Cloaked Crash Avoidance

[J.P. Gill]

How do cloaked ships avoid crashing into each other?

It's easy enough to answer for a squadron of cloaked ships, but what about two or three cloaked ships operating independantly (and unaware) of the other(s)?

Seems like it would be a huge problem in Klingon space with those sneaky Klingons always having their sneaky personal agendas against each other and sneakily filling their sneaky space with sneaky cloaked ships going this sneaky way and that...

CRASH!

[ghosty]

Given the vastness of space it should actually quite difficult to accidental ram another ship, cloaked or not. Ramming is a deliberate act. No matter how good the cloak, if you're close enough to ram the other ship, the sensors will show you where it is.

[Dan Gurden]

Not to mention the rather sheepish admition from the Romulans as the Romulan assigned to the Defiant, T'Rul, admits that there is a weakness that allows cloaked ships to be spotted.

They knew ways to spot other cloaked ships, as did the Dominion... But Starfleet was oblivious until that point.

This implies that the species operating cloaked ships, or of sufficiently advanced technology, will have no problem seeing the ship under cloak...

[Phantom]

The Romulans have been dealing with cloak tech for awhile. I seem to remeber reading somewhere they can pick up cloaked vessels on short range sensors, but close formations take alot of planning and good piloting, however.

[StyroFoam Man]

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[Perrryyy]

Originally posted by StyroFoam Man
This could make an excelent story idea... A huge cruise-liner full of people collides with a cloaked Romulan ship. First you have to save 3,000+ civies and then figure out why the @#$%* the Romulans were so far into Federation space...

I see shades of 9-11 written all over this. The Romulans try to teach the Feddies a lesson. Maybe a religious faction of the Tal Shiar trying to get the Fed. to recognize a long-ignored problem (perhaps the religous faction is denied entry into the RSE)?

Any thoughts?

[qerlin]

For our campaign, the Romulans use a secret transponder freq that rotates every week or so, so they can spot each other. Also, they know what to look for at shorter ranges -- weird gravimetric readings, subspace resonances.

In our game, they got their butts handed to them, because one of the intel people found the freq and started tracking them.

[Keeper]

Qerlin, that's PRECISELY what we came up with in our campaign (the transponder data link) for Romulan collision avoidance. One of the PC's on an intel mission was able to recover the rota for the freqs and allowed 39-Sierra (we were playing in the Arteline sector of Fagile Peace fame) to track Romulan movements with impunity.

[toadkiller]

Actually had a similar idea this last week.

For reasons I don't have time to get into right now a Romulan XO is currently in negotiations with the XO of the players ship. His CO has been poisoned (he at least believes by his own government) and his ship doesn't have a doctor. He is looking to trade the "cloak codes" for an EMH.

Currently the claim is that these codes would let the player's ship detect at least certain models of Rom cloaks at "close" range. More importantly (perhaps) by modulating thier shields they can hide themselves from the narrow sensor bands that a cloaked ship can use and hide themselves. In effect while a ship is cloaked it would not be able to detect the player ship. This would have no effect to non-cloaked ship's chance of spotting them.

Now - I haven't decided how much of this is true. The Romulan IS pretty anxious to save his CO - put just how trustworthy is he???

Will most likely resolve at least in part soon.
TK

[Phantom]

In the Empire that is called Treason. That Romulan had better hope the Tal Shiar doesn't get wind of this, or he'll be disappeared. Or shot by his CO, depending on who finds out first.

[ghosty]

But they also get their hands on a valuable piece of Federation medical tech, the EMH. Who knows if the code is real...it could be a ruse to steal the EMH system.

[toadkiller]

Yes it is treason - or is it?

Basically that's what the players are trying to figure out. He's either selling somthing important to get the EMH for his CO - who was poisoned rather seriously by someone; in which case they should make the trade 'casue who cares if they get medical tech.

Or the Roms really, really want the EMH tech for some reason and he's under orders to do this; in which case they shouldn't make the trade as they'd be playing into the Romulan plot and besides they don't have any proof the code is any good.

And of course thirdly - maybe HE poisoned his CO and wants the EMH so he can have it finish the job and then blame the UFP tech.

They can't even be sure that this guy isn't T.S. himself.

To make it worse this Rom ship is carrying an Ambassador (with links politically to Spock's group - or so it seems) that has been making sweeping reforms in talks with the UFP & Klingons. In my post-war game the Roms are the ones pushing hard to keep the "3-Power Alliance" up and running. Even going so far as to allow routes to be established in the neutral zone which escorted cargo ships can traverse for trade.

In fact the Roms have been so cooperative with the UFP that they are winning the trust of the "peace" faction in the Assembly and it is becoming very unpopular politically to suggest they are up to no good. "That sort of thinking is 50 years out of date Captain, the Romulans are our allies now - or did you miss the Battle of ______"

In my mind the Roms are simply taking a longer view - they'll trade with the Klingons and UFP for now and rebuild their strength and then maybe in 100 years or so they'll be set to resume the "master plan". What the UFP has to do is get them addictied economically and conduct their "root beer assimilation" before that time. I'm trying to make it very cloak and dagger - where noone on any side in the Rom Empire is quite sure who really wants this new peace and who doesn't.

But they are not "tame Romulans" - even if they act like it.

All of this is aside from the fact that someone just took over a Vulcan shrine and left with some very old artifacts, books/scrolls/whatever, and maybe a katra "holder" or two....