when a ship is cloaked, why dont weapons work?

[wise one]

ok, everytime a cloaked ship is there they dont seem to fire at the target, they usually turn the cloak off and then fire.

is it something to do with power????

anyone???

wise one

[Avatar28]

My guess is that it's because you can't be cloaked and shielded at the same time, it seems to be an either/or type proposition. When you fire you're weapons then you're pretty much painting a very clear target of where you are. Sure you may get a few shots off but it isn't going to take long for them to retaliate. All they have to do is fill the space in the vicinity of your shots with weapons fire of their own and they're pretty much guaranteed to hit you at least a few times and without shields you're going to be hurting very quickly.

[Heaven]

maybe firing through the cloak will collapse the field

[marty2006]

I think its because what avatar said sheild and cloak cant work at both times and firing would give away your position anyway so you may aswel come out of cloak and go to shields.

[IcyNeko]

Since true cloak technology doesn't exist, it's kind of all speculation. Here's a guess based on a few observations from different scifi shows (that all seem to have the same rules).

* Cloaking shields take a ton of energy in some series. This is kind of the assumption based on the fact that, when they switched the puddlejumpers to shields, it took the same power, and vice versa from the cityshield to cloak on Atlantis. In Wing Commander, they also stated this by saying that onboard laser weapons couldn't maintain a charge due to the huge amount of energy it took to power the cloaking shields.

* Cloaks emit a particular neutralizing EM field that encompasses the area that it covers. This is actually real science, and the basis of how cloaks work. This is also why you can't layer cloaking shields over/under/around/interweaved with regular shields. The frequencies would interfere with each other if it was interweaved. If someone tried to extend cloaks over regular shields, the regular shields would block out all but a certain allowable frequency of cloaking energy, which would make cloaking useless, since it would only block one range of bands. And extending shields beyond cloaks is poitnless, since sensor scans can read the shields. The whole "there's nothing there, but a huge SHIELD" is a dead giveaway.

* In Wing Commander, missiles were adversely affected by cloaking technology. While the tracking system could lock onto targets, the missile guidance system, while in teh cloak, could not get a lock due to the interference generated by the cloaking shields. The guidance systems were effectively blind. In the game, they showed this interference by making the user's screen turn grayscale whenever cloaks were engaged, making flight rather hard to see.

* Weaponsfire, when passing through the cloak barrier, could potentially cause interference that would break down the cloak matrix. Each weapon, energy or otherwise, emits a frequency. This could render the shield inert, or at least distort the ship long enough for someone to see. In Star Trek 6, the prototype bird of prey could be seen for a split second as it fired it's plasma torpedo.

[Ouroboros]

Because that's the way it was on StarTrek, and no, they never really explained it either.

[Buba uognarf]

Because that's the way it was on StarTrek, and no, they never really explained it either.

Yeah that's my conclusion too

[ManiacMike]

Well, cloaks are suppose to bend light around your ship so it seems like its invisible.

So when you fire your canons while cloaked, it breaks the cloak and they can see your ship.

Then they can probably get a fix on your heat signature and shoot you while cloaked (without shields).

[IcyNeko]

Either that or it's in the treaty of algeron.

[jds1982]

Either that or it's in the treaty of algeron.

Ah yes I believe there were flowers involved in that treaty.

[2ndgenerationalteran]

they probably do work but what would the point of being cloaked be if your shooting and giving away your position? If your doing runs on a ship it may be more practicle but a ship could probably figure out the originating place of firing and find where the ship should be next.

[Buba uognarf]

The thing is alkesh don't have shields! So it would be in their best interests to stay cloaked as it would make hitting them harder and they wouldn't sacrifice defenses. This IMO proves cloaks and weapons are mutually exclusive one or the other.

[Mister Oragahn]

Considering that a cloaked ship can be hit by enemy fire, it's possible that what can get inside the cloaking field (enemy fire) cannot get out.

Say that if your cannon fires out, it causes a chain reaction of some sort with the field.

Or the field uses too much power, and it's better to redirect to weapons, atmospheric shields and engines.

[PG15]

Because that's the way it was on StarTrek, and no, they never really explained it either.

Sure they did. The original Romulan Warbird couldn't fire and cloak at the same time because the cloak took a lot of power to generate.

[Wraith_Boy]

I think it's mainly to take something away from the ships!

If a cloak makes you invisible, then you could sneak up behind/beside an enemy & take them out. So if there is no way to hit you, then your are virtually unstoppable.

An example of this: You detect a rogue Hive or Cruiser. Cloak a ship & fly to it's location. They don't get anything on sensors so don't detect a threat. Therefore they may no activate their jamming technology. Allowing you to beam a nuke or gas on board & take them out.

You could even fly right up to it's bridge or other sensitive area of the ship. Fire a ton of warheads oright into them. Then straight away, jump into HS before they get pilots into their Darts & launch them.

In S1, they didn't use the shield because they never knew it existed. Therefore why did Shep need to decloak before firing drones from his PJ. It's not like he was trying to avoid detection anyhow, because by decloaking he would have been revealing his position anyhow.

To me it's silly, we know a shield draws more power than a cloak which remains constant, especially when it's being impacted upon. Therefore if you can shield & fire drones. You should easily be able to cloak & fire drones.

What I'd really like to see them do is retro-fit a PJ with 302 weapons. This way they could cloak & fire the simpler human projectiles. We saw how a single 302 could disable an entire Hive by itself. If they could put them on a PJ, then they could sneak upto a Hive & do the same, without any risk at all. Even install beaming technology on it, catch them while unaware of any threat. Then see if they could beam aboard a nuke to take it out.

Of course they won't do this because if they could, then it'd simply be a matter of repeating the process time & time again until the Wraith are way down in ship numbers.

Bascially I think it's simply the writers way of not making the good guys have such an advantage over their enemies. Therefore they give them 1 or the other but never both at the same time.