Technical Question - transporter

Ok, have another one. This time about transporters

The normal us in all the Star Treks I’ve watched (again that is limited compared to the normal here), is if it is ship to ship (non emergency non combat) the people or supplies are transported from their ships transporter pad to the other ship’s transporter pad. If it is emergency or combat, then from the ship’s transporter pad to other locations on the ship.

Likewise when beaming something from the other ship to theirs it is normally beamed into the transporter room. However, there are times (I think in TOS, but I’m sure they did in TNG) that supplies are beamed directly into a cargo bay.

With that, can people or things be beamed into other locations in the ship – directly into sick bay, into a security area, onto the bridge etc.

Also, can people not in the transporter room be beamed from the ship – something like a medical team prepped and ready in the med bay, but not enough time to get to the transporter room.

Now to change from ship to ship, what about ship to surface

The normal is easy, beam down from the ship to location x , or beam from location x up to the ship’s transporter room .

However, what if the team needs to go from location x to location y on the surface? Can the ship beam them directly from x to y, or do the have to be beamed up to the ship from x, then be beamed back down to the surface at location y.

Also, I just thought of this. Visual/sensor horizon on the surface from the ship. Can a ship beam people down to a location on the surface on the other side of the planet (therefore in a place that the ship can’t have sensors on) from the ship’s current location?

I would assume it is possible if the location is known and established – the main transporter pad of a well established colony etc. Of course it may be more difficult than normal or than if they were in sensor footprint of the ship. But, what about an unknown or not well established location on the surface outside the sensor foot print of the ship.

Oh another one I just thought of. Transporters and cloaking. Does a cloaked ship have to de-cloak to beam someone to where ever. If they can remain cloaked, can the transporter be sensed ? Of course it can if the cloaked ship is beaming onto the player’s ship, but what about beaming down to the planet or another ship?

I’m sure someone will have a more technical answer for you, but generally speaking transporters can beam people to and from anywhere assuming that 1) both places are in range, and 2) nothing is interfering with their function.

There are actually many examples of people being beamed directly to and from places that aren’t transporter pads. Sickbay is extremely common in a medical emergency, as is the cargo bay (which often has it’s own dedicated cargo transporters).

Mechanically speaking, the difficulty of the task in question is what changes. iirc, somewhere in the core book it talks about a transporter task being a base difficulty, +1 if not beaming from a transporter pad, +1 if not beaming to a transporter pad, plus any other considerations.

I’m unsure about the line of sight question on regards to a planet, but I would assume some form of direct relay would at least be helpful. It is mentioned a couple of times about personnel transporting to different facilities on Earth at least.

As for a cloaked ship, I see no reason that transporters wouldn’t work, (fairly sure they must do when considering undiscovered country, and some DS9 episodes), however I’d suggest they use a good amount of power, so increase the chance of detection?

All of this of course does depend on your story requirements however. Generally speaking, they work exactly as you need them to for your story too flow properly!

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Klingon vessels have been shown to be capable of transporting while cloaked. ST III, IV, and TNG Unification. As far as Romulan devices the only known reference point is the Defiant that had to decloak to transport.

This is pretty much how I handle anything too technical in ST. If my players can give me a convincing (or amusing) explanation I allow it, possibly with increased TN.

If I am running it for the antagonists I go with how I want the story to play out. (At least until the players start messing my plans up) ST has contradicted itself and created one-off, never to be heard of again technobabble explanations enough times that I feel I am perfectly within canon to do the same. :smile: