A New Edition of ACTA is coming...

[katadder]

Yes, but IMO it requires too much suspension of disbelief. "Oh my ship just happens to be directly behind you, facing up your exhaust pipe"... it might be fair and balanced and just like a jump point, but it isn't believable - to me, at least.

its comparable to subs in VaS though and cloaking is far more advanced tech than submerging.

It's totally believable in the source material though. The cloaked Romulan Warbird just follows you until they get into a good firing position or joined by friendlies, etc, then decloaks to spring the trap - right at your weakest point where your lateral phaser array won't reach, photon torpedoes have to make a radical course change to reach and you can't react before you've had a volley or two of phase disruptor fire into your unshielded hull...

There's a reason the Klingons and Romulans jealousy guard cloaking technology... :wink:

exactly, its believable, very star trek and happens alot.

as to knowing where the ship is after recloaking in the more modern era I thought they had developed ways of tracking cloaked ships by emissions (i know in some of the novels they do) as long as they know to look for cloaked ships.
also using fedcom you always know where a cloaked ship is even right from the start so theres altenative options like that. I prefer the VAS sub rules.

its quite amusing that we are already debating on possible rules and we dont even know if its ST or another license yet

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I think you're dealing with the Enterprise-factor there, Katadder. Cloaked ships operate until emissions control, it's pretty blatantly stated in at least one episode of TNG that I can think of - that one where Troi pretends to be Romulan. The commander of the Warbird talks about emissions betraying their location but only because the cloaking device has been sabotaged - otherwise it operates in combination with very strict emissions controls.

 

[Burger]

Well I don't care if it's based on VAS rules, that doesn't help. I would say the same about the sub rules in VAS.

In this game the ships of each side are assumed to start in their deployment zones. So what you are saying is that the cloaked ships were somehow present in the warzone before the battle started and used their clairvoyance skills to know that a battle was going to happen there? Or that they have actually been following their target since before the battle started -- but you don't have to specify which target they have been following until they decloak? Sorry don't buy that either...

If the ship is very fast and manouverable like a White Star or SM then fair enough, it could get into position while cloaked. But a 6" movement with 1/45 turn, no way!

 

[Paladin]

Cloaking - one system I've used in other games is to remove the mini and put down three tokens in it's place (possibly a wide range of locations if it's the start of the game), one of which is clearly marked as different. The unit's owner then gets to move the three tokens separately as if they were the real unit, limited by it's movement. When it "decloaks" all 3 tokens are flipped to reveal which one is the real one. Sort of a shell game. Lets the enemy know the unit is there, but keeps the element of surprise and forces the controller to move it fairly. Not a perfect system, but beats the - my hidden unit is moving over hear, be ready when it shows up.

 

[McKickaha]

Kattadder wrote;

does star trek have a fleet based game in TNG, DS9 or Voyager era? and theres a film coming out next year.

Voyager is kind of limited, not many fed ships without bringing in TNG designs.

DS9 ( much the same). Maybe sacrelige saying so but in licence terms I would count both Voyager and DS9 as contract sub clause addons vs the "real" TNG licence. (By the way I am a trek fan, definitely including DS9 & Voyager (& even a few "Enterprise" episodes) very much more so than overhyped? Starwars (ducks a swing from lastbesthope & probably many others)

Although TNG is not covered by an existing mini game right now, as we all know there are original series trek games out there.

As somebody elese said there are plenty of licence & generic "space" based mini games out there so why restrict your potential sales market by moving in against well established genre product. Seems a better ibusiness decesion to me to go for a novel licence.

Guess we will find out soon enough.

 

[katadder]

I think you're dealing with the Enterprise-factor there, Katadder. Cloaked ships operate until emissions control, it's pretty blatantly stated in at least one episode of TNG that I can think of - that one where Troi pretends to be Romulan. The commander of the Warbird talks about emissions betraying their location but only because the cloaking device has been sabotaged - otherwise it operates in combination with very strict emissions controls.

well its form novels as well, pretty much any cloak can be detected with plot power.
also didnt the romulans know how to track the defiant under cloak again due to emissions. they may be low but if you know what to look for you can find it.

 

[Foxmeister]

I think you're dealing with the Enterprise-factor there, Katadder. Cloaked ships operate until emissions control, it's pretty blatantly stated in at least one episode of TNG that I can think of - that one where Troi pretends to be Romulan. The commander of the Warbird talks about emissions betraying their location but only because the cloaking device has been sabotaged - otherwise it operates in combination with very strict emissions controls.

To be fair, Trek plays around with its own science canon all the time and cloaked ships are either detectable or non-detectable in any given story based on the whim of the individual writers it seems. Overall, Trek is pretty poor at keeping its universe consistent and is forever using "Deus ex machina"!

I mean in Undiscovered Country you had a Klingon Bird of Prey that could fire when cloaked, yet this technology seemed to get "lost" in later eras. They also destroyed the Bird of Prey with a modified photon torpedo that could home in on emissions. I'm sure someone will argue that the "firing when cloaked" technology was probably considered "dead end" by the TNG era, but that doesn't really work for me!

Mind you, I think Voyager took it all to silly levels when it seems that you could turn a standard Federation communicator badge into virtually anything.

Janeway: If I can just remodulate the phase amplified transducer circuit in my comms badge, and link it up with this pebble I found in my boot, I should be able to replicate a full sunday roast for eight people, with a string quartet to provide musical accompaniment to our meal! Pork or lamb Chakotay?"

Regards,

Dave

 

[Burger]

Voyager is funny. At the start, the Kazon were chasing them down with their crappy tech, they were a really bad bad guys because they were just too rubbish, they even had water supply problems yet they flew around in space. In later series every man and his dog has far superior tech than Voyager, some even almost stabilize Omega particles and others hunt down 8472 just for sh!ts and giggles, yet they still manage to not get blown apart by some guy who just wants to see how thier brains work. Come back Kazon all is forgiven!

 

[katadder]

depending on contract you dont have to stick that close either, i mean SFB has lyrans, hydrans, seltorians to name but a few of the races not normally or ever seen in trek.
then theres enterprise which has loads of races never seen before or since that obviously cannot be too far from earth either as it was "lower" tech.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

well its form novels as well, pretty much any cloak can be detected with plot power.
also didnt the romulans know how to track the defiant under cloak again due to emissions. they may be low but if you know what to look for you can find it.

I'm pretty sure the Defiant made at least one sojourn into the Romulan Star Empire under cloak and remained covert. I'm 99% sure the Romulan cloak was basically unbreakable without the pre-planned tachyon web emplyed in Redemption (TNG), hence the Romulans specifying that the cloak they supplied for the Defiant was not to be used in the Alpha Quadrant under any circumstances. Not that Sisko and his merry men listened to that restriction...

 

[H]

oh my, you guys just moved to a whole new geek level

 

[katadder]

Because of the Defiant's unusually high power signature the cloaking device could be penetrated by certain types of anti-proton beams. Deactivating main power was the only way to keep the Defiant fully invisible to sensors.

the defiant seems can be detected. am sure IIRC the jem'hadar were able to detect it also.

and like I said various novels have had ship tracking if you know what to look for.
star trek the return (novel) the romulans mention about being able to track a definat class under cloak and the monitor (defiant class) in the same novel finds and follows a d'deridex class warbird with both of them being under cloak (it knew to look for it though).

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I never heard of that one - and since when did the later Defiants have cloaking devices?

I do recall the Dominion finding a way to detect the Defiant under cloak but I seem to remember the technique being confined to them?

 

[Da Boss]

I think its simply the cloak is as unbeatable or not as plot demands - the cloak is penetrated on various vessels by various means throughout the shows..............

which sort of makes sense - there would be an ongoing war between steath and detection technologies especially given hugely different empires and their tech levels.

 

[katadder]

was written by william shatner, set after star trek generations.
on novels yes they did (one improved over the earlier defiants), also would make sense that if the prototype did the rest would. this wa also a matt black spec-ops defiant.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

was written by william shatner, set after star trek generations.
on novels yes they did (one improved over the earlier defiants), also would make sense that if the prototype did the rest would. this wa also a matt black spec-ops defiant.

I see... Mr Shatner's fan-wank given the legitamcy of his station as Kirk, basically. The Defiant's cloak was supplied by the Romulans and the Federation only ever dared try to break the Treaty of Algeron (spelling?) once - with disastrous results.

 

[katadder]

thought they used the cloak alot more in the alpha quadrant than once.

but as people have said ST fluff is very variable and never consistant so can almost do what you want.

 

[H]

was written by william shatner, set after star trek generations.
on novels yes they did (one improved over the earlier defiants), also would make sense that if the prototype did the rest would. this wa also a matt black spec-ops defiant.

I see... Mr Shatner's fan-wank given the legitamcy of his station as Kirk, basically. The Defiant's cloak was supplied by the Romulans and the Federation only ever dared try to break the Treaty of Algeron (spelling?) once - with disastrous results.

sigh, wading in, the Defiant was one of only a small number of ships if i recall, 3 was it, that were deemed unsuitable for whatever reason, think they had dodgy power management or somethign. the defiant got the romulan cloak, and initially a romulan tech dude. there were never supposed to be more defiant clss ships made... then, in other versions, you see loads of the buggers.

how easy is it to detect a cloaked ship? as easy as the plot dictates. heck if Kirk was on a freighter dumping custard out of the khazi would uncloak a klingon ship!!

 

[katadder]

also if you have access to technology you will have people looking at backward engineering it.

 

[Greg Smith]

also if you have access to technology you will have people looking at backward engineering it.

They've had the technology since Kirk's time but chose not to to backward engineer it, precisely because of the Treaty of Algeron. Canon says the Defiant is the only Federation ship with a cloak, and as we saw in Pegasus, experimenting with it is not allowed.