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[Seto Kaiba]

At this point I think the issue basically is what one uses to define a given unit as a "minor" and "obscure" in the 85ep. We apparently don't have the same definition.

That does seem to be the case, yes...

From my perspective, since I work very heavily with the OSM and other official materials... to be "minor", a design has to be prominently displayed in the animation in connection with a main character and figure into the story proper (or at least that character's backstory) in some meaningful way, or at least make a sizable number of background appearances. An "obscure" design, by my standards of measure, would be one that only appears in the "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" type scenes or as background filler once or twice, which is not directly connected to any named character or relevant to the story.

To give examples thereof... a "minor" design would be the VF-X-4 or Conbat, which are directly associated with main characters in the animation, or the LVT Avenger II, which is not directly connected with a major character but is featured prominently in a significant scene in the series. An "obscure" design would be an innocuous bit of background filler that doesn't really have any relevance to the story or any character, or is completely lacking in information (up to and including not having a name). Examples of "obscure" designs would be the Spider Bug, the various non-transforming robots in Southern Cross, or the generic bikes and jeeps seen in multiple shows.

I'm not so sure about that. Certainly a book dedicated to the stuff will be harder to sell if that is the focus, but stuff like this can be included. And some of them do have relevance to the plot or can help fill out the equipment tables. We know the UEEF didn't rely on VFA-6/VFB-9s until the 2040s, and the Condor/Conbat weren't the only mecha the UEEF used in the 2020-30s from the show.

Debatable... the returning forces depicted in the Masters Saga were rear-echelon supply groups, and not all that well-equipped (canon has it that their ships were almost useless as battleships). Still, these things are what would ordinarily be used to pad out a book that doesn't have a lot of high-profile material (such as the Masters Saga book did with the non-transforming robots).

I agree it (and possible AEs) likely would not happen unless HG gets really desperate for new material (they aren't?).

Not THAT desperate yet, apparently...

No. Or to put it clearly when do they go Extinct From Scott's Perspective? A case could be made that Leonard's statement is highly subjective to a specific POV in 2029.

They left Earth in 2022, so they shouldn't (and wouldn't) figure into Commander Leonard or the narrator's assessment of UEG survivors.

[silvermoon383]

finishing off that comic book crossover with Voltron (the one that started with a readership of less than 7,000 and has lost, on average, about 1,000 readers an issue)

Gonna need a source there buddy.

[Seto Kaiba]

Gonna need a source there buddy.

Dynamite's published sales figures, as retrieved from Diamond Comic Distributors Inc.*, corroborated by both Robotech.com and InvestComics.com.

Issue 1 sold 6,408 copies.
Issue 2 sold 5,118 copies. (-1,290)
Issue 3 sold 4,460 copies. (-658)

That's distributor-level sales, which doesn't guarantee that all those copies sold to distributors actually sold to customers. That's an average loss of 974 readers per issue. Sales figures are not yet available for #4. As of issue 3, it's also fallen out of the top 300 new releases (it started at 263 and now sits at 324).


* The largest comic book distributor serving North America, which has exclusive distribution agreements with most major comics companies.

[Alpha 11]

Gonna need a source there buddy.

Dynamite's published sales figures, as retrieved from Diamond Comic Distributors Inc.*, corroborated by both Robotech.com and InvestComics.com.

Issue 1 sold 6,408 copies.
Issue 2 sold 5,118 copies. (-1,290)
Issue 3 sold 4,460 copies. (-658)

That's distributor-level sales, which doesn't guarantee that all those copies sold to distributors actually sold to customers. That's an average loss of 974 readers per issue. Sales figures are not yet available for #4. As of issue 3, it's also fallen out of the top 300 new releases (it started at 263 and now sits at 324).


* The largest comic book distributor serving North America, which has exclusive distribution agreements with most major comics companies.

Looks like another dead end for them, sadly.

[ShadowLogan]

That does seem to be the case, yes...

From my perspective, since I work very heavily with the OSM and other official materials...

From my perspective I'm looking at screen time w/n the 85ep as that is should be a common frame of reference most should be somewhat familiar with.

Debatable... the returning forces depicted in the Masters Saga were rear-echelon supply groups, and not all that well-equipped (canon has it that their ships were almost useless as battleships). Still, these things are what would ordinarily be used to pad out a book that doesn't have a lot of high-profile material (such as the Masters Saga book did with the non-transforming robots).

They are equipped as well as the ASC (using the same ships, and even the AGAC), but they are ALSO shown using unique equipment that hasn't been touched yet (in the RPG) from the show. So we know the UEEF TO&E wasn't just Conbats & Condors in the late 2020s before the Alpha and Beta became the main stay mecha, indications are there where at least two other fighters (Wolfe & Carpenter)..

They left Earth in 2022, so they shouldn't (and wouldn't) figure into Commander Leonard or the narrator's assessment of UEG survivors.

I'm not sure the Zentreadi can (or should even) be considered "survivors" though by anyone be in 2013 or 2029, so would not count toward any survivor totals of said event.

[Seto Kaiba]

Looks like another dead end for them, sadly.

To be brutally honest, I don't think anyone expected this one to go anywhere or do anything... though what I've seen as far as feedback for the series has revolved around discontent that Harmony Gold is doing some alterniverse story instead of investing its efforts in advancing the plot of the main story, and argument over whether one of the two rewrite franchises in that relationship is "slumming".

From my perspective I'm looking at screen time w/n the 85ep as that is should be a common frame of reference most should be somewhat familiar with.

Screen time is only relevant if the design is prominently displayed... most folks aren't going to stop to look over, say, the cars in the background of some action scenes.

They are equipped as well as the ASC (using the same ships, and even the AGAC), but they are ALSO shown using unique equipment that hasn't been touched yet (in the RPG) from the show.

Which is rather a backhanded confirmation that the ASC used inferior equipment, isn't it? The return forces are said to be assigned to rear-echelon duty due to inferior ships and equipment.

I'm not sure the Zentreadi can (or should even) be considered "survivors" though by anyone be in 2013 or 2029, so would not count toward any survivor totals of said event.

It's pretty clear from the context that they're not counting them... but as they've been nearly wiped out in Khyron's rebellion over a decade before Leonard's speech, it's hardly surprising. Especially since they had already sent the surviving Zentradi into space seven years earlier.

[ShadowLogan]

Screen time is only relevant if the design is prominently displayed... most folks aren't going to stop to look over, say, the cars in the background of some action scenes.

What do we consider prominetly displayed though? Carpenter's fighters certainly are more displayed than the Conbat/Condor/VF-X-4 in time and action in the 85ep. Its arguably the "biggest" (or one of them) no-name unit in RT yet to be covered in terms of screen time. The Shadow Drone is next (Infopedia has stuff, but not the 2E RPG), with Wolfe's jeep close behind. The Conbat/Condor/VF-X-4 by comparison are displayed for a much shorter time.

And those other examples I've listed are things that aren't small filler one might miss ("Broken Heart" destroids) due to scale, they are prominently displayed taking up a good noticeable portion of the screen and clearly identifiable at the same level that the Conbat/Condor/VF-X-4 are.

Which is rather a backhanded confirmation that the ASC used inferior equipment, isn't it? The return forces are said to be assigned to rear-echelon duty due to inferior ships and equipment.

No it isn't a confirmation that the ASC used inferior equipment. Equipment is only as good as the people you have using it and directing the battle.

It's pretty clear from the context that they're not counting them... but as they've been nearly wiped out in Khyron's rebellion over a decade before Leonard's speech, it's hardly surprising. Especially since they had already sent the surviving Zentradi into space seven years earlier.

I agree they aren't being counted. However that does not mean they aren't physically around anymore by 2029 on Earth. All we know is that in the 2042-4 period they are considered extinct with no real indication of when that happened (IF that is in fact what Scott meant, I know its the common view, but it isn't the only view that works). Khyron's rebellion though did not take everyone, and I suspect the UEEF didn't take everyone either short of a draft (no indication there is a draft in RT's 85ep), and Leonard does play down Zentreadi contribution to rebuilding, so is hardly a source for when the Zent. became extinct.

[Seto Kaiba]

What do we consider prominetly displayed though? Carpenter's fighters certainly are more displayed than the Conbat/Condor/VF-X-4 in time and action in the 85ep.

The distinction being that Carpenter's fighters are never directly connected to a main or supporting character in the series (or anywhere else), and the official supplemental material doesn't even consider the "Carpenter fighter" to be important enough to merit a name. The fighters show up once as cannon fodder, during which they're onscreen just long enough to lose, and are never seen again. They're never connected in any way to any other design either.

To briefly compare that to your cited examples:

• The VF-X-4/YF-4 is directly connected (twice) to Rick Hunter, once in the series and once in the reboot's pilot comic "From the Stars". In both the OSM and Robotech, the VF-X-4 is the prototype for the next main fighter after the VF-1, though in Robotech it's also connected to the Alpha fighter, which was the rival program. It's also so frequently fixated-upon by Robotech fans that they frequently "appropriate" the actual VF-4 from Macross: Flashback 2012 when they do fan-fiction or conversions.
• The Condor and Conbat may be background designs that aren't shown fighting in the series proper, but both played a significant plot-relevant role in the backstory of the New Generation... with both having been the main mecha for the failed 1st Earth Reclamation Force that stranded both "Lunk" and Lancer on Earth's surface. The Conbat was, in a related matter, featured prominently in Lancer's backstory (around which an entire episode revolved, to say nothing of LLA and the Invasion comic). Both designs are also described to have been the direct predecessors the Alpha and Beta replaced in the UEEF inventory, and the Conbat also being the craft that filled the role now occupied by the Beta before the Beta's completion.

That's all pretty significant stuff... the Carpenter fighter, Wolf backstory fighter, etc. are more on par with those various nameless background robots from Southern Cross, which the RPG used as filler despite them never having official names and most never even appearing in the series proper.

And those other examples I've listed are things that aren't small filler one might miss ("Broken Heart" destroids) due to scale, they are prominently displayed taking up a good noticeable portion of the screen and clearly identifiable at the same level that the Conbat/Condor/VF-X-4 are.

But nowhere near as important or relevant to anything that's going on in the plot, and they're one-and-done appearances (unless you count debris).

No it isn't a confirmation that the ASC used inferior equipment. Equipment is only as good as the people you have using it and directing the battle.

So now we're confirming that the ASC has inferior soldiery too? (I'm just teasing you at this point...)

I agree they aren't being counted. However that does not mean they aren't physically around anymore by 2029 on Earth.

Apart from their complete absence, both visibly and in dialog... or that the official line has been that those few surviving Zentradi left Earth with the SDF-3 ever since Sentinels?

All we know is that in the 2042-4 period they are considered extinct with no real indication of when that happened (IF that is in fact what Scott meant, I know its the common view, but it isn't the only view that works).

There's no other interpretation that makes sense... considering Scott is a rabid, frothy-mouthed xenophobe worthy of Warhammer 40,000 for most of the series (and RTSC and Prelude establish that attitude is almost universal in the UEEF and shared by the UEDF's top man).

Khyron's rebellion though did not take everyone, and I suspect the UEEF didn't take everyone either short of a draft (no indication there is a draft in RT's 85ep), and Leonard does play down Zentreadi contribution to rebuilding, so is hardly a source for when the Zent. became extinct.

Assuming, of course, that there was a contribution significant enough to be worth mentioning... which may have been significantly hindered by most of the Zentradi population going crazy rampage nuts and blowing up many of society's gains before being exterminated or packed off into space.

[ShadowLogan]

The distinction being that Carpenter's fighters are never directly connected to a main or supporting character in the series (or anywhere else), and the official supplemental material doesn't even consider the "Carpenter fighter" to be important enough to merit a name. The fighters show up once as cannon fodder, during which they're onscreen just long enough to lose, and are never seen again. They're never connected in any way to any other design either.

From a plot perspective though they are just as important. They are connected to "guest" characters that are in for one episode and then gone. But if they can do Dusty's Motorcycle, then they can do other equipment connected to "guest" characters. That the OSM hasn't touched the design should give HG the freedom to do their own take on it so it is uniquely RT as opposed to the OSM derived mess we have now.

But nowhere near as important or relevant to anything that's going on in the plot, and they're one-and-done appearances (unless you count debris).

That doesn't mean that it can't change as a result of future works (which look less and less likely to happen). And we are looking for what could be seen as official/canon designs the RPG can use, its not up to us to decide if they should be covered only that they are out there. However all of these designs ARE connected to the UEEF so might end up in Marines anyway (if not "Source Book One", then a later book seems to be in the works possibly if they are calling this one SB#1).

Apart from their complete absence, both visibly and in dialog... or that the official line has been that those few surviving Zentradi left Earth with the SDF-3 ever since Sentinels?

Visually though we couldn't spot every micronized Zentreadi in a crowd of humans though. Their odd hair and skin tones don't seem to stand out among humans (Scott & Lancer, and heritage doesn't seem to cause Dana to stand out, Simon, Nova also qualify w/odd hair) and certainly didn't stop humans from mistaking Zent & Stage5-Invid as regular human (Miryia, 3-Spies, Corg, Sera, Ariel/Marlene, no-name pilot from "Reflex Point"). That leaves dialogue, but even then it would have to a reason to be mentioned.

There's no other interpretation that makes sense... considering Scott is a rabid, frothy-mouthed xenophobe worthy of Warhammer 40,000 for most of the series (and RTSC and Prelude establish that attitude is almost universal in the UEEF and shared by the UEDF's top man).

However Scott's rabid xenophobia is directed toward the Invid. We have only one bit about the Zentreadi, and none about the Masters or any of the Sentinel aliens, etc. So it is a bit much to assume that Scott's hatred of the Invid includes all aliens (Angelo makes such a comment to be taken that way, but not Scott). I do disagree about it being the only interpretation that makes sense, that its the commonly held interpretation doesn't mean it is the only one.

Assuming, of course, that there was a contribution significant enough to be worth mentioning... which may have been significantly hindered by most of the Zentradi population going crazy rampage nuts and blowing up many of society's gains before being exterminated or packed off into space.

Depends on what one considers significant. The show illustrates they where part of the construction and manufacturing crews during early reconstruction. Its basically Leonard "white-washing history".

[Seto Kaiba]

From a plot perspective though they are just as important. They are connected to "guest" characters that are in for one episode and then gone. But if they can do Dusty's Motorcycle, then they can do other equipment connected to "guest" characters.

The difference between Carpenter's forces and Dusty is that Dusty is the focal point of the entire episode in which he appears... while Carpenter's forces are, at best, the "B-plot" of the episode in which they appear, generally being out-of-focus in favor of the ongoing angst of Dana Sterling and company.

That the OSM hasn't touched the design should give HG the freedom to do their own take on it so it is uniquely RT as opposed to the OSM derived mess we have now.

Drawing upon the OSM for answers is not a negative factor... it's one of the few things that has enabled the Robotech "team" to produce material that isn't a completely internally inconsistent mess. If a mecha's so unimportant in the animation that its creators couldn't even be arsed to give it a name, let alone connect that design to someone who matters to the story, odds are it's not going to be a priority to cover, since that design is too out-of-focus for most people to care about.

It's also worth noting that, though they're very enthusiastic, there's been a fair amount of practical proof of the Robotech team's lack of "chops" when it comes to mechanical design and technical continuity when they can't lean on the OSM. (It ain't easy, so it's certainly understandable.)

That doesn't mean that it can't change as a result of future works (which look less and less likely to happen).

's why I don't bother with would'a-could'a-should'a... the practicals are inherently more satisfying than the theoreticals.

And we are looking for what could be seen as official/canon designs the RPG can use, its not up to us to decide if they should be covered only that they are out there.

You're right, it's up to Harmony Gold and their legal counsel to decide what can and should be used as far as canon designs the RPG can use... it just happens that they and I tend to see eye-to-eye on what ought to be done about off-model animation (ignore it, rather than trying to justify EVERYTHING).

However all of these designs ARE connected to the UEEF so might end up in Marines anyway (if not "Source Book One", then a later book seems to be in the works possibly if they are calling this one SB#1).

We'll know sooner or later, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you... the UEEF Marines book is already known to be exploiting the rejected MOSPEADA concept designs from the so-called "Imai Files", which likely won't all get used either. I don't think we'll see them going back to recreate comical nonsense like an enormous Alpha or big-headed Alpha.

Visually though we couldn't spot every micronized Zentreadi in a crowd of humans though.

If they're extinct, they're certainly not there to be spotted... and per Prelude/RTSC, hybrids and Zentradi in what remains of human society are so rare as to almost be unheard-of.

However Scott's rabid xenophobia is directed toward the Invid.

Correction... we only see Scott's rabid xenophobia directed at the Invid because 1. they're who's handy and 2. they killed his girlfriend. Look to the other UEDF and UEEF troops we see... most of them are avidly and openly untrusting of aliens at the best of times, if not openly hateful or fearful towards them. Look at how Leonard and Komodo reacted in the Masters Saga, or how practically everyone reacts in Prelude. They'd be right at home among the Imperial Guard in WH40K, if only they could affect a British accent, because they know not to trust the xenos and are perfectly happy to nuke a planet if it means killing 'em all.

We have only one bit about the Zentreadi, and none about the Masters or any of the Sentinel aliens, etc. So it is a bit much to assume that Scott's hatred of the Invid includes all aliens (Angelo makes such a comment to be taken that way, but not Scott).

But many, MANY characters in the UEEF make fairly blatant remarks about how untrustworthy aliens are, or how right Leonard and company were to view aliens as untrustworthy. Practically the only characters who're NOT openly hostile to aliens are Rick, Lisa, and their clique... whether Rick's crowd are holding the idiot ball or everyone else is just amazingly genre-savvy remains to be seen.

Depends on what one considers significant. The show illustrates they where part of the construction and manufacturing crews during early reconstruction. Its basically Leonard "white-washing history".

That's an unsupportable assertion, to say the least...

[ShadowLogan]

The difference between Carpenter's forces and Dusty is that Dusty is the focal point of the entire episode in which he appears... while Carpenter's forces are, at best, the "B-plot" of the episode in which they appear, generally being out-of-focus in favor of the ongoing angst of Dana Sterling and company.

Still Carpenter's forces represent part of what the UEEF has fieled in the past and in large numbers, something that would be more important for the RPG to allow diversity since the Alpha service period drifts from product to product.. The only reason to really skip them is if we are to treat them as some variant of Alpha Fighter.

Also the C-fighter is hardly out of focus/blurry. Time to clean the monitor/tv screen.

It's also worth noting that, though they're very enthusiastic, there's been a fair amount of practical proof of the Robotech team's lack of "chops" when it comes to mechanical design and technical continuity when they can't lean on the OSM. (It ain't easy, so it's certainly understandable.)

I agree it isn't easy and the "team" isn't really up to the task when it comes to new designs. However all they have to really focus on are the performance specs if it appears in the 85ep, greatly simplifying their task in this respect. And the OSM based specs are a mess only if you buy into the "technology backslide" idea which really isn't supported by the 85ep and is only something that comes up in terms of the OSM specs.

's why I don't bother with would'a-could'a-should'a... the practicals are inherently more satisfying than the theoreticals.

I find the theoretical more interesting and satisfying in many respects. Practicals though in this case don't hold up since we don't know what future stories might get told.

You're right, it's up to Harmony Gold and their legal counsel to decide what can and should be used as far as canon designs the RPG can use... it just happens that they and I tend to see eye-to-eye on what ought to be done about off-model animation (ignore it, rather than trying to justify EVERYTHING).

Except a lot of these aren't animation goofs, they appear in multiple shots providing some consistency that it was intentional.

We'll know sooner or later, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you... the UEEF Marines book is already known to be exploiting the rejected MOSPEADA concept designs from the so-called "Imai Files", which likely won't all get used either. I don't think we'll see them going back to recreate comical nonsense like an enormous Alpha or big-headed Alpha.

I'm not holding my breath either.. I'm aware of the exploiting the Imai Files (IINM two of the "Invasion" video game Invid mecha can be found in there to), but they still have the option of filling in w/material they haven't covered from the series. Its been awhile since I looked at the Imai Files, but I don't think there is as much useful stuff in there as people think, and some of it likely won't take up much space.

If they're extinct, they're certainly not there to be spotted... and per Prelude/RTSC, hybrids and Zentradi in what remains of human society are so rare as to almost be unheard-of.

Agree if they are extinct they aren't going to be spotted. However we do not know when they actually became extinct, there is a 12-14year gap between TRM saga and when Scott makes the comment or even TSC/Prelude. That is enough of a gap that extinction may apply in NG/TSC, but may not apply during TRM (it certainly wasn't in TMS).

Correction... we only see Scott's rabid xenophobia directed at the Invid because 1. they're who's handy and 2. they killed his girlfriend. Look to the other UEDF and UEEF troops we see... most of them are avidly and openly untrusting of aliens at the best of times, if not openly hateful or fearful towards them. Look at how Leonard and Komodo reacted in the Masters Saga, or how practically everyone reacts in Prelude. They'd be right at home among the Imperial Guard in WH40K, if only they could affect a British accent, because they know not to trust the xenos and are perfectly happy to nuke a planet if it means killing 'em all.

Scott's xenophobia is directed at the Invid for those reasons, but nothing about him indicates he has a generalist mindset. The Xenophobia of the UEEF isn't part of the 85ep, and even the UEDF its fairly limited.

But many, MANY characters in the UEEF make fairly blatant remarks about how untrustworthy aliens are, or how right Leonard and company were to view aliens as untrustworthy. Practically the only characters who're NOT openly hostile to aliens are Rick, Lisa, and their clique... whether Rick's crowd are holding the idiot ball or everyone else is just amazingly genre-savvy remains to be seen.

3 characters make such general statements, I'm not counting Scott since his is more focused (even Marcus might qualify in that respect). That's hardly a significant portion of the UEEF. Even in the UEDF there aren't that many openly hostile members like Angelo.

That's an unsupportable assertion, to say the least...

Which part, that Leonard would "white wash history" or that the show has the Zentreadi working as part of the manufacturing and construction crews? Both can be supported by the show.

Leonard did order the captured civilians to be listed as casualties of the battle, that indicates he is quite capable of "white washing history".

Zentreadi participation can easily be shown from the animation.

[Seto Kaiba]

Still Carpenter's forces represent part of what the UEEF has fieled in the past and in large numbers, something that would be more important for the RPG to allow diversity since the Alpha service period drifts from product to product.. The only reason to really skip them is if we are to treat them as some variant of Alpha Fighter.

Eh... yes and no. Per canon, Carpenter's forces represent equipment so appallingly substandard and utterly unsuitable for the task at hand that the UEEF brass relegated them to rear-echelon transport duties. That's not exactly thrilling RPG fodder, being so awful and ill-equipped to fight anything but an unarmed transport that the hard-pressed UEEF sends you to bail out the scrubs on Earth because YOU WON'T BE MISSED.

When you think about it, that's all kinds of horrible...

Also the C-fighter is hardly out of focus/blurry. Time to clean the monitor/tv screen.

's a figure of speech, my friend... one that means that they're there, but they're not really relevant to what's going on in the story.

Turns out it's also a trope.

I agree it isn't easy and the "team" isn't really up to the task when it comes to new designs. However all they have to really focus on are the performance specs if it appears in the 85ep, greatly simplifying their task in this respect.

Which, therefore, makes it eminently logical and straightforward to use the OSM stats... since those are what the people who created the designs and the animation created during development and did the choreography around.

I find the theoretical more interesting and satisfying in many respects. Practicals though in this case don't hold up since we don't know what future stories might get told.

Let's be fair, we can't say with any certainty that future stories will be told at all... but they've thus far shown no evidence of any intention of breaking with the "OSM line" even in new developments. Everything they do, design-wise, is building on things that already exist or making theoretically non-infringing copies of stuff they can't use.

Except a lot of these aren't animation goofs, they appear in multiple shots providing some consistency that it was intentional.

*shakes head*

Consistently wrong doesn't mean it's intentional... just look at the Sylphid/Shrewfield fighter from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. Its design only has the wings one way (more or less straight), but their animators had issues with perspective and off-model animation, leading to it being drawn off-model frequently... to the extent that it's a common RT fandom myth that it's either got some kind of VG wing or that there are multiple variants of it.

If it's intentional, there'll be animation model sheets for it.

I'm not holding my breath either.. I'm aware of the exploiting the Imai Files (IINM two of the "Invasion" video game Invid mecha can be found in there to), [...]

Only after Harmony Gold explicitly confirmed those designs were canon, partly via Prelude... remember, it's Harmony Gold calling the shots here, and they seem understandably disinclined to start making stuff up.

Agree if they are extinct they aren't going to be spotted. However we do not know when they actually became extinct, there is a 12-14year gap between TRM saga and when Scott makes the comment or even TSC/Prelude.

Current canon still goes with the line that the survivors left Earth in 2022 as the Zentradi auxiliaries on the Pioneer mission... though they appear to have been finally wiped out in 2043.

Scott's xenophobia is directed at the Invid for those reasons, but nothing about him indicates he has a generalist mindset. The Xenophobia of the UEEF isn't part of the 85ep, and even the UEDF its fairly limited.

Scott's xenophobia is never evidenced in the presence of any aliens besides the Invid, so we can't say that he's not also averse to other kinds of aliens the way the majority of UEEF troops are shown to be. Also, in the UEDF, we can't really say it's fairly limited since they don't harp on it ad nauseam the way they did for Prelude, and it's mostly evidenced by the top brass and triggerhappy commanders.

[ShadowLogan]

Eh... yes and no. Per canon, Carpenter's forces represent equipment so appallingly substandard and utterly unsuitable for the task at hand that the UEEF brass relegated them to rear-echelon transport duties. That's not exactly thrilling RPG fodder, being so awful and ill-equipped to fight anything but an unarmed transport that the hard-pressed UEEF sends you to bail out the scrubs on Earth because YOU WON'T BE MISSED.

However there is a comprimise approach that would work. Model variations. Just give Carpenter an older version that under performs compared to a newer version. There is some precedent in real life for such occurrences where earlier models under perform compared to later models (ex. the F-14A under performed due to its twin engines that where replaced with different ones in the F-14B design, the F-14 didn't get the ability to actually drop air-ground weapons until the 1990s either).

Which, therefore, makes it eminently logical and straightforward to use the OSM stats... since those are what the people who created the designs and the animation created during development and did the choreography around.

Not really. First the tech base is different in each of the OSMs, so that can cause issues right there. The whole "tech backslide" idea only works if one uses the OSM stats, just based on the animation there is no backslide or indication of it via dialogue.

Second, that assumes the units are pushing the limits of what they can do with the mecha in the animation. If they are holding back it makes the OSM stats useless in establishing the upper limits of what the RT version can do.

Consistently wrong doesn't mean it's intentional... just look at the Sylphid/Shrewfield fighter from Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross. Its design only has the wings one way (more or less straight), but their animators had issues with perspective and off-model animation, leading to it being drawn off-model frequently... to the extent that it's a common RT fandom myth that it's either got some kind of VG wing or that there are multiple variants of it.

Officially (not saying its Canon, just official) the Sylphid though is treated as having multiple wing designs as indicated in the 2E RPG. That sets a precedent that animation errors/goofs that are consistently done may be officially recognized for the RPG by HG, though may or may not also apply to canon.

Current canon still goes with the line that the survivors left Earth in 2022 as the Zentradi auxiliaries on the Pioneer mission... though they appear to have been finally wiped out in 2043.

That is still a gap in coverage in when they became extinct since Scott couldn't know anything about the events of 2043/Prelude as he was on Earth before the end of 2042. For the Zentreadi to be considered extinct by someone cut off from the UEEF (where the Zent. supposedly all go) in 2042, they would already have to be there before Scott gets cut off, even if there are Zent. still around. That really puts a damper on the idea that Zent. are technically extinct in terms of Scott's meaning based on Prelude.

Scott's xenophobia is never evidenced in the presence of any aliens besides the Invid, so we can't say that he's not also averse to other kinds of aliens the way the majority of UEEF troops are shown to be. Also, in the UEDF, we can't really say it's fairly limited since they don't harp on it ad nauseam the way they did for Prelude, and it's mostly evidenced by the top brass and triggerhappy commanders.

I agree Scott's Xenophobia IS directed at the Invid, but there is nothing to really indicate it applies to all aliens. Even the UEEF/UEDF may not be generally xenophobic, with cases that are rather targeted (at the Invid, or current danger which makes sense) or the generalists are just the most vocal as far as the story goes. The UEEF was working with aliens, Reinhardt didn't seem to have issues with the Haydonites, but certainly doesn't like the Invid, so here is a known example of someone who wants to kill all the Invid (xenophobic) okay with another alien race and has trouble seeing them as a danger that Scott was telling them they where based on information from an Invid (Ariel).

Further supporting the notion that the UEEF wasn't truely Xenophobic is that Lorn (a Karabarren alien) walked the halls of SSL w/Rick. Even Cabel and Rem did so w/o so much as a snicker or such from anyone that made it in. Even Wolf Squadron didn't have an issue working with Breetai and his Zentreadi. So it looks less and less like the UEEF is generally xenophobic to a more targeted form based on Prelude, that doesn't mean exceptions can't exist but they do not appear to be the rule either.

[mech798]

of course the problem is that by and large, especially with shadow chronicles, the setting of robotech makes xenophobia actually wise. The sentinals by and large aren't talked about, and beyond them, you had the zentraedi (who were ultimately extermianted and are no longer a factor) as the only gruop that even sort of worked with mankind. Masters, Invid and Hadonites were all hostile and sneaky. Again, it gets to how tiny the narrative space is in Robotech-- just about any time you meet an alien, you're likely going to be fighting. in that environment, coupled with the mass death of humanity, xenophobia starts to seem an awful lot like a survival trait.

[Seto Kaiba]

However there is a comprimise approach that would work. Model variations. Just give Carpenter an older version that under performs compared to a newer version. There is some precedent in real life for such occurrences where earlier models under perform compared to later models [...]

True, but mecha in Robotech almost invariably don't stick around long enough before being replaced by the next design to have that happen. The only time that's happened has been the short-lived VF-1R variant.

As old as the rest of Carpenter's hardware is, it's doubtful that he's got a fighter new enough that there'd be better variants floating around out there.

Second, that assumes the units are pushing the limits of what they can do with the mecha in the animation. If they are holding back it makes the OSM stats useless in establishing the upper limits of what the RT version can do.

For them not to be makes no realistic or narrative sense... this isn't the Suicide Squad from The Life of Brian we're talking about. Thus, using the OSM stats makes perfect sense, since those establish what those craft have for an upper bound.

Officially (not saying its Canon, just official) the Sylphid though is treated as having multiple wing designs as indicated in the 2E RPG.

Yeah, but that's the RPG... which is not exactly renowned for its accuracy and consistency even at the best of times.

That is still a gap in coverage in when they became extinct since Scott couldn't know anything about the events of 2043/Prelude as he was on Earth before the end of 2042.

True, which means the Zentradi had to be effectively out of the public eye BEFORE that point for his remarks to make any sense... suggesting that either the Zentradi were almost wiped out in Khyron's rebellion (which is more or less what HG has gone with for the last 28 odd years) or that attrition decimated the Zentradi on the battlefield to the point where they were no longer represented in any numbers significant enough to be noticed. "Functionally" extinct will suffice for Scott's obvious intent.

I agree Scott's Xenophobia IS directed at the Invid, but there is nothing to really indicate it applies to all aliens.

Considering he was part of the generation raised in space, it would make sense for his views to mirror those of his generation... which seem to be pretty uniform in their "don't trust the xenos!" attitude.

The UEEF was working with aliens, Reinhardt didn't seem to have issues with the Haydonites, but certainly doesn't like the Invid, so here is a known example of someone who wants to kill all the Invid (xenophobic) okay with another alien race and has trouble seeing them as a danger that Scott was telling them they where based on information from an Invid (Ariel).

Reinhardt was part of the Hunter clique though, that small group of officers who didn't think that dealing with aliens was double plus ungood... and consequentially were probably the only ones who didn't see the ensuing backstab coming.

Further supporting the notion that the UEEF wasn't truely Xenophobic is that Lorn (a Karabarren alien) walked the halls of SSL w/Rick. Even Cabel and Rem did so w/o so much as a snicker or such from anyone that made it in.

With Rick, one of the few proponents of collaboration with aliens... while the other brass and soldiers who loiter around the meeting rooms make remarks about how untrustworthy aliens are and how uneasy they are about it all. It's also rather curious that NOBODY seems to notice or care when Exedore, Breetai, and co. die. Their deaths go completely unremarked-upon.

The alien presence among the UEEF is so small that their rank-and-file don't seem to have ever even given a thought to there being a human-looking alien in their forces.

of course the problem is that by and large, especially with shadow chronicles, the setting of robotech makes xenophobia actually wise. The sentinals by and large aren't talked about, and beyond them, you had the zentraedi (who were ultimately extermianted and are no longer a factor) as the only gruop that even sort of worked with mankind. Masters, Invid and Hadonites were all hostile and sneaky. Again, it gets to how tiny the narrative space is in Robotech-- just about any time you meet an alien, you're likely going to be fighting. in that environment, coupled with the mass death of humanity, xenophobia starts to seem an awful lot like a survival trait.

Gettin' awful 40K in here... especially since RTSC retconned the Neutron-S missiles from "scorching a continent" to full Exterminatus.

[ShadowLogan]

True, but mecha in Robotech almost invariably don't stick around long enough before being replaced by the next design to have that happen. The only time that's happened has been the short-lived VF-1R variant.

As old as the rest of Carpenter's hardware is, it's doubtful that he's got a fighter new enough that there'd be better variants floating around out there.

Of course you are forgetting:
-that the Alpha has been around in some form since at least 2014-ish (FTS comic) with at minimum 3 major variants before the introduction of the Shadow variant (and a Drone Variant) in 2042-4 period.
-The Beta dates back to 2022-ish (OVA) with a new version/variant available in 2042 and a Shadow variant ready in 2044.
-The Conbat in 2022-ish had to take up the job of the Beta
-the VR-03x series had numerous variants, and served throughout the 2030s (and into at least the first half of 2040s)
-If we include the 2E RPG dates for various mecha, the VHTs go back to the mid 2010s (prototype spun-off VHT-1 and VHT-2 designs), the Logan is deployed around 2018 (IIRC), the Conbat is from 2013-ish, and the Condor mecha has at least 3 major variants (VF-X-5, MBR-10, and MBR-12 Mk2) going from 2022 upto 2038. And those are just the ones off the top of my head. ASC hardware also has similar dates going back into the 2010s when available for the most part, though I don't recall specifics.

So it isn't just the VF-1 with a long service life and variants existing, the UEEF hardware is also full of the stuff.

For them not to be makes no realistic or narrative sense... this isn't the Suicide Squad from The Life of Brian we're talking about. Thus, using the OSM stats makes perfect sense, since those establish what those craft have for an upper bound.

Why? Even though fighter jets can go super-sonic, they don't use that speed in a dog fights setting RL precedent that top speed can not be derived from the animation.

Yeah, but that's the RPG... which is not exactly renowned for its accuracy and consistency even at the best of times.

Which HG has tighter reigns on. So if the RPG is being allowed to do this, then it stands to reason they can do it again in an official capacity. Weather it would qualify as canon is highly debatable, but it has been officially recognized by HG.

True, which means the Zentradi had to be effectively out of the public eye BEFORE that point for his remarks to make any sense... suggesting that either the Zentradi were almost wiped out in Khyron's rebellion (which is more or less what HG has gone with for the last 28 odd years) or that attrition decimated the Zentradi on the battlefield to the point where they were no longer represented in any numbers significant enough to be noticed. "Functionally" extinct will suffice for Scott's obvious intent.

However the question is how many Zentreadi did Khyron actually recruit? And what percentage is that of the available Zent. population on the surface? Personally I find it highly unlike Khyron had a large percentage, not to mention the UEEF getting everyone of them to go to.

If we remove the Zentreadi from population we still have to find another reasonable source for the population spurt we see or hear about by 2029/2044.

Considering he was part of the generation raised in space, it would make sense for his views to mirror those of his generation... which seem to be pretty uniform in their "don't trust the xenos!" attitude.

I doubt that his generation actually has those views as a whole directed in a general sense, aside from one exchange between Marcus and Alex, general "alien" xenophobia doesn't seem to be part of the UEEF, though they have extreme prejudice toward the Invid. They would also have grown up with news about the Sentinels (depending on how that actually works out now) which should temper things.

With Rick, one of the few proponents of collaboration with aliens... while the other brass and soldiers who loiter around the meeting rooms make remarks about how untrustworthy aliens are and how uneasy they are about it all. It's also rather curious that NOBODY seems to notice or care when Exedore, Breetai, and co. die. Their deaths go completely unremarked-upon.

The alien presence among the UEEF is so small that their rank-and-file don't seem to have ever even given a thought to there being a human-looking alien in their forces.

Breetai and co. death was overshadowed by the situation so people didn't have time to react.

I certainly agree the UEEF was paranoid about the Invid to the point of shoot on sight, but the whole "all-aliens-are-bad" crowd is fairly small by all indications compared to those who dislike just the Invid.

[Seto Kaiba]

Of course you are forgetting:

Not really, no... here's why:

-that the Alpha has been around in some form since at least 2014-ish (FTS comic) with at minimum 3 major variants before the introduction of the Shadow variant (and a Drone Variant) in 2042-4 period.

A prototype Alpha (VF-X-6 Genia) is seen in 2015, but we don't see production Alphas until 2022... and thus far reliable sources have not identified any variants beyond the VF/A-6H, -I, -Z, and Shadow fighter, though none of those were upgrades to existing aircraft. The -Z was a new variant introduced to fill a different role, not dissimilar to the differences in role between the F-35's variants, and the -X "Shadow Fighter" was a new craft introduced to replace existing units entirely.

None of these were upgrades like the VF-1R or F-14B, which were produced by upgrading existing units that were already in service (the F-14B was originally designated F-14A+ for exactly this reason). You don't get block upgrades in Robotech.

-The Beta dates back to 2022-ish (OVA) with a new version/variant available in 2042 and a Shadow variant ready in 2044.

An unsuccessful prototype for the Beta dates back to 2022-ish... that's not the same thing, and even the RPG admits there are only two versions of the Beta, the initial production type and Shadow replacement.

-The Conbat in 2022-ish had to take up the job of the Beta

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about... we don't see upgraded Conbats anywhere, they got old as-is and were summarily replaced. That's how Robotech rolls.

-the VR-03x series had numerous variants, and served throughout the 2030s (and into at least the first half of 2040s)

The VR-038 has two (three) variants, none of which are different from the others except in their hand-carried armament... which aren't even referred to as variants (because nothing changed mechanically), but rather as "Armament Packages" (the Infopedia's term). There is no evidence that any kind of upgrade was made to all the VR-038s in the field either. The same goes for all the other Cyclones. One model and DONE, after which they're replaced by a newer, different model.

-If we include the 2E RPG dates for various mecha, [...]

If we include fan-fiction dates for various mecha we see interesting and irrelevant numbers too... with much the same result. These variants don't exist in Robotech proper, and exist solely to pad out the RPG. If we stick to the official canon sources, as future Robotech productions do, the picture is rather different.

So it isn't just the VF-1 with a long service life and variants existing, the UEEF hardware is also full of the stuff.

In the Robotech animated continuity, nothing has a long service life... even the VF-1R is labeled as a stopgap solution for wholesale replacement rather than a large-scale upgrade campaign, the average for a fighter's entire service lifespan in RT is only about 12 years, with the Alpha being the sole significant outlier with 21 years of service prior to the wholesale replacement of the only three variants produced.

Why? Even though fighter jets can go super-sonic, they don't use that speed in a dog fights setting RL precedent that top speed can not be derived from the animation.

But they DO fly supersonic to sortie long distances and for other purposes... and other capabilities that you have discussed in previous bouts of grousing about the use of OSM spec like reaching orbit unassisted with Alphas would completely annihilate the plot of an entire saga.

Which HG has tighter reigns on. So if the RPG is being allowed to do this, then it stands to reason they can do it again in an official capacity. Weather it would qualify as canon is highly debatable, but it has been officially recognized by HG.

Tighter reins on doesn't mean "as tight as Harmony Gold keeps on its own stories". I'm sure that Tommy and company recognize that the RPG needs more latitude than is usual in order to be viable and present variety in player-created stories.

To date, Harmony Gold has not reversed itself on the position that the RPG material is not canon or even pseudocanon... and I don't anticipate that changing at any point, since they seem pretty determined to do as the real SF mecha franchises do.

However the question is how many Zentreadi did Khyron actually recruit? And what percentage is that of the available Zent. population on the surface? Personally I find it highly unlike Khyron had a large percentage, not to mention the UEEF getting everyone of them to go to.

The official line has, for decades, made it out that Khyron recruited most of the Zentradi left on Earth, and that most of them got whacked in his final offensives.

If we remove the Zentreadi from population we still have to find another reasonable source for the population spurt we see or hear about by 2029/2044.

There's always cloning, we know they had cloning machinery and knew how to use it.

Breetai and co. death was overshadowed by the situation so people didn't have time to react.

Yet nobody later remarks upon Breetai's death, and not even Janice (who was right there with Exedore on the Deukalion) remarks upon the death of one of the most senior advisers to the UEEF.

[ShadowLogan]

None of these were upgrades like the VF-1R or F-14B, which were produced by upgrading existing units that were already in service (the F-14B was originally designated F-14A+ for exactly this reason). You don't get block upgrades in Robotech.

Actually not all F-14Bs are re-manufactured As, some are new production aircraft at that standard (the bulk are re-manufactured though).

In the Robotech animated continuity, nothing has a long service life... even the VF-1R is labeled as a stopgap solution for wholesale replacement rather than a large-scale upgrade campaign, the average for a fighter's entire service lifespan in RT is only about 12 years, with the Alpha being the sole significant outlier with 21 years of service prior to the wholesale replacement of the only three variants produced.

I don't think we are on quite the same page on this issue in just what is being discussed/envisioned. There is no reason that an upgraded model version with new capabilities/performance has to be re-manufactured from a previous model like the VF-1R was as they can be purpose built at that stage.

The capability/performance differences between the Alpha-Z/X/S and the Alpha-H/I, and the Beta models are precisely what I'm talking about. They may be thought of as totally new mecha by you, but they are still regarded as part of their respective family of designs WHICH is what I am getting at. Carpenter could have the equivalent of the Alpha-H/Is compared to the better performing/capability Alpha-Z/X/S for his fighter wing, but they are still a part the (equivalent to in this case) Alpha family.

The VR-038 has two (three) variants, none of which are different from the others except in their hand-carried armament... which aren't even referred to as variants (because nothing changed mechanically), but rather as "Armament Packages" (the Infopedia's term). There is no evidence that any kind of upgrade was made to all the VR-038s in the field either. The same goes for all the other Cyclones. One model and DONE, after which they're replaced by a newer, different model.

The RT.com infopedia for the VR-038 says " A successful design, it saw numerous variants, culminating with the -038 version. " So we don't know what these other versions looked like, but its pretty clear that the VR-038 is the most recent product.

But they DO fly supersonic to sortie long distances and for other purposes... and other capabilities that you have discussed in previous bouts of grousing about the use of OSM spec like reaching orbit unassisted with Alphas would completely annihilate the plot of an entire saga.

That they can fly supersonic isn't in dispute for real aircraft, but the use of that ability is more limited w/only a few exceptions as they can only do so with the use of fuel guzzling after burners.

Giving the Alpha that capacity doesn't actually break anything, nor negate the need for the Beta as I've said in the past. The Beta still brings capabilities that expand upon what the Alpha can do.

Tighter reins on doesn't mean "as tight as Harmony Gold keeps on its own stories". I'm sure that Tommy and company recognize that the RPG needs more latitude than is usual in order to be viable and present variety in player-created stories.

But we are looking at what they can do to keep the RPG going with "new" material. So allowing these designs into the RPG-verse does make sense then as they recognize the RPG needs latitude to remain viable w/new designs produced for GM/players (otherwise eventually you get stagnation in sales, you only need one of each book per group really). Since they pretty much exhausted the current material, that leaves the few bits they missed from the series, or start defining stuff for projects they haven't finished/canceled (RTA/TSC2/Sent) that they have rights to, unless they are willing to let PB to be more creative to fill in gaps (IMUs and Invited-variant show they are to some extent).

The official line has, for decades, made it out that Khyron recruited most of the Zentradi left on Earth, and that most of them got whacked in his final offensives.

I don't get that impression. Khyron only put together 1 battalion (his basic words to), that can't be representative of the entire population of Zentreadi on Earth post RoD given the sheer number of ships involved in that operation.

There's always cloning, we know they had cloning machinery and knew how to use it.

That they had access and knowledge does not mean they actually did it. We are shooting in the dark here.

Yet nobody later remarks upon Breetai's death, and not even Janice (who was right there with Exedore on the Deukalion) remarks upon the death of one of the most senior advisers to the UEEF.

That no one remarks about it negatively or positively doesn't prove anything though, just that the reaction wasn't important to the story. How many people reacted to the death of the redshirts Col. Wolf "lost" to the Invid?

[Seto Kaiba]

Actually not all F-14Bs are re-manufactured As, some are new production aircraft at that standard (the bulk are re-manufactured though).

Yes, but the point here is that, apart from the "stopgap" VF-1R, we never see any approach to upgrades in the UEDF and UEEF inventory other than wholesale replacement with an entirely new aircraft. They simply don't do block upgrades or modernization of units in the field. Unrealistic, yes... but them's the facts.

I don't think we are on quite the same page on this issue in just what is being discussed/envisioned. There is no reason that an upgraded model version with new capabilities/performance has to be re-manufactured from a previous model like the VF-1R was as they can be purpose built at that stage.

The point here is that, apart from the VF-1R, we never see an upgraded model of an existing aircraft that's introduced after the original models. Hell, but for that one example we never see a variant that's meant to replace an existing one... all we get are a select few variants meant to do a radically different job from the original design. They just don't upgrade things in Robotech.

The capability/performance differences between the Alpha-Z/X/S and the Alpha-H/I, and the Beta models are precisely what I'm talking about. They may be thought of as totally new mecha by you, but they are still regarded as part of their respective family of designs WHICH is what I am getting at.

Which is not in keeping with your own original comparison to the F-14A+/B... so are you moving the bar or just didn't think this one through? The VF/A-6Z was a variant only in that it shared the basic alpha chassis, but it was otherwise designed to do a different job. It'd be like claiming the F-18R was an upgrade for the F/A-18. It's the same platform, with practically the same performance, just modified to do a different job, and not necessarily better either.

Carpenter could have the equivalent of the Alpha-H/Is compared to the better performing/capability Alpha-Z/X/S for his fighter wing, but they are still a part the (equivalent to in this case) Alpha family.

Considering there's literally zero precedent for that kind of approach in Robotech, "could" means "very definitely did not". Even if the UEEF had higher-spec versions of their background cannon-fodder fighters in their arsenal (they don't), they uniformly do not assign higher-spec variants to separate units. They rely on the mixed unit approach, with the high-spec versions assigned to veteran pilots and have them lead units of the less experienced pilots with the grunt variants.

Put simply, while you have the best of intentions there's no defending your theory because it flies in the face of both the evidence and operational precedent in the setting.

The RT.com infopedia for the VR-038 says " A successful design, it saw numerous variants, culminating with the -038 version. " So we don't know what these other versions looked like, but its pretty clear that the VR-038 is the most recent product.

They don't list any variants though, and indicate explicitly and emphatically that the letters that we'd think indicated variants are actually indicating their armaments package. No variants are identified.

But we are looking at what they can do to keep the RPG going with "new" material.

They're not going to throw canon out the window, and they're not going to start mining animation errors... because they know that's fanboyish, and will only get them mocked. They might not be respected by their fellows in the industry much, but they at least act somewhat like professionals.

I don't get that impression. Khyron only put together 1 battalion (his basic words to), that can't be representative of the entire population of Zentreadi on Earth post RoD given the sheer number of ships involved in that operation.

Prove it. We never see Zentradi in large numbers after episode 27... though there's also no guarantee that the Zentradi definition of a Battalion is the same as a human one, organizationally. Just look at the major size difference between Battlepod and Valkyrie formations in the Macross OSM...

That no one remarks about it negatively or positively doesn't prove anything though, just that the reaction wasn't important to the story. How many people reacted to the death of the redshirts Col. Wolf "lost" to the Invid?

They make a meal out of Commander Taylor snuffing it, and he was a nobody compared to Breetai and Exedore.

[eliakon]

However the question is how many Zentreadi did Khyron actually recruit? And what percentage is that of the available Zent. population on the surface? Personally I find it highly unlike Khyron had a large percentage, not to mention the UEEF getting everyone of them to go to.

The official line has, for decades, made it out that Khyron recruited most of the Zentradi left on Earth, and that most of them got whacked in his final offensives.

I am curious. Where is this statement made as 'The official line' ?

[ShadowLogan]

Yes, but the point here is that, apart from the "stopgap" VF-1R, we never see any approach to upgrades in the UEDF and UEEF inventory other than wholesale replacement with an entirely new aircraft. They simply don't do block upgrades or modernization of units in the field. Unrealistic, yes... but them's the facts.

New model approaches can be thought of as upgrades to previous model version even if they are entirely new. Re-manufacturing the old into the new is not a requirement.

The point here is that, apart from the VF-1R, we never see an upgraded model of an existing aircraft that's introduced after the original models. Hell, but for that one example we never see a variant that's meant to replace an existing one... all we get are a select few variants meant to do a radically different job from the original design. They just don't upgrade things in Robotech.

VHT-1s received upgrades to operate in space AND the Pupil Pistol system. Denis Brown implies the system was also integrated with other ASC mecha so right there we have evidence of upgrades done to existing mecha into the TRM period by the UEDF.

The NG period is a lot harder to tell with the UEEF, since the focus is on a small traveling resistance unit. Hardly the people that would be the source of such upgrades (they likely would be a source of IMUs).

Which is not in keeping with your own original comparison to the F-14A+/B... so are you moving the bar or just didn't think this one through? The VF/A-6Z was a variant only in that it shared the basic alpha chassis, but it was otherwise designed to do a different job. It'd be like claiming the F-18R was an upgrade for the F/A-18. It's the same platform, with practically the same performance, just modified to do a different job, and not necessarily better either.

It is in keeping with the F-14, you may be taking the comparison a bit father than it was intended though. The F-14B was undertaken to address short comings in the F-14A. That is essentially what the Z/S variants of the Alpha do compared to the H/I, address short comings in their design. It doesn't really matter if the re-manufacture the older version into a new version, what really matters is that the newer version of an existing platform is being fielded that has capabilities/performance that address shortcomings to the version(s) before it.

They don't list any variants though, and indicate explicitly and emphatically that the letters that we'd think indicated variants are actually indicating their armaments package. No variants are identified.

Yes the VR-series uses letter designations for the modular armament system. They also don't spell out those other variants either, but they pretty much state they exist. That they aren't described is noted, but that doesn't change the fact that they are supposed to exist.

While a Jane's guide to every mecha in RT to date (prototype, seen, and unseen) would be nice, HG likely isn't going to do it.

Prove it. We never see Zentradi in large numbers after episode 27... though there's also no guarantee that the Zentradi definition of a Battalion is the same as a human one, organizationally. Just look at the major size difference between Battlepod and Valkyrie formations in the Macross OSM...

I agree the Zent. definition in this case isn't the same as a human one (Dolza equates the loss of 4 ships Khyron used in "Bursting Point" as small divisions). Its also possible the Khyron wasn't being technical.

However the Zentreadi numbered 5.8million ships (give or take on both sides) for FoA. They did not destroy every last one since Breetai's ship survived, we see several capital ships on the surface, etc.

Then you have the malcontents from post-Ep36 (FTS).

["quote="Seto"]They make a meal out of Commander Taylor snuffing it, and he was a nobody compared to Breetai and Exedore.[/quote]
Taylor though has that personal connection those individuals, Breetai and Exedore may lack that personal connection to those depicted. Sure they likely would recognize the names, but that doesn't mean they have a personal connection to everyone.

[Seto Kaiba]

I am curious. Where is this statement made as 'The official line' ?

Well, the series starts leaning towards the idea in episode 31, where they draw a line under the fact that the Zentradi survivors living on Earth were rapidly growing dissatisfied with the conditions there and that Khyron was whipping them into an army. Credit for the idea should go to Sentinels, though... which tried very hard to explain away the absence of the Zentradi in later sagas by having the ones who weren't part of what Macek considered the last significant group of Zentradi (Khyron's rebels, who were wiped out in their suicide attack) leave Earth as soldiers with the Pioneer Mission. Various licensees took the idea to different places... but the ones following Harmony Gold's notes for Sentinels tend to agree that Breetai took what was left of his people back into space aboard the SDF-3.

Commander Leonard's speech at the start of the Masters Saga makes no mention of anyone other than the 70,000 human survivors on the SDF-1 (and their descendants), while Scott Bernard strongly implies that in 2042-2043 the Zentradi are actually extinct. Even the Shadow Chronicles artbook speaks of the UEDF after the first war as being a purely human military and makes no mention of non-human inhabitants of the Earth (except for the occupying Invid).

Post-reboot, Harmony Gold's new creative director turned this notion that the Zentradi left Earth aboard the SDF-3 up to 11... the continuation of the animated continuity is trying so hard to avoid even using the word "Zentradi" that even the Shadow Chronicles artbook tries to avoid saying it and they quietly kill off the entire UEEF Zentradi group except an eternally-offscreen Miriya in one go.

(There is, of course, a significant ulterior motive here... in that they need to sweep all of the Macross stuff they can't use under the metaphorical rug so people will stop asking "why didn't you use ____?", and they won't have to worry about legal action from overseas every time they make a new title. Keeping Carl Macek's banishment of the Zentradi to deep space and Tommy's subsequent banishment of them to death's embrace serves that purpose well enough.)

[Seto Kaiba]

New model approaches can be thought of as upgrades to previous model version even if they are entirely new. Re-manufacturing the old into the new is not a requirement.

Not if they're intended to do a radically different job, e.g. the VF/A-6Z, or have been changed to much they are basically a completely new aircraft (e.g. the VF/A-6X and Shadow Beta).

VHT-1s received upgrades to operate in space AND the Pupil Pistol system.

The 15th's VHT-1s received that, there's no evidence that it was propagated to the entire force or even built into new craft... the 15th is the only unit ever shown or mentioned to have received it, and it's forgotten and never mentioned again. That's special mission hardware purpose-built for a single operation, not really what you'd call a permanent upgrade to the craft.

The NG period is a lot harder to tell with the UEEF, since the focus is on a small traveling resistance unit.

Nothing has been mentioned in any official source, therefore...

It is in keeping with the F-14, you may be taking the comparison a bit father than it was intended though. The F-14B was undertaken to address short comings in the F-14A. That is essentially what the Z/S variants of the Alpha do compared to the H/I, address short comings in their design.

You're bending the term "upgrade" so hard it's going to resemble a slinky... the VF/A-6Z was not mentioned as being intended to remedy any perceived shortcomings in the existing variants, and was not an upgrade of them either. It was to be introduced as a whole new aircraft to replace the standard model, while the Shadow version is a whole new aircraft built inside the existing airframe.

They make a meal out of Commander Taylor snuffing it, and he was a nobody compared to Breetai and Exedore.

Taylor though has that personal connection those individuals, Breetai and Exedore may lack that personal connection to those depicted. Sure they likely would recognize the names, but that doesn't mean they have a personal connection to everyone.

A senior UEEF commander snuffs it and NOBODY comments? Unlikely. Especially considering Prelude was where he snuffed it, and that was more about Rick and Vince (Breetai's friends!) than Marcus or anyone else.

[mech798]

I am curious. Where is this statement made as 'The official line' ?

Well, the series starts leaning towards the idea in episode 31, where they draw a line under the fact that the Zentradi survivors living on Earth were rapidly growing dissatisfied with the conditions there and that Khyron was whipping them into an army. Credit for the idea should go to Sentinels, though... which tried very hard to explain away the absence of the Zentradi in later sagas by having the ones who weren't part of what Macek considered the last significant group of Zentradi (Khyron's rebels, who were wiped out in their suicide attack) leave Earth as soldiers with the Pioneer Mission. Various licensees took the idea to different places... but the ones following Harmony Gold's notes for Sentinels tend to agree that Breetai took what was left of his people back into space aboard the SDF-3.

Which was one of Macek's most idiotic decisions-- because there was another, *completely* simple reason he could have used. The zentraedi were mostly micronized and micronized zentraedi don't look different from humans, especially in an anime where different hair and skin color is pretty common. Heck *Leonard's* were pretty much archtypical zentraedi, especially when you consider how much a zentraedi would likely hate and fear the Robotech Masters. (He'd certainly think it would be idiotic to negotiate with them.).

But it would solve so many problems-- how do 70,000 people suddenly get common enough that after both the robotech masters and Invid Scott's groups keep running into people-- and it's not a surprise, that they're finding functional, if small towns. The answer is, in addition to other survivors, lots of zentraedi who pretty much abandoned thier old ways, given that they didn't have much to do with having a normal life. It also allows us to make robotech look a little less like Warhammer 40K with transformers.


As a side note, it is flat out, 100% impossible to have the robotech series work if the only survivors are from the SDF-1 and there isn't *extensive* input from other sources like mass cloning. There are some good reasons for that:

1. Population incrase. A population of 70,000, remembering that the second war occurs less than 30 years after the rain of death couldn't increase itself that much-- even if you assume incredible levels of fertility, with every woman being pregnant every two years, the numbers dn't add up. We also don't see any of that on screen. There's also the fact that the military has a high percentage of women in their child bearing years, many of whom end up catching unfortuante cases of death.

2. The fleets. The REF loses at least 3 full fleets and the Mars fleet had several Ikazuichi-- but we don't even need to go there.

the RPG states for the SDf-4, gives us a crew of 6,800 and about 28,000 troops. For one shiop. In other words, nearly *half* the total number of survivors from the SDF-1...that landed under 30 years ago.

There's no way those numbers work, not without either A. a massive number of survivors (in the millions) or the wholesale use of cloning technology.

[ShadowLogan]

1. Population incrase. A population of 70,000, remembering that the second war occurs less than 30 years after the rain of death couldn't increase itself that much-- even if you assume incredible levels of fertility, with every woman being pregnant every two years, the numbers dn't add up. We also don't see any of that on screen. There's also the fact that the military has a high percentage of women in their child bearing years, many of whom end up catching unfortuante cases of death.

FYI the 2RW takes places 17years after the RoD as TMS closing arc picks up about 2years after the event, and TRM starts 15years after E36.

Not if they're intended to do a radically different job, e.g. the VF/A-6Z, or have been changed to much they are basically a completely new aircraft (e.g. the VF/A-6X and Shadow Beta).

No they would still remain part of the indicated family of mecha.

The 15th's VHT-1s received that, there's no evidence that it was propagated to the entire force or even built into new craft... the 15th is the only unit ever shown or mentioned to have received it, and it's forgotten and never mentioned again. That's special mission hardware purpose-built for a single operation, not really what you'd call a permanent upgrade to the craft.

I do agree that the 15th is the only VHT unit to be seen operating in space, so the space upgrade might not make it to other units not going in space. However the Pupil Pistol as indicated by Dennis Brown is more wide spead in terms of use. That establishes that RT does do upgrades to mecha beyond the VF-1R.

Nothing has been mentioned in any official source, therefore...

Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that TPTB don't see fit to cover it. If the Alpha enters service w/o the Beta-7 (as indicated), there is no need for the specific connection gear. That would allow the connection gear to be removed and replaced (or just left empty), and later returned when the Beta-9 comes out. Given we don't even know what changed between the -7 & -9, the Alpha may need to be updated to interface with the -9.

You're bending the term "upgrade" so hard it's going to resemble a slinky... the VF/A-6Z was not mentioned as being intended to remedy any perceived shortcomings in the existing variants, and was not an upgrade of them either. It was to be introduced as a whole new aircraft to replace the standard model, while the Shadow version is a whole new aircraft built inside the existing airframe.

Not really. An "upgrade" is an improvement (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). There is nothing that requires it be remanufactured or such, just improve upon the version that came before. The Z compared to the H/I is an upgrade in terms of atmospheric operations, and the X/S is also an upgrade compared to the H/I/Z in terms of Stealth.

A senior UEEF commander snuffs it and NOBODY comments? Unlikely. Especially considering Prelude was where he snuffed it, and that was more about Rick and Vince (Breetai's friends!) than Marcus or anyone else.

True, but the reactions may not be important to the story in Prelude that require them to be depicted. Vince had more pressing matters at the time. Rick wouldn't find out about it until well after the fact and again is shown to have more pressing matters to deal with in the depicted events of Prelude.

[Seto Kaiba]

Which was one of Macek's most idiotic decisions-- because there was another, *completely* simple reason he could have used. The zentraedi were mostly micronized and micronized zentraedi don't look different from humans, especially in an anime where different hair and skin color is pretty common.

You have to remember, Macek had to look at this not just from the perspective of a (re)writer, he also had to look at this from the perspective of a distributor working with IP he didn't own. He made it very clear in the interviews he did over the years, that they had ALWAYS known that Harmony Gold couldn't use the designs from Macross, and with them having to bow to both Tatsunoko and Big West's wishes when it came to subsequent developments like Sentinels, the most expedient solution was to simply jettison non-vital material that would be problematic to use.

It may kind of suck in hindsight from a writing perspective, but it was a relatively sound business decision in the circumstances he was in.

But it would solve so many problems-- how do 70,000 people suddenly get common enough that after both the robotech masters and Invid Scott's groups keep running into people-- and it's not a surprise, that they're finding functional, if small towns.

Personally, I've always suspected that since they never really talk about how long of a time passed between the end of the 2nd war and the start of the 3rd, that Macek probably expected that there'd be several more decades between the two for the population to rebound. Tommy Yune once famously made a mistake at a press event where he claimed the New Generation was originally set in the 2080s (which is when Genesis Climber MOSPEADA was set... 2083).

2. The fleets. The REF loses at least 3 full fleets and the Mars fleet had several Ikazuichi-- but we don't even need to go there.

Putting aside the whys of fan-induced exaggerations in the stats and all... which are down to fan theories based upon animation screw-ups... the actual fleets lost aren't that huge. If they'd gone with the OSM spec, it'd actually work better. The large 2nd Recapture Fleet that Bernard was a part of was only ten carriers, forty transport ships, and a hundred and sixty shuttles... and but for the carriers, including carried troops none of those has more than about thirty-two people aboard.

~32 people per Horizont, ~21 people per Garfish-class transport, that's a mere 5,960 people outside those ten carriers, each of which also likely has a very small crew since they were mostly meant to shuttle a huge number of fighters on a one-way trip. Even the largest ships, like the Izumo, likely only have at most ~500 people in their whole crew, considering the ship is lugging 150+ fighters, the supplies for a large scale planetary invasion, and the largest synchrotron cannon ever constructed. There probably weren't even ten thousand people in the entire 2nd Recapture Force Lt. Bernard belonged to, spread out across 50 ships and 160 shuttles.

Part of it might actually be a mistranslation... since Stig Bernard identifies himself as belonging to the 21st Battle Company in the original (a company being a formation of 80-250 troops led by a Captain or Major), whereas in the Robotech version, Scott Bernard identifies himself as belonging to the 21st Division (a division being anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 troops under a flag officer).

No they would still remain part of the indicated family of mecha.

This isn't always true... look at aberrations like the F/A-18E/F.

Doesn't mean it doesn't happen, just that TPTB don't see fit to cover it.

Until there is evidence that it occurred, it didn't... if we're having an evidence-driven debate.

[eliakon]

I am curious. Where is this statement made as 'The official line' ?

Well, the series starts leaning towards the idea in episode 31, where they draw a line under the fact that the Zentradi survivors living on Earth were rapidly growing dissatisfied with the conditions there and that Khyron was whipping them into an army. Credit for the idea should go to Sentinels, though... which tried very hard to explain away the absence of the Zentradi in later sagas by having the ones who weren't part of what Macek considered the last significant group of Zentradi (Khyron's rebels, who were wiped out in their suicide attack) leave Earth as soldiers with the Pioneer Mission. Various licensees took the idea to different places... but the ones following Harmony Gold's notes for Sentinels tend to agree that Breetai took what was left of his people back into space aboard the SDF-3.

Commander Leonard's speech at the start of the Masters Saga makes no mention of anyone other than the 70,000 human survivors on the SDF-1 (and their descendants), while Scott Bernard strongly implies that in 2042-2043 the Zentradi are actually extinct. Even the Shadow Chronicles artbook speaks of the UEDF after the first war as being a purely human military and makes no mention of non-human inhabitants of the Earth (except for the occupying Invid).

Post-reboot, Harmony Gold's new creative director turned this notion that the Zentradi left Earth aboard the SDF-3 up to 11... the continuation of the animated continuity is trying so hard to avoid even using the word "Zentradi" that even the Shadow Chronicles artbook tries to avoid saying it and they quietly kill off the entire UEEF Zentradi group except an eternally-offscreen Miriya in one go.

(There is, of course, a significant ulterior motive here... in that they need to sweep all of the Macross stuff they can't use under the metaphorical rug so people will stop asking "why didn't you use ____?", and they won't have to worry about legal action from overseas every time they make a new title. Keeping Carl Macek's banishment of the Zentradi to deep space and Tommy's subsequent banishment of them to death's embrace serves that purpose well enough.)

So there isn't actually any 'official line' its just that you, and some other people choose to interpret the facts that way. There is no actual statement either in universe or canonical out of it that supports the statement. Thank you. Now that we know that its not actually the official line then....we can go back to exploring their use then cant we.

[Seto Kaiba]

So there isn't actually any 'official line' its just that you, and some other people choose to interpret the facts that way. There is no actual statement either in universe or canonical out of it that supports the statement. Thank you. Now that we know that its not actually the official line then....we can go back to exploring their use then cant we.

Er... did you not read that?

I suppose you could say it's me and some other people... the other people being Carl Macek, who made that their explanation for "where'd all the Zentradi go in later sagas" when they were laying out Robotech II: the Sentinels in '86, Jason and John Waltrip (from their comic adaptation of same), James Luceno and Brian Daley (from the novelizations), and Tommy Yune (who continued the notion in Prelude and RTSC, as they essentially picked up where Jason and John left off). It's been a part of the setting for over twenty-five years.

So... yeah. It's me and some other people. Specifically, me and the creators.

There are plenty of statements that support it... as well as, y'know, the fact that it's a fairly major part of the setting for many attempts to continue the story. The only appreciable difference is what happened after the Zentradi left with the Expedition... whether they were wiped out, started breeding in space, or got lost in an obnoxious time loop and became the predecessors of themselves.

[ShadowLogan]

This isn't always true... look at aberrations like the F/A-18E/F.

The F/A-18E/F though IS still regarded as part of the F/A-18 family though.

Until there is evidence that it occurred, it didn't... if we're having an evidence-driven debate.

By that line of thinking you can get some really absurd notions though, like the frequency of using the lavatory, eating, sleeping, or celebration of various characters birthdays (Annie and Minmei are the only ones to have them).

suppose you could say it's me and some other people... the other people being Carl Macek, who made that their explanation for "where'd all the Zentradi go in later sagas" when they were laying out Robotech II: the Sentinels in '86, Jason and John Waltrip (from their comic adaptation of same), James Luceno and Brian Daley (from the novelizations), and Tommy Yune (who continued the notion in Prelude and RTSC, as they essentially picked up where Jason and John left off). It's been a part of the setting for over twenty-five years.

While the overall Novelization does have the Zentreadi removed from Earth by 2029/TRM saga, they do not in fact have all the Zentreadi leave with the REF/UEEF. A sizable portion remained behind on Earth, and eventually are "relocated" to a section of the RFS satellite where they try to be bait for the Masters, and ultimately wiped out by the Invid Invasion. That much is pretty clear from Novels 20 & 21. Not to mention Novel 19 has plenty of Zentreadi fermenting armed dissent post-Khyron.

[Seto Kaiba]

The F/A-18E/F though IS still regarded as part of the F/A-18 family though.

Yes and no... the designation that marks it as a part of the F/A-18 family was instituted not because it was actually a part of the F/A-18 family proper (it's almost an entirely new aircraft, mechanically), but because the Navy needed a way to con congress into paying for a new plane when there was no clean-sheet budget allocated. Their solution was to pass an almost entirely new aircraft off as a low-cost derivative to get the money.

Considering the huge number of changes to the Shadow fighter, y'kinda think it's the same deal... it's not really the same fighter "under the hood", but it's marketed as being so because it was an easier sell.

By that line of thinking you can get some really absurd notions though, like the frequency of using the lavatory, eating, sleeping, or celebration of various characters birthdays (Annie and Minmei are the only ones to have them).

That's not really the same thing and you know it, man... c'mon, it's taken as read that characters have your average human's biological needs, wants, and chronological necessities. This is more like the cryptid argument... until there's evidence that these things exist, something that we can point to as actual evidence rather than what-ifs, circular logic, and unsubstantiated stories, the safest and most reasonable assumption is that it does not exist.

[eliakon]

So there isn't actually any 'official line' its just that you, and some other people choose to interpret the facts that way. There is no actual statement either in universe or canonical out of it that supports the statement. Thank you. Now that we know that its not actually the official line then....we can go back to exploring their use then cant we.

Er... did you not read that?

I suppose you could say it's me and some other people... the other people being Carl Macek, who made that their explanation for "where'd all the Zentradi go in later sagas" when they were laying out Robotech II: the Sentinels in '86, Jason and John Waltrip (from their comic adaptation of same), James Luceno and Brian Daley (from the novelizations), and Tommy Yune (who continued the notion in Prelude and RTSC, as they essentially picked up where Jason and John left off). It's been a part of the setting for over twenty-five years.

So... yeah. It's me and some other people. Specifically, me and the creators.

There are plenty of statements that support it... as well as, y'know, the fact that it's a fairly major part of the setting for many attempts to continue the story. The only appreciable difference is what happened after the Zentradi left with the Expedition... whether they were wiped out, started breeding in space, or got lost in an obnoxious time loop and became the predecessors of themselves.

Actually I did read it. And it doesn't say that at all. Now if you can kindly provide a citation for your premise that this is the official line, then fine. Otherwise your claiming that your interpretation of WHY they did the actions they did, is the actual reason. That's a WHOLE different kettle of fish.
One is "I think that the reason they went down the paths they did is X"
one is "The reason they did X is Y"
Now, is there, or is there not a specific, official statement anywhere that Khyron had the last of the zentradi with him? Not a vauge "they were never mentioned again" or a "well the inference is that.." but an explicit statement. Otherwise your claim that this is the official line is simply speculation at best.

[mech798]

Putting aside the whys of fan-induced exaggerations in the stats and all... which are down to fan theories based upon animation screw-ups... the actual fleets lost aren't that huge. If they'd gone with the OSM spec, it'd actually work better. The large 2nd Recapture Fleet that Bernard was a part of was only ten carriers, forty transport ships, and a hundred and sixty shuttles... and but for the carriers, including carried troops none of those has more than about thirty-two people aboard.

~32 people per Horizont, ~21 people per Garfish-class transport, that's a mere 5,960 people outside those ten carriers, each of which also likely has a very small crew since they were mostly meant to shuttle a huge number of fighters on a one-way trip. Even the largest ships, like the Izumo, likely only have at most ~500 people in their whole crew, considering the ship is lugging 150+ fighters, the supplies for a large scale planetary invasion, and the largest synchrotron cannon ever constructed. There probably weren't even ten thousand people in the entire 2nd Recapture Force Lt. Bernard belonged to, spread out across 50 ships and 160 shuttles.

I'd have to disagree with those numbers. A nimitz class carrier with under 100 fixed and rotary wing craft has an airgroup of about 2500. Fighters need a lot of repair, especially if you're going to continually use them in combat-- now it's true veritech fighters are more durable than modern fighters, but even so, we see lunk doing work on the rag tag band's fighters and that's in a situation where they more or less are choosing their fights rather than any sort of line action. Even if we just assume a very minimal level of repair, treating any combat damaged aircraft as a loss, you're still probably seeing at least one tech for every one or two aircraft-- just imagine reloading missiles, if nothing else! It's likely that there are more, given that most ships were operating at the end of a fairly tenuous supply chain.

You *might* get away with fewer crew on the garfish, assuming that they are outsourcing their maintenance to the larger ships-- it's a pants on head *stupid* decision mind you that is likely to see half of your striking arm downchecked when you need it, but it's the same style of repair and support the Russians used for their divisions during the cold war. (noting that said strategy has been pretty completely shown to be a bad idea).

But even so, it really shows that the REF leadership are *insane*. Seriously, if your numbers are correct, or even mine are, going after earth, with its network of hives and a reflex point that occupies a substantial portion of north america is the kind of stupidity that makes Hitler's decision to invade Russia look like pure genius. Even if the invid didn't destroy the invasion fleet in the air, all they would have to do would be to hold out for a few days and the fact that you don't have any repair techs for your invasion force would do their work for them.


The only way I would see that working is if the actual plan was to exterminatus earth *all along* and the entire invasion was just set up to fail but give the leadership plausible deniability.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'd have to disagree with those numbers. A nimitz class carrier with under 100 fixed and rotary wing craft has an airgroup of about 2500.

You have to remember, the Nimitz-class is designed to be a mobile airbase on the ocean for long spans of time... to perform resupply, repair, recovery, deployment, and all sorts of other operations. The ships the Mars Colony forces sent to retake Earth in MOSPEADA were short-range ships intended to ferry fighters one-way to invade Earth. They had no means to actually recover the fighters they launched, which were not even stored inside the ship itself.

These aren't big ships we're talking about either... the uRRG writers misrepresented their size as being twice or more what they actually are. The Ikazuchi is actually SMALLER than a Nimitz, and only carries those ~140 fighters. The rest of its internal spaces are supplies and engines and living accommodations the pilots and crew would be living in while en route to try and liberate Earth. These ships don't require any big crew to run them... the Garfish-class transporters have a command crew of just four people under any normal operating conditions, not counting one or two mechanical support crew and the nine pilots.

It's a pretty low-manpower operation... and it really doesn't NEED to be a high-manpower one when we're shown even in RTSC that it takes only a dozen or so people to operate a kilometers-long battleship. Even less so if you go by RTSC's indication that these ships aren't even carrying enough fighters to fill all of the launch tubes they have instead of the launch bays.

Fighters need a lot of repair, especially if you're going to continually use them in combat-- now it's true veritech fighters are more durable than modern fighters, but even so, we see lunk doing work on the rag tag band's fighters and that's in a situation where they more or less are choosing their fights rather than any sort of line action.

If one man can maintain four fighters in the field with no official chains of supply simply by picking their battles... that's DAMNABLY IMPRESSIVE, and speaks to the relatively low number of maintenance staff necessary to operate in the fleet.

But even so, it really shows that the REF leadership are *insane*. Seriously, if your numbers are correct, or even mine are, going after earth, with its network of hives and a reflex point that occupies a substantial portion of north america is the kind of stupidity that makes Hitler's decision to invade Russia look like pure genius.

Well, yeah, UEEF leadership was certifiable in Robotech... but they were actually pretty sharp cookies back in the original. It didn't take them long at all to figure out that they were forever on the back food as the result of the Inbit detecting their powerplants, and the Inbit were only able to stop a mass landing by altering the composition of the upper atmosphere. The Mars Colony forces were sharp blokes... you could beat them, but never the same way twice.

Even if the invid didn't destroy the invasion fleet in the air, all they would have to do would be to hold out for a few days and the fact that you don't have any repair techs for your invasion force would do their work for them.

That's what those huge supply bunkers the Horizonts carry are for... they also carry support staff for the invasion.

[eliakon]

I'd have to disagree with those numbers. A nimitz class carrier with under 100 fixed and rotary wing craft has an airgroup of about 2500.

You have to remember, the Nimitz-class is designed to be a mobile airbase on the ocean for long spans of time... to perform resupply, repair, recovery, deployment, and all sorts of other operations. The ships the Mars Colony forces sent to retake Earth in MOSPEADA were short-range ships intended to ferry fighters one-way to invade Earth. They had no means to actually recover the fighters they launched, which were not even stored inside the ship itself.

This is Invid Invasion not MOSPEADA though....

These aren't big ships we're talking about either... the uRRG writers misrepresented their size as being twice or more what they actually are.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=54687

Conflicts and Inconsistencies between the RPG material and the Original Source Material (OSM): Yes they do exist and Palladium Books is aware of them. Please don't argue as to which set of statistics is right or wrong, they are both valid. It is okay to point out the differences between the RPG and the OSM, but don't turn this into an issue. It is up to each individual Game Master and Player to determine which figures work best for their game."

The Ikazuchi is actually SMALLER than a Nimitz, and only carries those ~140 fighters. The rest of its internal spaces are supplies and engines and living accommodations the pilots and crew would be living in while en route to try and liberate Earth. These ships don't require any big crew to run them... the Garfish-class transporters have a command crew of just four people under any normal operating conditions, not counting one or two mechanical support crew and the nine pilots.

So there is just the bridge crew, and some mecha pilots. No one else? No support crew of any sort? Mechanics, cooks, logistics, medics, nothing?

It's a pretty low-manpower operation... and it really doesn't NEED to be a high-manpower one when we're shown even in RTSC that it takes only a dozen or so people to operate a kilometers-long battleship. Even less so if you go by RTSC's indication that these ships aren't even carrying enough fighters to fill all of the launch tubes they have instead of the launch bays.

[/quote]
Again, that's just a few dozen bridge crew isn't it? Or are you claiming that the ships are totally automated and need only bridge crew?

[Seto Kaiba]

This is Invid Invasion not MOSPEADA though....[...]

So... serious question. Did you completely miss the context and content of the discussion in progress?

If not, why are you so determinedly bringing up stuff that we're already well aware of?

On the off chance you did, in fact, honestly and truly miss the actual content and context of the discussion we're having about Earth's population and the Zentradi's effect upon same after the 1st Robotech War, I'll patiently reiterate the key bits for you.

In short, mech798 feels that there are significant issues caused by the Robotech creators just "disposing of" the Zentradi by having them leave Earth with the UEEF. One of the key issues, the one that was relevant to the post you replied to, was "how did they get enough people to crew all the ships the REF lost trying to retake Earth?". The point I made in reply was that if the OSM stats had been reported to the staff at Harmony Gold accurately, it would actually be a lot less of an issue. The reason being that correct stats based on the OSM would make the ships a lot smaller, in keeping with their presentation in the show itself, and also gives them crews that are orders of magnitude smaller... thus requiring a lot smaller of a population to sustain the fleet.

Using the exaggerated Robotech official numbers, the 2nd Earth Recapture Force's total crew would be about 25,000 people.

Using the animation-correct MOSPEADA numbers, the 2nd Earth Recapture Force's total crew would be less than 10,000 people. That's a LOT more sustainable on a small population. With those figures, even the massive fleet in Shadow Chronicles would only be about 21,000 people... very sustainable with a small population in space. Much more so than the Robotech numbers if the populations given repeatedly by authorities in the series are accurate.

So there is just the bridge crew, and some mecha pilots. No one else? No support crew of any sort? Mechanics, cooks, logistics, medics, nothing?

Like I said before, in the OSM spec none of these ships are really what you'd call a proper carrier vessel for long-term operations in space. They're ASSAULT ships, meant to move troops from one base to the target zone and deploy them expediently. The Horizont descent shuttles and Garfish high-speed transporters are more cargo vessels than combat ones, meant to deliver personnel and materiel to the surface quickly, and then return to orbit. The little ships don't really need extensive logistical support on board because they're not operating in the field for very long under normal circumstances. Troop medics and other support that's part of the battle companies being delivered to the surface are in with the troops, and the supplies they all need to operate are right there in the back of the same pods they're flying in.

Again, that's just a few dozen bridge crew isn't it? Or are you claiming that the ships are totally automated and need only bridge crew?

What we're shown is that Vince Grant and the crew of the Icarus can operate the entire Ark Angel with just the dozen or so people they brought with them... a half-dozen on the bridge, and another half-dozen or so down in the reactor room to get the engines going. They're not manually aiming gun turrets, so they don't really need a colossal crew... especially considering how light the [Legioss/Alpha] is on maintenance and its refueling process being childishly simple. They don't have the huge CIC rooms like we see on the SDF-1's bridge or on many other Macross ships either. There's no real pressing NEED for thousands or tens of thousands of people to be on these ships.

[glitterboy2098]

no need.. until a circuit breaker fails amid the hundreds of miles of wiring. or a pipe leaks. or a seal fails. or the ship takes damage, and needs on the spot repair. or an autoloader jams and needs cleared. or any of a million things that can go wrong, will, and needs human hands.

not to mention shifts.. humans need sleep and offtime. so for every crewmember on duty, you need at least 2 more to fill other shifts in the 24 hour day.

[eliakon]

This is Invid Invasion not MOSPEADA though....[...]

So... serious question. Did you completely miss the context and content of the discussion in progress?

If not, why are you so determinedly bringing up stuff that we're already well aware of?

I am aware of the conversation in progress. The ships in discussion are long range ships from a fleet based at Triol, that sent back space raised people to Earth. They are not just short haul vessels from Mars. This is why it is important to make distinctions as to where we are getting sources. MOSPEDA has one set of world assumptions Invid Invasion has a second, different one. They there for have different answers to the same questions. Trying to use them interchangeably is futile at best, and disingenuous at worst.

On the off chance you did, in fact, honestly and truly miss the actual content and context of the discussion we're having about Earth's population and the Zentradi's effect upon same after the 1st Robotech War, I'll patiently reiterate the key bits for you.

In short, mech798 feels that there are significant issues caused by the Robotech creators just "disposing of" the Zentradi by having them leave Earth with the UEEF. One of the key issues, the one that was relevant to the post you replied to, was "how did they get enough people to crew all the ships the REF lost trying to retake Earth?". The point I made in reply was that if the OSM stats had been reported to the staff at Harmony Gold accurately, it would actually be a lot less of an issue. The reason being that correct stats based on the OSM would make the ships a lot smaller, in keeping with their presentation in the show itself, and also gives them crews that are orders of magnitude smaller... thus requiring a lot smaller of a population to sustain the fleet.

Using the exaggerated Robotech official numbers, the 2nd Earth Recapture Force's total crew would be about 25,000 people.

Using the animation-correct MOSPEADA numbers, the 2nd Earth Recapture Force's total crew would be less than 10,000 people. That's a LOT more sustainable on a small population. With those figures, even the massive fleet in Shadow Chronicles would only be about 21,000 people... very sustainable with a small population in space. Much more so than the Robotech numbers if the populations given repeatedly by authorities in the series are accurate.

All of which is based on the unfounded assumption that there is a tiny population base. AND that this population base must some how have not grown significantly while it was in space.
And lets face it 10k vs 25k is not some sort of huge discrepancy.

So there is just the bridge crew, and some mecha pilots. No one else? No support crew of any sort? Mechanics, cooks, logistics, medics, nothing?

Like I said before, in the OSM spec none of these ships are really what you'd call a proper carrier vessel for long-term operations in space. They're ASSAULT ships, meant to move troops from one base to the target zone and deploy them expediently. The Horizont descent shuttles and Garfish high-speed transporters are more cargo vessels than combat ones, meant to deliver personnel and materiel to the surface quickly, and then return to orbit. The little ships don't really need extensive logistical support on board because they're not operating in the field for very long under normal circumstances. Troop medics and other support that's part of the battle companies being delivered to the surface are in with the troops, and the supplies they all need to operate are right there in the back of the same pods they're flying in.

And in the OSM they are flying from bases on Mars. In Robotech they are flying from Triol. Different animals. Ergo they will have different needs. And again, are you stating that there are no crews on these ships but pilots and bridge crew? Yes or No?

Again, that's just a few dozen bridge crew isn't it? Or are you claiming that the ships are totally automated and need only bridge crew?

What we're shown is that Vince Grant and the crew of the Icarus can operate the entire Ark Angel with just the dozen or so people they brought with them... a half-dozen on the bridge, and another half-dozen or so down in the reactor room to get the engines going. They're not manually aiming gun turrets, so they don't really need a colossal crew... especially considering how light the [Legioss/Alpha] is on maintenance and its refueling process being childishly simple. They don't have the huge CIC rooms like we see on the SDF-1's bridge or on many other Macross ships either. There's no real pressing NEED for thousands or tens of thousands of people to be on these ships.

So, yes you are claiming that there are zero support staff on these ship.
No medics, no hospitals, no maintenance crews (mecha or ship), no logistics, no cooks, no cleaning, and that everyone works 24/7 since there are no back up shifts.
Or is it possible that "can fly off in an emergency" is not "normal crew"
Or to be more blunt. Is the Ark Angel and its "Dozen or so people" the normal crew complement, or the bare minimum that is needed to operate the ship, in an emergency?

[Seto Kaiba]

no need.. until a circuit breaker fails amid the hundreds of miles of wiring. or a pipe leaks. or a seal fails.

That's why you take a couple engineers along as part of that smallish crew... like that support tech we saw in Stig/Scott's Horizont. They can mop up anything minor, and the smaller ships can either just go home or ask the larger ships for support if something they can't handle occurs.

That kind of issue isn't likely to crop up in the kind of service they saw in the OSM, because they really aren't long-distance ships. They're making quick runs from the staging area on the Moon to Earth's surface, so the odds of something happening that they can't fix during a couple hours flight that wouldn't be detected during preflight checks is pretty minimal. Worst case scenario (short of getting stranded on the surface), if a minor system breaks down and you can't do without, home is never more than a few hours' flight away for you and any rescue craft that may be necessary.

or the ship takes damage, and needs on the spot repair.

Considering the kind of war this is and the weapons being used, if the ship actually sustains combat damage the ship is almost certainly beyond repair... usually from being rammed by an Inbit. Apart from ramming a ship, the Inbit never really demonstrate any ability to hurt a Mars Colony warship.

not to mention shifts.. humans need sleep and offtime. so for every crewmember on duty, you need at least 2 more to fill other shifts in the 24 hour day.

That's assuming that the ship is operating long times and/or long distances... they didn't really need to worry about that overmuch in MOSPEADA. Considering how small the necessary operating crew is for all these ships, most of 'em can easily have enough people to operate the ship around the clock without making a huge addition to the size of the crew. If you can run the ship with just four or five blokes, and you can easily carry two or three dozen, you've got shifts covered. If you're only going to be in the theater of operations a couple hours, no need to bring enough people to do shifts.

[eliakon]

no need.. until a circuit breaker fails amid the hundreds of miles of wiring. or a pipe leaks. or a seal fails.

That's why you take a couple engineers along as part of that smallish crew... like that support tech we saw in Stig/Scott's Horizont. They can mop up anything minor, and the smaller ships can either just go home or ask the larger ships for support if something they can't handle occurs.

The larger ships you just got done saying that have a crew of a dozen or so people?

not to mention shifts.. humans need sleep and offtime. so for every crewmember on duty, you need at least 2 more to fill other shifts in the 24 hour day.

That's assuming that the ship is operating long times and/or long distances... they didn't really need to worry about that overmuch in MOSPEADA. Considering how small the necessary operating crew is for all these ships, most of 'em can easily have enough people to operate the ship around the clock without making a huge addition to the size of the crew. If you can run the ship with just four or five blokes, and you can easily carry two or three dozen, you've got shifts covered. If you're only going to be in the theater of operations a couple hours, no need to bring enough people to do shifts.

That's circular logic. You just stated the premise "they have small crews" as part of the conclusion "because they have small crews they can have multiple shifts with out increasing crew size significantly" Also, if your going to call a change of 10,000 to 25,00 (x2.5) then an increase of (x3 8hour shifts at 24/7 work load) should be EQUALLY significant. Which is it is x2.5 a significant increase in crew size, or is x3 increase an insignificant increase?

[Seto Kaiba]

I am aware of the conversation in progress.

Then you're not really contributing anything.

The ships in discussion are long range ships from a fleet based at Triol, that sent back space raised people to Earth.

Ships that can travel hundreds or thousands of light years in just a couple hours... that doesn't necessitate high operational endurance.

They are not just short haul vessels from Mars.

The addition of a faster-than-light drive has simply raised the distance considered a "short haul"... they actual designs haven't changed, they still don't even have a way to recover the fighters they launch.

This is why it is important to make distinctions as to where we are getting sources.

It's also important to make sure you fully understand the discussion you're attempting to reply to... because you're tilting at a different windmill here. That these ships are going extrasolar doesn't matter, because this setting gives all of them faster-than-light drives that can let them travel to far distant star systems and back with obscene speed. All that really changed is the definition of a "milk run".

They there for have different answers to the same questions. Trying to use them interchangeably is futile at best, and disingenuous at worst.

The problem you're missing here is that the answers from one actually address a significant problem in the other... which is the meat and potatoes of the discussion.

All of which is based on the unfounded assumption that there is a tiny population base.

An explicitly and repeatedly stated fact from the series, actually... the narrator confirms that the only human survivors of the first Robotech War were from the SDF-1 (the crew, plus Lisa) in episode 28. Leonard says it again and puts the 70,000 number to it. They're doing this with the descendants of just 70,000 people, per the series. This is a fact for which repetition SPANS SAGAS.

How can one ship have 34,000 human crew when a mere 30 years earlier they only had 70,000 people to start over with? We are not bunnies, sir. Except, possibly, for the bunnygirls... but that is another matter entirely.

AND that this population base must some how have not grown significantly while it was in space.

Considering that the entire population in space is depicted as being the soldiers of the Expeditionary Forces (plus stowaway Minmei and Kyle), and the "everyone is soldiers" thing is even confirmed by the RPG, that's not a population with a lot of free time for having kids. Still, they had enough kids out there to keep up the numbers.

And lets face it 10k vs 25k is not some sort of huge discrepancy.

It's more of a discrepancy when you put it in terms of ships... 21,000 or so people for the entire UEEF main fleet vs. 25,000 for just the tenth of the fleet sent back to liberate Earth in 2042, which is more believable as something dispatched by a population that numbered only 70,000 a mere 30 years before?

And in the OSM they are flying from bases on Mars. In Robotech they are flying from Triol. Different animals.

Eh... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaactually, if you were paying attention to either version you'd know that in both they were flying from staging areas on the moon. I don't believe it ever got a name in MOSPEADA but Robotech calls it Moon Base ALuCE. So... same animal, actually.

And again, are you stating that there are no crews on these ships but pilots and bridge crew? Yes or No?

For the small ones, yeah... that's pretty much the letter of it. You might have one or two techs kicking about the launch bay to make sure everything's ready, but beyond that...

So, yes you are claiming that there are zero support staff on these ship.
No medics, no hospitals, no maintenance crews (mecha or ship), no logistics, no cooks, no cleaning, and that everyone works 24/7 since there are no back up shifts.

The Ark Angel demonstrated that these ships do not require more than a dozen or so people to actually run the ship in all its spaceship-py respects. The rest is window dressing. You don't need thousands to crew a single ship when you can achieve the same result and cover all those other bases with dozens or at most a couple hundred.

Logistics is probably a good deal easier thanks to supercomputers and robots, cooking... we don't know how they eat on ships so it could be replicators or ration packs or anywhere inbetween, cleaning is quite possibly one for the robots (there's precedent in RT), and if your necessary operating crew is only a dozen or so, you can easily fit all the people you need to run three or four shifts a day without stretching things or needing to bring hundreds of people along.

Or to be more blunt. Is the Ark Angel and its "Dozen or so people" the normal crew complement, or the bare minimum that is needed to operate the ship, in an emergency?

That's kind of my point... if the bare minimum needed to run the entire ship is just a dozen, you're not likely to need THOUSANDS to do the same job. Dozens? Sure. Maybe a couple hundred on the larger ships with an eye towards covering three or four shifts a day. Not thousands, and definitely not tens of thousands.

[eliakon]

I am aware of the conversation in progress.

Then you're not really contributing anything.

Thank you for your opinion

All of which is based on the unfounded assumption that there is a tiny population base.

An explicitly and repeatedly stated fact from the series, actually... the narrator confirms that the only human survivors of the first Robotech War were from the SDF-1 (the crew, plus Lisa) in episode 28. Leonard says it again and puts the 70,000 number to it. They're doing this with the descendants of just 70,000 people, per the series. This is a fact for which repetition SPANS SAGAS.

How can one ship have 34,000 human crew when a mere 30 years earlier they only had 70,000 people to start over with? We are not bunnies, sir. Except, possibly, for the bunnygirls... but that is another matter entirely.

And then we are back to the problems of things like Edwards (who was not on the ship, and survived, oops) Or The populations of the cities seen in the shows (That's a lot of people that Scott's crew runs into for them to ALL be decended from the 70,000 survivors), Not to mention the Zentradi who we know had SOME survivors, and AFAIK did not get canonically 'put on a bus' Which would suggest that Dana is not the only half Zent in existence. However I am perfectly willing to save that for its own thread.

AND that this population base must some how have not grown significantly while it was in space.

Considering that the entire population in space is depicted as being the soldiers of the Expeditionary Forces (plus stowaway Minmei and Kyle), and the "everyone is soldiers" thing is even confirmed by the RPG, that's not a population with a lot of free time for having kids. Still, they had enough kids out there to keep up the numbers.

Scott and Marlene are from space, ergo they must be reporoducing yes?

And lets face it 10k vs 25k is not some sort of huge discrepancy.

It's more of a discrepancy when you put it in terms of ships... 21,000 or so people for the entire UEEF main fleet vs. 25,000 for just the tenth of the fleet sent back to liberate Earth in 2042, which is more believable as something dispatched by a population that numbered only 70,000 a mere 30 years before?

Again this requires some assumptions that I do not share.

And in the OSM they are flying from bases on Mars. In Robotech they are flying from Triol. Different animals.

Eh... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaactually, if you were paying attention to either version you'd know that in both they were flying from staging areas on the moon. I don't believe it ever got a name in MOSPEADA but Robotech calls it Moon Base ALuCE. So... same animal, actually.

And again, are you stating that there are no crews on these ships but pilots and bridge crew? Yes or No?

For the small ones, yeah... that's pretty much the letter of it. You might have one or two techs kicking about the launch bay to make sure everything's ready, but beyond that...

So, yes you are claiming that there are zero support staff on these ship.
No medics, no hospitals, no maintenance crews (mecha or ship), no logistics, no cooks, no cleaning, and that everyone works 24/7 since there are no back up shifts.

The Ark Angel demonstrated that these ships do not require more than a dozen or so people to actually run the ship in all its spaceship-py respects. The rest is window dressing. You don't need thousands to crew a single ship when you can achieve the same result and cover all those other bases with dozens or at most a couple hundred.

Ark Angel doesn't prove anything. Its an emergency launch with a skeleton crew, at best, for a single short hop. It does not demonstrate anything about normal crew numbers.

Logistics is probably a good deal easier thanks to supercomputers and robots, cooking... we don't know how they eat on ships so it could be replicators or ration packs or anywhere inbetween, cleaning is quite possibly one for the robots (there's precedent in RT), and if your necessary operating crew is only a dozen or so, you can easily fit all the people you need to run three or four shifts a day without stretching things or needing to bring hundreds of people along.

Or the numbers in the book could be accurate and your numbers could be wrong.....

Or to be more blunt. Is the Ark Angel and its "Dozen or so people" the normal crew complement, or the bare minimum that is needed to operate the ship, in an emergency?

That's kind of my point... if the bare minimum needed to run the entire ship is just a dozen, you're not likely to need THOUSANDS to do the same job. Dozens? Sure. Maybe a couple hundred on the larger ships with an eye towards covering three or four shifts a day. Not thousands, and definitely not tens of thousands.

The bare minimum to get the ship doing an emergency with no safety margins at all, and normal operations are different.
Again using an extraordinary event like the Ark Angel as your baseline seems to be logically suspect.

[mech798]

Also, if a ship is hit by an invid, they don't immediately blow up-- we see several examples of ships being damaged but not immediately dying and in that case you need damage control crews-- lots of them. The minimal crew idea would mean that any damaged ships would be essentially written off and the crews would know it-- which honestly isn't going to do much for morale.

And as others have pointed out--whatever their look in Mospeada-- this isn't mospeada, it's robotech. Mospeada could afford to take risks becaus they had a large population behind them-- Robotch can't, with fewer, far fewer, than 100,000 soldiers if we take the Macek and later assumptions at face value. Honestly, there's not even any reason they should BE near earth-- to use Roslin's wisdom, the few humans left should be heading to another world and making babies.

If we take the robotech "numbers" as given, which is basically, the vast majority of survivors were from the SDF-1, no cloning, no introduction of zentraedi immigrants, then the entire setting falls apart and falls apart hard-- remember all the cities in Southern Cross? Where do those people come from? Remembering that they're those who are left after the REF leaves. Earth needs to have millions of people living after the rain of death at the very least, or have a source of immigration, for any of hte subsequent events to make sense.

[Seto Kaiba]

And then we are back to the problems of things like Edwards (who was not on the ship, and survived, oops)

Edwards is established to have been in the Grand Cannon, and with his lover having died in his arms in said Grand Cannon, he remains the only non-"Macrossian" survivor ever to appear or be mentioned, and only by indirect association with Lisa, who the series strongly suggests was the only survivor in the Grand Cannon's base until Edwards was retconned in.

Or The populations of the cities seen in the shows

The populations of those towns is not stated, so assuming that they contain large numbers of people is not really viable... even Scott confirms that one of the most populous cities on the entire planet (NYC) only has a population in the thousands circa 2044.

Scott and Marlene are from space, ergo they must be reporoducing yes?

Well, there is the slight fact that one of the very first things we're told in the New Generation is that our ill-fated crew of schmucks (including Scott and Marlene) are the descendants of Rick's generation who'd been born out in space "on a Robotech ship"... so I'd call that pretty good indications that they're reproducing in space, yes.

Again this requires some assumptions that I do not share.

The number of ships is actually documented, so there really aren't assumptions being made here...

Ark Angel doesn't prove anything. Its an emergency launch with a skeleton crew, at best, for a single short hop. It does not demonstrate anything about normal crew numbers.

The Ark Angel proves a LOT... the "skeleton crew" that launches it is the command crew from the Icarus... that double handful of people is all they needed to run a ship two kilometers long. It's entirely in keeping with what's said and shown in MOSPEADA/the New Generation WRT necessary crew sizes to operate ships.

Or the numbers in the book could be accurate and your numbers could be wrong.....

At the risk of possibly sounding slightly snippy, my numbers come from the people who created these ships and mecha, while the numbers "in the book" are thirdhand fan-fiction (yes, fan-fiction!) from fans who had considerable difficulty telling the difference between a 3 and an 8. I think I trust the people who created all these designs and consulted on the creation of Shadow Chronicles more than fans who can't read.

[Seto Kaiba]

Also, if a ship is hit by an invid, they don't immediately blow up-- we see several examples of ships being damaged but not immediately dying

The difference between "instant" and "it takes a second" is not really significant enough to make a difference.

Unless they're ramming, which is an insta-kill, the Inbit don't seem to have anything that can hurt a human ship, nor do RTSC's Invid. Of course, the Alphas also don't seem to have anything that can hurt an Invid ship either...

and in that case you need damage control crews-- lots of them. The minimal crew idea would mean that any damaged ships would be essentially written off and the crews would know it-- which honestly isn't going to do much for morale.

These ships are pretty much disposable boxes designed to move large amounts of materiel from Point A to Point B even in the Robotech version... Prelude establishes that they have escape pods if the ship ends up irreparably screwed, so it's not like they've gone full Zentradi (though the RPG seems to be hinting they're headed that way).

Mospeada could afford to take risks becaus they had a large population behind them-- Robotch can't, [...]

And yet they do... REPEATEDLY. They START a shooting war with the Robotech masters and waste two whole fleets on trying to liberate Earth and nobody bats an eye even though by that point it's bald-facedly stated to us that humanity is basically down to "UEEF" and "Slaves of the Invid" at that point, and the bulk of the fleet is shown to us as a mere 394 ships, most of which are TINY. This is not a huge force even if we assume they have thousands of people on the bigger ships.

The plot is, I'm afraid, leaving the UEEF with an idiot ball large enough to exert its own gravitational pull as the result of a haphazard adaptation process.

[eliakon]

And then we are back to the problems of things like Edwards (who was not on the ship, and survived, oops)

Edwards is established to have been in the Grand Cannon, and with his lover having died in his arms in said Grand Cannon, he remains the only non-"Macrossian" survivor ever to appear or be mentioned, and only by indirect association with Lisa, who the series strongly suggests was the only survivor in the Grand Cannon's base until Edwards was retconned in.

Simple there can not be BOTH "No survivors except on the ship" and "Survivor (any type)" They are mutually exclusive. Since we have at least one survivor, we can then prove that there were indeed survivors (at least one). Therefor the statement "there are no survivors other than the 70,000 on the SDF-1" must be false.

Or The populations of the cities seen in the shows

The populations of those towns is not stated, so assuming that they contain large numbers of people is not really viable... even Scott confirms that one of the most populous cities on the entire planet (NYC) only has a population in the thousands circa 2044.

Again, how many cities are there (they visit what? 4-5 cities on their trek?) How many people are there in New Generation? Once again, the numbers don't support the 'only 70k'

Scott and Marlene are from space, ergo they must be reporoducing yes?

Well, there is the slight fact that one of the very first things we're told in the New Generation is that our ill-fated crew of schmucks (including Scott and Marlene) are the descendants of Rick's generation who'd been born out in space "on a Robotech ship"... so I'd call that pretty good indications that they're reproducing in space, yes.

Okay

Again this requires some assumptions that I do not share.

The number of ships is actually documented, so there really aren't assumptions being made here...

The assumptions I was talking about was the 70k survivors, and the "all the zentradi died off/flew away with out contributing any population what so ever"

Ark Angel doesn't prove anything. Its an emergency launch with a skeleton crew, at best, for a single short hop. It does not demonstrate anything about normal crew numbers.

The Ark Angel proves a LOT... the "skeleton crew" that launches it is the command crew from the Icarus... that double handful of people is all they needed to run a ship two kilometers long. It's entirely in keeping with what's said and shown in MOSPEADA/the New Generation WRT necessary crew sizes to operate ships.

COMMAND crew. Not the whole crew. So all it shows us is...the size of a bridge crew....great that says NOTHING about the size of all the REST of the crew now does it?

Or the numbers in the book could be accurate and your numbers could be wrong.....

At the risk of possibly sounding slightly snippy, my numbers come from the people who created these ships and mecha, while the numbers "in the book" are thirdhand fan-fiction (yes, fan-fiction!) from fans who had considerable difficulty telling the difference between a 3 and an 8. I think I trust the people who created all these designs and consulted on the creation of Shadow Chronicles more than fans who can't read.

[/quote]
I think you don't get what this forum is then
THIS forum is not an OSM forum where your interpretations of the OSM is sacred writ. THIS forum is the Palladium Forum, where we use the Robotech RPG as Canon. So yes, if your going to say that the game is 'third hand fan fiction' then I would presume that you are actually not interested in talking about the game. Which means your either trolling, or clueless.
Now if you care to actually have a civil, intelligent discussion where the RPG material (you know the material that is relevant to the forum you are posting on..) is valid I am sure we can continue. If you want to have a discussion about the superiourity of the Various flavors of one show over the other show, and how Robotech is inferior to the shows that spawned it, then I would suggest you go to an appropriate forum for it.

[mech798]

The plot is, I'm afraid, leaving the UEEF with an idiot ball large enough to exert its own gravitational pull as the result of a haphazard adaptation process.

Which might explain the Haydonite attitude-- humanity isn't a stable race, it's a dying race ignoring demographics (a bit complex to get into here, but if we assume the numbers come mainly from the SDF-1 as the canon seems to assume, then every female character we see of child bearing age should either be pregnant, or have birthed a child and be preparing to get pregnant again. 70,000 is, once you realize just how many are beyond child bearing age, starting to get to thin edge of species viability without a lot of work, to ensure that you spread your genes around) in order to wage war against its enemies. The Neutron-S missiles take that into utterly insane territory, especially when you consider that there is one planet adapted for man-- earth.

in this, the booby traps could very well be along the line of: Once these lunatics realize they've doomed themselves, they could go full-on besercker on us, so best to be nice, ally and see if they're ever going to cal-what? They decided to take the Neutron S missles along to blow up *earth?* Very well, initiate Operation: Old Yeller.

[ShadowLogan]

Yes and no... the designation that marks it as a part of the F/A-18 family was instituted not because it was actually a part of the F/A-18 family proper (it's almost an entirely new aircraft, mechanically), but because the Navy needed a way to con congress into paying for a new plane when there was no clean-sheet budget allocated. Their solution was to pass an almost entirely new aircraft off as a low-cost derivative to get the money.

Considering the huge number of changes to the Shadow fighter, y'kinda think it's the same deal... it's not really the same fighter "under the hood", but it's marketed as being so because it was an easier sell.

None of which changes the facts that these units are derived from early versions much more so than a clean sheet design, making them a family affair. New version (be it block number or model letter) are going to have differences "under the hood", that's why they are considered a new version.

That's not really the same thing and you know it, man... c'mon, it's taken as read that characters have your average human's biological needs, wants, and chronological necessities. This is more like the cryptid argument... until there's evidence that these things exist, something that we can point to as actual evidence rather than what-ifs, circular logic, and unsubstantiated stories, the safest and most reasonable assumption is that it does not exist.

I'm just saying that one can get some pretty absurd notions if we require footage/comic panels/dialogue for everything. Everyone also responds to death differently though. The Fact is that in the case of Breetai's death, his friends had more pressing matters to attend to so would have to push any response off until later, which can be left out if the writer(s) don't feel it contributes to the story so we may be seeing the writers bias and not character bias.

You have to remember, the Nimitz-class is designed to be a mobile airbase on the ocean for long spans of time... to perform resupply, repair, recovery, deployment, and all sorts of other operations. The ships the Mars Colony forces sent to retake Earth in MOSPEADA were short-range ships intended to ferry fighters one-way to invade Earth. They had no means to actually recover the fighters they launched, which were not even stored inside the ship itself.

Except this is the Robotech version of those same ships one should be looking at. All indications are that the 21st MD came from deep space (they did de-fold per dialogue), not Mars. So they make look identical, but they are definitely different in terms of capabilities and range, and likely a host of other matters.

Your crew counts are off from the official line that can be seen in RT.com Infopedia and Art of TSC.

If one man can maintain four fighters in the field with no official chains of supply simply by picking their battles... that's DAMNABLY IMPRESSIVE, and speaks to the relatively low number of maintenance staff necessary to operate in the fleet.

I'm not sure if it is accurate to say Lunk did the work alone. In "Frost Bite" IINM he can be seen working with Lancer, and in "Metamorphosis" he had help from Annie (more of helper than Lancer was). And it wasn't just Lunk doing the work on the 3 ships in "Metamorphosis" either. This all leads to the conclusion that the workload wasn't just on Lunk's shoulders, though we may be lead to think that.

[Seto Kaiba]

Simple there can not be BOTH "No survivors except on the ship" and "Survivor (any type)" They are mutually exclusive.

Tell that to Carl, he's the one who retconned Edwards into the situation where previously the only survivor who wasn't on the ship was Lisa (a Macross crewman on detached duty) in the name of giving Hunter some same-side opposition.

I think you don't get what this forum is then

Y'know that board rule you unnecessarily posted at us a while back?

Practice what you preach, friend... because that rule says what I'm bringing to the table from the OSM is as valid and welcome on these forums as anything in the books. Therefore, kindly stifle your objections.

Which might explain the Haydonite attitude-- humanity isn't a stable race, it's a dying race ignoring demographics (a bit complex to get into here, but if we assume the numbers come mainly from the SDF-1 as the canon seems to assume, then every female character we see of child bearing age should either be pregnant, or have birthed a child and be preparing to get pregnant again.

Seems that way, actually... though Prelude sort of frames it in the context of the Haydonites being profoundly uncomfortable with how eager humanity was to play with weapons of planetary destruction even at the likely expense of destroying their homeworld and killing the greater portion of their species. From the way they've put it, it sounds like the Masters might have even done something similar in the past... since they were very worried about humanity setting itself on a similar course to the Robotech Masters.

70,000 is, once you realize just how many are beyond child bearing age, starting to get to thin edge of species viability without a lot of work, to ensure that you spread your genes around) in order to wage war against its enemies.

Well, as far as what the "thin edge" of species viability is, science seems to have a hard time coming up with an agreed-upon measurement for... but your point is certainly sound.

None of which changes the facts that these units are derived from early versions much more so than a clean sheet design, making them a family affair.

Again, refer to the Super Hornet example for why this is somewhere between "not necessarily" and "nope".

New version (be it block number or model letter) are going to have differences "under the hood", that's why they are considered a new version.

Yes, but the changes between variants or blocks are usually relatively minor... whereas the Shadow fighter evidences such dramatic differences from the originals that even its aerodynamics changed, it lost engines, weapons, and was radically rebuilt.

Except this is the Robotech version of those same ships one should be looking at. All indications are that the 21st MD came from deep space (they did de-fold per dialogue), not Mars.

Actually, they don't say where they came from... and we know they stage Earth Reclamation Fleets over on Luna. All we're told is that these people were BORN out in deep space.

So they make look identical, but they are definitely different in terms of capabilities and range, and likely a host of other matters.

Thus far, the ONLY difference that has been indicated (apart from a mistaken increase in size) is that they're fold-capable... unless we count the BSG launch tubes in RTSC and the drastically-reduced fighter count from same.

Your crew counts are off from the official line that can be seen in RT.com Infopedia and Art of TSC.

For a reason, as elaborated above... there is a significant problem with the numbers cited there as a result of poor sourcing practices from the original vendor of the information.

[ShadowLogan]

Again, refer to the Super Hornet example for why this is somewhere between "not necessarily" and "nope".

The Super Hornet IS still considered to be part of the family though.

Yes, but the changes between variants or blocks are usually relatively minor... whereas the Shadow fighter evidences such dramatic differences from the originals that even its aerodynamics changed, it lost engines, weapons, and was radically rebuilt.

Again not necessarily. Yes changes are usually more incremental, but that is not always the case and even dramatic difference don't render them outside of the family of a given design. Even the F-16XL & F-16FSW is still considered to be part of the F-16 family, even with their drastically altered wings.

Actually, they don't say where they came from... and we know they stage Earth Reclamation Fleets over on Luna. All we're told is that these people were BORN out in deep space

I'm aware they don't establish where they come from exactly, only out in deep space. However Ep61 does establish they did not stage from Luna since they arrive via Fold operation (dialogue establishes they used Fold Travel) time code ~3:26-9 on the Legacy disk (w/Ep61), its not the narrator but some background character via a count down.

The Moon Base does not appear to have been used as a staging area until the Ep83-5/TSC force, and 21st MD just come straight in w/o staging from that location as they specifcially noted to arrive via Fold travel. That would seem to rule out the Moon as their starting point as it should be over before it even started given the distances involved. That means they have to come from elsewhere in the Solar System (unlikely given the lack of any facilities indicated in 85ep) or extra-solar (given they are inter-stellar craft that is the most likely).

Thus far, the ONLY difference that has been indicated (apart from a mistaken increase in size) is that they're fold-capable... unless we count the BSG launch tubes in RTSC and the drastically-reduced fighter count from same.

Crew count has also changed per official media. The fact that the RT version is Inter-stellar as opposed to Inter-Planetary will require a different technological base and crew considerations. Small skeleton crews might be possible to operate even into combat, but they may not be ideal for a variety of reasons.

For a reason, as elaborated above... there is a significant problem with the numbers cited there as a result of poor sourcing practices from the original vendor of the information.

There is no reason that the ships can't fit the number of people indicated with the right technology base and assumptions about the internal volume and crew assignments. This really illustrates one of the reasons why the OSM shouldn't be used for RT, the fact that it ultimately leads to cherry picking of said information by TPTB (not to mention fans).

[Seto Kaiba]

The Super Hornet IS still considered to be part of the family though.

Only in the most superficial sense... it is, in all respects except designation, actually a completely separate and distinct aircraft from the Hornet and would have received a separate designation if not for the decision made to put one over on Congress to pay for it.

Again not necessarily. Yes changes are usually more incremental, but that is not always the case and even dramatic difference don't render them outside of the family of a given design. Even the F-16XL & F-16FSW is still considered to be part of the F-16 family, even with their drastically altered wings.

Bad, BAD choice of example for your argument... the "Shadow Fighter" is a radically different aircraft from the standard Alpha, purpose-built for stealthy operations and radically different internally. A better example might've been the F-15ACTIVE, but even that wasn't as radically different from its base design as the Shadow fighter is from the Alpha.

By contrast, the F-16XL and F-16SFW (yes, it's SFW, not FSW in the designation) are actually relatively minor changes to the F-16 in mechanical terms. Apart from calibrations changes to accommodate the aerodynamics of the modified wings, they didn't actually deviate from the "base" F-16 all that much.

I'm aware they don't establish where they come from exactly, only out in deep space. However Ep61 does establish they did not stage from Luna since they arrive via Fold operation

It would not be the first time short-range in-system fold jumps were used (or attempted) in Robotech. The Zentradi were quite fond of them in the Macross Saga. That they got there by fold is no guarantee that they came from outside the solar system.

Crew count has also changed per official media.

The validity of the crew count figures is somewhat suspect in RT, considering the depiction of those ships in the Shadow Chronicles movie... if we take that footage as any indication, the Ikazuchi-class has far fewer fighters than the OSM spec indicates (sixty launch tubes, but only about two dozen fighters shown per ship in formation).