Colony Ships: Specifically the SDF-3 and Ark Angel-class

[eliakon]

Also doesn't appear to be does not mean that there are none. It just means that they're not generally visible. And even in plain sight they could be over looks. Is that clerk in the PX a soldier or a civilian?

No, but that it's given as a fact that Minmei was the sole civilian in space with the UEEF (and not intentionally at that) does kind of rule out the idea of civilian colonies. No civilians, no civilian colonies.

I am curious where this "fact" comes from? Specifically. As in what, exact canon source are you citing that explicitly states Minmei was the sole civilian in space with the UEEF? I mean that is a rather significant issue about colonization, piracy, children ect., so the canon status of this claim is rather important.

[Seto Kaiba]

Theoretically, yes... but it's not as easy as all that in practical terms.

True, but there are several factors to consider how easy it would be in practical terms:

That's a great big list of unknowns, since the whole colonization thing was crowbarred in by Tommy in Prelude with contradictory accounts of program timing and so on... seemingly with no goal other than to set the colony ship Ark Angel up as the SDF-1 Part Deux.

It's hard to say what their plans were, since all that's said is that the Angel-class were intended to transport a whole community across the stars... and the dialogue points to them having still been incomplete when the UEDF's defeat and Earth's subsequent occupation cut off their supply of potential colonists.

[glitterboy2098]

actually as i have pointed out multiple times in the past, the dialog says no such thing regarding the Angel class.

also it is hard to 'crowbar' something into a setting that has had it as part of the continuity since day one, throughout several creative staffs. all tommy yune did was confirm the stance that already existed in the show dialog in all three eras.

[Seto Kaiba]

actually as i have pointed out multiple times in the past, the dialog says no such thing regarding the Angel class.

The dialog of Prelude and writeup in AotSC make it very clear that the Angel-class ships were incomplete spaceframes being mothballed after they'd been deemed unfit for service and a replacement drawn up. In fact, the writeup in AotSC establishes construction didn't even start on the Angel-class until after the 2nd Robotech War (lit. "after the death and destruction of the previous Robotech Wars.").

also it is hard to 'crowbar' something into a setting that has had it as part of the continuity since day one, throughout several creative staffs. all tommy yune did was confirm the stance that already existed in the show dialog in all three eras.

I think your memory may be playing you false here... as emigrant ships and space colonization were not part of the Robotech setting or chronology until after Tommy Yune took over the franchise, rebooted it, and started on the "Shadow Saga". It was one of a number of changes to the setting that Tommy made in an effort to make the newly rebooted franchise more Macross-y, like giving the "Alpha Fighter" Super Packs or retconning Liberty station into a factory satellite. Definitions of the "Pioneer Mission" that included exploring space for future colonization didn't start cropping up until the mid-2000s (and didn't appear in the Infopedia until Fall 2007).

It was, on more than one occasion, a plot point in the various continuations of Robotech II: the Sentinels that Minmei was the only civilian in space and by nobody's design but her own. Like the Hunters desperate attempt to find something to do with her that ended in making her a goodwill ambassador, or Kyle having to join the UEEF to "rescue" her (and getting killed while impersonating a Ghost squadron officer).

Are you perhaps confusing this with the original Japanese shows? All three of those contained space colonization as a plot device... though MOSPEADA stood alone in not having extrasolar colonization.

[glitterboy2098]

Seto, your beginning to sound like a broken record, repeating the same false information over and over.

Prelude and the art book don't make any such claim, and your circular twisted "logic" trying to make the claim stick prettym uch require a setting totally different than the one that exists. with the 2nd war ending in 2031, that gives a full 14 years for the ship class. in a setting where ships of such size can be completed in far less time (the hundreds of ASC plus unspecified number of UEEF ships in the 18 years between the 1st and 2nd wars, the massive UEEF fleet of reflex point in the span of only 4 per prelude, etc. heck the even larger and more complex ark angel class had it's first ship finished in a year or two, going by the time cues from prelude and shadow chronicles. once the design is set a factory sat like Space station liberty could build dozens or hundreds simultaneously for the next batch)

more than enough time for them to be built, serve a decade, and then be retired. which is what the dialog in the comic actually supports.


and as far as the colonization bit in the original show.. gloval makes a big deal out of it in macross. the Pioneer mission has a fair deal made of it in southern cross (pioneer being another term for 'colonist'), and the UEEF forces seen in new generation talk quite a bit about offworld origins in their dialog. it may not be blatant the way that say, macross 7 is, but it is clear that offworld colonization was meant to be a major, if offscreen, portion of the saga from the beginning. all Yune did was give us specific dialog to that effect in the comics.

i understand that you don't like it, but i'm afraid that you are dead wrong in both cases.


also, would you answer Eliakon's question?

[eliakon]

actually as i have pointed out multiple times in the past, the dialog says no such thing regarding the Angel class.

The dialog of Prelude and writeup in AotSC make it very clear that the Angel-class ships were incomplete spaceframes being mothballed after they'd been deemed unfit for service and a replacement drawn up. In fact, the writeup in AotSC establishes construction didn't even start on the Angel-class until after the 2nd Robotech War (lit. "after the death and destruction of the previous Robotech Wars.").

The problem here is that you are trying to conflate two different things.
Thing one is that the Angel class was canceled. No one disagrees with this, it is established in canon that it was canceled.
Thing two is that the Angel ship was the only form of colony ship ever. I am not aware of any canon support for this claim.
B does not follow A. It is possible that there were other colony ships either purpose built, or pressed into service. It is in fact quite possible that it was attacks on those previous colony ships that revealed that ships such as the Angel would be insufficiently safe and resulted in the canceling of the Angel class.

If you want to make the rather significant claim that there were NO colony ships, of any type, ever, then it is up to you to provide support for your claim as you are the one making an affirmative claim and as such the burden of proof is yours.

also it is hard to 'crowbar' something into a setting that has had it as part of the continuity since day one, throughout several creative staffs. all tommy yune did was confirm the stance that already existed in the show dialog in all three eras.

I think your memory may be playing you false here... as emigrant ships and space colonization were not part of the Robotech setting or chronology until after Tommy Yune took over the franchise, rebooted it, and started on the "Shadow Saga". It was one of a number of changes to the setting that Tommy made in an effort to make the newly rebooted franchise more Macross-y, like giving the "Alpha Fighter" Super Packs or retconning Liberty station into a factory satellite. Definitions of the "Pioneer Mission" that included exploring space for future colonization didn't start cropping up until the mid-2000s (and didn't appear in the Infopedia until Fall 2007).

It was, on more than one occasion, a plot point in the various continuations of Robotech II: the Sentinels that Minmei was the only civilian in space and by nobody's design but her own. Like the Hunters desperate attempt to find something to do with her that ended in making her a goodwill ambassador, or Kyle having to join the UEEF to "rescue" her (and getting killed while impersonating a Ghost squadron officer).

Are you perhaps confusing this with the original Japanese shows? All three of those contained space colonization as a plot device... though MOSPEADA stood alone in not having extrasolar colonization.

there is nothing in the Robotech animation to support your contention. Are you perhaps confusing the Novels with the Animation?
Because that is the only source for the claim that there is only one civilian. Unless you can provide another one? (which I would be fascinated to see since you have avoided answering this question every time it has been ask and simply repeated that it is true. As you are not a canon source you can not cite yourself. Let me repeat this.
Is there a canon source for your claim that there is only one civilian in space. If so what is it. If there is NOT such a source, then I would ask that you stop making the claim that there is and advancing that as an argument here as this is a place for arguing actual canon not peoples personal fanon, not non-canon materials, not ex-canon but actual current canon.

[Seto Kaiba]

Seto, your beginning to sound like a broken record, repeating the same false information over and over.

Unfortunately, facts you don't like are not automatically false. It's not the clearest situation in the world, but the info available is far from vague.

Prelude and the art book don't make any such claim, and your circular twisted "logic" trying to make the claim stick prettym uch require a setting totally different than the one that exists. with the 2nd war ending in 2031, that gives a full 14 years for the ship class. [...]

They do, in fact, make that assertion. Again, just because you don't like it will not make the explicit statement that the Angel-class was not even conceived until after there had been multiple Robotech Wars go away... nor will denial magic into existence a statement that any of them were ever completed or used. (After all, it says that they stopped building them because they were too indefensible to actually use.) It's right there in black and white (or, rather, white on a darkish gray) in AotSC.

in a setting where ships of such size can be completed in far less time (the hundreds of ASC plus unspecified number of UEEF ships in the 18 years between the 1st and 2nd wars, the massive UEEF fleet of reflex point in the span of only 4 per prelude, etc. heck the even larger and more complex ark angel class had it's first ship finished in a year or two, going by the time cues from prelude and shadow chronicles. once the design is set a factory sat like Space station liberty could build dozens or hundreds simultaneously for the next batch)

You've got a false premise here as well. Yes, the UEDF and UEEF had a couple hundred ships between them in the years after the First and Second Robotech Wars, but these ships were nowhere near as large as the Angel- or Ark Angel-class, and you're kind of forgetting that noncombatant ships would've been a lower priority than the upkeep of the actual combatant ships... and a noncombatant ship ten times the size of the average warship of the period would probably take quite some time to complete. There's no indication of when they actually started building the Ark Angel-class either, but by 2044 only one ship of the lot was complete enough to sail.

Also, it's explicitly stated in the comic, the OVA, and the art book that the Ark Angel was not finished... she was the only ship complete enough to sail, but she was still missing key systems. (In fact, in the OVA that's the whole reason they took her... her shadow technology-based defenses hadn't been installed yet, so she wasn't vulnerable to the Haydoniate booby trap.)

You're also making an unfounded assumption that the factory satellites can automatically build human ships... that has never been stated. (Indeed, as far as I know it's not even true in the OSM... they make components and the raw materials, but it's up to shipwrights to actually put them together.)) From the chronology, it takes 8-10 years for a shipyard to build a SDF-sized ship and outfit it for use... and that's when they were only building one at a time. The simultaneous construction of an unspecified but large quantity of ships would doubtless slow the process down.

and as far as the colonization bit in the original show.. gloval makes a big deal out of it in macross. the Pioneer mission has a fair deal made of it in southern cross (pioneer being another term for 'colonist'), and the UEEF forces seen in new generation talk quite a bit about offworld origins in their dialog.

That's one hell of a reach, and I think you are most certainly misremembering.

There's initially a little bit of talk on Gloval's part about space exploration, but he quickly shifts gears to the SDF-2 being a warship for a preemptive strike on the Robotech Masters homeworld and never mentions it again.

The meaning of "Pioneer" in the military sense is an advance party of troops sent to prepare the way for the main advance. That's what the SDF-3 was for before Tommy retconned colonization in in 2006. They even sent it out in camouflage. It was, explicitly, an armed expedition sent to the homeworld of the Robotech Masters for diplomatic talks and/or to reconnoitre the defenses of Tirol for a full-scale invasion.

The characters in the New Generation talk about being born out in deep space on a starship, but at no point do they ever indicate it was a colony ship. Indeed, the obvious interpretation given the knowns about the Sentinels arc would be that they were born aboard WARSHIPS... even the previous saga used the term "Robotech ship" to mean warships. Maia, for instance, was supposedly born out on the SDF-3. (Even the novels take that route, though admittedly with some goofy stuff where protoculture becomes The Force.)

it may not be blatant the way that say, macross 7 is, but it is clear that offworld colonization was meant to be a major, if offscreen, portion of the saga from the beginning. all Yune did was give us specific dialog to that effect in the comics.

I'm afraid it's entirely in your imagination... you're reading a lot of convoluted assumptions into some fairly simple and straightforward dialog.

There were no explicit mentions of, or allusions to, any kind of activity relating to extrasolar colonization being carried out in Robotech until ~2004... and there still isn't any evidence of a successful colony, which is only to be expected since it was a background plot device intended to justify the Ark Angel being a new SDF-1 and part of Tommy's Macross-ization of Robotech in the aborted Shadow OVA.

also, would you answer Eliakon's question?

I've had him on ignore for like a year, at the mods request. I can't say I feel any inclination to change that state of affairs.

[Tiree]

I think this will boil down to specific quotes within the books that are being cited. Specific quotes from episodes and time stamps being cited.

I personally can't believe it takes 8 to 10 years to build 1 ship in the factory satellite. Especially when those things were building Zentraedi Warships. Also didn't the UEEF capture more than 1 satellite?

In either case, I think it should be one of those points that: People can either agree or disagree. Neither answer is right, nor wrong. It's just left up to debate.

[ShadowLogan]

That's a great big list of unknowns, since the whole colonization thing was crowbarred in by Tommy in Prelude with contradictory accounts of program timing and so on... seemingly with no goal other than to set the colony ship Ark Angel up as the SDF-1 Part Deux.

I agree. While the goal might be for an super-sized SDF-1 for Shadow Saga, those are factors that would have to be considered even with the Ark-Angel or regular Angel class. Nor is something as large as the Angel classes necessary for colonization. A Tokagawa can host 150k people (even the SDF-3 and SDF-4 are in this area per AotSC), not as much as the listed capacity of the Ark Angel-class (750k), but that would certainly qualify as a decent sized community.

Then again I'm not sure we need the Angel class to actually exist, given TMS provides similar looking frames used by the Zentreadi that could just be said to be "retrofitted" by the UEEF. It's also worth considering why the Angel class wasn't just retro-fitted with additional weapon systems (as seen on the Ikazuchi and Garfish).

like giving the "Alpha Fighter" Super Packs or retconning Liberty station into a factory satellite.

I'm not sure Liberty fits the definition of rectoning since the facility was off screen for the entire TRM arc and details on it from the show are lacking in the extreme. Now it is a recton from the point of view of novels (1E RPG, maybe even the old comics), but those where all thrown out anyway (though I prefer to thinking them as alternate continuities anyway).

The Super Packs for the Alpha aren't necessarily new either at the concept level, the 1E RPG created an Alpha with them (for all essential purposes) in Bk6revised. Even the Novels suggest something like it was present initially since the Beta section wasn't named until the 2nd NG book and the 1st NG book treated it more like add-ons than a separate mecha (then again they also treat the Beta as having a forward and rear section to IIRC, the Alpha having a Veritech mode). Nor would I be surprised if there are fan-works out there using the concept that pre-date TSC.

You're also making an unfounded assumption that the factory satellites can automatically build human ships... that has never been stated. (Indeed, as far as I know it's not even true in the OSM... they make components and the raw materials, but it's up to shipwrights to actually put them together.)) From the chronology, it takes 8-10 years for a shipyard to build a SDF-sized ship and outfit it for use... and that's when they were only building one at a time. The simultaneous construction of an unspecified but large quantity of ships would doubtless slow the process down.

I agree the RFS likely can't automatically build human hardware, they need to be retooled and programmed for that, and if the 1st RFS capture is any indication they might need some heavy maintenance to boot. But I do not think it would typically take 8years like the SDF-3 is implied since:
A. We don't know if the SDF-3 went through any design changes during construction from it's 2015 start date (due to intelligence reports, new technical developments, politics influencing a change in design requirements or mission role)
B. We don't know how much the extra complexity the design added to construction from 2 areas:
B1. the exoskeletal hull is unique at this time and could inflate the time since you could be seen as building two ships, especially if we don't know when it became part of the design.
B2. if the completed SDF-3 (w/exo hull) was to mimic Zor's SDF-1 (or another Masters ship type) as much as possible to be its doppleganger it could slow things down
C. The SDF-3 (w/o exo hull, I'm assuming the Shadow Refit size is indicative) is of similar size to the Tokagawa-class (w/n 30meters IINM), and those ships don't appear to take that long to build. Carpenter's ship doesn't appear to be the name sake vessel (reserved for the first of the class), making it a later addition to the class, as it was his some for 15years making its deployment 2014 (by dialogue in 2029). AotSC is also clear that the ship type was designed and built for the UEEF so it has to be a post RoD design (2011), meaning we are looking at a 3years tops to design and build at least two vessels of similar size.
D. larger ships might be possible to be built faster by using modular construction as seen in the Garfish and N-S missile (the warhead section could be assembled separately and mated later to the frame).
E. we don't know if they ran into any shortages (labor or material) during construction
F. we don't know how strong the construction effort was to, it might have favored smaller ships to get the "numbers" up (IINM there are only a handful of Toks implied/seen)

The characters in the New Generation talk about being born out in deep space on a starship, but at no point do they ever indicate it was a colony ship.

But at the same time they don't indicate:
-it was a warship
-where deep space was for them. The SDF-1 is described as returning from deep space to and it never left the Solar System, so the Robotech ship in question might not even be a starship (given their ages and the timeline, they could have been born w/n the solar system and lived several years before moving out, probably when Liberty when it was moved after the 2RW, Fold systems can encompass a radius effect to bring other objects with them after all)
-Scott makes comparisons of Earth's terrain to Venus (and Mars IIRC), though in alternate story forms (non-series/TY canon) IIRC it was made into an alien world(s).

I personally can't believe it takes 8 to 10 years to build 1 ship in the factory satellite. Especially when those things were building Zentraedi Warships. Also didn't the UEEF capture more than 1 satellite?

Yes the UEEF is said to have captured more than 1 satellite, though the operating states of them isn't clear.

It took 8 years to get the SDF-3 and her exo-skeletal hull up and running. However there are issues to consider here that could inflate the construction time versus another ship type (ex Tokagawa).

[glitterboy2098]

You're also making an unfounded assumption that the factory satellites can automatically build human ships... that has never been stated. (Indeed, as far as I know it's not even true in the OSM... they make components and the raw materials, but it's up to shipwrights to actually put them together.)) From the chronology, it takes 8-10 years for a shipyard to build a SDF-sized ship and outfit it for use... and that's when they were only building one at a time. The simultaneous construction of an unspecified but large quantity of ships would doubtless slow the process down.

I agree the RFS likely can't automatically build human hardware, they need to be retooled and programmed for that, and if the 1st RFS capture is any indication they might need some heavy maintenance to boot. But I do not think it would typically take 8years like the SDF-3 is implied since:
A. We don't know if the SDF-3 went through any design changes during construction from it's 2015 start date (due to intelligence reports, new technical developments, politics influencing a change in design requirements or mission role)
B. We don't know how much the extra complexity the design added to construction from 2 areas:
B1. the exoskeletal hull is unique at this time and could inflate the time since you could be seen as building two ships, especially if we don't know when it became part of the design.
B2. if the completed SDF-3 (w/exo hull) was to mimic Zor's SDF-1 (or another Masters ship type) as much as possible to be its doppleganger it could slow things down
C. The SDF-3 (w/o exo hull, I'm assuming the Shadow Refit size is indicative) is of similar size to the Tokagawa-class (w/n 30meters IINM), and those ships don't appear to take that long to build. Carpenter's ship doesn't appear to be the name sake vessel (reserved for the first of the class), making it a later addition to the class, as it was his some for 15years making its deployment 2014 (by dialogue in 2029). AotSC is also clear that the ship type was designed and built for the UEEF so it has to be a post RoD design (2011), meaning we are looking at a 3years tops to design and build at least two vessels of similar size.
D. larger ships might be possible to be built faster by using modular construction as seen in the Garfish and N-S missile (the warhead section could be assembled separately and mated later to the frame).
E. we don't know if they ran into any shortages (labor or material) during construction
F. we don't know how strong the construction effort was to, it might have favored smaller ships to get the "numbers" up (IINM there are only a handful of Toks implied/seen)

the zent factory sat probably couldn't use automation to build human ships no, though by canon it did enable the creation of that vast armada that is the ASC and UEEF fleets. presumably it was building the individual components (which would be easy enough to reprogram) and then human workers put them together. a single work slip for even a zentreadi scout could hold half dozen human ships no problem.. and even in the pessimistic size estimates a factory sattelite could work on dozens of the 6+ kilometer long zentreadi capital ships at a time. that translates to room to build hundreds of human ships at the same time. using prefabricated parts and standardized designs, you could build a lot pretty fast.

and keep in mind the UEEF built its own factory satellites too.. space station liberty is clearly human built. and on the same scale as the smaller zent factory sat estimates. which means it too could be working on hundreds of ships at a time. and since it is human made, it would be using human programmed automation.. so much of the construction would not even need human workers. which means it is going to go very fast.

further when you look at the canon.. the SDF-3 doesn't have a build date given. in the official HG timeline that was at robotech.com (which is still accessible via internet archives), merely has the launch date of december 2022. nothing is said about when it was begun.
looking at the SDF-2, with the UEG being reestablished in Jan 2012, and the SDF-2 being destroyed newly commissioned in january 2014, it's construction had to take at most 2 years. since prior to 2012 the UEDF didn't have the capacity to build an SDF class vessel. in fact it's construction almost had to be be done in under a year, since prior to the factory sat they wouldn't have the facilities to build such a ship so fast. though i'm willing to believe that they might have started on the keel and hull in orbit over earth ala the ARMD's prior to the factory sat being captured. wit the factory sat coming in June 2013, that puts the bulk of the construction within 5 month time.

(of course if Seto wants to concede that some sort of shipyard survived the 1st war, i'm willing.. but that means he'll have to stop claiming there were only 70,000 survivors and that all human civilization and infrastructure was wiped out.)

so the SDF-3 could easily have had its keel laid down in 2020.

I personally can't believe it takes 8 to 10 years to build 1 ship in the factory satellite. Especially when those things were building Zentraedi Warships. Also didn't the UEEF capture more than 1 satellite?

Yes the UEEF is said to have captured more than 1 satellite, though the operating states of them isn't clear.

It took 8 years to get the SDF-3 and her exo-skeletal hull up and running. However there are issues to consider here that could inflate the construction time versus another ship type (ex Tokagawa).

you mind showing me in the canon sources where it says the SDF-3 took 8 years to get built? i can find no canon source for such a claim, and as pointed out above, the SDF-2 points to much faster build times. the only source i can find for 8 years is the old comics and novels.. which are completely decanonized.


and Seto, you mind giving a source for your claim of minmei being the only civilian in the UEEF while your at it?

[Seto Kaiba]

A Tokagawa can host 150k people (even the SDF-3 and SDF-4 are in this area per AotSC), not as much as the listed capacity of the Ark Angel-class (750k), but that would certainly qualify as a decent sized community.

Putting aside that those numbers are obviously ridiculous and would result in population densities that'd make Hong Kong look like pastoral Kansas...

Then again I'm not sure we need the Angel class to actually exist, given TMS provides similar looking frames used by the Zentreadi that could just be said to be "retrofitted" by the UEEF. It's also worth considering why the Angel class wasn't just retro-fitted with additional weapon systems (as seen on the Ikazuchi and Garfish).

Simple answer... because it's a plot hole, resulting from the legal inability to use Zentradi ship designs in animation or live-action works and the goal of setting the Ark Angel up as a one-of-a-kind city ship like the SDF-1.

The Super Packs for the Alpha aren't necessarily new either at the concept level, the 1E RPG created an Alpha with them (for all essential purposes) in Bk6revised. Even the Novels suggest something like it was present initially since the Beta section wasn't named until the 2nd NG book and the 1st NG book treated it more like add-ons than a separate mecha (then again they also treat the Beta as having a forward and rear section to IIRC, the Alpha having a Veritech mode). Nor would I be surprised if there are fan-works out there using the concept that pre-date TSC.

That doesn't disprove my point, mate... it just demonstrates that even back in the late 80's and 90's fans realized the only way to make Robotech more likeable would be to make its other segments more like the its most popular one.

A. We don't know if the SDF-3 went through any design changes during construction from it's 2015 start date (due to intelligence reports, new technical developments, politics influencing a change in design requirements or mission role)
B. We don't know how much the extra complexity the design added to construction from 2 areas:
B1. the exoskeletal hull is unique at this time and could inflate the time since you could be seen as building two ships, especially if we don't know when it became part of the design.
B2. if the completed SDF-3 (w/exo hull) was to mimic Zor's SDF-1 (or another Masters ship type) as much as possible to be its doppleganger it could slow things down
C. The SDF-3 (w/o exo hull, I'm assuming the Shadow Refit size is indicative) is of similar size to the Tokagawa-class (w/n 30meters IINM), and those ships don't appear to take that long to build. Carpenter's ship doesn't appear to be the name sake vessel (reserved for the first of the class), making it a later addition to the class, as it was his some for 15years making its deployment 2014 (by dialogue in 2029). AotSC is also clear that the ship type was designed and built for the UEEF so it has to be a post RoD design (2011), meaning we are looking at a 3years tops to design and build at least two vessels of similar size.
D. larger ships might be possible to be built faster by using modular construction as seen in the Garfish and N-S missile (the warhead section could be assembled separately and mated later to the frame).
E. we don't know if they ran into any shortages (labor or material) during construction
F. we don't know how strong the construction effort was to, it might have favored smaller ships to get the "numbers" up (IINM there are only a handful of Toks implied/seen)

There's some sound suppositions in here, but unfortunately nothing we can substantiate with evidence...

[Seto Kaiba]

the zent factory sat probably couldn't use automation to build human ships no, though by canon it did enable the creation of that vast armada that is the ASC and UEEF fleets.

"Vast" is a rather vague term... by the in-universe standards of Robotech, the UEDF and UEEF fleets were not large. Indeed, the few dozen ships fielded by the UEDF and few hundred fielded by the UEEF would be positively dainty compared to the colossal fleets fielded by the Robotech Masters and Zentradi.

and keep in mind the UEEF built its own factory satellites too.. space station liberty is clearly human built.

False.

The Space Station Liberty article on AotSC pg42 clearly states that Space Station Liberty was a captured installation originally constructed by the Tirolian empire.

further when you look at the canon.. the SDF-3 doesn't have a build date given. in the official HG timeline that was at robotech.com (which is still accessible via internet archives), merely has the launch date of december 2022. nothing is said about when it was begun.

The first mention of the SDF-3 being in planning is in 2014 in the series, and the RPG explicitly states that the SDF-3's keel was laid in 2015 (pg61, RTSC core book manga size). That means the ship took eight years to complete. This is, after all, HG-blessed content as you keep reminding me.

looking at the SDF-2, with the UEG being reestablished in Jan 2012, and the SDF-2 being destroyed newly commissioned in january 2014, it's construction had to take at most 2 years. since prior to 2012 the UEDF didn't have the capacity to build an SDF class vessel.

That's a stickier wicket, since the SDF-2 doesn't actually exist in Robotech's animation and there's no official info about it. Various fan theories posit its construction was accelerated using tech salvage from Zentradi wrecks and/or from the SDF-1 itself, or that the partially completed ship was recovered from a destroyed shipyard and transported to Macross City for completion. It's a great big plot hole.

(In the OSM, the SDF-2 was never present because she was being built on the moon, and had in fact been under construction since 2003.)

[ShadowLogan]

Putting aside that those numbers are obviously ridiculous and would result in population densities that'd make Hong Kong look like pastoral Kansas...

Just going with the numbers in the book. I don't think TY did any real thinking on the matter of colonization/ships when he plugged it in. Though one way to make the numbers work though is if the bulk of those passengers can be put into stasis/hibernation (ex. used in Clark's 2001/2010 Odyssey series, though dropped in later instalments)

Simple answer... because it's a plot hole, resulting from the legal inability to use Zentradi ship designs in animation or live-action works and the goal of setting the Ark Angel up as a one-of-a-kind city ship like the SDF-1.

I get that they can't use Zentreadi/Macross designs, but given the similarities with some designs* between GCM and SDF:M (or even either and SDC:SC) they could put/explain the GCM stuff as updated/retrofitted SDF:M designs in-universe and skirt the legal issue (since in actually they would not be). As it is they now they have to make everything be unique, which creates a real headache if they UEDF/UEEF is supposed to be in a state of regression (all those new designs would suggest the opposite).

*As I said, there is a profile shot of a Zentreadi ship that could be taken as a Neutron-S missile in the later arc, throw in that it was retrofitted by humans to begin with... I know I've brought it up in the past, but don't recall any time codes. It could also work with the VF-X-4/Conbat (though likely a good idea not to use SDF:M's transformation for the Conbat).

That doesn't disprove my point, mate... it just demonstrates that even back in the late 80's and 90's fans realized the only way to make Robotech more likeable would be to make its other segments more like the its most popular one.

I'm just saying it isn't necessarily TY's idea to put alternate modules onto the Alpha in place of the Beta. Though if the Beta was shelved in the 2022 as claimed, the UEEF would still look for a solution to the Alpha's problem that necessitated the Beta in the first place (and one of those options is likely to be Fast Packs).

There's some sound suppositions in here, but unfortunately nothing we can substantiate with evidence...

I agree. But evidence to explain the 8year construction is lacking when compared to a similar sized vessel that has at least 2 ships ready by 2015 and was specifically designed and built for the UEEF.

[ShadowLogan]

@glitterboy2098
please update your last post to properly credit who is saying what to avoid confusion.

a single work slip for even a zentreadi scout could hold half dozen human ships no problem

Um no. The only vessel that might fit multiples to a Scout Ship slot is the Garfish, and maybe the non-Tri-stars of the ASC (depending on their size in relation). But the Tokagawa and Ikazuchi won't fit, and the Tristar will take up most of the volume. In order to build terran designed ships in those berths, even muliple instances is likely to also require some retrofitting of the berths.

Per RT.com's Infopedia (via wayback)
Ship: Length (m) x Width (m) x Height (m)
Z.Scout: 498x178x355 (though IINM the height as depicted in the animation puts it at ~1/3 of the length or ~166m)
Tokagawa: 1120x430x357
TriStar: 461x107x101
Garfish: 179x59x70 (overall)
Ikazuchi: 702x154x177

and keep in mind the UEEF built its own factory satellites too..

Uh, no. Art of the Shadow Chronicles makes it clear that UEEF did not build Liberty. pg42 "Space Station Liberty is one of the most well known of the factory satellites that were appropriated by the humans during the fall of the Tirolian Empire." Nothing indicates Terran-humans built it. What TSC indicates though is that Terran-humans likely gave it an external face lift and possibly other retrofitting (ala the SDF-1).

looking at the SDF-2, with the UEG being reestablished in Jan 2012, and the SDF-2 being destroyed newly commissioned in january 2014, it's construction had to take at most 2 years. since prior to 2012 the UEDF didn't have the capacity to build an SDF class vessel.

except we don't know when the SDF-2 construction started, nor when its design work started. If HG is just cribbing from the OSM that means the ship was under construction prior to the RoD IINM.

I already laid out how the SDF-3 might have slower construction than the faster Tokawaga that doesn't have missing dates like the SDF-2.

you mind showing me in the canon sources where it says the SDF-3 took 8 years to get built? i can find no canon source for such a claim, and as pointed out above, the SDF-2 points to much faster build times. the only source i can find for 8 years is the old comics and novels.. which are completely decanonized.

Art of the Shadow Chronicles Time Line pg8 which is basically the same as RT.com timeline (before the site revamp into just a store front):
-"2015 The Robotech Expeditionary Force builds up its fleet with the commencement of construction of its new flagship, the SFD-3 in Earth orbit."
-"2022 The SDF-3 is launched to lead the Pioneer Expedition in search of the home world of the Robotech Masters."

while your at it, you mind giving a source for your claim of minmei being the only civilian in the UEEF while your at it?

????, I think you mean to direct this at Seto not me (ShadowLogan). Minmei is the only civilian with the UEEF AFAIK that gets a mention, aside from children growing up. If HG is keeping to the "broad-strokes" of the Sentinels, then Minmei would be be the only civilian present on the mission. Now that might be one of those details that gets changed, but to date nothing indicates it was, but then it also contributes to the mess we are discussing in terms of colonization/civilian role of the UEEF Pioneer Mission.

[glitterboy2098]

@glitterboy2098

a single work slip for even a zentreadi scout could hold half dozen human ships no problem

Um no. The only vessel that might fit multiples to a Scout Ship slot is the Garfish, and maybe the non-Tri-stars of the ASC (depending on their size in relation). But the Tokagawa and Ikazuchi won't fit, and the Tristar will take up most of the volume. In order to build terran designed ships in those berths, even muliple instances is likely to also require some retrofitting of the berths.

Per RT.com's Infopedia (via wayback)
Ship: Length (m) x Width (m) x Height (m)
Z.Scout: 498x178x355 (though IINM the height as depicted in the animation puts it at ~1/3 of the length or ~166m)
Tokagawa: 1120x430x357
TriStar: 461x107x101
Garfish: 179x59x70 (overall)
Ikazuchi: 702x154x177

the "Battle class" and "banshee class" ships that make up the bulk of the ASC fleet (and the UEEF fleet that arrives to assist in the 2nd war) are much smaller than that.

and the typical zentreadi warship is IIRC 3x longer than a zent scout and at least 2x wider and taller. their big ships are 4-5x longer and 3-4x wider.. even if the zent flagships and carriers used special docking slips and most slips in the factories are sized for the typical warship, you can still fit quite a few human ships into each.

and that is assuming they even use dedicated spaces.. the visual evidence from the show points to massive internal voids for communal station keeping rather than neat little compartments for each ship. which gives far more room for human ships to be worked on.

and keep in mind the UEEF built its own factory satellites too..

Uh, no. Art of the Shadow Chronicles makes it clear that UEEF did not build Liberty. pg42 "Space Station Liberty is one of the most well known of the factory satellites that were appropriated by the humans during the fall of the Tirolian Empire." Nothing indicates Terran-humans built it. What TSC indicates though is that Terran-humans likely gave it an external face lift and possibly other retrofitting (ala the SDF-1).

i stand corrected on origin, but clearly in addition to the external facelift (which leaves nothing intact), they did an internal refit (which leaves nothing intact) since the entire design looks absolutely nothing like the zentreadi factory sats. if anything other than gross structural members remain, i'll eat my hat. such an extensive refit is basically the same as building it brand new.

looking at the SDF-2, with the UEG being reestablished in Jan 2012, and the SDF-2 being destroyed newly commissioned in January 2014, it's construction had to take at most 2 years. since prior to 2012 the UEDF didn't have the capacity to build an SDF class vessel.

except we don't know when the SDF-2 construction started, nor when its design work started. If HG is just cribbing from the OSM that means the ship was under construction prior to the RoD IINM.

I already laid out how the SDF-3 might have slower construction than the faster Tokawaga that doesn't have missing dates like the SDF-2.

if it was in production prior to the rain of death howeve,r that means a sizeable shipyard and thousands of workers survived the rain of death. which Seto insists never happened, given the absurd lengths he has gone to convince people there were only 70,000 survivors.

he can't have it both ways. either only the civilians and crew of the SDF-1 survived, or shipyards and workers survived to give a pre-war origin to the SDF-2 and later ships. there is no way for the zentreadi to kill onyl the staff of such sites, and not destroy the facility and ship-under-construction within.

(further, we see in "to the stars" that earth's ship construction prior to the war took place in orbit, "in situ" as it were. which makes it unlikely that any ships under construction escaped the grand fleet folding into orbit, and the ensuing battle)

you mind showing me in the canon sources where it says the SDF-3 took 8 years to get built? i can find no canon source for such a claim, and as pointed out above, the SDF-2 points to much faster build times. the only source i can find for 8 years is the old comics and novels.. which are completely decanonized.

Art of the Shadow Chronicles Time Line pg8 which is basically the same as RT.com timeline (before the site revamp into just a store front):
-"2015 The Robotech Expeditionary Force builds up its fleet with the commencement of construction of its new flagship, the SFD-3 in Earth orbit."
-"2022 The SDF-3 is launched to lead the Pioneer Expedition in search of the home world of the Robotech Masters."

ok fair enough. Seto has a bad habit of asserting non-canonical things as if they are canonical, so i had to insist.

thankfully this has no bearing on any other ships, as you've pointed out.
and to add possiblities to your list BTW..
D. the SDF-3 construction was halted and restarted several times due to political and/or resource allocation disputes.
E. the SDF-3 was given lower construction priority relative to the construction of the rest of the fleet, both ASC and UEEF.

both possibilities would be logical given that the timeframe spans the period when the ASC was moving from merely a regional portion of the UEDF to the primary component of it. the ASC in the Southern cross portion of the show seems to have its own ideas about what is best for earth (which would fit with the sentinels video, broad strokes likely preserving that aspect), and the invasion comic establishes the UEEF didn't trust the ASC enough to tell them about the protoculture factory hidden somewhere in the SDF-1, suggesting the two services had some fairly bitter divides. so it would make sense that the earth forces and expeditionary force's relative goals would be subject to a lot of political infighting within the UEG, which would spill over to things like construction timetables.

while your at it, you mind giving a source for your claim of minmei being the only civilian in the UEEF while your at it?

????, I think you mean to direct this at Seto not me (ShadowLogan). Minmei is the only civilian with the UEEF AFAIK that gets a mention, aside from children growing up. If HG is keeping to the "broad-strokes" of the Sentinels, then Minmei would be be the only civilian present on the mission. Now that might be one of those details that gets changed, but to date nothing indicates it was, but then it also contributes to the mess we are discussing in terms of colonization/civilian role of the UEEF Pioneer Mission.

yeah, sorry about that. i've fixed it the post.

but given that comics like the invasion series have established that colonization was a primary goal of the UEEF and pioneer expedition, and prelude has established that earth does have colonies, both in the solar system and "the rest of the universe", it seems probable that minmei was NOT the only civilian in the new canon. with the war starting up so soon after the SDF-3 launched, the civilian percentage might have dwindled due to recruitment and losses, but odds are there were still a lot of civilians off earth.

after the evacuation of the remains of the ASC in 2031, i suspect there would be even more, since it seems unlikely the UEEF would have left the ASC troop's dependents behind. (at least, not willingly.)

[Seto Kaiba]

the "Battle class" and "banshee class" ships that make up the bulk of the ASC fleet (and the UEEF fleet that arrives to assist in the 2nd war) are much smaller than that.

Those only exist in fan fiction, friend... the official material makes no mention of any such ships, and the RPG refers to the ones with different engine configurations as Tristar-class variants. (Masters Saga sourcebook, pg161 of the manga size)

(Not that that invalidates your point... the typical UEEF warship is, depending on whether you trust the Infopedia's assumption-based stats or the original source material's official ones, either about 1/3 or 1/10th the size of the typical, correctly proportioned Zentradi fleet picket, the smallest fold-capable ship in the Zentradi inventory.)

and the typical zentreadi warship is IIRC 3x longer than a zent scout and at least 2x wider and taller. their big ships are 4-5x longer and 3-4x wider.. even if the zent flagships and carriers used special docking slips and most slips in the factories are sized for the typical warship, you can still fit quite a few human ships into each.

Depending on which class you consider to be the typical Zentradi warship, you're either correct or lowballing it. The medium-scale gun destroyer is 1.5km (precisely 3x the keel length of the picket) and the Thuverl Salan-class line battleship is 2.3km, not quite five times the keel length of the picket.

and that is assuming they even use dedicated spaces.. the visual evidence from the show points to massive internal voids for communal station keeping rather than neat little compartments for each ship. which gives far more room for human ships to be worked on.

It's difficult to say how typical the internal layout of Liberty station's yard is, since the SDF-3 seemed to be built in an individual slip in the first captured factory satellite and we never see the shipyard facilities in the Macross Saga.

i stand corrected on origin, but clearly in addition to the external facelift (which leaves nothing intact), they did an internal refit (which leaves nothing intact) since the entire design looks absolutely nothing like the zentreadi factory sats. if anything other than gross structural members remain, i'll eat my hat. such an extensive refit is basically the same as building it brand new.

Or it's possible that the exterior remodeling was minimal, and the internal architecture was copied for use on UEEF ships. Can't prove it one way or the other, but it's an interesting possibility. There is, after all, no statement that the installation that became Liberty station was a Zentradi factory satellite.

if it was in production prior to the rain of death howeve,r that means a sizeable shipyard and thousands of workers survived the rain of death. which Seto insists never happened, given the absurd lengths he has gone to convince people there were only 70,000 survivors.

You're assuming the shipyard was not destroyed... it could just as easily be the case that the shipyard was attacked and the SDF-2 was a partial wreck complete enough to salvage. After all, the RPG and AotSC both assert that UEEF and UEDF ships were built using salvaged systems from Zentradi wrecks. Waste not, want not, right?

Of course, that's no more provable than any other hypothesis since the SDF-2 is a great big bloody plot hole that HG has declined to do more than acknowledge.

thankfully this has no bearing on any other ships, as you've pointed out.
and to add possiblities to your list BTW..
D. the SDF-3 construction was halted and restarted several times due to political and/or resource allocation disputes.
E. the SDF-3 was given lower construction priority relative to the construction of the rest of the fleet, both ASC and UEEF.

E. is especially unlikely, given that the SDF-3 was to be the first ship of the UEEF to be launched.

EDIT: Or we could look at this from a quantity vs. quality standpoint and it would explain why it took so long for the Angel-class to be built, retired, and then pressed into service as a WMD. If they took a lower priority than all of the UEEF's combatant ships, that'd explain why a ship slightly larger than the SDF-3 would take longer to build even with assembly line mass production.

but given that comics like the invasion series have established that colonization was a primary goal of the UEEF and pioneer expedition, and prelude has established that earth does have colonies, both in the solar system and "the rest of the universe", it seems probable that minmei was NOT the only civilian in the new canon.

There's absolutely no evidence to back that contention up, though... having a goal is not the same as achieving that goal. Even in the Invasion comic, Lancer brings up the colonization initiative to highlight how stupid it is that they're NOT doing that. Instead, they're wasting manpower and machinery trying to recover a planet with a compromised ecosystem. Prelude reaffirmed what we already knew, that they had (militarized) colonies on the moon and Mars, and that they believed the Invid had a goal of galactic conquest.

Even the RPG does not support the notion of there being extrasolar colonies... it asserts there aren't really any civilians anymore, and that the military is the ONLY career path for people born in space.

There has been nothing... NOTHING... to overturn the idea that Minmei was the sole actual civilian in space for the entirety of the UEEF's operations. They even do an almost one-for-one retread of the ending of the Waltrip comics showing Kyle get killed while impersonating a soldier.

[Alrik Vas]

The problem here is that you are trying to conflate two different things.
Thing one is that the Angel class was canceled. No one disagrees with this, it is established in canon that it was canceled.
Thing two is that the Angel ship was the only form of colony ship ever. I am not aware of any canon support for this claim.
B does not follow A. It is possible that there were other colony ships either purpose built, or pressed into service. It is in fact quite possible that it was attacks on those previous colony ships that revealed that ships such as the Angel would be insufficiently safe and resulted in the canceling of the Angel class.

If you want to make the rather significant claim that there were NO colony ships, of any type, ever, then it is up to you to provide support for your claim as you are the one making an affirmative claim and as such the burden of proof is yours.

If you have a claim that there were other colony ships and that they did go places and when they went places, go ahead and prove that. Otherwise there is a statement that says the ships never went on any colonization missions.

If you don't have a claim of that nature, then why are you arguing with him?

[glitterboy2098]

The problem here is that you are trying to conflate two different things.
Thing one is that the Angel class was canceled. No one disagrees with this, it is established in canon that it was canceled.
Thing two is that the Angel ship was the only form of colony ship ever. I am not aware of any canon support for this claim.
B does not follow A. It is possible that there were other colony ships either purpose built, or pressed into service. It is in fact quite possible that it was attacks on those previous colony ships that revealed that ships such as the Angel would be insufficiently safe and resulted in the canceling of the Angel class.

If you want to make the rather significant claim that there were NO colony ships, of any type, ever, then it is up to you to provide support for your claim as you are the one making an affirmative claim and as such the burden of proof is yours.

If you have a claim that there were other colony ships and that they did go places and when they went places, go ahead and prove that. Otherwise there is a statement that says the ships never went on any colonization missions.

If you don't have a claim of that nature, then why are you arguing with him?

Eli doesn't have to prove his claim because he's just defending the current status quo. that a organization that was, per canon, created with the primary goal of colonization, and which in canon dialog confirmed it has colonies outside the solar system, has performed colonization.

Seto is attempting to convince people to ignore that canon based on his belief that a certain generation of colony ships built in the 2030's was never used. in doing so he is also promoting the idea that we have to ignore all the canon establishing the UEEF's colonization goal and it's existing colonies, all based on how he interpreters the existence of a ship coming from that same canon source.

he's making an incredible claim, yet his reasoning for it is based on circular logic (that the UEEF never colonized because it never finished those ships, which was never finished because the UEEF never colonizes) and tortuous interpretation of the dialog so that it says something opposite of what it actually appears to say.


all Eli is saying is that we know that the UEEF built colonies by canon, and had a primary goal of colonization. which means that if the Angel class never got used, there had to be other colony vessels of some kind prior to the angel class. so if Seto maintains that there ARE no colonies at all, and the angel class was the only effort the UEEF made to thatend, he has to actually provide evidence there was no colonization prior to the angel class, and that the canon references to colonization and colonies is wrong.

[Seto Kaiba]

Eli doesn't have to prove his claim because he's just defending the current status quo. that a organization that was, per canon, created with the primary goal of colonization, [...]

False! The definitions provided in AotSC on pages 105 and 141 indicate the primary goal of the Pioneer Expedition and SDF-3 was, and I quote, "to confront the Robotech Masters at their homeworld of Tirol". Exploring space for the purpose of future colonization took a backseat to liberating worlds occupied by the Invid (incl. Earth). On paper it might have been one of their primary objectives, but all evidence points to it being little more than a half-ignored sideshow.

and which in canon dialog confirmed it has colonies outside the solar system, has performed colonization.

It confirmed nothing of the kind, and no Robotech source to date corroborates the idea of extrasolar colonies... not even the RPG.

The reason you have to prove your claim is you're arguing AGAINST the evidence.

Seto is attempting to convince people to ignore that canon based on his belief that a certain generation of colony ships built in the 2030's was never used. in doing so he is also promoting the idea that we have to ignore all the canon establishing the UEEF's colonization goal and it's existing colonies, all based on how he interpreters the existence of a ship coming from that same canon source.

Strawman!

No, I'm merely pointing out that the official material points to the UEEF having never gotten around to setting up any extrasolar colonies, because the whole colonization schtick didn't even start until after the 2nd Robotech War and in AotSC we're explicitly told the early colonization efforts and the ships built for them were scrubbed because it was far too dangerous in space. No source has ever confirmed the existence of extrasolar colonies, or even that any colonization mission was actually launched. It's been an article of faith in Robotech since '86 that there weren't any civilians in space on purpose (Minmei being a stowaway), and we know that by the time they started to build those colony ships after the 2nd Robotech War there were no civilians to put on them becuase the UEDF had failed to hold Earth.

he's making an incredible claim, yet his reasoning for it is based on circular logic (that the UEEF never colonized because it never finished those ships, which was never finished because the UEEF never colonizes) and tortuous interpretation of the dialog so that it says something opposite of what it actually appears to say.

No, it's fairly straightforward logic... unlike some of the rather wild and unfounded guesses you've tabled in an attempt to claim colonization was a part of the story before Tommy got involved.

We're told, full stop, that the early colonization missions planned were to use the Angel-class. We're also told that the Angel-class didn't start construction until after the 2nd Robotech War, when the UEDF ceased to be a thing and the UEEF lost access to Earth thanks to the Invid occupation. We're told, again, that the Angel-class were deemed unfit for use beause they were inadequately defended, and that construction of the ships was halted immediately thereafter. Nowhere is it said that any ships were completed, let alone launched. Nowhere is it said that there were any previous colony ships. We're also told that there really aren't any civilians in space in 2044... they're all soldiers or children thereof who know virtually nothing else besides military service and combat against alien oppressors.

If you have no ships, no mission, and no colonists, it's a safe bet you don't have colonies. That's basic logic.

The only colonies that are ever mentioned are the ones established prior to the 2nd Robotech War on the moon and Mars, which were subsequently militarized.

Unless you can present actual, hard evidence of extrasolar colonization missions in the Robotech setting that occurred before the construction of the Angel-class (and none are mentioned), you don't have an argument... you just have reflex denial.

[Alrik Vas]

Eli doesn't have to prove his claim because he's just defending the current status quo. that a organization that was, per canon, created with the primary goal of colonization, and which in canon dialog confirmed it has colonies outside the solar system, has performed colonization.

You think eliakon is defending the status quo?

Can you cite a source for the colonization actually happening other than dialogue? No troll, actually curious. I have found the dialogue in Robotech, and the attempts by fans to "explain" the bad and otherwise contradictory dialogue into something other than a mistake, to be pretty suspect.

Kind of like the "Pirates" discussion, I think you might agree dialogue is pretty dubious at times in the show unless someone explains it, which right there tells me it's problematic at best.

[glitterboy2098]

this from the Comics, and fairly unambiguous compared to the dialog from the show. though it puts the dialog fro mthe show into a new light, as well.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxIua ... zlIaFd4Mmc
Invasion ,issue 02, page 2. lancer establishing that the UEEF's primary purpose was colonization. links it to Glovals statements in the last episodes of macross saga, where he informed Lisa hayes she was getting a new ship, and it's goal was to spread humanity outside the solar system.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxIua ... jlON3lpSTQ
Prelude to shadow chronicles, issue 5, page 11. General Reinhardt establishing humanity has colonies on the moon, mars, and elsewhere.

makes it clear that the UEEF (aka the 'pioneer mission'*) had a goal of colonization, and actually achieved it. now this could just mean they planted military/supply bases with large numbers of dependents onto worlds along the way to tyrol, rather than the elaborate stuff seen in the macross spinoffs, but clearly they did do colonizing.

* pioneer, for those who don't study history as much, meaning "someone who goes out into the unexplored wilderness with intent to settle there"

[Seto Kaiba]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxIuaTgKKEs4aVpPazlIaFd4Mmc
Invasion ,issue 02, page 2. lancer establishing that the UEEF's primary purpose was colonization.

No, it literally establishes that "advancement of colonization" is one of the UEEF's long term goals.

Not their primary purpose, or even one of their primary purposes... just a long-term goal.

That doesn't prove, or even support, your assertions here. It merely reiterates what we already know: that the UEEF planned to get around to colonization eventually, and instead ended up devoting its resources to liberating planets occupied by the Invid.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxIuaTgKKEs4cjltMjlON3lpSTQ
Prelude to shadow chronicles, issue 5, page 11. General Reinhardt establishing humanity has colonies on the moon, mars, and elsewhere.

That's your interpretation of it... which is rather different from what is literally being said.

What General Reinhardt IS saying is that, if they don't stop the Invid at Earth, there's nothing to stop them from later conquering humanity's colonies on the moon and Mars (the militarized colonies mentioned in AotSC), and then the rest of the universe (which the Regent had already given the good ol' college try).


In both cases, that's not what you were asked for. You were asked for corroborating non-dialog evidence to support your argument, because dialog can be interpreted many different ways. Do you have any manner of clear, unambiguous statement of fact in an official publication to the effect that:

• ... there were any colony missions launched before the Angel-class was planned and laid down.
• ... the Angel-class ships were ever completed or used for any purpose other than a delivery system for the Neutron-S missiles. (That they were not canceled before they could be used as AotSC indicates they were.)
• ... any kind or class of colony ship was actually launched for its intended purpose at any point in Robotech's timeline.
• ... that an extrasolar colony exists in the Robotech setting.

If you don't, then you do not have an argument.

* pioneer, for those who don't study history as much, meaning "someone who goes out into the unexplored wilderness with intent to settle there"

"Pioneer" in the military sense, for it is a military ship and a military expedition, means something rather different... namely, an advance party of troops moving ahead of the main force to prepare the way... which is exactly what the SDF-3 was doing.

[ShadowLogan]

the "Battle class" and "banshee class" ships that make up the bulk of the ASC fleet (and the UEEF fleet that arrives to assist in the 2nd war) are much smaller than that.

I'm trying to use easily referenced official stats, those ship types have no official size or even designation. IINM we see some ASC ships being built on Earth in TRM saga (unless they ran the blockade or where taken out of storage), so the RFS-type facilities might not have been used for their production.

and the typical zentreadi warship is IIRC 3x longer than a zent scout and at least 2x wider and taller. their big ships are 4-5x longer and 3-4x wider.. even if the zent flagships and carriers used special docking slips and most slips in the factories are sized for the typical warship, you can still fit quite a few human ships into each.

As Seto mentioned it depends on what you consider the "typical" Zentreadi ship, not to mention the "typical" human ship size and how you go about determining it. When ships are under construction I would also think you would want to make sure they are secure so that an accident has less a chance of setting one in motion compounding things, which likely means some retrofitting of the berths had to occur.

i stand corrected on origin, but clearly in addition to the external facelift (which leaves nothing intact), they did an internal refit (which leaves nothing intact) since the entire design looks absolutely nothing like the zentreadi factory sats. if anything other than gross structural members remain, i'll eat my hat. such an extensive refit is basically the same as building it brand new.

The EXTENT of an external and internal refit though really depends on what it looked like before. The text in AotSC leaves open the possibility there isn't a standard design for the RFS as it is stated they "were built into massive conglomerations of asteroids" in the SSL page. Its also possible that individual RFS's are optimized for specific products.

I'd also add that the Internal Refit does not need to be as extensive as suggested. Breetai's ship was retrofitted in areas for human habitation and use, just like the SDF-1. Both of which still retained different levels of "giant accessible". The RFS probably wouldn't be any different.

if it was in production prior to the rain of death howeve,r that means a sizeable shipyard and thousands of workers survived the rain of death. which Seto insists never happened, given the absurd lengths he has gone to convince people there were only 70,000 survivors.

I am not going to consider the SDF-2 in this discussion as it has to many unresolved issues. Restricting it to the Tokagawa avoids alot of that, while retaining the spirit of what the SDF-2 would result in though.

but given that comics like the invasion series have established that colonization was a primary goal of the UEEF and pioneer expedition, and prelude has established that earth does have colonies, both in the solar system and "the rest of the universe", it seems probable that minmei was NOT the only civilian in the new canon. with the war starting up so soon after the SDF-3 launched, the civilian percentage might have dwindled due to recruitment and losses, but odds are there were still a lot of civilians off earth.

after the evacuation of the remains of the ASC in 2031, i suspect there would be even more, since it seems unlikely the UEEF would have left the ASC troop's dependents behind. (at least, not willingly.)

Earth's overall population in TSC is stated to be in the millions in 2044, most of those are not UEEF/UEDF military (or even Zentreadi/Tirolians). However after the Invid Invasion they are essentially cut off from the UEEF in terms of recruitment for new colonies in the 2030s. So what ever the Terran population in space (military and civilian) is it has to sustain the existing UEEF (and its locations) until Earth can be liberated.

While the comics establish colonization goal it isn't real clear on the specifics. Reinheardts statement is an issue, but we do have to consider if he is using 'colonies" in the same manner than the Pioneer Mission's goals laid out (which would be for civilian) or not. Lunar and Martian colonies though likely would not have been established by the UEEF, but rather the UEDF (who seemed to be responsible for the Solar System in the 2RW).

The Moon (at least in RT) also makes a difficult site for colonization (AotSC pg36) due to a lack of atmosphere, but all of the sites on the Moon were militarized (which could remove them from being colonies depending on the POV) in the 2RW. AotSC doesn't mention the status of Mars, though if the Moon is any indication. The rest of the universe could refer to colonies or it might not grammatically speaking.

It is unlikely IMHO that Minmei is the only civilian though she is the only one clearly identified adult in the various stories to date. Lisa was getting ready to resign her commission in Prelude when she was pregnant per Rick, which IINM means she would be a civilian. If Lisa could resign her commission then other expectant parents probably can to.

E. is especially unlikely, given that the SDF-3 was to be the first ship of the UEEF to be launched.

Oh the contradictions this creates apparently with the Tokagawa writeup and the series itself since the Toks per dialogue appear to be in service (home) for 15years (in 2029) about 7years before the SDF-3 had been launched.

[Alrik Vas]

Oh the contradictions this creates apparently with the Tokagawa writeup and the series itself since the Toks per dialogue appear to be in service (home) for 15years (in 2029) about 7years before the SDF-3 had been launched.

Yet...wait, you're saying that the Tokugawa class was in service since 2014? Isn't that the end of the Macross timeline?

How is that possible?

[glitterboy2098]

Oh the contradictions this creates apparently with the Tokagawa writeup and the series itself since the Toks per dialogue appear to be in service (home) for 15years (in 2029) about 7years before the SDF-3 had been launched.

Yet...wait, you're saying that the Tokugawa class was in service since 2014? Isn't that the end of the Macross timeline?

How is that possible?

per Carpenter's dialog in the show, the ship they were on had been their home for 15 years. which would put him joining the crew/taking command (with one line it hard to tell in what capacity he was in during that time) in 2015 at the latest. earth got a robotech factory sat in mid 2013, which even without automated manufacturing of human ships, would greatly speed up the production process.

given that we know humanity was able to turn a captured RFS (Liberty) to the sole production of human gear (and even did a 'to the structure' refit on her to change her entire exterior, interior, and apparent technological systems appearance/components), it is clear humanity figured out how to reprogram the factory satellites to make human technology products. with liberty being captured sometime in the 2020's (implied) and totally rebuilt by the 2040's, (prelude, shadow chronicles) it is likely the factory captured in 2013 was the source of the expertise in turning them to human use. certainly, if humanity never learned how to use that factory, they'd never have bothered in capturing more later on.

if it helps, the Tokugawa class was described in robotech.com's old infopedia as the height of the ARMD type design, so it is likely the blueprints for the design existed prior to the war and survived somewhere. then humanity just had to start building them, probably with a few updates and tweaks made possible by the alliance with the zentreadi and the ability to salvage (then produce) zentreadi hardware like fold drives and better naval energy weapons.

[Seto Kaiba]

Oh the contradictions this creates apparently with the Tokagawa writeup and the series itself since the Toks per dialogue appear to be in service (home) for 15years (in 2029) about 7years before the SDF-3 had been launched.

Yet...wait, you're saying that the Tokugawa class was in service since 2014? Isn't that the end of the Macross timeline?

How is that possible?

Based on official materials from the Infopedia, the Tokugawa-class's design process was started before the 1st Robotech War ended and the UEDF/UEEF brass apparently didn't think it worthwhile to redesign the ships to take full advantage of "lessons learned" or incorporate technical advances or tech salvage from the war as they did when the UEDF's Tristar-class was designed later. That simplicity probably made them much easier to produce quickly in the wake of the 1st Robotech War, even if it did ultimately make them all but useless as warships. Size is about all they had going for them.

[Sambot]

The canonical absence of any official civilian presence would be a bit of a hint... as would the fact that even the RPG is telling us that serving in the military is the ONLY career path for people born in space. In the various depictions of the Pioneer Mission related to the animation, there were a grand total of three people who were not soldiers with the UEEF in space. One was Minmei, and the other two don't really count because they were (respectively) a man who'd joined the military under an assumed name to rescue (stalk) Minmei and a military espionage robot intended to spy on the UEDF brass for the UEEF who got dragged along by Minmei (who didn't realize that her companion was not a human).

That's just it. There used to be. That there are none is a recent developement/retcon. Depending on which history you go by Scott was either just born during the year the SDF-3 was launched or he was 8-10 years old. Every child born would have been a civilian.

How could Lynn Kyle possibly join the Pioneer Mission to stalk Minmei when no one knew she'd stow away?

For the same reason they don't fix anything else in the show... or produce anything new... or do anything to promote the show besides the pitifully poorly-attended convention tour... management isn't interested in doing anything but re-release the series and make a quick buck from existing fans on merchandising. There's no money to be had in it.

Yet the redid the sound effects didn't they?

As the official line and RPG have it, the UEG was a military sockpuppet after the 1st Robotech War.

Again, that's now. Not how it used to be.

Assuming, of course, that they were able to spare ships from the front lines to do that.

If you recall, one of the major plot points of the Sentinels arc was that the UEEF was unable to fleet and facing a numerically-superior foe. The best they could spare to reinforce Earth in the Masters Saga were ships of such poor quality that they'd already been relegated to rear echelon logistical support, and that was a dire emergency... which may account for why the "new generation" of soldiers in the New Generation saga state they grew up out in space aboard a "robotech ship".

One of the currant plot point. That they even had a fleet was originally missing with new ships being built at Tirol and Karberra. Even he new "Can't fleet" explanation doesn't make sense. Who has their flag ship without an escort? Especially when they're predicting going against a numerically and technologically superior foe?

We know for a fact that R&D was done by "military scientists" who held rank and wore uniforms.

Presumably the construction was also done by soldiers from the Corps of Engineers or some similar formation.

Some yes. Not all, originally.

Go back and watch the show... Admiral Gloval tells them it's a preemptive strike to rob the Robotech Masters of their ability to make war. Peace through superior firepower.

Is that the Remastered Version? I don't have that one. And who goes and picks a fight with a technologically and numerically superior foe? The whole point of going was to tell the Masters that Earth didn't have the Protoculture Matrix and to leave Earth alone. If that didn't work then the Pioneer Mission would use force so the next war would be over Tirol.

The novels are off in la-la land and the official canon shows that the Sentinels council was purely an advisory body to the UEEF brass.

That's why I said "That's now. Not then" Things have been retconned.

That doesn't follow... there were no colony bays until 2043-2044, and no civilians apart from Minmay in the official materials, unless you count the children of soldiers who were born much later. There were no civilians to include.

Again people have to live some where. And pre-retcon children were on the SDF-3 when she was launched. EVen with the retcon Scott was born the same year the SDf-3 was launched. So either he was onboard as an infant or he was born on her shortly after her launch. Also Dana and Bowie could have been passengers had their parents chose to bring them along. You don't plan to have children along on a purely military mission. In fact you make sure pregnancy can't happen.

[ShadowLogan]

Yet the redid the sound effects didn't they?

Yes they redid the sound track some time ago when HG management was still inclined to put some money forward (over 10years ago IINM). Currently though Seto is correct, HG hasn't shown a willingness to invest in significantly new material/products that aren't basically rehash of existing material. Their ambitions for RT: Academy recently fell flat when they tried to use kickstarter to raise the funds to get the project started.

Again, that's now. Not how it used to be.

And current canon is what is being considered, not what amounts to an Alternate Universe. One of the reasons for the 2001-ish reboot was to clean up the mess, though they've done a fair job of replacing it with their own mess (IMHO).

Is that the Remastered Version? I don't have that one. And who goes and picks a fight with a technologically and numerically superior foe? The whole point of going was to tell the Masters that Earth didn't have the Protoculture Matrix and to leave Earth alone. If that didn't work then the Pioneer Mission would use force so the next war would be over Tirol.

I have the Legacy Version, which is supposed to be the original broadcast version from '85. Seto is correct. Gloval in Ep36: "We will find it and we'll put an end to this war by destroy their capacity to make war We leave tomorrow", he has two more statements that tie into this in this particular scene, but this is the line I believe Seto is referring to and the Protoculture Matrix/Factory has no mention whatsoever in this scene, heck Protoculture itself isn't mentioned (I can post the entire scene dialoge if need be).

Again people have to live some where. And pre-retcon children were on the SDF-3 when she was launched. EVen with the retcon Scott was born the same year the SDf-3 was launched. So either he was onboard as an infant or he was born on her shortly after her launch. Also Dana and Bowie could have been passengers had their parents chose to bring them along. You don't plan to have children along on a purely military mission. In fact you make sure pregnancy can't happen.

Pre-Recton puts that material in an alternate universe for all practical purposes. Its like trying to use Marvel universe #616 in a discussion on Marvel Universe #1610 or #8096 or #19999 (and there are a lot of Marvel Universe Numbers per the wiki).

All prior Sentinels materials have been reduced down to "broad strokes" application per HG, and even then might not apply (case in point the SDF-3 is no longer considered to have left alone and built a fleet at Tirol, or been cut off from Earth in the 2020s). Seto can probably cite the source.

That children are born in space is not in doubt, what is in doubt is the claim they have to be on the SDF-3. All the show dialogue (which is part of current canon) tells us is that it was a robotech ship, nothing else on where they were born or the ship's name.

[Sambot]

You're thinking of the East India company? Yeah, though they were less colonizers and more enslavers.

Those are the ones. Thanks. They still founded colonies though and civilians did move to them. And were would slave rank? Not military. Maybe not civilian but not purely cargo either since they still needed some food and shelter.

That's now. Not then. Plus how often are military developments developed purely by military personnel? There's also a lot of OCCs not listed. That leaves a lot of jobs civilians could take beyond care givers and educators and space farmers/ranchers.

It's not a time-bounded statement in the RPG.

How often are military developments developed by purely military personnel? CONSTANTLY in Robotech... not so much in the real world. Unlike the OSM, in Robotech all this alien technology was reverse engineered and developed by the military itself... by a secretive cabel of military scientists who are the only ones who actually know how this stuff works. Dr. Lang, Dr. Zand, Dr. Cochrane, etc.
[/quote]

Time-bonded statement or not someone's got to do the job.

Sure some but not all. Didn't Emerson get in trouble for using outside doctors. That being Dr. Cochrane? I don't remembe Dr. Penn being in the military either.

Until then there's still no evidence for their existence and Harmony Gold considers the dialog of the series to be a fallible source... meaning they're Schrodinger's space pirates. They may or may not actually exist until they're observed to exist or not exist.

The problem is the fact that the line is there when it could have been removed in the Remastered Edition. That leaves the door open for pirates to exist.

No, but the canonical absence of civilians kinda does... just puttin' that out there.

Actually canonical evidence prooves otherwise. Scott Bernard was born in born 2022, post retcon. The SDF-3 was launched in 2022. That's one canonical child being on the SDF-3. I sincerely doubt he's the only one.

This site says that 4% of US women are pregnant at one time. https://www.quora.com/How-many-women-ar ... given-time Going by the 40% of UEEF troops being women and the old RPG SDF crew/troops numbers. There's 5,579 women on the SDF-3 with 223 of them being pregnant. Each year. I don't know how many of those pregnancies will be born but that's still a lot of babies. There must be facilities for them and for older children.

In the OSM? Becuase his bio doesn't identify him as holding any title besides Chief Engineer and the rank of Major.

Remember, in the OSM his character was so minor he didn't have a name until an alternate version of the character was included in Macross the First (Major Gina Bartlow).

Can you be a chief engineer without an engineering degree in an advanced society?

Actually civilians tended to follow the military. Families and traders would often go with or travel too the colony. There was also the native population that would gather around the base for protection and profit.

Camp followers are different from what we're talking about here...

Yet camp followers included family members and we know families went with the SDF-3. Do we know what Scott's parents did beyong work on the Factory Satellite?

No, but that it's given as a fact that Minmei was the sole civilian in space with the UEEF (and not intentionally at that) does kind of rule out the idea of civilian colonies. No civilians, no civilian colonies.

Again there's Scott Bernard. There's also Lance Belmont who would have been two years old in 2022. According to the RPG Luck would have been around 12 when the SDF-3 was launched. From what I can find Marlene Rush was born in 2023. that's four canon children being on the Pioneer Mission. Plus the countless others who weren't named. Those children will need care givers, baby sitters, teachers, living space, educational space, etc.

[Sambot]

False! The definitions provided in AotSC on pages 105 and 141 indicate the primary goal of the Pioneer Expedition and SDF-3 was, and I quote, "to confront the Robotech Masters at their homeworld of Tirol". Exploring space for the purpose of future colonization took a backseat to liberating worlds occupied by the Invid (incl. Earth). On paper it might have been one of their primary objectives, but all evidence points to it being little more than a half-ignored sideshow.

Umm, Where is that quote? The manga sized Masters Saga book page 105 says that the UEEF left Earth to find the Robotech Masters to insure peace. Page 141 has fluff about the Unicorn Battloid.

[Sambot]

That's your interpretation of it... which is rather different from what is literally being said.

What General Reinhardt IS saying is that, if they don't stop the Invid at Earth, there's nothing to stop them from later conquering humanity's colonies on the moon and Mars (the militarized colonies mentioned in AotSC), and then the rest of the universe (which the Regent had already given the good ol' college try).


In both cases, that's not what you were asked for. You were asked for corroborating non-dialog evidence to support your argument, because dialog can be interpreted many different ways. Do you have any manner of clear, unambiguous statement of fact in an official publication to the effect that:

• ... there were any colony missions launched before the Angel-class was planned and laid down.
• ... the Angel-class ships were ever completed or used for any purpose other than a delivery system for the Neutron-S missiles. (That they were not canceled before they could be used as AotSC indicates they were.)
• ... any kind or class of colony ship was actually launched for its intended purpose at any point in Robotech's timeline.
• ... that an extrasolar colony exists in the Robotech setting.

If you don't, then you do not have an argument.

Umm....What???? If there are no colonies why would General Reinhardt say that they needed to stop the Invid at Earth before they could be destroyed? How do you destroy what doesn't exist???

[Seto Kaiba]

That's just it. There used to be. That there are none is a recent developement/retcon. Depending on which history you go by Scott was either just born during the year the SDF-3 was launched or he was 8-10 years old. Every child born would have been a civilian.

No, it's not a retcon... that's the way it has always been, since Robotech II: the Sentinels was first drafted.

There was no invited civilian presence, no colonists or anything of that nature. Minmei was the only civilian and she was a stowaway. After a while you had the children of soldiers who were born out in space, but while those may not be soldiers they are the dependents of soldiers and, as the RPG points to, without any kind of civilian infrastructure, society, etc. they're basically soldiers-in-waiting. (If Scott's backstory in "Eulogy" is anything to go by, the children of soldiers may be sent back to the militarized colonies in the Sol system to grow up.)

How could Lynn Kyle possibly join the Pioneer Mission to stalk Minmei when no one knew she'd stow away?

He did it years later, and probably had a pretty fair idea of where she was given that she told her manager what she was doing right before she stowed away (in some versions of the story, her manager's hilariously off-point reaction was not to alert anyone but to call the label and inform them her next record would be a "Best of").

Yet the redid the sound effects didn't they?

They made a few refinements to the series when they piggybacked on ADV Films' work on remastering the original Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA. The redone title cards were for purely aesthetic reasons (matching the new overall marketing aesthetic), but IIRC the sound effects tracks were redone to accommodate a transition from 2.0 to 5.1 audio formatting while they were recutting the series to reincorporate the scenes that'd been cut back in the 80's.

Again, that's now. Not how it used to be.

Nah, 's pretty much always been like that... the UEG was basically limited to being the propaganda arm for the UEDF and UEEF until it was destroyed in the 2nd Robotech War.

One of the currant plot point. That they even had a fleet was originally missing with new ships being built at Tirol and Karberra. Even he new "Can't fleet" explanation doesn't make sense. Who has their flag ship without an escort? Especially when they're predicting going against a numerically and technologically superior foe?

Who has a flagship without an escort? The UEEF, apparently... in every version of Sentinels they launched the SDF-3 all on its lonesome on its mission to reach Tirol and either secure peace or commence a preemptive strike. In most, it was disabled before it could so much as fire a shot in its own defense (so at least they learned their lesson quickly).

Is that the Remastered Version? I don't have that one.

Nope, that's in the broadcast cut. I never sprang for the remastered edition either... seemed like a massive waste of money considering I already had the much-higher quality Animeigo remaster of Macross.

The scene in question starts at about 5:20 in Ep36's broadcast cut, with the (figurative) bombshell (about the actual bombshells) is dropped at approximately 7:40 in same, where Admiral Gloval informs Lisa that the goal of her new assignment is "to put an end to this war by destroying their capacity to make war". Indeed, once the scene is over the narrator refers to the subject matter of the offscreen portion of their discussion as "battle plans". The SDF-2's mission was no errand of peace, she was intended for a preemptive strike against the Robotech Masters.

And who goes and picks a fight with a technologically and numerically superior foe? The whole point of going was to tell the Masters that Earth didn't have the Protoculture Matrix and to leave Earth alone. If that didn't work then the Pioneer Mission would use force so the next war would be over Tirol.

The protagonists in Robotech, apparently... but the whole schtick about it being a diplomatic mission came after the original series.

That's why I said "That's now. Not then" Things have been retconned.

No, things never were that way except in titles that are Robotech in name only.

[Seto Kaiba]

Time-bonded statement or not someone's got to do the job.

Sure some but not all. Didn't Emerson get in trouble for using outside doctors. That being Dr. Cochrane? I don't remembe Dr. Penn being in the military either.

Dr. Cochrane is a military scientist... he was part of the team investigating the neutron-s missiles in Prelude, and the former superior of Dr. Nichols before he was transferred to Vince Grant's command.

The problem is the fact that the line is there when it could have been removed in the Remastered Edition. That leaves the door open for pirates to exist.

They don't do edits like that... they never have. The only changes to the show's content were additive when they did the remastered edition... putting back in scenes that'd been cut in the 80's.

Actually canonical evidence prooves otherwise. Scott Bernard was born in born 2022, post retcon. The SDF-3 was launched in 2022. That's one canonical child being on the SDF-3. I sincerely doubt he's the only one.

You're assuming he was on the SDF-3, without evidence. The bases on the moon and Mars are also under the UEEF's jurasdiction, as were the Tokugawa-class ships being used for advance scouting in the 2010's.

Can you be a chief engineer without an engineering degree in an advanced society?

Generally speaking, yeah... the military provides job training relevant to your position, including engineering disciplines.

Yet camp followers included family members and we know families went with the SDF-3. Do we know what Scott's parents did beyong work on the Factory Satellite?

Scott's parents are never mentioned, so I don't know where you're getting any of this...

Again there's Scott Bernard. There's also Lance Belmont who would have been two years old in 2022. According to the RPG Luck would have been around 12 when the SDF-3 was launched. From what I can find Marlene Rush was born in 2023. that's four canon children being on the Pioneer Mission. Plus the countless others who weren't named. Those children will need care givers, baby sitters, teachers, living space, educational space, etc.

You keep forgetting about the militarized colonies in the Sol system, on the moon and Mars... and you're making a LOT of assumptions.

[Sambot]

Yes they redid the sound track some time ago when HG management was still inclined to put some money forward (over 10years ago IINM). Currently though Seto is correct, HG hasn't shown a willingness to invest in significantly new material/products that aren't basically rehash of existing material. Their ambitions for RT: Academy recently fell flat when they tried to use kickstarter to raise the funds to get the project started.

I never said that HG wasn't willing to spend money on Robotech. I'm asking why, if they disagreed with that line, didn't they remove it then?

And current canon is what is being considered, not what amounts to an Alternate Universe. One of the reasons for the 2001-ish reboot was to clean up the mess, though they've done a fair job of replacing it with their own mess (IMHO).

It still has an impact on the present though. Plus as I've listed above there were many civilians included in the Pioneer Mission.

I have the Legacy Version, which is supposed to be the original broadcast version from '85. Seto is correct. Gloval in Ep36: "We will find it and we'll put an end to this war by destroy their capacity to make war We leave tomorrow", he has two more statements that tie into this in this particular scene, but this is the line I believe Seto is referring to and the Protoculture Matrix/Factory has no mention whatsoever in this scene, heck Protoculture itself isn't mentioned (I can post the entire scene dialoge if need be).

We leave tomorrow? They're going to go after them with just a couple ships and whatever supplies they can load in a few hours? Does the Legacy Version also have the throwaway line about Pirates?

You don't have to post it. I think mention of the matrix was in the novels. I'd still have to doubt that line though. Gloval would know that Earth isn't in any way prepared to take on the Robotech Masters. They're having a hard enough time with Kyron and Malcontents. I can't see Gloval flying off half cocked and Earth defenseless like that.

Code: Select all

Pre-Recton puts that material in an alternate universe for all practical purposes.  Its like trying to use Marvel universe #616 in a discussion on Marvel Universe #1610 or #8096 or #19999 (and there are a lot of Marvel Universe Numbers per the wiki).

All prior Sentinels materials have been reduced down to "broad strokes" application per HG, and even then might not apply (case in point the SDF-3 is no longer considered to have left alone and built a fleet at Tirol, or been cut off from Earth in the 2020s).  Seto can probably cite the source.

That children are born in space is not in doubt, what is in doubt is the claim they have to be on the SDF-3.  All the show dialogue (which is part of current canon) tells us is that it was a robotech ship, nothing else on where they were born or the ship's name.

I know but the presence of Colony Bays could be a nod to that past and of Macross's going out into the stars to spread mankind not provoke the Zentraedi's creators into another war.

I'm glad the SDF-3 wasn't alone. That never made sense. There still would have been children on ships of the Pioneer Mission, even if they weren't on board the SDF-3 itself. Canon tells us that. And if there's going to be children on ships wouldn't it make sense to put them on the safest ships possible? Ones that would be able to accommodate them and educational facilities?

[Seto Kaiba]

Umm, Where is that quote? The manga sized Masters Saga book page 105 says that the UEEF left Earth to find the Robotech Masters to insure peace. Page 141 has fluff about the Unicorn Battloid.

You do know the definition of the word "confront" doesn't imply violence, right? Merely a hostile or opposition relationship.

That's not a contradiction.. though confronting the Robotech Masters to sue for peace would be just as effective in the task of preserving the peace as confronting them with a sneak attack intended to destroy their ability to wage war.

Umm....What???? If there are no colonies why would General Reinhardt say that they needed to stop the Invid at Earth before they could be destroyed? How do you destroy what doesn't exist???

We're talking about colonies outside the solar system here, chief... there's no evidence for those.

Nobody is disputing the explicitly-stated fact of militarized colonies (AotSC's term) INSIDE the solar system... like ALuCE station on the moon, which was originally a civilian station built to harness lunar mineral resources before being militarized by the UEDF in the 2nd Robotech War and again by the UEEF in the 3rd. Now they're basically military bases "behind the lines" used as staging areas, resupply bases, and somewhere to send noncombatants if Scott's backstory is anything to go by.

[Seto Kaiba]

I never said that HG wasn't willing to spend money on Robotech. I'm asking why, if they disagreed with that line, didn't they remove it then?

Because that wasn't what they were doing... they were only directed to use the existing remastered footage and the audio they had remastered separately to reassemble the series with the material that'd originally been cut to comply with broadcast standards and runtime restrictions, which wasw being marketed as "never before seen deleted scenes", despite the fact that half the world had known about and been watching them for 20 years.

It still has an impact on the present though. Plus as I've listed above there were many civilians included in the Pioneer Mission.

You've made some unfounded assumptions, that's not quite the same thing. You're assuming "with the Expeditionary Forces" means "with the fleet", as we know the UEEF had bases on planets in the solar system, which are implied to be where many of these young soldiers actually grew up, and were staging areas for the attempts to retake Earth.

(This is something inherited from the OSM, where colonies orbiting Jupiter, Mars, etc. were contributing troops to attempts to liberate Earth that were staged at the moon after leaving their respective homeworlds).

We leave tomorrow? They're going to go after them with just a couple ships and whatever supplies they can load in a few hours? Does the Legacy Version also have the throwaway line about Pirates?

Not a couple ships, apparently just the one... the "new battlecruiser" that Lisa was given command of (revealed to be SDF-2 in later scenes).

Yes, that edition does have the line about pirates... and many other lines that Harmony Gold has identified as being inaccurate, like the Sylphid Veritech.

I know but the presence of Colony Bays could be a nod to that past and of Macross's going out into the stars to spread mankind not provoke the Zentraedi's creators into another war.

The colony bays were not part of the UEEF's ships when they launched... they were added to the SDF-3 and to Vince Grant's ship, the Tokugawa, when they were retrofitted with shadow technology in 2043-2044. Only the new Ark Angel was built with colony bays originally, and she wasn't even complete in 2044 when she launched

[Sambot]

That's just it. There used to be. That there are none is a recent developement/retcon. Depending on which history you go by Scott was either just born during the year the SDF-3 was launched or he was 8-10 years old. Every child born would have been a civilian.

No, it's not a retcon... that's the way it has always been, since Robotech II: the Sentinels was first drafted.

Scotts age is a retcon. And you don't invite children, especially helpless infants on a purely military mission.

There was no invited civilian presence, no colonists or anything of that nature. Minmei was the only civilian and she was a stowaway. After a while you had the children of soldiers who were born out in space, but while those may not be soldiers they are the dependents of soldiers and, as the RPG points to, without any kind of civilian infrastructure, society, etc. they're basically soldiers-in-waiting. (If Scott's backstory in "Eulogy" is anything to go by, the children of soldiers may be sent back to the militarized colonies in the Sol system to grow up.)

The presence of Lancer, Lunk and others says differently. And until those children are old enough to even be cadets in a military academy they'd still need someone to take care of them. And didn't you say that there weren't any ships to take children or pregnant women back?

How could Lynn Kyle possibly join the Pioneer Mission to stalk Minmei when no one knew she'd stow away?

He did it years later, and probably had a pretty fair idea of where she was given that she told her manager what she was doing right before she stowed away (in some versions of the story, her manager's hilariously off-point reaction was not to alert anyone but to call the label and inform them her next record would be a "Best of").

And Lynn Kyle got the info from her manager how? How'd he sign up and get to Tirol years later? If there were ships leaving the Sol System why weren't their ships available to go back?

Yet the redid the sound effects didn't they?

They made a few refinements to the series when they piggybacked on ADV Films' work on remastering the original Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA. The redone title cards were for purely aesthetic reasons (matching the new overall marketing aesthetic), but IIRC the sound effects tracks were redone to accommodate a transition from 2.0 to 5.1 audio formatting while they were recutting the series to reincorporate the scenes that'd been cut back in the 80's.

Okay. And why didn't they get rid of or change lines they didn't agree with?

Again, that's now. Not how it used to be.

Nah, 's pretty much always been like that... the UEG was basically limited to being the propaganda arm for the UEDF and UEEF until it was destroyed in the 2nd Robotech War.

On Earth maybe. On Tirol? The Plenipotentiary Council ran things. It'd be harder for Edwards to take over "legally" without them. Otherwise the Hunters could have smacked him down or transferred him when he started trouble. they probably wouldn't even have brought him along.

One of the currant plot point. That they even had a fleet was originally missing with new ships being built at Tirol and Karberra. Even he new "Can't fleet" explanation doesn't make sense. Who has their flag ship without an escort? Especially when they're predicting going against a numerically and technologically superior foe?

Who has a flagship without an escort? The UEEF, apparently... in every version of Sentinels they launched the SDF-3 all on its lonesome on its mission to reach Tirol and either secure peace or commence a preemptive strike. In most, it was disabled before it could so much as fire a shot in its own defense (so at least they learned their lesson quickly).

Weren't they trying to get close enough to open dialog with the Masters before being discovered as human and thus be in weapons range if they didn't want to talk? Otherwise it's really dumb.

Is that the Remastered Version? I don't have that one.

Nope, that's in the broadcast cut. I never sprang for the remastered edition either... seemed like a massive waste of money considering I already had the much-higher quality Animeigo remaster of Macross.

Yeah the Animeigo version was better. Although I still get ticked off about the price.

The scene in question starts at about 5:20 in Ep36's broadcast cut, with the (figurative) bombshell (about the actual bombshells) is dropped at approximately 7:40 in same, where Admiral Gloval informs Lisa that the goal of her new assignment is "to put an end to this war by destroying their capacity to make war". Indeed, once the scene is over the narrator refers to the subject matter of the offscreen portion of their discussion as "battle plans". The SDF-2's mission was no errand of peace, she was intended for a preemptive strike against the Robotech Masters.

I don't have it with me at the moment so I can't watch it. I do know that the Macross version of that scene is about colonization.

And who goes and picks a fight with a technologically and numerically superior foe? The whole point of going was to tell the Masters that Earth didn't have the Protoculture Matrix and to leave Earth alone. If that didn't work then the Pioneer Mission would use force so the next war would be over Tirol.

The protagonists in Robotech, apparently... but the whole schtick about it being a diplomatic mission came after the original series.

Probably. But I still don't think that they'd want to intentionally provoke an opponent they had little chance to win against.

That's why I said "That's now. Not then" Things have been retconned.

No, things never were that way except in titles that are Robotech in name only.

Um, what?

[ShadowLogan]

Who has a flagship without an escort? The UEEF, apparently... in every version of Sentinels they launched the SDF-3 all on its lonesome on its mission to reach Tirol and either secure peace or commence a preemptive strike. In most, it was disabled before it could so much as fire a shot in its own defense (so at least they learned their lesson quickly).

Not quite. Nearly every version pre-reboot that I'm familiar with except the 1E RPG. In the 1E RPG for Sentinels Main book states:
-pg5 "It is likely the SDF-3 was the flagship and ultimate weapon of an armada of REF warships" (this is from an "in-universe document" that was written in the "future" concerning events in their "past" and indicates records are lost)
-pg 150 "the flagship of the REF fleet"
-pg 150 "The purpose of the SDF-3 is to provide heavy supoort for its fleet/troops and to function as a mobile base of operations or space station."
-pg 150 "Without it, the fleet could never sustain a military or exploratory campaign for more than few months." ("it" referces to the foundation)
-don't forget the SDF-3 has the MTA-Titan in its inventory, which requires a Garfish to transport (per the 1E RPG, unlike the comics/novels where it used a specialized shuttle, granted the Garfish aren't Fold capable here, but then again they are to "hitch a ride" via Fold bubble.)
-service entry dates for the Garfish and Ikazuchi aren't provided either (then again they also treat several "new" items in NG as standard staples like the Battler and Shadow technology being available for the war with the Regent at Tirol)
-there might be some more that I'm not thinking of in the book itself

The SDF-3 in the current continuity IS part of a fleet (AotSC timeline for 2015 mentions "fleet", its also in the timeline for the Prelude graphic novel)

False! The definitions provided in AotSC on pages 105 and 141 indicate the primary goal of the Pioneer Expedition and SDF-3 was, and I quote, "to confront the Robotech Masters at their homeworld of Tirol". Exploring space for the purpose of future colonization took a backseat to liberating worlds occupied by the Invid (incl. Earth). On paper it might have been one of their primary objectives, but all evidence points to it being little more than a half-ignored sideshow.

Umm, Where is that quote? The manga sized Masters Saga book page 105 says that the UEEF left Earth to find the Robotech Masters to insure peace. Page 141 has fluff about the Unicorn Battloid.

AotSC = Art of the Shadow Chronicles. It is a non RPG book produced by HG that ties into canon as reference material.

I never said that HG wasn't willing to spend money on Robotech. I'm asking why, if they disagreed with that line, didn't they remove it then?

Why didn't they correct all the issues with lines? I don't know. But some of them really can't be edited out so easily without breaking the dialogue/scene, and making new dialogue wasn't (likely) in the budget. To get a more official answer you'd have to ask someone at HG like Tommy Yune.

It still has an impact on the present though. Plus as I've listed above there were many civilians included in the Pioneer Mission.

Alternate Universe material, which is essentially what you are pulling from, has no bearing on the canon universe that's why its alternate universe. HG can of course pull from it if they want to, but they don't that's why it was all tossed out in 2000-ish w/exception of the 85ep series.

We leave tomorrow? They're going to go after them with just a couple ships and whatever supplies they can load in a few hours? Does the Legacy Version also have the throwaway line about Pirates?

You don't have to post it. I think mention of the matrix was in the novels. I'd still have to doubt that line though. Gloval would know that Earth isn't in any way prepared to take on the Robotech Masters. They're having a hard enough time with Kyron and Malcontents. I can't see Gloval flying off half cocked and Earth defenseless like that.

Yes the line about pirates is in the Legacy version. I do not personally like to use the "throwaway line" excuse to explain dialogue.

Weather you want to doubt it or not, the line is present.

I know but the presence of Colony Bays could be a nod to that past and of Macross's going out into the stars to spread mankind not provoke the Zentraedi's creators into another war.

The Colony Bays though, as Seto has said, are a 2040s invention not present on the original design for the SDF-3 or the Tokagawa. The Tokagawa dates back to at least 2014 service, and the SDF-3 2022 service entry. That's over 20years where they are not present on the ships in question. The SDF-4 is a new ship by all indications. They aren't a nod to the past by any indication for an "in-universe" explanation.

[Sambot]

Time-bonded statement or not someone's got to do the job.

Sure some but not all. Didn't Emerson get in trouble for using outside doctors. That being Dr. Cochrane? I don't remembe Dr. Penn being in the military either.

Dr. Cochrane is a military scientist... he was part of the team investigating the neutron-s missiles in Prelude, and the former superior of Dr. Nichols before he was transferred to Vince Grant's command.

So who was the Doctors that Emerson have the captured Bioroid taken too?

The problem is the fact that the line is there when it could have been removed in the Remastered Edition. That leaves the door open for pirates to exist.

They don't do edits like that... they never have. The only changes to the show's content were additive when they did the remastered edition... putting back in scenes that'd been cut in the 80's.

They also changed the sound effects though so why not delete throwaway lines?

Actually canonical evidence prooves otherwise. Scott Bernard was born in born 2022, post retcon. The SDF-3 was launched in 2022. That's one canonical child being on the SDF-3. I sincerely doubt he's the only one.

You're assuming he was on the SDF-3, without evidence. The bases on the moon and Mars are also under the UEEF's jurasdiction, as were the Tokugawa-class ships being used for advance scouting in the 2010's.

The SDF-3 went to Tirol on it's own. The factory satellite followed later. After that when did other ships leave and why couldn't they bring children and pregnant women back? Children being on Tokugawa class ships buts civilians out into space even earlier. And weren't the bases on the Moon under the ASC's jurisdiction? They used ASC equipment.

Can you be a chief engineer without an engineering degree in an advanced society?

Generally speaking, yeah... the military provides job training relevant to your position, including engineering disciplines.

But to get the job in the fist place you need a certain amount of education. They're not going to just let anyone play around with a fold system or reflex drive. Don't you have to work up to it or already have the skills/knowledge when you sign up?

Yet camp followers included family members and we know families went with the SDF-3. Do we know what Scott's parents did beyong work on the Factory Satellite?

Scott's parents are never mentioned, so I don't know where you're getting any of this...

The original RPG mentions them. On there place did too but my mind is blanking at the moment. Still, he had parents. Do we know for sure that they weren't military?

Again there's Scott Bernard. There's also Lance Belmont who would have been two years old in 2022. According to the RPG Luck would have been around 12 when the SDF-3 was launched. From what I can find Marlene Rush was born in 2023. that's four canon children being on the Pioneer Mission. Plus the countless others who weren't named. Those children will need care givers, baby sitters, teachers, living space, educational space, etc.

You keep forgetting about the militarized colonies in the Sol system, on the moon and Mars... and you're making a LOT of assumptions.

But you said that they're not colonies. And how much shipping took place between the factory satellite leaving and Carpenter's ship coming back? Did it take those ships 3-5 years to get to Tirol also? Plus everythings I've read for Scott says he was born in space. Not a moon base or another planet. Space.

[Seto Kaiba]

Scotts age is a retcon. And you don't invite children, especially helpless infants on a purely military mission.

Scott didn't have a canon age until 2001... you can't retcon information that didn't exist before.

There were no children on the mission, it's a bloody plot point in every version of Sentinels that they're leaving Dana and Bowie home because it's a mission far too dangerous for children to come along. They couldn't do that much with the kids born out in space after the war cranked up.

The presence of Lancer, Lunk and others says differently. And until those children are old enough to even be cadets in a military academy they'd still need someone to take care of them. And didn't you say that there weren't any ships to take children or pregnant women back?

You're assuming, without evidence, that Lancer and Lunk and co. were aboard the SDF-3. There is no evidence to support that.

Also, I said there wasn't a ship to take MINMEI back... because, in every version of the Sentinels narrative to date, the SDF-3 left ALONE and was stranded in Tirolian space. They were stuck with her because, for the early stages of the war, they had no means to send her back. In the old Sentinels materials they just sort of forgot about it after a while and made her a goodwill ambassador because it was basically selling itself as "the continuing adventures of the Macross Saga cast".

And Lynn Kyle got the info from her manager how? How'd he sign up and get to Tirol years later? If there were ships leaving the Sol System why weren't their ships available to go back?

Presumably he asked... though with Minmei being the planet's apparently one and only pop star, her going missing wasn't going to go unnoticed for long. Kyle got involved MUCH later on... though exactly WHEN is unclear, he was finally on Tirol in 2043, where he was murdered by T.R. Edwards while impersonating an officer in Edwards' own elite forces, by which point ships had been coming and going for years with the Regent's war machine in tatters and the Robotech Masters destroyed.

Okay. And why didn't they get rid of or change lines they didn't agree with?

Presumably because the agreed-upon budget and statement of work for the remastering didn't include hriing any voice actors to rerecord dialog... they were working from existing tapes. That would've run the price up a fair bit, for no benefit, since the voice actors who worked on the series are SAG members now, and demand guild rates. (That is also reportedly why the cast was cut way down for RTSC... the cost of the voice actors was too high.)

On Earth maybe. On Tirol? The Plenipotentiary Council ran things. It'd be harder for Edwards to take over "legally" without them. Otherwise the Hunters could have smacked him down or transferred him when he started trouble. they probably wouldn't even have brought him along.

The council only tried to run things in the novels... which are Robotech in name only (per HG).

Officially, the council was an advisory body... one which the Hunters heeded, but the rest of the brass had very little use for... particularly Edwards. (In Prelude, they're regarded with barely-concealed hostility.)

Weren't they trying to get close enough to open dialog with the Masters before being discovered as human and thus be in weapons range if they didn't want to talk? Otherwise it's really dumb.

It wasn't the Tirolians who shot them... they were ambushed by the Invid, since the SDF-3 blundered into the Regent's occupation forces while he was doing his best Saturday Morning Cartoon Show villain schtick in the capital. (Which is why he's one of my favorite characters... he's unapologetically, scenery-chewingly evil despite being so poorly written, and the whole thing comes across as Shatnerian ham.)

I don't have it with me at the moment so I can't watch it. I do know that the Macross version of that scene is about colonization.

Yeah, in Macross that scene's about the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 being launched as the 1st Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet... in Robotech it's about a battlecruiser being sent to blow up the Robotech Masters and deprive them of their ability to make war.

Probably. But I still don't think that they'd want to intentionally provoke an opponent they had little chance to win against.

Given their stated goal, they seem to have been relying fairly heavily on the Robotech Masters having forgotten how to wage war because they spend all their time hiding behind the Zentradi.

[Sambot]

False! The definitions provided in AotSC on pages 105 and 141 indicate the primary goal of the Pioneer Expedition and SDF-3 was, and I quote, "to confront the Robotech Masters at their homeworld of Tirol". Exploring space for the purpose of future colonization took a backseat to liberating worlds occupied by the Invid (incl. Earth). On paper it might have been one of their primary objectives, but all evidence points to it being little more than a half-ignored sideshow.

Umm, Where is that quote? The manga sized Masters Saga book page 105 says that the UEEF left Earth to find the Robotech Masters to insure peace. Page 141 has fluff about the Unicorn Battloid.

AotSC = Art of the Shadow Chronicles. It is a non RPG book produced by HG that ties into canon as reference material.

Ah! Thank you. Thought it was Army of the Southern Cross.

Why didn't they correct all the issues with lines? I don't know. But some of them really can't be edited out so easily without breaking the dialogue/scene, and making new dialogue wasn't (likely) in the budget. To get a more official answer you'd have to ask someone at HG like Tommy Yune.

I guess so. TV seems to do it all the time though with swear words.

Alternate Universe material, which is essentially what you are pulling from, has no bearing on the canon universe that's why its alternate universe. HG can of course pull from it if they want to, but they don't that's why it was all tossed out in 2000-ish w/exception of the 85ep series.

Scott, Marlene, Lancer, Lunk, others are canon characters. They always have been. Their ages put them as children on the Pioneer Mission.

Yes the line about pirates is in the Legacy version. I do not personally like to use the "throwaway line" excuse to explain dialogue.

Weather you want to doubt it or not, the line is present.

I believe you. It makes no sense but I believe you. I don't like it much either but that's the term that gets used a lot.

I know but the presence of Colony Bays could be a nod to that past and of Macross's going out into the stars to spread mankind not provoke the Zentraedi's creators into another war.

The Colony Bays though, as Seto has said, are a 2040s invention not present on the original design for the SDF-3 or the Tokagawa. The Tokagawa dates back to at least 2014 service, and the SDF-3 2022 service entry. That's over 20years where they are not present on the ships in question. The SDF-4 is a new ship by all indications. They aren't a nod to the past by any indication for an "in-universe" explanation.[/quote]

The name "Colony Bay" may be new. I never said it wasn't. However, civilians being included in the Pioneer Mission are not. One may argue that they grew up in the Sol System except that if ships were traveling back and forth why wasn't the ASC reinforced by those ships? Why did Carpenter the only one sent from who know's where when there were lots of UEEF ships right there in the system? If the ships aren't there all those kids must have traveled with the Pioneer Mission.

[Seto Kaiba]

Not quite. Nearly every version pre-reboot that I'm familiar with except the 1E RPG.

Let's not get into that... becuase we both remember HG tossing 1E into the "not real Robotech" pile back in '06, for precisely the reason that they were making up their own stories and plot details because they had little-to-nothing to work from.

The SDF-3 in the current continuity IS part of a fleet (AotSC timeline for 2015 mentions "fleet", its also in the timeline for the Prelude graphic novel)

Granted, it does mention a fleet... but that doesn't mean they were launched at the same time. The very next entry in that timeline mentions only the SDF-3 launching.

So who was the Doctors that Emerson have the captured Bioroid taken too?

ShadowLogan, you wanna field this one? It's been a dog's age since I watched the Masters Saga instead of Southern Cross.

They also changed the sound effects though so why not delete throwaway lines?

Because then they'd have to re-edit and/or re-record whole scenes... many of those throwaway lines, like the pirates remark, occur in the middle of sentences or conversations.

The SDF-3 went to Tirol on it's own. The factory satellite followed later. After that when did other ships leave and why couldn't they bring children and pregnant women back? Children being on Tokugawa class ships buts civilians out into space even earlier. And weren't the bases on the Moon under the ASC's jurisdiction? They used ASC equipment.

We don't know, the timeline doesn't say when other ships launched... except the advance scouting operations that were going on in ~2013-2014.

The ships headed out to Tirol were reinforcements for the sorely pressed UEEF forces fighting the Regent on multiple fronts, so it wouldn't be at all surprising that they couldn't spare ships from the line to return. In 2029-2030 the war was still so bad that all they could spare to aid in the defense of Earth was a handful of ships so poorly armed as to be near-useless except as transports for fighters and war material.

But to get the job in the fist place you need a certain amount of education. They're not going to just let anyone play around with a fold system or reflex drive. Don't you have to work up to it or already have the skills/knowledge when you sign up?

You get the training in the vocational training part of your training as a soldier, and more on-the-job training once you assume your post, as well as required classes and so on. Presumably Major Bartlow was a career soldier who had extensive experience in engineering... or possibly did have a bachelor's or master's degree in engineering and joined up as an officer. You don't have to have a PhD to be an expert.

The original RPG mentions them. On there place did too but my mind is blanking at the moment. Still, he had parents. Do we know for sure that they weren't military?

If his family is in the shot of him as a kid, then they're almost certainly soldiers... practically everyone in the crowd is wearing some kind of uniform.

The 1st Edition RPG is in the same boat as the novels, considered not to be "real" Robotech by HG because of the excessive liberties taken by the licensee. Often necessary liberties, in Palladium's case, but still...

But you said that they're not colonies. And how much shipping took place between the factory satellite leaving and Carpenter's ship coming back? Did it take those ships 3-5 years to get to Tirol also? Plus everythings I've read for Scott says he was born in space. Not a moon base or another planet. Space.

They were colonies originally (on the moon and Mars) and the military still seems to consider them colonies even though they've been extensively converted into military bases and staging areas... presumably becuase that's where the closest thing they have to "behind the lines" living is.

Exactly how long it takes to get anywhere by fold in Robotech is unclear, but the "five year fold" hypothesis the fans had to explain discrepencies in the series was dismissed by HG.

Born "in space" can mean a lot of things...but Scott's buddy says they were all born out in deep space on a Robotech ship, which is still awfully vague. In the Macross Saga they seem to consider Pluto's orbit "deep space". It doesn't say the ship they were on was fighting with the UEEF at Tirol.

[glitterboy2098]

actually we do have ships from "deep space" arriving to help the ASC durign the 2nd war, with a group that includes a 2nd Tokugawa class so it likely included UEEF forces.

and we the old guys in the Garfish seen in new gen said they were sent to earth in that ship to fight the robotech masters. Col. Wolfe was sent to earth around that time too, going by scott's flashback. the new gen style ships must have been uncommon and assumed ot be 'offscreen' though.

however you are right that we don't have any evidence for the kind of back and forth traffic that them all staying in earth space would require. the ASC's only link to the UEEF/Pioneer mission was via space station liberty (which we now know to be a factory sat with the UEEF), and the ASC was unaware of what the pioneer mission had going on, given that leonard's response to carpenter bearing the message that the pioneer mission was too busy to help earth was shock and disbelief. had the ASC been in contact with the UEEF via regular traffic and large UEEF facilities in the solar system, they'd have known why the UEEF couldn't help and not been expecting it in the first place. (that the UEEF managed to send any help at all is frankly impressive)

[Seto Kaiba]

I guess so. TV seems to do it all the time though with swear words.

That's usually done in post-production of the original work itself... where they mix a few alternate audio tracks to dub over foul language with less-foul language for the inevitable event of the movie being broadcast on TV. That's maybe a couple weeks after shooting an episode, whereas the Robotech Remastered production was almost twenty years after the fact.

Scott, Marlene, Lancer, Lunk, others are canon characters. They always have been. Their ages put them as children on the Pioneer Mission.

Their ages put them as children... not necessarily on the Pioneer Mission. The statement about being born out in deep space isn't applied to Lunk or Lancer, for instance.

The name "Colony Bay" may be new. I never said it wasn't. However, civilians being included in the Pioneer Mission are not. One may argue that they grew up in the Sol System except that if ships were traveling back and forth why wasn't the ASC reinforced by those ships? Why did Carpenter the only one sent from who know's where when there were lots of UEEF ships right there in the system? If the ships aren't there all those kids must have traveled with the Pioneer Mission.

Canonically, there were no civilians on the Pioneer Mission... it was a purely military enterprise, and the children were left at home. You're making an unfounded assumption that "born in space" means "board aboard a UEEF ship on the front lines".

Who said there were ships going back and forth at that point in time? The evidence for ships coming back to the Sol system on a regular basis doesn't start until after the 2nd Robotech War ended. At the outset of the war, the bases like ALuCE station were civilian operations, and the troops that came back were ones that were sent back after the UEEF received Earth's distress call... the ones in ships that were basically useless in an actual fight.

[Sambot]

Scotts age is a retcon. And you don't invite children, especially helpless infants on a purely military mission.

Scott didn't have a canon age until 2001... you can't retcon information that didn't exist before.

Scott's had an age as far back as at least 1990

There were no children on the mission, it's a bloody plot point in every version of Sentinels that they're leaving Dana and Bowie home because it's a mission far too dangerous for children to come along. They couldn't do that much with the kids born out in space after the war cranked up.

Didn't Bowie complain about Scott getting to go? And if war is too dangerous for kids why did they take Dana when they captured the factory satellite? They could have just shown a video of her birth. And there wasn't a war when they left.

The presence of Lancer, Lunk and others says differently. And until those children are old enough to even be cadets in a military academy they'd still need someone to take care of them. And didn't you say that there weren't any ships to take children or pregnant women back?

You're assuming, without evidence, that Lancer and Lunk and co. were aboard the SDF-3. There is no evidence to support that.

SDF-3 or escort ship or factory satellite.

Also, I said there wasn't a ship to take MINMEI back... because, in every version of the Sentinels narrative to date, the SDF-3 left ALONE and was stranded in Tirolian space. They were stuck with her because, for the early stages of the war, they had no means to send her back. In the old Sentinels materials they just sort of forgot about it after a while and made her a goodwill ambassador because it was basically selling itself as "the continuing adventures of the Macross Saga cast".

So how did all those kids get from deep space to the Sol System for them to grow up and then go back to join the military? If there's no ships to ferry people back and forth to Earth how did all those people get to the Sol system to grow up and then to Tirol to join the military? And if there were ships why no contact with the Pioneer Mission in so long? If there where ships to take those kids to Tirol why not send the 15th ATAC too?

And Lynn Kyle got the info from her manager how? How'd he sign up and get to Tirol years later? If there were ships leaving the Sol System why weren't their ships available to go back?

Presumably he asked... though with Minmei being the planet's apparently one and only pop star, her going missing wasn't going to go unnoticed for long. Kyle got involved MUCH later on... though exactly WHEN is unclear, he was finally on Tirol in 2043, where he was murdered by T.R. Edwards while impersonating an officer in Edwards' own elite forces, by which point ships had been coming and going for years with the Regent's war machine in tatters and the Robotech Masters destroyed.

If ships had been coming and going for years, why didn't they send Minmei back? Why didn't UEEF get reinfocements from Earth? Why didn't the ASC know the Robotech Masters were coming and what their ships looked like?

Okay. And why didn't they get rid of or change lines they didn't agree with?

Presumably because the agreed-upon budget and statement of work for the remastering didn't include hriing any voice actors to rerecord dialog... they were working from existing tapes. That would've run the price up a fair bit, for no benefit, since the voice actors who worked on the series are SAG members now, and demand guild rates. (That is also reportedly why the cast was cut way down for RTSC... the cost of the voice actors was too high.)

How much does it cost to kill the sound for that second or so?

On Earth maybe. On Tirol? The Plenipotentiary Council ran things. It'd be harder for Edwards to take over "legally" without them. Otherwise the Hunters could have smacked him down or transferred him when he started trouble. they probably wouldn't even have brought him along.

The council only tried to run things in the novels... which are Robotech in name only (per HG).

Officially, the council was an advisory body... one which the Hunters heeded, but the rest of the brass had very little use for... particularly Edwards. (In Prelude, they're regarded with barely-concealed hostility.)

And yet they still had power to order arrests and trials.

Weren't they trying to get close enough to open dialog with the Masters before being discovered as human and thus be in weapons range if they didn't want to talk? Otherwise it's really dumb.

It wasn't the Tirolians who shot them... they were ambushed by the Invid, since the SDF-3 blundered into the Regent's occupation forces while he was doing his best Saturday Morning Cartoon Show villain schtick in the capital. (Which is why he's one of my favorite characters... he's unapologetically, scenery-chewingly evil despite being so poorly written, and the whole thing comes across as Shatnerian ham.)

You were saying the UEEF went to Tirol to start a war with the Masters. They also went by themselves. Wouldn't they want to get the first shot in? Wouldn't that be a reason to by in by themselves disguised as a Zentraedi ship?

I don't have it with me at the moment so I can't watch it. I do know that the Macross version of that scene is about colonization.

Yeah, in Macross that scene's about the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 being launched as the 1st Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet... in Robotech it's about a battlecruiser being sent to blow up the Robotech Masters and deprive them of their ability to make war.

With a single ship? Without any effort for peaceful talks?

Probably. But I still don't think that they'd want to intentionally provoke an opponent they had little chance to win against.

Given their stated goal, they seem to have been relying fairly heavily on the Robotech Masters having forgotten how to wage war because they spend all their time hiding behind the Zentradi.

Doesn't Exedore tell them not to underestimate the Robotech Masters though?

[Sambot]

The SDF-3 went to Tirol on it's own. The factory satellite followed later. After that when did other ships leave and why couldn't they bring children and pregnant women back? Children being on Tokugawa class ships buts civilians out into space even earlier. And weren't the bases on the Moon under the ASC's jurisdiction? They used ASC equipment.

We don't know, the timeline doesn't say when other ships launched... except the advance scouting operations that were going on in ~2013-2014.

The ships headed out to Tirol were reinforcements for the sorely pressed UEEF forces fighting the Regent on multiple fronts, so it wouldn't be at all surprising that they couldn't spare ships from the line to return. In 2029-2030 the war was still so bad that all they could spare to aid in the defense of Earth was a handful of ships so poorly armed as to be near-useless except as transports for fighters and war material.

If there were ships going back and forth, why not put Minmei on one of them? Or any of the children born? And the Earth didn't have any ships after the 2nd Robotech War to get to Tirol so how did the kids get there to make up the 10th and 21st divisions? And if there were enough ships to go get them why didn't they go and defend Earth?

But to get the job in the fist place you need a certain amount of education. They're not going to just let anyone play around with a fold system or reflex drive. Don't you have to work up to it or already have the skills/knowledge when you sign up?

You get the training in the vocational training part of your training as a soldier, and more on-the-job training once you assume your post, as well as required classes and so on. Presumably Major Bartlow was a career soldier who had extensive experience in engineering... or possibly did have a bachelor's or master's degree in engineering and joined up as an officer. You don't have to have a PhD to be an expert.

I never said you did. But I do know that in the US military the likely hood of getting certain jobs without a degree is slim. How is it for a more advanced UEEF?

The original RPG mentions them. On there place did too but my mind is blanking at the moment. Still, he had parents. Do we know for sure that they weren't military?

If his family is in the shot of him as a kid, then they're almost certainly soldiers... practically everyone in the crowd is wearing some kind of uniform.

The 1st Edition RPG is in the same boat as the novels, considered not to be "real" Robotech by HG because of the excessive liberties taken by the licensee. Often necessary liberties, in Palladium's case, but still...

They probably were but we don't know for sure do we? Whatever they were he was still with them.

But you said that they're not colonies. And how much shipping took place between the factory satellite leaving and Carpenter's ship coming back? Did it take those ships 3-5 years to get to Tirol also? Plus everythings I've read for Scott says he was born in space. Not a moon base or another planet. Space.

They were colonies originally (on the moon and Mars) and the military still seems to consider them colonies even though they've been extensively converted into military bases and staging areas... presumably becuase that's where the closest thing they have to "behind the lines" living is.

If they are colonies why couldn't there be more?

Exactly how long it takes to get anywhere by fold in Robotech is unclear, but the "five year fold" hypothesis the fans had to explain discrepencies in the series was dismissed by HG.

It's now three years in the new RPG.

Born "in space" can mean a lot of things...but Scott's buddy says they were all born out in deep space on a Robotech ship, which is still awfully vague. In the Macross Saga they seem to consider Pluto's orbit "deep space". It doesn't say the ship they were on was fighting with the UEEF at Tirol.

Yes it is vague. The problem is still time and location. If they were in the Sol System, they would have been sent for fight the Robotech Masters. Or they would have stayed and been part of a much larger and better prepared defense. Instead all there was was Wolf and whatever ASC forces that were left.

[Sambot]

actually we do have ships from "deep space" arriving to help the ASC durign the 2nd war, with a group that includes a 2nd Tokugawa class so it likely included UEEF forces.

and we the old guys in the Garfish seen in new gen said they were sent to earth in that ship to fight the robotech masters. Col. Wolfe was sent to earth around that time too, going by scott's flashback. the new gen style ships must have been uncommon and assumed ot be 'offscreen' though.

however you are right that we don't have any evidence for the kind of back and forth traffic that them all staying in earth space would require. the ASC's only link to the UEEF/Pioneer mission was via space station liberty (which we now know to be a factory sat with the UEEF), and the ASC was unaware of what the pioneer mission had going on, given that leonard's response to carpenter bearing the message that the pioneer mission was too busy to help earth was shock and disbelief. had the ASC been in contact with the UEEF via regular traffic and large UEEF facilities in the solar system, they'd have known why the UEEF couldn't help and not been expecting it in the first place. (that the UEEF managed to send any help at all is frankly impressive)

Where did the 2nd Tokugawa come from? I don't remember it.

The old guys in the Garfish could have come back with Wolf. I don' tknow why he had to come back in a single ship. Maybe a small task force?

Thanks, I didn't think there were or there should be more mixing of mecha and personnel. Not to mention knowledge of the coming Invid and how to fight them. Everything points to there not being any ships after the SDF-3 launches.

I guess so. TV seems to do it all the time though with swear words.

That's usually done in post-production of the original work itself... where they mix a few alternate audio tracks to dub over foul language with less-foul language for the inevitable event of the movie being broadcast on TV. That's maybe a couple weeks after shooting an episode, whereas the Robotech Remastered production was almost twenty years after the fact.

Maybe for newer films. I know they didn't used to be so strict about language when I was a kid. I know I've seen movies with swear words as a kid and then again when older that were edited for TV.

Scott, Marlene, Lancer, Lunk, others are canon characters. They always have been. Their ages put them as children on the Pioneer Mission.

Their ages put them as children... not necessarily on the Pioneer Mission. The statement about being born out in deep space isn't applied to Lunk or Lancer, for instance.

If they'd stayed in the Sol System those old enough would have ended up fighting the Robotech Masters. And after they wouldn't have had enough ships to get to Tirol.

Canonically, there were no civilians on the Pioneer Mission... it was a purely military enterprise, and the children were left at home. You're making an unfounded assumption that "born in space" means "board aboard a UEEF ship on the front lines".

Canonically there's no way for a division worth of kids to get from the Sol System to Tirol. Wolf's ship would not have been enough to transport them all. And if there were enough ships they would have been used to move troops to Earth before the Regis arrived. And those kids would have been trained on Earth.

I also never said that they must live on ships on the front lines. Just that those ships had facilities for children. And there still ships behind the lines. Hospital ships. Tenders. etc.

And if those weren't UEEF Ships they grew up on, who's ships were they?

Who said there were ships going back and forth at that point in time? The evidence for ships coming back to the Sol system on a regular basis doesn't start until after the 2nd Robotech War ended. At the outset of the war, the bases like ALuCE station were civilian operations, and the troops that came back were ones that were sent back after the UEEF received Earth's distress call... the ones in ships that were basically useless in an actual fight.

You said they did and there doesn't seem to be regular traffic back and forth. Just Wolf's ship. If there was regular traffic the Earth would have been much more heavily defended. And didn't you say that all the installations were no civilian colonies only military bases?

[Seto Kaiba]

Scott's had an age as far back as at least 1990

Scott's presumably had an age all his life... but it was never officially established until 2001.

Didn't Bowie complain about Scott getting to go? And if war is too dangerous for kids why did they take Dana when they captured the factory satellite? They could have just shown a video of her birth. And there wasn't a war when they left.

Scott doesn't appear in Sentinels, so no.

As to why Komilia/Dana was taken along on the factory satellite op... she was an infant still, and they couldn't afford to leave one of the military's best pilots at home, and in both versions they planned to use the kid to scare the crap out of the Zentradi (which worked a treat).

SDF-3 or escort ship or factory satellite.

That still wouldn't necessarily put them near the front lines of they were on a factory satellite or one of the ships that were detailed to protect same. Liberty station was WAAAAAY behind the lines until the Masters showed up.

So how did all those kids get from deep space to the Sol System for them to grow up and then go back to join the military? If there's no ships to ferry people back and forth to Earth how did all those people get to the Sol system to grow up and then to Tirol to join the military? And if there were ships why no contact with the Pioneer Mission in so long? If there where ships to take those kids to Tirol why not send the 15th ATAC too?

Robotech uses the term "deep space" much more liberally than it should... often including portions of the outer solar system in "deep space", like they did with the SDF-1 returning from Pluto's orbit.

If ships had been coming and going for years, why didn't they send Minmei back? Why didn't UEEF get reinfocements from Earth? Why didn't the ASC know the Robotech Masters were coming and what their ships looked like?

As to why they didn't send Minmei back later, once transport between the UEEF and the Sol system was reestablished is anyone's guess... at that point you'd have to ask the writers. The Waltrips seemingly kept her around for fanservice (after changing her design to give her the Most Common Superpower), and had her pining after Rick despite him being a happily married man. So... I guess what I'm saying is they kept her around for drama, being the SDF-3's official homewrecker.

Why the UEDF didn't know the Masters were coming and what their ships looked like... the UEEF never saw Masters ships when they arrived, so they wouldn't know either, and communications were not exactly regular between the two initially.

How much does it cost to kill the sound for that second or so?

Studio time is expensive... which is one of the reasons shows like Robotech aren't made anymore. It costs too much to do all that rewriting and re-recording. Reportedly, to save on studio time, Robotech was originally done in marathon sessions with actors sleeping in the studio hallways and eating at the pub across the street.

Killing the sound for a second wouldn't be too difficult... but if you intend to do it in the middle of a conversation and still have everything flow naturally, that means video and audio editing, hours of work to get everything synced up to the new timecodes again, amounting to several thousand dollars of added cost to delete a single sentence. (Plus let's not even get into how mad Robotech fans get when HG changes something...)

And yet they still had power to order arrests and trials.

In Prelude, it's the military brass ordering the arrests and trials...

You were saying the UEEF went to Tirol to start a war with the Masters. They also went by themselves. Wouldn't they want to get the first shot in? Wouldn't that be a reason to by in by themselves disguised as a Zentraedi ship?

The original plan voiced in the series was to go to Tirol for a preemptive strike... not to start a war, but to finish them before they could fight back. That was changed when Sentinels was made, and the writers presented it as being a heavily armed diplomatic mission theoretically intending to open peace talks but fully prepared to kick teeth in if things went south.

With a single ship? Without any effort for peaceful talks?

Yep... that's what they say in the Macross Saga. Remember, the Robotech series was written while the show was being produced. This stuff was not premeditated in any long-term way, which is why so many dialog errors exist in the first place. You had multiple rewriters working on multiple episodes at the same time, but with such tight time tables that they didn't have time to cross-check each other's work for accuracy or consistency. They were, in the most literal sense, making it up as they went and having to change things down the road once they decided to develop their own material.

Doesn't Exedore tell them not to underestimate the Robotech Masters though?

If we were to count every time a warning is ignored in a Robotech story, we'd be here all week.

[eliakon]

Scotts age is a retcon. And you don't invite children, especially helpless infants on a purely military mission.

Scott didn't have a canon age until 2001... you can't retcon information that didn't exist before.

You yourself constantly claim that material that is clairified in later materials is a retcon. Pick a standard, either one and use it. You cant have it both ways when it suits you to discredit others though.

There were no children on the mission, it's a bloody plot point in every version of Sentinels that they're leaving Dana and Bowie home because it's a mission far too dangerous for children to come along. They couldn't do that much with the kids born out in space after the war cranked up.

To bad there are no canon versions of Sentinels huh.
They have all been decanonized.
Which means that the stuff in the McKinnley novels? Yeah not canon. The stuff in the Comic? Yeah not canon.
There only canon "Sentinels" material out there right now is the new material... which DOESNT say that.
it is a JOKE to sit here and boldly argue that material that has been made non-canon is proof of how the canon must be.
Thus there ISN'T a canon statement about no children. Or that Minmei is the only Civilian. Or any of the other wild claims made... Because those claims are from the Novels which have LONG since been decanonized.

[Seto Kaiba]

If there were ships going back and forth, why not put Minmei on one of them?

Once traffic between Earth and the UEEF resumed, you'd have to ask the writer... it may have had something to do with the way they'd made her a goodwill ambassador in the meantime.

You keep asking the same questions over and over again, the answers will no change in repetition.

And the Earth didn't have any ships after the 2nd Robotech War to get to Tirol so how did the kids get there to make up the 10th and 21st divisions? And if there were enough ships to go get them why didn't they go and defend Earth?

From elsewhere, presumably... there were evacuations carried out in the wake of the 2nd Robotech War where people emigrated to the moon or to Mars. Of course, the soldiers of the 10th or 21st Mars Divisions may not have been born or raised anywhere near Tirol. "Deep space" covers a LOT of territory... more than it should, considering the loose way Robotech uses the term.

They probably were but we don't know for sure do we? Whatever they were he was still with them.

We don't know if anyone in that scene is related to him, or if he was living with any kind of family.

If they are colonies why couldn't there be more?

Inside the Sol system?

They don't seem to have established any new settlements due to all manpower and materiel being devoted to the war effort(s).

Outside the Sol system?

Pretty much the same as the above... what they had for people was soldiers and their children, and with an attrition rate so dire they lowered the recruitment age they couldn't afford to take large numbers of soldiers off the front line permanently to establish self-sufficient settlements. The military brass deemed colonization efforts too dangerous to pursue and scrubbed the program, since they didn't have the resources to protect the colony ships or a potential colony, and the ships themselves were apparently never finished. Without a civilian population to draw on, success was just not in the cards.

It's now three years in the new RPG.

The timeline in the core book doesn't put a date to it... where are you getting that?