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The adding and removing of it is fast and simple with the generators.

With the armor it would also be almost impossible to knock out power.

And if a ship lost power how would it fire its weapons anyway?

The benifits outway the costs.

Hmm... I suppose so.
Points conceeded.

Did the armour dematerialise to fire weapons or were they behind hatches that opened?

The big advantages of the armour (besides being the most impressive demonstration of large-scale transporter and relicator technology we've ever seen) would be to allow the Feds to pursue their "jack of all trades"approach to starship construction while still retaining significant battleworthiness. All the scientific palets, transporter pads, windows(!), etc that would otherwise present significant weak points in the hull are covered by the armour, allowing them to (to an extent) have their cake and eat it. Armour also has the advantage that if they loose power it's still there, unlike shields.

I'm pretty sure it dematerialised to let weapons fire.

Yes letting the Federation present a friendly face while still having powerful ships is most important. Starfleet are explorers not a military. Ablative armor allows this.

lol, some interesting points about the federation not being very war like

while the idea behind starfleet is exploratory, I personally think that Starfleet looks really friendly until you consider some of the heavier ship designs

The Sovergien class, for instance. When it comes to battle, Starfleet does NOT mess about. Or the Defiant, a ship built based on fighting the borg (i think). So sure, Starfleet looks rather quaint when you look at something like an Obreth or a Nova, but it depends on the ship type really.

Now, ablative armor. Its awesome. It does dematerialize when the weaponry needs to fire, or atleast torpedeo (spelling, sorry) systems, as demonstrated when Voyager destroyed borg cubes with transphasics in Endgame. Im not quite sure how phasers would work through an armor like that, although I suppose with computers as advanced as they are in Star Trek, the onboard computer could dematerialize only the portion of armor from whence the phaser beam came from, leaving only minimal exposre for mere seconds.

The reason I think it is generated is merely because it looks cool on the screen, though if I had to speculate why it would have to be that way in the Trek universe, I would say that maintaining the armor's integrity was a serious drain on power, which is perhaps why it is only deployed during battle. A loose theory, I know, but its all I can think of. The other idea is that the armor is replicated onto the hull instead of transported, and when it is no longer nessecary for battle, that energy is somehow reabsorbed into the ship's power systems.

My impression about the "ablative armor generator" technology was that it wasn't simply transported into place, but replicated wholesale. Which means it combines the best aspects of normal ablative armor (a thick, physical barrier that absorbs the full impact of a weapon strike and carries it away from the ship as it "boils" off) and shields (a barrier that you can recharge as long as you keep supplying power to it)

As to the question of having to remove sections of it to fire weapons, think of it this way: It's like having a layer of armor that you can ratract in the instant you fire the weapon, and slam back into place as soon as you're done firing. I have to assume that ship's weapons in Star Trek are generally quite vulnerable because it wouldn't normally be physically practical to build shutters like that. It might be fine for torpedoes and similar weapons that can change direction after firing, but for weapons with line of sight, like phasers, the mechanism would still block certain angles of fire even when retracted. A shuttered piece of armor would also be weaker because it would have joints, whereas this technology could (presumably) refabricate a solid piece of armor over the weapons after firing.

Fact: Voyager's ablative armor is also called batmobile armor by many fans.

Batmobile armour came first.

Now, Ablative Armour is a very cool (ie fanboyish) idea, but it leaves alot of plotholes.

First of all, there's the power concern. How the hell could Voyager generate enough power to replicate an entire layer of armour? No way the Intrepid's little Warp Core could do that. They moaned about power so much on Voyager that there were replicator rations. Now suddenly they can essentially create enough metal to build another Intrepid spaceframe?
Huuuuge plothole.

Second, replicator technology is similar to Transporter technology, only whereas Transporters move a set pattern from one location to another, Replicators use "Replicator stock" (usually waste matter) to generate preset patterns. Come on, unless the Crew disassembled every bulkhead and floor on the inside of Voyager and used that, they'd never have enough stock to cover the hull.

Next up, time delay. It took several seconds to cover the weapons in Armour. And I can only assume it'd take about the same time to uncover them. Now the 3 or 4 seconds it takes to open up a torpedo launcher may not seem like much, but it's enough to notice it happening and fire everything the enemy's got at said torp launcher.

On the plus side, it looks damn impressive.

You've got a good point about the power probolems, but remember how heavily voyager was modified with alien technology, especially Borg technology. For all we know Voyager could've outclassed the Scimitar (though I doubt it, haha)

And about several seconds to uncover weapon ports. Watch 'Endgame' where Voyager engages two Borg cubes. The time between the armor uncovering the aft launcher and firing the weapon is less than 3 seconds, possibly even less than 2. So sure, you can detect and react to that, but the crew of the vessel is going to KNOW they'll be exposed, and can easily maneuver or evade any incoming fire.

Think of it this way. Sure it takes a second to uncover your weapons but if you left them uncovered while the rest of this ship was covered you may as well paint a bulls-eye on you weapons for the enemy to hit since they would become the best targets. Not only does it protect them it becomes needed if the rest of the hull is covered.

Also we don't know what the armor is.

I pointed out in the first post that it would make sense for it to not be metal but some form of mineral since they have a higher melt point. In which case Voyager could have just stopped off at a astroid belt and beamed abord how ever much crap they needed.

First off, let me say that I really disliked the idea of "ablative armour" as it showed up in Endgame. To me, a little fanboyish, even for Voyager!

That said, it is a very interesting idea. (although if you ever catch me using it in a design/story I submit, please mock me mercilessly)

I think that the clearest explanation for reconciling all these ideas (why is it not always up, how do the ports open for weapons, how could Voyager possibly produce it, etc.) has to do with what I take to be the basic principle: basically armour replicated on the spot at the time needed.

If you can do this, it would explain how easily it could be retracted for firing. Yes, it takes a few seconds to cover the whole ship, but it doesn't take anywhere near that long for a single piece to appear. Besides, as someone mentioned earlier, beaming/replicating armour over the weapons ports would probably be better than, say, jointed doors as the single piece is most likely stronger.

A second advantage of replicated armour is that if you have enough of whatever raw materials are used, you should be able to replenish it at will! The only way to destroy the armour would be to take out the generators or wait until the ship exhausted it's supply of materials.

If your armour was replicated in place at the time needed, why bother having it on the whole time? If it takes even a fraction of the power to maintain it as it does to produce it, it is not cost effective to keep it on all the time, only in combat situations.

As to Voyager being able to produce it, it was probably decided that this event was important enough to use the ship at full power. I could see rationing replicators, etc. when the ship was en-route home to save even the smallest amounts of energy. But I doubt that the armour takes more energy than warp drive, for example! I don't see why it would be difficult at all to produce the armour if it is a one-time thing.

A second advantage of replicated armour is that if you have enough of whatever raw materials are used, you should be able to replenish it at will! The only way to destroy the armour would be to take out the generators or wait until the ship exhausted it's supply of materials.

I think that is the biggest advantage. The surviveability of the ship goes way up.

Still nobody's really answered the problem of the Replicator stock. Where would Voyager get that much matter to turn into Armour, and hold it?

If you were to completely fill Voyager's cargobays, the Shuttlebay, That mysterious "Room 5" behind the Shuttlebay, and even the holodecks, I still don't see enough room for the amount of matter needed to cover the ship.

The easy answer is that the armour is low density, but replicator stock is high density.

Imagine a cargo bay with a thousand tons of lead in it. Turned into something with the density of polystyrene, that would make a hell of a lot of armour!

That explains it nicely.