Other forms of FTL in Robotech

[drewkitty ~..~]

According to the novels, yes there are. They use the monopole fuel mined on fantoma, which is the fuel for Reflex Furnaces. And there are the Urflower Peat FTL drives. (UrFlower is the mutant form of the IFoL that thrived on Carbonara and has a link to the Carbonarites that when handled by Carbonarites it sets free the energies at a level near that of a PC reactor.

But that is the novels....

[keir451]

I'm creating a new race for Robotech that has FTL starships that don't use fold or protoculture (different arm of the Galaxy) and are aggressive colonizers and explorers.

[drewkitty ~..~]

The reason the Trioliens moved to fold drives is that they are inherently faster then the FTL drives they had.

e.g.: where with the the old FTL drives the trip to Optera, one of the close by systems, took weeks or months, with the fold drives only took hours or days.

I have made up my own starting setting, Its about what happened to the 7th colony fleet (the last one in my setting). It's fold jump took it farther then it should of, and a bit displaced in time. It could be that they moved to a new dimension, but since they know they have limited amount of PC they've started moving away from it's use.
However, I haven't gone past the basics.....

[taalismn]

The old Palladium Mechanoids game(if you have the compiled collection edition book, perfect)...has a range of FTL drives that range upwards from about less than 1 light year per DAY, that would fit nicely as low-end early tech FTL drive systems....

[keir451]

There's also the Logic Drive, it works by moving/reconfiguring space around you, instead of you moving through it.
You'd start off at point A then the drive reconfigures space around you to bring point B to you.
Tho' I'd only recommend this for high level, nigh unkillable, enemies y'know kinda akin to the Dominators.

[Beatmeclever]

There's also the Logic Drive, it works by moving/reconfiguring space around you, instead of you moving through it.
You'd start off at point A then the drive reconfigures space around you to bring point B to you.
Tho' I'd only recommend this for high level, nigh unkillable, enemies y'know kinda akin to the Dominators.

Like the ship in Futurama! Sweet!

[Rabid Southern Cross Fan]

Well, The Masters use Impulse to move FTL as an alternative to spacefold in the Tv series.

[drewkitty ~..~]

One of the book series had an interesting type of FTL drive. It does not 'go into hyper space' nor is it a warp drive like with ST.

The drive field is a time execrator field, so while the effect is to have a speed that is faster then light, the ship's velocity is less then c. To protect the humans on board there is a second field that shields the ship from the effects of the "drive field".

The thing is, that in warships the inner shield can be dropped, giving the crew almost 'All the Time in the World' to fight vs ships stuck in the normal flow of time.

[Aku-Arkaine]

There's also the Inertialess drives from the Lensman novels by E. E. Doc Smith. They basically achieve FTL by changing how physics affects the ship by reducing the C in E=MC2 is reduced to 0.

The UEG experimented with the concept in my Robotech campaign, but the test failed because the ship with the prototype drive never came back. Turns out, it hit a rogue asteroid on emergence. After that, budget cuts killed the project.

[gaby]

Any alternvate FTL will need to be inferior to Proto-powered fold,you will need a Original Aliens or a crossover with phase world.

[Seto Kaiba]

Any alternvate FTL will need to be inferior to Proto-powered fold, [...]

Why? The Haydonites have fold technology that doesn't appear to use protoculture in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles.

[glitterboy2098]

lets rephrase that then...

any alternate FTL available to humans or the Tirolian empire needs to be inferior to protoculture powered fold drives.
this is purely to prevent protoculture from becoming pointless.

[Nightmask]

lets rephrase that then...

any alternate FTL available to humans or the Tirolian empire needs to be inferior to protoculture powered fold drives.
this is purely to prevent protoculture from becoming pointless.

And why does protoculture HAVE to remain relevant? Why can't it become pointless? There's no reason for it to have to remain valuable, having it be moved beyond by advances in energy-production technology so that newer systems that don't require it including FTL systems are developed is certainly a valid story element.

[eliakon]

lets rephrase that then...

any alternate FTL available to humans or the Tirolian empire needs to be inferior to protoculture powered fold drives.
this is purely to prevent protoculture from becoming pointless.

And why does protoculture HAVE to remain relevant? Why can't it become pointless? There's no reason for it to have to remain valuable, having it be moved beyond by advances in energy-production technology so that newer systems that don't require it including FTL systems are developed is certainly a valid story element.

I think its more "any tech that exists in the setting as written, needs to be inferior otherwise everyone would use IT not PC Fold." There COULD be such tech, and it could replace PC...eventually, but that would be a divergent universe.

[Nightmask]

lets rephrase that then...

any alternate FTL available to humans or the Tirolian empire needs to be inferior to protoculture powered fold drives.
this is purely to prevent protoculture from becoming pointless.

And why does protoculture HAVE to remain relevant? Why can't it become pointless? There's no reason for it to have to remain valuable, having it be moved beyond by advances in energy-production technology so that newer systems that don't require it including FTL systems are developed is certainly a valid story element.

I think its more "any tech that exists in the setting as written, needs to be inferior otherwise everyone would use IT not PC Fold." There COULD be such tech, and it could replace PC...eventually, but that would be a divergent universe.

That's just it though, it doesn't need to be inferior it just needs to be developed recently, and that wouldn't constitute a divergent universe having protoculture replaced by non-protoculture systems. Divergent implies that somehow they only 'right' path is the retaining of protoculture which isn't so, and given it's generally presented as a finite resource everyone would HAVE to eventually switch to something else or return to societies tied completely to their own solar systems as they wouldn't have the means to travel between stars fast enough to maintain a social structure linking them together.

[Seto Kaiba]

I think its more "any tech that exists in the setting as written, needs to be inferior otherwise everyone would use IT not PC Fold." There COULD be such tech, and it could replace PC...eventually, but that would be a divergent universe.

But (comparatively) recent revelations in Robotech that emerged alongside the current edition of the RPG have made it clear that protoculture is not, in any way, actually necessary to achieve high performance in robotechnology... and with the creative staff's chosen direction being to de-emphasize protoculture into just another fuel source, and the way the abortive start of the 4th saga left humanity (and the rest of the galaxy) bereft of any way of obtaining the stuff, it's less relevant than ever before.

To be entirely blunt (because it's my second-favorite way to be), protoculture was always pointless thanks to the revelations made in recent years.

If the Haydonites can develop a version of the fold drive that doesn't use protoculture then humanity can too given time and/or one to study... without breaking the setting even slightly.

[Chronicler]

Just throwing this out there but, can protoculture be used in genetic modification then in the setting instead of a viable fuel source? Hey if the Invid and Robotech Masters can do it why not the UEEF, hell this can solve the population problem.

[Nightmask]

Just throwing this out there but, can protoculture be used in genetic modification then in the setting instead of a viable fuel source? Hey if the Invid and Robotech Masters can do it why not the UEEF, hell this can solve the population problem.

Population problems (as in too little) is generally solved by having genetic samples from as many as you can and mix them up as diversely as possible while making use of gestation chambers to develop them. You could possibly use the Zentraedi technology for 'programmed' skills (not that I'm sure that's actually canon to the anime rather than the game books) to deal with issues of education and development although that would be a slippery slope problem.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just throwing this out there but, can protoculture be used in genetic modification then in the setting instead of a viable fuel source? Hey if the Invid and Robotech Masters can do it why not the UEEF, hell this can solve the population problem.

It's generally assumed that the cloning technology the Zentradi use requires protoculture in the Robotech version of things... though it's only because of the new comics Love and War miniseries that we know that the chambers the Zentradi use for resizing are also cloning machines. (Tommy was just going with the OSM line on that one.)

Population problems (as in too little) is generally solved by having genetic samples from as many as you can and mix them up as diversely as possible while making use of gestation chambers to develop them. You could possibly use the Zentraedi technology for 'programmed' skills (not that I'm sure that's actually canon to the anime rather than the game books) to deal with issues of education and development although that would be a slippery slope problem.

's dubious whether cloning was used to beef up human numbers in Robotech, and as the technology is far less potent than it was in the Macross version it's unclear if they can do memory/knowledge downloads.

Now, on the other hand... that approach to cloning was exactly what was used in Macross's universe(s). Humanity may have started from a much bigger population (1 million survivors instead of 70 thousand) but they used precisely that kind of cloning to rebuild Earth's population and provide colonists for the space emigration program. Initially, they cloned people with valuable, hard-to-acquire skills and copied them right down to their memories to make up crew deficits in the first generation of colony missions, but went to creating more diverse populations afterwards.

(Duplicating individuals with their memories intact is a tall order for the Robotech Masters in Robotech, but is not all that dissimilar from how micloning machines work and how Zentradi are "born" in Macross.)

[taalismn]

[
If the Haydonites can develop a version of the fold drive that doesn't use protoculture then humanity can too given time and/or one to study... without breaking the setting even slightly.

Depends: The FTL the Haydonites use may be usable only by their particular sept of sentience(i.e. machines) with side effects detrimental to organic life(like attendant radiation).
(The converse could also be true of some forms of FTL; ever read The Warm Space, by David Brin? It's a McGuffin, but a great one.)

[Seto Kaiba]

Psycho burn! The Haydonite FTL systems leaves permanent mental trauma in organics. This is another way "metal is better than meat", [...]

Makes you wonder how much of the Haydonite body is actually organic and how much isn't...

and also explains why they want to eliminate humanity in general, rather than just giving their non-PC generation and fold technology to humanity and telling them to stuff this PC crap, it's only going to get worse from this point on!

Heh... Shadow Chronicles is already trying pretty hard to be Battlestar Galactica meets Macross: Do You Remember Love?. Let's not encourage that one any further.

[mech798]

THe problem Ihave is that increasingly it's: protoculture isn't much better (if at all) in mecha, there are other FTL systems out there...

So why ws everyone using it? More importantly, how did it help the master's ever get a huge empire? It's as if the story went from "this was the holy grail" to "Wow, the robotech master's created unleaded gasoline...which isn't that much better than anything else."

[ShadowLogan]

THe problem Ihave is that increasingly it's: protoculture isn't much better (if at all) in mecha, there are other FTL systems out there...

Well there are a couple of factors here to explain why PC is better:
1st, PC vs SLMH/hydrogen sources are shown to have double the endurance of the best SLMH system (at least discarding IMU builds)
2nd, PC is more energy dense, so for a given unit of measure, PC will be better than SLMH/hydrogen. That means you can either carry more payload, reduce the size of the fuel tank (and overall size possibly to), or some combination of the previous without loss of capability.

There might be other FTL systems out there. But PC may allow much faster transit time.

So why ws everyone using it? More importantly, how did it help the master's ever get a huge empire? It's as if the story went from "this was the holy grail" to "Wow, the robotech master's created unleaded gasoline...which isn't that much better than anything else."

The change is partly based in the various revisions that have cropped since 2001 concerning PC. PC helped the Masters get a huge empire by several means:
-clone army and genetic engineering. PC seems instrumental in these applications for fast turn around time. The Zentraedi sizing chamber grows a new adult body in a matter of hours. That means an army can be much quicker to replace than for normal people.
-PC supply seemed necessary for the RM society, they take Bio-Energy Supplements which could lead to drug addiction and withdrawal. Spread it to subject worlds and get them hooked...
-FTL systems appear to be faster if they use PC, so the Masters forces can respond faster in conflict zones bringing in reinforcements and supplies
-Reflex weaponry appears to be something to be cautious of if in play, as demonstrated by the Zentraedi in Ep1.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Why protoculture?

Because it a 'cheat' to be able to make things smaller, faster, more powerful then if they were using a 'hard science' background.

Sort of how Kick's son in Wrath of Kahn used an unstable material to 'solve' some problems in the genesis device. Bringing along some 'side-effects with it.

Yep, you young'ins are going to have to go watch that ST movie to understand my example.

[Seto Kaiba]

Because it a 'cheat' to be able to make things smaller, faster, more powerful then if they were using a 'hard science' background.

ORLY? Because the technologies in use in Macross and MOSPEADA aren't exactly that unrealistic... NASA's concept for a fusion turbine is a dead ringer for what Macross's design staff set down for the VF-1's reaction turbines, and MOSPEADA's mecha are basically using hydrogen fuel cells. Gundam's power plants are based on very real physics (except for the presence of an exotic particle byproduct). I could go on...

A macguffin is not actually necessary.

Seen Wrath of Khan plenty of times... but that's more fun if you're watching to see William Shatner and Ricardo Montalbán engage in a scenery-chewing contest.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Because it a 'cheat' to be able to make things smaller, faster, more powerful then if they were using a 'hard science' background.

ORLY? Because the technologies in use in Macross and MOSPEADA aren't exactly that unrealistic... NASA's concept for a fusion turbine is a dead ringer for what Macross's design staff set down for the VF-1's reaction turbines, and MOSPEADA's mecha are basically using hydrogen fuel cells. Gundam's power plants are based on very real physics (except for the presence of an exotic particle byproduct). I could go on...

A macguffin is not actually necessary.

Seen Wrath of Khan plenty of times... but that's more fun if you're watching to see William Shatner and Ricardo Montalbán engage in a scenery-chewing contest.

I was just talking about the PC was used.
While the Macross (as in SDF-Macross) Valkareis designs are more hard science then the PC tech that is used to 'bind' the three stories together.

[Seto Kaiba]

I was just talking about the PC was used.
While the Macross (as in SDF-Macross) Valkareis designs are more hard science then the PC tech that is used to 'bind' the three stories together.

Still doesn't really work, logically... because the Haydonites are talked up as being equally adept with tech (if not moreso) as the Robotech Masters at the height of their empire, and their gear's protoculture-free by all accounts. Likewise, the "hard science" fusion power plants seem to give better performance than the protoculture ones, even if they don't have the same endurance*.


* Only in the RPG. There is nothing to date that indicates the Alpha, Beta, etc. were possessed of any more endurance than a VF-1 or Logan in the series.

[drewkitty ~..~]

That is the thing, PC is not "Logical".

The thing I liked about the RT novels, was how the PC itself affected the users at the probability level of things. Moving it towards something it wants. While this might of been something Haydon programed into the flowers when they moved the flower from Earth to Optera, it is still there in the story to explain how/why leaders did not take the 'optimal' decision route when interacting with others.

Haydon...the race that created the haydonites and Haydon 4 in the RT novels.

[eliakon]

Perhaps the true secret of Protoculture is that it is the most efficient fuel to power Idiot Balls? Those groups that need to maintain massive quantities of Idiot Balls long term thus choose Protoculture.