KLM wrote:Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so I have to find it yet.
Sgt Anjay seems to have refuted this fairly definitively, and even provided some evidence to suggest that
Macross and
Robotech fold drive technology ought to function just fine in the Three Galaxies.
KLM wrote:First, in intergalactic space CG drives are even faster (like 5 times or so).
Not a huge issue, being that a
Macross-style fold jump should be untraceable after the ship enters super dimension space, and at five times the speed you cited for a 3G's FTL system, their ships would still only be 73% as fast as the observed lower bound for fold velocities using a properly functioning fold system in
Robotech. In short, they won't have a clue where a ship with a
Macross fold drive went (or how far), and a
Robotech fold drive will blow past them like they're standing still.
KLM wrote:Second, ships can follow FTL disturbances - now, as far as I see both types of fold drives would be detectable as they pass by, not just entry and exit points.
While this statement applies well enough to a
Robotech-style fold (ersatz-warp) drive as described in AoTSC,
Macross-style fold drives leave the universe entirely, there's no wake or disturbance to detect apart from the gravitational disruption of the ship entering or leaving super dimension space.
Nightmask has the gist of it, but
Macross-style fold drives do the "folding space" bit in another universe entirely... and would therefore be undetectable while doing so unless the enemy had the kind of dedicated sensor apparatus to detect ships in super dimension space, which even then (as evidenced multiple times) is only really good for detecting folding ships in the immediate vicinity, not over long (interstellar) distances.
keir451 wrote:The energy conversion armor is one of "those things" that just smacks of quasi science (a major problem in many Japanese shows
).
Incidentally, you'd be wrong to say so... the energy conversion armor technology used in
Macross is based on very real technology. Electroactive ceramic polymers have existed for decades, and have myriad real-world applications, and
Macross wasn't the only SF series to draw inspiration from it. That same technology also inspired the polarized hull plating in
Star Trek: Enterprise (as stated by Paramount's science consultant Andre Bormanis in
Star Trek: the Magazine), and likely also the phase shift armor in
Gundam's Cosmic Era timeline.
keir451 wrote:Until Frontier I'd never even heard of it, everything was just fairly basic tech.
At the risk of sounding rude, just because you hadn't heard about it doesn't mean that the technology was never there. What it
does mean is that you didn't check your facts. A lot of what I'm going to tell you is in the Macross Mecha Manual, so I'm kind of surprised you don't already know this...
Now, in point of fact, energy conversion armor had already been part of
Macross's setting
for 14 years when
Macross Frontier started its broadcast run. The first interview to discuss it in depth was published in 1999, and its first explicit mention inside the series itself was in 2002's
Macross Zero.
keir451 wrote:There was indeed the presumption of some level of cybernetics and bio-tech in RT (all revolving around the Flower of Life)
Yes, there was... but none of it was ever associated with the Zentradi. It was all with the Robotech Masters themselves, and the Invid.
keir451 wrote:Breetai has the cybernetic eye & face plate
No, he did not. The original production art for Britai clearly shows that the metal plate he wore on his face was nothing more than an eyepatch. The eye it conceals appears to be a lazy eye, and blind to boot, likely as the result of an injury. The idea that said eyepatch is really a cybernetic implant is, AFAIK, just
Robotech fanon. He never gives any indication that it's a working eye, and when he miclones in
Sentinels to join the UEEF forces, the eyepatch is replaced by an opaque lens on the right side of that stupid bucket he wears on his head, a feature that's still visible in
Prelude. One would imagine a head full of circuitry would also make micloning rather difficult...
keir451 wrote:and their's a cybernetics facility on board the Factory ship in Return of the Masters),
Well, yeah... that's something of Palladium's invention, with no basis whatsoever in the series.
keir451 wrote:and the Zentran were still clones.
I'm not disputing that, but they never exhibit any of the advanced applications of clone technology that their
Macross counterparts do.
keir451 wrote:Micro gravity systems are kinda implied, in some of RT (like the Garfish and and the Synchro cannon) but generally, YES, there was no official evidence ( By the way, the works of these authors are NOT religious texts, so official is the appropiate term).
Canon is the accepted term for dealing with official materials in fiction. You don't need to lecture me about the world's classical meaning, I had compulsory scriptural study in high school.
Incidentally, neither of the systems you just mentioned as apparent examples of miniaturized gravity control systems have anything to do with Zentradi in
Robotech... you seem to be trying to build a counterargument entirely out of "I didn't know" and non sequiturs here...
keir451 wrote:While there are discrepencies between Macross, Macross 2 and the various Palladium products, the simple fact is that the Zentran ships are still the same classes and sizes and can be used interchangeably between Macross, M2 and RT
SIGNIFICANT discrepancies... kind of like saying a VF-1 and a F-14 are interchangeable because they're shaped mostly the same. There are significant technological and fleet logistical differences between the versions in
Macross's two continuity and the
Robotech universe.
keir451 wrote:Even the info on the Macross mecha Manual generally corresponds with the original dimensions of the first Zentran ships.
Again, you're trying to cite that to the wrong guy... external similarities are one thing, it's their capabilities that are significantly different between universes.
keir451 wrote:Yes there's alot of unpublished material, but until it becomes published (either in an Art of Macross or other publication, and I can access it, it's useless to even mention it to me).
Okay,
that's a new one... pretty much everything I've said to you so far is in the Macross Compendium, the Macross Mecha Manual, and
Macross itself, and all of it in English.
EDIT: Also, there is NOT "a lot of unpublished material". If anything, there's precisely the opposite problem... an excess of published material.
Macross Chronicle, a official serialized
Macross encyclopedia published from 2008-2010, totaled 1,600 pages long and
still didn't cover everything. Just in the past year and a half, we got no fewer than FOUR Variable Fighter tech manuals, each one over 100 pages long.