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While for each of the ships with fold capabilities have listed size of the fold bubble and distance it can go in one jump how much time takes place mid jump? Any idea of a general speed of fold travel?

isawarenshi wrote:While for each of the ships with fold capabilities have listed size of the fold bubble and distance it can go in one jump how much time takes place mid jump? Any idea of a general speed of fold travel?

Nope! As far as Robotech is concerned, there has been no official (or even quasi-official) word on the speed of fold travel. Distances are only presented in very vague (and sometimes inconsistent) terms in the Robotech series, so it's often all but impossible to put even a rough approximation on it. It's clearly at least a few tens of thousands of times the speed of light, considering the Robotech Masters very advanced fold systems were able to get them to Earth from another galaxy in the time they did.

There may be OSM-related reasons they're avoiding identifying a speed, even though Robotech's fold drive was established to be a Star Trek-style warp drive in Shadow Chronicles instead of a kind of teleportation the way it is in the original Macross.

honestly, your best bet is likely to just give them speeds comparable to the phase world setting. 1 to 10 lightyears per hour. odds are it is actually a lot faster than that, but at least that way you have a easy way to figure out travel time.

as for "another galaxy": the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is a seperate galaxy, but it crosses through our's in several places because it is in the gigayear long process of colliding with the milky way. Artisits rendition based on the measurements taken so far

one of the spots it crosses through is right next to the location of our solar system, which had led to a few scientists to think we belonged to it not the milky way, but orbit data for our solar system showed we are part of the milky way.

so the master's might not have been all that far away after all.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

isawarenshi wrote:While for each of the ships with fold capabilities have listed size of the fold bubble and distance it can go in one jump how much time takes place mid jump? Any idea of a general speed of fold travel?

Nope! As far as Robotech is concerned, there has been no official (or even quasi-official) word on the speed of fold travel. Distances are only presented in very vague (and sometimes inconsistent) terms in the Robotech series, so it's often all but impossible to put even a rough approximation on it. It's clearly at least a few tens of thousands of times the speed of light, considering the Robotech Masters very advanced fold systems were able to get them to Earth from another galaxy in the time they did.

There may be OSM-related reasons they're avoiding identifying a speed, even though Robotech's fold drive was established to be a Star Trek-style warp drive in Shadow Chronicles instead of a kind of teleportation the way it is in the original Macross.

Awesome thanks Seto for that. Its kind of what I thought unfortunately. Did that happen to mention even in the now defunct books an idea on how long it took for either the Master to go from Tirol to Earth or the REF to reach the other way around?

isawarenshi wrote:Awesome thanks Seto for that. Its kind of what I thought unfortunately. Did that happen to mention even in the now defunct books an idea on how long it took for either the Master to go from Tirol to Earth or the REF to reach the other way around?

The total time which separated the Robotech Masters departure from "another galaxy" and their arrival at Earth was 15 years, 8 months. Exactly how much of that was spent folding is open to debate, as it their remaining distance to travel after the fold jump.

Odds are there isn't one uniform fold speed either... the Robotech Masters had very advanced ones in good repair, while humanity's are established to be salvaged and/or crude.

actually they seem to have crossed the long distance pretty quickly, since the next time we see them they are close enough to earth to run into a destroyed fleet of ASC type ships. (and this still in the macross period. suggests some sort of colony force or scouting group from earth). they admit they are nearly out of protocultre and don't have enough to fold, so they have to make the rest of the trip "on impulse power".

the 15 some years they spent travelling seem to have been done using a far slower drive system, from a relatively closeby location.

isawarenshi wrote:While for each of the ships with fold capabilities have listed size of the fold bubble and distance it can go in one jump how much time takes place mid jump? Any idea of a general speed of fold travel?

The closest one can do is approximate the speed based on the one incident we know how much time it took (24hours/1day, Breetai's jump from Sol. to where ever Dolza's base was. And the trip back by Azonia's fleet is said to take a similar amount of time). Otherwise I don't think the show gives an idea of how long any particular jump actually took, but they avoid giving an actual idea of the distance to. You then compare that to the known ship distances in the Zentraedi fleet and assume Dolza's base was at maximum range (per the 2E RPG) since they did not do multiple jumps. This last bit is a bit more tricky since we are assuming the distance involved, but given a mixed group went back...

Destroyer: 140parsecs (456.4ly) in 24hrs means ~19ly per hour
Flagship: 180parsecs (586.8ly) in 24hrs means ~24ly per hour

1parsec = 3.26light years (about)

While I don't recall Breetai's flagship folding to the base with escort (until it left), Azonia had a fleet with her of mixed ships and they managed the same time frame. More ship types would be helpful in this case.

glitterboy2098 wrote:actually they seem to have crossed the long distance pretty quickly, since the next time we see them they are close enough to earth to run into a destroyed fleet of ASC type ships. (and this still in the macross period. suggests some sort of colony force or scouting group from earth). they admit they are nearly out of protocultre and don't have enough to fold, so they have to make the rest of the trip "on impulse power".

the 15 some years they spent traveling seem to have been done using a far slower drive system, from a relatively closeby location.

The distance from "another galaxy" to the planet twenty light years from Earth trip time is unknown (is where they encounter the ASC ships in the TMS period). And what they actually say is the lack the PC to make the hyperspace fold to Earth's solar system, not that they lack the ability to fold at all (for a shorter distance).

"we don't even have enough to make the hyperspace jump to Earth's solar system"-RT Master in "Khyron's Revenge", so they don't rule out shorter Fold jumps.

Assuming the RT.com time line is accurate, and I've placed events correctly (since they don't elaborate on each episode's events) we are likely looking at May-July 2013 period between their 3 appearances. I don't think the actual location of the first appearance is indicated, but we know they execute a Fold before they are revealed to be in the "recesses of another galaxy".

May and July have 31days, and June has 30 days. That gives a window of approximately 32-92days (all of June plus one day from each month minimum, maximum every day in all three months) to have made the trip from another galaxy in as we lack more exact timing. Their Fold array (per 2E RPG) is good for 200parsec jumps, or 652ly range, not that it will be a factor here.

Assuming they are in the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy as you suggest they are in a galaxy then that is 10,000ly in diameter and 70,000ly away from Earth. That's 69980-79980ly range from their another galaxy (depending on how far in they are relative to Earth) to 20ly from Earth (complete w/planet). Assuming they didn't dawdle. That's a speed of ~31.6-104.1-ly/hr depending on what combination of trip time and distance is used.

it is portrayed like Hyperdrives in Star Wars....the RPG gives times it takes to travel from one system to another but in the movies it takes as long (or as short) as it needs to.

This is inaccurate as there is no actual source to support it but most fansite put fold drives 1 ly every 6 minutes or 10 ly per hour which is, as GB suggested as well, Phaseworld range of FTL travel.

I've always thought of the Robotech Fold System as more like a jump gate type of technology without any passage of time between source and destination.

Perhaps time does pass, but it not for those on board of the jumping craft. From their prospective it is instantaneous. If times passes to the rest of the universe, I'm not sure.

FatherMorpheus wrote:I've always thought of the Robotech Fold System as more like a jump gate type of technology without any passage of time between source and destination.

Perhaps time does pass, but it not for those on board of the jumping craft. From their prospective it is instantaneous. If times passes to the rest of the universe, I'm not sure.

conflicts with visuals in the show. other than the single trip the SDF-1 made, all fold travel spends notable time in transit, perfectly aware. and the SDF-1's trip was probably just too short to have much elapsed time.

glitterboy2098 wrote:

FatherMorpheus wrote:I've always thought of the Robotech Fold System as more like a jump gate type of technology without any passage of time between source and destination.

Perhaps time does pass, but it not for those on board of the jumping craft. From their prospective it is instantaneous. If times passes to the rest of the universe, I'm not sure.

conflicts with visuals in the show. other than the single trip the SDF-1 made, all fold travel spends notable time in transit, perfectly aware. and the SDF-1's trip was probably just too short to have much elapsed time.

Which show? Most of the times I remember seeing the various jumps in the original 3 series they were using non-folding engines most of the time. Or they let me to feel they had to jump, recalculate, jump again. Maybe I need to re-watch it again to refresh my memory.

definately rewatch it. especially the following episodes:
episode 11: "First Contact"
Episode 12: "the big escape"
Episiode 30: "Viva Miriya"

all have extended fold travel.

FatherMorpheus wrote:I've always thought of the Robotech Fold System as more like a jump gate type of technology without any passage of time between source and destination.

Thus far, there has only been one official depiction/diagramming of a fold drive in operation in RT... the one shown on screen in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles. That diagram, and the animation from the OVA and the aborted Robotech Academy trailer, shows the Robotech version of the fold drive being a system more or less identical in principle to the warp drives of Star Trek. The ship is contained within the bubble of artificially normalized space and that bubble is being moved through space at faster than light speeds by contraction and expansion of space in front of and behind the bubble.

FatherMorpheus wrote:Perhaps time does pass, but it not for those on board of the jumping craft. From their prospective it is instantaneous. If times passes to the rest of the universe, I'm not sure.

It's definitely not instantaneous, the various depictions in canon agree that travel is not instantaneous and time does pass for those traveling aboard the ship. It can take hours or days of continuous travel to reach your destination, though they seem to have done away with the holdover concept of a difference between the subjective and objective passage of time during fold travel that was inherited from Macross.



Prior to Harmony Gold rebooting the Robotech franchise and creating the Shadow Chronicles, it had been generally assumed that Robotech's fold drives worked much the same way as fold systems from the Japanese Macross franchise.

Macross's fold systems are effectively a form of interdimensional teleportation, bridging two points in our three-dimensional universe via a 10+ dimensional sub-universe called super dimension space and using that folded higher-dimension space to circumvent the distance between point A and point B. Traveling by fold isn't instantaneous though, but the relationship between distance "traveled" and time spent folding is an inconstant thing that depends on a lot of different factors like the quality/efficiency of the fold system being used, the distance being covered, the "course" of the compressed higher dimension space, and the integrity of the higher dimension space along that "route". The disparity between the subjective and the objective passage of time during fold travel is also somewhat variable depending in part upon those same factors. To give an example straight out of Macross Frontier, in ideal conditions and with a modern fold system, a civilian galaxy starliner could make a trip of a dozen light years in under two hours realtime (that includes non-fold flight time, surface airport to surface airport). In very poor conditions, with many fold faults on the route, that exact same galaxy starliner could need the better part of a day (subjective) to make the trip and lose (objective) over 170 hours in the time differential.*

Under normal circumstances, there's very little time differential and even a trip of a couple hundred light years is no worse than one of the longer non-stop international flights is today.

I suspect Robotech's fold drives, being essentially the same as Star Trek's warp drives, suffer many of the same problems... namely, that speed isn't a constant. The speed of a given "warp factor" is variable depending on things like the local particle density around the warp effect, gravitational fields, or various other stellar phenomena that have gravimetric or electromagnetic effects. Since Robotech's fold drives don't seem to have any "throttle" settings besides Parked and Floor it!, there's less variation caused by the vessel.

Chris0013 wrote:the RPG gives times it takes to travel from one system to another but in the movies it takes as long (or as short) as it needs to.

Unless it's changed with a more recent printing. No they do not. What the RPG tells us is that a Fold Array on a given Ship can cover X-number of Parsecs (1parsec = ~3.26ly). What it doesn't say is how long those jumps take, which is the question here.

In most instances the show doesn't tell us how long or how far the trip is. We can figure out the distance from Earth to Pluto (ep3) fold pretty easily, and the trip time though is near instant (I don't think it would be out of place to assume elapsed time is equal to the visual depiction as no audio conflicts with it). Every other Fold avoids the issue of actual distance traveled and or the time frame it occurrs. The only other trip distance/time that can be worked out is the 20ly trip the Masters took while under Impulse Power in approx. 15years, but there is some question on just what that actually entails.

jaymz wrote:This is inaccurate as there is no actual source to support it but most fansite put fold drives 1 ly every 6 minutes or 10 ly per hour which is, as GB suggested as well, Phaseworld range of FTL travel.

Which might actually be to low given the assumptions above. The Masters easily where doing 30ly/hr (and possibly up to about 100ly/hr) to travel from another galaxy to end up a mere 20ly from Earth in the allotted time from RT.com's time line, and that assumes the Masters are in the closest Dwarf Galaxy if they are in a farther galaxy...

Even the Zentraedi have potential speeds based on the 2E RPG and show dialogue that can potentially be faster since we don't know the actual distances involved in trips we have a rough idea of the time involved.

Seto wrote: shows the Robotech version of the fold drive being a system more or less identical in principle to the warp drives of Star Trek. The ship is contained within the bubble of artificially normalized space and that bubble is being moved through space at faster than light speeds by contraction and expansion of space in front of and behind the bubble.

Which might actually conflict with Dialogue that refers to Fold travel in terms of hyperspace (multiple times) and IIRC dimensional aspects. Though it may just be RT and ST using different terminology to describe the same effect.

S/L - as I said it was inaccurate dude. I was just pointing out what others have done. I use it for simplicity myself, nothing more. Just as I use Mach speeds for space. Not accurate or even realistic but simple. If I myself were interested in realistic, I'd not be using Palladium to begin with

ShadowLogan wrote:Which might actually conflict with Dialogue that refers to Fold travel in terms of hyperspace (multiple times) and IIRC dimensional aspects. Though it may just be RT and ST using different terminology to describe the same effect.

Possibly... or not, if you consider that even Star Trek has its warp drive employ extradimensional physics (the warp field uses subspace fields). Though having official canon information not line up perfectly with the in-series dialogue means very little in RT since the dialogue is often in contradiction with itself.

RTA leaves little room for doubt that the warp drive version of fold tech has definitively replaced the OSM teleportation-style fold system.

honestly, combined with the dimensional and hyperspace descriptions, i'd say Fold Drives are closer in nature to Star War's Hyperdrives or maybe the version used in StarGate.

the Visuals in the Macross Saga would seem to fit the latter, the visuals of the SDF-1's fold and the shadow chronicles one being closer to the star wars one.

They may be closer GB but I wouldn't be so sure of them being as "fast"....

The creator of Firefly was asked once how fast do the drives in FF go. And his responce was that they take as long as the plot needs them to go.

Which does no one any good in a game that may need to know how far one can go in a given time frame.

jaymz wrote:S/L - as I said it was inaccurate dude. I was just pointing out what others have done. I use it for simplicity myself, nothing more. Just as I use Mach speeds for space. Not accurate or even realistic but simple. If I myself were interested in realistic, I'd not be using Palladium to begin with

I know. I'm merely stating that it was low balled by apparent current official RT material when pieced together. The number had to come from somewhere. So either someone just pulled the stat from another series for simplicity, or they did some figuring with some assumptions of their own.

Seto wrote:Possibly... or not, if you consider that even Star Trek has its warp drive employ extradimensional physics (the warp field uses subspace fields). Though having official canon information not line up perfectly with the in-series dialogue means very little in RT since the dialogue is often in contradiction with itself.

As I said, it may simply be doing the same thing just with different techno-babble terms. Hyperspace is used in numerous sci-fi to indicate FTL travel (Stargate, Star Wars, Robotech, Galaxy Rangers, Babylon Five, etc), but the term itself isn't used in Star Trek IIRC.

As I said, it may simply be doing the same thing just with different techno-babble terms. Hyperspace is used in numerous sci-fi to indicate FTL travel (Stargate, Star Wars, Robotech, Galaxy Rangers, Babylon Five, etc), but the term itself isn't used in Star Trek IIRC.[/quote]

actually used properly, hyperspace, warp, and jump style drives are radically different in how they accomplish the end which is FTL movement.

ok I may have the details wrong, but warp drive as used by star trek does NOT involve a moving a stable bubble of spacetime around, what actually happens is the drive "effectively" treats space as if it is a sheet, and pulls ripples into it in front of the ship, compressing distances, as it "surfs" across the tops of the "waves" the ripples return to normal behind the ship. the difference between archer/kirk's generation, and picards, is that the picard generation uses a "double compression" system vs the older single compression system IE short and long waves instaid of just the "long or short" waves.

hyperdrives work by transiting out of normal spacetime, into an alternate "dimension" where the inherent distances are shorter than in normal space, and so after traversing the shorter distance they transition back into "normal" space.

the fold or jump drives work by taking 2 non adjacent points and change the "fabric" of space so that they are adjacent and then jump or transition from one point to the other (much like folding a piece of paper and then shoving the pencil through the paper and then allow it to "unfold")

now from what I am hearing is the rewritten ftl works more like an Alcubierre drive where it takes a stable bubble of space and moves it around, that happens to contain the ship or ships inside it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

note that while Robotech calls their drives "fold" they don't do point to point instant space jump in the manner of a theoretical "folded space" drive. they seem to work more like star wars hyperdrive in terms of narrative/plot effect.. ships "leap" into FTL and spend a fair amount of time there, complete with glowing streaks passing by/psychedelic tunnel visuals for those on the ship.

macross's FTL is closer to a folded space drive, though going by the various sequel show's depictions, it seems to involve finding paths through already folded spacetime.

guardiandashi wrote:ok I may have the details wrong, but warp drive as used by star trek does NOT involve a moving a stable bubble of spacetime around, what actually happens is the drive "effectively" treats space as if it is a sheet, and pulls ripples into it in front of the ship, compressing distances, as it "surfs" across the tops of the "waves" the ripples return to normal behind the ship.

You do, in point of fact, have the details wrong.

Per the descriptions and graphics in Star Trek's many series, the "warp field" produced by the warp nacelles is a (non-spherical) bubble of subspace field energy around the ship, which acts as the focal point for the compression and expansion of space in front of and behind a ship to propel the artificially-normalized space inside the field through space at faster-than-light speeds. The most graphic demonstration of the warp field as an artificially normalized bubble in which the ship rides was the Enterprise episode "Divergence", where two ships that were both moving at warp merged their warp fields into a single, larger warp field for the purpose of transferring personnel between the two ships, leveraging the fact that it's the bubble moving, not the ship inside it.

This is practically identical to how Robotech's fold drives are diagrammed and shown in the Shadow Chronicles and the trailers for Robotech Academy, with the only noteworthy exceptions being the substitution of "hyperspace" for "subspace", the "fold bubble" being visible under normal conditions (warp fields in Trek are normally not visible to the viewer or the "naked eye"), and the fold bubble being spherical instead of oblong or lozenge shaped. Robotech's fold drive is clearly not causing the ship to leave realspace, based on visuals from the new animation, so its closest analogue is the Star Trek warp drive as demonstrated and described in Star Trek itself.

Couldn't find anything you said about waves in the official material... the ship is described as "riding" the distortion created by compressing and expanding space around the bubble (not unlike, in theory, squeezing a bar of soap in a wet fist).


Your description of fold drives only really applies to drives that are folding realspace, as well... it's worth noting that not many actually do, with most operating on some kind of sub-universe like subspace or hyperspace.

So I thought I would run a potential concept for game mechanics for RT “Fold” warp drives by the forum and see what you guys think.

A couple points I am going to go with from what I know and have read ect.

1) Mechanically the only rules shown thus far are the maximum range on the drive.
2) Per the newer HG documentation the “Fold” works more along the lines of a ST warp drive.
3) During the original series Lisa Hayes had stipulated that being in a folded ship time seemed to travel at 10 minutes for every hour outside the fold bubble. (Is this correct? It’s been a while since I watched my copies of the original series)
4) A key difference between ST warp drives and RT “Fold” warp drives is that from the way I always thought the ST sub light speeds were an extension of the same normalized subspace bubble that was the warp field. Also it was constantly active even when not in active use.
5) Also another difference between ST and RT warp systems is ST is variable speed drive while the RT is a simple off/on drive.
6) In RT using the material we have there is nothing stating a difference in speed from one “Fold” drive to another but there is the shown difference in single jump range.

So using these points I put this idea as a player made concept (for the RPG only of course) for the RT drive that ties in all these points into a concise whole that we can kick around and maybe flesh out a little more to see if this would work.

So my idea in order to explain and utilize the method Palladium has used for “Fold” measurement and from there work out speeds is to say that the difference between better drives is the ON speed for the warp drive. I think we could say a constant for the “Fold” drive technology in the RT universe could be that the warp bubble can only be maintained for a set amount of time before it collapses and drops you back into sub-light speeds. Then the reason for the different ranges per jump is that better drives can move faster within the static time frame of warp bubbles stability.

Zentraedi Flagship range: 180 Parsecs = 586.6 Light-years
Ikazuchi Carrier range: 250 Parsecs = 815 Light-years
Tirolian Mothership range: 200 Parsecs = 652 Light-years

So what we would need to work out is what is a reasonable or has something based in the expanded universe of RT that gives an idea on how long an individual jump can last?

isawarenshi wrote:3) During the original series Lisa Hayes had stipulated that being in a folded ship time seemed to travel at 10 minutes for every hour outside the fold bubble. (Is this correct? It’s been a while since I watched my copies of the original series)

I don't think she cited an exact time differential the way she did in the original Macross, but it's been quite a while since I've voluntarily dusted off my Robotech DVDs. Of course, it's worth noting that in the original Macross, her estimate of the time differential was based on humanity's then-rather crude fold technology and somewhat basic understanding of super dimension spatial theory.

By RTSC, the differential between time inside the fold effect and time outside seems to have been utterly forgotten by Robotech's creators, making it pretty much just a regular warp drive, so that could be interpreted to either be Lisa being misinformed or humanity being rubbish at building fold drives and ending up suffering relativistic effects as a result of doing it wrong (which, they are at least canonically rubbish at building fold drives, to the extent that the UEDF and UEEF ships used salvaged drive plants from Zentradi ships).

isawarenshi wrote:4) A key difference between ST warp drives and RT “Fold” warp drives is that from the way I always thought the ST sub light speeds were an extension of the same normalized subspace bubble that was the warp field. Also it was constantly active even when not in active use.

Sort of... after TOS, Star Trek established that impulse drives are using a very low-power subspace field to cheat the inertial mass of the ship down to a level where the (still quite powerful) combination of fusion rocket and plasma ion engine technology which actually comprises an impulse drive plant can push the ship to high sublight speeds.

isawarenshi wrote:5) Also another difference between ST and RT warp systems is ST is variable speed drive while the RT is a simple off/on drive.

As far as we know, yes... though it's also possible that the speed of a RT fold drive varies by the relative power of the drive system itself, meaning a more advanced drive system may be faster even though they still lack a variable speed.

isawarenshi wrote:6) In RT using the material we have there is nothing stating a difference in speed from one “Fold” drive to another but there is the shown difference in single jump range.

To be fair, there's nothing in the show that backs up the single jump range either...

isawarenshi wrote:So what we would need to work out is what is a reasonable or has something based in the expanded universe of RT that gives an idea on how long an individual jump can last?

Realistically, since there doesn't appear to be a time differential aspect anymore, if we accept the totally unsubstantiated RPG distance limits, all we need is a rough idea of speed and we're good to go.

Seto Kaiba wrote:Realistically, since there doesn't appear to be a time differential aspect anymore, if we accept the totally unsubstantiated RPG distance limits, all we need is a rough idea of speed and we're good to go.

Yeah I totally agree there. Since we don't have official HG statistics on these parts of the minutia of their warp systems and we are currently working/debating on how the warp should work in a game that has writen also with not fully fleashed out rules for the warp systems I brought this up to look for a way to both use the existing game mechanics and what we know from the universe as a whole.

The basic principle I am offering is to give the warp bubble a stable window before the "Fold" collapses and drops back to a sub-light speed. If we work on the premise that this is a systemic requirement of the technique they are using to generate the warp bubble then we can have a starting point to begin to figure out what might be a more correct Lightspeed per hour then using the shoehorned in Three Galaxies model (Not saying I dislike it, heck at least its something but I think we can agree its just the best current way of giving rules to it).

That would give each ship its own FTL speed while keeping to the stipulation of the existing game mechanics given by Palladium.

TheOttoman wrote:

isawarenshi wrote:The basic principle I am offering is to give the warp bubble a stable window before the "Fold" collapses and drops back to a sub-light speed. If we work on the premise that this is a systemic requirement of the technique they are using to generate the warp bubble then we can have a starting point to begin to figure out what might be a more correct Lightspeed per hour then using the shoehorned in Three Galaxies model (Not saying I dislike it, heck at least its something but I think we can agree its just the best current way of giving rules to it).

That would give each ship its own FTL speed while keeping to the stipulation of the existing game mechanics given by Palladium.

I'm kinda curious as to how you plan to incorporate range in your FTL design. Unlike normal travel, you're going to need to know where you're going to end up, and ensure that there isn't anything occupying that particular part of space when you "de-fold". You'll need to make sure that a planet (something you know) or a rogue asteroid (something you don't know) isn't going to be occupying your space at the same time.

In order to know where you are folding to, you need to know what's there and that can only be done via one of a couple of ways, and the only one that makes sense to me currently would be to use a telescope to examine your destination, and be limited to the speed of light to know what will be there at your expected time of de-fold. Naturally, the further away the destination, the greater your margin of error and the greater the likelihood of something unexpected being where you are going to be. For example, if your fold system operates at 1LYpH (Light Year per Hour) and you want to travel 1 Parsec (3.26 LY / 38 Tkm) you will need to have a telescope (for lack of a better term - in reality some sensor that can examine a point in space) that has the ability to see the destination, and all of the things that can intersect your destination (in three axises) in 3 and a quarter hours. One would think that the closer the distance, the safer and more accurate the trip, where as jumping across the galaxy would be crazy/require unbelievable compute power as you would need to astro-navigate based off a picture 100,000 years old.




All this being said, in the hardcover RtSC book, they list the Ikazuchi as having a fold range of 250 parsecs for a single jump. Meaning that if what I talk about above is used, the computers on there need to be able to astro navigate what a spherical destination 3.2km across will look like from an image effectively 815 years old.

Please remember we are also working on the premise of the modern RT franchise in which it has been established by HG that even though they use the name "Fold" its not really a fold drive. It operates much in the scheme of ST warp drives except on a much faster scale. Now also a big difference from ST to RT is the normalized space bubble is visible to the naked eye.

What I am hypnotizing here is that in order to make both the HG visual and clarified travel principle mesh with the mechanical rules as written by Palladium that we come up with a time frame that RT fold drives can maintain their warp bubble thus from there drill down to an idea of Light Years per Hour for each ship based on their given fold "ranges".

So what we would need to work out is what is a reasonable or has something based in the expanded universe of RT that gives an idea on how long an individual jump can last?

We can already do that to some extent. Between the RPG Fold Distances AND the series dialogue it should be possible. Which I've already done above.

3) During the original series Lisa Hayes had stipulated that being in a folded ship time seemed to travel at 10 minutes for every hour outside the fold bubble. (Is this correct? It’s been a while since I watched my copies of the original series)

In Robotech time dilation is mentioned while in Fold by Lisa to Rick & Ben when Breetai's ship is folding, but there is a distinct lack of a specific rate.

TheOttoman wrote:Nevermind everyone saying the word "jump" which visualizes hoping from one point to another (like teleportation) which is in contradiction to the visual.... unless you want to explain it away as that is what it looks like from an external viewpoint.

not the first time a scifi uses that terminology for such things though. in star wars you "jump to lightspeed" which is, according to the star wars canon, generating a field around the ship to warp space until you enter hyperspace (a subset of normal space), where you travel faster than in normalspace.

in Babylon 5 "jump drives" and "jump gates" open portals into another type of hyperspace, which is a linked universe where distances are shorter.

in Stargate, "jumping to hyperspace" has the ships project a gateway thing to a subset reality hyperspace, and projects a 'tunnel' through hyperspace for the ship to travel through.

in trek they've used "jump into warp" a few times too.

the useage stems more from the "sudden action" effect where the ship does something rapidly then suddenly goes somewhere else rapidly, rather than anything relating to the actual travel method.

TheOttoman wrote:In order to know where you are folding to, you need to know what's there and that can only be done via one of a couple of ways, and the only one that makes sense to me currently would be to use a telescope to examine your destination, and be limited to the speed of light to know what will be there at your expected time of de-fold.

That's one of the more problematic inconsistencies in Robotech... humanity doesn't seem to possess faster-than-light sensors half the time, even though they've surely acquired such technology from one or more of their foes.

Mercifully, this isn't an issue in Macross, which has offered a fairly concrete explanation of how ships know they're not going to collide with anything on defold.

TheOttoman wrote:So if you're going the Star Trek route, you would still need be able to navigate while in FTL speed, and adjust your destination as necessary (and if you watch during the Shadow Chronicles, when the Icarus de-folds, they de-fold in a black hole that was not in the computers); but that completely negates what is shown in the Macross and New Generation (which... okay).

There are no fold effects shown in the New Generation, MOSPEADA's ships had no FTL capability.

TheOttoman wrote:

Seto Kaiba wrote:There are no fold effects shown in the New Generation, MOSPEADA's ships had no FTL capability.

I never said MOSPEADA.

You said New Generation, and Robotech's "New Generation" saga uses the animation of the Genesis Climber MOSPEADA series (albeit cut down).

Just as an addition to this, a big problem si that robotech often used fairly vague comments as to where destinations were. The robotech masters were in "another galaxy." What does that mean? LMC? Andromeda? Some galaxy that is not even a part of our local group?

It gets worse when you really how narratively tiny the robotech universe is. A drive that moves you to another galaxy opens up trillions of stars to exploration and contact-- and yet we never see more than a few worlds. I would have much rather preferred that they kept things much smaller-- even our galactic arm would have been a vast canvass.