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I know this is totally a Daystrom question, but do you think you could make a cloaked ship appear by spraying it with an opaque substance like paint? Should starships come with giant paint nozzles?
One episode of Enterprise has the crew finding a cloaked ship by ejecting and igniting warp plasma so i would say yes.
Deflectors would atomize small particles coming in at it like that, automatically the same as it handles meteorites and leftover screwdrivers left in orbit (bc at faster-than-light travel speeds those could HURT! maybe not worse than stepping on a Lego but still bad!).
But probably some method of friend-v-foe could be devised - e.g. instead of paint, send out tachyon or chroniton bursts? Hehe, send everything around you back and forth through time, and then look for the ripples of a cloaked ship moving into position? Probably not so good for the environment though...
On the other hand, cloaking devices have the strongest protection possible in that entire universe, making it impossible to break through their... plot armor!
Nero clicks every square
"FIRE EVERYTHING!!"
Let me get my emission seeking mouse pointer.
(Hint: it’s the Kobayashi Maru test)
I don't believe in a no captcha scenario.