Why doesn't starfleet Tell the Romulans to F*** off?

posted on January 8th, 2013, 8:45 pm

you can't just buy an Airbus and paint it in radar reflective paint and say "Tada! Stealth Bomber"..

HOW DO YOU KNOW MY PLANS?!

airbus actually do make military aircraft, but afaik none of them are geared towards stealth or bombing.

posted on January 8th, 2013, 10:35 pm

I'll put it this way:

Federation: "F*** you Romulans, we're making cloaking devices!"

Romulans: "Ok."

A month later the Federation is in ruins and the Romulans have conquered more then half their planets.


That's why the Federation has not tapped into cloaking devices. By the time they had some ready and operational the Romulans would have found out about it and declared war. So no it's not stupid to shy away from developing a tech that will almost certainly call a swarm of planet conquering hornets that can become invisible before you even get the tech out of the launch bay door. Even if there was a hint that Starfeet was developing a cloak I can guarantee important Federation targets would detonate in the night before construction of a cloaking device even started.

The Federation is not stupid for avoiding cloaks, they are smart for not losing half their infrastructure to Romulan saboteurs before a cloaking device was even halfway complete and a major war with a superior force was on their hands.

posted on January 9th, 2013, 12:35 am

Squire James, I believe I already stated that. I said the Romulans and Klingons likely design their ships to work with cloaking technology. My point was that the Federation did already develop a cloak prototype that worked fine on a Galaxy class starship that wasnt designed with cloaking in mind, and if a prototype works that well, it seems unlikely that the Federation would have an issue developing a production version that could be put on existing Federation designs. And yes like everyone elses cloaks it likely requires so much power that they cant use weapons or have shields (not that you would NEED shields whey your phased) but thats par of the course in the cloaking segment of Star Trek. Im not saying they could equip every ship at the drop of a hat, but from what we saw with the prototype, it doest seem like they have many bugs to work out to make it a production cloak.

And your analogy: you can't just buy an Airbus and paint it in radar reflective paint and say "Tada! Stealth Bomber". The system works as a whole not a sum of it's parts.

Well with a phase cloak you actually kinda can, even if the cloaking part isnt perfect and you can detect the ship, its phased so there isnt gonna be much anyone can do about it .

posted on January 9th, 2013, 2:03 pm

Going a little off on a tangent, but regarding phase cloaking, wouldn't it be possible to tune phasers or other energy weapons to work on that same phase and thus negate the phasing ability? A bit like when they altered their hand phasers to fight those Devidian creatures.

Also I think they said something on the phase cloaking episode about not knowing how long the phase cloak would stay working. Whilst this is probably largely down to the prototype nature of the cloak, it might also be down to the size, shape or composition of the Enterprise herself. Remember the Pegasus was an Oberth; FAR smaller, and constructed quite differently (older tech).

Would not be exactly a glorious moment if when the Federation sortied it's first phase cloak equipped ships, they all randomly lost their cloak at different points as they couldn't maintain their field. So, whilst the Enterprise did it (in an emergency, and due to their hero shields, the ship didn't dephase in the middle of a rock) I doubt that Starfleet would put such a temperamental technology into any service vessel, nor would it spend any more resources and time on a project that was deep sixed for political and face saving reasons some time beforehand. Remember the whole incident was due to a mutiny about the way that captain acted. The Federation doesn't like people to realise that things are not as utopian and wonderful as they say they are. (I believe a Marquis in DS9 said something to that effect also)

It's a TNG Genesis Project basically

posted on January 9th, 2013, 2:13 pm

Going a little off on a tangent, but regarding phase cloaking, wouldn't it be possible to tune phasers or other energy weapons to work on that same phase and thus negate the phasing ability? A bit like when they altered their hand phasers to fight those Devidian creatures.

still have to see them to know where to shoot. that was presumably still the whole point of a phase cloak, being invisible. but with phase cloak, accidental collisions with normal matter are impossible. the disadvantage is the same as with normal cloak, if they can find your position, they can shoot you when you're vulnerable.

i wonder if the romulans ever had an accident where 2 cloaked ships collided with each other.

about firing weapons out of phase, that would make a good torpedo. have it stay out of phase (and hence invisible) until the torpedo has passed through shields, then return to normal phase and detonate. the only way we've seen to force something to return to normal is anyon emissions, which would be a countermeasure to this torpedo.

posted on January 9th, 2013, 10:04 pm

One of the sillier episodes of DS9 was that Vulcan serial killer that killed everyone with a gun that use a mini transporter to transport bullets midflight through the stations structure. It was one of those WTF........why aren't they immediately giving these things out to all their soldiers. All those red shirts that died because they stood up to early or didn't duck quick enough could have lived if they could have just stayed behind their cover and used one of those guns.

Edit: I am so sorry for referring to the Feds fighters as soldiers, what was I thinking. I forgot that the Feds don't like aggressive terms like battleship etc. They probably are not called soldiers they are probably call Tactical Assistants.

posted on January 9th, 2013, 10:10 pm

The TR-116s were probably dropped because they worked... though I think the transporter wasn't actually part of the design.