So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten about?

[enterprisecvn65]

First I have to say I remember someone saying once that it's pretty funny that, right here in the present day, we have weapons capable of targeting and destroying ships or aircraft that are hundreds of miles away. Yet in EVERY sci-fi series they seem to have lost this capability, especially when it comes to space battles, where the target always has to be in visual range for weapons to be used on it.

Anyway what I want to know is why were two big breakthroughs in weaponry that were introduced in TUC, the BOP that could fired cloaked and the photon torpedo that could "track" its target by its exhaust seemingly never used again as far as I know...which includes TNG and most of DS9, don't know about VOY.

So as I understand it at the beginning of TOS noone has a cloak powerful enough to hide a starship. Later on the Romulans develop one and Kirk and Spock steal it and successfully integrate it into the Enterprise...and that's where it ends, we never see the Enterprise use a cloak again all the way to the end of TUC. Seems to me when they were refitting her for TMP and were basically tearing her apart that would have been a great time to say "Hey!!! Let's put a cloak on her, what an advantage that would be." But the TOS Federation never uses it again for whatever reason.

So it appears in TSFS, but has one big draw back, the ship doesn't have enough power to fire and keep the cloak at the same time. By TUC though they've developed the technology to fire and remain cloaked which is a HUGE advantage. I can accept them developing the technology with no problem. Submarines used to only stay submerged for 12 hrs at a time, the nuclear power changed that. Aircraft carriers couldn't launch and recover aircraft at the same time, but they invented the angled deck to allow it to be possible.

So the cloaked firing ship is used to great effect through most of the film, until the Enterprise thinks of a way to find the ship. Now I understand from a film standpoint they had to come up with a solution to beat Chang to the plasma tracking torpedo was a necessary plot device.

But in reality...really? I'm sure Starfleet has an advanced weapons development division that creates new and more powerful weapons or improves older ones. I would imagine that working on a weapon that could target and hit a cloaked ship would be a pretty high priority project. Apparently though by TUC they either hadn't found one yet, or had decided there was no way to do so. Yet, Spock (and I know he's smart and all) realizes the BOP's engines emit exhaust and Uhura thinks some research equipment for detecting gaseous clouds can work as a detection device.

So Spock and McCoy in a matter of minutes are able to install a scientific/exploration device into a photon torpedo, interface it perfectly and have it work flawlessly as it does track and hit the cloaked BOP. Starfleet weapons division must be made of the most incompetent people ever if they'd been working on it for years and couldn't come up with something the Enterprise crew in 5 minutes.

Anyway what I want to know is why are these two HUGE advances seemingly forgotten in the future. I don't recall anyone except Shinzon using a firing cloak again. And I don't remember anyone using photon torpedoes that can track a cloaked target.....BUT THESE WERE HUGE BREAKTHROUGHS!!!!!

So the Klingons and everyone else just gave up on the firing cloak because the prototype was destroyed?!?! It still doesn't change the fact if you use it correctly you can approach an enemy vessel and wipe it out before they know what happened. But noone seems to have any use for it ever again.

I know the Federation in TNG can't use cloaks because of some stupid treaty they signed with the Romulans, a totally untrustworthy, militaristic and xenophobic race. That'd be like the US saying to Russia OK we won't use ballistic missile submarines, but you can as long as you promise not to use them for hostile reasons. But no other power seems to have use for it either.

And the tracking photon torpedo...that's the 23rd equivalent of the heat seeking or radar guided missile where it can actually detect the target and zero in on it on it's own, instead of just firing at random, or just using visual ques, like they often do. It certainly would be handy to have on board if you suspected a cloaked vessel was around or if one cloaked in front of you to escape....which happened numerous times in the TNG era.

But again, apparently it did its job in TUC and wasn't pursued or needed anymore.

What happened? Did weapons technology peak in TUC and every power in the quadrant decided these things were too powerful to use in the future....or did they just forget they invented them?

It'd be like the US using the A bomb on Japan and then going "Well that weapon is powerful and did the trick, but we don't need to build anymore" and just forgot about it.

 

[Captain Rob]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

I have to agree with alot of this.
But the plasma seeking torpedo from TUC may have some problems.
It's essentially tracking the heated plasma exhaust coming from the BOP's impulse engines. Basically it's a heat-seeking missile. Riding up the exhaust trail until it hits it's target. That's fine if you're chasing a fighter jet in an atmosphere where it's engines run continuously. But in space, there's usually no friction to slow you down. So you only need to run your engines if you change course or change speed. I'm guessing that's why it's called an impulse engine. It only emits plasma when it's generating thrust. So the target's course is no longer a solid trail but instead is a series of different sized puffs (impulses). Now if I were a 23rd Century weapons designer making a plasma tracking torpedo. I sure would give it the ability to predict the course of it's target, based on the size and direction of the puffs. Essentially 'Connect the dots'.
The thing about the cloaking device is that for it to be useful in space. It has to mask ALL of the EM emissions, or any other detectable emissions, from its' host spacecraft. Not just visible light. It was mentioned in one of the early TNG episodes with the Romulans that they had greatly improved their cloaking devices. But you still can't mask the heat of the plasma coming from your engines. The only way I can think of would be to have an impulse engine that emits cold gas that matches that background temperature of the surrounding space. I think that the low velocity RCS thrusters of the Space shuttle used something like this. But it was for very low thrust impulses and very fine course adjustments. Sort of like shooting a fire extinguisher.

 

[Ithekro]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

The assumed progression is that the cloaks got better and the sensors got better. The Klingons either thought the firing while cloaked was a failure (as Kirk managed to destroy the prototype) or they thought it was dishonorable and dropped the line.

The other possible answer is that the cloaked BoP can only fire when cloaked at sublight speeds, with its shields down. Thus if Federation sensors are upgraded to detect plasma or triagulate the weapon firing position of the BoP form its torpedoes, than the unshielded BoP is pretty much dead, and of limited use.

The Klingons might have attemepted to correct the problems, but with the whole bit about Praxis they might not have had the time or funding to make any headway into the new cloaking devices, allow it to be shelved, or perhaps actuall being forced to shleve it by the Federation in return for help with repairing the Homeworld.

The Romulans may have gotten word of the device but either never got it to work right until the Dominion War, forced to upscale it to rediculous levels to get all the systems needed to cover the plasma trail and all the other tricks Starfleet had used to find cloaked ships over the previous 113 years. The alliance during the war likely allowing the Romulans to get a look at just what the Federation did to find their ships, and work on a total countermessure ship, not only against the Federation , but also against the Dominion which was able to find cloaked ships like USS Defiant,which also used a Romulan cloaking device.

As for torpedoes that can track plasma, we know torpedoes lock on to targets already and we rarely see Federation starships miss with torpedoes in the 24th century unless there is a known source of interference in play, or the torpedoes are used a warning shots. Federation phasers almost never miss. It could be they track all sorts of thing, it is just that cloaking devices used by the Klingons and Romulans got better at masking things to counter Federation sensors. Just they couldn't get these systems to work while also allowing them to fire while cloaked as the power requirements either became to great, or the cloak stopped worked as well once firing started.

We know by the 2360s Romulan cloaking devices were very difficult to track for the Federation. They sometimes could spot them, or knew enough to know there was a Romulan ship in the area, but not locate it accurately without the ship either decloaking or having it pass through a tachyon sensor net. The Dominion also would find ships using something like an antipolaron beam.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

The assumed progression is that the cloaks got better and the sensors got better.

Exactly, and that's all you need to know.

So the Klingon ship can fire when cloaked. Big deal. In some amount of time (months? a few years?), the Federation sensors will be able to see through the cloak of that ship, and it will no longer be cost-effective for the Klingons to deploy. You cannot assume that the next generation of Klingon ship with a superior cloak that the Federation cannot see through can itself fire when cloaked. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Timo]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

So as I understand it at the beginning of TOS noone has a cloak powerful enough to hide a starship.

One wonders... "Balance of Terror" is the only episode where our heroes would show amazement at invisibility. And it isn't even the first to feature the phenomenon: say, the Thasian ship popped out of nowhere in "Charlie X", eliciting no gasps of incredulity.

Sure, it might be surprising that Romulans know how to make their ships invisible. But there should be nothing "theoretical" about it, as Starfleet would have encountered many advanced species with the ability - quite as ENT justly shows happening.

Klingons in turn might have had invisibility down pat, too: they manage to get the drop on our heroes in "Errand of Mercy" despite the heroes being alerted to a state of war. Few other adversaries manage to enter weapons range unseen, so "invisibility" rather than "ludicrous speed" sounds the likelier reason for this particular tactical failure. But Klingons might have trouble cloaking their bigger ships with the same efficacy as the small scouts - meaning Kirk has trivially easy time destroying the assailant with one volley, while suffering minimal damage himself. And later in ST3, Kirk would immediately deduce that a cloaked vessel is a Klingon Bird of Prey and not, say, a Klingon Battle Cruiser or a Romulan Warhawk... Possibly because it's the Klingons, not the Romulans, who have a tradition of operating small cloakships.

the ship doesn't have enough power to fire and keep the cloak at the same time

This is not an explicit reason for Kruge decloaking. Kirk speculates his opponent might need to decloak, for reasons he doesn't explain, but Kirk is not certain.

One might argue that cloaks consume only minimal power. After all, DS9 frequently shows "handheld" cloaks, capable of cloaking themselves without being hooked up to anything let alone to a warp core -category power source. And ST4 hinges on a Klingon ship deprived of main power and power for transporters (another apparent low-pow application) still effortlessly maintaining a cloak.

An alternate reason for decloaking before firing is that firing reveals your position anyway - so if the cloak consumes even a little bit of power, that power is better spent elsewhere. But that sounds like a pennywise thing to do, and not a Klingon maneuver at all.

Klingons might choose to decloak for uniquely Klingon reasons: showing their face to their would-be victims may be psychologically vital. But would Romulans, that dishonorable bunch of backstabbers, schemers and surprise attackers, do the same?

Yet there is one other option that might make sense. Firing a Trek weapon supposedly necessitates priming it first: photon torpedoes need to be loaded in advance of firing, phasers need to be powered up, and combat dialogue from the earliest days of TOS seems to emphasize the necessity of such preparations. Weapons are high-power applications compared to cloaks or transporters. Perhaps there is no point in maintaining a cloak when you preheat your phasers, because that preheating will shine through anyway, ruining the effect?

Klingons might on occasion forgo such precautions, thinking that even partial cloaking is better than none at all. Romulans, those cowards, would always decloak and then power up weapons and shields as a matter of policy, and that would carry over to the Defiant and its Romulan-donated cloak. And certain Romulan-minded Klingons would follow the "foreign policy", too...

This would have certain consequences on the rat race between cloaks and weapons, too.

So the cloaked firing ship is used to great effect through most of the film, until the Enterprise thinks of a way to find the ship.

It's not the obvious way, though. For all the improvements, the firing of a torpedo still makes Chang's ship quite visible: the torpedo doesn't quietly swim out before activating its engine or whatnot, but brightly illuminates the firing vessel, providing a good target at which to aim with regular phasers.

The problem is that Kirk cannot target swiftly enough to score a hit. And Chang no doubt maneuvers aggressively after each shot to avoid being hit by blind return fire (which limits his own rate of fire, even when Kirk never wastes shots trying to fire back). But that could change soon enough, as Starfleet acquires slightly more powerful computers or slightly more optimized targeting programs. And the Klingons would be back to square one.

Now, such natural development would explain why Klingons don't bother to fire from under a cloak in the 24th century any more. There may be brief periods of history when their cloak is fast enough and the guns of the Feds slow enough, but we happen to miss all of those. (Instead, we see a rapidly recloaking drone in "Arsenal of Freedom" that manages to challenge even 24th century Starfleet fire control systems and frustrate Worf - and it factually is swifter than Chang's ship in that respect.)

As for the other half of the equation, the tracking torpedo, that never made any sense to me. Why would a starship need a tailpipe? It's not Flash Gordon's rocket...

Sniffer-based guidance could be thwarted simply by refusing to emit the telltale scent. If a BoP absolutely needs to vent stuff, it can wait until opportune moments to make a clandestine drop (preferably in a sealed canister), then hold again for a while until the next drop.

The classic alternative is using decoys. In Trek, there surely exist "sensor echoes" and whatnot, something more refined than sowing physical scent markers or flares or the like.

It could be they track all sorts of thing, it is just that cloaking devices used by the Klingons and Romulans got better at masking things to counter Federation sensors.

This sounds likely. Even in "Redemption pt II", Data scores hits on fully cloaked Romulan Warbirds using a suitable telltale emission, but the writers are careful to identify that emission as unique and unusable in other tactical situations. But after "Face of the Enemy", the Feds gain the ability to spot quantum singularity powerplants, and the big Romulan advantage is all gone, as AQS emissions appear to leak through their best cloaks ("Visionary" even if not "Improbable Cause"/"The Die is Cast").

Just because we don't see maneuvering in torpedoes is no reason to disbelieve in tracking. To the contrary, the better the guidance system is at tracking, the less the torpedo needs to waste time and propulsion in making tight turns. Kirk's TUC weapon just had a very poor tracker, meaning it had to maneuver a lot.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

The assumed progression is that the cloaks got better and the sensors got better.

Exactly, and that's all you need to know.

So the Klingon ship can fire when cloaked. Big deal. In some amount of time (months? a few years?), the Federation sensors will be able to see through the cloak of that ship, and it will no longer be cost-effective for the Klingons to deploy. You cannot assume that the next generation of Klingon ship with a superior cloak that the Federation cannot see through can itself fire when cloaked. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm sorry it just doesn't hold water that "The sensors got good enough where a firing cloak was impractical"

How many times in the TNG era did a cloaked Romulan ship appear right in front of the Enterprise and Picard and co were like "Oh shit.....where the hell did that Warbird come from" or a Warbird cloaks to escape and the Enterprise has no idea where they went.

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

Sure they could detect cloaks if they did some coordinated effort between many ships, or if a single ship was using a specific process. But it really seems like under normal operating conditions this wasn't the case. Plus they only seemed to deploy these tactics if they thought a ship was there and it wasn't like it was a standard sensor or procedure that was always operating.

At any rate being able to fire first undetected is a HUGE advantage. You strike first the enemy may be unable to fight back even when they know you are there, or it may destroy them completely.

Submarines can be detected by SONAR, but it doesn't always negate the sub's advantage to approach undetected and fire first and I don't navies not building submarines just because countermeasures exist that might detect them.

Everything in the TNG era points to cloaks still being extremely effective in many cases and adding the ability to fire would only make it that much more dangerous. There is no practical reason why this technology that was invented some 80 years before still wouldn't be around and used on a regular basis.

 

[Cyke101]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

To be fair, Shinzon's cloak was supposed to be state-of-the-art and revolutionary. It was among the list of impressive tech that our heroes list off in order to intimidate them: 52 pulse disruptor cannon, 27 photon torpedo launchers, two layers of shields, the cloak itself, the size of the ship, etc. etc. So it seems unfair to compare the Scimitar to the ships before it in that regard.

(And that's the last time I'll defend Nemesis.)

Overall though, I'm partially with you on the point. TOS space battles used to take place over huge distances, but ever since TWOK and the techniques/technology to film two ships in a dogfight, getting two or more ships on screen simultaneously has been the norm and drastically reduced the range of engagement (oftentimes even contradicting dialogue -- TNG would say the enemy ship is firing weapons thousands of kilometers away, but on screen they'll fight nose-to-nose).

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

The assumed progression is that the cloaks got better and the sensors got better.

Exactly, and that's all you need to know.

So the Klingon ship can fire when cloaked. Big deal. In some amount of time (months? a few years?), the Federation sensors will be able to see through the cloak of that ship, and it will no longer be cost-effective for the Klingons to deploy. You cannot assume that the next generation of Klingon ship with a superior cloak that the Federation cannot see through can itself fire when cloaked. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm sorry it just doesn't hold water that "The sensors got good enough where a firing cloak was impractical"

How many times in the TNG era did a cloaked Romulan ship appear right in front of the Enterprise and Picard and co were like "Oh shit.....where the hell did that Warbird come from" or a Warbird cloaks to escape and the Enterprise has no idea where they went.

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

Sure they could detect cloaks if they did some coordinated effort between many ships, or if a single ship was using a specific process. But it really seems like under normal operating conditions this wasn't the case. Plus they only seemed to deploy these tactics if they thought a ship was there and it wasn't like it was a standard sensor or procedure that was always operating.

At any rate being able to fire first undetected is a HUGE advantage. You strike first the enemy may be unable to fight back even when they know you are there, or it may destroy them completely.

Submarines can be detected by SONAR, but it doesn't always negate the sub's advantage to approach undetected and fire first and I don't navies not building submarines just because countermeasures exist that might detect them.

Everything in the TNG era points to cloaks still being extremely effective in many cases and adding the ability to fire would only make it that much more dangerous. There is no practical reason why this technology that was invented some 80 years before still wouldn't be around and used on a regular basis.

And you know that what we see in NEM is the same generation of cloaking technology as in TUC.... how? Because given every thing said in Nemesis, it's a superior cloak to anything that's come before, which is perfectly in line with what I said.

 

[-Brett-]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

First I have to say I remember someone saying once that it's pretty funny that, right here in the present day, we have weapons capable of targeting and destroying ships or aircraft that are hundreds of miles away. Yet in EVERY sci-fi series they seem to have lost this capability, especially when it comes to space battles, where the target always has to be in visual range for weapons to be used on it.

Dialogue is a better representation of technical capabilities than visuals, and dialogue gives combat ranges in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

That ships appear in the same frame is just artistic license.

 

[Ithekro]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

The assumption we have to make is that the TUC style fire when cloaked system was impractical very quickly. It was mentioned someplace that Chang was firing a torpedo every 30 seconds or so. The better Federation starships can take individual torpedo hits quite well usually. With their shields up even better. The modern starships are usuallt firing multiple torpedoes at once with a lot of phaser fire to back it up. Two torpedoes a minute is not going to break the shields of a Ambassador-class starship, much less a Galaxy-class ship. This could be the flaw in the old system. Too much power to cloak and move that only one torpedo tube could be powered and even them only loaded twice a minute.

The cloaking device of Kruge seemed to need to be turned off so that power could be switched to weapons. This seems to be the standard for a ling time. Chang's ship could fire when cloaked, but we don't know for sure how limited it is otherwise. We only see them fighting at sublight speed and only firing every 30 seconds or so.

By TNG, the Klingon ships seem to be able to do more while cloaked, though I've attempting to remember if they could have their shields up while cloaked. I know the D12 in Generations flaw resulted in the ship being forced to cloak and drop its shields by a transmission from Enterprise. I don't recall if the shields have to be down for the cloak to be on. I know this wasn't that much of a problem for USS Defiant because of the advanced armor she had could take a pounding in the time between decloaking and raising shields. The Romulan cloak on Defiant seemed to take a lot of power if I recall correctly. Though the ship could still operate at warp speeds while cloaked (it seemed to need to lower the cloak for a second to use the transporters in some instances).

The other question would be, how intensive on power usage are the ship's weapons? Do the torpedoes require less energy to operate than the phasers or disruptors?

 

[Timo]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

By TNG, the Klingon ships seem to be able to do more while cloaked, though I've attempting to remember if they could have their shields up while cloaked.

At the end of "Redemption pt I", one of the rebel vessels (a largish ship even if of the Bird of Prey shape) disengages and cloaks when Kurn's identical-looking BoP arrives. Kurn nevertheless manages to squeeze off several shots that hit the invisible enemy. Said enemy does not explode!

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/season-4/4x26/redemption-hd-333.jpg

The above certainly looks like a hit on an (invisible) bubble shield. Although admittedly we know that the hulls of Klingon ships can take quite a pounding even with shields completely down (say, "Return to Grace"), and that cloaks and shields can both be skintight. So that could be a hit on an unshielded or shielded hull alike.

(Another interesting aspect of that scene is that Kurn's arrival surprises the enemy. Not only that, but the enemy is only awakened by the first disruptor bolts slamming against his shields. The bolts come from outside the frame, so we're left to speculate - did Kurn perhaps fire them from under a cloak?)

Elsewhere it's established that Klingons can beam through cloaks without compromising anything. Not only does this work against the primitives of Earth in ST4:TVH, but also against the vigilant defenses of the Romulan Homeworld in "Unification"!

That certain individual Klingons decide not to raise shields until after decloaking is probably doctrinal rather than technological. Or then sheer bravado.

The Romulan cloak on Defiant seemed to take a lot of power if I recall correctly.

What was stated was something of the opposite: if the ship used a lot of power, say, at high warp, the cloak could not hide the usage and the ship would became slightly detectable. The cloak itself consuming power was not mentioned as such.

It is only in "Balance of Terror" that Spock speculates that cloaks would be power-hungry. And the enemy sort of confirms this:

Commander: "We grow visible. Attend the cloaking system!"
Underling: "It consumes much power, Commander. With no enemy to concern us-"

Yet the Commander apparently doesn't value his underling's expertise much. This prototype might be power-starved for a variety of reasons, such as running at high speed (for a "submarine"), firing that plasma weapon, or simply being shoddy work because of lack of previous experience by the builders. Later events show cloaks as low-power systems in general.

Though the ship could still operate at warp speeds while cloaked (it seemed to need to lower the cloak for a second to use the transporters in some instances).

This happened in "The Search", where the heroes were still new to the device and took advice from their resident Romulan. It might be a doctrinal hang-up specific to the Romulan Star Empire and its allies, as Klingons other than the Duras traitors certainly don't see the need.

The other question would be, how intensive on power usage are the ship's weapons? Do the torpedoes require less energy to operate than the phasers or disruptors?

Good question. It might even be split in three: which type of weapon takes more power to fire, which takes more power to bring to firing readiness, and which takes more power to maintain in firing readiness?

We could speculate that torps are easy to prepare, because our heroes could do it fully automatically in ST3:TSfS. Or perhaps they had done the hard work earlier on, and torpedoes are only easy to keep in readiness once prepared? For some reason, our heroes did not opt for phasers there, even though one would think phasers could better be targeted against a suddenly emerging enemy, and would reach that target a vital few seconds faster.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[enterprisecvn65]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

Exactly, and that's all you need to know.

So the Klingon ship can fire when cloaked. Big deal. In some amount of time (months? a few years?), the Federation sensors will be able to see through the cloak of that ship, and it will no longer be cost-effective for the Klingons to deploy. You cannot assume that the next generation of Klingon ship with a superior cloak that the Federation cannot see through can itself fire when cloaked. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm sorry it just doesn't hold water that "The sensors got good enough where a firing cloak was impractical"

How many times in the TNG era did a cloaked Romulan ship appear right in front of the Enterprise and Picard and co were like "Oh shit.....where the hell did that Warbird come from" or a Warbird cloaks to escape and the Enterprise has no idea where they went.

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

Sure they could detect cloaks if they did some coordinated effort between many ships, or if a single ship was using a specific process. But it really seems like under normal operating conditions this wasn't the case. Plus they only seemed to deploy these tactics if they thought a ship was there and it wasn't like it was a standard sensor or procedure that was always operating.

At any rate being able to fire first undetected is a HUGE advantage. You strike first the enemy may be unable to fight back even when they know you are there, or it may destroy them completely.

Submarines can be detected by SONAR, but it doesn't always negate the sub's advantage to approach undetected and fire first and I don't navies not building submarines just because countermeasures exist that might detect them.

Everything in the TNG era points to cloaks still being extremely effective in many cases and adding the ability to fire would only make it that much more dangerous. There is no practical reason why this technology that was invented some 80 years before still wouldn't be around and used on a regular basis.

And you know that what we see in NEM is the same generation of cloaking technology as in TUC.... how? Because given every thing said in Nemesis, it's a superior cloak to anything that's come before, which is perfectly in line with what I said.

OK so it's implied the Scimitar is some kind of revolutionary ship in many ways and maybe an improved cloak is one of those breakthroughs.

But in TNG there were many episodes, before the Scimitar was created, where warbirds either cloaked or uncloaked right in front of the Enterprise and Picard had no idea it was there until he sees it.

So even the "standard" cloak of the TNG era seems to be almost impossible to detect with regular sensing equipment. In fact in that one episode where Deanna is on the Romulan ship pretending to be a member Tal Shiar they have to deliberately sabotage the cloak so the Enterprise can detect something.

Seems like cloaks are pretty damn effective in the TNG era....doesn't make sense adding the ability to fired cloaked wouldn't have been further developed since TUC. Just seems like it was totally abandoned.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

I'm sorry it just doesn't hold water that "The sensors got good enough where a firing cloak was impractical"

How many times in the TNG era did a cloaked Romulan ship appear right in front of the Enterprise and Picard and co were like "Oh shit.....where the hell did that Warbird come from" or a Warbird cloaks to escape and the Enterprise has no idea where they went.

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

Sure they could detect cloaks if they did some coordinated effort between many ships, or if a single ship was using a specific process. But it really seems like under normal operating conditions this wasn't the case. Plus they only seemed to deploy these tactics if they thought a ship was there and it wasn't like it was a standard sensor or procedure that was always operating.

At any rate being able to fire first undetected is a HUGE advantage. You strike first the enemy may be unable to fight back even when they know you are there, or it may destroy them completely.

Submarines can be detected by SONAR, but it doesn't always negate the sub's advantage to approach undetected and fire first and I don't navies not building submarines just because countermeasures exist that might detect them.

Everything in the TNG era points to cloaks still being extremely effective in many cases and adding the ability to fire would only make it that much more dangerous. There is no practical reason why this technology that was invented some 80 years before still wouldn't be around and used on a regular basis.

And you know that what we see in NEM is the same generation of cloaking technology as in TUC.... how? Because given every thing said in Nemesis, it's a superior cloak to anything that's come before, which is perfectly in line with what I said.

OK so it's implied the Scimitar is some kind of revolutionary ship in many ways and maybe an improved cloak is one of those breakthroughs.

But in TNG there were many episodes, before the Scimitar was created, where warbirds either cloaked or uncloaked right in front of the Enterprise and Picard had no idea it was there until he sees it.

So even the "standard" cloak of the TNG era seems to be almost impossible to detect with regular sensing equipment. In fact in that one episode where Deanna is on the Romulan ship pretending to be a member Tal Shiar they have to deliberately sabotage the cloak so the Enterprise can detect something.

Seems like cloaks are pretty damn effective in the TNG era....doesn't make sense adding the ability to fired cloaked wouldn't have been further developed since TUC. Just seems like it was totally abandoned.

My point is that these are different cloaks, the power plants for the ships are different, so everything is different. You can be sure that the Romulans would have wanted to add all sorts of wonderful features. The corollary here is that the Ent-D would (to a practical certainty) have been able to see through the cloak on Chang's ship; that cloak was decades old.

 

[Timo]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

When the Romulans venture into Federation space in "Face of the Enemy", they seem mortally afraid that they will be detected, sooner or later. Clearly, the rat race between cloaks and sensors is a neck-to-neck one.

So if the ability to fire through a cloak, or preheat your guns under a cloak, imposes even a slight penalty... Then the cloak-users of the 2360s will refrain from implementing that ability. The cloak-users of the 2380s may have different ideas again, and perhaps firing through cloaks was a regular thing in the 2340s as well but impossible in the 2320s, common in the 2300s but unthinkable in the 2280s, etc.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MacLeod]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

I'm sorry it just doesn't hold water that "The sensors got good enough where a firing cloak was impractical"

How many times in the TNG era did a cloaked Romulan ship appear right in front of the Enterprise and Picard and co were like "Oh shit.....where the hell did that Warbird come from" or a Warbird cloaks to escape and the Enterprise has no idea where they went.

They couldn't detect Shinzon's cloak either. So this "Sensors render a firing cloak useless" doesn't hold up to what the show seems to indicate.

Sure they could detect cloaks if they did some coordinated effort between many ships, or if a single ship was using a specific process. But it really seems like under normal operating conditions this wasn't the case. Plus they only seemed to deploy these tactics if they thought a ship was there and it wasn't like it was a standard sensor or procedure that was always operating.

At any rate being able to fire first undetected is a HUGE advantage. You strike first the enemy may be unable to fight back even when they know you are there, or it may destroy them completely.

Submarines can be detected by SONAR, but it doesn't always negate the sub's advantage to approach undetected and fire first and I don't navies not building submarines just because countermeasures exist that might detect them.

Everything in the TNG era points to cloaks still being extremely effective in many cases and adding the ability to fire would only make it that much more dangerous. There is no practical reason why this technology that was invented some 80 years before still wouldn't be around and used on a regular basis.

And you know that what we see in NEM is the same generation of cloaking technology as in TUC.... how? Because given every thing said in Nemesis, it's a superior cloak to anything that's come before, which is perfectly in line with what I said.

OK so it's implied the Scimitar is some kind of revolutionary ship in many ways and maybe an improved cloak is one of those breakthroughs.

But in TNG there were many episodes, before the Scimitar was created, where warbirds either cloaked or uncloaked right in front of the Enterprise and Picard had no idea it was there until he sees it.

So even the "standard" cloak of the TNG era seems to be almost impossible to detect with regular sensing equipment. In fact in that one episode where Deanna is on the Romulan ship pretending to be a member Tal Shiar they have to deliberately sabotage the cloak so the Enterprise can detect something.

Seems like cloaks are pretty damn effective in the TNG era....doesn't make sense adding the ability to fired cloaked wouldn't have been further developed since TUC. Just seems like it was totally abandoned.

True, but it could have taken decades of research to get the ability to fire when cloaked, someone develops a sensor that can see through that cloack, so you develop a new cloack that sensors can no longer pentrate, it could decades more to get that ability back. During which time the other side is developing even more advanced sensors to see through your new cloak. Just because we don't see that ability to fire whilst cloak doesn't mean it isn't being developed, all it means is that they haven't developed the ability to fire whilst cloaked with the current generation of cloaks.

 

[EnriqueH]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

I think the technological arguments above make sense, but I'd also like to add:

At least for the Klingons, firing while cloaked could be easily interpreted as cowardly, dishonorable, and not befitting a warrior, leading to its technology being discontinued or falling out of fashion.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

As was pointed out in DSN's "Way of the Warrior" nothing is more honourable than victory if I remeber correctly including sneek tactics.

 

[Timo]

Re: So why are weapon advances shown in TUC just totally forgotten abo

And conversely, everything your enemy or competitor does is automatically dishonorable, unless it fails to help him defeat you... Then you can go all "Oh, Rommel was such a fine soldier!" or "We totally respect Gorshkov for his strategic vision!" or "Sure I can drink with you, Duras sympathizer - just keep on banging your head against the brick wall that is my mighty House fleet!"

Timo Saloniemi