If we had the Enterprise NCC 1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D in orbit, you would be able to see it with the naked eye. The thing is 288 m long. Even in geosynchronous orbit you’d still be barely able to see it.
If you’re referring to pretty much any of the classes of starships once TNG starts, those ships would be clearly visible in a standard low to high orbit.
That’s understandable for civilizations up to industrial age, but once they start getting prewarp, hiding in orbit would get more and more difficult.all the satellites in orbit, telescopes and scanners would likely pick up something
Cloaks strike me as primarily defensive tech with potential offenses strategies
Klingons use it almost exclusively as an offensive technology.
Romulans use it to misinform and to be the boogy-man.
These aren’t Starfleet or Federation ideals.
But wouldn’t it also help with the Prime Directive?
They use holograms for ground outposts, and you can’t really see a ship in orbit easily.
The use case with the prime directive is rather limited.
If we had the Enterprise NCC 1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D in orbit, you would be able to see it with the naked eye. The thing is 288 m long. Even in geosynchronous orbit you’d still be barely able to see it.
If you’re referring to pretty much any of the classes of starships once TNG starts, those ships would be clearly visible in a standard low to high orbit.
That’s understandable for civilizations up to industrial age, but once they start getting prewarp, hiding in orbit would get more and more difficult.all the satellites in orbit, telescopes and scanners would likely pick up something
This is why I added the qualifier easily to that sentence.
Pre warp civilizations aren’t always going to be able to do those things.
the big shields are used primarily in combat. thus they are offensive technology.
Shields are, and always have been defensive. Weapons are offensive.
the shield that displaces light is an offensive technology
And starfleet could put it on ships designed to rescue refugees in hostile territory.
yeah! they could kill all the people displacing those refugees the first place without the refugees even knowing about their benefactors.