Defiance of the defiant

[Graham Kennedy]

Well maybe the cloaking device explodes in a really BIG explosion....

[Mark]

[Granitehewer]

ST:V made it seem like a BoP couldn't travel at warp while cloaked. We know they can, because we see it in ST:III. So, one can only assume Kord was an idiot to remain decloaked within sensor range of a Constitution class starship.


EDIT

Better yet, stay cloaked until ready to attack. Period.

Klagh not koord

[Reliant121]

I'd always thought it just disrupted the cloaking field. If a cloaked ship, from the smallest Klingon BOP to the Largest Romulan Warbirds, can travel at warp while cloaked; I hardly think they don't have enough power to chuck a disruptor bolt while cloaked at STL. Firing while cloaked AND at FTL speeds, I can understand a power issue. Otherwise, i dont think it's a power problem.

[Praeothmin]

I'd always thought it just disrupted the cloaking field. If a cloaked ship, from the smallest Klingon BOP to the Largest Romulan Warbirds, can travel at warp while cloaked; I hardly think they don't have enough power to chuck a disruptor bolt while cloaked at STL. Firing while cloaked AND at FTL speeds, I can understand a power issue. Otherwise, i dont think it's a power problem.

While it may not be a pure power production issue, it could be a power system issue.
For example, propulsion (Warp and Impulse) are getting power from one "power system" (call it relay or circuitry if you prefer), and Offensive and Defensive equipment (Weapons & Shields, Cloaking Device) from another.
And for some reason, while a ship may have enough power to activate both systems at the same time, each system cannot handle two sub-systems running at the same time, or it will suffer power surges and blow up.
so Warp and Shields, or Warp and Cloak, but not "Shields & Weapons" and Cloak...

[McAvoy]

I think it's not a power issue but whether the two repsective systems 'agree' with each other.

[Reliant121]

Possibly. Maybe the way the energy is "formatted" disagrees. I dont know what kind of energy a cloaking field uses (plasma, polaric or all that treknobabble crap), maybe it doesnt like mixing with nadion particles from a phaser/disruptor or photonic particles from a PT.

[McAvoy]

That is what I am thinking.

Maybe when the cloaking device was first designed there was power issues and they couldn't fully test a ship using weapons/shields while under cloaked. But as time went on and technology allowed them for higher power outputs they found out that there was issues with the cloak and weapons.

[Sionnach Glic]

Maybe the discharge of energy that comes from the disruptors or phasers causes some weird effect when coupled with an active cloak?

[McAvoy]

That is pretty much what I am saying.

[Praeothmin]

That is pretty much what I am saying.

But then what would stop the ship from having shields while cloaked if it was simply a question of the weapons interacting with the cloak?
How about torpedoes, who are shielded?

[Mikey]

Torps are shielded? Anyway, a shield touching a cloak field could cause destructive interference the same as a weapon. Even constructive interference would cause EM spikes which could be detected.

[Praeothmin]

Torps are shielded? Anyway, a shield touching a cloak field could cause destructive interference the same as a weapon. Even constructive interference would cause EM spikes which could be detected.

Just like we saw, say, in ST VI?
The cloak was disrupted by the torpedoes coming out, but it was reformed immediately once the torpedo had passed through...
The question is:
Why would weapons fire, or shields for that matter, affect the cloaking fields in a way to disrupt them completely?

[Captain Seafort]

Torps are shielded?

They must be - it's the only way to explain them having a frequency setting.

[Mikey]

To P's question: the interference doesn't have to be perfect. Even a partially-disrupted cloak is useless to sensors.