Ideas for how to find cloaked ships.....

posted on January 6th, 2013, 9:35 am

My idea is a bunch of squirt guns located all over the surface of the ship. A liquid would be squirted out into space in all directions and it would freeze into little tiny pellets. Eventually they are going to hit the cloaked ship, assuming it isn't one of those phased cloaks, and that would reveal it's location. If the liquid had trace amounts of something that could be detected by scanners such as biological material then it would stick to the ship. Waste urine fits the bill just nicely.

posted on January 6th, 2013, 10:42 am

a paint bomb basically, i think we've all had the idea, it would work when you know a cloaked ship is nearby. like in nemesis. but then cloak wouldn't be as fun.

posted on January 6th, 2013, 10:45 am

Ah nuts.........thought I was on to something there.

Actually the paint idea would be even better since it could be glow in the dark.

posted on January 6th, 2013, 10:23 pm

Would that really be effective with the distances involved?

posted on January 6th, 2013, 10:43 pm

Probably not, space is kinda big for what sounds like a scattershot ability.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 12:34 am

Probably not, space is kinda big for what sounds like a scattershot ability.

the idea isn't to cause damage. just to have something stick to the hull of a cloaked ship, something that is easily detectable.

all it would take is a liquid that emits a detectable radiation, any liquid that starts to move in an abnormal pattern has stuck to a ship. the further out you go, the bigger the gap between particles of liquid. this would limit the countermeasure to when you know a cloaked ship is nearby. at other times it forces cloaked ships to stay away for fear of being stuck with goo.

the enterprise did something similar with its phasers in nemesis, shoot everywhere, hope you land a hit.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 3:05 am

So all the Klingon Defence Force would need to do to defeat your new cloak detector is to coat their Bird of Prey in Teflon

posted on January 7th, 2013, 4:09 am

I don't know off-hand the distances usually seen in Federation-Romulan encounters, but I would guess that they would be large enough that the cloaked ship would have to be really, really close to be detected by this. You're essentially shooting mass off into space, and compared to the speeds the ships can go the projectiles are going to be moving pretty slowly. It certainly wouldn't be a good idea to use generally, but if you knew a cloaked ship was nearby it could have limited usefulness. But then, firing phasers off randomly can have a similar effect.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 5:15 am

I can't remember the specific episode of DS9, but it started off with the crew doing some sort of "hunt the changeling" exercise on board the station. They went into the rooms with the Type 3 phasers and had them set to super wide beam mode. I wonder why the Enterprise E didn't do that with their blind firing. Even if you don't do much damage with your beam all spread out, you would instantly know where a cloaked ship was if you managed to hit it and then the beam could simply lock on to it and then use other phasers and torpedoes to blow it up.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 5:38 am

I can't remember the specific episode of DS9, but it started off with the crew doing some sort of "hunt the changeling" exercise on board the station. They went into the rooms with the Type 3 phasers and had them set to super wide beam mode. I wonder why the Enterprise E didn't do that with their blind firing. Even if you don't do much damage with your beam all spread out, you would instantly know where a cloaked ship was if you managed to hit it and then the beam could simply lock on to it and then use other phasers and torpedoes to blow it up.

Is that something ship phasers can do? I could see it being more useful in handheld models than ship phaser arrays, so it's possible that only handheld phasers can do that. If not, that would definitely be a better cloak detection method.

As a sidenote, that was a cool episode. (Though I don't remember the name or anything.)

posted on January 7th, 2013, 12:23 pm

So all the Klingon Defence Force would need to do to defeat your new cloak detector is to coat their Bird of Prey in Teflon

funny, but it doesn't work either. when the paint bomb goes off it would generate an expanding sphere of paint. as it expands, the gaps between particles of paint would all be roughly similar. if a ship with teflon blocked the movement of paint, there would be an instant hole in the sphere to target. even if the paint didn't stick.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 4:01 pm

Actually, that's a similar concept to another 2D game that I play -

Solar Vengeance - The main webpage appears to be down at the moment (probably because it is being updated for the Ipad release): Home Page

They have two different ships for cloak detect, Inkspot & Cloak Detector

The Inkspot is self-explanatory - This ship moves about (usually on a user-defined patrol route or point), and when it collides with a cloaked ship....it becomes visible.

The Cloak Detector does not make cloaked ships visible, but rather "points" toward the closest cloaked ship within it's scan radius.

The combination of these two ships provide a measure of defense against cloaked opponents, with the trade-off being that you have two less ship types to use in-game (there is a limit of 6 ship types).

Just some food for thought......

posted on January 7th, 2013, 4:53 pm

So all the Klingon Defence Force would need to do to defeat your new cloak detector is to coat their Bird of Prey in Teflon

funny, but it doesn't work either. when the paint bomb goes off it would generate an expanding sphere of paint. as it expands, the gaps between particles of paint would all be roughly similar. if a ship with teflon blocked the movement of paint, there would be an instant hole in the sphere to target. even if the paint didn't stick.

True enough, but the same can be achieved with a depth charge type weapon, as the explosive flash would quickly show any cloaked ships, sort of like an "energy silhouette". They used this principle in Starfleet Command and Klingon Academy. The concept of the paint/freeze gun thing was to stick particles to a cloaked ship so it could be tracked, not to momentarily flash the location.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 5:24 pm

the idea isn't to cause damage. just to have something stick to the hull of a cloaked ship, something that is easily detectable.

all it would take is a liquid that emits a detectable radiation, any liquid that starts to move in an abnormal pattern has stuck to a ship. the further out you go, the bigger the gap between particles of liquid. this would limit the countermeasure to when you know a cloaked ship is nearby. at other times it forces cloaked ships to stay away for fear of being stuck with goo.

Who said anything about damage? But thanks for explaining why scattershot wouldn't be much help at a distance.

posted on January 7th, 2013, 5:36 pm

True enough, but the same can be achieved with a depth charge type weapon, as the explosive flash would quickly show any cloaked ships, sort of like an "energy silhouette". They used this principle in Starfleet Command and Klingon Academy. The concept of the paint/freeze gun thing was to stick particles to a cloaked ship so it could be tracked, not to momentarily flash the location.

the cloak already compensates for energy based things, like light and active sensors. cloak allows passage for these. more energy would be needed (eg phaser/disruptor/photon torp) which isn't cheap or effective.

paint/water/liquid is matter, which isn't affected by normal cloaks, and is cheap, as it doesn't need to do any damage.