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Colonel Wolfe wrote:

Rabid Southern Cross Fan wrote::sighs:

HPW-125A1 Particle Cannon (VHT-1A1, VHT-1A3): This 125mm particle cannon replaced the MCR-86A1 105mm Cannon in later model Hover Tanks in 2029. Its fires a stream of charged particles over long distances and delivers a massive amount of kinetic, armor piercing damage.
..........................
Note: The HPW-125A1 delivers a stream of charged particles moving at the speed of light. The gun hits like a wrecking ball, and any mecha under 50 tons hit by a blast has a chance of being knocked down.

- P. 97, The Masters Saga Sourcebook

All that sounds alot like a Arrow, or a Bullet... just Kinetic force being applied to Atoms.
That means Particle Canons in Robotech are Kinetic weapons, weather they are in Rifts or not.

You're free to think that.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Nightmask wrote:Sorry but you really need more than wiki entries to support your claim, and it's pointless to keep going back and forth because you want it one way and I disagree and that's where it's going to end because neither of us is going to change the other's opinion so it's 'agree to disagree' time and drop it. Go back to dealing with the main point of the thread.

It's in the USAF website article too... and plenty of the scholarly papers referenced in the Wikipedia articles as well. Of course, as Rabid Southern Cross Fan just illustrated (Thanks for that, BTW), particle beam weapons in the Robotech RPG definitely function the way physics says they should... by imparting kinetic energy to the target. Since the aforementioned spell only seems to cover non-kinetic energy weapons, it should provide no protection against particle weapons.

And repeating, you're free to think that, since one can hardly consider any RPG as a canon physics paper.

and according to Robotech.com Reflex canons are Particle beam canons.

ARMAMENT (after 2009 Earth refit)
1 x Reflex cannon (heavy particle beam)
8 x main particle cannon, one under the main hull, three on the upper main hull, two on the flanks of the reflex cannon, and two on the upper legs.
1 x secondary triple-barreled particle cannon,

Nightmask wrote:

Colonel Wolfe wrote:

Rabid Southern Cross Fan wrote::sighs:

HPW-125A1 Particle Cannon (VHT-1A1, VHT-1A3): This 125mm particle cannon replaced the MCR-86A1 105mm Cannon in later model Hover Tanks in 2029. Its fires a stream of charged particles over long distances and delivers a massive amount of kinetic, armor piercing damage.
..........................
Note: The HPW-125A1 delivers a stream of charged particles moving at the speed of light. The gun hits like a wrecking ball, and any mecha under 50 tons hit by a blast has a chance of being knocked down.

- P. 97, The Masters Saga Sourcebook

All that sounds alot like a Arrow, or a Bullet... just Kinetic force being applied to Atoms.
That means Particle Canons in Robotech are Kinetic weapons, weather they are in Rifts or not.

You're free to think that.

that's Direct Quotes from the new RPG.... Written by Jason and Kevin... Its not me who thinks that, its the Designer of the Fracking game.

Nightmask wrote:And repeating, you're free to think that, since one can hardly consider any RPG as a canon

Umm, we're discussing one group of RPG antagonists versus another group of RPG antagonists. If you want realism, might I suggest physics.org or plasma-universe.com.....

Colonel Wolfe wrote:

Nightmask wrote:

Colonel Wolfe wrote:

Rabid Southern Cross Fan wrote::sighs:

HPW-125A1 Particle Cannon (VHT-1A1, VHT-1A3): This 125mm particle cannon replaced the MCR-86A1 105mm Cannon in later model Hover Tanks in 2029. Its fires a stream of charged particles over long distances and delivers a massive amount of kinetic, armor piercing damage.
..........................
Note: The HPW-125A1 delivers a stream of charged particles moving at the speed of light. The gun hits like a wrecking ball, and any mecha under 50 tons hit by a blast has a chance of being knocked down.

- P. 97, The Masters Saga Sourcebook

All that sounds alot like a Arrow, or a Bullet... just Kinetic force being applied to Atoms.
That means Particle Canons in Robotech are Kinetic weapons, weather they are in Rifts or not.

You're free to think that.

that's Direct Quotes from the new RPG.... Written by Jason and Kevin... Its not me who thinks that, its the Designer of the Fracking game.

They're quite free to think what they want to, doesn't mean it's right mind you. Either way you're pointlessly wasting energy wanting to prove your rightness, I disagree, continually repeating it won't change that. Hence my saying we'd have to agree to disagree and suggesting the reasonable idea of dropping it.

Nightmask wrote:And repeating, you're free to think that, since one can hardly consider any RPG as a canon physics paper.

Okay, we've got the creators of Robotech, the authors of the Robotech RPG, the US Air Force, the Federation of American Scientists, and plenty of physicists around the world agreeing on the particulars... but your staunch denial somehow overturns all of that? Sorry, but even if the real-world science didn't support it, it would still hold true that particle beam weaponry is kinetic energy weaponry for this discussion because the RPG explicitly describes it as such.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Nightmask wrote:And repeating, you're free to think that, since one can hardly consider any RPG as a canon physics paper.

Okay, we've got the creators of Robotech, the authors of the Robotech RPG, the US Air Force, the Federation of American Scientists, and plenty of physicists around the world agreeing on the particulars... but your staunch denial somehow overturns all of that? Sorry, but even if the real-world science didn't support it, it would still hold true that particle beam weaponry is kinetic energy weaponry for this discussion because the RPG explicitly describes it as such.

And I still don't care, what a surprise. Now on to something different.

Nightmask wrote:They're quite free to think what they want to, doesn't mean it's right mind you. Either way you're pointlessly wasting energy wanting to prove your rightness, I disagree, continually repeating it won't change that. Hence my saying we'd have to agree to disagree and suggesting the reasonable idea of dropping it.

So the Game Designers? are wrong about the game they Designed? or is one interested in dropping the Topic, because the Game Designers have basically said one's Opinion in the argument is incorrect.

here we go:
Kevin Wrote Rifts
Kevin Wrote Robotech RPG.
Kevin Says Particle Canons are Kinetic in Robotech
a forum poster says Kevin is Wrong.....
that means the Game Designer must be wrong about the Game he Wrote and Designed....

Hi there!

Colonel Wolfe wrote:Reading the wording of the Spell, it doesn't directly refer to PBCs as being items its immune to.

Check DMB2, page 164 - Shadow Bolts are immune to particle beams. Period.

You know: rules as written.

- - -
As for MDC - depends on materials, not just on armor thickness. If we go just by the rules, 3Galactic armors are better
(Silverhawk vs. Cyclones or battlepods, for example), just as a measly Wilks rifle is better than a XX.century MBT gun.
Size is secondary.

- - -
Finally: we have only a vague description how Zentraedi fold drives operate, and it is even questionable that they
operate at all in the 3G.
However the Earth-Pluto trip took one hour - rather slow by 3G standards.
Then we do not know, how precise are CG drives - but from the radius of the Arachnea (sp?) interdictor, it is
around a few dozen kilometers. Something that makes 100.000km+ ranges a moot point, outside gravity
wells - especially if 3G warships can intercept those slow fold drives...

And of course there are those "funny" things, like a pleasurer singer or a machine people/ TW/ super psi with
telemechanics saboteur firing those P-beams as friendly fire.

Adios
KLM

Zentradi Fold Drives are Precise enough that Khyron was able to purposefully fold close to Breeti's Fleet, and crash his destroyer in to another vessel.
and the SDF-1's Fold system isn't an example of a properly working system. 1) it folded in a gravity well, and 2) it was rebuilt by humans to some degree, who had little clue exactly how it worked. as for them not wokring,
and im not sure what a Shadow-bolt is... but the refrence is to Rifts PBc';s which aren't Kinetic weaposn per the Rifts Universe, where as Robotehc PVC's are Kinetic weapson, so these shadow bolts would have to be immune to punches, bullets and knives as well?

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Nightmask wrote:And repeating, you're free to think that, since one can hardly consider any RPG as a canon physics paper.

Okay, we've got the creators of Robotech, the authors of the Robotech RPG, the US Air Force, the Federation of American Scientists, and plenty of physicists around the world agreeing on the particulars... but your staunch denial somehow overturns all of that? Sorry, but even if the real-world science didn't support it, it would still hold true that particle beam weaponry is kinetic energy weaponry for this discussion because the RPG explicitly describes it as such.

That's great!

Sigged!

Colonel Wolfe wrote:Zentradi Fold Drives are Precise enough that Khyron was able to purposefully fold close to Breeti's Fleet, and crash his destroyer in to another vessel.

So what? Are they faster that CG drives? Nope, looks like they are actually slower.

Are CG drives precise enough? Can CG driven craft just "warp" into their weapons range? Odds are, they can.

So, if a Zentraedi fleet goes from star A to star B, they can be hunted down, one by one,
and because of the distorted time (a few hours in fold means a fortnight or so on the SDF-1 according to Lisa),
they even react clumsily.

and im not sure what a Shadow-bolt is...

A TW starfighter, whose description expressly said, that it is immune to particle beams, among other things. Period. So, please get
familiar with
a, what I am writing
b, 3Galactic material

Especially for someone coming up with "Rules as Written". Thank you.

Adios
KLM

KLM wrote: Period. So, please get
familiar with
a, what I am writing
b, 3Galactic material

Sorry, I'm not familiar with EVERY single item in the Rifts universe, guess i should just bow out of the conversation since I'm apparently not well read enough for this topic....

Lets put this idea in simpler terms. The Particle Beam cannons on Zentran starships do INFINTE damage to anything LESS than a planet, as objects smaller than a planet do not have the capability to absorb the infinite amounts of damage delivered.
As for speed ratings of Fold drives, I personally use the stats given by steel falcon(fan stats admittedly) which give the speed of a Fold as 1 L.Y. (light year) per 6 min. That makes the Fold Drives INCREDIBLY fast by 3G standards. It also makes Zentran ships nearly untraceable, as they do not travel through "normal space", they technically pop into hyperspce- then travel in hyperspace to their destination- then pop back out into "normal space". AFAIK you cannot track a ship once it has Folded Out.
Either way, Zentran/Marduk vessels in the 3G can be a nasty thing to go up against.

keir451 wrote: As for speed ratings of Fold drives, I personally use the stats given by steel falcon(fan stats admittedly) which give the speed of a Fold as 1 L.Y. (light year) per 6 min. That makes the Fold Drives INCREDIBLY fast by 3G standards. It also makes Zentran ships nearly untraceable, as they do not travel through "normal space", they technically pop into hyperspce- then travel in hyperspace to their destination- then pop back out into "normal space". AFAIK you cannot track a ship once it has Folded Out.

Hence, why Breetai's fleet had to spread out all over the place to find Zor's Fortress...No convenient drive wake to follow.
You MIGHT be able to still detect the expanding shockwave of a Fold re-entry well after the fact, but that's rather iffy if the sphere has dispersed enough.
If Zor had REALLY wanted to put the screw to his old bosses, he could have sent the SDF-1 WAAAYYYY away from where anybody could find it...
But then, part of his long range plan, depending on who you ask, was to break the Masters' Empire.
Plus, the Zentraedi Fleet was HUGE, and could fan out and cover a LOT of galactic ground.

taalismn wrote:

keir451 wrote: As for speed ratings of Fold drives, I personally use the stats given by steel falcon(fan stats admittedly) which give the speed of a Fold as 1 L.Y. (light year) per 6 min. That makes the Fold Drives INCREDIBLY fast by 3G standards. It also makes Zentran ships nearly untraceable, as they do not travel through "normal space", they technically pop into hyperspce- then travel in hyperspace to their destination- then pop back out into "normal space". AFAIK you cannot track a ship once it has Folded Out.

Hence, why Breetai's fleet had to spread out all over the place to find Zor's Fortress...No convenient drive wake to follow.
You MIGHT be able to still detect the expanding shockwave of a Fold re-entry well after the fact, but that's rather iffy if the sphere has dispersed enough.
If Zor had REALLY wanted to put the screw to his old bosses, he could have sent the SDF-1 WAAAYYYY away from where anybody could find it...
But then, part of his long range plan, depending on who you ask, was to break the Masters' Empire.
Plus, the Zentraedi Fleet was HUGE, and could fan out and cover a LOT of galactic ground.

Solid point Taalismn. Even in the original Macross it probably took the fleet sometime to track the gunship. As for Defold reaction, I believe that in Macross 2 and Frontier they were able to detect defold reactions. I do allow for the 3G starships to have mass & gravitic sensors so they can detect the changes in local gravity caused by the exit/ reentry of a Macross/RT vessel.

keir451 wrote:Solid point Taalismn. Even in the original Macross it probably took the fleet sometime to track the gunship. As for Defold reaction, I believe that in Macross 2 and Frontier they were able to detect defold reactions. I do allow for the 3G starships to have mass & gravitic sensors so they can detect the changes in local gravity caused by the exit/ reentry of a Macross/RT vessel.

Probably a gravitic ripple, like a pebble in a pond. Also likely some radiation as the local spacial particles get compressed/annihilated by the sudden influx of outside particles coming in suddenly from OUTSIDE(local space/time).
At closer ranges, and aboard larger vessels, the Masters(and the Zentraedi) also likely had some generalized sensor for Protoculture emissions(nowhere near as advanced or accurate as the Invid, but good enough to be able to quickly scan a system for active Protoculture sources) thus eliminating a LOT of hassle kicking over every rock and dust basin in a system looking for a 1.5km-long superdimensional fortress-needle-in-an-ocean.

Hystrix wrote:That's great! [...] Sigged!

Hehe... that's twice now that's happened.

KLM wrote:Finally: we have only a vague description how Zentraedi fold drives operate, and it is even questionable that they operate at all in the 3G.

Eh... if we were to reference the original source materials for an explanation (an accepted practice with official Robotech sources and the Palladium RPG alike), then we can say with certainty that fold drives ought to function just fine in the 3 Galaxies... they do have gravity there, right? (By the RTSC definition, they should also still work, since that's just Star Trek's warp drive by another name)

KLM wrote:However the Earth-Pluto trip took one hour - rather slow by 3G standards.

That's an hour of objective time, right... not an hour of subjective time?

keir451 wrote:As for speed ratings of Fold drives, I personally use the stats given by steel falcon(fan stats admittedly) which give the speed of a Fold as 1 L.Y. (light year) per 6 min. That makes the Fold Drives INCREDIBLY fast by 3G standards.

Heh... it'd make fold drives incredibly fast by Macross standards too. That's about 15 times as fast as the derived official figure for conventional fold drives, and right about in the butter zone for a Phaeton-type fold booster.

keir451 wrote:Either way, Zentran/Marduk vessels in the 3G can be a nasty thing to go up against.

Eh... if I were you, I would avoid mixing the Zentradi and/or Mardook into this, since their fold drives and other equipment play by somewhat different rules than the Zentradi in the Robotech timeline, as illustrated below.

keir451 wrote:Solid point Taalismn. Even in the original Macross it probably took the fleet sometime to track the gunship.

Actually, it didn't... Britai's fleet detected traces of the Supervision Army gun destroyer's (the Macross's) defold reaction from 10 light years away, and immediately folded to where the ship had emerged.

keir451 wrote:As for Defold reaction, I believe that in Macross 2 and Frontier they were able to detect defold reactions.

Yes, in the main Macross continuity it's perfectly possible for ships and even ELINT or recon-variant fighters to detect folding ships (even in super dimension space) and detect a ship entering or exiting fold at considerable distance. In Macross II's continuity, they ramp it up a further notch by not only being able to detect fold reactions at extremely long ranges (~.75 light hours, observed) and with the right technology even disrupt or redirect fold jumps. (Not counting weaponized applications of fold technology, or the several types of fold drive varying in speed from respectable to "far too fast for comfort"... ~6,000c to ~1.4 million c)

Seto Kaiba wrote:[

keir451 wrote:Solid point Taalismn. Even in the original Macross it probably took the fleet sometime to track the gunship.

Actually, it didn't... Britai's fleet detected traces of the Supervision Army gun destroyer's (the Macross's) defold reaction from 10 light years away, and immediately folded to where the ship had emerged.

)

Figure the Defold disturbance 'bubble' is traveling at light speed, the humans had the ship for about nine-ten years...depending on who you ask, the Zentraedi have been looking for the ship for longer than that....they're flying along, searching system by system, and looking precisely for the 'echo' of a Fold/Defold, figuring that they or the Invid are the only ones around who possess that particular drive type(and anybody else who does is worth finding out about)...so yeah, they've been looking for a while, or else sitting and waiting (maybe near likely clusters of stars/mass) passively 'fishing' for Fold-sign.

Of course, if you pick up such an echo, you speed there hoping that you don't miss ANOTHER echo of a Fold soon after, because then you're back to sitting and waiting and hoping you're not years away from your target's new location.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Hystrix wrote:That's great! [...] Sigged!

Hehe... that's twice now that's happened.

KLM wrote:Finally: we have only a vague description how Zentraedi fold drives operate, and it is even questionable that they operate at all in the 3G.

Eh... if we were to reference the original source materials for an explanation (an accepted practice with official Robotech sources and the Palladium RPG alike), then we can say with certainty that fold drives ought to function just fine in the 3 Galaxies... they do have gravity there, right? (By the RTSC definition, they should also still work, since that's just Star Trek's warp drive by another name)

KLM wrote:However the Earth-Pluto trip took one hour - rather slow by 3G standards.

That's an hour of objective time, right... not an hour of subjective time?

keir451 wrote:As for speed ratings of Fold drives, I personally use the stats given by steel falcon(fan stats admittedly) which give the speed of a Fold as 1 L.Y. (light year) per 6 min. That makes the Fold Drives INCREDIBLY fast by 3G standards.

Heh... it'd make fold drives incredibly fast by Macross standards too. That's about 15 times as fast as the derived official figure for conventional fold drives, and right about in the butter zone for a Phaeton-type fold booster.

keir451 wrote:Either way, Zentran/Marduk vessels in the 3G can be a nasty thing to go up against.

Eh... if I were you, I would avoid mixing the Zentradi and/or Mardook into this, since their fold drives and other equipment play by somewhat different rules than the Zentradi in the Robotech timeline, as illustrated below.

keir451 wrote:Solid point Taalismn. Even in the original Macross it probably took the fleet sometime to track the gunship.

Actually, it didn't... Britai's fleet detected traces of the Supervision Army gun destroyer's (the Macross's) defold reaction from 10 light years away, and immediately folded to where the ship had emerged.

keir451 wrote:As for Defold reaction, I believe that in Macross 2 and Frontier they were able to detect defold reactions.

Yes, in the main Macross continuity it's perfectly possible for ships and even ELINT or recon-variant fighters to detect folding ships (even in super dimension space) and detect a ship entering or exiting fold at considerable distance. In Macross II's continuity, they ramp it up a further notch by not only being able to detect fold reactions at extremely long ranges (~.75 light hours, observed) and with the right technology even disrupt or redirect fold jumps. (Not counting weaponized applications of fold technology, or the several types of fold drive varying in speed from respectable to "far too fast for comfort"... ~6,000c to ~1.4 million c)

To me there is effectively no difference between the Zentran of Robotech and the Zentran of Macross, I also use the Macross Mecha Manual info ALOT (anagram for Alto? ) when setting up for either game. Right now I'm deliberately mixing Macross 2 & Frontier in the 3G setting.
What are the "official" speeds for Fold operations in Macross? I do use the "long" ranges you posted for their detection ranges, giving them an even greater advantage over the "listed" ranges of 3G.
As for Breetai/Britai and tracking the SDF-1, I've heard that the ship actually lead them on a merry chase before finally crashing on Earth. At least that's what I've been hearing for the past 20+ yrs.:shrug:
I would also add that the Macross/RT ships have completly different power sources than the typical 3G ships, (Reflex Furnaces vs anti-matter) wether this is an advantage or not I'm not sure on. At the very least no-one in 3G can say "I track them thru their purchases of anti-lithium!" or whatever ani-matter material you use.

Tyranneix wrote:

Kovoston wrote:Zentradi against the Dominators??? Two giant races battle it out!

It would be very interesting indeed!

I would'nt want to be in that sector of space during that battle....

Guys - In regards to Particle weapons. For all intents and purposes in any Palladium game Particle beams are TREATED as energy weapons NOT kinetic ones. Always have been always will be regardless of fluff descriptions or real world descriptions. All of you except maybe Seto should know this by now.

All right... last post of my to-reply-to backlog! Let's rock...

taalismn wrote:Figure the Defold disturbance 'bubble' is traveling at light speed, the humans had the ship for about nine-ten years...depending on who you ask

9 years, 6 months, 22 days... give or take a couple hours, as per the original Macross, YMMV for Robotech since the detection time mentioned was for Macross.

taalismn wrote:the Zentraedi have been looking for the ship for longer than that

Again, only in Robotech... the "detected it 10ly away and came right away" applies to Macross only, as was stated in the original remark and the comment I made it a reply to.

taalismn wrote:Of course, if you pick up such an echo, you speed there hoping that you don't miss ANOTHER echo of a Fold soon after, because then you're back to sitting and waiting and hoping you're not years away from your target's new location.

Considering, at the speed Macross's fold drives move, they would've been there in ~15 hours, it probably wouldn't have been a huge problem if the target ship had folded again, as they would've had a much fresher trace to work with.

keir451 wrote:To me there is effectively no difference between the Zentran of Robotech and the Zentran of Macross

Okay, for your specific purposes (ie, within your game) there might not be any difference between the Zentradi of Macross and the Zentradi of the Robotech adaptation... but as you should know full well by now, what I present is the official canon information, which does indicate fairly significant differences in organization and technology between the Zentradi of Macross and those of Robotech.

(Not bashin' you or your approach, I'm just saying...)

keir451 wrote:I also use the Macross Mecha Manual info ALOT (anagram for Alto? ) when setting up for either game. Right now I'm deliberately mixing Macross 2 & Frontier in the 3G setting.

Yeah, I know... I was prompted to weigh in on a few aspects of that, remember?

I gotta find Mr March, I'm up to my eyeballs in updates that need to be made to the Mecha Manual... Macross the Ride alone dumped five or six major revisions that need to be made to individual pieces.

keir451 wrote:What are the "official" speeds for Fold operations in Macross? I do use the "long" ranges you posted for their detection ranges, giving them an even greater advantage over the "listed" ranges of 3G.

Estimating the speed of fold travel is, as I've said before, somewhat tricky since it involved space-time displacement. The relative velocities calculated are based on time it would take a folding ship to cover a specific distance. They don't reflect the fact that a folding ship is not actually moving, but is rather substituting the space around the ship with the space at the destination point. The displacement from normal space time means that the crew of a folding ship will only experience about 1/240th the time the jump actually takes.

The approximate relative velocity of a fold jump using a conventional fold drive is ~5,698c, which comes out to 1 light year every ~1 hour, 32 minutes of real time, or about 3.76x as fast as Warp 9 in Star Trek. The "Project Phaeton" fold booster described as part of the VF-19ES speed test plane comes out to ~54,943c, which comes out to 1 light year in about 9 minutes, 34 seconds of real time, or about 36.25x as fast as Warp 9. The fastest would be zero-time, or "super", fold boosters, which eliminate the disparity in the different paces of time and eliminating the effect of fold faults, which leaves the geometric energy demands as the only major barrier to fold drive performance, potentially enabling ships to travel as fast as 1.367 million times the speed of light (1 light year every 23 seconds).

keir451 wrote:As for Breetai/Britai and tracking the SDF-1, I've heard that the ship actually lead them on a merry chase before finally crashing on Earth. At least that's what I've been hearing for the past 20+ yrs.:shrug:

In Robotech, but not quite so much in Macross... there wasn't anything special about the Supervision Army gun destroyer that crashed on Earth in 1999. The Zentradi of Macross's universe have been at war with the Supervision Army for 500,000 years, so they were just looking for any signs of Supervision Army activity.

keir451 wrote:I would also add that the Macross/RT ships have completly different power sources than the typical 3G ships, (Reflex Furnaces vs anti-matter) wether this is an advantage or not I'm not sure on.

If I knew the power output of a 3G antimatter reactor, I could have a guess... remember, the Robotech and Macross ships also have wildly different power sources, as do their mecha. The Macross ones are demonstrably superior in this regard, being that their ships don't run on an exotic, impossible-to-produce magic flower fuel, and that their thermonuclear reaction heat pile power systems can even run on non-nuclear material, and are explicitly stated to be much safer and more efficient than conventional fusion power sources.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

KLM wrote:Finally: we have only a vague description how Zentraedi fold drives operate, and it is even questionable that they operate at all in the 3G.

Eh... if we were to reference the original source materials for an explanation (an accepted practice with official Robotech sources and the Palladium RPG alike), then we can say with certainty that fold drives ought to function just fine in the 3 Galaxies... they do have gravity there, right? (By the RTSC definition, they should also still work, since that's just Star Trek's warp drive by another name)

Except that fold drives are mentioned to "very likely" malfunction in the 3G's (f.ex. DMB2, pg 152.). Add to this the malfunction
table of Robotech book 3.

KLM wrote:However the Earth-Pluto trip took one hour - rather slow by 3G standards.

That's an hour of objective time, right... not an hour of subjective time?

Probably. One hour for CG (or phase drive) pursuers to reload guns and shields, rearm fighters and PA.

Also, with the rather "military standard" CG drives of 5 ly/h it takes much less time to get there - but
only a few seconds pass on the SDF-1 or on a zentraedi ship.

BtW, Trekkie warp drive can be followed, even intercepted.

Adios
KLM

KLM wrote:Except that fold drives are mentioned to "very likely" malfunction in the 3G's (f.ex. DMB2, pg 152.). Add to this the malfunction table of Robotech book 3.

'k then... as I don't have any 3G books, would you (or anyone with a free moment) mind checking to see if they actually provide any kind of rationale for why fold drives would be atypically likely to malfunction in that setting? I'm mildly curious whether it'd apply to all fold drives, or just one particular version of the technology since fold drives operate on entirely different principles in the official Macross and Robotech explanations. Being that they're completely different technologies, I can't imagine both versions of fold drives would be equally likely to malfunction under identical circumstances...

KLM wrote:Probably. One hour for CG (or phase drive) pursuers to reload guns and shields, rearm fighters and PA.

I'd hope so... the alternative is ten days (240 hours) for pursuers to rearm.

KLM wrote:Also, with the rather "military standard" CG drives of 5 ly/h it takes much less time to get there - but only a few seconds pass on the SDF-1 or on a zentraedi ship.

Ah, yeah... that's pretty fast. Mind you, a Macross-style fold drive can't be traced once the ship has entered super dimension space without specialized equipment, so a clean getaway shouldn't be a problem. Robotech's fold drives don't get that benefit, as per the official explanation, since they're basically no different from Star Trek's warp drive. Due to some inconsistencies, it's difficult to say how fast Robotech's fold drives are... but there is evidence to suggest they're substantially faster than the fold drives typically used in Macross, possibly as much as 7x faster than the "military standard CG drives" you described.

KLM wrote:BtW, Trekkie warp drive can be followed, even intercepted.

Yes, I know.

Hi there!

Seto Kaiba wrote:

KLM wrote:Except that fold drives are mentioned to "very likely" malfunction in the 3G's (f.ex. DMB2, pg 152.). Add to this the malfunction table of Robotech book 3.

'k then... as I don't have any 3G books, would you (or anyone with a free moment) mind checking to see if they actually provide any kind of rationale for why fold drives would be atypically likely to malfunction in that setting? I'm mildly curious whether it'd apply to all fold drives, or just one particular version of the technology since fold drives operate on entirely different principles in the official Macross and Robotech explanations. Being that they're completely different technologies, I can't imagine both versions of fold drives would be equally likely to malfunction under identical circumstances...

Hardly identical circumstances - the Three Galaxies have space ley lines, even fields. Also, the Cosmic Forge is frequently blamed.

Ah, yeah... that's pretty fast. Mind you, a Macross-style fold drive can't be traced once the ship has entered super dimension space without specialized equipment, so a clean getaway shouldn't be a problem. Robotech's fold drives don't get that benefit, as per the official explanation, since they're basically no different from Star Trek's warp drive. Due to some inconsistencies, it's difficult to say how fast Robotech's fold drives are... but there is evidence to suggest they're substantially faster than the fold drives typically used in Macross, possibly as much as 7x faster than the "military standard CG drives" you described.

Mind you, ships come "standard" with sensors able to detect FTL in the 3 galaxies, up to 10 lys range.

Also, 3Galactic stuff is long criticised to have too slow sublight engines and too short ranged guns . Further aggravating the matters,
that in DMB2 a tank - albeit a 10.000 ton contragravity driven "land battleship" - had guns with 3200 km range, making it far the longest
ranged gun. For comparison, frigates have similar tonnage, usually armed a few canons which do comparable damage - but have ranges
tipically around 25 kms...

And there is the magic/psionic departmen which is IMO not fully exploited in its full deep.

Adios
KLM

@Seto Kaiba; Yeah I remeber our "discussions", Seto.
Re: Zentraedi, it's not an issue of my game, per se. It's more that when I look at the two series I don't see much difference between them except for the RT Zents being made with Protoculture(the Flower of Life) vs being made BY the Protoculture race. To me the ships are also virtually identical. I can easily use the RT deck plans for any Rogue Zentran fleets.
As for fold drives not working, I don't recall any specific rationale, just an implication that the presence of the Rifts may interfere.
As for the supposed "geometric increase" in power consumption. Yes I know it's official, I just don't buy it.
I have long assumed that the "Heat pile furnaces" were, in fact, just large scale fusion plants or more recently a Plasma Induction Furnace. Which means they effectively have a star as their power sources so there's none of this "geometric increase" in power consumption.
Wether it's 6 mi./LY or 9 min./LY, that still faster than many 3G ships. Let's take the example of the CCW Protector class battleship; Its listed speed is 6 LY/hr, compared to 9 min./LY means I get there in 54 min. which gives 6 min. of real time to prep for an assault, if I use the 6 min./LY figure I get there in 36 min. while the Protector still has 24 min. til arrival. In game terms where a melee is 15 seconds that's an eternity to plan and execute assaults.
Technically the reason why a Zentran ship is untraceable is because (depending upon whom you ask) they slip into hyperspace where the distances are shorter or they literally "fold" space around themselves creating as "shortcut" between Point A and Point B.
The 3G ships are all designed to travel in normal space, the same place their combat occurs. They may not have the appropiate sensors, then again maybe they do. That area is left up to each GM's individual discretion.

Hi there!

My points summed:
1, Fold drives
- may be subject to malfunctions in the 3 Galaxies as per DMB2 (and other Phase World materials)
- their speed is questionable, but the Robotech 2nd ed Macross SB states that zentraedi flagships have a maximum fold range
of 180 or so parsecs. Now it took 10 or so "objective" days to reach Dolza's fortress and if that was the maximum range, it gives
about 2,5 lys/h speed, prolly less, since the characters in the TV series got back aboard a "cruiser", which might have shorter
fold range.

2, Weapon ranges
- 3Galactic ranges need a serious revising, see the range of the TGE Doomsday tank in DMB2.
- Even if we keep weapon ranges as they are, both the CCW and the TGE prefers massive swarm assaults
on capital ships (with PA, robots, fighters and up to frigates), which somewhat negate this range advantage

3, Reflex/main particle "destroys everything" canons
- Even pinpoint barrier systems have a chance to save ships from it - 3Galactic vessels have "full" shields. Cruisers and up
have more MDC in their shields than the pinpoint fields.
- Every major faction has access to magic and phase tech, which can be used to protect their ships

4, Infiltration, information gathering
- Get a single machine person/techno wizard/noro psyker with Telemechanics on board of a Zentraedi ship and
see what's happening.

This said, if all the 4+ million Zentraedi fleet arrives to the 3 Galaxies, even if one accepts all my points about
the lack of Zentraedi superiority, they would do quite a havoc. Kinda like if the German Hochseeflotte from 1916
suddenly appeared on British waters - sure they would be massacred, but not before doing some serious damage on
civilian ships and other assets.

Adios
KLM

KLM wrote:Hardly identical circumstances - the Three Galaxies have space ley lines, even fields. Also, the Cosmic Forge is frequently blamed.

I meant if a Robotech and a Macross found themselves in the same sector of space in the Three Galaxies, one wouldn't expect both ships to have the same problems with their fold engines, on the grounds that Robotech fold drives and Macross fold drives operate on completely different principles.

KLM wrote:Mind you, ships come "standard" with sensors able to detect FTL in the 3 galaxies, up to 10 lys range.

An impressive detection radius... but still not really an issue for a ship escaping via fold jump in Macross or Robotech style. Using either universe's fold technology, a 10 light year distance is almost inconsequentially short. Robotech's fold drives are apparently capable of covering intergalactic distances in the span of just a month or so (300,000c+). Macross fold engines aren't quite as zippy, but on several occasions they indicate that a jump of 12ly or so is considered a short-range milk run. Since the fold drives in Macross can take courses other than just straight lights and the ship doesn't need to be pointing the direction it intends to travel by fold, they could easily jump hundreds of light years and a 3G ship wouldn't even know which direction they'd folded in.

keir451 wrote:Re: Zentraedi, it's not an issue of my game, per se. It's more that when I look at the two series I don't see much difference between them except for the RT Zents being made with Protoculture(the Flower of Life) vs being made BY the Protoculture race.

But that's still your take on it... not what the official info indicates.

keir451 wrote:I have long assumed that the "Heat pile furnaces" were, in fact, just large scale fusion plants or more recently a Plasma Induction Furnace. Which means they effectively have a star as their power sources so there's none of this "geometric increase" in power consumption.

No such luck... they're effectively just massively scaled-up versions of the same kind of thermonuclear reaction power plants used by the mecha of the series. Basically, they're operating on similar principles to fusion reactors, but the application of super dimension spatial physics allows the reactors to be extremely compact, makes the reaction clean, highly efficient, and easy to maintain, and enables the reactor to run on fuel that isn't nuclear material.

The "geometric increase in power consumption" is not a characteristic of the power plant itself, it's a property of the fold drive. That would apply regardless of the type of energy generation system, even if they had a "star" as a power source. The fold drive's energy requirements increase in a geometric progression to the distance of the fold jump, which is only logical... the further you want to bend the fabric of space, the more energy it's going to take. (This same geometric progression, ironically enough, applies to the warp velocities in Star Trek... the energy requirement grows as a geometric progression to reach higher warp factors)

KLM wrote:This said, if all the 4+ million Zentraedi fleet arrives to the 3 Galaxies, even if one accepts all my points about the lack of Zentraedi superiority, they would do quite a havoc.

... and heaven help them if it was a Macross Zentradi taskforce, which could be made up of more than one ~5 million ship fleet, since they have somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 of them kicking around.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

KLM wrote:Hardly identical circumstances - the Three Galaxies have space ley lines, even fields. Also, the Cosmic Forge is frequently blamed.

I meant if a Robotech and a Macross found themselves in the same sector of space in the Three Galaxies, one wouldn't expect both ships to have the same problems with their fold engines, on the grounds that Robotech fold drives and Macross fold drives operate on completely different principles.

KLM wrote:Mind you, ships come "standard" with sensors able to detect FTL in the 3 galaxies, up to 10 lys range.

An impressive detection radius... but still not really an issue for a ship escaping via fold jump in Macross or Robotech style. Using either universe's fold technology, a 10 light year distance is almost inconsequentially short. Robotech's fold drives are apparently capable of covering intergalactic distances in the span of just a month or so (300,000c+). Macross fold engines aren't quite as zippy, but on several occasions they indicate that a jump of 12ly or so is considered a short-range milk run. Since the fold drives in Macross can take courses other than just straight lights and the ship doesn't need to be pointing the direction it intends to travel by fold, they could easily jump hundreds of light years and a 3G ship wouldn't even know which direction they'd folded in.

keir451 wrote:Re: Zentraedi, it's not an issue of my game, per se. It's more that when I look at the two series I don't see much difference between them except for the RT Zents being made with Protoculture(the Flower of Life) vs being made BY the Protoculture race.

But that's still your take on it... not what the official info indicates.

keir451 wrote:I have long assumed that the "Heat pile furnaces" were, in fact, just large scale fusion plants or more recently a Plasma Induction Furnace. Which means they effectively have a star as their power sources so there's none of this "geometric increase" in power consumption.

No such luck... they're effectively just massively scaled-up versions of the same kind of thermonuclear reaction power plants used by the mecha of the series. Basically, they're operating on similar principles to fusion reactors, but the application of super dimension spatial physics allows the reactors to be extremely compact, makes the reaction clean, highly efficient, and easy to maintain, and enables the reactor to run on fuel that isn't nuclear material.

The "geometric increase in power consumption" is not a characteristic of the power plant itself, it's a property of the fold drive. That would apply regardless of the type of energy generation system, even if they had a "star" as a power source. The fold drive's energy requirements increase in a geometric progression to the distance of the fold jump, which is only logical... the further you want to bend the fabric of space, the more energy it's going to take. (This same geometric progression, ironically enough, applies to the warp velocities in Star Trek... the energy requirement grows as a geometric progression to reach higher warp factors)

KLM wrote:This said, if all the 4+ million Zentraedi fleet arrives to the 3 Galaxies, even if one accepts all my points about the lack of Zentraedi superiority, they would do quite a havoc.

... and heaven help them if it was a Macross Zentradi taskforce, which could be made up of more than one ~5 million ship fleet, since they have somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 of them kicking around.

It's true enough that it is my interpretation of the Zentraedi, but considering they started from the same source and really haven't diverged all that much just makes my point of veiw seem more valid (at least to me).
I can see that the greater the distance of Fold jump, the greater the energy requirements per se. Again some of it is technical disagreements w/ the various authors and much of their "quasi science".

keir451 wrote:It's true enough that it is my interpretation of the Zentraedi, but considering they started from the same source and really haven't diverged all that much just makes my point of view seem more valid (at least to me).

Here's the thing... there's a hell of a lot more to Macross's Zentradi than just the material in the original series. Robotech's version of the Zentradi might have once been similar to the Zentradi of Macross's main continuity, but time and sequels did rather a lot to distance the two from each other... never mind the DYRLverse's version of the Zentradi, which applies to Macross II and related titles, and is significantly different from the other versions.

There are significant differences between Macross's Zentradi and Robotech's Zentradi in terms of their origins, their organization, and their technology. The two are nowhere near interchangeable. For example, Robotech's Zentradi lack technology that would be commonplace in a Macross Zentradi fleet... like energy conversion armor, man-portable beam weaponry, SDE beam weaponry, cybernetics, biotechnology, miniaturized gravity control systems, fold system countermeasures, the list goes on... and that's not counting the MANY other types of Zentradi mecha and ships that never appear in Robotech, and many other things besides.

keir451 wrote:I can see that the greater the distance of Fold jump, the greater the energy requirements per se. Again some of it is technical disagreements w/ the various authors and much of their "quasi science".

Unlike Robotech and its vague and nebulous official canon policy, Macross's creators are very definite on how things work in the universe they created. You might not like it, but they're the ones who decide what's what in Macross. Very little in the Robotech and Macross II RPGs is actually accurate, so if you're using those as sources that would explain a lot of your apparent confusion...

Its entirely possible that statements saying that fold drives malfunction only apply to fold drives that have been designed/built in the Three Galaxies...and in DB6, its said that the leading theory for this is that anti-matter power sources are what causes the problem. That leaves both Robotech and Macross ships in the clear, as well as (not so coincidentally) the Intruders, who are unambiguously stated as using fold drives just fine in the 3Gs.

Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote: the Intruders, who are unambiguously stated as using fold drives just fine in the 3Gs.

Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so
I have to find it yet.

- - -

Seto Kaiba wrote:

KLM wrote:Hardly identical circumstances - the Three Galaxies have space ley lines, even fields. Also, the Cosmic Forge is frequently blamed.

I meant if a Robotech and a Macross found themselves in the same sector of space in the Three Galaxies, one wouldn't expect both ships to have the same problems with their fold engines, on the grounds that Robotech fold drives and Macross fold drives operate on completely different principles.

On the other hand, no current civilisation is able to produce a reliable fold drive in the 3 Galaxies. Neither RT, nor Macross type
ones.

KLM wrote:Mind you, ships come "standard" with sensors able to detect FTL in the 3 galaxies, up to 10 lys range.

An impressive detection radius... but still not really an issue for a ship escaping via fold jump in Macross or Robotech style. Using either universe's fold technology, a 10 light year distance is almost inconsequentially short. Robotech's fold drives are apparently capable of covering intergalactic distances in the span of just a month or so (300,000c+). Macross fold engines aren't quite as zippy, but on several occasions they indicate that a jump of 12ly or so is considered a short-range milk run. Since the fold drives in Macross can take courses other than just straight lights and the ship doesn't need to be pointing the direction it intends to travel by fold, they could easily jump hundreds of light years and a 3G ship wouldn't even know which direction they'd folded in.

Depends on the circumstances.

First, in intergalactic space CG drives are even faster (like 5 times or so).

Second, ships can follow FTL disturbances - now, as far as I see both types of fold drives would be detectable as they pass by, not
just entry and exit points.

Then there is that ugly temporal magic named Retro-Viewing. The names says it all.

Adios
KLM

edit: Just checked Fleets - both the sploogies and the NE use CG and Rift drive for FTL, even thought they
clearly have access to fold drives OUTSIDE from the 3Galaxies

KLM wrote:Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote: the Intruders, who are unambiguously stated as using fold drives just fine in the 3Gs.

Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so
I have to find it yet.

You're not looking for it, then, because it isn't hidden. Both DB3 and DB6 describe the Intruders as using fold drives without problems.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

keir451 wrote:It's true enough that it is my interpretation of the Zentraedi, but considering they started from the same source and really haven't diverged all that much just makes my point of view seem more valid (at least to me).

Here's the thing... there's a hell of a lot more to Macross's Zentradi than just the material in the original series. Robotech's version of the Zentradi might have once been similar to the Zentradi of Macross's main continuity, but time and sequels did rather a lot to distance the two from each other... never mind the DYRLverse's version of the Zentradi, which applies to Macross II and related titles, and is significantly different from the other versions.

There are significant differences between Macross's Zentradi and Robotech's Zentradi in terms of their origins, their organization, and their technology. The two are nowhere near interchangeable. For example, Robotech's Zentradi lack technology that would be commonplace in a Macross Zentradi fleet... like energy conversion armor, man-portable beam weaponry, SDE beam weaponry, cybernetics, biotechnology, miniaturized gravity control systems, fold system countermeasures, the list goes on... and that's not counting the MANY other types of Zentradi mecha and ships that never appear in Robotech, and many other things besides.

keir451 wrote:I can see that the greater the distance of Fold jump, the greater the energy requirements per se. Again some of it is technical disagreements w/ the various authors and much of their "quasi science".

Unlike Robotech and its vague and nebulous official canon policy, Macross's creators are very definite on how things work in the universe they created. You might not like it, but they're the ones who decide what's what in Macross. Very little in the Robotech and Macross II RPGs is actually accurate, so if you're using those as sources that would explain a lot of your apparent confusion...

The energy conversion armor is one of "those things" that just smacks of quasi science (a major problem in many Japanese shows ). Until Frontier I'd never even heard of it, everything was just fairly basic tech. There was indeed the presumption of some level of cybernetics and bio-tech in RT (all revolving around the Flower of Life), Breetai has the cybernetic eye & face plate and their's a cybernetics facility on board the Factory ship in Return of the Masters), and the Zentran were still clones. Micro gravity systems are kinda implied, in some of RT (like the Garfish and and the Synchro cannon) but generally, YES, there was no official evidence ( By the way, the works of these authors are NOT religious texts, so official is the appropiate term).

While there are discrepencies between Macross, Macross 2 and the various Palladium products, the simple fact is that the Zentran ships are still the same classes and sizes and can be used interchangeably between Macross, M2 and RT, the real differences are in the sizes of some of the Marduk/UN Spacy ships and equipment/technologies and the fighter sized fold drives of Macross (which were cool) as well as the appearance of the Macross Zentran. Even the info on the Macroiss mecha Manual generally corresponds with the original dimensions of the first Zentran ships.
Yes there's alot of unpublished material, but until it becomes published (either in an Art of Macross or other publication, and I can access it, it's useless to even mention it to me). For the most part Macross follows a consistant and logical theme, the colonization of the galaxy by humans and the advancenment of their understanding of an alien technology. RT jumps around too much and has very little consistancy outside of fighting some group that despises/desires Protoculture.
Either way if ANY of those groups came through in large numbes to the 3G and were not immediately wiped out the entire setting would be in for a world of hurt. At least until the humans of 3G got their heads out of their collective anuses and adapted the technology for their own use and started kicking the crap out of them.

So, just how does a fold drive 'pass by' anyone? It's not a warp drive like Star Trek, it's folding space to skip over the intervening space so there is no path in real space that they can be tracked along like with a CG drive.

KLM wrote:Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so I have to find it yet.

Sgt Anjay seems to have refuted this fairly definitively, and even provided some evidence to suggest that Macross and Robotech fold drive technology ought to function just fine in the Three Galaxies.

KLM wrote:First, in intergalactic space CG drives are even faster (like 5 times or so).

Not a huge issue, being that a Macross-style fold jump should be untraceable after the ship enters super dimension space, and at five times the speed you cited for a 3G's FTL system, their ships would still only be 73% as fast as the observed lower bound for fold velocities using a properly functioning fold system in Robotech. In short, they won't have a clue where a ship with a Macross fold drive went (or how far), and a Robotech fold drive will blow past them like they're standing still.

KLM wrote:Second, ships can follow FTL disturbances - now, as far as I see both types of fold drives would be detectable as they pass by, not just entry and exit points.

While this statement applies well enough to a Robotech-style fold (ersatz-warp) drive as described in AoTSC, Macross-style fold drives leave the universe entirely, there's no wake or disturbance to detect apart from the gravitational disruption of the ship entering or leaving super dimension space. Nightmask has the gist of it, but Macross-style fold drives do the "folding space" bit in another universe entirely... and would therefore be undetectable while doing so unless the enemy had the kind of dedicated sensor apparatus to detect ships in super dimension space, which even then (as evidenced multiple times) is only really good for detecting folding ships in the immediate vicinity, not over long (interstellar) distances.

keir451 wrote:The energy conversion armor is one of "those things" that just smacks of quasi science (a major problem in many Japanese shows ).

Incidentally, you'd be wrong to say so... the energy conversion armor technology used in Macross is based on very real technology. Electroactive ceramic polymers have existed for decades, and have myriad real-world applications, and Macross wasn't the only SF series to draw inspiration from it. That same technology also inspired the polarized hull plating in Star Trek: Enterprise (as stated by Paramount's science consultant Andre Bormanis in Star Trek: the Magazine), and likely also the phase shift armor in Gundam's Cosmic Era timeline.

keir451 wrote:Until Frontier I'd never even heard of it, everything was just fairly basic tech.

At the risk of sounding rude, just because you hadn't heard about it doesn't mean that the technology was never there. What it does mean is that you didn't check your facts. A lot of what I'm going to tell you is in the Macross Mecha Manual, so I'm kind of surprised you don't already know this...

Now, in point of fact, energy conversion armor had already been part of Macross's setting for 14 years when Macross Frontier started its broadcast run. The first interview to discuss it in depth was published in 1999, and its first explicit mention inside the series itself was in 2002's Macross Zero.

keir451 wrote:There was indeed the presumption of some level of cybernetics and bio-tech in RT (all revolving around the Flower of Life)

Yes, there was... but none of it was ever associated with the Zentradi. It was all with the Robotech Masters themselves, and the Invid.

keir451 wrote:Breetai has the cybernetic eye & face plate

No, he did not. The original production art for Britai clearly shows that the metal plate he wore on his face was nothing more than an eyepatch. The eye it conceals appears to be a lazy eye, and blind to boot, likely as the result of an injury. The idea that said eyepatch is really a cybernetic implant is, AFAIK, just Robotech fanon. He never gives any indication that it's a working eye, and when he miclones in Sentinels to join the UEEF forces, the eyepatch is replaced by an opaque lens on the right side of that stupid bucket he wears on his head, a feature that's still visible in Prelude. One would imagine a head full of circuitry would also make micloning rather difficult...

keir451 wrote:and their's a cybernetics facility on board the Factory ship in Return of the Masters),

Well, yeah... that's something of Palladium's invention, with no basis whatsoever in the series.

keir451 wrote:and the Zentran were still clones.

I'm not disputing that, but they never exhibit any of the advanced applications of clone technology that their Macross counterparts do.

keir451 wrote:Micro gravity systems are kinda implied, in some of RT (like the Garfish and and the Synchro cannon) but generally, YES, there was no official evidence ( By the way, the works of these authors are NOT religious texts, so official is the appropiate term).

Canon is the accepted term for dealing with official materials in fiction. You don't need to lecture me about the world's classical meaning, I had compulsory scriptural study in high school. Incidentally, neither of the systems you just mentioned as apparent examples of miniaturized gravity control systems have anything to do with Zentradi in Robotech... you seem to be trying to build a counterargument entirely out of "I didn't know" and non sequiturs here...

keir451 wrote:While there are discrepencies between Macross, Macross 2 and the various Palladium products, the simple fact is that the Zentran ships are still the same classes and sizes and can be used interchangeably between Macross, M2 and RT

SIGNIFICANT discrepancies... kind of like saying a VF-1 and a F-14 are interchangeable because they're shaped mostly the same. There are significant technological and fleet logistical differences between the versions in Macross's two continuity and the Robotech universe.

keir451 wrote:Even the info on the Macross mecha Manual generally corresponds with the original dimensions of the first Zentran ships.

Again, you're trying to cite that to the wrong guy... external similarities are one thing, it's their capabilities that are significantly different between universes.

keir451 wrote:Yes there's alot of unpublished material, but until it becomes published (either in an Art of Macross or other publication, and I can access it, it's useless to even mention it to me).

Okay, that's a new one... pretty much everything I've said to you so far is in the Macross Compendium, the Macross Mecha Manual, and Macross itself, and all of it in English.

EDIT: Also, there is NOT "a lot of unpublished material". If anything, there's precisely the opposite problem... an excess of published material. Macross Chronicle, a official serialized Macross encyclopedia published from 2008-2010, totaled 1,600 pages long and still didn't cover everything. Just in the past year and a half, we got no fewer than FOUR Variable Fighter tech manuals, each one over 100 pages long.

Sgt Anjay wrote:

KLM wrote:Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote: the Intruders, who are unambiguously stated as using fold drives just fine in the 3Gs.

Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so
I have to find it yet.

You're not looking for it, then, because it isn't hidden. Both DB3 and DB6 describe the Intruders as using fold drives without problems.

Page number please where it is stated that those fold drives function "just fine" - I only found (see above) that
a, fold drives are unreliable
b, Intruders have fold drives

Therefore intruders have fold drives, which malfunction with an unstated percentage (see Zentraedi Deck Plans for
malfunctions - even in Robotech's Milky Way there is a 15% for Zentraedi fold drives to malfunction, ranging from
minor deviations from course to drives exploding).

Kinda funny if one loses 3 to 5% of his ships per fold operation... Especially with Zentraedi, who cannot repair them.

Also, detecting ship in fold... If one uses the "sheet of paper" model, the folding of the paper can be detected.

Thought it is worth mentioning that if an imaginary fold drive operates (with a good dose of handwavium) then
one has to explain how those sensor detecting disturbances in normal time-space continuum (DMB pg 153.)

And again: Robotech RPG books stat out Zentraedi flagships with a maximum fold range of 180 parsecs. This,
from Lisa's sentence of "10 days" givens fold speed up to 2,4 lys/h.

So, if we stick to canon in every letter and keep rock throwing 3G ranges, we must keep sluggish folds
from Robotech.

Adios
KLM

KLM wrote:Therefore intruders have fold drives, which malfunction with an unstated percentage (see Zentraedi Deck Plans for malfunctions - even in Robotech's Milky Way there is a 15% for Zentraedi fold drives to malfunction, ranging from
minor deviations from course to drives exploding).

As much as I hate to be "that guy", it would be remiss of me not to point out that said malfunction rate and distance limitations apply only to Robotech Zentradi. I don't see any stipulation by the OP that indicates that Macross Zentradi are not also a valid line of inquiry. Amusingly enough, the Macross II RPG doesn't seem to have ANY rules regarding fold travel... possibly because the game's authors somehow got it into their heads that no UN Spacy ships had fold drives.

Still, damn... Robotech's Zentradi ships SUCK if their fold drives malfunction 15% of the time. Fold drive malfunctions and accidents like that are practically unheard-of in the Macross universes... and rightly so, since fold drive technology had hundreds or even thousands of years of patient testing and refinement and half a million years of practical use behind it before humanity ever got its hands on it.

KLM wrote:Also, detecting ship in fold... If one uses the "sheet of paper" model, the folding of the paper can be detected.

Can you detect someone folding a sheet of paper in an alternate universe? As I have already pointed out to you on more than one occasion, Macross fold engines are not folding realspace... they're folding the fabric of super dimension space. A folding ship will not create any abnormalities in the fabric of realspace except when emerging from or entering super dimension space... and the detectable disturbances from that consist of gravitational flux and light. (Source: Macross Chronicle technology sheets 04A and 04B)

Robotech's fold drives don't even really fold space, but rather move a bubble of normalized space through realspace at faster-than-light speeds, so it wouldn't take scanning for abnormalities in the fabric of space to spot one.

KLM wrote:Thought it is worth mentioning that if an imaginary fold drive operates (with a good dose of handwavium) then one has to explain how those sensor detecting disturbances in normal time-space continuum (DMB pg 153.)

All fold drives are not created equal... the official explanation of Macross's fold drives is radically different from Robotech's, and I would imagine both are quite different from the ones in Three Galaxies.

KLM wrote:So, if we stick to canon in every letter and keep rock throwing 3G ranges, we must keep sluggish folds from Robotech.

Heh... if we were sticking to canon, the RPG books would've been thrown out with prejudice at the very beginning, as they've never been anything like canon.

KLM wrote:

Sgt Anjay wrote:

KLM wrote:Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote: the Intruders, who are unambiguously stated as using fold drives just fine in the 3Gs.

Errr... They use fold drives, all right, but is there ANY information about them using those drives "just fine"? If so
I have to find it yet.

You're not looking for it, then, because it isn't hidden. Both DB3 and DB6 describe the Intruders as using fold drives without problems.

Page number please where it is stated that those fold drives function "just fine" - I only found (see above) that
a, fold drives are unreliable
b, Intruders have fold drives

I'm a little surprised you're relying on the "close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and shout 'LALALALA' method, but..

First and foremost, the statement in DB2 that you're basing your entire position on runs along the line that fold drives are used by other megaversal cultures, but they are unreliable in the 3Gs. You assume this means that no fold drives of any sort can work in the 3Gs, when it could simply mean that while cultures in other parts of the megaverse get them to work, cultures of the 3Gs make unreliable fold drives. This is a statement backed up by DB6, but more on that later.

DB3, pg 45 "[the distances the Intruders cross] suggests that they must have a more advanced FTL system". It then goes on to talk about how much more advanced the Intruders tech is than the rest of the 3Gs, with the one and only one exception of phase tech. It also mentions (still on page 45) that their ships are "faster, more maneuverable".

If you're trying to claim that the Intruders both have a malfunctioning system and that this system is simultaneously more advanced than everything in the Three Galaxies, letting them do something the 3G's can't, I'm going to gleefully disregard that paradox. Otherwise, this strongly implies their fold drives don't have completely unstated problems. This is rather handily backed up by the fact that the actual quote from the book states on page 90 that a UFO attack ship "uses a space-fold system that lets it cross 100 light years in one jump! The fold system can perform up to 5 jumps per day (500 light years in a day)." No mention of problems, issues, no stats for malfunctions, no talk about malfunctions, just talk about how advanced they are and how far they can go.


I will also at this juncture point out that I don't see any mention of a 15% misfold chance in the 2nd edition of the Robotech RPG.

Moving on to DB6, which I mentioned earlier. Page 131, under the section labelled, appropriately enough, Fold Drive: "Rumored to be used by a race called the Intruders, this type of drive is still being explored by the rest of the civilizations in the Three Galaxies. Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process." This paragraph quite clearly states that it is the races of the Three Galaxies who cannot get fold drives to work. Not the rest of the Megaverse; not even the rest of their own universe. The Three Galaxies scientists can't make them work. It also states the theory is related to anti-matter power sources...which the Intruders, and not so coincidentally Macross and Robotech, don't use.

So. Is there any actual evidence that Intruders have malfunctioning systems, or that it isn't antimatter power that's the problem, or that other non-3G races would have problem with their systems in the 3Gs?

KLM wrote:(see Zentraedi Deck Plans for malfunctions

You mean Book 3 of the First edition of the Robotech RPG? That aspect of the RPG, among many others, is gone now, and never matched up with the series nor the backstory anyway.

KLM wrote:And again: Robotech RPG books stat out Zentraedi flagships with a maximum fold range of 180 parsecs. This,
from Lisa's sentence of "10 days" givens fold speed up to 2,4 lys/h.

Hold on...so, first you cherry pick something from the first edition of the RPG, and now you're cherry picking a stat from the 2nd edition of the RPG? If you're going to mix and match whatever is convenient instead of staying consistent it makes this pretty difficult. Regardless, its "180 parsecs per fold, with longer distances requiring multiple folds" (emphasis mine)...don't leave out the important part. The Flagship may've gone much, much, much farther, it just took multiple folds to do it. Unfortunately, we don't know how many folds can be done consecutively, or per hour, or per day, or some other useful measure. Therefore, your stated speed is speculation, and seems calculated for unwarranted minimization.

Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote:I'm a little surprised you're relying on the "close my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and shout 'LALALALA' method, but..

Oh well, I will type slower, so you can understand.

First and foremost, the statement in DB2 that you're basing your entire position on runs along the line that fold drives are used by other megaversal cultures, but they are unreliable in the 3Gs. You assume this means that no fold drives of any sort can work in the 3Gs,

You might noticed that little difference "work unreliably" vs. "no fold drives can work".

when it could simply mean that while cultures in other parts of the megaverse get them to work, cultures of the 3Gs make unreliable fold drives.

DMb2, pg153:"For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies. Some blame
the Cosmic Forge for it. Others think that the strong presence of magic and ley lines even in empty space may somehow
disrupt those systems".

It could mean, yeah. Especially if one considers the Treshold and other phenomena in the 3 Galaxies. No...

Moving on to DB6, which I mentioned earlier. Page 131, under the section labelled, appropriately enough, Fold Drive: "Rumored to be used by a race called the Intruders, this type of drive is still being explored by the rest of the civilizations in the Three Galaxies. Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process." This paragraph quite clearly states that it is the races of the Three Galaxies who cannot get fold drives to work.

Clearly, eh? And it cannot mean that they cannot make fold drives (reliably) operate IN THE 3Galaxies. Yeah right...

So. Is there any actual evidence that Intruders have malfunctioning systems, or that it isn't antimatter power that's the problem, or that other non-3G races would have problem with their systems in the 3Gs?

So, what about thinking it over.

Lets suppose, noone was Rifted to Center from a dimension, where there are working fold drives
(this includes that Temporal Raider who is teaching in Center) .

Lets suppose the Sploogies didn't got their tentacles on a working one.

Lets suppose that NE do not have access to fold drives.

Lets suppose that even the infernal forces in Dimensional Outbreak (DMB12) do not have access to them.

Very likely, eh? (That is sarcasm, you know).

Adios
KLM

edited for some typoes.

KLM wrote: This,
from Lisa's sentence of "10 days" givens fold speed up to 2,4 lys/h.

Can I get a Line of Dialog where Lisa is called "Dr. Hayes", or refered to as an Expert in Fold Drives, or Expert on Fold Theory?
Lisa Hayes in the Macross Era is a Air-traffic controller, not a Physicist.
I mean she looks at her Watch to figure mid-fold how long time has passed...

how far they fold?
how many folds they execute?
how Lisa knows exactly how Zentradie Fold systems work? (she can't)
Lisa has only been in one Fold before that episode, and it was a botched on that took a piece of the earth with it...

KLM wrote:

First and foremost, the statement in DB2 that you're basing your entire position on runs along the line that fold drives are used by other megaversal cultures, but they are unreliable in the 3Gs. You assume this means that no fold drives of any sort can work in the 3Gs,

You might noticed that little difference "work unreliably" vs. "no fold drives can work".

Or I can write "no fold drives can work as they're supposed to" or "fold drives don't work right" or "fold drives which are otherwise perfectly sound are rather unsound when transposed into the environment in which exist the Three Galaxies". Regardless, the point is you're using a single sentence from the earliest book interpreted in a certain way while ignoring the implication of the rest of the statements regarding fold drives in the 3Gs.

KLM wrote:

when it could simply mean that while cultures in other parts of the megaverse get them to work, cultures of the 3Gs make unreliable fold drives.

DMb2, pg153:"For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies. Some blame
the Cosmic Forge for it. Others think that the strong presence of magic and ley lines even in empty space may somehow
disrupt those systems".

And then there's DB6, which says " The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process." My explanation of DB2 doesn't throw out what it says in DB3 and DB6, the more recent books. You want to ignore newer books to tenaciously cling to your convenient interpretation of DB2. Which I guess sort of dovetails nicely with your snagging a bit from the 1st edition of the Robotech RPG and snagging another bit from the 2nd edition of the Robotech RPG to try and paint a poor picture of their fold drives.

KLM wrote:

Moving on to DB6, which I mentioned earlier. Page 131, under the section labelled, appropriately enough, Fold Drive: "Rumored to be used by a race called the Intruders, this type of drive is still being explored by the rest of the civilizations in the Three Galaxies. Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process." This paragraph quite clearly states that it is the races of the Three Galaxies who cannot get fold drives to work.

Clearly, eh? And it cannot mean that they cannot make fold drives (reliably) operate IN THE 3Galaxies. Yeah right...

First of all, if that were so, why doesn't it state that the Intruders have any problems with their fold drives? Why doesn't it give fold drive malfunction stats? Why doesn't it go into space/time issues involving the drives and interstellar hazards, since interstellar hazards are one of the main things this book describes? This is the perfect chance for them to do so. Instead, there is zero evidence of such.

And secondly, the explanation given is that the problem is with anti-matter power sources, which the Intruders don't use, so it wouldn't make any sense for that to be the theory of why fold drives malfunction if Intruders drives malfunction. And again, this is in addition to the statements about what the Intruders can do which are in DB3, where every bit of text describes how advanced and amazing Intruders technology is.

KLM wrote:

So. Is there any actual evidence that Intruders have malfunctioning systems, or that it isn't antimatter power that's the problem, or that other non-3G races would have problem with their systems in the 3Gs?

So, what about thinking it over.

Lets suppose, noone was Rifted to Center from a dimension, where there are working fold drives
(this includes that Temporal Raider who is teaching in Center) .

Lets suppose the Sploogies didn't got their tentacles on a working one.

Lets suppose that NE do not have access to fold drives.

Lets suppose that even the infernal forces in Dimensional Outbreak (DMB12) do not have access to them.

Very likely, eh? (That is sarcasm, you know).

Oh really? Well, even setting aside the fact you're ignoring that DB6 says the problem is anti-matter power, that leaves a very interesting supposition. That must mean, by your logic, nothing in all of the Megaverse, in all of infinity, could ever be as good or better than Phase World, because if it was it already would have gotten to Phase World and been copied. So nothing in any setting can ever top Phase World in anything.

Ridiculous.

That's demonstrably not how it works. By that logic there wouldn't be any secret, unknown, uncommon, one-off, and similar useful and powerful technologies, magics, and abilities in the Megaverse. Instead, there are plenty. Just looking at the things which exist in Rifts (an even bigger megaversal crossroads) but don't exist in Phase World, and vice versa, even though there are things which the two dimensions share, puts the lie to that. Then you go into the more specialized settings within the Megaverse. And even within the 3G's universe, there's a race from another galaxy described as more advanced than the 3Gs (the Intruders, and oh look, they use fold drives). There's elder/ascended races above the normal level of 3G races. And so forth.

Not that it matters. I don't have to justify what the text says, the text is the rules, and I'm just pointing out what is actually written in every mention of fold drives in the Three Galaxies, instead of fixating on a single sentence from the earliest book.

Hm... objective commentary time.

Incidentally, keir451, you managed to show me an error I've never seen from a phpBB installation before... you apparently deleted the message you sent me before it could be delivered? Were you afraid it would offend me or something?

Anyway, let's rock...

Colonel Wolfe wrote:

KLM wrote: This, from Lisa's sentence of "10 days" givens fold speed up to 2,4 lys/h.

Can I get a Line of Dialog where Lisa is called "Dr. Hayes", or refered to as an Expert in Fold Drives, or Expert on Fold Theory?
Lisa Hayes in the Macross Era is a Air-traffic controller, not a Physicist.

Lisa Hayes of Robotech's "Macross Saga" is an air traffic controller, yes... but, as per her official bio, she was also the ship's executive officer. Being that her primary job in that role would be to supervise the logistics of the ship's day-to-day operations, and with the added expectation of having to take charge in the event that the commanding officer was incapacitated or killed in action, one would expect her to have a reasonably firm grasp of the ship's capabilities... particularly combat-relevant ones like propulsion, weaponry, defensive measures, etc.

In short, the scope of her job makes it entirely plausible that she would understand the basic principles of fold travel.

Colonel Wolfe wrote:I mean she looks at her Watch to figure mid-fold how long time has passed...

If you've ever been stuck somewhere with nothing to do, like in a busted elevator, you know how easy it is to over- or underestimate how much time has passed. Checking a watch to figure out how much time has passed is entirely reasonable, perhaps more so when you consider she was trying to approximate how much time had passed in normal space during the fold jump.

Colonel Wolfe wrote:how far they fold?
how many folds they execute?

Only one jump is mentioned, though the "180 parsec" distance limit from the RPG does not apply since it doesn't originate in the series, so there's no saying how far they via Robotech sources. If we were to draw on the Macross numbers, we could guesstimate the distance to be ~156ly, give or take about 20ly, based on the elapsed time.

Colonel Wolfe wrote:how Lisa knows exactly how Zentradie Fold systems work? (she can't)

Considering that, in Robotech, the SDF-1's fold engine was originally designed and built by the same people who engineered the Zentradi's fold engines (the Tirolans), the knowledge of fold tech Lisa would've had in the course of her duties as the SDF-1's XO ought to be equally applicable to Zentradi ships. This particular line of reasoning has a fair bit of support from AoTSC, wherein the Earth Forces are alleged to use fold engines salvaged from Zentradi wrecks until they learned to reliably construct their own.

Hi there!

Sgt Anjay wrote:And then there's DB6, which says " The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process." My explanation of DB2 doesn't throw out what it says in DB3 and DB6, the more recent books.

So, an unproven theory, which does not include why fission, fusion, magic and - for the Altess's part - "strange matter" power sources.

Oh, and there are the Dominators, who does not use fold drives either.

First of all, if that were so, why doesn't it state that the Intruders have any problems with their fold drives?

Does it have to? It is a faceless alien threat, without clear explanation - actually several explanation are given.

Oh really? Well, even setting aside the fact you're ignoring that DB6 says the problem is anti-matter power, that leaves a very interesting supposition.

Maybe if you would pull your finger out, and stop clinging to that theory...

That must mean, by your logic, nothing in all of the Megaverse, in all of infinity, could ever be as good or better than Phase World, because if it was it already would have gotten to Phase World and been copied. So nothing in any setting can ever top Phase World in anything.

Ridiculous.

Yepp, it is a ridiculous statement, but you wrote it.

Just looking at the things which exist in Rifts (an even bigger megaversal crossroads) but don't exist in Phase World,

Such as?

There's elder/ascended races above the normal level of 3G races.

Like the Altess and the Dominators? Who does not use fold drives, nor AM power?

Honestly, if the war-torn Earth of Robotech/Macross could copy fold drives within a decade or so of salvaging,
with the tech level of the 1990's, based on fusion power... And it is a rather everyday and usefull item...
So, it is quite unlikely, that 3G civilisations could not make a working example.

Edit: Also, both in Robotech and Macross Earth on the SDF-1 they were able to create shields (first in pinpoint, then it
barrier form), something which the Zentraedi did not have. This in itself would question their "mythical" technological superiority.

Adios
KLM

Hi there!

@Seto Kaiba
/signed
As an addendum, one does not have to know (especially all the equations and calculus) the theoretical background to
know, that time is distorted, about 240 to 1...

Seto Kaiba wrote:Only one jump is mentioned, though the "180 parsec" distance limit from the RPG does not apply since it doesn't originate in the series, so there's no saying how far they via Robotech sources. If we were to draw on the Macross numbers, we could guesstimate the distance to be ~156ly, give or take about 20ly, based on the elapsed time.

Is it light years? Not parsecs? Because 10 days of realtime for 180 lys is less than 0,75 lys/h...

Adios
KLM

As a side note, you (KLM) and Sgt Anjay could really both stand to take it down a notch with the hostility... if it continues unabated, your current practice of trading barbed remarks about each other's intelligence and debate practices is probably going to get this thread locked. So, please shelve the insults and stick to the evidence. Thank you.

KLM wrote:As an addendum, one does not have to know (especially all the equations and calculus) the theoretical background to know, that time is distorted, about 240 to 1...

Precisely... the executive officer of, say, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier might not have a complete and detailed grasp of the ship's Westinghouse A4W nuclear fission reactors, but he/she would definitely know essential information like the safety limits of their operation or the maximum speed they're capable of producing.

KLM wrote:Is it light years? Not parsecs? Because 10 days of realtime for 180 lys is less than 0,75 lys/h...

Yes. As I said back on page 6, the relative velocity of a conventional fold engine in Macross is ~5,968c, or 1 light year every 92 minutes (.65ly/h). That, however, was not the point of the section you quoted... the point was that the range limit suggested by the RPG is complete bunk with no basis in the show, and to give a rough idea of how far Britai's ship jumped in Macross based on known factors since Colonel Wolfe asked. It would be remiss of me not to mention that advances in the science of fold travel boosted the speed considerably... the Phaeton fold booster reached 6.27ly/h, and by all accounts a zero-time fold engine would cover ~156ly/h.

Thing is... various Macross titles depict fold drives as being easily capable of making jumps of 1000ly (306.6 parsecs) or more. This quite explicitly torpedoes the idea that the Macross fold engines would be subject to a range limitation of 587ly/180 parsecs.

By a similar token, the Robotech series sets the absolute lower bound for the relative velocity of fold travel at 25,000c (34.22ly/h), courtesy of the Robotech Masters. Be thee aware, that's assuming "the depths of another galaxy" meant "the closest rim of the Canis Major dwarf galaxy". In all likelihood, it's much higher... ~300,000c (410.7ly/h) if the ship was near the core of Canis Major, or ~3,000,000c (4,106.9ly/h) if they were in Andromeda.

Precisely... the executive officer of, say, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier might not have a complete and detailed grasp of the ship's Westinghouse A4W nuclear fission reactors, but he/she would definitely know essential information like the safety limits of their operation or the maximum speed they're capable of producing.

Except, the X-O of that Navy ship would have day to day observation of said Reactor to know this info First hand.... I doubt the same X-O would have this information if the Reactor disappeared the first time they turned it on.

Colonel Wolfe wrote:

Precisely... the executive officer of, say, a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier might not have a complete and detailed grasp of the ship's Westinghouse A4W nuclear fission reactors, but he/she would definitely know essential information like the safety limits of their operation or the maximum speed they're capable of producing.

Except, the X-O of that Navy ship would have day to day observation of said Reactor to know this info First hand.... I doubt the same X-O would have this information if the Reactor disappeared the first time they turned it on.

No but she would certainly have at least a theoretical knowledge of what it is supposed to be capable of. Also if she were out of whack it would have made sense to indicate said information IN the show which they did not thus making her observations based on her theoretical knowledge likely to be correct. (edit) or at the very least not that far off from accurate.