Reggie Fils-Aime denies your request every time.
Because Reggie can see through your disguise.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
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- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
Because Reggie can see through your disguise.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I strongly suspect that cloaks actually are superior. It's only our extremely high Science scores that let our ships sneak around. The most impressive feat of stealth in Federation history (sneaking up on Betazed's star when the defense fleet was looking for it) was carried out by the T'Mir, which also has the highest Science score of any ship in the fleet besides our most elite explorers, AND is a very small ship.
By contrast, the Klingons were able to get a Bird of Prey into the Romulus system and blow up a freighter. And Romulus probably had much better defenses than Betazed did at the time of our fleet exercise. And even a Mk II Bird of Prey cannot possibly have a science score anywhere near that of the T'Mir. But the Klingons did it. Because they had a cloak.
If we actually had cloaks as a realistic option, I think we'd find them greatly superior to our existing stealth technology, all else being equal.
Now that being said, I am still in full agreement that cloak development is actively undesirable. But I would like to warn against being in denial about the advantages use of the technology gives the Klingons, the Romulans, and (potentially) other rivals.
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The problem with the cloak in my opinion is economics. A modern Romulan cruiser with a cloak that they put out recently is basically a Connie-B but for 110 BR and 95 SR. This is a ship more modern than the Renaissance.
Thors_Alumni
Proud member of Thors Class VII from Liberl
- Location
- Liberl Zemuria.
Warp fleet over Akuz's home. Unload full complement of Photon Torpedoes on the target then return to base.
If you are a humble seamstress than I am the Emperor of Mankind.
That there is why we need cloaks. If a Starfleet ship could do that uncloaked. think about what it could do while cloaked.
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Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
- Location
- Behind You
Which is exactly why we shouldn't get cloaks.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's a very good point.
We've got a lot of platforms built to counter cloaks, so they don't look as impressive to us.
It's less that the bonuses aren't good, more that our anti-stealth is good enough that we can counter them, mostly. So they look kind of meh compared to what our best can do, because our best are usually against inferior anti-stealth.
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Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
- Pronouns
- He/Him
#Thisisnotanempirequest
Seriously, though, Starfleet operates with honesty. We minimize sneaking around because we want the Federation to truly be what it says it is. The diplomatic benefits of chosing to not build cloaks are greater than the tactical advantages... And tactical advantages are worth very little to the Federation as it is.
Not to mention that, like SWB pointed out, cloaks are expensive and require design compromises.
True, it would probably a smart idea for those two factions to introduce a few "standard" designs (non-cloak) into their roster, especially for their heavier, more expensive ships. But while that may be more realistic/sensible you would likely loose quite a lot of narrative value/flair (especially in a format like his where you generally don't spend that much time on a single faction) so I don't think it makes much sense to do so from a story telling perspective.
In general though I am not a big fan of widespread specialist technology like cloaks - they tend to be a bitch to balance, at least in my opinion.
I don't think we have the evidence to say that. And canon depictions of cloaks certianly contradict that statement.
I don't think we should get cloaks at the moment either, but the definitely have major advantanges over emissions control, and the Klingons especially use them to devestating effect tactically even when they can't fire though them.
I think the effect seems to be that you can achieve very low probabilites of being detected by proper emissions control , but to do that you eliminate a large amount of your capabilities in speed and sensors. Cloaks however allow you to travel at signficant speed whislt undetected, and use your sensors to detect others whislt you remain (mostly) immune to detection.
Well not "more modern". They were designed at most a year or two apart... hardly anything as far as tech goes.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yes. Though I suspect that counter-cloak techology has been advancing by leaps and bounds among the Romulans and Klingons over the past ten years or so, and will likely continue to do so. Neither side wants to miss an entire fleet of cloaked warships hitting them.
Allowing for the fact that the Romulans may be just a few years ahead or behind us in ship design, this is basically a valid point. Cloak-capable ships are more expensive to build and less capable ton for ton; you pay for the stealth advantage.
Creep up on an inhabited star system and slaughter all its people with a superscience weapon? Because that's what T'Mir was PRETENDING to do to Betazed.
Another problem with doing that is that it divides your fleet up into "cloakable" and "uncloakable" ships.
Think about it from, say, the Romulans' point of view. You build a large production run of cloakable cruisers and light warbirds, but decide to save money and/or get more capacity per ton by making your battleships (heavy warbirds) cloakless.
Now think about some of the problems this presents you. If you send a mixed squadron of ships, your lighter vessels can cloak but your heavier ones can't, so the squadron as a whole can't sneak up on the enemy the way a cloaked fleet would. Likewise they can't use the cloak to disengage from battle as a whole; if the lighter ships cloak and slip away, that just means leaving the big ones to get pounded to pieces by the enemy's entire fleet, sacrificing the big obvious battleship to save their skins. A huge variety of strategies and doctrines that your fleet previously relied on (due to being uniformly equipped with cloaks) now cease to work, because you can't cloak ALL your ships, only some. Sure, the cloaks on the smaller ships will remain useful, but they won't be useful for nearly as many things as they were back when you could cloak your whole fleet.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Bomb major Human cities. Got it.
Thank you
~Your Majesty~
> : P
- Location
- Central Standard Time
No.
Frowning_Stesk.webm
I'd imagine that cloaking is a specialised S-check.
SpcC, perhaps.
- Location
- Australia
The only part I'm still mulling over really is the Trunk Loop, because for larger and more advanced polities it doesn't seem to properly scale. I'm pretty sure I just need a multiplier for tier/development level or the like. Though that will make the Cardassian state merchant marine weep blood. But who cares about those guys, right?
Actually, options on a few things. No more Miss Nice Kitty.
Oh, it wouldn't be the Starfleet ambition, but your Council Developer-in-Chief is about to hand you guys Options.
Actually, options on a few things. No more Miss Nice Kitty.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
Ah yes, I'm eagerly awaiting our next demonstration of the Dunning–Kruger effect in practice for a politician. Because there's not enough of that in real-life already.
Well, either you retroactively give them more freight capacity, or they utilise the method that was mentioned somewhere back in the mists of time of using their cruisers to move goods around. Depends on how much of threat you want them to be to us in the short term.
As for the President, she was being nice up til now? Could have fooled me.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
To be fair, retconning enough ships for their economy to be at least kinda sorta functional in peacetime seems only fair. If the rules get modified in midgame in ways that make previously functional polities dysfunctional, nobody benefits.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
- Location
- Infraspace
No images yet, but I'm working on a design which basically puts the engineering hull vertically aligned with the saucer, which cuts down on its size, and would necessitate the saucer-only deflector.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is an interesting nonlinear relationship between how competent people think they are, and how competent they really are. It is often simplified into "people who are very bad at what they do tend to think they are adequate or good at it," or "people ignorant of a field underestimate how hard it is," or something like that.
The Donald Trump Effect.
Yeah, that.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
Shit, we may need to bust out the cat nip.
- Location
- Australia
We can build spinward berths for forward defence and logistics/engineering/members can use them while idle.
Very happy to leave it there, logistics do their thing, tell us if they need more berths, or come to us with a plan if things are getting critical.
The only way I could see cloaking used is if we made a small (<100kt) asset for starfleet intelligence. I don't think we even need cloaking, just a dedicated low emissions ship so intel can do what they do now but better. Need to get footage from Bajor to show to waivering Cardassian clients? That's how they get it.
Lol, sounds like things at logistics have gone critical.
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Logistics aside, I do have some questions for OneirosTheWriter (or anyone else if they know the answer)
1. Can we build a joint-starbase in a pending-ratification affiliates territory? (fortify that southern spinwards attack lane)
2. Is a deep space starbase effective in covering the approach to a homeworld? Or would it be bypassed? (We need more defensive depth for Indoria/Rethelia)
3. Can we upgrade member <1mt berths to Federation standard, and similar for 2-3mt to 3mt berths
4. If the political will was there, could Amarkia make a Planitia?
5. Can we stack multiple outposts to increase the defences of a world?
6. Did the critical ship infrastructure upgrade mean our supply chain spinwards now starts in Amarkia? If not , is there an upgrade to do so?
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We need Councillor Stesk with a rolled up newspaper.