOCK: His heading is now one eleven mark fourteen. The exact heading a Romulan would take, Jim, for the Neutral Zone and home.


KIRK: Negative. You and Mister Sulu will match its course and speed with the object on our sensors exactly, move for move. If he has sensors, I want him to think we're a reflection, an echo

SULU: They're turning, sir. We're staying with them.
SPOCK: Steady on one eleven mark fourteen. Back on their original course, Captain, toward the Neutral Zone.

they wouldnt have been able to pull of being the "reflection" if they hadnt been able to track their every move exactly.

Yet they had to use proximity fused "phasers" because they couldn't lock on to the target. Firing at an approximate point in space rather than an exact target.

 

[Timo]

Remember that they were firing at a target that was two emergency-warp-minutes away and moving. That's bound to be several lighthours of distance - way more than any other instance of ship-to-ship phaser fire in Star Trek. Even had the target been fully visible, I for sure would have chosen proximity-detonating weapons rather than trusted my aim.

True that their aim didn't improve all that much even when they closed the distance...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Omega_Glory]

^^I just watched BOT this past weekend and they only fired one time at the distance your'e suggesting. That was just before the Romulan ship would cross into the neutral zone. Kirk decided to try one more time to hit the thing before the Ent had to cross into the zone herself. There is discussion of "a hit at this range would be the wildest stroke of luck". At particular moment, the Enterprise was at extraordinary long range...but that would seem to be the only time.

The rest of the battle seemed to be a much closer range. Matter of fact, no range was ever discussed except "at extreme range" when they got a visual early on. They did accelerate just before firing a couple of times, but no mention of their intial speed is made, so there isn't much to go on.

In the briefing room, Sulu argues with Stiles on how do they aim their phasers since the ship is cloaked. Stiles suggests using sensors. Sulu says something about hoping for a lucky hit.

Its pretty clear that the cloak has rendered the targeting scanners pretty much inoperative and thats why they are using proximity phasers and targeting an area of space rather than locking onto the enemy.

 

[Timo]

Indeed. I wonder what these targeting scanners are, if not the "sensors" of Stiles or the "sensors" of Spock?

If the parlance obeys the intention of "scanners" being active (like radar) and "sensors" being passive (like microphone or camera), then it makes a great deal of sense that (some) sensors might remain useful while targeting systems based on scanners aren't applicable. With a radar-like device, one has to aim the scanning beam before one can obtain a scan. It can be done blindly here on Earth, where distances are small and targets have great angular size. In space combat, it might take centuries to hit a typically tiny and distant target with a scanning beam unless there were telltale emissions to provide initial aim.

Timo Saloniemi