vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 8, 2010 7:20:16 GMT -5
I've thought a lot about the cloaking device, and wondered why it is not in more widespread use. If you remember The Balance of Terror (one of my top three TOS episodes), and draw analogies to the technology of earth (past and present), ships equipped with cloaking devices are the equivalent of the submarine, where cloaked == submerged. The Balance of Terror was, in essence, a WWII movie, pitting the Allied destroyer commander (Kirk) against the German U-boat commander. It was the classic U-boat duel. Even the way Spock was able to create an improvised sonar set, where he could detect the Romulans at a moment in time but not track them in real time, and the way the Enterprise used her photons with proximity heads, in essence, using them like depth charges, while the Romulans fired these huge honking (plasma) torpedoes. The Romulans could not fire cloaked (submerged), this places the technology analogy at about WWII as well.
This was taken to the next level in Star Trek VI, where we saw a Bird of Prey that could fire while submerged (cloaked).
So here are my questions. Just as most of the major countries today have submarines, why don't most races have cloaked ships? With the exception of the Romulans, the Klingons, who licensed the technology from the Romulans, and the Defiant in DS9 (who borrowed the cloak from the Romulans, no one else uses cloaking technology. Now, using the submarine analogy, I don't think that you could grab the device and plug it into your ship like Scotty did in The Enterprise Incident, but rather ships with cloaking technology would be purpose-built from the hull out.
The other question is what happened to all the technology from ST VI? Ships that can fire from cloak and tracking photons? Both of these seem very valuable technologies that were never seen again in the canon of Trek.
Thoughts? --vr
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Post by putraack on Jan 8, 2010 10:19:12 GMT -5
First off, may I recommend the WW2 movie "The enemy below"-- a prime inspiration for Balance of Terror, IMO, and a great flick.
Second, I figure that cloaks are limited to the Romulans for some technical (but not technological) reason. Maybe some of these? - Romulan ships are purpose-built to use cloaks, others are not. - Operating the cloak sucks down a lot of fuel that other empires would rather use for zooming around. IIRC, we are told the cloaked ship is slower than the Enterprise, maybe it is also much shorter ranged. Is the Romulan Empire much smaller than the Federation? - In one or another TNG episode, I think I remember hearing that Romulan powerplants used a totally different form of power generation (singularities?)-- maybe these are easier to cloak than matter/antimatter reactions, or M/A reactions are near-impossible to hide? As far as I know, the power plant and warp drive would have to be the biggest signatures on a ship. - Scotty got away with it, 'cause he's a genius. I remember reading that the next Federation ship to test the cloak was lost or destroyed.
My answers are likely influenced by years and years of playing Star Fleet Battles.
As for the stuff seen in STVI, ... I got nuthin'.
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coffee
Lieutenant
"My chicken sandwich...and coffee." - James T. Kirk
Posts: 84
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Post by coffee on Jan 8, 2010 13:50:40 GMT -5
For the Federation, it's an honor thing: We don't do sneak attacks. For the Klingons, they didn't get the technology during the five-year mission (it would have been later). I don't know about the other races, but I like the ideas put forth above.
This question strikes to the heart of the whole Star Trek series. Writers come up with great technological devices (the transporter, the phaser, the cloaking device) that would make it too easy to get out of future problems. So the later writers have to find a way around it, like taking the phasers away or sabotaging the transporter. (This, I'm sure, is where the "no using the transporter while the shields are up" thing came from.)
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Post by Falconer on Jan 8, 2010 13:52:06 GMT -5
I do like thinking of it as sub vs destroyer from a story point of view, but there are a few things to consider in terms of “Trek Tech”. In Balance of Terror, Scotty states “their power is simple impulse” to which Kirk replies “Meaning we can outrun them.” Apparently there are a lot of fan debates about whether this means impulse propulsion or impulse power generators, not that I really grasp the difference, but the point I can grasp here is that a destroyer can travel faster than a sub; in fact, due to the vastness of space, perhaps the subs are only encountered along a border (Romulan Neutral Zone in TOS or Klingon Neutral Zone in TUC). The other point is made or implied in The Enterprise Incident, when Spock states “Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.” So in this episode the Romulans have developed a new generation of cloaking device, because the previous generation has been rendered useless by advances in technology which allow Starfleet vessels to see through the old cloaking device. Kirk and Spock steal the new generation cloaking device, and the implication (to me) is that by delivering it to their scientists, it, too, will become obsolete.
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 8, 2010 20:00:52 GMT -5
First off, may I recommend the WW2 movie "The enemy below"-- a prime inspiration for Balance of Terror, IMO, and a great flick. I know. Seen it several times and currently have it in my Netflix queue. You know, there aren't but about a handful of good sub flicks that spring to mind... Second, I figure that cloaks are limited to the Romulans for some technical (but not technological) reason. Maybe some of these? - Romulan ships are purpose-built to use cloaks, others are not. A couple of things make it hard for me to accept this. - Scotty, regardless of how talented an engineer and how good a hardware hacker, would have a difficult time integrating the cloaking device into the Enterprise's systems in so short a time. Let's face it, its like me taking the engine out of my Acura and putting it in my wife's Altima. Not gonna happen in the few minutes before the Romulans would have turned them into plasma. Heck, we have interoperability problems today between Air Force systems and Navy systems, and they are on the same side...
- If they were purpose built, would it be possible to steal one component and bestow invisibility on one's own ship? Just like you can't turn a frigate into a submarine by installing a sub's dive planes...
- The Romulans installed (or allowed to be installed) a cloaking device on the Defiant in DS9...
- Operating the cloak sucks down a lot of fuel that other empires would rather use for zooming around. IIRC, we are told the cloaked ship is slower than the Enterprise, maybe it is also much shorter ranged. Is the Romulan Empire much smaller than the Federation? Well, much like U-boats of WWII, which were also much slower when submerged and running on battery power (unlike today's crop of submarines), during non-combat periods, like when transiting a large area of open sea (space), they probably ran without cloak. Nominally, this would allow them to travel at warp (otherwise it would have taken them a lifetime to get to Earth Outpost 4 from Romulus at impulse). There is a fascinating discussion of this at www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/history-romulan.htm. An interesting theory that I had never considered, especially the last point: One point is that the Romulan commander said during the battle was "our fuel is nearly exhausted..." Does this mean fuel for the plasma torpedoes or fuel for the impulse engines? - In one or another TNG episode, I think I remember hearing that Romulan powerplants used a totally different form of power generation (singularities?)-- maybe these are easier to cloak than matter/antimatter reactions, or M/A reactions are near-impossible to hide? As far as I know, the power plant and warp drive would have to be the biggest signatures on a ship. See final point above... - Scotty got away with it, 'cause he's a genius. I remember reading that the next Federation ship to test the cloak was lost or destroyed. Hmmm... My answers are likely influenced by years and years of playing Star Fleet Battles. As I recall, Romulan ships are not limited to the 1 hex per turn that sublight represents in SFB. I'm too tired to go dig my rulebooks out of the basement to check... --vr
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 8, 2010 20:07:20 GMT -5
For the Federation, it's an honor thing: We don't do sneak attacks. For the Klingons, they didn't get the technology during the five-year mission (it would have been later). I don't know about the other races, but I like the ideas put forth above. Ah, but is there not a difference between a sneak attack and a tactical advantage? Just like submarines today, we don't use them for sneak attacks, rather for tactical advantages. Exactly.
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 8, 2010 20:15:44 GMT -5
I do like thinking of it as sub vs destroyer from a story point of view, but there are a few things to consider in terms of “Trek Tech”. In Balance of Terror, Scotty states “their power is simple impulse” to which Kirk replies “Meaning we can outrun them.” Apparently there are a lot of fan debates about whether this means impulse propulsion or impulse power generators, not that I really grasp the difference, but the point I can grasp here is that a destroyer can travel faster than a sub; in fact, due to the vastness of space, perhaps the subs are only encountered along a border (Romulan Neutral Zone in TOS or Klingon Neutral Zone in TUC). The other point is made or implied in The Enterprise Incident, when Spock states “Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.” So in this episode the Romulans have developed a new generation of cloaking device, because the previous generation has been rendered useless by advances in technology which allow Starfleet vessels to see through the old cloaking device. Kirk and Spock steal the new generation cloaking device, and the implication (to me) is that by delivering it to their scientists, it, too, will become obsolete. Or could he have meant cloaking technology in general? Remember that the Bird of Prey self-destructed, so the Federation never got its hands on that cloaking device.
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coffee
Lieutenant
"My chicken sandwich...and coffee." - James T. Kirk
Posts: 84
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Post by coffee on Jan 9, 2010 0:45:35 GMT -5
As I recall, Romulan ships are not limited to the 1 hex per turn that sublight represents in SFB. I'm too tired to go dig my rulebooks out of the basement to check... --vr The War Eagle isn't so limited, having warp power. But the War Bird is limited the one hex due to impulse power.
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Post by finarvyn on Jan 9, 2010 9:22:42 GMT -5
It's possible that cloaking technology is relative. You build a cloak, I make better sensors and now I can see you. You have to build a better cloak, but I respond by building even better sensors and now I can see you again.
The technology behind sensors would likely always lag behind that of the cloaks, since you wouldn't bother to build a sensor to see what hasn't been hidden yet, so folks with a cloaking devise would always have a bit of an edge. So, in The Enterprise Incident it's possible that Kirk wasn't stealing "the Cloaking Device" but simply trying to catch up in a hurry by obtaining a cloaking device.
Each nation could have its own specialty. The Federation might have better warp technology, so its ships might always have a bit of an edge even though others might be close behind. The Romulins might have better cloaks than everyone else. The Klingons have those nifty "glass shields" so they get blown apart from the aft. And so on.... :-)
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Post by putraack on Jan 9, 2010 21:14:14 GMT -5
As I recall, Romulan ships are not limited to the 1 hex per turn that sublight represents in SFB. I'm too tired to go dig my rulebooks out of the basement to check... That depends on the ship and the time, in SFB. For the bulk of the SFB history, Romulan ships have only non-tactical warp, meaning they can travel FTL, just not within some distance of another warp bubble. So, in SFB, they're stuck at 1 hex/turn. This has the side effect of making them inherently stealthy, which the cloak makes even better. After the Klingon-Romulan Treaty of Smarba (near the end of TOS, or Y159 in the SFU), the Romulans can get ships with tactical warp, which the other empires developed about a hundred years before. Why did the Roms never develop something others obviously have had for such a long time? The official SFU answer is a combination of Gorn (and Orion?) sabotage and massive amounts of political infighting among the Romulans. For me, the powerplants-relying-on-really-different-physics sounds like a rather important factor, so if you ask *me*, that becomes a part of it, too.
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Post by thedungeondelver on Jan 22, 2010 12:20:23 GMT -5
IIRC, the cloaking device in The Enterprise Incident was effectively destroyed by how Scotty had to interface it. There wasn't much left for the scientists to work backwards from.
Likewise, the cloaking technology of the Botany Bay (the renamed Klingon ship from ST:SFS and ST:TVH) was ruined when that ship sank below crush depth after its arrival back on Earth.
I can't recall if that's from novels or the FASA STRPG.
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Post by chgowiz on Jan 22, 2010 12:33:26 GMT -5
Likewise, the cloaking technology of the Botany Bay (the renamed Klingon ship from ST:SFS and ST:TVH) was ruined when that ship sank below crush depth after its arrival back on Earth. In the SF bay? There's no crush depth there! LOL!
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Post by Falconer on Jan 22, 2010 13:17:10 GMT -5
chgowiz is right about the Bay’s depth! BTW, “ H.M.S. Bounty” is the name of the Klingon ship that Kirk captured. “ S.S. Botany Bay” was the Khan’s prison barge.
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Post by blackbat242 on Jan 23, 2010 19:27:21 GMT -5
Botany Bay being the name Captain Cook gave the place where his crew became the first Europeans to set foot on Australia (on 29 April 1770).
Botany Bay was chosen as the site of the penal colony the British established in Australia on 18 January 1788 (which was the first permanent European settlement in Australia).
Which is why that name was chosen for the ship in which Khan Noonian Sing and the rest of his "supermen" were forcibly sent away from Earth... and then placed as a "penal colony" on an uninhabited planet by Kirk.
HMS Bounty was the name of the ship in which the famous mutiny took place... which is why Kirk chose that name for the Klingon ship they captured.
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vulcanridr
Lieutenant
I am in your Enterprise, haxoring your tubes...
Posts: 64
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Post by vulcanridr on Jan 25, 2010 17:35:57 GMT -5
chgowiz is right about the Bay’s depth! True, but she sank in the bay. After all, when Scotty released the whales, I don't think that closing the barn doors were paramount considering the chaos the probe was causing. And perhaps the corrosive salt water even affects alien metals...
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