star trek - Why can't cloaked vessels shoot?

What prevents ships firing phasers and photon torpedoes through a cloak? I have yet to see a episode where this is brought up. It may have been mentioned in The Undiscovered Country, as I know there is a kingon ship that does it, but I have not seen that movie in years. Is it addressed there or somewhere in one of the series'?

Answer

A cloak requires the dampening or absorbing of all internal energy emmissions while simultaneously rebroadcasting all background and directed energy emmisions "through" the ship; not a simple task.

Preparing to fire weapons, even torpedos, requires taking multiple actions that would be extremely diffcult to mask or play into the backgound sound. From charging weapon capacitors to acquiring an active target lock it is very likely that the target ship would pick up on even small clues (sudden unexplained miscellaneous energy spikes, active sensor emmissions with no apparent point of origin etc) and take appropriate precautionary measures such as raising their shields.

Comments

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

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Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

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story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

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warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...

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