Pegasus-Style Phasing Cloak?

@Felderburg, On what page of the Operations book did you find that statement? I’m curious to pull out my copy and take a look at that and anything else they might say.

Correct. This is what I remember from the episode and this is what the STA operation book states.

It is probably active as the Pegasus incident was the result of power failure. However, I would not allow weapons to be fired. For energy weapons the explanation is easy: The energy would not change phase after leaving the array. For torpedoes your explanation is quite convincing. However, I do not like the balancing implications.

Maybe the point is to change phases in a controlled manner to displace any matter present, while you would meld with it if you changed phase in an uncontrolled manner. Space is never really empty. There will always be some lost atom of something that, melding with the wrong object (or person!) could wreak havoc upon the user of such a technology. Let’s say if you “phase back in” in a controlled way, everything is pushed away by the ship coming back in into our universe. If, in contrast, you do without control, any matter will meld with you as we have seen with the Pegasus.

If one wants the players to be able to fire torpedoes (again, I would not allow this. A ship that can fire wile phasing cloaked will ruin even more plots than a ship with only a phasing cloaked equipped), I would raise the power costs of firing and rule that the phase cloaked trait of the ship raises the complication range of firing weapons. It may even have its own escalation costs, meaning that for every torpedo fired, the GM will pull Threat.

p. 62 with the rest of the rules and explanations regarding the phasing cloak (as mentioned earlier on this thread :wink: ).

@MisterX, OOPS! I missed that you mentioned the page number previously. :persevere: My apologies.

Uh… Ok, so, it is your game, so if you want to do this, go for it. But, it does go against what we see in TNG. If it worked like think in the show, they would have seen the rocks as they flew through it.

But if you do use it like that, you’ll should keep it consistent. So, no going through a star, center of a planet, etc. (due to bright light). And if you can see the first, then you can see every other part of the ship, AND if the first and see you (to lock eyes), then others on ship would be able to see what ever they are passing through as well.

Well, apart from the ‘eyes locking on each other’ this is pretty consistent with what we saw in TNG. And that could either be just the impression of the CO (as in: the Jem’Hadar First did not really lock eyes on them, it might have been pure chance, whatever the odds) or it could be some (yet to be explained) meta-psychological effect of the Jem’Hadar First knowing something is there without actually seeing it.

Regardless of how it’s explained, I think it’s a very cool scene and a great starting point of a story arc between the CO and that Jem’Hadar First. :smiley:

But is it? As the Enterprise went through the asteroid, you didn’t see the asteroid from inside the ship, and as the ship is cloaked, so the other ship couldn’t see the CO anyway…

Ah, okay, I see what you mean. Yes, the asteroid was only on the viewscreen, right.

Dunno, I think this is a perfect example of a great application of the rule of cool. :smiley:

Need to put an antimatter bomb inside a planet? Cloak.

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Like I said above, it is his game so if he wanted to do this, he should go for it.

However, if his players are like me, they would be thrown off as that is working not as expected. And if you change something that has be established in cannon, you run the risk of having players start second guessing how other things work.

I felt a warning was justified.

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I would not say this ruins plot points but rather opens them. Especially since this tech would be agreed upon by the GM. What types of dangers are there while phased? What type of enemies could you drum up hiding in such a “void”? What could they accidently bring back into normal phase with them? This is actually a key plot point in the campaign I am running at the moment. One of the keys in designing a campaign around some wonderful versatile tech like a “phased cloak” I have found is that as a GM you just need to think outside of the box a bit. Just because it is an area that the federation and even any other “key” super powers in the trek universe (EX : klingons, romulans, cardassians, etc) bave not explored does not mean that there are not other races not yet encountered that are are using it frequently and essentially have been hidden in plain sight through the years. It gives a lot of chance for 1st contact situations and even a chance to introduce a new villianous species to the mix much like the introduction of species 8472 and fluidic space :wink::grin:

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