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I want this. We need this. Zentraedi have more than two ships (published in current titles). There are a billion references to this supplement in canon material. Yet we still do without half the Zentraedi armada and classic ships like the Tokugawa-class. We need Horizant V, science variants of Garfish, and dropships which were clearly shown in tSC movie and canon comic books. Oh where, oh where have our spaceships gone?

Wails the damned souls, ever languishing in purgatory, waiting for release. Yes, Spaceships! Maybe even more than Marines!

hopefully we might get some of the missing ships in Marines (I got my copy last summer).

Kagashi wrote:I want this. We need this.

But will we get it? Probably not...

Then again, I'm not convinced it's that much of a loss. Ship-to-ship combat is practically an afterthought, rules-wise, and the actual stats for ships are horribly unbalanced. Human ships really got shorted bad... most of their weapons are marginally less effective than faxing the enemy a sternly worded letter, and a fight between a human and alien ship is mostly like those cartoon scenes where a bully holds a short kid at arm's length while the kid windmills his arms impotently.

Kagashi wrote:There are a billion references to this supplement in canon material.

There are a lot of references to it, but I doubt there are quite that many...

Kagashi wrote:Yet we still do without half the Zentraedi armada and classic ships like the Tokugawa-class. We need Horizant V, science variants of Garfish, and dropships which were clearly shown in tSC movie and canon comic books.

To be fair, there's not a whole lot of practical difference between the types of Zentradi ship... and they're all punching way, WAY above the weight class of human ships. Can't see the Tokugawa-class being high priority, as they're canonically useless and very low-profile. Same story for the Horizon-V, which is something that didn't even appear. The science variant Garfish-class is just a Garfish without the hangar (no specifics on its sensors are known). No data or reference art exists for the dropship that appeared in Prelude... so Palladium and Harmony Gold have nothing to work with there. There are lots of ships waiting to be covered, but very few of them have any immediate relevance to the story, and RT2E's following the canon story relatively closely.

I imagine some of the missing ships will be covered in the UEEF Marines book, since that's basically the broad strokes coverage of what used to be Sentinels, spackled over with rejected MOSPEADA concept art in the absence of original Robotech IP.

Seto Kaiba wrote:[most of their weapons are marginally less effective than faxing the enemy a sternly worded letter

We of the CDT(Corps Diplomatique Terra) would have you know, sir, that a properly composed letter of protest, accompanied by an admonition to cease and desist, can be FAR more effective than any rude exercise in violence.*


(*Only if delivered by Jamie Retief)

While I expect there to be some sort of ship statt'ed out in the Marines book I don't expect anything specific.
The Horizant V might be one, but till they publish I don't expect to hear anything.

The main reason to have the spaceships is to give the players something to launch from or against. Also something for the non-Veritech pilots in the party to go down to the planet in.

SRoss wrote:The main reason to have the spaceships is to give the players something to launch from or against. Also something for the non-Veritech pilots in the party to go down to the planet in.

And to scare the hell out of PCs when they see a heavy cruiser squadron hoving into view in line of battle.

Oh wow... I just did a comparison between the Zentradi Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleship and several human ships. The prospects for ship-to-ship combat are worse than I remembered. There is just no way to make spaceship combat rules even remotely balanced. The old Macross II RPG's ship battle rules were almost not horribly unbalanced because everybody's guns were the same level of capability... but this? This is so one-sided it's painful to think about.

Zentradi ship guns got NERF'd compared to what's stated for their range in the series, but they still out-range guns from human ships (even human ships supposedly built around salvaged Zentradi tech) by a factor of 1,000 for the big guns and 183 for the small ones. The Zentradi do 25% more damage and have more of the heavy-hitting long ranged guns too... yowch.

You all suck. Hijackers.

How to deal with a thread hijack in 3 simple steps.

1) Attempt to redirect the thread back to the desired course by posting something on point and asking for a response.

2) Ask politely for those who are off topic to either return to the topic or start a new thread for their side discussion.

3) Assuming 1 and 2 did not work, report the first off-topic post and request that the moderators split the topic.

The alternative approach of just flaming folks instead results in the following.

I do hope that the missing ships do appear soon. I'd really like a dedicated spaceships book with revised stats and rules for playing true ship vs ship and fleet vs fleet actions. That could even be the next miniatures concept for Palladium to look into, though that is definitely a niche market within a niche market.

Seto Kaiba wrote:Oh wow... I just did a comparison between the Zentradi Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleship and several human ships. The prospects for ship-to-ship combat are worse than I remembered. There is just no way to make spaceship combat rules even remotely balanced. The old Macross II RPG's ship battle rules were almost not horribly unbalanced because everybody's guns were the same level of capability... but this? This is so one-sided it's painful to think about.

Zentradi ship guns got NERF'd compared to what's stated for their range in the series, but they still out-range guns from human ships (even human ships supposedly built around salvaged Zentradi tech) by a factor of 1,000 for the big guns and 183 for the small ones. The Zentradi do 25% more damage and have more of the heavy-hitting long ranged guns too... yowch.

This is why I usualy tack a few extra zeroes onto the end of the human ship ranges. As for damage, small tweaks, of the later generations, are in the works, but something I can't play test for a while.

-POUNCER

Seto wrote:Then again, I'm not convinced it's that much of a loss. Ship-to-ship combat is practically an afterthought, rules-wise, and the actual stats for ships are horribly unbalanced. Human ships really got shorted bad... most of their weapons are marginally less effective than faxing the enemy a sternly worded letter, and a fight between a human and alien ship is mostly like those cartoon scenes where a bully holds a short kid at arm's length while the kid windmills his arms impotently.

Yes and no. I agree the actual playability of ships are in a variety of ways aren't needed. However there are aspects of ship information that can be more useful to GMs more so than players. Deck plans for one (I know the M2 plans where horrible, but the 1E RT plans tended to be much better), now the GM has some idea of where things are on the ship so the party can enter a ship (derelict or other) and move around w/o having to pull it out of the air. Complements are another. Though I do agree the actual game stat aspect could be left out when you get down to it.

So, my apologies as one of the thread-derailers.

Getting back on-topic, I can't help but think that Palladium's plan (now) is to sprinkle ship stats throughout the line rather than producing an entire separate sourcebook. That's the impression I get from the random inclusion of the SDF-4 and the Shimakaze-class in Genesis Pits, anyway.

I would expect to see more in Expeditionary Force Marines, when/if that comes out. The Horizon-T/Horizon-V seem particularly relevant to that book, being dropships, and the Tokugawa-class is often used as a troop transport. Maybe they'll throw in another Zentraedi ship.

Can't see the Tokugawa-class being high priority, as they're canonically useless and very low-profile.

So? We have Oberths and ARMDs statted out and they were obliterated in the first encounter with the Zentraedi, never to be seen again. Yet we still have stats. Additionally, we have the SDF-1 and stats for Kyron and Azonia; all of which were unique aspects whom were destroyed canonically. Yet we have stats. The Tokugawa (a personal favorite of mine) is more than a single named ship and was a class of vessels which could have had more than the two we know of. They would be good platforms to base adventures from. I see the Tokugawa, both pre and refit versions, central to the Robotech story. Its inclusion in the comics builds continuity with the show as well.

Same story for the Horizon-V, which is something that didn't even appear.

It does appear. In both Prelude and the Art of the Shadow Chronicles, both of which are canon sources according to Yune.

The science variant Garfish-class is just a Garfish without the hangar (no specifics on its sensors are known).

And those RPG stats are....?

No data or reference art exists for the dropship that appeared in Prelude... so Palladium and Harmony Gold have nothing to work with there.

They are RPG designers...design something. Publish it. Done. But they do appear with minor stats in the Art of the Shadow Chronicles and the Graphic Novel version of Prelude. So there is something to go from. Just get something in print so we can use it without having 10 different points of view of what the stats should be.

Honestly, the Siembieda-written tSC book lacked in terms of electronic warfare, something Marker did an extraordinary job with. I'd love to see Garfish-era ships have these capabilities, something Marker didnt have the opportunity to include.

There are lots of ships waiting to be covered, but very few of them have any immediate relevance to the story, and RT2E's following the canon story relatively closely.

Agreed. I still want all of them regardless. You would think the SDF3 would have seen print by now since it quite literally IS the story.

I imagine some of the missing ships will be covered in the UEEF Marines book, since that's basically the broad strokes coverage of what used to be Sentinels, spackled over with rejected MOSPEADA concept art in the absence of original Robotech IP.

I suspect as well. I still want all the ships. Id like to see the border fleet ships as well seeing the original SDF-3 was designed to be a look-alike of.

Of The Funk wrote:
I would expect to see more in Expeditionary Force Marines, when/if that comes out. The Horizon-T/Horizon-V seem particularly relevant to that book, being dropships, and the Tokugawa-class is often used as a troop transport. Maybe they'll throw in another Zentraedi ship.

Don't forget the Crusader class dropships mentioned and seen in Prelude and the Art of the Shadow Chronicles.

Kagashi wrote:The Tokugawa (a personal favorite of mine) is more than a single named ship and was a class of vessels which could have had more than the two we know of. They would be good platforms to base adventures from. I see the Tokugawa, both pre and refit versions, central to the Robotech story. Its inclusion in the comics builds continuity with the show as well.

There is also the fact that the UES Tokugawa only got killed because Tommy Yune used it as a bad plot device. Quite simply, it should have overwhelmed the UES Icarus with beam, projectile and missile fire since we have proof from the series that ships of the same era use visual tracking. Failing that, launching some 1000 mecha might have achieved similar results as well.

Yeah, a shame. I just assumed Grant was an inexperienced commander and let Edwards get the best of him with the surprise Synchro Cannon attack. Even Edwards seemed to mess up in that engagement, only crippling the Tokugawa. Syncho Cannons are supposed to be similar to Reflex Cannons (Palladium stats say they are similar), yet the Tokugawa was only grazed and survived. In the show, Zentraedi ships were not even hit and they still disintegrated (as shown in the intro every episode). That battle was kinda like Bull Run, where both sides really didnt know what they were doing against each other. I would have liked to have seen the Tokugawa utilized better. At least see a sister ship in official canon. As far as the RPG is concerned, printing the Tokugawa could justify that utilization in terms of stats.