plotting out the Global War

[glitterboy2098]

well, since it seems unlikely that HG will ever give us offical details on this timeperiod, and with the RPG gone OOP there isn't much chance of an RPG book on it, i guess we have to sort it out on our own.

the Global War [sup][1][/sup] ended in 1999 with the crash of an alien starship in the Bonin islands [sup][2][/sup] in the north pacific. after that event the superpowers of the world, faced with the potential of an extraterrestrial threat, called a cease fire. and would, 6 years later, form a unified world government.

[1] it is always referred to as "global war" in the show, and the comics.. so the 1st ed "global civil war" nonsense should end. can't have a civil war if the world hasn't been unified yet
[2] i'm assuming that Macross island in robotech is located in the same location as South Ataria Island is in the original SDF:macross series.

the show itself gives us relatively little beyond that to work with, beyond a few images. video here from Ep1: Boobytrap
here are the images in question:
Image 1: comanchero helicopters attacking an urban area
Image 2: Middle Eastern(?) combat
Image 3: troops in urban warzone
Image 4: Infantry being attacked by what looks like energy weapon beams

the wildstorm comics did manage to add a few details that hint at the geopolitical aspects.. in the first full issue of from the Stars we see Gloval, then a submarine captain wit hthe Russian navy, commanding an Oscar class SSGN, the Minsk. and he is being hunted by an American carrier group, led by the U.S.S. Kenosha, commanded by Admiral Hayes. the Kenosha is hunting the minsk because they had been given intel that the Russians had sold the sub to "a foreign power", something Gloval apparently has heard as well, which he states is ridculous because they'd never sell one of their "most prized vessels" to someone that might use them against russia. Gloval's speech also states that Russia's forces are stretched thin trying to deal with the "many conflicts that have erupted around the world"

this indicates that not only are Russia and the US not currently at war, but that the group that america is at war with, or perhaps close to being at war with, is one that has a mixed relationship with russia.. one close enough that the russians selling a large potentially nuclear armed SSGN to would be plausible, but bad enough that the russians would be concerned that they'd turn on them. i have my own thoughts on that one, but i'll cover that later.
it also establishes that it was not a single conflict.. it wasn't WW3 basically. it was instead a large number of smaller conflicts, which the major nations found themselves involved in.

looking at the 1990's, there are certainly plenty of real world conflicts that could be included..
the 1st Congo war between 1996-and 97 and its follow up 2nd Congo war in 1998 (which IRL ran to 2003, which means it liekly would have been effected by the SDF-1 crash)
Gulf War 1 in 1990 (which could easily have taken longer than IRL, had there been a push to take Iraq rather than leave it intact.. even if the events played out as IRL, a 2nd gulf war might not have waited to 2003 in the robotech timeline)
the 1st Chechen war in 1994-1996
the Kosovo war/Balkans conflict of 1998-1999
The Yugoslav wars (1991-1995) as yugoslavia broke up. this included the Bosnian conflict of 92-95.
The Somali Civil war (started 1991, still not resolved IRL.) UN and US intervention started in 1992, and IRL withdrew in 1995.

Potential conflicts included;
the taliban seizure of Afghanistan in 1996
unrest in Algeria after the cancellation of democratic elections (1991-2002 RL) over concern that radical islamist movements had a chance of being elected to government.
the general breakup of the former soviet union, as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan declare independence.
the ever present threat of warfare between Israel and its neighbors.
the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, when the Rwandan government attempted to wipe out the Tutsi tribal group probably should have created one IRL.. the UN and major world powers drew a lot of flak over the fact that no one stepped in to try and stop it. IRL about a million people were killed (Tutsi, as well as Batwa Pygmy's, comprising about 70% and 30% their total populations, respectively) and it only ended after a Tutsi backed Rwandan patriotic Front deposed the government after a very brutal civil war. (said civil war had been going since 1990, and the genocides were the "final solution" of the predominately Hutu tribal group controlled government to the issue of the Tutsi backed RPF.. the logic apparently being that if the Tutsi don't exist anymore, there would be no more RPF)

and perhaps, the rise of Maoist hardliners in china following Tienanmen square. which IRL ended when Deng Xiaoping and later Jiang Zemin pushed for economic and political reforms over that decade. something that started very tenuously and could easily have failed, which would have resulted in a china that was more militaristic and likely more expansionist (to bolster a failing economy and distract their populace)


i suspect that China is the "foreign power" that the sub was supposed to have been sold too.. even i nthe early 90's, when they were near pariahs even in russia, the two nations were close enough that china could obtain military hardware, but relations were rocky enough (between the political unrest in china and economic issues) that a war between the two seemed plausible (especially since it had happened before, within memory of the governments involved.)
this suggests that the US was either at war with, or had really high tensions with, china in 1999, where the addition of an Oscar SSGN to the chinese navy would have been a really bad scenario. That the carrier group was not attempting to confirm the sub wasn't russian suggests that "at war with" is probably closer to the truth.. sinking a russian sub would be a major incident, and the carrier group wasn't just trying to track the sub, i was trying to sink it.

what is interesting is that we see fighters with marking identical to those of the later Anti-Unification League attacking one of the Kenosha's ASW helicopters. when F-203's from the Kenosha catch up with the bogies the fighters (the MiM-31 Karyovin) are not recognized by Fokker or the other US pilots, nor are the markings recognized. the fighter type and the markings get brought up as AUL in later issues. this attack also saw Admiral hayes switch from a cautious strategy regarding the russian sub to ordering an ASW group out to kill it right away.
that what would later be called the AUL was active during the global wars is interesting, as is the fact that their attack seems to have been aimed at sparking an incident between the US and russia by getting the americans to sink the Minsk.

[Kargan3033]

well, since it seems unlikely that HG will ever give us offical details on this timeperiod, and with the RPG gone OOP there isn't much chance of an RPG book on it, i guess we have to sort it out on our own.

the Global War [sup][1][/sup] ended in 1999 with the crash of an alien starship in the Bonin islands [sup][2][/sup] in the north pacific. after that event the superpowers of the world, faced with the potential of an extraterrestrial threat, called a cease fire. and would, 6 years later, form a unified world government.

[1] it is always referred to as "global war" in the show, and the comics.. so the 1st ed "global civil war" nonsense should end. can't have a civil war if the world hasn't been unified yet
[2] i'm assuming that Macross island in robotech is located in the same location as South Ataria Island is in the original SDF:macross series.

the show itself gives us relatively little beyond that to work with, beyond a few images. video here from Ep1: Boobytrap
here are the images in question:
Image 1: comanchero helicopters attacking an urban area
Image 2: Middle Eastern(?) combat
Image 3: troops in urban warzone
Image 4: Infantry being attacked by what looks like energy weapon beams

the wildstorm comics did manage to add a few details that hint at the geopolitical aspects.. in the first full issue of from the Stars we see Gloval, then a submarine captain wit hthe Russian navy, commanding an Oscar class SSGN, the Minsk. and he is being hunted by an American carrier group, led by the U.S.S. Kenosha, commanded by Admiral Hayes. the Kenosha is hunting the minsk because they had been given intel that the Russians had sold the sub to "a foreign power", something Gloval apparently has heard as well, which he states is ridculous because they'd never sell one of their "most prized vessels" to someone that might use them against russia. Gloval's speech also states that Russia's forces are stretched thin trying to deal with the "many conflicts that have erupted around the world"

this indicates that not only are Russia and the US not currently at war, but that the group that america is at war with, or perhaps close to being at war with, is one that has a mixed relationship with russia.. one close enough that the russians selling a large potentially nuclear armed SSGN to would be plausible, but bad enough that the russians would be concerned that they'd turn on them. i have my own thoughts on that one, but i'll cover that later.
it also establishes that it was not a single conflict.. it wasn't WW3 basically. it was instead a large number of smaller conflicts, which the major nations found themselves involved in.

looking at the 1990's, there are certainly plenty of real world conflicts that could be included..
the 1st Congo war between 1996-and 97 and its follow up 2nd Congo war in 1998 (which IRL ran to 2003, which means it liekly would have been effected by the SDF-1 crash)
Gulf War 1 in 1990 (which could easily have taken longer than IRL, had there been a push to take Iraq rather than leave it intact.. even if the events played out as IRL, a 2nd gulf war might not have waited to 2003 in the robotech timeline)
the 1st Chechen war in 1994-1996
the Kosovo war/Balkans conflict of 1998-1999
The Yugoslav wars (1991-1995) as yugoslavia broke up. this included the Bosnian conflict of 92-95.
The Somali Civil war (started 1991, still not resolved IRL.) UN and US intervention started in 1992, and IRL withdrew in 1995.

Potential conflicts included;
the taliban seizure of Afghanistan in 1996
unrest in Algeria after the cancellation of democratic elections (1991-2002 RL) over concern that radical islamist movements had a chance of being elected to government.
the general breakup of the former soviet union, as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan declare independence.
the ever present threat of warfare between Israel and its neighbors.
the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, when the Rwandan government attempted to wipe out the Tutsi tribal group probably should have created one IRL.. the UN and major world powers drew a lot of flak over the fact that no one stepped in to try and stop it. IRL about a million people were killed (Tutsi, as well as Batwa Pygmy's, comprising about 70% and 30% their total populations, respectively) and it only ended after a Tutsi backed Rwandan patriotic Front deposed the government after a very brutal civil war. (said civil war had been going since 1990, and the genocides were the "final solution" of the predominately Hutu tribal group controlled government to the issue of the Tutsi backed RPF.. the logic apparently being that if the Tutsi don't exist anymore, there would be no more RPF)

and perhaps, the rise of Maoist hardliners in china following Tienanmen square. which IRL ended when Deng Xiaoping and later Jiang Zemin pushed for economic and political reforms over that decade. something that started very tenuously and could easily have failed, which would have resulted in a china that was more militaristic and likely more expansionist (to bolster a failing economy and distract their populace)


i suspect that China is the "foreign power" that the sub was supposed to have been sold too.. even i nthe early 90's, when they were near pariahs even in russia, the two nations were close enough that china could obtain military hardware, but relations were rocky enough (between the political unrest in china and economic issues) that a war between the two seemed plausible (especially since it had happened before, within memory of the governments involved.)
this suggests that the US was either at war with, or had really high tensions with, china in 1999, where the addition of an Oscar SSGN to the chinese navy would have been a really bad scenario. That the carrier group was not attempting to confirm the sub wasn't russian suggests that "at war with" is probably closer to the truth.. sinking a russian sub would be a major incident, and the carrier group wasn't just trying to track the sub, i was trying to sink it.

what is interesting is that we see fighters with marking identical to those of the later Anti-Unification League attacking one of the Kenosha's ASW helicopters. when F-203's from the Kenosha catch up with the bogies the fighters (the MiM-31 Karyovin) are not recognized by Fokker or the other US pilots, nor are the markings recognized. the fighter type and the markings get brought up as AUL in later issues. this attack also saw Admiral hayes switch from a cautious strategy regarding the russian sub to ordering an ASW group out to kill it right away.
that what would later be called the AUL was active during the global wars is interesting, as is the fact that their attack seems to have been aimed at sparking an incident between the US and russia by getting the americans to sink the Minsk.

Interesting I like this, so if we are making fan made RT source books then I think this would be a solid foundation for a source book, now we just need to tie some or all of these ideas together some how.

Here's something to consider the proto AUL is behind the conflicts in africa as each faction of the proto AUL are trying to take over all or large parts of africa then when the SDF-1 crash lands and the UEG is formed the factions of the proto AUL close ranks and from the AUL as a direct counter to the UEG with africa being their main stronghold but given the death and destruction of the african wars they are hampered from becoming as powerful as the UEG and are doing everything they can to build up their armed forces as well as trying to get their hands on the alien/robotech as well as trying to gain more resources and power by causing trouble in south america which cause the newly formed UEG a fair amount of trouble which hampers the study of the alien tech and the creation of robotech.

[Jefffar]

What do we have for confirmation on the factions involved?

On various websites I've hear mention of a Western Alliance and an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (or something akin to that). Mecha Journal includes the RPGs EBSIS, but I don't think that's ever been made official or otherwise explained.

[Seto Kaiba]

What do we have for confirmation on the factions involved?

Essentially nothing.

As glitterboy2098 said, there really isn't any official information on this period in Robotech history. Only From the Stars ever depicts this era, and only briefly, showing just an isolated incident between the US Navy and Russian Navy that is interrupted by the crash of Zor's battlefortress.

Harmony Gold seems to have taken the same tack as Macross's creators, in writing the Soviets out of the series history to account for the real world collapse of the Soviet Union. So, when the official canon was established, EBSIS ended up not being a thing.

[ShadowLogan]

What do we have for confirmation on the factions involved?

On various websites I've hear mention of a Western Alliance and an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (or something akin to that). Mecha Journal includes the RPGs EBSIS, but I don't think that's ever been made official or otherwise explained.

None actually. The WA and EACPS are from the Novel continuity and never made it into the current canon continuity.

EBSIS hasn't been made official/explained outside of the 1E RPG. I know there was a poll on RT.com sometime ago relating to the EBSIS.

[glitterboy2098]

Russia and the United States are the only confirmed factions involved..
https://robotech.com/roboverse/bio/henry-gloval

"Born Henryk Jozef Glovalsky to a Russian father and a Lithuanian mother, he distinguished himself as an officer in the Russian Navy. He served aboard both surface vessels and submarines and was a career military man.
Through the upheaval of the late 20th Century leading into the Global War, Gloval remained a steadfast presence and was highly regarded among the men and women who served under him, as well as his fellow officers and superiors. This respect crossed over to his adversaries in other military forces.
As American forces moved to stabilize an out-of-control political and military situation in the Asian Pacific, the Russian Navy was ordered to deter American forces. This pitted Gloval against former allies he had worked with during the hopeful days following the end of the Cold War."

[Seto Kaiba]

None actually. The WA and EACPS are from the Novel continuity and never made it into the current canon continuity.

The latter is at least drawn from world history... the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was Imperial Japan's plan for its conquered territories in Asia during the 2nd World War.

[Seto Kaiba]

A bizarre thought occurs...

A detail from From the Stars can be interpreted to point to the timeline branching from our own way back in the 1940s. Namely, that "Skull Squadron" is the US Navy's VF-84. That would suggest that the real world Jolly Rogers, first founded as VF-17 (later redesignated as VF-5B and VF-61) were originally called the Skulls, and passed that name on to VF-84, who were apparently never disestablished in 1995 as they were in the real world.

If the timeline branched in the 1940s... could the Global War be a World War II that just never properly ended? Or the fallout from the settlement of World War II, with deteriorating relations between the US and Russia leading to a "hot" war instead of a cold one? Perhaps World War II didn't end the way it did in the real world, and Japan was allowed to keep its conquered territories... hence the "East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

[taalismn]

I always regarded the EACPS in this context to be more a terrorist organization playing with the Imperial Japanese term to mess with peoples' heads to make it look like they represented a larger or more formidable international organization than they really were(sorta like G.i. Joe's COBRA if one must get that cheesy).

[Seto Kaiba]

I always regarded the EACPS in this context to be more a terrorist organization playing with the Imperial Japanese term to mess with peoples' heads to make it look like they represented a larger or more formidable international organization than they really were(sorta like G.i. Joe's COBRA if one must get that cheesy).

I've never really given much thought to anything in the novels... but if Robotech history branches off from our own during World War II as that blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail in From the Stars could indicate, that'd put rather a different spin on the whole bunch.

(It'd fit the often-irritating inclination of American writers to make alternate universes based on divergent history branch from ours in World War II[sup]1[/sup].)

Since all we know in official terms is that there were US-Russia hostilities c.1999, the possibilities are fairly interesting if we consider factions like the Co-Prosperity Sphere to exist where EBSIS and the Soviet Union are more explicitly ruled out. Here are 3 different musings on the subject:

• Robotech's Global War IS World War II. Instead of ending in 1945 with the surrender of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan as in the real world, the war continued to simmer for the rest of the century. With Italy defeated and Germany divided, Imperial Japan abrogates the Tripartite Pact. Tensions flare up between the Allies and Soviet Union over the disposition of captured territories, enabling Japan to hold onto the Co-Prosperity Sphere territories while the US and Soviet Union bicker over Eastern Europe. The Cold War turns hot, leading to three way war between the Allies (now "Western Alliance"), Soviet Union, and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as the three dominant world powers. A campaign of influence by the Western Alliance fragments the Soviet Union, leaving Russia and a collection of Western Alliance-aligned Eastern European nations c.1999.
• Robotech's Global War is the fallout of the Soviet Union's collapse. Desperate to hold onto power as its control slips, Russia re-invades the territories that wish to secede from the Soviet Union, prompting intervention from the US and its allies to liberate the disputed territories.
• Robotech's Global War is a result of post-Soviet Russia looking for ways to bolster its economy. Instead of collapsing in the 90's, the Soviet Union breaks up in the 1950s during de-Stalinization after Stalin's death, leaving Russia vulnerable and feeling threatened by its former allies in the US and Western Europe and by the re-emergent Co-Prosperity Sphere superpower in Asia. A series of small brushfire conflcits-by-proxy flare up in an otherwise cold war as jumpy politicians on all sides interpret everything in the worst possible light.

Spoiler:

1. It's a bad habit I've never liked. There are so many more interesting bits of history that could be more effective and influential turning points. The Code Geass series has a really interesting one, in which the timeline first branches in about 55 BCE with the Britons electing a King of Kings to lead their people against the Roman invasion and successfully drive the Roman legions out of Britain. That gets followed by other branches like never getting the Magna Carta signed, having Ben Franklin side against the colonies in the American Revolution and it failing as a result, Napoleon conquering England, and the British royal family moving to America and setting it up as a new British Empire.

[ShadowLogan]

If the timeline branched in the 1940s... could the Global War be a World War II that just never properly ended? Or the fallout from the settlement of World War II, with deteriorating relations between the US and Russia leading to a "hot" war instead of a cold one? Perhaps World War II didn't end the way it did in the real world, and Japan was allowed to keep its conquered territories... hence the "East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

I doubt it. That isn't to say that WWII couldn't have had a different outcome, but it doesn't appear that the Global War is a continuation of WWII. IINM most views in RT media in the past (official, but not cannon) had the war being a 10year thing. I don't recall any dialogue bits to confirm this, but if that view still holds over at HG... We know the UN "failed" in RT (per dialogue IINM, I know its novel dialogue just not 100% sure on show), so if you are looking for a cause it likely has to result in the "collapse" the UN.

US/Russia relations going by Gloval and Hayes history suggests they are on the same side IIRC (this is at odds w/FTS) the story Gloval tells Lisa about her father during the war.

We do know that aircraft designs diverged from RW at some point (70s I'd say).

[Seto Kaiba]

IINM most views in RT media in the past (official, but not cannon) had the war being a 10year thing.

Honestly, I don't recall anything like that. It was usually one of those topics that HG and its licensees just sort of ignored. Due to Robotech repurposing dialog from Macross about the Macross-exclusive Unification Wars, I could maybe see how that would be a popular fan assumption.

I don't recall any dialogue bits to confirm this, but if that view still holds over at HG... We know the UN "failed" in RT (per dialogue IINM, I know its novel dialogue just not 100% sure on show), so if you are looking for a cause it likely has to result in the "collapse" the UN.

Historical fun fact time... the United Nations was the formal name given to the Allies in World War II, drawn from the Declaration by United Nations in 1942. The text of the declaration later became a starting point for the United Nations charter in 1945 when the name was appropriated for the international organization.

If the USSR turned on the allies, or even just left the alliance because of something like a soft settlement with Japan over disputed territories, that'd still be the United Nations failing. Or it could mean that, without the USSR involved, the organization that followed was never able to achieve sufficient representation from non-aligned and opposing countries to enact meaningful policies. Or, the simplest answer, that since the United Nations' mission is to maintain international peace and security, to promote human rights, foster social and economic development, and to protect the environment, that having a global war means an all-fronts failure of the objectives the organization was founded to fulfill.

US/Russia relations going by Gloval and Hayes history suggests they are on the same side IIRC (this is at odds w/FTS) the story Gloval tells Lisa about her father during the war.

It's a problematic anecdote, since the original Macross dialog puts this event in the course of the Unification Wars... when the Japanese-Australian Takashi Hayase and Italian Bruno J. Global served together in the UN Navy. The original versions of those characters being from countries that don't exactly have strained relations with each other. (Covered in the short story The Plundering Fleet.) Mind you, it's not inconceivable that the two countries were engaged in joint operations against a third party. FTS's excuse for Gloval being there doesn't help matters, since it too is based on the Macross OSM version of that anecdote... hunting a submarine in the hands of a hostile power. (The difference being that they're hunter and huntee instead of both being the hunter.)

Of course, the Robotech dialog does tend to be rather ambiguous about when events like this happened, for the aforementioned reason (e.g. Roy's background in the war).

We do know that aircraft designs diverged from RW at some point (70s I'd say).

Debatable. While we see F203s in FTS and, of course, the animation... FTS also has an F-22A performing at an airshow, and those weren't available until September 1997.

[ShadowLogan]

Honestly, I don't recall anything like that. It was usually one of those topics that HG and its licensees just sort of ignored. Due to Robotech repurposing dialog from Macross about the Macross-exclusive Unification Wars, I could maybe see how that would be a popular fan assumption.

RDF Manual (1E RPG) timeline puts the Global War starting in 1995 due to the International Space Station. Which is a bit problematic due to Russia and the US being the only powers at the time capable of independent manned flight. I could go on, but am short on time.

Novels Bk1 Chapter 1 state "a rapid spiraling of diverse conflicts that, by 1994, was well on its way to becoming a full-scale worldwide struggle"

So I'm not sure why I was thinking 10years (might be a later statement in the novels, that was the first I could find and if you include the diverse conflicts before they morphed into the GCW of the novels, you can probably get 10years).

If these views still hold true to some extent though it is unlikely the Global War is a stretched WWII.

Historical fun fact time... the United Nations was the formal name given to the Allies in World War II, drawn from the Declaration by United Nations in 1942. The text of the declaration later became a starting point for the United Nations charter in 1945 when the name was appropriated for the international organization.

Context of the statement makes it seem like the it is reference to the post WWII UN ("peacemakers" are said to have
formed the League of Nations and then United Nations, both of which failed."-quote may not be exact from a post FOA episode, but the gist is there).

Debatable. While we see F203s in FTS and, of course, the animation... FTS also has an F-22A performing at an airshow, and those weren't available until September 1997.

That the F-22 is performing in an airshow can be problematic, but the YF-22 goes back to circa 1990-1 (it was flying in this period for ATF competition, was selected in April of 1991). So depending on just why the F-22 is in the airshow also has to be considered, but the break is more directed toward mainline designs of the period (the F-14s, F-15s, F-16s, etc) and not the next generation fighter the ATF/F-22 represents. Though I'm not entirely sure why they felt the need to include the F-22 at all since its clear RT history splits from RW history prior to 1999 by the footage.

[Seto Kaiba]

RDF Manual (1E RPG) timeline puts the Global War starting in 1995 due to the International Space Station.
[...]
Novels Bk1 Chapter 1 state "a rapid spiraling of diverse conflicts that, by 1994, was well on its way to becoming a full-scale worldwide struggle"
[...]
So I'm not sure why I was thinking 10years (might be a later statement in the novels, that was the first I could find and if you include the diverse conflicts before they morphed into the GCW of the novels, you can probably get 10years).

I have a suspicion that these authors probably weren't sharing notes, so to speak... and PB at least have gone on record to indicate that they got precisely bugger-all in terms of info from Harmony Gold for 1e. That's probably just them swinging for the fences.

Character reactions and other circumstantial evidence point to a longer, rather more messy conflict. Like the US Navy having CVN-90 already in service for some time in 1999, when the real world CVN-80 isn't scheduled to be launched until 2025.

Context of the statement makes it seem like the it is reference to the post WWII UN ("peacemakers" are said to have
formed the League of Nations and then United Nations, both of which failed."-quote may not be exact from a post FOA episode, but the gist is there).

That doesn't necessarily rule it out, though... the United Nations organization was established in '45. The charter was signed before the war was even over, and the organization's official founding was barely a month after Japan surrendered. That's quite a span of time for the United Nations to "fail" by having a full-scale war break out...

That the F-22 is performing in an airshow can be problematic, but the YF-22 goes back to circa 1990-1 (it was flying in this period for ATF competition, was selected in April of 1991). So depending on just why the F-22 is in the airshow also has to be considered, but the break is more directed toward mainline designs of the period (the F-14s, F-15s, F-16s, etc) and not the next generation fighter the ATF/F-22 represents.

Exactly where the F203 fits in there is probably going to be the crux of that issue... since the F203 was already in service in 1999 and presumably had been for some time given that Hayes commanded an aircraft carrier full of 'em, it's probable that they were another 4th Generation fighter intended for replacement by the F-22, a unrealized NATF design (F-22N), or the F-35.

Though I'm not entirely sure why they felt the need to include the F-22 at all since its clear RT history splits from RW history prior to 1999 by the footage.

Much of From the Stars is just rearranged, Robotech versions of events from Macross backstory materials... that may have a bit to do with it, since by all accounts the ATF program probably didn't get binned until 2001 in Macross with the kickoff of the F203 program in 2001 and VF-0 program in 2002.

Honestly tho, with circumstantial evidence pointing to a timeline split during WWII, I would totally be inclined to run with it since it would really open things up for altering the base setting... and perhaps explain why humanity seems to be so warlike in the Robotech universe as opposed to the original shows (and how the UEG could get away with claiming the AUL destroyed an entire island when they were a trivial nuisance for most of FTS, if not a UEG strawman).

[glitterboy2098]

the problem with a WW2 divergence point is that the farther back the timeline diverges, the more different the results will be. since the global war era of robotech does not look that much different from the 90's of real life, just with some different vehicles, that suggests that the divergence point was fairly close to the time period we see in the show.

my own preference is to assume that it was the very late 80's or early 90's.

you can make a very good case for the F-203 Dragon II replacing the IRL F/A-18E/F super hornet, since a replacement for the F-14 had been discussed since the mid-80's, with the idea of an enhanced hornet just one of the proposals. IRL the super hornet didn't get an official start till the early 90's because the USN was spending a lot of money on the A-12 Avenger II stealth strike fighter program (the flying dorito proved a major money sink for no return), and when the F-14 replacement did become a priority, they went with the uper hornet without much of a usual acquisition process (competing designs, fly offs, etc) which drew some flak politically. it wouldn't be hard to believe that with a general higher tempo of conflicts in the pre-global war period, that the priorities of the USN would shift away from an expensive stealth strike fighter, and funding for development of an F-14 replacement earlier. the F-203 easily could be the result of that. the number of F-203's on the USS Kenosha in the FtS comic certainly suggests that the F-203 fills many of the same roles the F/A-18E/F super hornet filled IRL.. perhaps even replacing most of the standard F/A-18 A/B/C/D's (as has been happening IRL.. and would likely occur faster in robotech if the higher number of conflicts led to higher combat attrition and more wear related airframe retirements)

the S-11 Avenger II in robotech could easily be the result of an alternate version of the 'advanced tactical aircraft program' that IRL produced the problematic A-12 Avenger II.. the ATA was meant to replace the A-6 Intruder, and the focus on stealth was what killed the A-12, because it forced it to use expensive materials and a very complex flying wing design, which is what made the project end up so expensive. a version of the program that focused on a more conventional airframe could easily have produced robotech's S-11 Avenger II.. which fills the role of the A-6 Intruder, the EA-6 Prowler, and the S-3 Viking.. (which could explain the "S" designation rather than an "A"), all of which were aircraft the USN was looking to replace at the time.

the VC-33 too fits a USN replacement program for the timeframe.. IRL the proposal of the time was the earlier form of the "common support aircraft" program. which was supposed to replace the C-2 Greyhound Carrier Onboard Delivery role, the E-2 Hawkeye Airborne early warning role (in a different variant), and potentially some combat variants to fill A-6 and S-3 roles. (there was a lot of debate over what should replace the A-6 and S-3)
the VC-33 fits the C-2's role perfectly.. and the ES-11 is easily a replacement for the E-2 Hawkeye in the AEW role.

the E-3 Sentry (a USAF AWACS) was also being discussed for replacement in the 80's and 90's, as the 707 the E-3 was based on was getting pretty old. IRL none of these proposals got much traction, since the costs outweighed the need given the low temp of operations. in robotech this would obviously be different, which could easily lead to the EC-33B seen in robotech.

[ShadowLogan]

I have a suspicion that these authors probably weren't sharing notes, so to speak... and PB at least have gone on record to indicate that they got precisely bugger-all in terms of info from Harmony Gold for 1e. That's probably just them swinging for the fences.

Character reactions and other circumstantial evidence point to a longer, rather more messy conflict. Like the US Navy having CVN-90 already in service for some time in 1999, when the real world CVN-80 isn't scheduled to be launched until 2025.

Authors might not be sharing notes, but it seems like they had the same basic frame work they where working off of. If not that is one coincidence for the McKinney Team and K.Siemedia to both get a "start" year so close together.

As for the CVN-#s, it is possible that hull assignments where skipped for a variety of reasons and they never went back (CV-35/44/46/50-8 are USN carriers that are cancelled prior to completion in real-life, surprised they didn't skip "unlucky" numbers or such). However if there was a Global War in the 90s, US might have had to seriously ramp up Carrier production (and thus CVN # assignments).

Much of From the Stars is just rearranged, Robotech versions of events from Macross backstory materials... that may have a bit to do with it, since by all accounts the ATF program probably didn't get binned until 2001 in Macross with the kickoff of the F203 program in 2001 and VF-0 program in 2002.

If there was a Global War going on in the 90s the ATF might have been scrapped due to cost. When selected IIRC the initial buy was to be for ~600 F-22s, but as unit cost went up the lot numbers went down driving cost up more. Eventually the US only pruchased ~200 units (less actually). So the ATF could have been canceled long before then due to cost overrun and needing the funding elsewhere. That wouldn't necessarily ground the unit permanently (or result in it being scarped).

Honestly tho, with circumstantial evidence pointing to a timeline split during WWII, I would totally be inclined to run with it since it would really open things up for altering the base setting... and perhaps explain why humanity seems to be so warlike in the Robotech universe as opposed to the original shows (and how the UEG could get away with claiming the AUL destroyed an entire island when they were a trivial nuisance for most of FTS, if not a UEG strawman).

I'm not sure there is that much to actually point to WWII, remember that the use of that named faction in RT is not from canon, but the separate universe novels AFAIK.

Start pruning the population in the 90s, have buildup for the next war in the 00s, have a mass die off in early 10s followed by attempted integration of a large influx Zentreadi (warlike race), and then take a portion of the survivors into deep space to wage another war that goes on for years. Yeah I can see how humanity might seem warlike by this point, especially when it is them who get the story focus (though the people of Earth seemed to be burned out on war and only really wanted to live in peace during the Invid occupation).

[glitterboy2098]

The need for the atf would be higher in a world with actual serious shooting wars and not just peacekeeping campaigns against insurgents.
More likely the AFT project progressed (we do see a production model raptor not the more angular prototype), but the many delays and major cost overruns it suffered irl got avoided. Most of those were due to the attempt to make it a more multirole plane with strike ability, by adding bomb carriage and the avionics to do ground attack.
But I agree there would not be many raptor. Even with the delays above removed, it would see deployment at best just a couple years before the sdf arrived at earth.

[Seto Kaiba]

the problem with a WW2 divergence point is that the farther back the timeline diverges, the more different the results will be.

That depends on how severe the original divergence is.

Still, thanks to zeerust, the world we see c.2009 in Robotech is more than a bit off compared to the real world... this could explain that, to a certain extent, such as the absence of cellular phones, LPs still being prevalent, etc.

Authors might not be sharing notes, but it seems like they had the same basic frame work they where working off of. If not that is one coincidence for the McKinney Team and K.Siemedia to both get a "start" year so close together.

If Kevin's remarks from his SSL interview about the making of 1e are anything to go by, it's a coincidence. He professed to have received practically nothing in terms of information from Harmony Gold, and had to resort to freeze-framing through tapes of the series and paying for (bad) translations of a what few artbooks they found.

As for the CVN-#s, it is possible that hull assignments where skipped for a variety of reasons and they never went back (CV-35/44/46/50-8 are USN carriers that are cancelled prior to completion in real-life, surprised they didn't skip "unlucky" numbers or such). However if there was a Global War in the 90s, US might have had to seriously ramp up Carrier production (and thus CVN # assignments).

Granted, but even under a hair-trigger war footing like the Cold War it will still take several years to build, certify, and commission a new ship that large. To be up into the 90's in 1999 when CVN-75 Harry S. Truman had only just entered service here in the real world would suggest the war has gone on for decades. Those ships take about six years to complete.

If there was a Global War going on in the 90s the ATF might have been scrapped due to cost.

If anything, a global war would prompt an expansion of the ATF program and would probably have saved the NATF program. At that point it's a literal arms race, and if you're losing a lot of aircraft you're going to want to be replacing them with a newer and more powerful aircraft that has more of an advantage. (There are just too many examples of this to cite from WW2.)

I'm not sure there is that much to actually point to WWII, remember that the use of that named faction in RT is not from canon, but the separate universe novels AFAIK.

The point from FTS I was using for this was that Roy's letter to Rick identified him as serving in VF-84... which is not only still around four years after being disestablished in the real world, it has the iconic Jolly Rogers insignia the squadron adopted from 1 April 1960 onwards but is referred to as "Skull squadron" instead.

VF-84 had inherited the Jolly Rogers name and insignia from VF-61 - formerly known as VF-17 and VF-5B - which was the first unit to adopt the name and insignia back in January 1943 under the command of LCDR John Blackburn. That points to a timeline branch occurring in one of two points: in 1943 when VF-17 chose its name, or 1955 when the third VF-84 was founded.[sup]1[/sup]

Yeah I can see how humanity might seem warlike by this point, especially when it is them who get the story focus (though the people of Earth seemed to be burned out on war and only really wanted to live in peace during the Invid occupation).

I'm not sure it's even that... there were plenty living under the Invid occupation who seemed quite ready to lead violent lives. It may be more that they just didn't have a way to fight the Invid when they were mostly armed with nothing fancier than police revolvers and the occasional shotgun.

Spoiler:

1. Like so much else in From the Stars, this is probably Tommy Yune riffing on details from the Macross setting. The question being whether he was riffing on the idea that the UN Spacy's SVF-1 Skulls was connected to the US Navy's Jolly Rogers, or some older doujinshi and magazine materials that assumed that the unit's designation was (S)VF-84.

(Amusingly there WAS a unit in some old books designated VF-84 and named the Jolly Rogers, but they were assigned to one of the ARMD-class carriers out in Earth orbit.)

[ShadowLogan]

Granted, but even under a hair-trigger war footing like the Cold War it will still take several years to build, certify, and commission a new ship that large. To be up into the 90's in 1999 when CVN-75 Harry S. Truman had only just entered service here in the real world would suggest the war has gone on for decades. Those ships take about six years to complete.

True to an extent. But they could produce ships in a shorter time frame on a war footing (WWII).

If anything, a global war would prompt an expansion of the ATF program and would probably have saved the NATF program. At that point it's a literal arms race, and if you're losing a lot of aircraft you're going to want to be replacing them with a newer and more powerful aircraft that has more of an advantage. (There are just too many examples of this to cite from WW2.)

To an extent this would be true, but if the programs result in to costly an aircraft the programs likely would be cut. The technologies might be migrated to more cost effective solutions.

That points to a timeline branch occurring in one of two points: in 1943 when VF-17 chose its name, or 1955 when the third VF-84 was founded.1

Not really, the use of the VF-84 would rule out 1943, but it doesn't actually point toward 1955 exclusively as when the branch could form it just creates a potential earliest-possible-point.

[glitterboy2098]

Note that the US military does reuse names, not always attached to the same squadron numbers. They also reuse squadron numbers too. So neither names not numbers is sufficient evidence of when a timeline diverged.

[Seto Kaiba]

True to an extent. But they could produce ships in a shorter time frame on a war footing (WWII).

Back then, ships were a fair bit less complex... we're talking about a nuclear aircraft carrier here. Even at the height of the Cold War, when the US military expected the Soviets to declare war at any minute, four years was about as fast as they could put an aircraft carrier together, not counting post-construction testing, and the facilities available made it difficult to build more than two or three at a time.

To an extent this would be true, but if the programs result in to costly an aircraft the programs likely would be cut. The technologies might be migrated to more cost effective solutions.

The presence of the F-22A in From the Stars is indisputable, so the argument that it was not deemed "too costly" for at least limited production would seem to be sound.

Not really, the use of the VF-84 would rule out 1943, but it doesn't actually point toward 1955 exclusively as when the branch could form it just creates a potential earliest-possible-point.

The point wasn't the squadron number - there have been three units designated as VF-84[sup]1[/sup] - but rather its role in the "chain of custody" of the iconic Jolly Rogers (or, in this case, Skulls) name and insignia. VF-84 inherited the Jolly Rogers (Skulls) name from an older squadron that was dissolved. That squadron originated the Jolly Rogers name and insignia.

It implies that either 1. the Jolly Rogers have always been called the Skulls in this timeline, and thus it branches in 1943, or 2. VF-84 (III) have been called the Skulls since their founding in 1955, thus branching in 1955.

Note that the US military does reuse names, not always attached to the same squadron numbers. They also reuse squadron numbers too. So neither names not numbers is sufficient evidence of when a timeline diverged.

Reusing names is relatively common, as there are certain iconic names which Navy squadrons don't wish to see pass out of use like the Jolly Rogers, Red Rippers, etc., but reusing numbers is something that's become increasingly rare with time. They used to do it quite frequently in the 40s and 50s, but it became quite rare thereafter. IIRC the last case was the short-lived fourth VF-194 in 86-88.

It's also worth noting that the Navy considers the disestablishment of a squadron to be the end of its tradition, so a new unit founded with that number is not considered to be a refounding of the disestablished unit and typically will not inherit its name or insignia. Doubly so in the case of iconic units like the Jolly Rogers, where the name and insignia are passed to another squadron on disestablishment. A new squadron founded with the old number would be obliged to select a new name and insignia. It's not 100% ironclad evidence of when timelines diverged, but it's reasonably good when one accounts for naval tradition in these matters.

Spoiler:

1. The unnamed VF-84 founded in 1944 and attached to USS Bunker Hill during the invasion of Iwo Jima, Reserve Fighter Squadron 921 which got redesignated to VF-84 for two years in the fifties before being redesignated twice more, once to VA-86, then VFA-86, known on all occasions as the Sidewinders.
The third is the VF-84 Vagabounds founded in 1955, who took up the Jolly Rogers name starting in 1960.

[ShadowLogan]

Back then, ships were a fair bit less complex... we're talking about a nuclear aircraft carrier here. Even at the height of the Cold War, when the US military expected the Soviets to declare war at any minute, four years was about as fast as they could put an aircraft carrier together, not counting post-construction testing, and the facilities available made it difficult to build more than two or three at a time.

I agree ships where less complex in WWII, but if they needed ships to be built as fast as possible, they might forgo the nuclear aspect or look toward "simpler" and "faster" methods to manufacture, or you know simply brute force it from the worker perspective that wasn't really an option during the Cold War.

The presence of the F-22A in From the Stars is indisputable, so the argument that it was not deemed "too costly" for at least limited production would seem to be sound.

But we don't even know what level of hardware the F-22A is at (by level I'm talking prototype, EMD, demonstrator, production, pre-production, etc) or why it was even in the airshow. All we know is the F-22A is there cosmetically. The F-22A of RT might not have the same capabilities of the realworld aircraft at the same point in time (it might use a different radar, engine, lack air-ground role, etc).

It implies that either 1. the Jolly Rogers have always been called the Skulls in this timeline, and thus it branches in 1943, or 2. VF-84 (III) have been called the Skulls since their founding in 1955, thus branching in 1955.

But it really doesn't establish a "break point" in either case. All it does is put a limit on how far back the break can occur, but doesn't actually make the break occur at that point. And it doesn't even really do that since it just requires a break farther back to allow for the same thing to develop.

The problem with pushing the break point farther and farther back also is that at some point it is questionable if we'd end up with the same real world tech item being developed at certain points in time (like the ATF) in the same form or other historical events from happening (ex. what if the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into a conventional war, would the US have landed on the Moon in 1969 or what would the ramifications be on the space program if Project Mercury had gone with the proposed "super X-15" option instead of the selected capsule would Project Gemini or Apollo look the same? What about the space shuttle, etc).

[Seto Kaiba]

I agree ships where less complex in WWII, but if they needed ships to be built as fast as possible, they might forgo the nuclear aspect or look toward "simpler" and "faster" methods to manufacture [...]

There's a limit to how much you can speed up production before quality suffers, and some things (like handling fissile material) you absolutely don't want to rush.

We can safely say they didn't cut the nuclear option, since the Kenosha's hull classification symbol is CVN... marking it out as a nuclear-powered carrier.

But we don't even know what level of hardware the F-22A is at (by level I'm talking prototype, EMD, demonstrator, production, pre-production, etc) or why it was even in the airshow.

Design cues in the art would rule out the prototype, suggesting this is probably the trial production lot or later. All things considered, given that the F-22 in question is appearing in an airshow, it's unlikely it's anything less than a production unit... you don't generally see test articles trotted out for the public's enjoyment because they cost more and haven't been fully safety-certified.

All we know is the F-22A is there cosmetically. The F-22A of RT might not have the same capabilities of the realworld aircraft at the same point in time (it might use a different radar, engine, lack air-ground role, etc).

There's nothing to suggest that that is the case.

But it really doesn't establish a "break point" in either case. All it does is put a limit on how far back the break can occur, but doesn't actually make the break occur at that point. And it doesn't even really do that since it just requires a break farther back to allow for the same thing to develop.

It establishes a break from real world history at a specific point in time. It doesn't have to be the only break, since it's a relatively trivial change in history.

It's only in the worst kind of sci-fi where the tiniest detail leads to a butterfly effect of historical changes, such that wearing the wrong color socks to work one morning will damn the world to a hundred years of slavery under the mole people.

The problem with pushing the break point farther and farther back also is that at some point it is questionable if we'd end up with the same real world tech item being developed at certain points in time (like the ATF) in the same form or other historical events from happening (ex. what if the Cuban Missile Crisis turned into a conventional war, would the US have landed on the Moon in 1969 or what would the ramifications be on the space program if Project Mercury had gone with the proposed "super X-15" option instead of the selected capsule would Project Gemini or Apollo look the same? What about the space shuttle, etc).

Kinda my point, actually... Robotech shows us a 2009 where cell phones, CDs, and other modern tech we take for granted DOESN'T EXIST. If the break point were farther back in the past, that would account for things like that.

[ShadowLogan]

It's only in the worst kind of sci-fi where the tiniest detail leads to a butterfly effect of historical changes, such that wearing the wrong color socks to work one morning will damn the world to a hundred years of slavery under the mole people.

To an extent yes, but we really aren't talking about a superficial change here, we're talking about a breaking point that results in a Global War in full swing by 1999. That would suggest unintended consequences could occur (not that they must, but could). That is one of the problems with changing the timeline, what other changes can occurr that we don't intended.

Kinda my point, actually... Robotech shows us a 2009 where cell phones, CDs, and other modern tech we take for granted DOESN'T EXIST. If the break point were farther back in the past, that would account for things like that.

But is the lack of these technologies we'd expect because the technologies don't exist or they didn't take off culturally? Or even just a in-universe terminology thing. Or just a product of the time it was written/animated originally? (this last is probably the likely culprit when you get down to it).

[eliakon]

Kinda my point, actually... Robotech shows us a 2009 where cell phones, CDs, and other modern tech we take for granted DOESN'T EXIST. If the break point were farther back in the past, that would account for things like that.

The problem with this logic is that it is backwards
It takes something that did not exist when the show was created, and uses it as a justification for why the world must be different.

There are a number of problems here.
1) the first is that we dont know that the technology isnt there.
2) we dont know WHY the technology isnt there, if it isnt
3) it predicates the idea that those technologies will never be invented via parallel processes in any world (for cell phones for example the idea that the invention of personal communications technology is some how a historical anomoly and that most other worlds will not do so... but WILL be able to built all the other devices of the same tech seems... unsound)
4) it worse, assumes that a far past break point will some how have the world be almost the same... except for a few sytalistic changes. The sad fact is that with one or two exceptions (and none of them are in anime as far as I know) IP worlds are NOT thought out strictly. They do NOT have people doing detailed "what if this happens, what are all the ripple on effects". Instead you simply say "oh yeah, I want this, this and that" like at a buffet. You dont have someone who is in the back doing the research to figure out what cultural changes would be needed to turn the selections you picked into the normal dinner meal....

Thus there is no need to presume a break point 50+ years back and then try and figure out how to rewrite all of world history from that point on.
You can put minor break points in at the points where things are obviously diverging and a LOT of the differences vanish in the glare of "artistic licence"
Sure they could have had easy personal communications in Robotech/Macross... but if they DID then most of the storylines would have to be changed as it would be too easy to by pass the communications gaps that power much of the narative. And thus any world with such tech would NOT be Robotech/Macross... the tech has to go in the interests of having the desired story.

[glitterboy2098]

i would also point out that all that technology does exist.. the phone-robots wouldn't be able to do their jobs at all if cellphone tech didn't exist for example.

we just see that technology being used in a slightly different fashion than our own 2000's used it.

[Seto Kaiba]

To an extent yes, but we really aren't talking about a superficial change here, we're talking about a breaking point that results in a Global War in full swing by 1999. That would suggest unintended consequences could occur (not that they must, but could). That is one of the problems with changing the timeline, what other changes can occurr that we don't intended.

There doesn't need to be just ONE break point... what I'm pointing to is just evidence of what is arguably the first/oldest point of divergence from the real world chronology.

But is the lack of these technologies we'd expect because the technologies don't exist or they didn't take off culturally? Or even just a in-universe terminology thing. Or just a product of the time it was written/animated originally? (this last is probably the likely culprit when you get down to it).

It's that last one, that's why I referred to it as Zeerust earlier.

Still, since we're dealing with a great big unknown quantity undefined by canon, it's the closest to a blank check Robotech has. Why not go nuts with it and use it to actually close some of those nagging holes?

i would also point out that all that technology does exist.. the phone-robots wouldn't be able to do their jobs at all if cellphone tech didn't exist for example.

Not necessarily. We don't know what the network architecture behind the phone robots is like... there are a LOT of different two-way radio technologies. Cell phone tech isn't just having a two-way radio that can interface with telephone exchanges, it's also the miniaturization aspect that makes them handheld.

[ShadowLogan]

There doesn't need to be just ONE break point... what I'm pointing to is just evidence of what is arguably the first/oldest point of divergence from the real world chronology.

If there is one break point though subseqent breaks just build off of the initial break is my point since the world is already different in some way.

Still, since we're dealing with a great big unknown quantity undefined by canon, it's the closest to a blank check Robotech has. Why not go nuts with it and use it to actually close some of those nagging holes?

Personally I don't see it as a big unknown. Official (though non-canon) media has already addressed it to some extent . Sure it could be filled in better, but I just don't see a pressing need for the period. I see other things as more pressing to be developed than the Global War.

In all likelihood a timeline divergence from the real world in RT is likely sometime after 1985, maybe even a bit before it. Unless the RT-writers had some details on the Global War that didn't make it into the show, I don't see any reason to suspect an earlier date.

[Seto Kaiba]

If there is one break point though subseqent breaks just build off of the initial break is my point since the world is already different in some way.

Not necessarily. You'll only get breaks building on each other when one break from the real world timeline is so severe that events cannot proceed as usual without the break being acknowledged.

Take, for instance, my earlier example of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion and its alternate history. The first break from the real world timeline occurred back during the Roman invasion of Britain, when the Celts elected a King of Britain to lead the resistance. History still proceeds more or less as normal and doesn't diverge in any meaningful way from our history until the 17th century and Elizabeth I having an illegitimate son (Henry IX) who was later crowned King, that being the break point from real history where things go off the rails[1].

Unless the divergence is severe enough that it starts to interfere with other events in history, it'll pass largely unnoticed.

Personally I don't see it as a big unknown. Official (though non-canon) media has already addressed it to some extent .

's not really "official" anymore, what with HG disowning the pre-2001 licensee-made materials back in '06.

It's an almost entirely undocumented era, so why not go nuts with it. It's as close to a blank check as we get.






[1] Queen Elizabath I being able to continue the line of succession kept the Tudors in power clear through the Napoleonic Wars. The Tudors were able to maintain the absolute monarchy, preventing the English Civil War from occurring, and with a sane absolute monarch on the throne (Henry X) they were also able to put down the American Revolution ("Washington's Rebellion"). That displacement of British military power to hold the colonies led to General Napoleon Bonaparte winning at Trafalgar in 1805, invading Britain, occupying London, and deposing Elizabeth III at Edinburgh in 1807 before sending her into exile where she died childless in the American colonies in 1813, appointing the Duke of Britannia as her successor and thus kicking off the formation of the Holy Britannian Empire, which orchestrated the assassination of Napoleon before he could declare himself Emperor, clearing the way for the EU to form in the early 19th century.

[eliakon]

If there is one break point though subseqent breaks just build off of the initial break is my point since the world is already different in some way.

Not necessarily. You'll only get breaks building on each other when one break from the real world timeline is so severe that events cannot proceed as usual without the break being acknowledged.

Take, for instance, my earlier example of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion and its alternate history. The first break from the real world timeline occurred back during the Roman invasion of Britain, when the Celts elected a King of Britain to lead the resistance. History still proceeds more or less as normal and doesn't diverge in any meaningful way from our history until the 17th century and Elizabeth I having an illegitimate son (Henry IX) who was later crowned King, that being the break point from real history where things go off the rails[1].

Unless the divergence is severe enough that it starts to interfere with other events in history, it'll pass largely unnoticed.

Which requires the magical fiat wand of "don't worry. None of the changes that SHOULD occur from this will, just trust us."
The Leoch time line is just as artificial and contrived as any other alternate time line. It just is artificial in that it posits that it can make changes in history in the deep past that will have virtually no effects for centuries.
Thus we can safely state that it diverged at that point and that all the rest is still divergence, just some of the divergence is "this happens event though the cause of it is gone because of X previously"

Same here. As soon as you diverge from our history everything else is still divergent. As the simplest and smallest example... diverging in WWII would mean that you need to deal with the colony issue. The formative UN was instrumental in decolonizing after WWII... if there is no end to WWII then there is no UN, and no decolonization. Which means you run into all sorts of issues (not the least of which is an existential issue for China!)

Personally I don't see it as a big unknown. Official (though non-canon) media has already addressed it to some extent .

's not really "official" anymore, what with HG disowning the pre-2001 licensee-made materials back in '06.

It's an almost entirely undocumented era, so why not go nuts with it. It's as close to a blank check as we get.

Hence the term "official though non-canon"
It is not canon, but it is stuff that was already done. Why re-invent the wheel? Especially in ways that have little to no realistic canon support other than "Well I want to"
I would say making a good solid timeline is a good idea.
Replace what needs to be replaced to make that work.
But if you already have some material out there already...
...well it isn't like this project is canon itself so why should it be worried that it might use a no longer canon piece of material?

[glitterboy2098]

and lets not even get into the fact that without captured Nazi prototypes and recruited Nazi Scientists, that aircraft design would go down very different routes. the robotech aircraft look like they fit into the real world 80's and 90's. you'd not get that if there was no end to ww2 and the entire history of jet aviation skewed off onto tangents due to the lack of nazi knowledge being captured.

[Sgt Anjay]

Point of divergence March 4, 1985

[Peacebringer]

Yawl realize that the F-24 Dragon II (Falcon) and the MIM-31 probably fought each other in the GSW.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yawl realize that the F-24 Dragon II (Falcon) and the MIM-31 probably fought each other in the GSW.

Of course... the From the Stars limited comic shows MiM-31s and F203s both being in service prior to Zor's battlefortress crashing on Earth.

After all, the F203 and MiM-31 were rival designs fielded as the main fighter aircraft of the Unification Forces and Anti-Unification Alliance respectively during the Unification Wars period of Macross history. Robotech adapted the Unification Wars as the Global Civil War, so naturally that carried over too.

[Jefffar]

From the Stars also has the MiM-31 not making it's combat debut until the very end of the Global War. Fokker and his squadron mates weren't sue what they were when they tangled over the pacific.

[glitterboy2098]

From the Stars also has the MiM-31 not making it's combat debut until the very end of the Global War. Fokker and his squadron mates weren't sue what they were when they tangled over the pacific.

which makes for a bit of a clash with the RPG's write up, where we find out nations in Asia have been using them a bunch during the war.

[RobotechMaster]

I always regarded the EACPS in this context to be more a terrorist organization playing with the Imperial Japanese term to mess with peoples' heads to make it look like they represented a larger or more formidable international organization than they really were(sorta like G.i. Joe's COBRA if one must get that cheesy).

Actually yes, EACPS has had precedence in real world events. In 1970s, there's several inter-related left wing Japanese terrorists groups the likes of East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, Japanese Red Army & United Red Army.

Japanese Red Army terrorists even participated together with Middle Eastern outfits, and the famed Tamil Tigers Eelam of Sri Lanka.

[xunk16]

Kinda my point, actually... Robotech shows us a 2009 where cell phones, CDs, and other modern tech we take for granted DOESN'T EXIST. If the break point were farther back in the past, that would account for things like that.

The problem with this logic is that it is backwards
It takes something that did not exist when the show was created, and uses it as a justification for why the world must be different.

There are a number of problems here.
1) the first is that we dont know that the technology isnt there.
2) we dont know WHY the technology isnt there, if it isnt
3) it predicates the idea that those technologies will never be invented via parallel processes in any world (for cell phones for example the idea that the invention of personal communications technology is some how a historical anomoly and that most other worlds will not do so... but WILL be able to built all the other devices of the same tech seems... unsound)
4) it worse, assumes that a far past break point will some how have the world be almost the same... except for a few sytalistic changes. The sad fact is that with one or two exceptions (and none of them are in anime as far as I know) IP worlds are NOT thought out strictly. They do NOT have people doing detailed "what if this happens, what are all the ripple on effects". Instead you simply say "oh yeah, I want this, this and that" like at a buffet. You dont have someone who is in the back doing the research to figure out what cultural changes would be needed to turn the selections you picked into the normal dinner meal....

Thus there is no need to presume a break point 50+ years back and then try and figure out how to rewrite all of world history from that point on.
You can put minor break points in at the points where things are obviously diverging and a LOT of the differences vanish in the glare of "artistic licence"
Sure they could have had easy personal communications in Robotech/Macross... but if they DID then most of the storylines would have to be changed as it would be too easy to by pass the communications gaps that power much of the narative. And thus any world with such tech would NOT be Robotech/Macross... the tech has to go in the interests of having the desired story.

Oh well... Your subject brought me here because I was personally involved in it at the moment, and this post was sufficiently interesting for me to answer.
You sirs, have justified my creation of this here account. Let's try to make it as useful as I can.

First, let's just say I'm not an old time fan as many here sounds to be. (Which doesn't means I haven't fallen in love with the product. But I'm not on the level to quote years of plane being in service as evidence. You guys are kinda awesome.) Me and my group of players fell on a copy of RRT in a store by luck and eventually managed to grab the full 1st and 2nd ed of the RPG just before it became a relic. (Including the Gold 2nd hardcover. ^^) As far as the game goes, there is certainly holes to be plugged in the continuity in order for it to be as coherent as some other we have played in in the past. Thus... we did invest in tracking back the old comics and novels. And even then... I've had quite a bit of research to do online, in order to create from bits and pieces the missing parts. (Basically, we plan to do the whole thing from the Global Civil War to the Shadow Chronicle in one multi-character campaign with time passing faster in downtime. It was the only way to agree on all the different character concepts our group came up with.) Now... I've just finished to cram all that data into my head as well as customizing missing parts from the books to better emulate the missing era from the game; so please excuse my possible confusion in sources.
And, of course, personal elaborations...

As interesting as the idea to create a whole alternate continuity going back to WWII, I personally don't think such a thing is necessary. In that, I rather follow in the footsteps of Tim Wing (writer for Mecha Journal) who did compile a full timeline of the events of the "original" Robotech. (Meaning prior to Titan Re-Imagining.) In fact, I'm rather surprised to see no one quoting his works on here.
As we understand and plan to play it, the Global Civil War was just that... a state in which the whole world was engulfed in minor conflicts to the point where alliances and politics became too muddy for most to care. Not a world war per say, but rather a phenomenon by which a whole generation knew only war. A time so bloody that it became common for kids to get drafted, or civilians to work directly for local militia in exchange for food and protection. The world got progressively smaller as the people in it lost track of the big picture, rather trusting the newly arrived soldier group than their own governing body.

Like Tim Wing, I think it would be rather justified to think of it as a Cold War gone terribly wrong. In this way, we can use as evidence the story of Edwards and Roy Fokker, which claimed that "they changed sides so many time, it became hard to track" (I think this is from the RNU).
One could either see this as a degradation of military structures to the point of whole units turning mercenary in order to survive, or simply the Big Brother phenomenon of having last week's villain suddenly turning out to be your best friend. Either way, it clearly spell for us the picture of confused governing bodies trying to get by on dwindling budget estimates, as the troops grows ever more confused about the goal / objective of their respective forces.

Another supporting point for this theory would stand by Gloval being both friend and enemy with admiral Hayes. Or again, Gloval recounting the blatant act of treason from Admiral Hayes having to steal resources from his own superiors in order to feed his troops. In fact, the whole recruiting of Gloval by the U.N. seems a bit to me like the scenario from "A Desert Called Peace" by Tom Kratman (Unrelated to Robotech, but still good military sci-fi...), meaning that a collaborating POW with great experience and better loyalties from his men and government could get to be recruited in order to put down the flames of the conflict.

Which brings me to another topic I'm surprised to not see mentioned here.
In the old comic continuity (Return to Macross), we actually have a few other to put back together with the EBSIS (grown from the late Soviet collapse) and the Neasians (coming from the potentially re-formed Pan-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, as their name using the root "neo" suggest).

- The Neo-Tsarist : Who exists as at war with the Soviets. Meaning that the Russians were going through a civil war themselves, probably from the same tensions that eventually lead to the end of the Red Regime in the RW.
- The Sons of the Constitution : While I think I remember at least a second group like this one mentioned, I would have to get back to the comic in order to name it. (And my wife is already waiting... So I have to write faster.) From memory, there were a group of right radicals centred around the idea that the US should drop the U.N. altogether thus ending the participation of much of north America from the war. So here we go again with a second civil war in the states, separated in (probably) three parts vying for power; as the main one assemble its coalition to encounter the Soviet in their final battle in Mexico (Tim Wing's Timeline).
- The Exclusionists : My favourite... Still trying to achieve political secession from the U.N. during the next era (Return to Macross), they are actually British based! Which means that at some point Europe would have managed to get out of the cold war / global civil war by proxy, and oppose directly what the U.N. was slowly turning into : basically a regime as fascist as the recently felled Nazis. One world, one nation, one language, one culture... certainly something the Brits could be afraid of, as the current RW events shows for a version of the world not governed by the Brits themselves.
Even then tough, you'd probably find at least a part of Europe (and the 1980s UKs) not happy to turn their backs to the nuclear powered U.R.S.S. or U.S.A.
- The Lemurians : At some point, the conflict became such an hell that a nation of submarine crews defectors was born. Ok, it's extreme, but it certainly speaks a lot about the kind of Dark Age we are looking at. Something that would remain a puzzle for historians of centuries to come... even without counting the Zentraedi Rain of Death.

So there you have it. What happens if the Yalta accord, stating that the Russian and the US should never fire a shot at each other during the Cold War, was utterly destroyed in the face of public revolts against the ever growing drain of proxy wars fought around the globe for NOTHING. You'd basically have all the hippies succeeding not only in overthrowing Nixon, but starting their own territorial conflict over the defence of their civil disobedience.
Now... I don't pretend to be a history teacher, born in 1989 myself.
But I recall a few movies about the time which seems to depict the world full of "liberation groups". Basically civil militias stockpiling ammo in prevision of a third world war. Or supposedly "pacifists" organization portrayed as protecting their members with Ak-47s.
Don't forget, also, that Dr.Vaudell's sect must be able to seem inoffensive enough until "Clones" and "Mordecai". Which seems to imply that the Robotech universe also had its share of crazy cults during the 70s to 90s. These guys bought an island able to get military sized funding... and no one cared?

So... what happens to the cold war if the big three suddenly collapse on themselves?
You'd certainly have a Global Civil War.
The contras in the south, the first and second Indochine Wars, the golf wars, all of those "little" wars for keeping a line suddenly turning free.
All of these little nations, otherwise kept in place by either the Soviets or the Us; suddenly able to trade weapons and blows at the same time.
Chaos. Bloody chaos.

So... Where does the Neasians fits, you wonder? Well, simple.
With no one to keep Japan in check, it would be quite possible that some of the old timers would want to resurrect a "strong Asia" to protect themselves from the chaos of the world. Typical ancient time Japanese answer to the violence of the occidentals. (Retiring 200 years and all that jazz...)
Now, let's just say for a moment that suddenly, they aren't the only one interested.
Cambodia and Vietnam certainly wants their independence. Why not Tibet while we're at it.
And the Tienanmen incident in Hong Kong during the 80's could well provoke such a shift.
The people's republic would suddenly find itself trapped between the Soviet (still sore that they couldn't be the rulers), and all these little places tired of either Chinese or US domination.

I'm uncertain about North Korea though... Would they enter the fray from the side of the Chinese, or the Neasians?
Well, considering that China would still be communist, and that Edwards was clearly paid handsomely as mercenary by the Neasians in the RNU... Id's say it could be possible that the Neo Co-Prosperity Sphere would be a capitalist power. (We don't know really... but they'd have to convince most of Asia to change side.)
In that light, the DPRK's dynasty of great leaders could well be balancing their options between China and the Soviet.

And then, just when everyone is on the verge of starting to throw nuclear missiles to clear the air... The SDF-1 happens.

As for the AUL, it might be just me... but Return to Macross lead me to think Edwards was a part of it. It could have been a shadow alliance of nations trying to pull a fast one against the U.N. alliance just in order to have some good news on hand to calm the people at home. Or... To create their own "shadow U.N.".
OR at least is started that way... Then there is the Tim Wing "Unification War" era.
Being a mix between the countries trying to get out of the economic enslavement to the top secret Macross, real terrorists threats, false terrorists cover-ups of alien attacks, martial law being the norm, and Robotechnology's witness having to be pacified. (See, the Faithful; eventually the "Church of Recurring Prophecies".)

In that point of view...

1) While we don't know if the technology for global networks and cellphones was ever invented in that universe, we can certainly claim that it wouldn't have been a priority. It's inventors would probably have been ruined and dead before doing anything of value. (Just think of the death tolls if none of the cold war conflict had ended!) And even if it did existed, the newly founded global government of the one true Earth would probably have been against such a thing.
Revolutionary able to organize on a new system that only a few understand? While there is some examples of Hacker culture in the Robotech comics, it's all very dated indeed. And they certainly doesn't seem to have much opposition, even when getting access to military projects. In that light, the Globalist would have been hardly pressed to care for a network of satellite they cannot pay and which would in turn let the barely pacified people come back organized to bite them in the proverbial bacon.
Hence, no... cellphones were probably never invented. And the robot telephone we see are only the attempt to make the Echelon program the biggest telecom of the new U.N.!
2) I think I've found a possible explanation. See 1.
3) Cellphones would probably have been a thing if it ever came to the economy regaining enough momentum for that. But the difficulties in travel and reduced population after the Zentraedi Rain of Death made the enterprise unprofitable. The reconstruction era saw only one civilian satellite being financed, and even then to track malcontents using Lin Minmei as bait. It was then followed by using E.V.E. as a propaganda / surveillance device in order to keep the people quietly in tune with the military agenda of the time. Then you have the Robotech Masters...
If the ASC had trouble to finance some of its own projects for defence... better encrypted and armoured radios for soldiers would have been more of a priority.
As for cellphone under the Invid... Well. That is self-explanatory...
But what of the humans on tirol you ask?
The young people of the UEEF never had the chance to get a civilian experience. They grew in a world where there is intercoms everywhere and soon to be alien tech to help. We also have no example of video games ever taking the front since there is not much place for entertaining outside of show business. Remark that there is not even one example of a movie filmed on Tirol. I'd wager the young ones wouldn't even have a proto-internet to guide them toward what we have today. By this point, the UEEF's setting is simply too remote to get the incentive for the technology.
4) I... can't argue with that.

And now, with this said... I must go back to the RW myself.
Soon to write my own bg for my Neasian defector.

[Seto Kaiba]

Oh well... Your subject brought me here because I was personally involved in it at the moment, and this post was sufficiently interesting for me to answer.
You sirs, have justified my creation of this here account. Let's try to make it as useful as I can.

First, let's just say I'm not an old time fan as many here sounds to be. (Which doesn't means I haven't fallen in love with the product. But I'm not on the level to quote years of plane being in service as evidence. You guys are kinda awesome.) Me and my group of players fell on a copy of RRT in a store by luck and eventually managed to grab the full 1st and 2nd ed of the RPG just before it became a relic. (Including the Gold 2nd hardcover. ^^)

Huh, a new fan. Haven’t seen one of those in ages.

As far as the game goes, there is certainly holes to be plugged in the continuity in order for it to be as coherent as some other we have played in in the past. Thus... we did invest in tracking back the old comics and novels.

Eech… um… I actually feel kinda bad having to say this after you went to the trouble of finding all that old material, but the pre-2001 Robotech comic books and the novelization by Brian Daley and James Luceno (under the pseudonym “Jack McKinney”) are all non-canon.

Back in the early 2000’s, Harmony Gold rebooted Robotech and threw out everything from before 2001 except the 85 episode TV series. Their reason for dismissing the McKinney novel series, the old comics, and even the original edition of the RPG, was their poor quality and inconsistencies with themselves, each other, and the Robotech setting in general. They’re essentially Robotech in name only. Many of the original characters, events, and story arcs they depict don’t exist in Robotech proper.

(Their reasons for that were likely not purely creative, as the authors of the old comic books had frequently committed copyright infringement in their work for Robotech. Easier and safer by far to disown that material than risk lawsuits from the likes of Sunrise, Production IG, Tatsunoko, Toho, Big West, or the 800lb gorilla that is 20th Century Fox.)

(Basically, we plan to do the whole thing from the Global Civil War to the Shadow Chronicle in one multi-character campaign with time passing faster in downtime. It was the only way to agree on all the different character concepts our group came up with.)

That’s a popular one. I think every RPG group does that at least once.

As interesting as the idea to create a whole alternate continuity going back to WWII, I personally don't think such a thing is necessary.

You only have to go back that far if you’re looking to resolve ALL of the inconsistencies between the Robotech setting and real world history. This is mainly the fault of one canon comic that established that Roy served with the US Navy VF-84 “Skulls” in 1999… the inherited squadron name “Jolly Rogers” goes back to ‘43 and VF-17.

In that, I rather follow in the footsteps of Tim Wing (writer for Mecha Journal) who did compile a full timeline of the events of the "original" Robotech. (Meaning prior to Titan Re-Imagining.) In fact, I'm rather surprised to see no one quoting his works on here.

There’s a good reason you won’t see Tim Wing’s site being quoted… it’s fan fiction, not anything like an accurate Robotech reference work.

Tim’s site is very detailed, but most of the detail is a product of his own imagination rather than being from any official source. He’s got a lot of inaccuracies in his coverage of Robotech’s official materials, he’s mixed in stuff from non-canon Robotech materials like the cancelled sequel projects, stuff he came up with himself, and content borrowed from other franchises like the Japanese Macross franchise, Megazone 23, or concept art from development of the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.

Sadly, there really aren’t any good Robotech reference sites out there. The few that are still around mostly indulge in similar shenanigans, while most have faded into history with the end of Yahoo! Geocities freehosting.

As we understand and plan to play it, the Global Civil War was just that... a state in which the whole world was engulfed in minor conflicts to the point where alliances and politics became too muddy for most to care. Not a world war per say, but rather a phenomenon by which a whole generation knew only war. A time so bloody that it became common for kids to get drafted, or civilians to work directly for local militia in exchange for food and protection. The world got progressively smaller as the people in it lost track of the big picture, rather trusting the newly arrived soldier group than their own governing body.

That’s… pretty dark. Like Yoshiyuki “Kill ‘em all” Tomino dark. Way darker than Robotech ever hinted at that era being. Their presentation of the Global Civil War was much more along the lines of a series of skirmishes and brushfire conflicts that flared up and died out which kept the major powers busy but otherwise didn’t intrude on life all that much. It might or might not have been the US and Russia antagonizing each other through third parties given that the only detailed depiction of events during the conflict involved a US carrier pursuing a Russian sub in international waters. Rick grew up a long way from war, as a happy and well-adjusted kid whose dad ran a flying circus.

(The Global Civil War in Robotech was a reworking of the Unification Wars period from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. That was, likewise, a period where a bunch of little armed conflicts sprang up around the world… albeit in response to the formation of a world government instead of before one formed.)

Like Tim Wing, I think it would be rather justified to think of it as a Cold War gone terribly wrong.

Really, I don’t think it’s all that different from the cold war we actually had… with both sides trying to arm their allies against each other and fight via proxy, like Russia putting nukes in Cuba or the US government arming Afghani rebels against the Soviets.

Another supporting point for this theory would stand by Gloval being both friend and enemy with admiral Hayes.

That’s one of those weird, eccentric moments that came from Robotech dicking around with the original story during the adaptation. They were never enemies in the original, and met when they served together on the UN Navy submarine Marco Polo. (He was Italian originally, not Russian.) There’s actually a whole short story devoted to their daring supply heist.

Robotech turned him into a Russian submarine commander that Hayes was hunting. It isn’t clear if he actually knew Hayes until after the UEG formed.

Which brings me to another topic I'm surprised to not see mentioned here.
In the old comic continuity (Return to Macross), we actually have a few other to put back together with the EBSIS (grown from the late Soviet collapse) and the Neasians (coming from the potentially re-formed Pan-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, as their name using the root "neo" suggest).

As noted above, the pre-2001 comics are all non-canon… factions like the Eastern Block Soviet Independent States don’t exist in Robotech proper. (The Evil Russians thing was very 80’s, but it was pretty much played out by the time Harmony Gold rebooted Robotech in the early 2000’s.)

So... what happens to the cold war if the big three suddenly collapse on themselves?
You'd certainly have a Global Civil War.

But, canonically, the United States of America and Russian Federation are still around and world leaders in 1999 in Robotech. The Global Civil War seems to have been more along the lines of an escalation of the proxy wars that were already happening.

Well, considering that China would still be communist, and that Edwards was clearly paid handsomely as mercenary by the Neasians in the RNU…

IIRC, post-reboot Edwards was a true blue US soldier… to the extent that he looks like Guile from Street Fighter in his post-reboot canon comic appearance.

As for the AUL, it might be just me... but Return to Macross lead me to think Edwards was a part of it.

He canonically is, in the post-reboot materials. He was their spy/saboteur on Macross Island in the 2000s, responsible for undermining development of the VF-1 and assisting in the hijacking of ARMD-01. (His handler was none other than then-Colonel Leonard, who orchestrated hijacking ARMD-01 and the destruction of Antarctic Base with a reflex warhead before being stopped by Roy in the VF-1 prototype.)

It could have been a shadow alliance of nations trying to pull a fast one against the U.N. alliance just in order to have some good news on hand to calm the people at home. Or... To create their own "shadow U.N.".

Exactly what the Anti-Unification League were after in Robotech is never really made clear.

The canon comic “From the Stars” went so far as to imply that some, possibly all, of their activity may be a false flag operation by the UEDF to justify the continued military buildup on Earth that was actually meant to defend against an alien invasion without admitting that hostile aliens were a thing.

They too were adapted from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross story, in which they were an alliance (the Anti-Unification Alliance) of various national partisan groups who were opposed to the formation of the Unification Government as the supreme governing body for the Earth and participated heavily the Unification Wars until they fell apart in 2008.

OR at least is started that way... Then there is the Tim Wing "Unification War" era.
Being a mix between the countries trying to get out of the economic enslavement to the top secret Macross, real terrorists threats, false terrorists cover-ups of alien attacks, martial law being the norm, and Robotechnology's witness having to be pacified. (See, the Faithful; eventually the "Church of Recurring Prophecies".)

Tim is borrowing from other franchises there… partly from Macross, in which the AUL’s Macross counterpart (the Anti-Unification Alliance) was a collection of small groups who opposed the Unification Government for various reasons like paranoia, national pride, simple revenge for lives lost accidentally or by design in suppression of terrorist activity, opposition to government policies mandating international technology sharing, or the high economic cost of restoring the wrecked alien ship, building a massive space fleet, colonizing the moon and Mars, etc.

1) While we don't know if the technology for global networks and cellphones was ever invented in that universe, we can certainly claim that it wouldn't have been a priority.

It’s equally possible that cell phones do exist, but were prohibited on Macross Island because it was one huge military base where top secret development was constantly being done.

(That said, when Macross’s creators revisited the original story in the manga Macross the First, cell phones and other modern advances were present… their absence was simply your average case of zeerust in a series made in 1982.)

3) Cellphones would probably have been a thing if it ever came to the economy regaining enough momentum for that. But the difficulties in travel and reduced population after the Zentraedi Rain of Death made the enterprise unprofitable.

I’d probably attribute it more to Earth’s manufacturing infrastructure being geared up to produce war materiel for the Expeditionary Forces… consumer electronics aren’t exactly high priority for that kind of situation. Also, Earth was a de facto military dictatorship so y’know… probably easier to control public opinion and manipulate information for propaganda purposes if the public can’t communicate as freely.

It was then followed by using E.V.E. as a propaganda / surveillance device in order to keep the people quietly in tune with the military agenda of the time.

That whole plot never happened… they scrubbed that from the timeline even before the reboot, due to Robotech: the Movie bombing in test screenings, being pulled from release, and HG letting the Megazone 23 Part 1 license expire.

The young people of the UEEF never had the chance to get a civilian experience. They grew in a world where there is intercoms everywhere and soon to be alien tech to help. We also have no example of video games ever taking the front since there is not much place for entertaining outside of show business. Remark that there is not even one example of a movie filmed on Tirol.

Well, yeah… you won’t find anything like that because there weren’t any (adult) civilians… the only career path was military service, so the entire population were soldiers and their children.

[xunk16]

Oh... My post passed!
After reading about necro-posting and some such about cannon material I was very afraid to be silenced here for a while.
Thanks for the answer. And also thanks to the moderator who let in my apparently "gauche" sourced post. While digging around for a year, preparing our game and building hundreds of pages of un-publishable stats for "missing" ships and mecha, I must admit I had developed a weird relationship with the attitude on most Robotech sites and forums that do still exists.
It started to feel like a weird timing and desperate era to become a Robotech fan indeed.
It was a bit like meeting this new friend and then learning it was dying from cancer with everyone knowing except you.

Huh, a new fan. Haven’t seen one of those in ages.

Maybe this is mainly due to the difficulty there is in starting a neophyte conversation when so much has become "taboo" over the ages.
Everything seems to be said, all must be quoted directly from hardly available material... And though any RPG campaign will eventually need to invent something in order to get out of a dark place, we hardly see anyone using the gaming perspective when speaking about the franchise. I would guess there might be some other new fans out there... but they might get afraid of what their sempaï might think!
Plus, most of the conversations that do enter healthy debates rarely quits this Macross / Robotech dichotomy.
Having a true conversation about Robotech, by itself, seems almost like a lost art form.
What does happens if one does like the idea of "neo-Feudalism" in the Master Saga?
Or is more interested with what happens with the Zentraedi and the Tirloeans after their fall?
Or if someone, who do recognize the challenge of producing decent animation in the early 2000s economy, did like "Shadow Chronicle", despite the missing characters in a certain scene for what is probably some more legal shenanigans?
All things that were all only in Robotech.

"Sent in Spoiler to avoid humongous scrolling of side commentaries"

Spoiler:

Eech… um… I actually feel kinda bad having to say this after you went to the trouble of finding all that old material, but the pre-2001 Robotech comic books and the novelization by Brian Daley and James Luceno (under the pseudonym “Jack McKinney”) are all non-canon.

Back in the early 2000’s, Harmony Gold rebooted Robotech and threw out everything from before 2001 except the 85 episode TV series. Their reason for dismissing the McKinney novel series, the old comics, and even the original edition of the RPG, was their poor quality and inconsistencies with themselves, each other, and the Robotech setting in general. They’re essentially Robotech in name only. Many of the original characters, events, and story arcs they depict don’t exist in Robotech proper.

(Their reasons for that were likely not purely creative, as the authors of the old comic books had frequently committed copyright infringement in their work for Robotech. Easier and safer by far to disown that material than risk lawsuits from the likes of Sunrise, Production IG, Tatsunoko, Toho, Big West, or the 800lb gorilla that is 20th Century Fox.)

Yeah... I know. It is kinda crazy.
But once we got RRT and were awaiting patiently for wave 2 to get out of development hell, we (me and my little player group) got curious. When the announce came in that the RPG would be discontinued, we sincerely asked ourselves; do we take the risk of getting serious about this? So we ordered the RPG (without knowing anything about the Palladium system), then the anime (even if we already had only a passing interest in Macross), then found out they didn't quite matched with one another. It was only after finding out about the "Tommy Yune" Era that we understood why. And by that point, we had already plunged in the novels and old comics. Which do have this amazing cloak and dagger feel to them... That and a very baroque touch on the topic.

Then again, Robotech is kinda crazy by itself, right? By all legal standards, it shouldn't even exists... yet it does. From a removed point of view, what Robotech is at its core seems debatable. I guess it was an audio drama put to the rhythm of borrowed animation. But then, what can be considered the "true" Robotech? Outside of the few movies and movie segments that were directly adapted for it, i mean. I guess, philosophically, we just felt that the RNU was the only completed version of that precise art piece. (This could change...) To the point whence, if Harmony Gold would have chosen to create their own mecha in order to save the story, we might have understood and still jumped in. (Who knows where the live movie might take it, or the next Titan issue for that matter... it seems saving the designs became at some point more important than saving the story.)
That is were I can't totally agree that the old comics are Robotech "in name only". From a production perspective, they could arguably by judged to be even more Robotech than the first draft the anime represents. It might have been a rejected attempt, but it still was an attempt to make Robotech its own thing; somewhat less dependable on the re-purposed and limited source / inspiration material.
Yet, it's easy to say this in 2019. All that was original is already done. So one story being inspired by another seems totally unavoidable nowadays. At least Robotech never pretended to be its source material.
I guess following the battle since 1985, things must look very different indeed. I apologize if I ruffle some feathers. It isn't easy speaking about Robotech rationally.

But above all, from an audience perspective : it existed. Even with Macek getting rid of "the Movie"... It still exists. It still feels more Robotech than plugging holes with only our imperfect knowledge of the narrative and basing it on absolutely nothing at all. We're not looking to do a roughly improvised campaign, we can do that anytime (we just got out of one), we are looking for a Robotech campaign... a hard thing to define.

I did notice they were continuity issues, especially when keeping track of the timeline. While the sequence of event seemed clear enough to every author, the timing of said events always appeared to be a point of debate. Except "Rubicon" though... (my head still hurt trying to follow that one) It mostly fits as a sequential narrative. (Albeit one including a multiversal loop with some multiversal singularities happening from one universe to another.) But as a RPG group of players, we came from a mindset of complicated and "integrated in lore" backgrounds. So... Choosing between a complete timeline, which made sense in terms of story telling, and an incomplete timeline, leaving the Gm to invent most of the justifications for the way it differs from any possible research results? It wasn't a choice really. Our Gm knows we will ask pertinent but yet unsolved questions, at inappropriate timings, and that it will help by this point to have the luggage that represent those authors who came before us.

I can understand why some of the comics would deserve their reputation as "poor quality" material. It is hard to miss. Yet their utter rejection by Harmony Gold leaves me confused. While this was made perfectly clear for "the movie", or the RNU and its thinking caps; it remains a mystery to why an RPG, which itself had to be written on the first reboot of such comics, including "Prelude to Shadow Chronicles", would dismiss them. "Prelude" had even the Waltrips coming back, creating a sense that Robotech was going the way "Transformers" previously had for its comic canon.
Meaning that what was previously here in themes and names still existed, though could be slightly or completely different than in previously published material.

Hence my proposing here to include the "Global Civil War" factions to the debate.
Which could, or couldn't, be included in future material officially produced by Harmony Gold.
If I have sinned against some obscure ruling, please forgive me, I wasn't sure.
I was especially prompted to do so by the first post :

well, since it seems unlikely that HG will ever give us offical details on this timeperiod, and with the RPG gone OOP there isn't much chance of an RPG book on it, i guess we have to sort it out on our own.

Thus making it appear relevant to throw in stuff that was already done, albeit no longer static.

That’s a popular one. I think every RPG group does that at least once.

Damn... and there we felt so brave to tackle such an issue and all. XD
But I guess there is a reason. Robotech has this special relation with its narrative that other RPG or franchise doesn't.
With the most interesting spaces to play being these in-between era moments of instability.
It's really about getting stuck with the mess our forefathers left us, right? That and the power of evolution through mutual acceptance I guess.

You only have to go back that far if you’re looking to resolve ALL of the inconsistencies between the Robotech setting and real world history. This is mainly the fault of one canon comic that established that Roy served with the US Navy VF-84 “Skulls” in 1999… the inherited squadron name “Jolly Rogers” goes back to ‘43 and VF-17.

Oh... That becomes increasingly hard to debate with only the anime as "official" source. I kinda see your point better under that light.

There’s a good reason you won’t see Tim Wing’s site being quoted… it’s fan fiction, not anything like an accurate Robotech reference work.

Tim’s site is very detailed, but most of the detail is a product of his own imagination rather than being from any official source. He’s got a lot of inaccuracies in his coverage of Robotech’s official materials, he’s mixed in stuff from non-canon Robotech materials like the cancelled sequel projects, stuff he came up with himself, and content borrowed from other franchises like the Japanese Macross franchise, Megazone 23, or concept art from development of the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA.

Sadly, there really aren’t any good Robotech reference sites out there. The few that are still around mostly indulge in similar shenanigans, while most have faded into history with the end of Yahoo! Geocities freehosting.

And you are right again. I particularly cringed at the inclusion of Macross only material concerning space colonisation.
Nonetheless, there seem to have a particular point he did accurately research when doing his work; namely the separation between the Global Civil War era and the Unification War era. One being the passage from the Cold War into what could be described as WWIII (as referenced chronologically in the first robotech episode), and the other being the reconstruction era following the crash of the SDF-1.
It postulate that the U.N. won the war only because the SDF-1 crashed, but it also take the logical approach in saying not everyone would be happy to pay high military taxes to the U.E.G. without being told what it is for. As I recall, the VF-1 program was very hush-hush prior to 2009. Hence I also submit to the idea that the AUL would have been created to oppose the U.N. first, then survive as a terrorist organization financed by malcontents. (Not those yet.)
It would then serve as the perfect cover up for other incidents since, like we have seen in the real world, such terrorist group tends to have difficulties to act on an international level. In this, I don't feel like I'm straying too far from previous authors.

But... If I understand you correctly, you are saying that Robotech never had a name for the era following the close of the GCW and its fallout until the first Robotech War came knocking in 2009? That the "Unification War" era was only a Macross thing? So... Are we speaking of the whole era from 1994 to 2009 here?
You do address the point of those being two versions (Macross Vs Robotech) of the same conflict later in your answer, but I was under the impression that there were two "eras" globally accepted to have taken place before "the Macross Saga".

That’s… pretty dark. Like Yoshiyuki “Kill ‘em all” Tomino dark. Way darker than Robotech ever hinted at that era being.

I don't know... Los Angeles in ruins with soldiers raising kids to become hackers (comics) and Rick Hunter being a teenage soldier (anime) already looked like pretty desperate to me. In fact, having Max Sterling becoming a pilot despite being young and wearing what appears to be corrective glasses also looks very much like a depletion of the ranks has occurred. And while the last one could very well be imputed to the isolation of the SDF-1, there seem to remain this idea that these cases (Rick and Max) were socially acceptable.
While these instances of kid soldiers did happened in the RW, it was generally in desperate times following human resource depletion. (The Kids Crusade in the Dark Ages being probably the worst! Swiftly followed by the Nazi youths defending Berlin in WWII.) I don't think, or at least I wasn't under the impression, that kid soldiers would be a globally accepted thing nowadays. Except possibly (I haven't travelled there myself) in the middle-east after a bloody and very long, very confusing conflict.
I think I also remember the anime showing combat helicopters firing on civilians during the GCW...

Disambiguation in spoiler to save on scrolling.

Spoiler:

While it is true that Scott Bernard did what he could to protect Annie from the carnage, the "New Gen" segment of the show was in itself pretty dark indeed. Borderline "Mad Max" dark. Dana's early relationships in the novels were... edgy. And what about "The Master Saga" seeing a whole generation of young adults having known nothing but war on a whole planet?
Overall... I'm not familiar with "Kill'em All" Tomino, but the Zentraedi Rain of Death alone should leave one staggered about how dark it really is.
And does any version of the story stutters, or insist, on the global depression that should be following? I don't recall such an instance.
Instead, Robotech shows us a version of mankind hardened by war to the point of seeing reconstruction time as being periodical happenings.
Surely, these would have been people that would have known they were the lucky ones.
People who learned the hard way how to cope with disasters.
While arguably someone could interpret the first Robotech War as being enough... it seems clear to me that these people were already pretty hardy and resourceful in 1999. The lack of separatist thought after 2012 also points out to a people not only imagining, but knowing what such a choice would incite.

Of course we have the malcontent uprising, but its more about individuals not fitting in the new world order than creating a new nation. More fallout than schism. You do have some civilians - still depending on the military installed post-war industry - starting their own polities, but no new "official" military defector groups trying to topple the UEDF to replace it or keep it away. Even the Army of the Southern Cross was aiming at a world government and not a return to a divided world. It did not include the existence of a separate UEDF in its philosophy, turning it more into an inside coup.

Once the older generation remembering the GCW starts disapearing however, you feel the new generation devoid of such scrupulous tought. Under the Southern Cross' heel, there was some dissension and re-occurence of separatism. Hence the return of the EBSIS. Or, if one doesn't take that argument as valid, you could always go with the fall of the ASC leading to no global force being ready for the Invid. A division did occur, but only in a generation raised in "peace".

On the other hand, if the Global Civil War hadn't been worst than the real events of the Cold War... the RW points us toward a world were frontier are still pretty much seen as an unavoidable evil (or good, see Claude Levi-Strauss). From a certain perspective, it looks like the endless stray of proxy conflicts never really ended. They just switched shape. Something only allowed by the ever distant nature of war from the countries that indulge in them.
On the other hand, where devastation has indeed visited, be it a storm or a war, you usually see people band together vowing this to never happen again. Something that would have facilitated the rise of the U.E.G. that much more.

Their presentation of the Global Civil War was much more along the lines of a series of skirmishes and brushfire conflicts that flared up and died out which kept the major powers busy but otherwise didn’t intrude on life all that much.

Then... I haven't lived the end of the Cold War. So maybe a series of skirmishes and brushfire, always this close to open a bigger conflict, would have already been enough. But then, how would one create a narrative leaving the doors open for the U.E.G. - keeping its main threat a secret - while the world would probably be desperate to get out of an economical crisis afterwards? If the Cold War simply grew but never ended prior to 1999, how many weapons and crafts would have been stockpiled for nothing? How many industries would have closed? What would have happened to crime rate outside of the little paradise that had become Macross Island? Surely there would still have been some pockets of troubles waiting the Zentraedi's arrival...

If the same enemy (the AUL) was the main villain from the GCW to the Unification War (even if just in simulated cover ups) during the Macross reconstruction; wouldn't had it seemed overly hypocritical to state that the war was over? Wouldn't countries accused of helping the AUL be defending themselves openly? After all, such an enemy should come from somewhere... and a small scale conflict would leave plenty of satellites. Wouldn't the years following the crash of the SDF-1 have been worst, not better?
The rationale of Robotech goes rather the other way. The SDF-1 remains presented as the great "shut up" which fell from the sky, directly inspired / taken from Macross and possibly related, as a trope, to Dr.Manhattan in Watchmen.
The AUL continuing, and not only publicly appearing after that point, would look unbelievable... no?

It might or might not have been the US and Russia antagonizing each other through third parties given that the only detailed depiction of events during the conflict involved a US carrier pursuing a Russian sub in international waters. Rick grew up a long way from war, as a happy and well-adjusted kid whose dad ran a flying circus.

Then again... Rick grew on a circus directed by a guy who despised soldiers / war. The few instances where we do have flashback of this time period shows the circus either moving, or having difficulty coming by a paying audience. One could also understand this as Pops Hunter doing all he can to move his representation out of the fighting and thus preserve the innocence of Rick. Making him one of the most devoted Dad out there.
As for the US and Russia antagonizing, it was also made clear that the purpose of this chase might have been dubious and involving a third party at least.
Why would they play the game when even in war time they were very clear about when they weren't responsible for some perceived aggression, going often as far as helping to resolve the perceived threat?

(The Global Civil War in Robotech was a reworking of the Unification Wars period from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross. That was, likewise, a period where a bunch of little armed conflicts sprang up around the world… albeit in response to the formation of a world government instead of before one formed.)

So... Should one consider that the current canon of Robotech is more like Macross? Or more like Robotech?
Was it a global invasion of U.N. troops and plane bombings all over the world?
Or was it what we were told... a global civil war?
Who came up with that name anyway?
Are you implying that the "civil" part of it might only have been something coined by the U.E.G. to enforce the idea of the earth as only one nation?

That’s one of those weird, eccentric moments that came from Robotech dicking around with the original story during the adaptation.

Though the Macross version of events IS less convoluted... a Robotech game would probably have to go with all the "dicking around" being part of history.
At least the parts that are still available to the official material.
So until the dissolution of Robotech in Macross... I guess we do have to include a few eccentric moments in our tentative to bring that precise universe to life.
It is weird. It is extreme.
Mind-blowing, even, that such a conflict could even happen.
As previously said... Robotech IS kinda crazy.

But, canonically, the United States of America and Russian Federation are still around and world leaders in 1999 in Robotech.

I seem to have missed something... The U.S. are still here? Wasn't the whole planet re-organized into quadrants with Ontario even becoming it's own country and all? Wasn't the whole U.E.G. thing about stripping the diverse people from their cultural / political identity in order to put a definitive end to war?

IIRC, post-reboot Edwards was a true blue US soldier… to the extent that he looks like Guile from Street Fighter in his post-reboot canon comic appearance.

Oh... so that was where that change was coming from. Good to know.

The canon comic “From the Stars” went so far as to imply that some, possibly all, of their activity may be a false flag operation by the UEDF to justify the continued military buildup on Earth that was actually meant to defend against an alien invasion without admitting that hostile aliens were a thing.

Would that theory still include the UEDF creating themselves planes identified as AUL to attack themselves?
Thus disposing of real opponents and creating a climate of mistrust? That would indeed be a great idea to exploit at a table!
It sounds a tad bit too modern for its time of publication though. Then again, we never really know the real state of imperialism and the supremacy of the U.N. during the GCW, even less afterwards. Especially if we clean the table of old material.

They too were adapted from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross story, in which they were an alliance (the Anti-Unification Alliance) of various national partisan groups who were opposed to the formation of the Unification Government as the supreme governing body for the Earth and participated heavily the Unification Wars until they fell apart in 2008.

Damn... and I thought that part, or its interpretation at least, was Robotech.

(That said, when Macross’s creators revisited the original story in the manga Macross the First, cell phones and other modern advances were present… their absence was simply your average case of zeerust in a series made in 1982.)

And... I put my proverbial foot in my mouth again. We just finished our character sheets recently.
The RPG does have Cellphones in starting equipment, which as far a a published source for the purpose of this forum is an indication of such technologies being present.
Albeit very big and clumsy 90s cellphones, but nonetheless.

I’d probably attribute it more to Earth’s manufacturing infrastructure being geared up to produce war materiel for the Expeditionary Forces… consumer electronics aren’t exactly high priority for that kind of situation. Also, Earth was a de facto military dictatorship so y’know… probably easier to control public opinion and manipulate information for propaganda purposes if the public can’t communicate as freely.

Agreed... But we're not only speaking about consumer electronics here.
After the ZRoD, everything was more or less destroyed. This is was made Protoculture the first energy source on earth during the reconstruction / malcontent era. (Yes, these.) Not only would one have had to reconstruct the towers and satellite needed for the cellphones to work, but they would also have to create the assembly lines, transports and shops for these products. The situation with the priority of the Pioneer mission is the main economic factor I was using for my reasoning also.
However, this doesn't seem to have touched T.V. production, why? Ships and military bases do apparently need screens, which would means such assembly lines and enterprise covered by the expanse of the mission.
I guess one reasonable assumption would be to tell that companies went to the military to get funding, then would be privatized once their military contract was over.

That whole plot never happened… they scrubbed that from the timeline even before the reboot, due to Robotech: the Movie bombing in test screenings, being pulled from release, and HG letting the Megazone 23 Part 1 license expire.

[Sigh...] Since the recent development of the franchise... isn't this also the state of the Palladium released RPG and first-reboot comics?
Are fans of the defunct Robotech only like Unicorns living in the stories told by parents to children to put them to sleep?
Am I a dream?

Apologies for the humongous post. At least it is thorough?

[Seto Kaiba]

Oh... My post passed!
After reading about necro-posting and some such about cannon material I was very afraid to be silenced here for a while.

The moderation queue for the Newly Registered Users group didn’t always take so long to clear new posts, I can only assume there’s a lot of spambot activity lately. The mods are only interested in keeping the spambots out, so no worries about being silenced or anything along those lines.

It started to feel like a weird timing and desperate era to become a Robotech fan indeed.
It was a bit like meeting this new friend and then learning it was dying from cancer with everyone knowing except you.

Ah, yes… I suppose it would be a very awkward time to become a Robotech fan, given that the series will effectively cease to exist in a bit under a year and nine months. (634 days, when I wrote this post.)

Huh, a new fan. Haven’t seen one of those in ages.

Maybe this is mainly due to the difficulty there is in starting a neophyte conversation when so much has become "taboo" over the ages.
Everything seems to be said, all must be quoted directly from hardly available material... And though any RPG campaign will eventually need to invent something in order to get out of a dark place, we hardly see anyone using the gaming perspective when speaking about the franchise. I would guess there might be some other new fans out there... but they might get afraid of what their sempaï might think! [...]

My suspicion on that note would be that it probably has a lot more to do with it having been quite a long time since Robotech was last relevant to anyone or anything except a lawsuit.

It’s been over twelve years since the release of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, and that was the last serious attempt to move the story of Robotech forward. The last time it was on TV at a reasonable hour where someone might see it in North America was over sixteen years ago. It kind of wore out its novelty on streaming services fairly quickly too. There hasn’t been much going on to catch the eye of the passer-by, apart from the occasional lawsuit aimed at a more popular property like BattleTech or Transformers.

Having a true conversation about Robotech, by itself, seems almost like a lost art form.
What does happens if one does like the idea of "neo-Feudalism" in the Master Saga?
Or is more interested with what happens with the Zentraedi and the Tirloeans after their fall?
Or if someone, who do recognize the challenge of producing decent animation in the early 2000s economy, did like "Shadow Chronicle", despite the missing characters in a certain scene for what is probably some more legal shenanigans?
All things that were all only in Robotech.

Honestly, I’m not sure it was ever truly possible… so much of what passed for discourse even in the early years of the online Robotech fandom was flame wars over “true Robotech”, to get a group of Robotech fans to even agree what Robotech was was an uphill battle at the best of times and was often downright impossible.

It wasn’t until Harmony Gold rebooted the Robotech franchise and imposed a proper series canon that there was finally an objective value of truth that could be used as a foundation for an actual discussion of the content. Even then, it was still pretty difficult since the fandom was still very attached to the headcanon they’d spent over a decade coming up with. The official canon and actual input from Harmony Gold made it possible to have some of those discussions, but in turn the answers to the actual questions tended to be rather anticlimactic. A lot of the lines that fans spent years agonizing over turned out to be throwaway lines unconnected to anything that actually happened in the story (e.g. feudalism) or outright errors caused by rushed production. Questions about what happened to various factions like the Zentradi or Tirolians suddenly had entirely mundane answers (extinction and living as a UEEF protectorate, respectively).

There’ve been plenty of good talks about the challenges of new development for the franchise and its legal shenanigans, but since almost all of that is dictated by avoiding the possibility of lawsuits from Japan it’s impossible to talk about without getting into Robotech’s relation to Macross. That one factor alone has dictated most of the creative decisions in the various failed Robotech sequel efforts.

Spoiler:

[...] Then again, Robotech is kinda crazy by itself, right? By all legal standards, it shouldn't even exists... yet it does.

I’m not sure I’d go quite THAT far… Robotech’s existence isn’t a legal implausibility, it’s just a VERY impractical thing to do in this day in age. The practices that created it were already on their way out when the show was made, so it gets a lot more flak for being what it is than would otherwise be fair.

From a removed point of view, what Robotech is at its core seems debatable. I guess it was an audio drama put to the rhythm of borrowed animation. But then, what can be considered the "true" Robotech? Outside of the few movies and movie segments that were directly adapted for it, i mean.

From a legal standpoint? Almost none of it. The copyright Harmony Gold claims on the series is almost a joke, which covers little more than the dub audio track itself (but not most of what’s actually in it), some name changes, a small quantity of original music, and a few other smallish odds and ends.

Narratively? That’s what an official canon is for… to determine and identify what the true and official version of the story is. The version of the story that licensees are supposed to build all their products on, and that future works will continue and further develop. For Robotech, that’s the 85 episode TV series, the comics by DC/Wildstorm, and Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. That’s what dictates the contents of the RPG and other materials, for the most part.

I guess, philosophically, we just felt that the RNU was the only completed version of that precise art piece. (This could change...)

A rather odd view, given that Harmony Gold’s view is that it’s a heavily skewed and inaccurate version of the piece… it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the story of the TV series, and in a lot of places feels more like a Star Wars fic.

(Who knows where the live movie might take it, or the next Titan issue for that matter... it seems saving the designs became at some point more important than saving the story.)

“Nowhere”, I’m afraid… the movie isn’t going to be made. It never was. Warner Bros and Sony both only acquired the license because the series was a contemporary of Transformers, a property that Paramount was making serious bank on. It’s SOP for studios to buy up the rights to similar stories after a breakout hit like that simply to deny them to each other. There are too many legal complications vis a vis Macross to ever make the film.

Titan is off in lala land. I’m not sure they’re even trying to do a good job with it, each new issue seems to be more an excuse to show off how badly they’re failing to take the property seriously by tracing almost every character, “borrowing” material from other properties like Halo and The Matrix, etc. Even their “original” take on the VF design was stolen… they were tracing from stills of a CG model created by a Macross fan artist.

That is were I can't totally agree that the old comics are Robotech "in name only". From a production perspective, they could arguably by judged to be even more Robotech than the first draft the anime represents. It might have been a rejected attempt, but it still was an attempt to make Robotech its own thing; somewhat less dependable on the re-purposed and limited source / inspiration material.

I think you’re crediting them with a lot more artistic intent than was actually present. Most of the old comics were quick and dirty work licensees threw together on the fly to make a quick buck on a dirt-cheap license. That’s why they infringed on copyrights so heavily… they weren’t going to invest the time and energy in coming up with original designs and plots when it was easier to just ape the flavor of the month.

At least Robotech never pretended to be its source material.

Eech… um… actually, it did. Like, A LOT.

I don’t know what motivated him to do it, but Carl Macek told an awful lot of whoppers over the years to look important at convention panels. One of the most common early ones he told was that Robotech was the original version of the story, and that the animation was created for his series and then marketed separately in Japan as different shows. He also frequently (as in well into the 2000s) liked to falsely claim that sequels to the original Macross were drawing on his Robotech adaptation rather than the original. (He also frequently badmouthed the original creators of those shows.)

It’s only in the last couple years that Harmony Gold has finally started to come clean about the vast majority of what fans love about Robotech having come from the original shows, not the adaptation… though almost everyone already knew.

But above all, from an audience perspective : it existed. Even with Macek getting rid of "the Movie"... It still exists.

That’s the thing… in multiple senses, it really doesn’t exist.

The movie that was made was absolutely not the story that was written for it, due to Tatsunoko telling Macek on no uncertain terms he was forbidden from using Macross in it. That sunk pretty much everything Macek’d planned for the story, like the tie-ins to Robotech II. (B.D. Andrews and T.R. Edwards were originally the same character, same with EVE and Janice.) It was a mess of reworks and hasty editing hacks when the rough cut was screened, to try to work around the ban.

It was pulled from general release, and only got a rushed low-quality home video release in a few small markets outside of the US before vanishing completely. HG doesn’t even hold the necessary rights to use it anymore, so it has effectively ceased to exist after having already been written out of the overarching Robotech storyline for its failure in test screenings.

It still feels more Robotech than plugging holes with only our imperfect knowledge of the narrative and basing it on absolutely nothing at all. We're not looking to do a roughly improvised campaign, we can do that anytime (we just got out of one), we are looking for a Robotech campaign... a hard thing to define.

Therein lies a bit of a catch. The RPG’s material is all written based on the official canon… so you’ll run into a lot of issues trying to integrate non-canon materials that were written without regard for it or each other into it. There’s a LOT of conflicting information in there. I can well understand why it’d give you headaches.

I can understand why some of the comics would deserve their reputation as "poor quality" material. It is hard to miss. Yet their utter rejection by Harmony Gold leaves me confused. While this was made perfectly clear for "the movie", or the RNU and its thinking caps; it remains a mystery to why an RPG, which itself had to be written on the first reboot of such comics, including "Prelude to Shadow Chronicles", would dismiss them. "Prelude" had even the Waltrips coming back, creating a sense that Robotech was going the way "Transformers" previously had for its comic canon.

That’s all business.

Back when Harmony Gold rebooted the Robotech franchise, the new creative staff who had replaced Carl Macek were putting some serious bloody effort into reinventing Robotech as a credible SF/mecha anime property. They broomed all the poor quality and/or legally problematic material like the old comics, the novels, etc., imposed the official canon, and started enforcing it on their licensees to ensure that the products being made for their brand were all consistent with it for tone and content so that the brand would be as seamless as any other professionally-done metaseries. I suspect it was particularly important for them to have the RPG be accurate to their official canon, since the absence of proper art books like mainstream anime titles had meant the fans often purchased the RPG not as a game but as an ersatz artbook and fact file.

As I noted previously, Harmony Gold also had strong incentive to discard the old comics from a legal viewpoint. The authors of those old comics committed A LOT of copyright infringement in them over the years with lazy tracing, story theft, and so on. Harmony Gold was already on bad terms with Macross’s owners in Japan, and a lawsuit from them could’ve easily meant the end of the franchise… never mind what’d happen if they drew attention to having infringed upon properties owned by even bigger fish like Sunrise or 20th Century Fox. Involving the Waltrips in the Prelude comic was an olive branch to fans who weren’t sure that they were going to like Shadow Chronicles, but that’s as far as it ever went… officially Sentinels is all still on “broad strokes” continuity only.

Hence my proposing here to include the "Global Civil War" factions to the debate.
Which could, or couldn't, be included in future material officially produced by Harmony Gold.
If I have sinned against some obscure ruling, please forgive me, I wasn't sure.

Given the circumstances, we can be fairly sure that they won’t be included in the future as the franchise’s remaining future is quite finine in duration… but, in general, I tend to come at stuff for Robotech from the official canon perspective since it’s much easier to debate with a set of agreed-upon knowns.

That’s a popular one. I think every RPG group does that at least once.

Damn... and there we felt so brave to tackle such an issue and all. XD

It’s always an ambitious undertaking, that’s for sure.

And you are right again. I particularly cringed at the inclusion of Macross only material concerning space colonisation.

He and I had a bit of an argument when his site first debuted about including non-Robotech material… IMO it’s tantamount to misinformation, though I have a bit of a personal stake in it as I host one Macross reference site, I’m actively developing another, and contribute to several others. Even now I still get an e-mail or two a month from people asking why our site is missing such and such a design they saw on a Robotech site, or why we have such a such a design they saw on a Robotech site, etc. Other folks contact my group to ask us to source stuff on sites like his, which has gotten WEIRD on several occasions.

(To date, I think my favorite was a few weeks back when someone asked us to source what Tim put for the Tirolian emblem on his site… it’s actually the mon (formal emblem) of the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan from the start of the 17th century, taken from the Science Fiction Sengoku Saga series concept art that evolved into the body armor of Southern Cross.)

Nonetheless, there seem to have a particular point he did accurately research when doing his work; namely the separation between the Global Civil War era and the Unification War era. One being the passage from the Cold War into what could be described as WWIII (as referenced chronologically in the first robotech episode), and the other being the reconstruction era following the crash of the SDF-1.

To be entirely fair, it would’ve been hard NOT to separate them given that even if you lined them up on the same timeline they’d be set years apart. Robotech’s “Global Civil War” - a name that doesn’t actually make sense given that a civil war is by definition a conflict between two or more factions within a single state or country - ended in 1999 with the crash of the alien ship in the South Pacific. Macross’s Unification Wars (plural) didn’t really coalesce from a number of little regional conflicts until 2001. He basically just copied from the timeline over on the Macross Compendium, so it’s not surprising there’s a well-defined separation between the two conflicts that don’t exist in each other’s official settings.

It postulate that the U.N. won the war only because the SDF-1 crashed, but it also take the logical approach in saying not everyone would be happy to pay high military taxes to the U.E.G. without being told what it is for. As I recall, the VF-1 program was very hush-hush prior to 2009.

Robotech’s official canon puts it more along the lines of a cease fire that turned into lasting peace when they realized there was a bigger fish… though the UN wasn’t a side.

The stuff about dissatisfaction with the high costs of the global defense programs is something that goes all the way back to the original work.

Hence I also submit to the idea that the AUL would have been created to oppose the U.N. first, then survive as a terrorist organization financed by malcontents. (Not those yet.)
It would then serve as the perfect cover up for other incidents since, like we have seen in the real world, such terrorist group tends to have difficulties to act on an international level. In this, I don't feel like I'm straying too far from previous authors.

Exactly what the Anti-Unification League’s status is is unclear, since the canon comics had one of their MiM-31 Karyobins show up before the alien ship even crashed and after that there was the reveal that they were a sockpuppet for the UEG to use to justify continuing to build up their armed forces to resist the alien invasion they never told the general public was coming.

Back in the original Macross story, the Anti-Unification Alliance was a group that emerged in the wake of the declaration of the Earth Unification (UN) Government (which is not the UN we’re familiar with, but a successor organization) as a coalition of various anti-government forces and paranoid militia types from around the world who opposed a one world government.

But... If I understand you correctly, you are saying that Robotech never had a name for the era following the close of the GCW and its fallout until the first Robotech War came knocking in 2009? That the "Unification War" era was only a Macross thing? So... Are we speaking of the whole era from 1994 to 2009 here?

Yes, that is correct. In fact, the official Robotech timeline doesn’t even acknowledge there having been a period of conflict in that era. This may be a legacy of Robotech’s rewrite of Macross repurposing virtually all of the references to that period in Macross’s setting for use as the “Global Civil War”.

The Unification Wars (plural) are a period unique to the Macross setting’s history, wherein a number of small conflicts that sprang up in the wake of the crash of the alien starship’s crash on South Ataria island in the Ogosawara islands gradually snowballed into armed opposition to the creation of the Earth Unification Government. The first conflict generally held to be a part of the Unification Wars actually started before the proposal of a unified government in the middle east, but the Unification Wars proper are normally held to have begun in earnest in May 2001 due to the Anti-Unification Alliance commencing armed hostilities with the newly created UN Forces in response to the start of the major military buildup for planetary defense (the commencement of construction on Grand Cannon 1 in Alaska, and the shipyards at Earth-Moon L5.)

That’s… pretty dark. Like Yoshiyuki “Kill ‘em all” Tomino dark. Way darker than Robotech ever hinted at that era being.

I don't know... Los Angeles in ruins with soldiers raising kids to become hackers (comics) and Rick Hunter being a teenage soldier (anime) already looked like pretty desperate to me. In fact, having Max Sterling becoming a pilot despite being young and wearing what appears to be corrective glasses also looks very much like a depletion of the ranks has occurred. And while the last one could very well be imputed to the isolation of the SDF-1, there seem to remain this idea that these cases (Rick and Max) were socially acceptable.

The stuff from the old comics isn’t a part of the actual Robotech setting… but that aside, it wouldn’t be surprising to have either Rick or Max be soldiers. They’re 18+ in Robotech’s version of events, so they would’ve been able to enlist even in peacetime.

Hikaru and Max were 16 in the original Macross’s version of the story, but the age of legal majority under the Earth Unification Government was 17 and, even though they enlisted while the ship was away from Earth in extremis, they would’ve been old enough to serve by the time they finished training. As long as you have a parent or guardian’s permission, it’s actually quite legal to join the military while you’re still underage provided you’ll be legal before you’re actually deployed. (The movie version aged ‘em up to 18 and changed their backstories such that they’d all joined during peacetime.)

Spoiler:

While it is true that Scott Bernard did what he could to protect Annie from the carnage, the "New Gen" segment of the show was in itself pretty dark indeed. Borderline "Mad Max" dark.

It wasn’t that dark, not by a long shot. Even when you got some Fist of the North Star-looking biker gangs, they were more like ineffectual comedic villains than a real threat to anyone. Robotech tried to hype up the alleged oppression of the Invid, but most of what’s shown of life on Earth is pretty peaceful and the crew are rarely in danger from anything that’s not Invid.

Dana's early relationships in the novels were... edgy. And what about "The Master Saga" seeing a whole generation of young adults having known nothing but war on a whole planet?

That’s the novels… they’re basically a bad fanfic. The last war the planet had ended when most of them were still in nappies.

Overall... I'm not familiar with "Kill'em All" Tomino, but the Zentraedi Rain of Death alone should leave one staggered about how dark it really is.

Yoshiyuki Tomino is the creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, a showrunner famous for the high death tolls in his shows. To give you an idea, the death toll of the opening narration of the first Mobile Suit Gundam series was 5.9 billion. 5.9 billion before the story even properly got started! (The sequels that followed on all have pretty excessive death tolls too, and the main characters are NOT exempt.)

The death toll of the Zentradi’s orbital bombardment in Macross was higher, but it was less drawn out and gruesome and the aftermath was depicted a lot more optimistically… even in the Robotech adaptation. Macross was substantially Lighter and Softer than Gundam despite the scale of the devastation. (Made even more apparent by Mobile Suit Gundam: the Origin having devoted most of an episode to actually showing the massacres that had previously only been shown in stills and described by the narrator.)

And does any version of the story stutters, or insist, on the global depression that should be following? I don't recall such an instance.

Macross does… the principal antagonist in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy was a man who was so traumatized by the destruction wrought on Earth during the war that he was prepared to use/abuse an ancient alien time travelling bioweapon to make the war un-happen. Even some of the Zentradi caught it. Roli Dosel, the short one in the Zentradi spy trio, ended up as an alcoholic in the wake of the war.

Robotech not so much, but that’s mostly because each of the shows it adapted were about humanity’s first alien war, so you didn’t really have anyone who’d been properly traumatized by war at the start. That and, for the most part, the population didn’t actually see much suffering in the two subsequent alien wars in its story… most of the beating was taken by the military, and the alleged cruelty of the Invid is mostly offscreen alleged villainy (a legacy of the animation’s original story having the Inbit generally unwilling to acknowledge that humans were intelligent life forms and thus ignoring them).

Once the older generation remembering the GCW starts disapearing however, you feel the new generation devoid of such scrupulous tought. Under the Southern Cross' heel, there was some dissension and re-occurence of separatism. Hence the return of the EBSIS. Or, if one doesn't take that argument as valid, you could always go with the fall of the ASC leading to no global force being ready for the Invid. A division did occur, but only in a generation raised in "peace".

There really wasn’t any such thing… in canon Robotech anyway. It’s hard to be despotic or tyrannical enough to induce dissent when your entire armed forces are basically the washouts the real military felt would be least missed on the front line, armed with the very best weapons the money from between the sofa cushions could buy. The best they could really manage was being verbally abusive. (This is, oddly enough, carryover from the original story as well… where the Southern Cross Army was mostly for show and their mecha were ineffectual enough on the battlefield to lose a war to an enemy that had forgotten how to actually wage war millennia before.)

Then... I haven't lived the end of the Cold War. So maybe a series of skirmishes and brushfire, always this close to open a bigger conflict, would have already been enough.

We got pretty close to that bigger conflict entirely too many times… and avoided it mainly due to the strenuous efforts of a small army of cooler heads reining things in and reminding the ones in charge that getting the electorate vaporized was bad for their reelection campaign, occasionally disobeying orders to make sure we all got to be carry on being Not Dead Yet for another day.

But then, how would one create a narrative leaving the doors open for the U.E.G. - keeping its main threat a secret - while the world would probably be desperate to get out of an economical crisis afterwards?
[...]
The rationale of Robotech goes rather the other way. The SDF-1 remains presented as the great "shut up" which fell from the sky, directly inspired / taken from Macross and possibly related, as a trope, to Dr.Manhattan in Watchmen.
The AUL continuing, and not only publicly appearing after that point, would look unbelievable... no?

That’s one of those “fridge” problems in the Robotech adaptation… in which the existence of aliens wasn’t revealed to the public, all development was done in secret, and there was a HUGE military buildup that had to be explained. The Anti-Unification League is never really touched on in any great detail, so it’s one big plot hole. There wasn’t (canonically) a Unification Wars period of major armed conflict in opposition to the creation of a one world government, so from whence cometh the justification for spending trillions on the military?

In Macross, there wasn’t any such problem. The world was at peace before the alien ship’s crash, the existence of aliens wasn’t kept secret, the development was done in the open by the world’s major corporations, and there was an ongoing series of wars that started after the crash to keep the newly created UN Forces busy and further spur development of new weapons. The military’s excuse for the island vanishing as an Anti-Unification Alliance attack with a nuke was a perfectly believable excuse in the Macross version, since the Alliance had last been active a mere six months before (2 months if we count Macross the First’s flashback arc) and on at least one prior occasion had deployed stolen thermonuclear reaction weapons against a major city. (St. Petersburg in 2006, and a failed attempt on South Ataria island on Christmas 2008 in Macross the First... four nukes were used in that conflict six months prior, but the UN Gov’t didn’t have to tell civilians they, not the alliance, were the ones who fired them… and they didn’t declassify what they fired them AT for fifty years.)

Then again... Rick grew on a circus directed by a guy who despised soldiers / war. The few instances where we do have flashback of this time period shows the circus either moving, or having difficulty coming by a paying audience.

Neither of those things are at all unrealistic for peacetime though… there’s plenty of people who scorn the armed forces for involvement in various questionable foreign wars, and professional entertainment is a notoriously unstable industry at the best of times. (I’m sure you’ve heard in 2017 that Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus shut down after 146 years due to a steady decline in interest, and that’s a performance with broader appeal than an airshow.)

Why would they play the game when even in war time they were very clear about when they weren't responsible for some perceived aggression, going often as far as helping to resolve the perceived threat?

Because soldiers in the field don’t set national policy?

So... Should one consider that the current canon of Robotech is more like Macross? Or more like Robotech?
Was it a global invasion of U.N. troops and plane bombings all over the world?
Or was it what we were told... a global civil war?
Who came up with that name anyway?
Are you implying that the "civil" part of it might only have been something coined by the U.E.G. to enforce the idea of the earth as only one nation?

One would have a hard time denying that Robotech’s official canon has been moving closer to that of the original three shows in the wake of the 2001 reboot, de-emphasizing protoculture’s mystical/magical properties or outright removing them, and so on.

Robotech’s version of the story still sticks with the idea that there was global warfare going on up to the crash, and world peace in the wake of the ceasefire that was declared shortly after the crash. IIRC the term “Global Civil War” came from the novels originally, which was probably the authors using words they didn’t know the meaning of… which would hardly be a first for the series.

But, canonically, the United States of America and Russian Federation are still around and world leaders in 1999 in Robotech.

I seem to have missed something... The U.S. are still here? Wasn't the whole planet re-organized into quadrants with Ontario even becoming it's own country and all? Wasn't the whole U.E.G. thing about stripping the diverse people from their cultural / political identity in order to put a definitive end to war?

I’m talking about before the alien ship crashed… Roy was, at the time, a pilot in the US Navy’s Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84) stationed aboard the USS Kenosha (CVN-90). Gloval was a captain aboard a Russian Federation nuclear submarine.

They never say anything about nations being abolished or the whole planet being reorganized into quadrants in the series or anything along the lines of stripping people of their cultural and political identity. That’d be awfully Orwellian. Robotech’s writers apparently just felt that calling it the Ontario “Quadrant” sounded more sci-fi than “Ontario Region” as in the original’s dialog. It wasn’t its own country either, that was a case of a slightly dodgy translation of the Japanese term used, which actually refers to a semi-autonomous province or ward like what Ontario kind of already is.

(Even in the original Macross, the nations of Earth were still very much intact and present after the establishment of the Unification Government. It was just a supranational government that had a relationship with the member nations similar to the US Federal Government does to the state governments. The nations of Earth didn’t cease to be a thing until the Zentradi blew them all to bits, though cultural identity never went away… the protagonist of one of the sequels set 50 years after the First Space War was a 19th generation classically-trained kabuki actor who ran away from home to be a pilot.)

Would that theory still include the UEDF creating themselves planes identified as AUL to attack themselves?
Thus disposing of real opponents and creating a climate of mistrust? That would indeed be a great idea to exploit at a table!

Or exploiting and disposing of hotheaded idiots who would otherwise be trying their hands at real attacks by setting them up to obligingly commit suicide for the greater good? Edwards’s activities seemed to indicate a genuine believer in the AUL, as did Leonard’s, but the brass in Alaska suggested the AUL was essentially a manufactured threat. They might have believed they were really fighting the good fight instead of just dancing on the end of a string.

Albeit very big and clumsy 90s cellphones, but nonetheless.

Exotic weapon proficiency… a 90’s cell phone could be a pretty decent throwing weapon. The old Nokia handsets were practically indestructible.

After the ZRoD, everything was more or less destroyed. This is was made Protoculture the first energy source on earth during the reconstruction / malcontent era.

Except when it wasn’t. The reboot pretty much punted protoculture’s widespread adoption into the New Generation era...

[Sigh...] Since the recent development of the franchise... isn't this also the state of the Palladium released RPG and first-reboot comics?

Titan’s comic seems to have officially established itself as an alternate universe story, much like the crossover with Voltron, so thus far the only official canon still appears to be the one from the reboot in 2001.

Are fans of the defunct Robotech only like Unicorns living in the stories told by parents to children to put them to sleep?
Am I a dream?

Let me get back to you on that after the rescue team I sent into Plato’s Cave returns.

[xunk16]

Well... I feel like I should apologize to the people who started this topic. I feel that, by my presence, I have opened the door to brake something that was beautiful. It might well have been one of the last place of exchange, about Robotech, that was not polluted by Macross talks and all the legals implications. (Not that it isn't interesting, or true.) Or by this general attitude that there is nothing left to do for the franchise, even as Harmony Gold and Titan Comics are busting their last resources in trying to salvage what they can of it. (Some might be more cynical and think it's just a last cash-in, but I do hope it succeed in becoming much more – at least until I get my Crisis Point copy, and if I’m lucky it’s New Gen Sequel).

Would you like to know more ?

Spoiler:

For all we know, the movie is still in the talks. Sony only asked that HG build back the audience. Something made difficult by this confusion in canon, not letting enough of the love go through. I have found other small dark corners of the web where, sometime, someone will dare to talk about it, but these chance encounters are often short lived and in terror of what could very well be the last days of a mythology. Art should never have to die like this.
I have never seen any other fandom being so much speaking of production, and not the philosophy of the themes and the possibilities offered by a fictional universe.
I imagine what it must be like nowadays, working on such a franchise, with the internet wide open... and not being able to find where and who those Robotech fans are. Even great shows such as Farscape eventually had to go to the fandom in order to get their technobabble straight. Transformers always had a giant production bible... But Robotech? It has to navigate in this uncomfortable dichotomy of what was really made for it, and the fact that the "fans" won't ever forget the stuff it wasn't; yet came from.

It saddens me to think of what it must have been like, for the folks at palladium, to live with the persistent criticism I have seen online about their work. Not only for their faults, but for when they actually, with Harmony Gold's consent, tried to create something that could belong only to that precise franchise and not be borrowed. (An uphill battle at best indeed...)

Plus, despite all the talks about the poor quality of the comics, (which I think is limited to some of the art – Academy’s last run – prior to the 2001 reboot), or errors in continuity (mainly consisting of borrowed design from future events where none existed, mechas in production returning suddenly in prototype phase, etc. All not really affecting the greater scale of the sequential story.)... I don't think one should just barge in and compare Robotech to it's source material when trying to establish a map of it.
It's not just unfair to the original series, which still exists in their own rights...
It's unfair to what Robotech was trying to become after it's original success, based on an incomplete work of art.
I must also declare that, while I do understand the dislike and criticism the McKinney novels gathered along the years (which are critically sound from a certain standpoint); they remain one of the most beautiful and well done novelization / adaptation I have seen to date. True to their source in both themes and character. Not the anime, of course, but the idea of Robotech; as if it was an original show inspired by others and not built from them. Something that HG will need to achieve, one day, in order to get the franchise out of its seed's shadow. Something I also think can be said about the comics scripts, if not for all the little quirks in production. (Or the terrible change in tone at the start of the Titan "sequel". Which, at least, had the decency to place it as a follow-up to universal altering events, instead of passing it like a bulldozer on the sequential continuity some fans have grown to love. It also, in some ways, is more Robotech than its previous sources. Returning Protoculture’s nature into the mix, for example.)

It might be too soon, but Titan re-publishing the Sentinels books seems to clash with your arguments about endless legal issues and some such. Once again, it's easy for me to come when all is done and check it all at once in the "good" reading order. (Though I kinda regret the time and effort to track the original, now that they will be re-edited as brand new copies instead of dusty cracking yellowing ones.) I didn't have to live through the long years of waiting, or the silence, or the confusing and potentially ill-advised statements of Mr. Macek. I'm just a guy who fell on Robotech and took it at face value. Even when previously familiar with Macross (that I’ve dropped at Delta for lack of interest), I've never really tried to compare them. They are, for me, two distinct franchise. (Yeah, the mechs kinda look alike on the outside.)
And I do hope other new folks, or older ones, will take the opportunity HG and Titan seems to be trying to give us. Forget all that was always wrong about it and learn to enjoy Robotech for what it was. What it could have become. What it can still turn out to be.
Legal issues are funny that way. The most popular, the one making money, always win. (Remember Skyfire / Jetfire.) If there is any support left out there for what was, then they should let themselves be known. If they don't... then imagine how hard it can be, to produce something, when nobody cares or encourages you... That is what has been going on with Robotech for years (according to the pages of forums I scrolled – might be only the impression I got). If they can't know what the audience want, they can't give it. (To be fair, that's not all the fans' fault.)

The moderation queue for the Newly Registered Users group didn’t always take so long to clear new posts, I can only assume there’s a lot of spambot activity lately. The mods are only interested in keeping the spambots out, so no worries about being silenced or anything along those lines.

Good to know. Let's get some of those cobwebs out then.

Ah, yes… I suppose it would be a very awkward time to become a Robotech fan, given that the series will effectively cease to exist in a bit under a year and nine months. (634 days, when I wrote this post.)

That is not a lot of time!! But if Firefly could get out of its legal issues and still get to producing comics, board games and RPGs years later... Who knows what Robotech can do. Sometime, miracles do happens. If only they could find something that would let them drop the anime and still claim it exist.

My suspicion on that note would be that it probably has a lot more to do with it having been quite a long time since Robotech was last relevant to anyone or anything except a lawsuit.

Yes, mistakes were obviously made. Mistakes I think they should try to correct while there is still time. But I don't think game reviewers on Crisis Point, using footage from "The Movie" lost in Plato's cave find it that irrelevant. (I'm not seeing your team... It's so dark in here! XD) Nor the people that actually made the effort to find back the publishing rights to the old sentinels comics. In fact, given the ardent answers I get from you, even if they sound like someone who got hurt a lot trying to love a dying franchise, I think it can still be pretty relevant.
And one might argue that the beauty of life is; everything living is dying. That’s why we protect life.

Honestly, I’m not sure it was ever truly possible… so much of what passed for discourse even in the early years of the online Robotech fandom was flame wars over “true Robotech”, to get a group of Robotech fans to even agree what Robotech was was an uphill battle at the best of times and was often downright impossible.

That is generally when the fans must come in. Art is a process of giving and sharing. Of course fans can never be legally right, they are not the authors... that is until the authors make them right. Or they become authors themselves. I was there, crossing my fingers for the Titan comic to be revealed as a bad dream, and lo and behold, it happened. My fan theory is now canon.
Did Furman read my comments on this or that blog? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it is the collective unconscious. (Or other sources of puzzled dissent for what was clearly going down the drain.)

The power to kill art, however, the power to stay silent and not give... that is something a fan-base can do. Without a target audience, art ends. I don't think anyone came to Robotech for the legal issues... I think people came to Robotech for the generational story-line, the cast of more than five main characters (a rarity nowadays), the space left to explore as an expanded universe, and of course for giant transforming mechas becoming a necessity in front of an increasingly hellish scenario. That and, maybe, that strange idea that "attraction of opposites" can change the universe.
Some might even have been there for it's political mess and darker parts.
As for me, the mystical "shapings" played a great part... I loved that idea of topological determinism Vs life. When played right, that card is downright terrifying.

You speak of the reboot as if it was a good idea... Maybe it was at the time. But some decisions in there, to please a target audience, missed the spot. Taking robotech out of robotech might have been what pleased the fans then, but it’s not useful as a producing tool. The balkanisation of the show and merchandising, and trying to retcon using a handful of loose continuity plug-ins based on it, also didn't help the clarity issues it already had. Invalidating Lisa instead of building her, for example... Or fleeing the Master Saga instead of trying to re-write it toward a larger audience. But it seems HG is finally getting there. Painfully and very late, but they seem to do.
So what if they have to eventually draw a whole new VF-1, change character names, or even begin the live movie continuity with the sentinels? Why are these things never said? The RNU and comics both stated that there was some multiversal cycle in there, why not give a chance to a new universe?
The worst that can happen is that it won't speak to the audience.
At which point, sharing will end nonetheless.
Or... it could speak to the audience, make money, and then let them do flashbacks to re-introduce the disputed parts.

Though it's true that the "SC" take of the RPG totally re-written the sentinels already. Most of it for the better. With SW turning to ashes, a “new” space opera franchise could do well on the Box Office.

A rather odd view, given that Harmony Gold’s view is that it’s a heavily skewed and inaccurate version of the piece… it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the story of the TV series, and in a lot of places feels more like a Star Wars fic.

As I understood it, HG took that stance because some of the fans did not like "The End of The Circle".
Then again, some of the fans did not like "Aftermath", nor "Clones".
And even more disturbing, some so called fans did not even like "Master Saga".
(I'm falling into the trap again! I'm still speaking of parts! I shouldn't! ARGH!)
But a Star Wars fanfic, really? How? And that is a very harsh statement.
If you had said, a re-imagining of the Tegen Toppa Gurren Lagan plot... then okay, I'd be following you. The "Shapings" are much more akin to "Spiral Energy", as a driving force of evolution through change, than "The Force" ever was... "The Force" is a great equalizer and protector of the status quo, not something that create, pushes forward, or unite people. They are kind of opposites. (Then again, Star Wars is also dead so... meh.)
And at least... Tegen Toppa Gurren Lagan had the mechs built for the purpose of fighting giant enemies. Some of which representing entropy. But it came after Robotech, didn't it.
At the very least, I would have understood the comparison between Haydon and Unicron...
But Star Wars? o_o''

There are too many legal complications vis a vis Macross to ever make the film.

Then pull a Final Fantasy... use the very last moments of your job to drop Macross and do everything you wished you had with the Franchise. If they don't, well... You told me first.
In any cases, declaring bankrupt is still declaring bankrupt. Be it from legal issues, or loss of a mean to produce money.

Titan is off in lala land. I’m not sure they’re even trying to do a good job with it, each new issue seems to be more an excuse to show off how badly they’re failing to take the property seriously by tracing almost every character, “borrowing” material from other properties like Halo and The Matrix, etc. Even their “original” take on the VF design was stolen… they were tracing from stills of a CG model created by a Macross fan artist.

By issue #20, I would have had entirely agreed with you on Titan. (Even if Matrix and Halo both admittedly borrowed from Japanese animation also... Originality is a myth.) It made the worst of Academy, Eternity, the infamous thinking caps, and even Wildstorm look like the Mona Lisa. But that was coming from the perspective that they were actually trying to adapt the original... not doing a sequel. Once you take it for what it is... it has... potential?
I'm no longer sure. I really never was. I'm expecting. Grasping at straws...
I just have to remember the feeling, while constructing a 400 pages (notes included, but not the 250 pages of retro engineering the SC RPG and calculi) PDF for my Gm, on "no longer canon" material, to tell you that it must be very hard to care in the situation they are in. No feedback is the worst for an author. At least bad but honest, and critical, feedback tells you where to go with it.
I just couldn't believe that Simon Furman would fell this low... (I've been a fan since a few years on other works.) And it still surprises me. I think it is far too soon to tell if there will be anything salvageable from it once it's over; but I just have to find for myself. Forge my own opinion. And if any silent lurker is reading those words, my advice to you would be to do the same. Check it out, judge it for it's own flaws / merit. Best case scenario, they are orienteering for the movie.

I think you’re crediting them with a lot more artistic intent than was actually present.

Well... someone ought to. "Invid War" remains impressive. Comic books represent a lot of work, and most of it must be deliberate. (I know someone and all that...) Are not "Tank Girl" whoever wish they were. And I did read the "maybe manufactured" letter columns and interviews.
At least I am not giving Oscars at a movie made at random. (I'm looking at you Apocalypse Now!)
And I'm not pretending they were perfect either.
But from a gaming perspective... Involving real players at a real table engaged in a totally unofficial and improvised story-line; what should matter is the fun that can be taken out of it, no?

Most of the old comics were quick and dirty work licensees threw together on the fly to make a quick buck on a dirt-cheap license.

Well... Isn't that in the definition of American comic books in general? Forever rebooted and trifled with continuity crashes? We're not speaking about a European B.D., or a Manga here. The production is involving a lot of difficulties not present in other mediums. In fact, I'm surprised it stand on its own that well.

That’s why they infringed on copyrights so heavily… they weren’t going to invest the time and energy in coming up with original designs and plots when it was easier to just ape the flavor of the month.

We are so far from the original topic it's not even funny. But I must ask... what are you referring to? Yes they did a few things, like an homage to Blade Runner on Karbarra for one... But I would hardly classify that as a copyright infringement. We might not be seeing the same things here, what is so problematic?

That’s the thing… in multiple senses, it really doesn’t exist.

Yet it can be found, and watched, and quoted by fans doing reviews; makes for a wonderful story about production done the wrong way, and even has its own website. It was the most requested adaptation of the old comics (and one of the biggest disappointment in the changes they made to it, because of a rushed production schedule). And contrary to the inventor of the Antychitera mechanism, or most of what was lost at the great library of Alexandria, we still can speak about it.
Exactly as you do. And despite being a mess, I must say I've seen worst movies.

The movie that was made was absolutely not the story that was written for it, due to Tatsunoko telling Macek on no uncertain terms he was forbidden from using Macross in it. That sunk pretty much everything Macek’d planned for the story, like the tie-ins to Robotech II. (B.D. Andrews and T.R. Edwards were originally the same character, same with EVE and Janice.)

That is the first time I read that one, I think... (About E.V.E and Janice.) Thanks.
Another great "could have been" to add to the list. Yet is is the movie we had.
As for the failure... it has again to do with problems in cornering the right audiences at the time.

Therein lies a bit of a catch. The RPG’s material is all written based on the official canon… so you’ll run into a lot of issues trying to integrate non-canon materials that were written without regard for it or each other into it. There’s a LOT of conflicting information in there. I can well understand why it’d give you headaches.

Then again, we chose that path because it was simpler to use it as scotch tape than to reconcile much of the RPG with the anime or with itself. At some point, the players must be able to create a comprehension of the universe. Not just strifle trough some incomplete and contradicting reports that alludes to possible events. The Fusion / Protoculture duality, for example, only does sense in the context of the comics (old and new) and not the Anime, nor the RPG itself. Revealing in great part that they probably wrote this stuff for people who grew on a regular diet of Robotech, not poor souls falling on it by accident in Plato's Cavern like we did.
(How do we read it in the dark you ask? The shadows... The shadows are the reality!)

I must admit I'm curious what could happen to someone never having seen the show, or unable to find the comics, who still would try up a game.
An entire other world... but what a mess.

I tend to come at stuff for Robotech from the official canon perspective since it’s much easier to debate with a set of agreed-upon knowns.

I can respect that. However, it does not especially, nor necessarily help to advance the cause of getting inspirations for people wanting to try their own Pre-Macross game.

To be entirely fair, it would’ve been hard NOT to separate them given that even if you lined them up on the same timeline they’d be set years apart. Robotech’s “Global Civil War” - a name that doesn’t actually make sense given that a civil war is by definition a conflict between two or more factions within a single state or country – ended in 1999 with the crash of the alien ship in the South Pacific.

However, it does in a world where there is "One World Nation". If on paper it has been unified as a single country, then a planet that would enter into a "World War" would effectively be written in history (by the winner) has having had a civil war. (Something somewhat less important sounding, less violent for the medias.)
Just think how Israel could erase Palestine from existence, with paperwork and mutual confidence.
A "Global Civil War" would then, by definition, be different from a "Regional / Continental Civil War" happening on only a continent or a part of a continent. Which, to say the least, the "Unification WarS" were. (Though in that precise case, they would have buffed the name, not nerfed it. It’s all propaganda mechanics. I guess, to remain Robotech, one could speak of the “Unification Era” without resorting to “wars” in order to avoid the Macross confusion.)

Or, to return to the previous train of thought used in this topic; a disintegration of the Yalta Accord, leading to all proxy wars of the Cold War to degenerate into even more civil conflicts, and unrest, supported by a complicated net of shady alliances; would effectively be a general "state of civil war" covering the globe.

In this, one would be advised to remember that historical period names aren't always meant to look great in the long run. (Which gives this one realism, if nothing else.) "World Wars" weren't really waged on the whole planet (and in every single small countries), even if they did touched every country a little differently.
The "Middle-Ages" will eventually be very far at the start of the story, and according to some, we are already out of "Modern Times"... which were terribly named. Let's just hope our kids won't name the current era "The Future", or the current web petition revolution "the immobile likes wars".
In fact... even "Cold War" is a misnomer... There was still a lot of engagement (by proxy), and it was all about the hottest weapons mankind ever built!
Nothing to do with fighting to stay cold, during an ice age, or using liquid nitrogen.
I can also assure you that, while the "Beaver Wars" were about "Beavers"... They sadly didn't fought enough to be remembered as a really important side of the story. Poor Beavers.

But, since the only thing I could try to relate this to once officially published material would be to Quote Rick Hunter in "Robotech Graphic Novel : Genesis" saying : "Well, Pop – you were right. Civilization is on the move again – Things are getting better instead of worse. It all started when that spaceship lit up the sky over San Francisco, that night we went into town with Alice-- The Emergency World Government held together a lot longer than anyone thought – All those petty little civil wars died down. They just didn't seem to Matter, not after the discovery of Robotechnology..."
I might as well get on with the program and procure the last thing I CAN do.

Namely, offering perspective between the now unofficial "first draft" (as notes taken from Genesis, Return to Macross, Protoype 001, and Academy for our own campaign) GCW, and the officially kept in rebooted canon as "The Global War". (Still seemingly signifying that it overshadowed both world wars…)

In 1999, the entire world was in the grip of war. Regional conflicts that had been festering for years simultaneously appeared to flare up everywhere at once. Even the most powerful nations of the Earth, with their vast economic and military resources, were spread too thin to handle the strain of constant global warfare. However, the crash landing [...]
As the new members contributed resources to the unification effort, there were still many who strongly opposed the new government. These elements formed the Anti-Unification League to directly oppose the efforts to bring the world under the authority of a single government. [...]
Originally formed in opposition to the globalization of the world economy, the Anti-Unification League was made up of various groups and interests that had little in common other than their desire to release the world from the control of military and economic superpowers. After the arrival of the alien vessel in 1999, the Anti-Unification League quickly grew in power and influence.

I've gutted the too easily known parts (with [...]) to avoid a too "on the nose" quote.
The essential is still there however.
So according to this, Gloval did begin the GW under the Russian flag and was eventually drafted as the new world government formed. One might assume that this was still a bit of time before the official ceasefire.
As for the AUL, they couldn't be known during the GW because they officially appeared afterward... Which leaves open to debate what they could have been prior. Since, you know, global governmental infrastructures and the means to oppose them don't just appear over night. It would be very plausible to state that the "unification process" begun as a diplomatic proposal a few months before, at least, the "most powerful nations" would have theoretically fell. (The reboot keeping in canon the high officials of the UEDF which considers the SDF-1 to have been a godsend to save mankind.)
If this stands up enough for you to use, then it would probably equally stands to reason that other alliances might have existed which knew there could be defeat.

However, even in its complete form (less than a page of text), this is a bit thin to go on for a campaign setting. Hence, if only to be able to write our background in an interesting manner, we chose to include the old organizations of the GCW in order to flavor our fluff with something more than "war everywhere at once". Since, you know, sequentially it looks like exactly the same events unfolding... only now with a new, some would even argue improved, name.

The notes rendered here are stuff I would I’ve liked to be able to find while planning my own character. I assume, from a writer’s perspective, it could be used as inspiration… if nothing more.
I thoroughly admit that they are no longer “official” canon material, but still could be interesting for people trying to explore the era during an RPG campaign.

The Eurasians : (U.R.S.S.?)

• Accused in rumors to have used bacteriological warfare against Manchuria. (This might lead one to believe Mongolia got out of the PRC and the URSS.)
• Failed to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons (and their use) in the middle-east.

France :

• Apparently an independent power, sufficiently important to be referred by name and invited to the SDF-1 crash site. There is an uncertainty concerning their relation to other groups. With that said, considering the time and how they are referred to, it is clear that they were adversaries of the UEG at least. Maybe even socialists.
• Have tested nuclear weapons near Micronesia (Macross Island)

East Germany : (German Democratic Republic)

• Use MiG-29 during the GCW.
• Maximilian “Wulf” / “Blue Max” was one of their East Germany Air Force pilots, registering 107 victories during the GCW. He’ll eventually join the Internationalists (EDAF) as instructor.

The Western Alliance / The Internationalists (O.N.U.) :

• Side of the Plane-Carrier Kenosha on which Roy Fokker and Gloval served near the end of the GCW in 1999. (Other ships such as the Aleutian are named, but never really described.)
• Near defeat, its command is ready to organize a global hoax to force unification. Their original plan to manufacture an artificial crisis is forfeited when the object later known as SDF-1 fall.
• Containing the “Western States”, a democracy (at least by Roy Fokker’s standards). We do not know with any degree of certitude if that means they are a part of the defunct USA, or just in the general west of common maps.
• Senator Russo and Admiral Hayes will eventually get from its ranks to form the UEG.
• Have taken back an unnamed city from the “Tsarists” then lost it to the “Neo-Marxists”.
• Their army is referred to as the “Internationalist Coalition Force” - ICF – during the GCW.
• The provincial government of British-Columbia is part of the Alliance, link alluded by their employ of Admiral Hayes and his given home’s location. After threats from “Pacifica” (California), which accuses BC of being the reason for the failure of their Trade Pact with the “Neo-Tsarists”, the province is attacked.
• Refugees from the San Bernardino Enclave (California) try to join an internationalist force on the west coast.
• The ICF eventually retake L.A. from the Millier’s Militia.
• They retake control of Okinawa Island (Japan) near the end of the war, where they install the “Internationalist Pacific Command”. By this point, the internationalists also have control of Hawaï.
• They participate to a botched operation to retake Pacifica in collaboration with the “New European Commonwealth” very near the end of the GCW.

Miller’s Militia :

• Autumn of 1998 : Los Angeles (California) falls under the troops of the militia with then takes the road toward San Francisco (California). After the conquest, the militia manages to maintain power and phone services in the area of L.A.
• Potentially one of the major Aryan Posses referred elsewhere.

Trans-American Troops :

• During the worst of the GCW, retake Montana and Wyoming from a coalition of “Aryan Posses”.
• Eventually join, get merged into, the Internationalists.

Eastern United States :

• Their express convocation to the SDF-1 crash site in Micronesia confirms that they aren’t directly affiliated with “The Western States”. The conservation of “United” seems to indicate that they are what officially remains of the not yet globalized USA. Thus giving strength to the belief that the “Western States” are also located in the USA.

Sons of the Constitution :

• Nationalist group having been accused to participate in the unnamed atrocities committed at Pacifica (and elswhere) by the UEG. They continue to resist after the rise of the UEG.
• The movement had its roots in a region between Wyoming and Montanna (North-West of the USA), potentially after / in reaction to the “Aryan Posses” takeover.
• Founding Father : Gerald McBain.

Greather Northeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (NEACPS) :

• AUL unofficially in existence during the GCW. (Unnamed).
  
  • T.R. Edwards have a brief skirmish against Skull Squadron before appearing at an air battle above San Francisco bay (1999). We can notice the AUL sigil “<O>” painted on his fighter's wing. Fokker’s comment leave us to suppose a link between the AUL of this time period with the Neasians. The sigil could be of NEACPS origin.
• Considered to be a Fascist Regime by Fokker.
• Toshiro Nagata : Ex-head of the intelligence department for the NEACPS, potentially indicating that NEACPS has Japanese origins like the previous CPS. Will eventually join the “Federalist Coalition / AUL”.

Neo-Tsarists (Often only “Tsarists”) :

• Have developed chemical biological warfare agents during the GCW.
• The Neo-Tsarists have launched a quantity of these agents in orbit using a Pegasus Shuttle at the end of 1998, just prior to being conquered by the Internationalists / Western Alliance. That information will eventually fall into the hands of the Exclusionists (also in existence prior to the Unification Era).

The Exclusionists :

• Have at least a POW camp in New-Zealand (near Australia). ICF Lt. Shane Patrick Gleason was incarcerated there for at least 6 month, then freed in 1998 by the Kenosha’s crew. Probable use of mental conditioning was inflicted either then, or later.
• Bombed Melbourne (Australia).
• Mention of an “Exclusionist plague” in 1995.

(New) European Commonwealth :

• Group in control of London after the GCW. Seems to have changed their name, adding the “New” after the war.
• Nationalist entity having allegedly taken part in the unnamed atrocities committed at Pacifica (and elsewhere) according to UEG’s accusations. Still continue to oppose the UEG after the Unification.
• Speaker after 1999 : Colonel Wendell Hamilton. Publicly doesn’t approve of the “grotesque techniques” of the “Sons of the Constitution”. Could indicate previous history between the two groups. Prior to his official tenure with the Commonwealth, Hamilton was with the Internationalists. Might indicate a support in U.K., for Unification, prior to the end of the war.
• Temporary precarious allies of the Internationalists, without directly being clear members.

Eastern Soviet Republics :

• Summoned to the SDF-1 Micronesian crash site.
• Potentially formed from the URSS’ European and otherwise former satellite nations (Ukraine, Byelorussia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, etc…)

China (PRC) :

• Summoned to the Micronesian crash site of the SDF-1.

Lemuria :

• Their HQ is a submarine named “The Lemuria” under captain Moira Burrows in 2005. Is it alluded that this would have been the case since the GCW.
• Their submarine type was used by many major powers during the GCW. In 2005, it might well be the last Leviathan-Class.
• The Lemurian have built themselves a culture around the belief that “war never ends”, and that “the only way out is to live [hidden] out of the cycle”, ready to defend themselves.
• During the GCW, they worked for the NEACAPS and sank two of the largest plane-carriers of Oceania for them. (Making officially Oceania an adversary of NEACPS).
• They take part in the attack on Brisbane (Australia) in 1998.
• A submarine base was partly built, by a rich European family searching a place to hide, during the start of the GCW. It was only later reclaimed, and finished, by the Lemurians which used it as living quarters for at least 200 individuals. The base is located at 172 E, 28 S (meaning between Hawaï, Japan, and Papua New-Guinea, approximately at the height of Taiwan. Or, simply, right in the middle of the Pacific.)
• They pretend to have developed a technology letting them effectively perform a “memorial deletion” of a time period roughly equivalent to three weeks.

• Aerial Battle “in the Bay Aera”, near the Golden Gate (San Francisco). This events affects Pop’s Hunter aerial Circus. Edwards, flying AUL colors, is allegedly after the Richmond oil refinery.
• Rick mentions that “all the little civil war died down”, thus confirming that the planet was in a pitiful state in 1998-1999.
• Nadia ??? : Lived her life in an unnamed city patrolled by soldier who, despite the place changing government three times, remained the same. Tsarists, Internationalists and Neo-Marxists are mentioned.
• London, January 1997 : Cyberblitz. Four armies vie for control of the city. These would be Celtic Thunder, T.R. Edwards with the “Emergency Action Coalition”, the “Western Alliance” and most probably the European Commonwealth. (The fourth one was never really named.)
• Pegasus Long-Range Shuttles : Small space vessel / capsule, used by at least half a dozen power during the GCW. (Clearly NOT the Pegasus as known during the ASC era. Or any other.)
• The people are said to have already been used to “get to shelter” prior to the end of the GCW.
• Pacifica (California) plans the Trade Pact through a Canadian Mission’s Ministry with the Neo-Tsarists. The deal doesn’t hold for the mistrust of the Tsarists being too great. Pacifica then turns against (specifically) the provincial government of BC, under the pressure of famine. Their leader is reputedly “mad”, ready to use minuted tracers containing viral strains. It seems to be alluded that Hayes works for the government of / lives in BC at the time?
• A constitution (maybe that of the USA) was (maybe metaphorically) shredded.
• Federalist / Nationalist : progressively stated to be the same thing. Obviously an evolving idea during the Eternity / Academy run. But could also be an artifact from trying to mimic realistic and abbreviated speech patterns among connoisseurs. Most are either the remains of opposing forces from the GCW turned terrorists, or groups formed in the wake of the Unification. Ultimately cemented as “The Federalist Coalition” potentially the real name the AUL gives itself, the other one maybe created for the needs of the UEG’s false flag operation. Each separated cell is referred to as either “Nationalists”, “Neo-Nationalists”, or “Retro-Nationalists”. It looks like this could be a vestigial philosophical debate from the GCW, with the former defending the idea of new nations vs the latter defending old frontiers and boundaries. Named “Nationalists” groups include : “Nova Roma” (most certainly related to the AUL), the “New European Commonwealth”, and joined later by “The Sons of the Constitution”.
• Despite the state of the world, Lory Hill, solo guitarist and signer, manages to get an album out in 1999, titled : “The Devil’s Playground”.

If nothing else, these perfectly exemplify why a neophyte could conclude that the period would have been a bloody mess of epic proportions. It also give credence to some of the theories, given above on this forum, that the timeline might have gone wrong at least from WWII. Especially considering an “Aryan presence” being used as a credible threat in American soil. The frequent name changes concerning the “Globalist” faction (a Macross term, I suppose) does seem to mimic not one, but many attempt at creating a lasting alliance that would be able to stop the conflict. While these might be an artifact of writers being very bad at keeping track of their stuff, or being blocked from using certain names according to copyright laws, it does create the illusion of political shifts happening as new countries give up their independence and join the “Internationalists”.
The latter being more useful to an RPG campaign than production occult shenanigans, I hope these might be one day of some help to Gms passing here for information. Even if their copy of SC RPG, or Robotech 1[sup]st[/sup] edition, would be by that point, an antiquity.

If anyone reading this finds something to add that I would have missed, or misrepresented, please feel free to comment and improve our common knowledge of what is, what was, what could have been, and what might one day be.

MORE ANSWERS!!!! (Really...)

Robotech’s official canon puts it more along the lines of a cease fire that turned into lasting peace when they realized there was a bigger fish… though the UN wasn’t a side.

Ah but it says here, in the Wildstorm Source-book that there is : "The United Nations of Earth [The First United Earth Government]" Peace has to begin somewhere and these would have been the guy to band together and stop it. So there was, though maybe very late in the GW, a U.N. which was a side.
It would stand even truer during the moping up of the fallout that came afterwards.

Yes, that is correct. In fact, the official Robotech timeline doesn’t even acknowledge there having been a period of conflict in that era. This may be a legacy of Robotech’s rewrite of Macross repurposing virtually all of the references to that period in Macross’s setting for use as the “Global Civil War”.

Ok, then... so there exist the option to make this a single period in time.

What the “Macross Saga Sourcebook” says, however, is that there was a global war, then in 1999 the AUL appeared and “dragged” it up until 2005. Identifying this as the same conflict without interruption in name, despite the obvious change in motives. (Wishful thinking forces me to notice how the first part is written “global war” and the second “Global War”, indication that the writer seemed to imply a very two-fold conflict. Further timelines of the RPG mentions only the part prior to 1999 and not using capital letters.)
But the same little text from Wildstorm states : "By the year 2005, the majority of nations adopted the accords, making official the government of the United Nations of Earth."
So... Not only there was still a conflict afterward, though maybe no longer a heavily armed one, but that would refine the "SC RPG" timeline accordingly to state that the GW (1999-2005) could be what is most commonly referred to in every other (contemporary available) sources as the Unification War.
Something that Robotech could interpret as an abbreviation of the (Anti-) Unification (League) War.
(History named by the winner, always.)
Establishing that this... the preceding "Festering Regional Wars Simultaneously Appearing to Flare Up" – FRWSAFP – is just a complicated way to rename even more descriptively a "Global Civil War".

???? - 1999 would then be “a global war”.
1999-2005 “The Global War”, including the AUL.
And from 2005 to 2009 you’d get the “reconstruction” phase from the Unification Era. Which as seen from the comics gives it a more Cloak and Dagger “spy movie” and counter-terrorism style. (With Edwards working for the UEG and the Uks leading the counter-revolution.)
The whole thing ending up as being named ingloriously “THE Global War”. Which in the very resumed style of the RPG’s timeline is as good as saying that there is more to dig up. Or a mythic book coming just around the corner.

The practical thing would then probably be to consider that Robotechs begins in 1999 from the new canon standpoint. But the lack of information on the period, that would then lead to its very inception, pushes us to try and do at least the final months prior to the arrival of the SDF-1. If only to get a feel for the setting and the system prior to launching “the real campaign”.
We’re putting the furniture before moving in, if you prefer.

Then, despite all claims to the contrary, one could be wise to see this as a way to keep canon intact, despite copyrights making precise notation difficult. In fact a stroke of genius from Tony Yune and the folks at palladium; leaving the fan community able to use older events as they see fit without describing them themselves. All this while paving the way to be able to re-write any events of the period, would the franchise itself “flare-up” toward something able to be developed once more.

Spoiler:

The stuff from the old comics isn’t a part of the actual Robotech setting… but that aside, it wouldn’t be surprising to have either Rick or Max be soldiers. They’re 18+ in Robotech’s version of events, so they would’ve been able to enlist even in peacetime.

Point taken. The SC RPG does states that Rick was 19 when the series began... My bad.
Good to know for the finer legal points of military enlisting. I guess we aren't as civilized as we want to make believe we are yet.

It wasn’t that dark, not by a long shot. Even when you got some Fist of the North Star-looking biker gangs, they were more like ineffectual comedic villains than a real threat to anyone. Robotech tried to hype up the alleged oppression of the Invid, but most of what’s shown of life on Earth is pretty peaceful and the crew are rarely in danger from anything that’s not Invid.

The famine stricken poor peoples living in ruins from one end to the other of New Gen would probably disagree with you. As would probably those who kill and sell their fellow humans to the Invid in order to grasp at a few measles protoculture cans… Only because without it, there is no more power; and without power, there isn’t any industry, no high-tech medical apparatuses, no power tools, no long-range communication / commerce / travel. In other words, the death tolls, even not from the invid, would be disastrous considering the few humans still alive. It would be giving up to the dark ages one last time, or worst. (10 to 15% death of overall population each years… and that is considering that people would be well trained and adapted to live in those condition at least as much as medieval Europe was.)
So would the Urchins of the world having to steal and probably worse for a living.
Annie is clearly trying to hitch up at a very young age, relatively coherent with a nation having difficulties with education, law and order.
As for Robotech, the SC RPG, at least, describes Protoculture Farms... were people are kept by the hundreds in three room communal brick blocks, using the same clothes everyday, and getting only minimal nourishment. Doesn't qualify as cheerful to me.
Plus, the general reaction to members of the "Red Dragon Gang" spoke a lot of their not so comedic ways. Especially with the former members of the "Blue Angel Gang".

"Mad Max dark" doesn't mean there isn't good days. The little kid with the music box is happy. The Thunder-dome fights are certainly comedic. Some might try to hype up the supposed violence of the recent movie (Fury Road)... but it's fairly more acrobatic than aggressive.
It still is a crap-sack world.
Notice how I didn't say "Hardware (1990)" dark.
Nor "Screamers (1995)" dark.
And certainly not "Bone Tomahawk (2015)", or “Blue Gender (1999)” Dark.
Though I must admit I find "Captain Harlock (1977)" anime debut to be also dark on an approximately equal footing with Robotech.
In a child friendly way.

Yoshiyuki Tomino is the creator of Mobile Suit Gundam

Wait... Gundam? Oh yeah... Love the new "Origin" manga. Didn’t noticed his name was under the main artist though. Don't spoil it please, I haven't finished! XD (Finished the 4th volume by the time of this post.)
In fact, it is still my first contact with the franchise. Robotech finally decided me to try it.
That and the wonderful editing of the series. Who gives so much care to publish a Manga? They are utterly gorgeous! I’m usually not a great consumer of English translations, but the quality got me. Who knew making a great hardcover could be an art form?

Because soldiers in the field don’t set national policy?

Not what I'm referring to. The URSS and USA met many times after Yalta to disclose certain course of actions in order for each of them to not be misinterpreted as a threat. The Cuba Missile Crisis comes to mind as example. The same kind of policy still applies today, with China giving satellite reports in order to prove that there was no Nuclear Tests in North Korea. (But rather a mining accident).
The same kind of reasoning would apply considering that cooler heads would still be alive (probably) which wouldn't be happy with the GW going worst. So... After so many false flag operations, there would probably be other diplomats sharing satellite pictures, in order to claim their innocence. As the False AUL propaganda machine would be going worse, I'd wager there would be some real ex-nations to form up in protest... again.
Which is something soldiers in the field would at least be worried of.
Useful for characters to entertain small and not so small talks at a table.
Or for Gms to create game relevant news articles.

Or exploiting and disposing of hotheaded idiots who would otherwise be trying their hands at real attacks by setting them up to obligingly commit suicide for the greater good? Edwards’s activities seemed to indicate a genuine believer in the AUL, as did Leonard’s, but the brass in Alaska suggested the AUL was essentially a manufactured threat. They might have believed they were really fighting the good fight instead of just dancing on the end of a string.

This is an awesome idea.
Now imagine heroes from the AUL learning what they are up to and trying to expose the UEDF for what it is. Or creating a real AUL from the resources of the false AUL by contacting ex-comrades...
A nice take on Robotech, perfectly grounded in canon (old and new) which hasn't been done, yet.
The W.P. cellphones is also worth considering... though the RPG does have rule to throw unwieldy generic objects.
Thanks.

Except when it wasn’t. The reboot pretty much punted protoculture’s widespread adoption into the New Generation era...

Which makes the whole thing that much more awkward. Probably their worst mistakes.
Even the Zentraedi drawing “magic circles” was easier to grasp than this.
It basically tore down most of the justifications and motivations for the whole franchise.
Especially while keeping the Perytonians and Sekiton afterward.
They basically followed the 4th wall Haydonites... "Destroy the Protoculture Addicts".
While taking out the meaning of that same sentence.
One more of the questions which lead to a much needed "return to sources".
The old comics see this duality as a tragedy when thinking about the pioneer's mission costs. (Seeing scavenging invid "blood" or Robotech Master fuel as the best option, not knowing if SLMH – which would be terribly hard to produce without a known beachhead – will be available. They keep the VF-1 as running on the stuff to explain their fall out of use, and at least paint a target on all the Sentinel's planets.)
Better than no explanation. It also avoid the contradiction of having Rand tell Scott about the protoculture detection issue.

Titan’s comic seems to have officially established itself as an alternate universe story, much like the crossover with Voltron, so thus far the only official canon still appears to be the one from the reboot in 2001.

We still have the Regess taking Zor to be Haydon, yes? So... In a way, a multiversal connection is not yet taken out of the picture. The Haydonites could still be defending our 4 dimensional universe from a big crunch.
However... let's just leave Voltron out of the picture for now.
It's already complicated enough on the legal front.
And I don’t know a thing about Voltron… XD

I think I might've heard a shadow speaking about strangers entering the cave.
Let me go take a look...

[Seto Kaiba]

Well... I feel like I should apologize to the people who started this topic. I feel that, by my presence, I have opened the door to break something that was beautiful. It might well have been one of the last place of exchange, about Robotech, that was not polluted by Macross talks and all the legals implications.

Wow, you really ARE new… no, I don’t think there was ever such a place where Robotech was discussed without referencing the OSM. The wild mass guessing that existed before HG’s institution of an official canon was equal parts Wild Mass Guessing and info and art taken from the Japanese OSM publications, and the official canon information is largely derived from what was in OSM sources. Palladium fans were, if anything, the group that did the most mixing with practically every prominent RPG supplement site heavily borrowing designs and other content from Macross sequels and other non-Robotech works.

Or by this general attitude that there is nothing left to do for the franchise, even as Harmony Gold and Titan Comics are busting their last resources in trying to salvage what they can of it. (Some might be more cynical and think it's just a last cash-in, but I do hope it succeed in becoming much more – at least until I get my Crisis Point copy, and if I’m lucky it’s New Gen Sequel).

That’s not cynicism, that’s realism. Most of us who’ve been with the franchise a long time have had enough candid personal interactions with the people running the franchise to know that the Robotech franchise is effectively dead even without the specter of Harmony Gold losing its rights to the original three shows looming large on the horizon.

Spoiler:

We know for a hard fact from the members of the Robotech creative staff at HG that the Shadow Chronicles was supposed to be a four part OVA, but was cancelled after its first episode. Why? Because they failed to deliver on all of the lofty promises they made to get what little funding they got from Harmony Gold itself. Nobody outside of Harmony Gold was willing to invest in new Robotech development after the expensive failures of all three of the previous attempts to develop sequels (Untold Story, Sentinels, and 3000), and management at HG itself was pretty damn reluctant to invest in Robotech to any extent more than mining the wallets of the terminally nostalgic with merchandise and DVD re-releases. To get what little funding they got, the creative staff had to promise HG’s management that the OVA was going to elevate Robotech to the ranks of mainstream anime properties, bring in new fans in droves, and attract sponsors who would pay for the remaining episodes.

Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles came out to basically zero acclaim, with the only award it won being one for which it was the only entrant in its category. Robotech fans hated it, and non-fans largely didn’t even notice it existed. The overwhelmingly negative fan reaction to that first episode on the official Robotech website led to mass bannings. When they put it up on Hulu Plus to promote it, the comment section was mostly mockery. Needless to say, their cheap direct-to-video sequel’s first installment didn’t attract any sponsors willing to fund production for parts 2 thru 4, so it received a de facto cancellation within months of part 1’s release due to the absence of a budget for development or production.

Robotech: Love Live Alive was a dirt-cheap DVD extra feature marketed as though it were a brand new development, even though it had only a few minutes of new animation spliced into an OVA released for MOSPEADA back in 1985… it also was not well received.

With even HG now convinced that new Robotech development was just a waste of time and money, the creative staff turned to Kickstarter in the hope of securing funding to animate a pilot episode for a new series concept called Robotech Academy in July 2014. Their Kickstarter campaign would end a week early with Harmony Gold rage-quitting Kickstarter to avoid having the campaign officially branded a failure. They only managed to raise 38.9% of their $500,000 goal with a week remaining in the 35 day campaign, and every projection indicating they had a 0% chance of being successfully funded.

That was essentially the end of Harmony Gold’s efforts to continue developing Robotech’s story. Nowadays, the brand is so exhausted that the only licensees they can get are the small time indie crowd and East Asian toy bootleggers.

Titan Comics is not busting their butts trying to salvage Robotech. They are VERY clearly phoning it in so hard they called collect. They’re doing it very cheaply and lazily. Almost all of the character art is visibly traced, which leads to characters looking radically different between any two panels. A fair amount of the designs were, as previously noted, stolen from various sources like Macross fan artists and Bungie’s Halo series. The story is gibberish and seems to be trying to tick off every soap opera cliche it can. They’re very clearly just throwing whatever they can at the wall to see what they can get away with.

Spoiler:

Would you like to know more ?
For all we know, the movie is still in the talks. Sony only asked that HG build back the audience.

Ah, no. After twelve years, the only thing that’s come out of this live action movie license is a lot of dishonest reporting from HG itself. They paid a lot of money for a few fairly prominent writers to do story treatments, and then falsely claimed for years that ALL of those writers they’d paid to do story treatments were attached to write the final script. Likewise, they made A LOT of claims about different directors committing to direct the film, none of whom have shown any interest in the project.

In fact, Harmony Gold publicly indicated the reverse of your hypothesis… they were hoping that a Robotech live action movie would build THEIR audience back up to the point of someone being willing to fund new Robotech development.

Something made difficult by this confusion in canon, not letting enough of the love go through. I have found other small dark corners of the web where, sometime, someone will dare to talk about it, but these chance encounters are often short lived and in terror of what could very well be the last days of a mythology. Art should never have to die like this.

Well, that’s what happens when you try to build a business on taking credit for someone else’s work, while simultaneously doing everything you can to **** off that someone else who owns the IP you’re leasing from them.

I have never seen any other fandom being so much speaking of production, and not the philosophy of the themes and the possibilities offered by a fictional universe.

Eh… you’ll find a LOT of that kind of talk in any fandom where ownership of the IP is disputed or split. Space Battleship Yamato was one of the biggest examples due to disputed ownership of the original show among its Japanese creators. Macross had some brief confusion which was caused by false claims Harmony Gold made about its license back in 1999-2000. Tenchi Muyo! had a lot of issues like that, with one of its creators publishing reams of additional stuff for it on the side due to not having full creative control. Star Trek is currently suffering badly over split ownership and issues arising from it, to the extent that it’s almost all the news that the franchise gets these days.

Robotech may have some additional issues given that most of its themes and possibilities are secondhand.

I imagine what it must be like nowadays, working on such a franchise, with the internet wide open... and not being able to find where and who those Robotech fans are.

With production essentially dead in the water for the last five years and being out of a job in less than two, I don’t think they’re that worried about it.

Even great shows such as Farscape eventually had to go to the fandom in order to get their technobabble straight. Transformers always had a giant production bible... But Robotech? It has to navigate in this uncomfortable dichotomy of what was really made for it, and the fact that the "fans" won't ever forget the stuff it wasn't; yet came from.

Robotech is what it is… a hastily-produced rewrite of three pre-existing shows that were all set in separate universes, that was never intended to be anything more than a commercial for a failed line of robot toy kits from Revell. The depth and sophistication you see in it is the original shows shining through, as a result of the rushed adaptation failing to dumb it down to the target level for their intended audience… which was one of the reasons it didn’t do very well when the series aired in ‘85. Its commercial performance was low enough that they just farmed licenses out to whoever was willing to pay and let them do whatever with comic books, novels, etc.

Carl Macek might’ve gotten grand ideas about it after the fact for the sake of his self-promotion, but it wasn’t until about 2001 that Harmony Gold actually started treating the property like it was an actual franchise worth managing. That reboot in 2001 was when Robotech started trying to take itself seriously and evolve into a franchise that managed its continuity and setting for the sake of consistency like a proper professionally-run franchise.

It saddens me to think of what it must have been like, for the folks at palladium, to live with the persistent criticism I have seen online about their work. Not only for their faults, but for when they actually, with Harmony Gold's consent, tried to create something that could belong only to that precise franchise and not be borrowed. (An uphill battle at best indeed...)

For one, constant criticism is just the inevitable consequence of producing anything that garners - or is for - a fandom. It comes with the job, so I doubt they really care. They’re big boys, it’s not easy to hurt their feelings.

For two, Robotech itself is almost entirely “borrowed”. The borrowed stuff is pretty much the entirety of what Robotech fans actually like about it. Prior to Robotech Academy, HG’s one and only attempt to cut ties and make non-borrowed Robotech was the biggest disaster the franchise ever had because the fans unilaterally hated it so much that it was cancelled after just one teaser trailer. You can’t separate the borrowed material from Robotech any more than you could separate the water in your body from you. Removing it means death. That the material was mostly borrowed gave Palladium’s game a strong periphery demographic in fans of the original shows (mostly Macross) who use the RPG to run games in the original settings.

Plus, despite all the talks about the poor quality of the comics, (which I think is limited to some of the art – Academy’s last run – prior to the 2001 reboot), or errors in continuity (mainly consisting of borrowed design from future events where none existed, mechas in production returning suddenly in prototype phase, etc. All not really affecting the greater scale of the sequential story.)... I don't think one should just barge in and compare Robotech to it's source material when trying to establish a map of it.

There was no “sequential story” in the vast majority of the comics. You’re assuming there was a lot more orchestrating intent there than there actually was… namely, zero. Comico just remade the series in comic book form, and the Waltrips did their own thing with Sentinels, but all the other comics were not anywhere near that coordinated, which caused a LOT of problems. These were dirt cheap, rushed comic books churned out with no supervision by third rate publishers to make a quick licensing buck. There wasn’t a unifying artistic vision or any such lofty nonsense.

I must also declare that, while I do understand the dislike and criticism the McKinney novels gathered along the years (which are critically sound from a certain standpoint); they remain one of the most beautiful and well done novelization / adaptation I have seen to date.

Medically speaking, there’s no accounting for taste… but vocal dislike of the novels was, and is, quite widespread in the fandom. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion they’d be punted out of the official setting because they barely resemble the show that is the prime source of the story and continuity.

It might be too soon, but Titan re-publishing the Sentinels books seems to clash with your arguments about endless legal issues and some such.

The Sentinels series by the Waltrips was essentially the exception to the widespread use of copyright infringement. Even then, there are likely a few scenes that will be sanitized to remove potentially-infringing material.

And I do hope other new folks, or older ones, will take the opportunity HG and Titan seems to be trying to give us. Forget all that was always wrong about it and learn to enjoy Robotech for what it was. What it could have become. What it can still turn out to be.

Eh… most of us have been around long enough to know this isn’t an opportunity, it’s just a final cash grab before the end.

That is not a lot of time!! But if Firefly could get out of its legal issues and still get to producing comics, board games and RPGs years later... Who knows what Robotech can do. Sometime, miracles do happens. If only they could find something that would let them drop the anime and still claim it exist.

Firefly didn’t have legal problems, it was cancelled because its ratings weren’t so much in the toilet as halfway to the sewage treatment center. Joss Whedon and his company Mutant Enemy Productions owned the rights to Firefly’s IP, and thus could exploit it in other ways once Fox cancelled the series. All they had to do to keep going was change the title because Fox had trademarked the title as the network running the series.

Harmony Gold doesn’t own the IP behind their Robotech series… so they can’t do the kind of stuff Joss Whedon did with Firefly once their license expires. The Macross IP is fully owned by Big West Frontier and Studio Nue in Japan, while the IP for Southern Cross and MOSPEADA is owned by Tatsunoko Production Co. Ltd.. They have a license sold to them by Tatsunoko that allows them to distribute the animation outside of Japan and make merch for it for sale outside Japan. When that license expires in 630 days, Harmony Gold loses all of its rights under license to that material, meaning HG would no longer legally be able to use any of the material from the original shows in any format, as well as any material they’ve come up with based on that material. Because almost everything Robotech is drawn from or built on the original three shows, that means almost everything Robotech is instantly and permanently off the table. Robotech, Untold Story, Sentinels, Shadow Chronicles, all of the comics, novels, games, toys, other collectibles… all that is gone. Robotech 3000 was the ONLY one to be all-original and not dependent on the Japanese IP, so it would be the only one to still be usable… and it’s worth remembering that it was cancelled because the fanbase hated it with uncommon vigor and unprecedented unity.

There is no Joss Whedon Firefly-esque escape scenario here… we’re not looking down the barrel of a cancellation Robotech could bounce back from, we’re looking at a future where everything we know to be part of Robotech can no longer legally be used in Robotech. A cessation of Robotech’s very existence.

In fact, given the ardent answers I get from you, even if they sound like someone who got hurt a lot trying to love a dying franchise, I think it can still be pretty relevant.

The irony of ironies, “Robotech” is far better known as a brand of pool cleaning machine (for added irony, one model is named the “Robotech 3000”) in the west and in Japan as a… er… um… how can I put this delicately? A brand of “automated self-gratification device”. It’s so obscure that a genuine pop-culture reference to Robotech is very rare.

That is generally when the fans must come in. Art is a process of giving and sharing. Of course fans can never be legally right, they are not the authors... that is until the authors make them right. Or they become authors themselves.

If the franchise itself suffers a catastrophic failure to exist for legal reasons, they’re kind of up sh*t creek there…

Mind you, fans have been doing what they can but after decades of it many of them have moved on to other, more viable franchises.

I don't think anyone came to Robotech for the legal issues... I think people came to Robotech for the generational story-line, the cast of more than five main characters (a rarity nowadays), the space left to explore as an expanded universe, and of course for giant transforming mechas becoming a necessity in front of an increasingly hellish scenario.

A lot of that is the borrowed gloss from the original shows, which might explain why so many of them moved on to the originals…

That said, the actual Robotech universe has a problem in that it’s geographically very large but narratively it’s very small. It suffers from the same problem the old Star Wars EU did in that the same handful of people do EVERYTHING (mostly the Macross Saga holdovers) and in practice there are only two or three planets in the whole entire galaxy that actually matter to the plot… Earth, Tirol, and Optera. There’s a lot of space around them but there’s bugger-all going on in it… which is likely one reason Robotech fans have attached themselves to the idea of Macross-esque space emigration for fan expansion of the story.

You speak of the reboot as if it was a good idea... Maybe it was at the time. But some decisions in there, to please a target audience, missed the spot. Taking robotech out of robotech might have been what pleased the fans then, but it’s not useful as a producing tool. The balkanisation of the show and merchandising, and trying to retcon using a handful of loose continuity plug-ins based on it, also didn't help the clarity issues it already had. Invalidating Lisa instead of building her, for example... Or fleeing the Master Saga instead of trying to re-write it toward a larger audience. But it seems HG is finally getting there. Painfully and very late, but they seem to do.

It was a good idea… it was just too little, too late. The goal was rebuilding Robotech into a modern mecha anime franchise via a reboot and official canon was a measure meant to permit Robotech to grow in a way that would make it a credible contender to the genre that would be taken seriously. Setting an official canon and continuity is a VERY useful production tool for a franchise.

This was not Balkanization of Robotech by any stretch of the imagination. The fandom was always like that, with most “discourse” being flame wars between proponents of one version of the story or other. What HG did was try to forge a proper union by setting an official course for the franchise’s future that would enable it to appeal to old and new fans alike. The majority of Robotech fans are fans of the TV series and don’t really care much about the old comics and novels, so it was actually fairly well-received except among those who were particularly devoted to their personal headcanon.

They were limited in what they could do in future animation by the legal restrictions on their use of the IP. Macross designs were basically right out, so they had to get rid of many of their holdover characters and totally redesign plot-critical ones. As with much of Robotech’s own history, the lawyers are the ones writing the plot.

Trying to rework the Masters Saga would be a lost cause. Fans hate it, but fans are also bitterly opposed to any tampering with the TV show they remember from 1985. Witness the discontent over “Robotech Remastered”. That would’ve been a course of action with no possible positive outcome… so it’s hardly fair to hold not trying against them. They are but men, they cannot turn lead into gold.

So what if they have to eventually draw a whole new VF-1, change character names, or even begin the live movie continuity with the sentinels? Why are these things never said? The RNU and comics both stated that there was some multiversal cycle in there, why not give a chance to a new universe?

Simple answer… because the designs and characters of the 85 episode TV series are what the fans actually like, and what keeps them coming back. When Harmony Gold tried to divorce the Robotech franchise from that IP, the fans were for once united… in their vocal hatred of the series pitch… to the extent that Harmony Gold scrubbed the project after just one teaser trailer.

Even the Titan Robotech comic is not well-received by fans. It’s mostly mocked for its bad art, bizarre and nonsensical story, and - inevitably - for its deviations from the existing story of the Robotech TV series.

As I understood it, HG took that stance because some of the fans did not like "The End of The Circle".

End of the Circle was the low point for practically all fans, even proponents of the novels… but the general incompatibility of the novels with the setting of the TV show was the reason for their banishment.

And even more disturbing, some so called fans did not even like "Master Saga".

Most fans didn’t. Then again, that was not surprising as Southern Cross itself was a flop in Japan that was earmarked for cancellation barely ⅓ of the way into its broadcast run due to the terrible ratings it was getting.

But a Star Wars fanfic, really? How? And that is a very harsh statement.

It’s harsh, yes… but not without basis. VFs suddenly having energy shields that were not in the show, the whole Sentinels arc turning protoculture into The Force…

(The Star Wars connection comes from the fact that the authors are much better known for their work on Star Wars novels… both before and after Robotech. I’m told that they’re actually pretty good at it, which made the quality of the novels and their inconsistency with the established setting rather surprising.)

Then pull a Final Fantasy... use the very last moments of your job to drop Macross and do everything you wished you had with the Franchise. If they don't, well... You told me first.

But it’s the first, and most important, part of the Robotech story… so they’re kinda hosed and no studio wants to take a risk on a multi-million dollar lawsuit for copyright infringement. Just look at the sh*tstorm surrounding CBS over having allegedly plagiarized part of the plot for Star Trek: Discovery’s first season from an indie game on Steam. They’re likely to lose in court on a copyright beef and have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages… when they’re still $200 million upside-down on production.

By issue #20, I would have had entirely agreed with you on Titan. (Even if Matrix and Halo both admittedly borrowed from Japanese animation also... Originality is a myth.)

There’s a difference between using an existing trope and outright stealing a plot… Robotech comics have consistently done the latter, which is a criminal offense, where the former is simply called “homage”.

But from a gaming perspective... Involving real players at a real table engaged in a totally unofficial and improvised story-line; what should matter is the fun that can be taken out of it, no?

Well, yeah… but when it comes to licensed games a lot of players tend to be rather attached to the stories and settings they’re playing in, and react poorly to dicking around with mechanics and set pieces from those stories.

Well... Isn't that in the definition of American comic books in general? Forever rebooted and trifled with continuity crashes?

Continuity problems aside, the stuff from the high-end publishers and their imprints generally have an artistic vision behind them and their universes… they’re not shallow cash grabs, there’s some passion there.

We are so far from the original topic it's not even funny. But I must ask... what are you referring to? Yes they did a few things, like an homage to Blade Runner on Karbarra for one... But I would hardly classify that as a copyright infringement. We might not be seeing the same things here, what is so problematic?

Stealing entire stories from other works, using designs that Robotech doesn’t have rights to from other works, using characters that Robotech doesn’t have rights to from other works…

For example, the Robotech: Wings of Gibraltar miniseries has a character in it who is just Brent Spiner’s character from Independence Day... not “inspired by”, literally just stills from the movie that were traced. The new VF design introduced in the comic? A slightly modified VF-19F Excalibur from Macross 7.

Yet it can be found, and watched, and quoted by fans doing reviews; makes for a wonderful story about production done the wrong way, and even has its own website.

None of which can actually be used for Robotech, and all of which is technically illegal.

Then again, we chose that path because it was simpler to use it as scotch tape than to reconcile much of the RPG with the anime or with itself. At some point, the players must be able to create a comprehension of the universe. Not just strifle trough some incomplete and contradicting reports that alludes to possible events.

You don’t have contradictory accounts if you leave out the non-canon material though.

The Fusion / Protoculture duality, for example, only does sense in the context of the comics (old and new) and not the Anime, nor the RPG itself.

That all of the mecha ran on protoculture was only ever a fan assumption… it’s actually stated at any point in the series.

I can respect that. However, it does not especially, nor necessarily help to advance the cause of getting inspirations for people wanting to try their own Pre-Macross game.

That’s the catch-22, there’s no information about that time period in Robotech except for a few vague remarks and the one brief view of it in “From the Stars”.

What’s shown isn’t really much different from what we had in 1999 for real, so… it’s difficult to do a game about a war that doesn’t look like it was ever actually that big of a thing. (Which I guess may parallel the attitude Star Trek’s pseudocanon novel-verse writers take with the Eugenics Wars, indicating that they flew under the radar to most of the western world due to outwardly looking like a bunch of unrelated small conflicts and the dots weren’t joined up until after the Augments were defeated and fled into space.)

However, it does in a world where there is "One World Nation". If on paper it has been unified as a single country, then a planet that would enter into a "World War" would effectively be written in history (by the winner) has having had a civil war. (Something somewhat less important sounding, less violent for the medias.)

That’s the catch, there wasn’t a one world nation yet… and there wouldn’t be one for years, so to call it a “Global Civil War” makes no sense.

I guess, to remain Robotech, one could speak of the[/i] “Unification Era” without resorting to “wars” in order to avoid the Macross confusion.)

The catch being that the the Robotech series and comics act like this era didn’t have any organized conflict in it… the whole world had a mass “oh cr*p” and came together, the end.

In this, one would be advised to remember that historical period names aren't always meant to look great in the long run. (Which gives this one realism, if nothing else.)

They’re usually indicative names though… the World Wars involved many of the major powers in the world at the time, they might not have involved the world as a whole in a literal sense but figuratively they did because they were wars between the colonialist powers that controlled the vast majority of the world.

“Global Civil War” implies that the world is already unified, which wasn’t the case… and as such is a non-indicative name.

In fact... even "Cold War" is a misnomer... There was still a lot of engagement (by proxy), and it was all about the hottest weapons mankind ever built!

A “Cold War” just means there is no direct conflict between the belligerents. It doesn’t rule out engagement by proxy, so the name is actually not a misnomer, the true meaning of the term as coined by George Orwell just isn’t properly understood.

But, since the only thing I could try to relate this to once officially published material would be to Quote Rick Hunter in "Robotech Graphic Novel : Genesis" saying : "Well, Pop – you were right. Civilization is on the move again – Things are getting better instead of worse. It all started when that spaceship lit up the sky over San Francisco, that night we went into town with Alice-- The Emergency World Government held together a lot longer than anyone thought – All those petty little civil wars died down. They just didn't seem to Matter, not after the discovery of Robotechnology..."

Note the continuity error there, that dialog is assuming the “Global Civil War” happened after the crash not before it… like the Unification Wars in the original Macross.

As for the AUL, they couldn't be known during the GW because they officially appeared afterward... Which leaves open to debate what they could have been prior. Since, you know, global governmental infrastructures and the means to oppose them don't just appear over night. It would be very plausible to state that the "unification process" begun as a diplomatic proposal a few months before, at least, the "most powerful nations" would have theoretically fell. (The reboot keeping in canon the high officials of the UEDF which considers the SDF-1 to have been a godsend to save mankind.)
If this stands up enough for you to use, then it would probably equally stands to reason that other alliances might have existed which knew there could be defeat.

This just makes the Anti-Unification League the Anti-Unification Alliance under another name… which was kind of par for the course after the reboot. It would’ve been crazy militia types and soldiers who went off the reservation, the occasional terrorist group, that kinda thing. Not an enormous governmental alliance like the various in-hindsight ridiculous caricatures which the writers of the novels and old comics populated their stories… most of which hinders the idea that this was scattered conflicts and not an actual World War III between a bunch of large-ish alliances.

If nothing else, these perfectly exemplify why a neophyte could conclude that the period would have been a bloody mess of epic proportions.

It’s a lot less messy when you have a whole bunch of well-defined national alliances and so on fighting. IMO it’s less freedom, not more, to come up with a character backstory that might have personal resonance. Robotech’s setting and history is supposed to be relatively close to our own prior to 1999, so you’d expect a chaotic and bloody period like this to flare up not with huge alliances of nations duking it out for supremacy but with dozens of pre-existing hostilities flaring up like, for instance (and this is not meant to reflect any particular political view or prompt political discussion, just a general index of places that could end up as Global War hotspots in a continuity close to our reality:

• The Russian Federation attempting to annex former Soviet territories along its border.
• India and Pakistan going to war over possession of Kashmir.
• Civil unrest and possibly civil wars in the People’s Republic of China over the pro-democracy opposition to the Communist Party and oppressed minority groups.
• North and South Korea duking it out again.
• Japan and the Russian Federation squaring off over possession of the Kuril Islands.
• Japan and North Korea squaring off over abduction of Japanese citizens and their nuclear program.
• Sectarian violence in the Middle East.
• An attempt to establish Kurdistan as a nation on the Kurdish-held territories in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.
• Civil war in Columbia between the FARC and government.
• Civil unrest in Venezuela.
• Any of a thousand potential ethnic, sectarian, and national conflicts in Africa, especially North Africa.

All that and hundreds more can be had without having to add new factions to the setting, many of which have the potential to offer more resonance to a player than those between two factions they’ve never heard of before.

The frequent name changes concerning the “Globalist” faction (a Macross term, I suppose) does seem to mimic not one, but many attempt at creating a lasting alliance that would be able to stop the conflict. While these might be an artifact of writers being very bad at keeping track of their stuff, or being blocked from using certain names according to copyright laws, it does create the illusion of political shifts happening as new countries give up their independence and join the “Internationalists”.

Not a Macross term, actually… but in Macross one of the things that made the Earth Unification Government work was that it was a mechanism for the smaller nations to prevent major powers (OTEC’s founding six: the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan) from monopolizing the technological developments from the wrecked alien starship.

For all the factions in Robotech, it’s mostly just writers coming up with stuff on the fly and not checking each other’s work because there was no oversight in place.

Ah but it says here, in the Wildstorm Source-book that there is : "The United Nations of Earth [The First United Earth Government]" Peace has to begin somewhere and these would have been the guy to band together and stop it. So there was, though maybe very late in the GW, a U.N. which was a side.

That was the government that emerged out of the end of the war. It wasn’t a faction, it was the outcome of the peace process between the factions.

But the same little text from Wildstorm states : "By the year 2005, the majority of nations adopted the accords, making official the government of the United Nations of Earth."
So... Not only there was still a conflict afterward, though maybe no longer a heavily armed one,

That doesn’t imply that there was still ongoing armed conflict… just that some nations hadn’t yet ratified the new world government. Generally speaking, you’d expect nations to want to avoid a conflict with the new 800lb gorilla in the room. The government became official when there was essentially no real opposition to it politically.

???? - 1999 would then be “a global war”.
1999-2005 “The Global War”, including the AUL.

The problem with that reasoning being that the official timeline explicitly says the global war ended in August 1999. Any conflict with the League appears to have been so insignificant that it was not even given a name, and may not have been significant enough to be considered a war.

The practical thing would then probably be to consider that Robotechs begins in 1999 from the new canon standpoint.

To be frank, that’s kind of been the approach that the official material has always taken. There’s no entries in the official timeline prior to 1999.

Then, despite all claims to the contrary, one could be wise to see this as a way to keep canon intact, despite copyrights making precise notation difficult. In fact a stroke of genius from Tony Yune and the folks at palladium; leaving the fan community able to use older events as they see fit without describing them themselves.

Eh… knowing Tommy and having been consulted by him a few times for info, I would suspect it was a much more straightforward case of simply not considering anything that happened prior to the crash of the SDF-1 in 1999 to be relevant to the Robotech story proper. Harmony Gold did go out of its way to prohibit Palladium from including factions like EBSIS in the game, which if anything suggests that their intention is for these factions to not exist in Robotech at all.

The famine stricken poor peoples living in ruins from one end to the other of New Gen would probably disagree with you. As would probably those who kill and sell their fellow humans to the Invid in order to grasp at a few measles protoculture cans… Only because without it, there is no more power; and without power, there isn’t any industry, no high-tech medical apparatuses, no power tools, no long-range communication / commerce / travel. In other words, the death tolls, even not from the invid, would be disastrous considering the few humans still alive. It would be giving up to the dark ages one last time, or worst. (10 to 15% death of overall population each years… and that is considering that people would be well trained and adapted to live in those condition at least as much as medieval Europe was.)

We don’t actually see anyone famine-stricken, we do see people living in ruins though…

There’s kind of some dissonance between the story the dialog tries to tell and what’s actually on screen, as we see the Invid are nowhere near the oppressors they’re built up to be. They don’t really bother humans as long as the humans aren’t coming after them. We never see the slave laborers allegedly being worked to death on protoculture farms or anything of that nature, all we see are the occasional group squatting in ruins for no clear reason and the nicer settlements are generally left to live in peace and actually look like nice-ish places to live, apparently being given all the fuel they need as long as they don’t support an armed uprising against the Invid.

Annie is clearly trying to hitch up at a very young age, relatively coherent with a nation having difficulties with education, law and order.

Just in the original MOSPEADA, it’s pretty much entirely for comedic effect… Annie/Mint is a boy-crazy teenage girl who wants a hot older boyfriend.

As for Robotech, the SC RPG, at least, describes Protoculture Farms... were people are kept by the hundreds in three room communal brick blocks, using the same clothes everyday, and getting only minimal nourishment. Doesn't qualify as cheerful to me.

No such thing is ever depicted in the show or comics… that’s the RPG playing things up for a little drama, because otherwise the Invid really wouldn’t seem all that hostile.

Plus, the general reaction to members of the "Red Dragon Gang" spoke a lot of their not so comedic ways. Especially with the former members of the "Blue Angel Gang".

… and yet, nobody ever seems to suffer more than a few bruises from dealing with them, their antics mostly seem to be general rowdiness, and their big showdown results in no injuries and no loss of life. As threats go, they’re pretty toothless.

"Mad Max dark" doesn't mean there isn't good days. The little kid with the music box is happy. The Thunder-dome fights are certainly comedic. Some might try to hype up the supposed violence of the recent movie (Fury Road)... but it's fairly more acrobatic than aggressive.
It still is a crap-sack world.

The Robotech adaptation suffers from the same issue the original MOSPEADA did in that the Inbit/Invid are a pretty anticlimactic antagonist. They really only want to be left alone and are perfectly happy to live and let live as long as they don’t see you as an imminent threat to their people. They don’t really make for horrifying oppressors precisely because they have that “unless it’s directly trying to hurt me it’s not my problem” mentality.

Wait... Gundam? Oh yeah... Love the new "Origin" manga. Didn’t noticed his name was under the main artist though. Don't spoil it please, I haven't finished! XD (Finished the 4th volume by the time of this post.)

Gundam: the Origin’s OVA can be watched for free on YouTube in its original form (legit, not pirated), and Crunchyroll has the Advent of the Red Comet TV series edit of it in simulcast if you’re interested. VERY dark, even darker than the original 1979 series when it comes to what we see of the Battle of Loum and the One Week Battle that left 5.9 billion dead. (I’m not gonna lie, I got a little queasy seeing those events actually depicted…)

That and the wonderful editing of the series. Who gives so much care to publish a Manga? They are utterly gorgeous! I’m usually not a great consumer of English translations, but the quality got me. Who knew making a great hardcover could be an art form?

Gundam is pretty much the biggest fish in the mecha anime pond. It can afford to have artists lavish that kind of attention on it because it is a gargantuan merchandising machine.

This is an awesome idea.
Now imagine heroes from the AUL learning what they are up to and trying to expose the UEDF for what it is. Or creating a real AUL from the resources of the false AUL by contacting ex-comrades...
A nice take on Robotech, perfectly grounded in canon (old and new) which hasn't been done, yet.

There was a Macross story that was very much like that… Macross VF-X2, which is set between Macross 7 and Macross Frontier. In that story, the player character (Aegis Focker) is part of a special forces unit that was dispatched to deal with anti-government forces only to discover…

Spoiler:

... that you’ve been playing as the bad guys all along. Your boss is part of Latence, an Earth-supremacist pseudo-fascist group who want to abolish the autonomy of emigrant planet and fleet governments and transfer all authority to Earth in the name of preventing any internal conflicts and better coordinating responses to external threats. All the anti-government groups you’ve been wiping out were anti-fascist forces opposing their takeover, so you switch sides to prevent their impending coup d’etat.

A bunch of later stories all tie into it, like Macross R and the novelization of Macross Delta.

It basically tore down most of the justifications and motivations for the whole franchise.

That protoculture was universally adopted was never in the show… it was just something the fans assumed.

Especially while keeping the Perytonians and Sekiton afterward.

They kept the Perytonians, I don’t know if they kept the sekiton… since the canon appearances of the Sentinels aliens amounts to like two comic panels and no dialog for everyone who isn’t a Haydonite.

They basically followed the 4th wall Haydonites... "Destroy the Protoculture Addicts".
While taking out the meaning of that same sentence.

Nah, starships and the UEEF mecha use protoculture as its primary power source… so it still makes sense in context.

Better than no explanation. It also avoid the contradiction of having Rand tell Scott about the protoculture detection issue.

Really, the whole Sentinels mission and not discovering that the Invid could sense protoculture was a plot hole all along… they fought a war for 22 years and never once figured out how their enemy knew where they were? This doesn’t change it, since the Pioneer Mission in canon is using protoculture-powered mecha more or less exclusively.

We still have the Regess taking Zor to be Haydon, yes? So... In a way, a multiversal connection is not yet taken out of the picture. The Haydonites could still be defending our 4 dimensional universe from a big crunch.

Do we? I don’t recall that ever coming up. In the Titan comic, shadow technology appears to be Invid in origin, not Haydonite.

However... let's just leave Voltron out of the picture for now.
It's already complicated enough on the legal front.
And I don’t know a thing about Voltron… XD

That’s fine, most of us would prefer to forget about that terrible crossover comic… and we heartily thank our lucky stars it’s an alterniverse story and not canon.

[xunk16]

It is finished. Finally over. Ready to get looked at, trampled over, start conjectures... and hopefully advance the cause of defining the 1994-1999 part of the Global War and rise of the AUL.

https://www.deviantart.com/xunkdejanelk ... -810461876

(Use the download function as the picture shown directly on the page is quite fuzzy...)

What was done here is take every bit of information I could find in the old secondary-canon comics, relate it to as much real world references I could find (since, you know, authors must mean something and they generally use words because they intend them to be understood); then completed the holes by a careful reading of each available nation on the map on Wikipedia. (Plus searching for relevant maps of statistical / military / political importance when a choice had to be made.)
The goal was to map every possible conflict for the period, including the RT inspired ones, to the nearest province.

And really... there is a whole lot of civil war / unrest / guerrilla activity / terrorism and coup d'état going on in that small unit of time.

Sometime it wasn't easy to decrypt the meaning of the comics. I had to puzzle how in hell something like that could have happened. So I'm sorry to say there is absolutely nothing official about that map. And while I have managed to find some sort of sense to it all, the reason as to why the US would fall into a civil war which would so divide them is still a little beyond me.
(I'm currently assuming it has to do with economy, the war effort, and a particularly tied and polarizing election. Paradoxically, it is also the best [comic-accurate] mapped country from the secondary canon information.)

In the end though, the effort was mostly attempted to let players have a fast primer on the IRL / Robotech situation for their background and orient them into which conflict they might have participated prior to the start of the campaign. Plus, helping the Gm in determining the looks of ruins for most of the setting. And of course the lives of NPCs which will have lived through the era.
As we say here, everything that lets characters have small talk when they are trapped into an elevator helps good role-play.

Other things that had to be assumed and how the major players were made sense of :

Spoiler:

• The failed August coup of 1991 did happen, but it was successful. However, the URSS minus Gorbachev and remaining under communism wasn't enough to keep the eastern soviet republics from seceding when civil unrest from the neo-tsarist movement engulfed Russia. (Mainly localized according to IRL GDP for the given era, location of soviet prison camps, and interests in the monarchist party.) Following this, the communist politburo of Russia had to find back-up to stay in control. They finally resolved their long dispute with China by accepting that their model for socialism worked; becoming the Neo-Marxist bloc.
  
  The Eastern Soviet Republic then proceeded to continue on their own agenda with a less polarized COMECON.
  
• France having a socialist revolution is both an original idea (ignore them if you wish), and suggested by their exclusion from the NEC in the comics. The revolution being a long term conflict was also chosen in order to not push that deduction too strongly. It was mapped according to election maps of the era and GDP. Support of France in it's external regions was also thoroughly scrutinized.
  
• The Emergency Action Coalition was never quite defined outside of it's activity in London and the UKs. Without any more information, I related it to the long lasting troubles surrounding the IRA and Ireland in general. In that case, a people's war lead by a legitimate Northern Ireland Communist Party which would have raised some kind of trouble able to cross borders in the U.K.s
  
• Manchukuo was kept partly independent for the people that lives there and also because the comics never directly states it as being part of the NEACPS. Though it should stand to reason that the link between the PACPS and the NEACPS imply some sort of relation. Thus, there is a part of it that is leased to the NEACPS in exchange for military protection.
  
• Miller's Milita and the Son's of Constitution were both classified as Retro-Nationalist for their strong interest in the affairs of the USA both before and after the crash of the SDF-1. Which means that without being in any way a legitimate political body, they do want the US to continue to exist as it was prior to the war. It should be considered that both have seen a lot of action in the Trans-American Troop's territory. However, for ease of readability in 1998 (which is the start of our campaign) I represented their regions at their smallest / most certain. (With their eradication / arrest being one of the first item post-1999.)
  
• The NEACPS was reconstructed using the countries in the PACPS which would have been most likely to risk a new relationship with japan. I'm assuming it was a confederation since there was obviously no one that would have been crazy about starting back Japanese domination. I'm also assuming that Japan did make the amendment to their constitution for defending close allies in a war without ever starting one themselves. This would obviously let them play the game of proxy wars enjoyed by the Soviet, the Neo-Marxists, and the Internationalists. Considering the speed at which they socially integrate any opportunity for advancement, I'm guessing this was the best way to do it.
  North Korea Juche's ideology also placed it as more interested in an equitable confederation than staying under the umbrella of China. Which doesn't necessarily makes them enemies.
  However, it is interesting to note that if one wanted to start his own GCW directly from WWII and avoid the fall of the PACPS... Secondary canon would be as much supportive of the idea.
  
• The Exclusionists were most likely inspired from a nationalist party from Australia that does exist. The reason behind their involvement in the global war against the Internationalists and most probably the NEACPS are however unknown. Especially since they have US bases on their territory. I assumed the good folks from down under would have wanted to keep their neutrality as long as they could.
  In the end though, with the US unable to shield them, and the NEACPS probably trying to find a pressure point for Australia to join them... I assumed there would have been some kind of "unidentified" piracy on their oil reserve to motivate them. The maps sees them as trying to get both factions out of their territory while the Australian people itself resist the new party's plan to free them from one of their longest-lasting ally.
  
• Nova Roma also exist IRL. But prior to its political activity post-1999 and its subsequent tagging as a terrorist organization by the UEG; it was simply a civil movement for the preservation of the Italian heritage. The military support to that civil unrest is unknown for that period, but is likely.
  
• Celtic Thunder was assumed to be a pro-celtic nationalist movement originating in Ireland. Its relation in the battle of London however motivated me to increase it's sphere of influence by making it inspire a similar party in Wales. If you would prefer to have them be simple mercenaries, knock yourself out. The comics doesn't give us a lot to go by for these guys.
  
• Pacifica was interpreted as an independent nation born out of a civic movement for the rights of indigenous people that was pretty active during the period and in the Pacifica Region. Considering the whole lot of refuges seen and the "Aryan Posses'" unknown original extent; I assumed they might have been taking in refugees wanting to get out of the war but not under a military junta.
  
• To my surprise, the Western Alliance did existed as a plan for the secession of Western Canada. It still sees popularity from time to time. I simply included it as is on the map. The Western United states were clearly allies, and have been clearly cut by the territory otherwise occupied in secondary-cannon. I added Québec's independence because... Well, regional conflicts that had been festering...

This map does not, in any event, account for the violence of the conflict presented. Only the power bases and the frontier on which potential clash are most likely to happens. So if you wish to play it as total carnage, be my guest. If you want to keep it more realistic by having subs and plane squadrons play cats and mouse as their government argue about who has the biggest missile arsenal, you can also do it.
Like Seto said previously, there is no official account for the global level of violence. All that can be traced back is the power game that was played and would continue to influence and monetize the AUL's existence.

The page on Deviant Art has a few more explanation on how one can use and interpret the map.

If nothing else, I hope this helps to shed some light on what might have been intended by the Robotech franchise before it's official reboot and subsequent entrance into the world of multiverse conflict. Don't hesitate to comment.

I also have made short notes for each nations as I was doing it. If anyone is interested, I could translate them from french and post them here.

________________________________________________________________

Long answer to Seto Kaiba.

Spoiler:

That’s not cynicism, that’s realism. Most of us who’ve been with the franchise a long time have had enough candid personal interactions with the people running the franchise to know that the Robotech franchise is effectively dead even without the specter of Harmony Gold losing its rights to the original three shows looming large on the horizon.

The situation has evolved in such a way since I last posted here that I think we can fairly consider this line of thought to be... indefinitely suspended.
Thanks the shapings.

Let's just hope that the Titan's Minmei literally defeating an army by telling them to buzz off was the bottom of the barrel. I don't want to know how anyone could get lower from there. And to be fair, it's been rather improving since a few issues. Still incredibly unclear though; like if the game was called "Guess My Story-line". At least they have plugged back parts of "The Movie", the mutated T.R. Edwards, and related their "halo" stuff to RT:3000. A small step in the right direction.

The depth and sophistication you see in it is the original shows shining through, as a result of the rushed adaptation failing to dumb it down to the target level for their intended audience… which was one of the reasons it didn’t do very well when the series aired in ‘85. Its commercial performance was low enough that they just farmed licenses out to whoever was willing to pay and let them do whatever with comic books, novels, etc.

I doubt this is all there is since most of my "hallucinated depth" does not come from material directly built out of the original shows. Neither would I call any of the old comics run (except Comico's) a dumb down. Especially since none of the original shows (not counting unused sequels) ever reached the grim sociopolitical nature of the Malcontent Era, nor the survival horror feel of Invid War : Aftermath, nor even the grotesque and baroque nature of some of the RNU. As for the low commercial success of Robotech... We can all fairly say it was impressive in the face of "the Rock Lords" and "Robotix : The Series", or a few others from the same era.

That the material was mostly borrowed gave Palladium’s game a strong periphery demographic in fans of the original shows (mostly Macross) who use the RPG to run games in the original settings.

What I have seen so far, at least on this site, demonstrate the futility of contesting you that point.
Me and my group, however, do plan to use this game as a Robotech product.

There was no “sequential story” in the vast majority of the comics. You’re assuming there was a lot more orchestrating intent there than there actually was… namely, zero. Comico just remade the series in comic book form, and the Waltrips did their own thing with Sentinels, but all the other comics were not anywhere near that coordinated, which caused a LOT of problems. These were dirt cheap, rushed comic books churned out with no supervision by third rate publishers to make a quick licensing buck. There wasn’t a unifying artistic vision or any such lofty nonsense.

It was however a franchise built bricks by bricks by people who did manage to paint a large scale story-line. There was a reading order that could be deduced of this "whole mess" as you seem to see it, and it does mostly make sense. I have troubles believing that people having to write into an IP would not even sparsely read what came before them. Especially if they obtain that much continuity from their work. Sometime, it is the holes left by previous authors, these dark spots which asks to be filled... that become the most relevant spots of a franchise. Something especially true from a RPG, since without holes for players to include themselves in, there wouldn't be a story; only the eradication of one.
In that, they weren't so different from any other expanded universe on the market. At the very least, they did not end up creating an inescapable bubble burst that would have forced a whole scale reboot before they had found an ending of sorts.

Medically speaking, there’s no accounting for taste… but vocal dislike of the novels was, and is, quite widespread in the fandom. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion they’d be punted out of the official setting because they barely resemble the show that is the prime source of the story and continuity.

I resent that remark. But there is obviously no point in highlighting that the RNU still has fans, or that is was one of the only ever completed versions of Robotech, from beginning to end; akin to a first official version since the rushed process of the anime is, even often here, considered little more than a first draft.

The irony of ironies, “Robotech” is far better known as a brand of pool cleaning machine (for added irony, one model is named the “Robotech 3000”) in the west and in Japan as a… er… um… how can I put this delicately? A brand of “automated self-gratification device”. It’s so obscure that a genuine pop-culture reference to Robotech is very rare.

And yet... I never heard of those. Google seems to also disagree.

That said, the actual Robotech universe has a problem in that it’s geographically very large but narratively it’s very small. It suffers from the same problem the old Star Wars EU did in that the same handful of people do EVERYTHING (mostly the Macross Saga holdovers) and in practice there are only two or three planets in the whole entire galaxy that actually matter to the plot… Earth, Tirol, and Optera. There’s a lot of space around them but there’s bugger-all going on in it...

Yes well, this is usually why this genre is called "space opera". You have a small cast of soloists, diva and tenors, having to convey a relatively short story through a relatively restrained number of acts, related by big ellipses, which asks a lot production-wise for decor, and the rest is mostly choirs and narrations. Would you criticize "metal" for using an electric guitar?

Also, I would submit that while you are mostly right to tell that there is "bugger-all" going on in the larger universe, there was.
Most species and empires were eradicated by the migration of protoculture. (Which is no small part in the meanings of the "shapings".)
From the war between Monte Yarrow and the Gottruzello, to migration of eluded to "common ancestors" from Andromeda to the Milky Way, to the establishment of the Tirolean Mercantile Empire, the switch toward the Robotech Master's empire, then the fall of both these under the Invid. I don't remember quite correctly the estimation given, but there is mentions of a trail of planets being ruined even before the inclusion of Earth in that narrative. Robotech mainly takes place in a dead / dying universe... But not because it wasn't taken care of, because it was the will of its creators.
The fandom has tried to expand on this in fanon, but the RPG chose the easy (and correct) road by leaving us with a whole system to create a near infinity of races that might have been thrown back to the stone age, or otherwise isolated for sometime. The Palladium's iteration of the Sentinels / U.E.E.F. even go as far that path as making some of the named planets stand in "unknown" locations.

However, the ever changing window of time for the Tirolean conflict with the invid doesn't help getting a clear picture of the scale of it. One could almost say this is worst than the Warhammer 40k's "Imperium of Man" Calendar, purposefully retconned by authorities in place in order for that precise millennium to never end. What a dark age indeed, history-wise at least.
The very nature of the Robotech Masters, being to not care for their yesteryear's subjects or historical archives, speaks a lot of their obsessive "protoculture" addiction. Something that made the plot of having a first version of the Zentraedi history, written after the Invid War, that much more touching. It was one of the very few uphill moment in Robotech's narrative.
Now, one could choose to see this as simple mismanagement of a potentially cool aspect to dig-in by previous writers. Followed by a fast patch plugged-in by a passing contributor. Or simply accept that it was the story written and that it doesn't speak in a very flattering light of the characters letting this happen. Objectively, the text is what it was. Such as when actors changes their lines at the last minute. Subjectively, one's interpretation of art is almost as important to its appreciation than it's quality. It will never make it critically acclaimed, but it can't deny the love it will receive.

And if this personal appreciation of a piece of art gets purposefully confused and condemned for "headcanon" concerning what is most definitely a defunct part of a franchise...
What can I say.
I did like "The End of the Circle". And Master Saga. Not necessarily by themselves... but by their interaction with the whole.
And growing up reading AVP and the SW : EU novels. We all have different referents from which we receive new information.

You don’t have contradictory accounts if you leave out the non-canon material though.

I agree the thing from "Wings of Gibraltar" did look familiar. Though I couldn't put my finger on it while I read it at the time.

But while you seemingly think my headache in trying to clean-up material and include secondary-canon material came up from the latter... I would say the most problems I had was, in fact, with the stuff post-reboot with itself. Including, but not limited to, references in the RPG leading to straight up nothing, or numbers impossible to accurately retro-engineer due to estimations from meters to feet being wildly different.
It is these problems that pushed me toward older published, though no longer official, material.

Also, your current argument seems to defeat most of our previous encounters about animation errors and Robotech in general not giving a bloody mast about cross-checking it's own dialogues. These did not stop. You yourself did point that even Titan's iteration suffered greatly (and I agree) from such nonsense. This however, is comparable in scope to other long enduring franchise from that era... Highlander readily comes to mind.
So why would you be so hell-bent in telling me that I can't use material I get the illusion to understand / can explain away Vs material I would be forced to re-write, emancipate past the borders of good taste, and transform into insulting head-canon even prior to the inclusion of the RPG aspect to it?
Especially since the end goal is the latter?
(Yes, I recognize there is an irony in this coming in the same post as my map, but I still consider it to be more of an elaboration on given information than right out invention without regard to any existing material. For me, it still would defend it as fanon rather than headcanon. I'm not pretending it's the ultimate truth either.)

In this, one would be advised to remember that historical period names aren't always meant to look great in the long run. (Which gives this one realism, if nothing else.)

They’re usually indicative names though… the World Wars involved many of the major powers in the world at the time, they might not have involved the world as a whole in a literal sense but figuratively they did because they were wars between the colonialist powers that controlled the vast majority of the world.

“Global Civil War” implies that the world is already unified, which wasn’t the case… and as such is a non-indicative name.

[...]

A “Cold War” just means there is no direct conflict between the belligerents. It doesn’t rule out engagement by proxy, so the name is actually not a misnomer, the true meaning of the term as coined by George Orwell just isn’t properly understood.

I've just finished revising that whole period IRL. There was a whole lot of civil wars and guerrilla warfare going on. Plus if you count "coup d'etats", revolutions, civil unrest, crimes against humanity and the people obviously trying to fight them... One could fairly say that we get enough fingers and toes to count the places who didn't get touched at least a bit. Especially if counting in the civil wars added by the authors who did use this term.
If "world war" can figuratively refer to "Colonial Empires War", and if "Cold War" can be misinterpreted to the point where school teachers gives us the impression it was peaceful...
I feel fairly justified to think that this precise author coining the term "Global Civil War" might have as well been figuratively speaking, and not terribly remembered for his own definition. Such is often the lot of anticipation fiction, to depict a version of event which will never accurately happen. Furthermore justified, to believe that the term in-universe might not have been better inspired, or quoted by those who eventually constructed their history books.
It always sounded to my ear like a journalist, or angry radio-anchor man, telling it something like this :

"And well, if the "X people" finds it a good idea to massacre innocents across borders until they get sponsored by these globalist, or red, maniacs... I say let them! Let them! Let's have a civil war and make it Global. Why not folks, do you have anything better to do this summer? No? Then why not join the fun until the clock of nuclear apocalypse stops in confusion?! ... As if we had not enough crazy fanatics running in the streets with guns already. Well, that's all for the news folks, and now we return to..."

Then the thing could have evolved, out of context, to what we usually read in early robotech material. One day some other journalist or anchorman sees the current ongoing conflict and in desperation writes that "We finally have done it. We have achieved a state of global civil war...". But this is pure supposition on my part.
And it doesn't invalidate your take on it. It certainly is a paradoxical name.

But, since the only thing I could try to relate this to once officially published material would be to Quote Rick Hunter in "Robotech Graphic Novel : Genesis" saying : "Well, Pop – you were right. Civilization is on the move again – Things are getting better instead of worse. It all started when that spaceship lit up the sky over San Francisco, that night we went into town with Alice-- The Emergency World Government held together a lot longer than anyone thought – All those petty little civil wars died down. They just didn't seem to Matter, not after the discovery of Robotechnology..."

Note the continuity error there, that dialog is assuming the “Global Civil War” happened after the crash not before it… like the Unification Wars in the original Macross.

What continuity error? When the spaceship lit up the sky, an emergency world government was formed. All those petty civil wars died down.
But Rick is older. And he comes to Pop's grave to tell that the world is getting better like if it was some kind of news that might have been hard to believe only a while ago.
This means there was civil wars before. And there was civil wars after. The then named "EWG" was under enough stress that a lot of people didn't believe it would last.
But Pop's was right. Even this came to pass. Sure the AUL conflict is set post 1999, but that's mostly the same as said in any Robotech material. Nevertheless, the players and objectives were already existing prior to the ship's crash.
However we choose to call it by this point, the "GCW" is still that previous state of the world as described in the "Macross Saga Sourcebook", and the UEG must wait 2005 before it is recognized.

This just makes the Anti-Unification League the Anti-Unification Alliance under another name… which was kind of par for the course after the reboot. It would’ve been crazy militia types and soldiers who went off the reservation, the occasional terrorist group, that kinda thing. Not an enormous governmental alliance like the various in-hindsight ridiculous caricatures which the writers of the novels and old comics populated their stories… most of which hinders the idea that this was scattered conflicts and not an actual World War III between a bunch of large-ish alliances.

It is based upon something that was once considered a kid show. Caricatures can be powerful things.
I do not interpret most of the named "alliances" in the comics to means well functioning and well implemented coalitions. Roughly, I think they represents general classifications as seen by the globalists themselves. Internal conflict would also be pretty evident in a "Global Civil War".
IRL, even communists did not fight as a unified front.
But they did support themselves with trainers, weapons, food, etc...

Robotech’s setting and history is supposed to be relatively close to our own prior to 1999, so you’d expect a chaotic and bloody period like this to flare up not with huge alliances of nations duking it out for supremacy but with dozens of pre-existing hostilities flaring up like, for instance (and this is not meant to reflect any particular political view or prompt political discussion, just a general index of places that could end up as Global War hotspots in a continuity close to our reality:

Scattered military conflicts feeding a larger war turning out into terrorists contesting a cease-fire is exactly what I'm interpreting from the written material.
And the IRL situation as modified by the few clues the old comics and novels gave.
Which isn't surprising if we consider the disastrous economical state the world would have been in if both Russia and the USA had started their own civil conflict.
The close relation between the two is why I also choose to complement my map by IRL ressearch.

Ah but it says here, in the Wildstorm Source-book that there is : "The United Nations of Earth [The First United Earth Government]" Peace has to begin somewhere and these would have been the guy to band together and stop it. So there was, though maybe very late in the GW, a U.N. which was a side.

That was the government that emerged out of the end of the war. It wasn’t a faction, it was the outcome of the peace process between the factions.

Following your own argument about the RT universe being close to us, is it such a stretch to interpret this as meaning that the old U.N. served as a base to create the UEG? Why use such closely related names if not to create the feeling of this stuff evolving from our own well-known world?

That doesn’t imply that there was still ongoing armed conflict… just that some nations hadn’t yet ratified the new world government. Generally speaking, you’d expect nations to want to avoid a conflict with the new 800lb gorilla in the room. The government became official when there was essentially no real opposition to it politically.

The whole history of the continent of Africa, and a good part of South America, do not agree well with your statement. No matter how stupid it is to fight the 800lbs gorilla, there will be insurgency. Some of which will still be armed and fighting generations after the end of a war. Some of which still potentially recognized as the legitimate governing body by once allied nations. The survival to this day of the Kuomintang also comes to mind.
Sure... it's not longer an armed conflict for them, they no longer have an ally.
But a just recently forced together world, put into indentured labour for reconstruction of once-enemy settlements and financing top-secret projects in the Pacific, might push some politicians to check their options with other hard-pressed once-nations. Which is exactly what we see in Return to Macross.

Hell, we even have a society for the protection of archaeological-heritage becoming identified as terrorists. (Yes... There is a real Nova Roma. And their internal organization and attachment to Roman cultural heritage makes them strangely adept at becoming an interim or contested government.)

The problem with that reasoning being that the official timeline explicitly says the global war ended in August 1999. Any conflict with the League appears to have been so insignificant that it was not even given a name, and may not have been significant enough to be considered a war.

Some versions of the timeline does. And you're right in that the MSS book states that the AUL only "dragged" the conflict.
But however insignificant and one sided it was, it didn't prevent the USA to call their little excursion in the middle-east a "War on Terror".
Which is utter nonsense.
But that's still how that period will be remembered.
In fact, I find it almost prescient that Macross / Robotech predicted that the wave of violence of the 90s would eventually end up as wiping out terrorists of dubious origin and mostly engendered by the same effort to wipe them out. But... as said elsewhere, it is fairly useless to praise the scribbling of St-Macek now.

Eh… knowing Tommy and having been consulted by him a few times for info, I would suspect it was a much more straightforward case of simply not considering anything that happened prior to the crash of the SDF-1 in 1999 to be relevant to the Robotech story proper. Harmony Gold did go out of its way to prohibit Palladium from including factions like EBSIS in the game, which if anything suggests that their intention is for these factions to not exist in Robotech at all.

Why? There is a lot there that was kinda cool. Plus, isn't it better for expanded universes to experiment with a franchise in order to prepare for future merchandising?

Especially while keeping the Perytonians and Sekiton afterward.

They kept the Perytonians, I don’t know if they kept the sekiton… since the canon appearances of the Sentinels aliens amounts to like two comic panels and no dialog for everyone who isn’t a Haydonite.

The RPG did. Many time the output of a fusion reactor, a certain specific speed is given.
Which is in fact useless considering we haven't a map of the galaxy, travel times, etc...
But it is still there. Explained without any links to mutated protoculture though. For a strange reason. (EFMS P.39)
Then again... I feel a bit alone in taking the RPG as official material.

We still have the Regess taking Zor to be Haydon, yes? So... In a way, a multiversal connection is not yet taken out of the picture. The Haydonites could still be defending our 4 dimensional universe from a big crunch.

Do we? I don’t recall that ever coming up. In the Titan comic, shadow technology appears to be Invid in origin, not Haydonite.

Issue #21 states it to be Terran in origin and Zand knows about it... probably from accessing the data-banks of the time-travelling SDF-1.
Same issue brings back E.V.E., Andrews, and the mutated Edwards from either Prelude to Shadow Chronicles or the RNU.
I'm assuming here that this means the Titan's Regess is actually the Regess from Shadow Chronicle and that she has Shadow Tech from stealing it.
Which makes her the Regess from the anime...
Which has been duped by Zor, of which the only explanation is that she mistook him for Haydon.

IF they really did what they pretended to do up until now, this would also mean that Shadow Tech was most probably stolen from abandoned human wrecks. Which would be hybrid Haydonite tech. And a reconstruction of a Shadow tech once known by both the Haydonites and the Invid; referring to the original "Children of the Shadow" whomever they might be.

EDIT : Finished second reading up to #23 and including the "Free" (but hard to find) issue in the correct spot. Some correction is in order to keep it clear and avoid potential misrepresentation. The Regess has indeed stolen Shadow Tech from Zand's files, including R&D made on Mars Base before Karl Rieber was pronounced KIA, themselves coming from the future SDF-1. (And thus, only probably, originating from Haydonite cooperation.) However, she already knew what she was searching for prior to the theft and lost no time applying them to the "construction" of an Invid Overmind-Shadow hybrid. This knowledge previous to the theft looks to me like strong evidence of this being an older version of the Regess, leaving space for a real main Titan Regess to be still somewhere else. However, the Haydonite link was never directly mentioned; giving credit to the deduction of Seto as previously stated.