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glitterboy2098 wrote:wow.. you really haven't been keeping up with the current canon have you.

macross saga is the first part of robotech. with rick and roy and such.
masters saga is the 2nd part, with Dana and zor and the like.

and HG is the ones that went with the fusion bit for those two generations. when they junked all the old products and established the unified canon prior to the release of Shadow Chronicles, they got rid of protoculture being required for mecha. about the only thing it's still required for is to power fold drives. no mystical element, no psuedo-psionic man-machine link, no performance enhancement.

it's just an exotic alien fuel now.

I mean, I guess so. Did they change the series? As far as I understand it, Shadow Chronicles is just a sequel to Invid Invasion.

I'm looking at my Shadow Chronicles, and, indeed, the veritechs have a fusion backup, which is new. They have backup fusion thing doesn't allow for transformation and reduces speed. Where does it talk about the other fusion power source? Regardless, that's new and I didn't notice.

More importantly, and I apologize for my ignorance, Robotech being one of my favorite things ever, and the reason I got into Palladium almost 30 years ago, but where and how does Harmony Gold make fusion canon without changing the shows a lot? Did they?

Aside from the note in the power source for the veritechs in the Shadow Chronicles RPG, I can't find anything about fusion in mecha outside of the original Macross.

Conversion Book 1 (unrevised) really speaks to Robotech 1st Edition. I suppose you could apply it to 2d edition, but they beefed up RT mecha's MDC to easily match anything in Rifts in second edition. Depending on the Cyclone model, they rival a SAMAS already.

Anyway, 2d Edition addresses a Cyclone's lack of protoculture, which states it has a battery back up (no mention of how long the duration is though). It inhibits the flight capabilities and "reduces speed and mobility" (no mention to what those penalties are...-1 to all combat rolls I guess?).

Although it states you have to have some specialized skills to even replace a protoculture cell, assuming you have extra and assuming the character has the skills, I can see a Mystic Knight being able to charge the battery to allow the use of the Cyclone well after Protocultre has depleted. A Techno-Wizard may be able to simply charge the battery as well.

pretty sure i recall reading in the old conversion book that macross saga mecha absolutely do use protoculture. masters saga mecha, however, do indeed use fusion.

and for any mecha that uses protoculture as a power source, it is specifically noted as providing a better man/machine connection in the RPGs (though not in the shows as far as i can tell. in fact, it's barely mentioned at all in the shows...)

the old conversion book was written decades before HG went through and cleaned house canon wise.

and the mention of man-machine stuff is only true for the old RPG.

Aside from the note in the power source for the veritechs in the Shadow Chronicles RPG, I can't find anything about fusion in mecha outside of the original Macross.

Macross saga sourcebook and Masters saga sourcebook for the RPG. Hg's mentions were scattered around their old website's infopedia. they asked Jason Marker to make them all fusion powered when writing the RPG so clearly they had no trouble with fusion powered mecha. makes sense.. when it was just the SDF-1 they only had a tiny amount of PC (that found in the SDF-1's fuel tanks) and since they didn't learn about the PC factory until well after the 1st war, it's clear they were not siphoning off much of it. given they had no idea when the zentreadi might arrive, they'd certainly be designing their military around long term plans.. decades or even centuries. and they'd need to arm up tens of thousands of mecha to cover the whole planet. minimum. the PC on the SDF1 clearly would not be enough, given they'd think it's a finite resource at the time.
(it would be the equivalent of trying to redo the US military to operate off of anti-matter powerplants IRL, when we've never been able to make more than a gram of the stuff in the space of the last 2 decades.)

by the ASC period huanity clearly has more, salvaged from the remains of the grand fleet.. but they still don;t have the PC factory that was aboard the SDF-1, so its stil la finite resource. the majority of it apparently was earmarked for the starships of the UEEF. UEEF mecha using it seems most probable to have been a logistics choice (simplify the amount of stuff each ship has to have loaded onto it, given SLMH is going to be a lot bulkier and be run through a lot faster), a major concern when these ships might be months or years away from resupply. doesn't do the ships much good to be using a super-longterm fuel for their own drives if their defending mecha run out part way into the trip.

I dunno if it makes sense. The Masters seem to be able to do a lot with a little bit of protoculture. More significantly, Khyron can't launch his ship cause no protoculture, so he goes to steal the Matrix at the "micronian factory." His target is a "protoculture warehouse" within which he finds the Matrix. I think the implication is the micronians were making, and storing, the protoculture they needed to power their vehicles.

It don't matter though. If they want to make it easy for me to convert cyclones then I'm all about it.
And I have an even better explanation. It is love that is the basis of protoculture. I love cyclones. Therefore they have power. Problem solved.

Khyron stole a "storage matrix".. not the factory matrix that's discovered in the ruins of the SDF-1 during the 2nd war.

Earth has all the PC salvaged from the zentreadi fleet, but no way to make more. the lack of production is spelled out several times in dialog by both characters and narrator. the factory hidden (and unnoticed) on the SDF-1 is even called the only source of new protoculture several times.

glitterboy2098 wrote:Khyron stole a "storage matrix".. not the factory matrix that's discovered in the ruins of the SDF-1 during the 2nd war.

Earth has all the PC salvaged from the zentreadi fleet, but no way to make more. the lack of production is spelled out several times in dialog by both characters and narrator. the factory hidden (and unnoticed) on the SDF-1 is even called the only source of new protoculture several times.

I really dont remember the humans or narrator saying so, but I believe you. The Masters and Khyron certainly have that problem. I guess this is an excuse to watch it all again.

Jorick wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:Khyron stole a "storage matrix".. not the factory matrix that's discovered in the ruins of the SDF-1 during the 2nd war.

Earth has all the PC salvaged from the zentreadi fleet, but no way to make more. the lack of production is spelled out several times in dialog by both characters and narrator. the factory hidden (and unnoticed) on the SDF-1 is even called the only source of new protoculture several times.

I really dont remember the humans or narrator saying so, but I believe you. The Masters and Khyron certainly have that problem. I guess this is an excuse to watch it all again.

Yeah you both are making want to sit down and watch them all again. Sad to say the Masters were my least favorite series.

SummerRider wrote:

Jorick wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:Khyron stole a "storage matrix".. not the factory matrix that's discovered in the ruins of the SDF-1 during the 2nd war.

Earth has all the PC salvaged from the zentreadi fleet, but no way to make more. the lack of production is spelled out several times in dialog by both characters and narrator. the factory hidden (and unnoticed) on the SDF-1 is even called the only source of new protoculture several times.

I really dont remember the humans or narrator saying so, but I believe you. The Masters and Khyron certainly have that problem. I guess this is an excuse to watch it all again.

Yeah you both are making want to sit down and watch them all again. Sad to say the Masters were my least favorite series.

i think masters was pretty much *everyone's* least favourite...

most of the stuff explaining what protoculture is and earth's lack of production for it is found in the southern cross segment, so i'm not surprised that a lot of people missed it. sigh. southern cross is actually not all that bad a story, it just suffers from too many silly/annoying characterizations early on.