Star Wars Cloaking Devices

[User1627]

it went against their moral laws.

Which is what I stated earlier as well.
Whatever the reasons for them not using WMD, they don't, even those who aren't outlawed through treaties, like the Genesis torpedo...

So it again comes down to:
Giving the Federation their one-of-a-kind, never-used-again WMD in a vs scenario is dishonest, because they never used them even when useful in their own wars...

Next time you shave, try standing an inch or two closer to the blade.

[Praeothmin]

I would, but I use an electric shaver... :)

[User1626]

There are two types of cloaking devices in SW: stygium and hybridium. a Stygium cloak, like the one on Darth Maul's ship, was the best, as it allowed the use of non-Force based sensors on the ship. the hybridium cloak was much bigger, required more power, and was "double-blind"; no one could see in, but you couldn't see out. Stygium cloaks were gone by the time of ANH, as the last source of crystals in the galaxy was depleted. both cloaks could be pierced by a CGT (crystal gravfield trap), which sensed the gravitic impression left on the fabric of space-time, however, CGTs were very rare

Sounds like standard federation graviton-based sensors.
The Romulan cloaks plugged into the ship's deflector-shield control, so it could render the ship undetectable and they could use the ship's passive sensors.

[StarWarsStarTrek]

Cloaking technology is one of the few military fields in which Star Trek has an edge over Star Wars, but Star Wars does have Stealth X's in the late EU era, which, while not literally invisible, is invisible to sensors.

[Picard]

Regarding Federation WMD's (other than torpedoes, obviously) - Starfleet might not use them, but I have no problem imagining Section 31 blowing up couple of planets. Althought they usually do things "cleaner" way.

[Lucky]

As I recall, Torres and Chakotay also modified their shuttle's shields to look like a jet fighter in "Future's End."

Using holograms, perhaps?

Given they had to seemingly modify Voyager to generate hologram I doubt they can do that easily.

Can't the defiant alter it's shield geometry to make airfoil type shape? It could be a matter of just fooling radar, or lasers may truly be useless in Star Trek.

[Praeothmin]

Given they had to seemingly modify Voyager to generate hologram I doubt they can do that easily.

Can't the defiant alter it's shield geometry to make airfoil type shape? It could be a matter of just fooling radar, or lasers may truly be useless in Star Trek.

Well, I would imagine generating holograms far from the ship, of many different ships all moving in different directions would be harder than simply generating a single hologram around the ship...

[Lucky]

Given they had to seemingly modify Voyager to generate hologram I doubt they can do that easily.

Can't the defiant alter it's shield geometry to make airfoil type shape? It could be a matter of just fooling radar, or lasers may truly be useless in Star Trek.

Well, I would imagine generating holograms far from the ship, of many different ships all moving in different directions would be harder than simply generating a single hologram around the ship...

You wouldn't happen to have a clip of the scene, or at least the script? I can't find a clip on YouTube, and I don't know where to find a script of the episode.

Altering radar returns could fit what we are talking about when it comes to looking like something.

[User1632]

As I recall, Torres and Chakotay also modified their shuttle's shields to look like a jet fighter in "Future's End."

Using holograms, perhaps?

Given they had to seemingly modify Voyager to generate hologram I doubt they can do that easily.

Can't the defiant alter it's shield geometry to make airfoil type shape? It could be a matter of just fooling radar, or lasers may truly be useless in Star Trek.

In "The Outrageous Okuna," Picard says that lasers won't even cut through the navigational deflectors of the Enterprise, and that they could fire until their batteries ran dry and it wouldn't hurt the ship. And that's just the nav-deflectors; the combat-deflector shields would be even stronger.
This has been called a "no-limits fallacy," but deflectors seem to bend actual space rather than absorbing attacks like SW shields do, so it would take an awful lot of raw energy to cut through them.

As for cloaking-devices, SW cloaks aren't graviton-based, so the ship's mass would still be there, and that would be plain to ST sensors.

[Praeothmin]

In "The Outrageous Okuna," Picard says that lasers won't even cut through the navigational deflectors of the Enterprise, and that they could fire until their batteries ran dry and it wouldn't hurt the ship. And that's just the nav-deflectors; the combat-deflector shields would be even stronger.
This has been called a "no-limits fallacy," but deflectors seem to bend actual space rather than absorbing attacks like SW shields do, so it would take an awful lot of raw energy to cut through them.

As for cloaking-devices, SW cloaks aren't graviton-based, so the ship's mass would still be there, and that would be plain to ST sensors.

Prove it!
Or admit this is just bullshit...

[2046]

So I was rewatching Cat and Mouse and something dawned on me. That ship has cockpit windows that work while the ship is cloaked.

It would have to have some sort of projection system to replace that light as part of the design, or else if it was bending light it would either leave a hard shadow or a soft one depending on how they did things.

Have we ever seen out from windows on a cloaked Trek ship?

[359]

Not that I am aware of, the closest we have come is watching from the main view screen of the Defiant, but that isn't a window, at least until Star Trek (2009)...

[Mike DiCenso]

So I was rewatching Cat and Mouse and something dawned on me. That ship has cockpit windows that work while the ship is cloaked.

It would have to have some sort of projection system to replace that light as part of the design, or else if it was bending light it would either leave a hard shadow or a soft one depending on how they did things.

Have we ever seen out from windows on a cloaked Trek ship?

To my recollection there are only two possible occasions:

- In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", the BoP Bounty was cloaked while flying around 20th century Earth's atmosphere and with characters standing right next to it and there were no visible shadows or other effects, even when the whaling ship's harpoon bounced off the hull there was no visible distortion. When Sulu flies in with a helicopter and drops in the plexiglass for the whale enclosure through the open cargo bay hatch of the BoP and Scotty is looking up inside the bay and out at Sulu. There is also no visible distortion whatsoever, and people are shown exiting and entering the Bounty while it is cloaked through a mysterious hatch that in no way is effected by the cloak.

- In DS9's "Improbable Cause", When Odo and Garak are brought to Tain's quarters on one of the cloaked D'deridex-class warbirds we see this view out the cabin window:



So I guess they can look out the windows while cloaked with no obvious issues.
-Mike

[Picard]

It is logical that we would be able to see light, since, as with all other spectrums, ship has to receive emissions in order to see what is going on outside. Problem is, if ship is receiving energy, but not letting it go... althought they probably do have some storage for that, and I doubt levels would be high enough to cook crew anyway. Actually, emissions from ship itself would be larger problem, althought they probably solve it same way as received energy - maybe some kind of Mass Effect-esque heat sinks.

[Praeothmin]

I never believed cloaking to be absorption of all energy emissions without letting go...
I always thought of it as absorbing and scattering every which way...
Harder to do with neutrino emissions, thus why a cloaked ship can be detected as being in the vicinity, but non one can pinpoint its location...