Crossover idea

[Jay05]

I don't know if this idea has been posited before. Here goes. I'm thinking of starting a game set in Shadow Chonicles era, where the Tirol system is closely neighbored by the Charizolon System from Skraypers with all that entails. I'm picturing epic battles featuring mechs, supers aliens and monsters. With the REF and the rebels of the Charizolon System being well suited to being allies. Thoughts and suggestions not of the "this sucks" variety welcome. Thanks

[Lt Gargoyle]

what is your cross story back ground? what is gonna get the REF to get involved in this conflict?

[taalismn]

Indeed...there's a big lead-up to the SC era...if Tirol and Charizolon are so close together, what's their mutual past history? Especially since both worlds are spacefaring(the Tirolians having had FTL for at least a century, and certainly had STL means further back than that, the Tarlok and the Seerons are stated in the Rifts info section of having a more recent interstellar (near-relativistic?) capability). I don't see the Tirolians just ignoring such a promising star sysetm so near them...so, had they previously occupied the system? Blockaded it using Zentraedi?

[glitterboy2098]

instead of putting them close together stellar distance wise, i'd put them far enough away that the Tarlok are on the edge of the Tirolian Empire, and are thus one of the Empire's more minor threats/rivals. a state that changes when the zentreadi grand fleet gets pulled away to search for Zor's fortress in the hinterlands of the milky way, and the master's spacegoing mothership fleet takes off not long after. leaving an Empire with limited border defenses.

so Tarlok moving in from one side, Invid invading from another.. and the UEEF arrives in 2025 right smack in the middle.

perhaps the Tarlok, having conquered seeron as per the dimension book, have been using super-powered shocktroops against the tirolians (and later the UEEF troops that arrive to help out), which has caused the UEEF to make an effort to liberate seeron, in hopes of denying the Tarlok their main advantage, and possibly gain a new ally to help against the invid.

[Jay05]

All good questions and thoughts, btw this is just in the beginning stages of development. So you've given me things to consider and work with. Thanks, and actually GB2098, your suggestion does circumvent the issue of not messing with RT canon. While setting up the possibility of the various factions from the two settings meeting and or conflicting.

[glitterboy2098]

the main issue is whether to give the Tarlok FTL. IIRC they don't have any in the official book, instead relying on just (un-statted) sublight ships, giving them a fairly small empire located within one (rather abundantly inhabited) solar system.for robotech though, you'll probably want a larger empire for them, with some worlds/outposts located in systems other than the one solar system, so some form of FTL might be worthwhile.
i'd say not Fold drives though. perhaps whatever slower FTL the Tyrolians used prior to inventing fold drives/discovering protoculture instead? something on par with say, the Alien unlimited galaxy guide for speeds, where a lightyear takes months if your slow, weeks if your fast? (instead of being able to cross hundreds of them in a day like with fold drives, going by show evidence)
you could use the AUGG to make their ships going that way, actually, once you decide how to convert them to MDC. the result would be ships with better sublight speeds (robotech ships barely accelerate a third of a mach a melee, but AUGG ships do a flat 1 mach per), but much much slower FTL speeds. which could make for an interesting dynamic.

in re-reading, the Charizolon solar system gives me a feel comparable to the 12 colonies of Kobol from BSG or 'the verse' from Firefly in terms of system size and habitable real estate. if you keep it as the book has it with one large system, you might want to consider turning it into a binary, or trinary solar system and add a few additional stars to it, to spread the inhabited worlds out a touch more and add the uninhabited/uninhabitable worlds you'd expect from a solar system. to be honest, as currently written it practically screams "engineered system", hinting at some ancient race of "first ones" having terraformed every world in the system to habitability, and perhaps having planted all those races. a multi-star system probably would give off similar vibes, but not to the same obvious extent. the possibility of the system having been engineered could be an interesting mystery if you want to go that route. you'll want to figure out why it was though, even if you never tell the players. an experiment of some sort? or maybe a race of 'lifebringers' akin to the First ones of babylon 5 or the 'progenitors" of star trek, which seeded life everywhere they could just because they could. or perhaps even something like the Forerunners of Halo, which fall a bit into both categories, being both nurturers and seeders of life, and experimenters on it.

if you go the route of an engineered solar system, this would give you an opening for "ancient artifacts" as a plot-hook/device.. perhaps the Tarlok found a ancient star ship in the system's asteroid belt or crashed on one of the worlds, and are rebuilding it into a terrible super-weapon flagship (reminiscent of the SDF-1 on earth). or found some other piece of hyper advanced technology and are trying to weaponize it.

another issue from the skraypers setting to bring up.. the Atlantis connection. the inhabitants of Seeron are (heavily implied to be) descendants of true atlanteans, probably ones that took a bit of a backwards timeskip in the process of dimensionally traveling to the world. if you keep that connection it opens up a few interesting threads. first, did Atlantis exist on robotech earth in its history, or are they dimensional refugee's? second, would this make the Tirolians and the praxians offshoots of true atlanteans too? (certainly an interesting idea) if humanity discovers this connection, what wil lthe UEEF think of it?

and perhaps a bit more left field.. there are other groups in the palladium game library also implied to be conencted to atlantis, liek the 'atlantees' from mechanoids. which might give you another gameline to mix in.. the alien races of the later mechanoids books, and the various star systems from the whole mechnoids trilogy, could thus be scattered into the setting to fill some gaps. perhaps as minor worlds in the tirolian empire or other bordering star nations. though the age of the mechanoids books might make converting them to robotech's more modern ruleset tricky. the mechanoids themselves, at least have their rifts sourcegbook 2 versions for use, though they might be a bit much to add. (though it might allow a bit of a battlestar galactica feel.. especially if the 'atlantees' of the machanoids are changed to be ancient seeronians or the ancestors of tirolians..) alternately you could just drop the psychic cyborg aspects of the mechanoids and mine their material to give the Haydonites a wider variety of android forms and mecha.

[Jay05]

Wow, fantastic ideas. Most of which I hadn't considered GB2098,thanks! I've actually thought about using the Atlantis angle at least in part, and if I could get my hands on the Mechanoid books, might do just that along with your suggestions regarding elements from those books. Also, your ideas RE the FTL make sense to me and I've got AU:GG to make that happen. You'very given me a helluva lot to think on and consider. Now I just need to get the rest of the RT books and the Mechanoids. Grab bags here we come! LOL. Thank again GB.

[gaby]

Will a CCW,s Colony ship showing up in Robotech,s Sol System in 2006,changed things in Earth fight with Zentraedi?
Csv New Hope,s game from Rifter 60 can wokr too.
Maybe Arismal,s Rag tag fleet can show-up and trade tech for food,they can help earth but still not overpower the Zentraedi.

Just two ideas for you.

[taalismn]

Will a CCW,s Colony ship showing up in Robotech,s Sol System in 2006,changed things in Earth fight with Zentraedi?.

I'm going to entertain this just this once:

Little if anything at all....Conestoga's a civilian transport, not a warship. Its weaponry consists of 12 laser cannons that aren't any better than what the UEDF is already developing, and its shields and drives are at least a couple of hundred years in advance of what that Earth can produce with its understanding of Robotehnology(the rest of its techbase is 20th century modern day). Without the infrastructure to build advanced CG drives and shields, and without the antimatter powerplants to power those high end systems, the UEDF just ain't going to be able to field enough advanced shipkillers to thwart the Zentraedi bombardment. If you kept the ship intact, all you accomplish is either a) another target for hordes of Zentraedi ships to hammer on, or b) a few people might escape to another solar system using the CG FTL drives.

In fact, some Robotech projects might get canceled altogether because the bureaucracy will be arguing over which techbase is better...why continue to build giant robots when we can field more conventional hovertanks or contragravity vehicles from the CCW techbase?

Hell, you could drop a CCW Explorer CRUISER in at 2006 and it's not going to make much of a difference, except muddy the waters a little. The CCW just doesn't carry 'make the entire enemy fleet go bye-bye' superweapons on its ships or specifications of in its ship databases.

At BEST, even with the cooperation of the CCW crew(s) and their database, the UEDF might swat a few more Zentraedi ships and save a few more cities, but the problems you got are TIME(to desimminate the advanced technology, build up infrastructure, and mature the technology), and NUMBERS....the Zentraedi are coming with upwards of TEN THOUSAND ships....the Earth's not going to be able to field enough heavy iron to counter that significantly to avoid Earth getting at least a partial shellacking.