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which books the stats for Tokugawa battleships in second edtion.

To my recollection, the 2nd edition did not get around to stating the Tokugawa in either form.

tobefrnk wrote:To my recollection, the 2nd edition did not get around to stating the Tokugawa in either form.

I concur. I had to reformat this one from internet scratches and other sources.
In fact, the absence of the Tokugawa is one of the major factor that pushed back our game so that I'd build the missing pieces for our Gm.
The Tristar feels very lonely without it and directly refers to it, and according to the U.E.E.F. book itself, you can't really use a G.M.U. without one.

That legendary infamous missing "ship book" would probably have been the masterpiece of the second edition line. -_-'

Now since I'm still isn't sure where the "don't post stats" officially ends, I'm hesitant to post my port of it here.
I have seen some topics that seems to have circumnavigated the rule for conversion by specific GMs, but it is all rather hazy to me.
I wonder if it'd be okay to post a "revised" description of it, now including corrected ship's complement and mecha complements at the very least. It kinda was the part that needed the most work.
All of it was based originally on the Rick R. Mortis version suitable for 1st edition gameplay, additional research, and diverse proportions described by 2nd ed..

tobefrnk wrote:To my recollection, the 2nd edition did not get around to stating the Tokugawa in either form.

Yeah, the Tokugawa seems to have had too minor a role in the series to get included in any book that was actually planned.

xunk16 wrote:The Tristar feels very lonely without it [...]

How so? The UEDF literally doesn't use the Tokugawa-class, the UEEF explicitly doesn't use the Tokugawa-class if they can at all help it because it's rubbish as a warship.

xunk16 wrote:That legendary infamous missing "ship book" would probably have been the masterpiece of the second edition line. -_-'

Almost certainly not, no... it would much more likely have been something like the UEEF Marines book - a disjointed and heavily padded book of misfit toys - given that it existed as a catch-all for ships that weren't put in the books for their respective sagas.

xunk16 wrote:Now since I'm still isn't sure where the "don't post stats" officially ends, I'm hesitant to post my port of it here.
I have seen some topics that seems to have circumnavigated the rule for conversion by specific GMs, but it is all rather hazy to me.

The "Don't Post Stats" rule is something that came with the Robotech RPG's 2nd Edition, seemingly hand-in-hand with the more general "No Conversions" rule. It seems have been partly to stop longtime fans from eroding demand for new books by posting their own updates of stats from the 1st Edition, but mainly to prevent the otherwise-inevitable legal problems caused by fans "borrowing" material from other games and franchise (ESPECIALLY Macross). Likely the same reason the Rifter refused to take Robotech fan submissions.

Basically, it's OK to post the "fluff" (AKA "lore"), the stuff that has no mechanical effect on gameplay, of something that isn't in the books... just not the "crunch", the stuff that is actually used for play like MDC values and weapon ranges/damages.

(For the stuff that IS in the books, the usual rule of thumb has always been to post the minimum amount necessary for the purposes of the discussion at hand.)

The Art of the SC book says it is 1196 meters long and has a crew of 2,800, with total capacity for 150,000 people. On the Mecha Data pages.

From what I counted from the artwork there are 12 Ikazuchi class style main turrets (single barrel instead of triple barreled) and about double that in AA lasers, with four AA Ls around the main flying bridge.
Half on the dorsal and half on the nominal underside of the ship.

Note I believe that this describes the UEEF variant/refit of this class. Cause the art book distinctly has the artwork for the SC class of this ship, and I was describing what is seen in the RT:SC movie.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Note I believe that this describes the UEEF variant/refit of this class. Cause the art book distinctly has the artwork for the SC class of this ship, [...]

Yes, the text in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles only describes the ~2043 UEEF Shadow technology refit version of the Tokugawa-class.

It may not even be correct to refer to it as a class-wide refit, as the description only mentions the lead ship of the class (the Tokugawa, under Vince Grant) receiving the refit and we know that ship was lost in its first-and-only battle when it was sunk in a single hit by the Icarus.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:[...] and I was describing what is seen in the RT:SC movie.

[/quote]
... there are no Tokugawa-class ships in the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles movie.

The only place that the Tokugawa-class refit was ever depicted was in the limited comic Robotech: Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles. Only one was depicted, Vince Grant's Tokugawa, which was short-lived to say the least.

They did a 3D computer graphic and that need up in the Artbook. Which is why I could give some mostly accurate numbers of weapon's turrets.

It has been too long since I watched RT:TSC movie the background stuff is like ...'yah there were lots of ships in the shot...numbers?...type...there were the CV's and BC's that I remember.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

xunk16 wrote:The Tristar feels very lonely without it [...]

How so? The UEDF literally doesn't use the Tokugawa-class, the UEEF explicitly doesn't use the Tokugawa-class if they can at all help it because it's rubbish as a warship.

From the Master Saga p.94 :
The UEEF even took a few Tristars on thier mission, along with their Tokugawa battleships, a testament to the ship's power and versatility.

Here you go. We have the ship that is supposed to keep the front line, but we don't have the big weak point the enemy is supposed to go for and where the troops are stationed. I don't know about you but I also think a little diversity goes a long way for the sake of interesting space battles. Even ones where the heroes might get their proverbial bottom kicked.
Plus, technically, there is a long while to play and explore between the fall of Khyron and the great departure of the Pioneer mission. During that time, Tokugawa were built most probably one by one and most certainly had some patrol action field test alongside the Tristars. But of course, that part is only speculation.

Seto Kaiba wrote:Basically, it's OK to post the "fluff" (AKA "lore"), the stuff that has no mechanical effect on gameplay, of something that isn't in the books... just not the "crunch", the stuff that is actually used for play like MDC values and weapon ranges/damages.

Ok then. So here is the stuff I can give from my variant... I think. It hasn't been peer reviewed of proofread by others yet, so there might still be some imperfections in there.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The Art of the SC book says it is 1196 meters long and has a crew of 2,800, with total capacity for 150,000 people. On the Mecha Data pages.

Hum... I sadly didn't had access to this. So my numbers are consistently not on par with these figures. In the end though, one could always use cross product to reflect those numbers if they wished.
I chose to include the Vindicator, and also ported it to 2nd ed standards; simply because I felt that, as an original Robotech creation (from an A.E. but still), it would be nice to have something fill the "giant fighter" space left open by the disappearance of VF-1s. I also liked the idea of them being built in prevision of supplemental Troodi forces that never showed up.
As for the Hornet, I had some space left... that the version I based this on proposed only nonexistent mechs for. Mostly referring to barely finished concept art for "The Sentinels". Since I wanted to work from known material as much as possible, and since our game considered "The Untold Story" to be canonical, the Hornet seemed like a good filler. Feel free to replace it with what suits you best.
The last thing you might find hard to input is the Centaur. This was also based and revamped from online sources, mostly because the comic continuity seemed the most relevant with the stuff referred to by second edition supplements. (Though some feel this should only include "Prelude to Shadow Chronicle".)

Well. At least I hope some of you might have fun with this.

literally your best bet is to take the reference material from the robotech.com robopedia entry, and then cross reference the ARMD and Tristar stats to produce your own.

https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/to ... battleship

this is also the best approach for the SDF-3
https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/sdf-3
(note that said page has some.. very interesting timeline information about the pioneer mission)

glitterboy2098 wrote:this is also the best approach for the SDF-3
https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/sdf-3
(note that said page has some.. very interesting timeline information about the pioneer mission)

Sounds like we're in for an harder reboot this time around.
Oh well.

From the Master Saga p.94 :
The UEEF even took a few Tristars on thier mission, along with their Tokugawa battleships, a testament to the ship's power and versatility.

The ships of that type of design could barely deal with the masters.....power and versatility?

I just said screw it and wrote/rewrote them all up myself and used 4 or 5 differing sources to get a good balanced take on them.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:They did a 3D computer graphic and that need up in the Artbook. Which is why I could give some mostly accurate numbers of weapon's turrets.

Nope... that's labeled as key art, meaning it's a 2D drawing that was created as design reference material for the artists working on the comic.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:It has been too long since I watched RT:TSC movie the background stuff is like ...'yah there were lots of ships in the shot...numbers?...type...there were the CV's and BC's that I remember.

My brain, unfortunately, retains that kind of pointless trivia really well... there were 395 ships in the UEEF's 3rd ERF in the animation. 30 individual (copy-pasted) formations of one Ikazuchi-class carrier and twelve Garfish-class escorts, and one command group of the SDF-4 escorted by four Shimakaze-class escorts. One of the more fun lazy things to notice is every ship of a type is using the same texture as its fellows, so they all have identical markings which are also mirrored instead of being drawn in full so you can occasionally spot backwards text on them.

xunk16 wrote:From the Master Saga p.94 :
The UEEF even took a few Tristars on thier mission, along with their Tokugawa battleships, a testament to the ship's power and versatility.

Granted, but the important bit from the Infopedia got left out:

"Due to the vulnerability of these ships in a stand-up fight, many were relegated to transport duties later into the Expeditionary Force mission." - Infopedia, Tokugawa entry

To wit, those ships were only powerful and versatile on paper. Their performance in actual combat was so dismal the UEEF brass removed the surviving ships from the order of battle and reassigned them to rear-echelon duties as freighters hauling men and materiel behind friendly lines.

(While it's certainly coincidental, this fact provides a realistic explanation for why the Tokugawa-class ship operating under the callsign "Recon One" in Ep47 was commanded by low-ranking officer like Major John Carpenter. The Tokugawa-class are operated as logistical support ships, which are normally commanded by lower-ranking officers like Lieutenant Commanders. In the original, the ship was named Hannibal and was a capital ship from the Liberte Frontier Guard under the command of Colonel George Lombard.)

xunk16 wrote:I don't know about you but I also think a little diversity goes a long way for the sake of interesting space battles. Even ones where the heroes might get their proverbial bottom kicked.
Plus, technically, there is a long while to play and explore between the fall of Khyron and the great departure of the Pioneer mission. During that time, Tokugawa were built most probably one by one and most certainly had some patrol action field test alongside the Tristars. But of course, that part is only speculation.

When it's justified, sure. In the UEEF's case, it makes a lot more sense for there to be only a few classes of frontline warship because they're operating in enemy territory and standardization of repair and replacement parts would go a long way towards making the fleet less dependent on regular resupply given that the setting lacks the manufacturing "cheats" from more advanced sci-fi stories.

Given how poorly they're indicated to perform, the only way I could see working a Tokugawa-class or Tristar-class ship into a UEEF scenario would be as either the transport the protagonists arrive aboard before the start of the campaign, as a largely defenseless ship in distress that needs to be rescued, or as a wreck to be boarded for investigatory purposes.

xunk16 wrote:The Tokugawa class ships are among the most powerful ships of the UEDF and UEEF’s fleets.

Oh my, no... the opposite is true, for the reasons given above. They're pretty much useless in a fight. That's why they ended up being repurposed as freighters.

xunk16 wrote:With the completion of the SDF-3 (built out of Breetai’s flagship),[...]

Nope... in the Sentinels animation, the SDF-3 is explicitly a human-manufactured warship with a false outer hull made to imitate the visual aesthetic of a Zentradi ship.

xunk16 wrote:A relief fleet lead by the Marcus Antonius was sent back to Earth by the UEEF under the command of Colonel Jonathan Wolff, arriving late in the Second Robotech War. It was later hijacked by the 15th ATAC, and sent back to Tirol loaded with refugees from the Master’s motherships.

On the one occasion they've shown the relief fleet in question, the only ships seen were New Generation designs.

xunk16 wrote:However, due to faulty fold drives, it had suffered severe stresses and was decommissioned. The Archangel became the flagship of the Sentinels after the destruction of the Farrago. It was later refitted with a Shadow Device and updated fold drives, and served the Saturn Division. Later, the Archangel was used by Scott Bernard, Vince and Jean Grant in their quest to find the Missing SDF-3.

Only one ship of the class is noted to have been even still in service come the shadow tech refit, and that was the Tokugawa... which was fatally disabled in a single hit by an escort ship a fraction of her size and what was left of the ship after its uncontrolled reentry crashed on Optera. Not a ringing endorsement of the improved design.

The ship used to search for the SDF-3 was the Ark Angel, the leading (and only surviving) ship of the Ark Angel-class, which was launched in extremis before completion to evacuate Space Station Liberty while the station and all the other incomplete Ark Angel-class spaceframes were compacted into a singularity by a neutron-s warhead detonation.

xunk16 wrote:Finally the Tokugawa was used by the UEDF loyalists during the UEEF Civil War as a fleet flagship. It was destroyed when it was rammed by Edward’s flagship, the Xerxes an Ikazuchi-class command carrier.

Edwards had a surface posting in R&D on Tirol until it was discovered that he was a traitor, and his ONLY ship was the brand-new Shimakaze-class Icarus he stole when he fled the planet and set up shop on Optera. The Icarus was later taken by Vince Grant to evacuate the survivors of the Tokugawa's crew from Optera after Edwards was killed by an orbital bombardment carried out by the newly-repaired and refitted SDF-3 and remained in Vince Grant's command until he jumped ship to the incomplete Ark Angel.

xunk16 wrote:Sounds like we're in for an harder reboot this time around.
Oh well.

Eh... it's not so much a reboot as a shutdown, TBH.

Development of new animated Robotech animated works was defunded over a decade ago, trying to fund new development via Kickstarter was an epic failure, the one comic series they had was quietly put on indefinite hiatus after a significant readership loss with a hilarious excuse that obviously doesn't check out, most of their merchandising partners have left and been replaced by bootleg-tier outfits (or actual bootleggers), and HG has lost a string of legal battles with Macross's owners over the last year or so that've cost them their trademarks in the UK, EU, and PRC and revealed the franchise is in even worse shape than the most pessimistic fans predicted.

Basically, they put up any old thing because there's nothing new coming... that's also why there are so many broken links and empty articles on the "new" site. They've given up.

xunk16 wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:this is also the best approach for the SDF-3
https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/sdf-3
(note that said page has some.. very interesting timeline information about the pioneer mission)

Sounds like we're in for an harder reboot this time around.
Oh well.

actually that page dates from the first continuity 'reboot'. it just requires some extra effort to reach since it does not have a direct entry in the robopedia. bad site design on the part of robotech.com
you'll notice that the shadow chronicles RPG main book actually conforms to that in its fluff about the bioroid interceptor and in other places. as they talk about the UEEF fighting many battles on their way to tirol.

unfortunately UEEF marines got written by someone who didn't do enough research into the current state of the canon, resulting in the use of the pre-reboot novel continuity timeline. which also conflicted with the Prelude comic series in many details (such as the date of the battles of optera and the death of the regent)

jaymz wrote:

From the Master Saga p.94 :
The UEEF even took a few Tristars on thier mission, along with their Tokugawa battleships, a testament to the ship's power and versatility.

The ships of that type of design could barely deal with the masters.....power and versatility?

I just said screw it and wrote/rewrote them all up myself and used 4 or 5 differing sources to get a good balanced take on them.

The Tri-Star though is said to be upto taking on the Zentreadi though in the RT.com Infopedia. "...the Tristar would have easily held its own against the far larger vessels of the alien giants. However, the enemy it encountered were the Robotech Masters, whose vastly superior technology meant that the Tristar could often only barely hold its own in combat."-RT.com Infoepia's Tri-Star Entry (https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/tr ... ss-cruiser), said entry also mentions its use by the REF. What this amounts to is the Masters > Zentreadi in terms of technology (even running on empty), which would explain why the appear to be barely adequate.

glitterboy2098 wrote:literally your best bet is to take the reference material from the robotech.com robopedia entry, and then cross reference the ARMD and Tristar stats to produce your own.

https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/to ... battleship

this is also the best approach for the SDF-3
https://robotech.com/roboverse/mecha/sdf-3
(note that said page has some.. very interesting timeline information about the pioneer mission)

I agree this is the best approach, treat the ships weapons as 1:1 copies of existing systems for game mechanic purposes. Working out the hull strength (MDC by lcoation) is more problematic IMHO as it would be more arbitrary.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:They did a 3D computer graphic and that need up in the Artbook. Which is why I could give some mostly accurate numbers of weapon's turrets.

Nope... that's labeled as key art, meaning it's a 2D drawing that was created as design reference material for the artists working on the comic.

...snip

Then you like the mix up in ep 1 (maybe ep 2) where the hull number is plainly shown on the 'Armor' ship. But because the ship is coming towards the 'camera' the number is inverted. So what is really Armor 01, is called armor 10 in the English dialog.