Fold Drives in the 3G's

[Seto Kaiba]

When you look at the reaction of the Zentraedi to the idea it's pretty clear that it's from trying to fold while so deep into the Earth's gravity well, since they have that 'No! I can't believe it! No one would dare do that!' kind of reaction, so it's obviously not a good idea to space fold so close to a planet no matter what the power source is.

Eh... the Robotech version does play it up like that, yes. Of course, as Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" is really a warp drive, there's a plethora of very good reasons they would be flabbergasted over someone attempting such a suicidally insane maneuver. Squeezing the fabric of space-time the way that warp drives do would probably do some fairly unpleasant things to the planet's atmosphere... and if there were even the slightest imperfection in the isolation of the "bubble" around the ship, outside matter could penetrate it and strike the ship, with devastating results. (Mind you, since Robotech was dubbed in a very slapdash way and the nature of fold systems in it wasn't explained until decades later, this was an extremely fortunate coincidence... exactly this sort of danger is one of the reasons Star Trek almost never shows ships even using their impulse engines in atmosphere... at a quarter light speed, a grain of sand would blow a pretty impressive hole in a ship.)

In Macross, folding into or out of a planet's atmosphere isn't exactly cause for incredulity... it does require much greater precision than folding into orbit, because the safety margins are much smaller. You don't want to come out of super dimension space and immediately crash into the surface, or come out in the planet's crust. It's easier to aim at the general vicinity of the planet with a margin of error of a few tens of thousands of kilometers instead of a few dozen kilometers. For most purposes, it's just easier to fold into orbit and spend a few minutes making reentry. When someone's shown folding into or out of an atmosphere, it's usually a more advanced alien race showing off... like the Mardook, the Protodeviln, the Vajra, and the Protoculture's Ehvil and Birdhuman-series biomecha. (Even Boddole Zer didn't fold his big mobile fortress into Earth's atmosphere, but Ingues did it with his just to be a jerk.)

[keir451]

When you look at the reaction of the Zentraedi to the idea it's pretty clear that it's from trying to fold while so deep into the Earth's gravity well, since they have that 'No! I can't believe it! No one would dare do that!' kind of reaction, so it's obviously not a good idea to space fold so close to a planet no matter what the power source is.

Eh... the Robotech version does play it up like that, yes. Of course, as Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" is really a warp drive, there's a plethora of very good reasons they would be flabbergasted over someone attempting such a suicidally insane maneuver. Squeezing the fabric of space-time the way that warp drives do would probably do some fairly unpleasant things to the planet's atmosphere... and if there were even the slightest imperfection in the isolation of the "bubble" around the ship, outside matter could penetrate it and strike the ship, with devastating results. (Mind you, since Robotech was dubbed in a very slapdash way and the nature of fold systems in it wasn't explained until decades later, this was an extremely fortunate coincidence... exactly this sort of danger is one of the reasons Star Trek almost never shows ships even using their impulse engines in atmosphere... at a quarter light speed, a grain of sand would blow a pretty impressive hole in a ship.)

In Macross, folding into or out of a planet's atmosphere isn't exactly cause for incredulity... it does require much greater precision than folding into orbit, because the safety margins are much smaller. You don't want to come out of super dimension space and immediately crash into the surface, or come out in the planet's crust. It's easier to aim at the general vicinity of the planet with a margin of error of a few tens of thousands of kilometers instead of a few dozen kilometers. For most purposes, it's just easier to fold into orbit and spend a few minutes making reentry. When someone's shown folding into or out of an atmosphere, it's usually a more advanced alien race showing off... like the Mardook, the Protodeviln, the Vajra, and the Protoculture's Ehvil and Birdhuman-series biomecha. (Even Boddole Zer didn't fold his big mobile fortress into Earth's atmosphere, but Ingues did it with his just to be a jerk.)

Thanks! In this case I was just using the books as a reference despite theem being "incorrect" as they are the "official" sources according to Palladium Books (or at least they were in the case of Macross II) and in the books they're typically called "auto-heat pile generators".

[eliakon]

When you look at the reaction of the Zentraedi to the idea it's pretty clear that it's from trying to fold while so deep into the Earth's gravity well, since they have that 'No! I can't believe it! No one would dare do that!' kind of reaction, so it's obviously not a good idea to space fold so close to a planet no matter what the power source is.

Eh... the Robotech version does play it up like that, yes. Of course, as Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" is really a warp drive, there's a plethora of very good reasons they would be flabbergasted over someone attempting such a suicidally insane maneuver. Squeezing the fabric of space-time the way that warp drives do would probably do some fairly unpleasant things to the planet's atmosphere... and if there were even the slightest imperfection in the isolation of the "bubble" around the ship, outside matter could penetrate it and strike the ship, with devastating results. (Mind you, since Robotech was dubbed in a very slapdash way and the nature of fold systems in it wasn't explained until decades later, this was an extremely fortunate coincidence... exactly this sort of danger is one of the reasons Star Trek almost never shows ships even using their impulse engines in atmosphere... at a quarter light speed, a grain of sand would blow a pretty impressive hole in a ship.)

In Macross, folding into or out of a planet's atmosphere isn't exactly cause for incredulity... it does require much greater precision than folding into orbit, because the safety margins are much smaller. You don't want to come out of super dimension space and immediately crash into the surface, or come out in the planet's crust. It's easier to aim at the general vicinity of the planet with a margin of error of a few tens of thousands of kilometers instead of a few dozen kilometers. For most purposes, it's just easier to fold into orbit and spend a few minutes making reentry. When someone's shown folding into or out of an atmosphere, it's usually a more advanced alien race showing off... like the Mardook, the Protodeviln, the Vajra, and the Protoculture's Ehvil and Birdhuman-series biomecha. (Even Boddole Zer didn't fold his big mobile fortress into Earth's atmosphere, but Ingues did it with his just to be a jerk.)

Thanks! In this case I was just using the books as a reference despite theem being "incorrect" as they are the "official" sources according to Palladium Books (or at least they were in the case of Macross II) and in the books they're typically called "auto-heat pile generators".

So, the books are the source to use even if they are "incorrect" to "official" sources for the materials you like (reactor names) but not for things you don't like (drive names). Gotcha.

[Seto Kaiba]

Thanks! In this case I was just using the books as a reference despite them being "incorrect" as they are the "official" sources according to Palladium Books (or at least they were in the case of Macross II) and in the books they're typically called "auto-heat pile generators".

*nods* Yeah, Palladium's accuracy leaves a lot to be desired even now, when they can cheat and avoid most of the actual work by copying from English-language Macross and MOSPEADA web sites. You can imagine how annoying the "blind idiot" translations in the original Robotech RPG and Macross II RPG are for a competent translator... especially considering most of the info they're put into the 2nd Edition was available back in the 80s.

They at least got in the ballpark with "auto-heat pile generator"... the correct term is "heat pile system cluster", which is just a group of thermonuclear reaction furnaces. Macross's ships don't go in for having one, big, centralized power system like a warp core that can be taken out and leave the ship to flounder without power. They have a bunch of smaller reactors running below capacity so that they're able to keep operating at full power even if a few are offline for maintenance/repair. The modular ships tend to give each module an independent power system so that the individual modules can even run as separate ships if need be. (The Macross Quarter-class is noteworthy for being able to split into 5 separate ships at the drop of a hat, each with its own engines, weapons, and power systems.)

So, the books are the source to use even if they are "incorrect" to "official" sources for the materials you like (reactor names) but not for things you don't like (drive names). Gotcha.

Hey, what he does with his game is his own business... besides, even Harmony Gold doesn't consider the RPG books to be an accurate or valid resource for Robotech. Just look at the number of times they contradict canon.

[Nightmask]

I'm afraid one can't successfully argue that the SDF-1's fold from Earth was some sort of 'FTL bubble' like for example Star Trek. They simply disappear from Earth and reappear out near Pluto's orbit, if they'd had some sort of warp bubble effect at a minimum the Earth would have been destroyed when you consider you've not just the SDF-1 but an entire island being moved at FTL speeds through the atmosphere, it would have caused catastrophic environmental damage under such conditions. So it must have either done a standard 'teleport' space-fold hop where it simply connected two points in space-time to end up at the other end or else entered some other dimension (called for this discussion hyperspace) then existed it a the other location in normal spacetime.

[keir451]

So, the books are the source to use even if they are "incorrect" to "official" sources for the materials you like (reactor names) but not for things you don't like (drive names). Gotcha.

Unless and until HG or teh producers of the JN Macross actualy get their heads out thier collective rear ends and approve accurate and non-fan conversions to PB standards those books are about all we have for "official" material, even if they are "wrong" or no longer "officially" supported. I'm not arguing w/ Seto on this subject. I was, originally, addressing the differences in power sources between the 3Gs and the RT/Macross settings. In 3Gs they use antimatter and in the RT/Macross settings they use the "auto heat pile" or "heat pile system".

Hey, what he does with his game is his own business... besides, even Harmony Gold doesn't consider the RPG books to be an accurate or valid resource for Robotech. Just look at the number of times they contradict canon.

The underlined section is true for ALL of us. Here on the PB Forums I believe the general rule is to use PB printings as our references vs fan translations for aspects of our discusiions. Therefore I reference RT books old and new (where I have them) and the Macross II books as well, as, once upon a time (and, again, until HG or Studio Nue release truly OFFICIAL conversions) they were and sorta still are, the ONLY "official" translations we have.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm afraid one can't successfully argue that the SDF-1's fold from Earth was some sort of 'FTL bubble' like for example Star Trek. They simply disappear from Earth and reappear out near Pluto's orbit, [...]

Apart from the bubble suddenly not being on Earth anymore, there's really no basis for saying that there's no way it could be the case... because the footage focuses almost exclusively on the bubble's contents. There's all kinds of word salad that could be made to explain it away... since that one instance of a fold trip is an aberration with a malfunctioning drive system.

The official line is still the official line. Deal with it. After all, consistency and Robotech are usually two mutually exclusive categories.

Unless and until HG or teh producers of the JN Macross actualy get their heads out thier collective rear ends and approve accurate and non-fan conversions to PB standards those books are about all we have for "official" material, even if they are "wrong" or no longer "officially" supported. [...]

Eh... unlikely to happen, I think. Harmony Gold doesn't much care about the Robotech RPG, as the general rule for licensed RPGs for a cinematic work is that they're never canon. That kind of removes all incentive to do accurate work... just getting it in the ballpark is enough. Of course, Harmony Gold has gone on the record to say they've disowned the pre-reboot licensee-developed material, so the 1st Edition RT RPG might not even count as "official" anymore. Macross's creators and owners did one worse... they don't even acknowledge the existence of the Palladium Macross II RPG or Viz Media's Micron Conspiracy comic.

Japan's more video game turf than traditional RPG turf anyway... the Macross FA-RPGs that Studio Artdink has made are EXEMPLARY. Macross 30: Voices across the Galaxy was apparently so fondly regarded by Studio Nue that it's been officially adopted as a canon story.

Therefore I reference RT books old and new (where I have them) and the Macross II books as well, as, once upon a time (and, again, until HG or Studio Nue release truly OFFICIAL conversions) they were and sorta still are, the ONLY "official" translations we have.

Which is depressing in the extreme... because the contents of the Macross II book couldn't be more inaccurate, and Palladium still made a lot of errors in the 2nd Edition of the RT RPG, including some copy-paste errors where material that ISN'T Robotech was accidentally included while "borrowing" info off Macross web sites.

[Nightmask]

I'm afraid one can't successfully argue that the SDF-1's fold from Earth was some sort of 'FTL bubble' like for example Star Trek. They simply disappear from Earth and reappear out near Pluto's orbit, [...]

Apart from the bubble suddenly not being on Earth anymore, there's really no basis for saying that there's no way it could be the case... because the footage focuses almost exclusively on the bubble's contents. There's all kinds of word salad that could be made to explain it away... since that one instance of a fold trip is an aberration with a malfunctioning drive system.

The official line is still the official line. Deal with it. After all, consistency and Robotech are usually two mutually exclusive categories.

That's on the rude side saying it like that, and if the official line was that the moon was made of green cheese I wouldn't take it seriously either. It also doesn't matter if what happened was a malfunction, what we see has nothing in relation with Star Trek style warp travel. What we see correlates with either teleportation or hyper-space transit where you go from point A to point B without crossing the intervening distance, that's not how Star Trek style travel works.

What scant evidence we have says Robotech (and by extension Macross) spacefold drives are of the 'from point A to point B in normal space without crossing the intervening space' nature and not 'from point A to point B going at FTL speeds in normal space'. You also couldn't get away with spacefolding into the middle of a formation as you'd hit something in the process, or spacefolding behind something since again you couldn't get to the other side without hitting it.

[keir451]

Eh... unlikely to happen, I think. Harmony Gold doesn't much care about the Robotech RPG, as the general rule for licensed RPGs for a cinematic work is that they're never canon. That kind of removes all incentive to do accurate work... just getting it in the ballpark is enough. Of course, Harmony Gold has gone on the record to say they've disowned the pre-reboot licensee-developed material, so the 1st Edition RT RPG might not even count as "official" anymore. Macross's creators and owners did one worse... they don't even acknowledge the existence of the Palladium Macross II RPG or Viz Media's Micron Conspiracy comic.

Yeah that's the bummer of it that we, the poor, unloved gaming society, are so ignored.

Which is depressing in the extreme... because the contents of the Macross II book couldn't be more inaccurate, and Palladium still made a lot of errors in the 2nd Edition of the RT RPG, including some copy-paste errors where material that ISN'T Robotech was accidentally included while "borrowing" info off Macross web sites.

A serious bummer indeed. Unfortunately it was (and in some way still is) the only "official" work we're ever likely to have ever again.

[Seto Kaiba]

That's on the rude side saying it like that, [...]

Nah, just blunt and to the point.

The official, canon answer is, after all, the official, canon answer. Whether or not you like it won't change that it is a "Word of God" fact from the show's creative staff and something they'll continue to use in new and forthcoming animation.

The reason? Well, they obviously don't want to get sued by Big West for infringing upon their copyrights, so they made sure to use RTSC to put as much distance between Robotech's future and the only part of Robotech that has ever historically mattered.)

It also doesn't matter if what happened was a malfunction, what we see has nothing in relation with Star Trek style warp travel.

That's your interpretation, not a fact. It's quite possible, especially given that the distortion effect of the bubble was enough to shear through bedrock, that the fold bubble of the malfunction was strong enough to resist penetration by atmosphere while the ship warped off the planet. You could easily pull off what Khyron did with a warp drive. How do we know? Because coming out of warp into someone else's close formation isn't exactly an uncommon occurrence in SF, and as long as the Alcubierre drive can stop altering the curvature of space-time fairly promptly, it ought to be possible from a physics standpoint.

If Harmony Gold wants to make the official interpretation of how the ships disappear a low-rent version of Star Trek's "zoom off with a twinkle" effect, that's their call. We're gonna keep seeing the warp drive version on a going-forward basis, so you might as well accept it.

What scant evidence we have says Robotech (and by extension Macross) spacefold drives are of the 'from point A to point B in normal space without crossing the intervening space' nature and not 'from point A to point B going at FTL speeds in normal space'.

What official, non-interpretation statements of incontrovertible fact we have says Robotech's hyperspace fold drive is a Star Trek-style warp drive that does not leave realspace. Evidence in support includes the whole of the Shadow Chronicles movie.

Likewise, that Macross's fold technology is of the "from point A to point B without crossing the intervening space by teleporting through a higher-dimension sub-universe" is a simple fact, and one that hasn't changed in going on thirty-five years of Macross. We have the paper trail to prove it.

[keir451]

What official, non-interpretation statements of incontrovertible fact we have says Robotech's hyperspace fold drive is a Star Trek-style warp drive that does not leave realspace. Evidence in support includes the whole of the Shadow Chronicles movie.

Interesting, I always viewed it a working the way the Macross systems were stated as working. Oh well, doesn't matter all that much except if you want a truly spectacular screw in the fold system to transport your ship somewhere unique.

[Seto Kaiba]

Interesting, I always viewed it a working the way the Macross systems were stated as working. Oh well, doesn't matter all that much except if you want a truly spectacular screw in the fold system to transport your ship somewhere unique.

*shrug*

That's true for a lot of Robotech fans... the absence of a defined, official continuity and setting saw entire too many licensees try to come up with their own explanations, and a lot of fans following in Kevin's footsteps by trying to assemble information from the OSM. Harmony Gold eventually followed suit and just adopted large swathes of OSM information in 2001, but when they made the Shadow Chronicles, that ended up establishing the hyperspace fold drive as a Star Trek-type warp drive... almost certainly as part of their concerted effort to distance the series from the letter of Macross while trying to copy it thematically.

Star Trek's warp drive generally gets up to a lot more shenanigans anyway... and it offers a bit more cinematic-ness than Macross's fold tech, since you can't have a daring FTL pursuit when neither ship is actually moving and the trip is almost instantaneous most of the time. You'd end up with something like the notorious chase scene from Irresponsible Captain Tylor... twenty odd minutes of ships appearing and disappearing at random.

[Nightmask]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances rather than simply try flying across them and that they don't actually have FTL systems as seen in Star Trek or Phase World and that the RPG itself (at least the 1st edition, I've no access to the second) also lists them as a spacefold system.

What we also know is that we're told such systems are unreliable for some reason in the 3 Galaxies, but not the exact reason why. It could be a result of all the extensive use of contra-gravity drives for FTL travel (something speculated to possibly reach a crisis point at some unknown point in the future rendering all such FTL travel systems inoperative) but we're not actually told the cause (likely so players can't outfit their ships with a version that would work reliably if a definitive reason was given).

So it's left to the GM to decide what systems would be reliable if any (the Intruders apparently pull it off, but it could be they simply use such systems to get from their galaxy to the 3G ones and use more conventional systems while there). The reason magic Rift drives are unaffected is likely because magic is more flexible and can compensate for any distortions in the fabric of spacetime or that the tech spacefold drives we see aren't advanced enough to handle the distortions and compensate for them.

[keir451]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances rather than simply try flying across them and that they don't actually have FTL systems as seen in Star Trek or Phase World and that the RPG itself (at least the 1st edition, I've no access to the second) also lists them as a spacefold system.

What we also know is that we're told such systems are unreliable for some reason in the 3 Galaxies, but not the exact reason why. It could be a result of all the extensive use of contra-gravity drives for FTL travel (something speculated to possibly reach a crisis point at some unknown point in the future rendering all such FTL travel systems inoperative) but we're not actually told the cause (likely so players can't outfit their ships with a version that would work reliably if a definitive reason was given).

So it's left to the GM to decide what systems would be reliable if any (the Intruders apparently pull it off, but it could be they simply use such systems to get from their galaxy to the 3G ones and use more conventional systems while there). The reason magic Rift drives are unaffected is likely because magic is more flexible and can compensate for any distortions in the fabric of spacetime or that the tech spacefold drives we see aren't advanced enough to handle the distortions and compensate for them.

IIRC one specualtion was that all the 3G's "local" fold drives were powered by anti-matter (not that I'd really buy that explanation, but it's ONE theory offered). I might speculate that the high level of dimensional activity from rifts may cause alot of problems. I might institute a rule that the drives need some sort of dimensional "anchor" to be able to function properly or that they can only fold short distances, say 20,000 ly or so at a time anything longer would risk either the drive disappearing, burning out or dragging something from another dimension into the 3G.

[Nightmask]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances rather than simply try flying across them and that they don't actually have FTL systems as seen in Star Trek or Phase World and that the RPG itself (at least the 1st edition, I've no access to the second) also lists them as a spacefold system.

What we also know is that we're told such systems are unreliable for some reason in the 3 Galaxies, but not the exact reason why. It could be a result of all the extensive use of contra-gravity drives for FTL travel (something speculated to possibly reach a crisis point at some unknown point in the future rendering all such FTL travel systems inoperative) but we're not actually told the cause (likely so players can't outfit their ships with a version that would work reliably if a definitive reason was given).

So it's left to the GM to decide what systems would be reliable if any (the Intruders apparently pull it off, but it could be they simply use such systems to get from their galaxy to the 3G ones and use more conventional systems while there). The reason magic Rift drives are unaffected is likely because magic is more flexible and can compensate for any distortions in the fabric of spacetime or that the tech spacefold drives we see aren't advanced enough to handle the distortions and compensate for them.

IIRC one specualtion was that all the 3G's "local" fold drives were powered by anti-matter (not that I'd really buy that explanation, but it's ONE theory offered). I might speculate that the high level of dimensional activity from rifts may cause alot of problems. I might institute a rule that the drives need some sort of dimensional "anchor" to be able to function properly or that they can only fold short distances, say 20,000 ly or so at a time anything longer would risk either the drive disappearing, burning out or dragging something from another dimension into the 3G.

Except is there REALLY that much rift activity in the three galaxies, particularly in space where you'd be folding from and to? Plus as already noted we DO know that anti-gravity drives are explicitly causing problems with the fabric of space-time resulting in locations that are literally trapping ships that are using those drives by making it impossible for the drives to function. So the anti-gravity drives are known to be causing problems that could be seen as also affecting something that functions by manipulating the fabric of spacetime to get around.

[eliakon]

Or it could be that the Forge doesn't like people to bend, fold, spindle or mutilate local space time. Or maybe its a effect left over from the Elder races wars, either an instability from a weapon, or a counter measure to impede another races weapon/drive/whatever. Or perhaps its just that the 3Gs is where missing socks go, and unless people correct for the unexpected mass/gravity of these socks they go off courses, or.....
It could be any number of reasons, I support the theory that works best for the specific game in question. But the reason is less important than the fact that the effect exists.

[Nightmask]

Or it could be that the Forge doesn't like people to bend, fold, spindle or mutilate local space time. Or maybe its a effect left over from the Elder races wars, either an instability from a weapon, or a counter measure to impede another races weapon/drive/whatever. Or perhaps its just that the 3Gs is where missing socks go, and unless people correct for the unexpected mass/gravity of these socks they go off courses, or.....
It could be any number of reasons, I support the theory that works best for the specific game in question. But the reason is less important than the fact that the effect exists.

Well the reasons can't be ones that should affect things that are already seen to work fine, since you don't want to be going 'I just say so' as an explanation for why those things work when they shouldn't.

[eliakon]

Or it could be that the Forge doesn't like people to bend, fold, spindle or mutilate local space time. Or maybe its a effect left over from the Elder races wars, either an instability from a weapon, or a counter measure to impede another races weapon/drive/whatever. Or perhaps its just that the 3Gs is where missing socks go, and unless people correct for the unexpected mass/gravity of these socks they go off courses, or.....
It could be any number of reasons, I support the theory that works best for the specific game in question. But the reason is less important than the fact that the effect exists.

Well the reasons can't be ones that should affect things that are already seen to work fine, since you don't want to be going 'I just say so' as an explanation for why those things work when they shouldn't.

Well since canonically there is no mechanical definition of what the precise mechanics of a 'space-fold' is and how it differs from other drives that's not much of an issue. Especially if there are multiple different sorts of drives that all come under the umbrella heading of 'space fold'. Simply stating that what ever it is, affects what ever a 'space-fold' is, and only that requires no more than saying "Well something makes drive X not work". We don't need to know the exact hyper-spatial mechanics, since they don't really exist any more than we need to know the exact physics behind a phase drive, or a magic spell, or super power.

[Seto Kaiba]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances [...]

This would, of course, be incorrect... the Shadow Chronicles OVA depicts the hyperspace fold drive as a Star Trek-style warp drive, which is what Harmony Gold used to establish the official version of how a fold drive works.

[eliakon]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances [...]

This would, of course, be incorrect... the Shadow Chronicles OVA depicts the hyperspace fold drive as a Star Trek-style warp drive, which is what Harmony Gold used to establish the official version of how a fold drive works.

Assuming of course that we take your word for it that this is in fact what is said in the art book, and we further assume that the all the unstated ambiguities are all exactly the way that you have supposed them to be, and that we further hand wave away all instances of any contradictory events, and assuming that we decide that TSC and the Original RT are using the same continuity. Then sure, maybe,....but to me that looks like a heck of a lot of unfounded assumptions.

[Nightmask]

In any case, we know from the actual animation that Robotech uses an actual spacefold system in order to cover vast distances [...]

This would, of course, be incorrect... the Shadow Chronicles OVA depicts the hyperspace fold drive as a Star Trek-style warp drive, which is what Harmony Gold used to establish the official version of how a fold drive works.

It would of course NOT be incorrect, since however the drives may work in Shadow Chronicles the fold drives from Robotech clearly are NOT Star Trek style drives and are never depicted as functioning like them. What we actually see has no elements of them so they cannot be them no matter what Harmony Gold might say. Again, if they said the moon was made of green cheese officially when we clearly know it isn't their official word is nonsense and without value and will lose against the proof that they're wrong.

[Seto Kaiba]

Assuming of course that we take your word for it that this is in fact what is said in the art book, and we further assume that the all the unstated ambiguities are all exactly the way that you have supposed them to be, [...]

I've cited my sources... I've been waiting quite patiently for anyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, since The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is the one publication for Robotech which gives any details regarding the function of Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" technology, it seems like I have a lock on this one. My information comes from the people who have sole authority over what gets to be "true" in Robotech... Harmony Gold's creative staff, and specifically its creative director: Tommy Yune.

What have you brought to the table besides baseless supposition?

[...] and assuming that we decide that TSC and the Original RT are using the same continuity.

Um... are you joking? Did you... at any point... actually read the RPG books? Or the Robotech.com website? Or, really, pay any attention at all to Robotech in the last eight years? Because if you're asking that question in complete seriousness, then the answer to the preceding questions would have to be "No".

To bluntly address your point, we don't need to assume anything... because Harmony Gold has explicitly and repeatedly confirmed that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is in the same continuity with the so-called "Original 85". You would have known this if you had read the RPG books at any point, or if you had watched the OVA or read the tie-in comic, both of which explicitly link RTSC to the main series, or if you'd bothered to do any research at all like consulting Robotech.com, which places RTSC on the official chronology starting at August 2044. The same timeline is also helpfully included with the other featured content in the aforementioned official RTSC art book.

Then sure, maybe,....but to me that looks like a heck of a lot of unfounded assumptions.

Sadly, it seems the only unfounded assumption here is that you had an evidentiary basis for your argument.

It would of course NOT be incorrect, since however the drives may work in Shadow Chronicles the fold drives from Robotech clearly are NOT Star Trek style drives and are never depicted as functioning like them.

No description of the fold drive's operation is offered until RTSC, and RTSC is the only case in which they weren't tied to pre-existing animation. Their answer isn't wrong, the only thing wrong is your interpretation.

[eliakon]

Assuming of course that we take your word for it that this is in fact what is said in the art book, and we further assume that the all the unstated ambiguities are all exactly the way that you have supposed them to be, [...]

I've cited my sources... I've been waiting quite patiently for anyone else to do the same. Unfortunately, since The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is the one publication for Robotech which gives any details regarding the function of Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" technology, it seems like I have a lock on this one. My information comes from the people who have sole authority over what gets to be "true" in Robotech... Harmony Gold's creative staff, and specifically its creative director: Tommy Yune.

What have you brought to the table besides baseless supposition?

Well besides asking you to prove your contention that the bubble does remain in our universe even though its called hyperdrive? Considering your own statement that you select your canon based on your preferences your reliability as an independent source is suspect, no offense. So yah, its suspect that the 'obvious answer' is not in the anime shows, nor in the game books, but is infact in a book published 15 years AFTER the material in question (one that most of us don't have access to I might add), and that the answer is best answered by a summation from a person who has self stated that they CHOOSE what they wish to be canon.

[...] and assuming that we decide that TSC and the Original RT are using the same continuity.

Um... are you joking? Did you... at any point... actually read the RPG books? Or the Robotech.com website? Or, really, pay any attention at all to Robotech in the last eight years? Because if you're asking that question in complete seriousness, then the answer to the preceding questions would have to be "No".

To bluntly address your point, we don't need to assume anything... because Harmony Gold has explicitly and repeatedly confirmed that Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles is in the same continuity with the so-called "Original 85". You would have known this if you had read the RPG books at any point, or if you had watched the OVA or read the tie-in comic, both of which explicitly link RTSC to the main series, or if you'd bothered to do any research at all like consulting Robotech.com, which places RTSC on the official chronology starting at August 2044. The same timeline is also helpfully included with the other featured content in the aforementioned official RTSC art book.

For the anime sure. This is the Game. Please try to keep note of the fact that we are talking about the game here, and not your fandom. Thus there *IS* a question of if RT1 is the same continuity as RT2/TSC. This discussion is on the Palladium Game board, not on the Robotech.Com fan site, ergo I would logically conclude that statements will be about the GAME, and not the SHOW. Which is why I don't 'Bother researching, or reading' or what not. I play the game not obsess about the fandom.

Then sure, maybe,....but to me that looks like a heck of a lot of unfounded assumptions.

Sadly, it seems the only unfounded assumption here is that you had an evidentiary basis for your argument.

Actually the unfounded assumption is that the source you cite says what it does, since you have a proven record of altering inconvenient facts to fit your preconceived notions and simply claiming that any evidence to the contrary is 'wrong'. You have explicitly stated as much, ergo why would I believe this convenient fact?

The point remains. The drive in the AoTSC says it creates a bubble. We can all agree on that. You have NOT provided any text to support that the bubble stays in our universe, even though it is called a 'hyperdrive'. You claim that the 'starlines' prove it. Are these explicitly labled as starlines? Because with out that EXPLICIT statement then its your OPINION that those are Real Space stars, and not a hyperspace phenomena. The fact STILL remains that the drive is CALLED a hyperspace fold by the crew. That you WANT it to be a warp drive and thus 'proving' that the Robotech franchise and the Macross franchise don't share things in common has no bearing on the issue. You have made an assertian that it is warp, and that all the hyperspace references are 'errors' where does it say that, exactly, and what is the exact wording.

It would of course NOT be incorrect, since however the drives may work in Shadow Chronicles the fold drives from Robotech clearly are NOT Star Trek style drives and are never depicted as functioning like them.

No description of the fold drive's operation is offered until RTSC, and RTSC is the only case in which they weren't tied to pre-existing animation. Their answer isn't wrong, the only thing wrong is your interpretation.[/quote]

[Seto Kaiba]

Well besides asking you to prove your contention that the bubble does remain in our universe even though its called hyperdrive?

Off to a bad start, I see... for the record, at no point is it referred to as a hyperdrive in that entry. The description makes no mention of hyperspace being involved AT ALL and explicitly identifies the bubble as moving through space, not hyperspace. I've pointed this out to you before.

Considering your own statement that you select your canon based on your preferences your reliability as an independent source is suspect, no offense.

To correct your second error, I do not select my canon based on my preferences... you may be confused, or perhaps confusing me with something else. I am a firm supporter of the official canon, and always have been. I am not "choosing" anything, I am simply reporting what the people who are in charge of the entire Robotech franchise have set down in print as the facts.

That you do not like what I tell you from cited sources does not make those sources wrong.

So yah, its suspect that the 'obvious answer' is not in the anime shows, nor in the game books, but is infact in a book published 15 years AFTER the material in question (one that most of us don't have access to I might add), and that the answer is best answered by a summation from a person who has self stated that they CHOOSE what they wish to be canon.

If you have difficulty with the concept that Harmony Gold has published an official art book, written by the franchise's creative director, that actually EXPLAINS THINGS, well... that's not my problem. Harmony Gold didn't put any effort into explaining anything prior to Tommy taking over in '01, so no explanation was ever forthcoming. To HG, RT was only ever a quick and largely unsuccessful attempt to make a quick buck on the robot craze Transformers started. It wasn't until '01 that HG started wanting RT to be taken seriously as a SF/anime franchise.

Just because you don't have a copy of the book doesn't make it an invalid source... it just means that I have better access to the information than you, and therefore can make arguments based on hard facts from the show's creators instead of moon logic, guesswork, and strawman arguments.

You'd also be inaccurate to say that Tommy has said that people choose what is canon... Harmony Gold has officially disowned practically everything made before 2001, and they've been pretty consistent with their policy regarding continuity.

Please try to keep note of the fact that we are talking about the game here, and not your fandom. Thus there *IS* a question of if RT1 is the same continuity as RT2/TSC.

The question is irrelevant. Harmony Gold has gone on record to say that "RT1" is not RT.

Ultimately, the RT2 edition has supplanted RT1 because RT1 was RT in name only, and RT2 is at least a semi-accurate reflection of the official Robotech continuity, to which the Shadow Chronicles most definitely and officially belongs.

The point remains.

What point? All you've demonstrated so far is that you don't have a book and therefore don't want to accept the official info the book provides.

The book never once refers to it as a hyperdrive. The book states that the bubble is moved at faster-than-light speeds through space. Hyperspace is not even MENTIONED. If hyperspace isn't even mentioned in the only official description of how the drive works, and the bubble is both described and depicted as moving through normal space in the animation, what basis do you have for your claim that the ship has left the material universe?

None. Your claims have no factual basis.



EDIT: Edited for tone... this turned out to be a little more trenchant than I'd wanted.

[Qev]

I'm not sure why Macross is coming up at all in this discussion, since it's entirely irrelevant to how anything works in Robotech and/or Palladium. They're entirely separate canon.

Anyway, there's one huge upside to fold drives in the 3G. A dangerously unreliable FTL drive of this nature should be easily repurposed into a dangerously reliable anti-capital-ship weapon.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm not sure why Macross is coming up at all in this discussion, since it's entirely irrelevant to how anything works in Robotech and/or Palladium. They're entirely separate canon.

Er... not wishing to be rude, but is it possible you've forgotten about Palladium's Macross II RPG from the 90s? That's a Palladium product and, while the contents may be about so wide of the mark that even the most basic details of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's setting are completely wrong, it's still a Palladium Books game (technically) belonging to the Japanese Macross franchise.

Also, since the OP only specified "fold drives", that leaves the floor open to at least three different game settings Palladium Books supports, or has supported, which contain dissimilar technologies which have all refer to FTL travel as a "fold" and the engine for same a "fold system" or "fold drive".

(The Japanese Macross franchise would also be relevant in that Palladium Books and Harmony Gold frequently base their material on - or outright copy it from - the Japanese source material for the trio of original shows.)

Anyway, there's one huge upside to fold drives in the 3G. A dangerously unreliable FTL drive of this nature should be easily repurposed into a dangerously reliable anti-capital-ship weapon.

's not the only one of the three where fold technology could be applied to weaponry.

Mind you, the Japanese Macross setting has been running with the idea of fold weaponry since day one. The super dimension physics that fold systems work on are applied in all kinds of weaponry. Super dimension energy weapons, which include practically every starship-based beam weapon from turrets to main gun systems as well as weapons small enough to be a VF's head-mounted gun, use resonance fold effects to pull extradimensional high-mass exotic matter into three-dimensional space and trigger fusion within it, projecting it outwards as a devastatingly powerful fusion plasma beam. Similar principles were used in thermonuclear reaction and pair-annihilation reaction warheads.

Other forms of dimension weaponry, like quantum beam weapons, fire beams of that same exotic matter with an eye towards using its extreme mass either to deal damage kinetically or to actually warp space temporarily. Dimension eater weapons take it one step further, effectively reversing the process of the super dimension energy weapons by actually using a weaponized fold effect to banish matter into super dimension space... kind of like a weaponized fold drive. This is applied in beam weaponry, warheads of every size from planet-destroying ordinance right on down to micro-missiles, and even 30mm armor-piercing bullets. The most impressive example being the car-sized dimension eater that drew almost the entirety of the planet Gallia 4 into super dimension space when it was set off.

EDIT: Come to that, a more direct weaponization of a fold system's distortion of space and time is the barrier technology... I don't need to tell what THAT can do.

[eliakon]

Okay, why don't I try starting over.
We have, mentioned in Palladium Books 5 different instances of 'fold drives' I will call thes F1-F5 in order that they were introduced by publication.
F1 is the RT1
F2 is the Macross II Fold Drive
F3 is the Ahrkhon Fold Drive
F4 is the Intruder Fold Drive
F5 is the TSC Fold Drive.

I think we can all agree that the F2 drive works through some sort of 10th dimensional hyperspace.
We can even agree for the purposes of this discussion that the F5 drive is some sort of 'bubble' that moves around.
That leaves us with the F1, F3, and F4 drives. For the sake of discussion lets say that the F1 drive is the same as the F5 drive. We are still left with two unidentified drives with in the 'fold' category. These can be either F2 or F5 drives and still be fold, or they could be a different third and possibly even forth type. Either way they are all for some reason classed as 'fold drives' so presumably they have some sort of commonality that leads them to all be classed that way. Probably in the same way that there are multiple varities of internal combustion engine, but they are all considered IC engines.

[Seto Kaiba]

I think we can all agree that the F2 drive works through some sort of 10th dimensional hyperspace.

Was it ever in dispute? It's hard to dismiss thirty-one years of consistently presented information...

We can even agree for the purposes of this discussion that the F5 drive is some sort of 'bubble' that moves around.

That's... very abstract. I'll grant you it makes no sense for them to continue calling it a hyperspace fold drive when their official explanation doesn't involve hyperspace at all, and describes the ship as being transported through just plain, boring, normal space. Such are the wages of an artifact title.

That leaves us with the F1, F3, and F4 drives. For the sake of discussion lets say that the F1 drive is the same as the F5 drive.

That'd be Harmony Gold's official position on the matter, though you are right in that the animation does not technically support it without injecting Harmony Gold's official interpretation on top of it... due mainly to the original show having made it a F2-style fold system. No doubt Palladium, basing its earlier work more upon the OSM than anything else, assumed it was a "space fold" drive in the sense of F2.

We are still left with two unidentified drives with in the 'fold' category. These can be either F2 or F5 drives and still be fold, or they could be a different third and possibly even forth type. Either way they are all for some reason classed as 'fold drives' so presumably they have some sort of commonality that leads them to all be classed that way.

Apart from the F5-type Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles version, they all share the commonality that they are actively bending the fabric of space in some universe (whether three-dimensional normal space or some alternate reality) such that the distance between where they are and where they want themselves to be is zero or close to it. The significant differences being how they're powered, and the medium they're actually folding to negate distance.

Macross seems to be the odd one out in that they're jumping into a higher-dimension sub-universe and folding THAT, which has some benefits (like circumventing gravity and three-dimensional navigation) and some drawbacks (the separation from regular space-time and immersion in the different flow of time found in super dimension space leads to a disparity between the passage of time on the ship and in our normal reality. Normally said disparity is quite small, but under extremely poor conditions like a fold that tries to penetrate a fold fault can result in losses of days (the worst instance to appear in animation or other sources was the first fold to Gallia 4, which had a loss of 7 days 4 hours and 15 minutes due to a very severe dimensional fault).

[eliakon]

But they are all 'Fold Drive' in some way. Which suggests that they all will have 'issues' in the 3Gs.
Hrmmm, come to think of it that could explain why the Intruders attacks seem so random. They ARE random. If the Intruders are from outside the 3Gs, and if what ever causes the problems with fold drives is a local phenomenon they may NOT be able to control where they are going. Which could be why their attacks seem to have no pattern, and some of their hostility (especially if they think this is a deliberate attack. Which it could very well be. The tech of the Intruders is Elder Race level, perhaps the reason fold drives don't work is because of a defense mechanism that was set up specifically to stop the Intruders or a related race.)

[keir451]

Seto is correct, I, as the creator of this post did not specify which of the various fold drives I was referring to. In my mind I was thinking exclusively of the RT, Macross and Macross II fold drives, however the other fold systems are also valid discussion points as well.

(The Japanese Macross franchise would also be relevant in that Palladium Books and Harmony Gold frequently base their material on - or outright copy it from - the Japanese source material for the trio of original shows.)

For my frame of reference, Seto may disagree with me, which is fine, I consider fold drives F1, F2 and F5 to be fundamentally the same in principal, or at least that's the way I intepreted the animes they came from. It is possible that the F3 and F4 fold drives work upon a differnt concept entirely which may be why they experienced the problems they have.
I also agree that the JN Macross is viable as it is the series from which RT originally came from so, for me, the RT fold drives (be they RT1 or TSC) are fundamentally the same.
My reasoning for asking this is that the 3G are fairly magic heavy, perhaps not as magic heavy as Rifts Earth, but magic heavy none the less. So I wasn't sure if it was the dimensional disturbances from various rifts or the Rifts drives or contra-gravity drives or other differences.

[Seto Kaiba]

But they are all 'Fold Drive' in some way. Which suggests that they all will have 'issues' in the 3Gs.

That depends on how broadly you want to apply the actual text in the books... which identifies the drive technology that has the difficulty as "space fold" drives. Taken literally, that probably wouldn't/shouldn't apply to hyperspace fold drives (RT), subspace/super dimension space fold systems (M2, though the RPG refers to them as hyperspace), or any other variation that doesn't fold the fabric of normal space. That makes a certain amount of sense that folding normal space would be problematic in a setting where they have virtually every ship already distorting the fabric of normal space to get around.

For my frame of reference, Seto may disagree with me, which is fine, I consider fold drives F1, F2 and F5 to be fundamentally the same in principal, or at least that's the way I intepreted the animes they came from.

*shrug* F1 is never explained, F2 and F5 are basically polar opposites of each other in terms of how the official material and visual effects depict them.

I also agree that the JN Macross is viable as it is the series from which RT originally came from so, for me, the RT fold drives (be they RT1 or TSC) are fundamentally the same.

Therein lies one of the sticking points... that Harmony Gold seems to want to get away from having quite so many legally-problematic direct lifts from Macross, and thus have used RTSC to establish the fold drives in their universe are basically just warp drives.

[keir451]

But they are all 'Fold Drive' in some way. Which suggests that they all will have 'issues' in the 3Gs.

That depends on how broadly you want to apply the actual text in the books... which identifies the drive technology that has the difficulty as "space fold" drives. Taken literally, that probably wouldn't/shouldn't apply to hyperspace fold drives (RT), subspace/super dimension space fold systems (M2, though the RPG refers to them as hyperspace), or any other variation that doesn't fold the fabric of normal space. That makes a certain amount of sense that folding normal space would be problematic in a setting where they have virtually every ship already distorting the fabric of normal space to get around.

For my frame of reference, Seto may disagree with me, which is fine, I consider fold drives F1, F2 and F5 to be fundamentally the same in principal, or at least that's the way I intepreted the animes they came from.

*shrug* F1 is never explained, F2 and F5 are basically polar opposites of each other in terms of how the official material and visual effects depict them.

I also agree that the JN Macross is viable as it is the series from which RT originally came from so, for me, the RT fold drives (be they RT1 or TSC) are fundamentally the same.

Therein lies one of the sticking points... that Harmony Gold seems to want to get away from having quite so many legally-problematic direct lifts from Macross, and thus have used RTSC to establish the fold drives in their universe are basically just warp drives.

This refeence to warp confuses me as the only time I reall seeing a "warp filed" was when Louie combined the Icarus' fold drive wiht the dimensional effects of the Shadow cloaking system so they could escape the balck hole. It may be that the TSC RPG describes the drives as "warp" but I probably just glossed over it as it ignores that previous fact that all RT vessels used a fold drive according to RT1.

[Seto Kaiba]

This refeence to warp confuses me as the only time I recall seeing a "warp field" was when Louie combined the Icarus' fold drive with the dimensional effects of the Shadow cloaking system so they could escape the black hole.

Really, that's the one occasion on which they don't just show the fold bubble moving through space, but showed the diagram of the effect in operation. Still, what we see visually doesn't resemble anything like Macross's fold effect... we see the ship surrounded by streaks of light like we do with warp drive on Star Trek, just faster (because, by all dialog given, fold drives in RT ARE considerably faster than a Star Trek warp drive).

The way the official material in AotSC describes it is consistent with a fairly brief summation of how warp drives work in Star Trek, and the principles behind the real-world theoretical Alcubierre drive.

It may be that the TSC RPG describes the drives as "warp" but I probably just glossed over it as it ignores that previous fact that all RT vessels used a fold drive according to RT1.

*shrug* Well, there's a bit of a contradiction... Palladium's displaced RT1 with RT2, and Harmony Gold flatly disowned RT1 for their own reasons. I wouldn't really apply what RT1 says to RT2, since the way Harmony Gold is leaning, RT1 isn't RT and RT2 is RT-Only.

[keir451]

*shrug* Well, there's a bit of a contradiction... Palladium's displaced RT1 with RT2, and Harmony Gold flatly disowned RT1 for their own reasons. I wouldn't really apply what RT1 says to RT2, since the way Harmony Gold is leaning, RT1 isn't RT and RT2 is RT-Only.

And people wonder why i stick w/ the older books more thant the newer ones?

[Seto Kaiba]

And people wonder why i stick w/ the older books more than the newer ones?

With the best will in the world... yeah, I kinda do wonder that.

Mainly because the old books are so inaccurate that even calling them Robotech feels like a stretch, and the quality suffered because of a lack of outside support. Whatever its faults, the RTSC game is one massive leap forward in quality and accuracy.

Me, I don't see anything wrong with RT deciding the fold drive there works differently from fold systems in Macross... esp. since on a few occasions in RT they do associate "warp" with it.

[DhAkael]

-le-sigh- but we can not speak ill of the holy HG lest we bring down the wrath of the Mod-hammer.

Accept the fact you won't be able to do anything 'canon' in-game using RT material because the canon has been ret-conned and alterted beyond all recognition by this point due to lawyers.

[eliakon]

-le-sigh- but we can not speak ill of the holy HG lest we bring down the wrath of the Mod-hammer.

Accept the fact you won't be able to do anything 'canon' in-game using RT material because the canon has been ret-conned and alterted beyond all recognition by this point due to lawyers.

* Quivers in fear at the thought of the wrath of the IP Lawyer*
Perhaps a less terrifying subject please? Like oh, I don't know the eating habits of Nightlords, or Splugorth courting rituals....

[Seto Kaiba]

-le-sigh- but we can not speak ill of the holy HG lest we bring down the wrath of the Mod-hammer.

Really? Because I've never shied away from it and I've never had a mod get on my case about it. S'long as you stick to the facts and avoid being insulting, it's usually all good.

Accept the fact you won't be able to do anything 'canon' in-game using RT material because the canon has been ret-conned and alterted beyond all recognition by this point due to lawyers.

Actually, as I've noted earlier in this thread, there wasn't any official canon for Robotech until what many fans mistakenly refer to as "retcons" started happening. It wasn't until Harmony Gold decided their licensees and Carl Macek had made such an unholy mess of things that the only way to salvage it was a fresh start from zero via the DC/Wildstorm comics with a new creative director that they finally began to establish a canon.

While Harmony Gold itself doesn't consider either edition of the RPG to be canon, and the original honestly can't be called Robotech with a straight face, the RTSC RPG at least offers enough options that the enterprising GM can run a game that's at least closely reflective of canon. It just requires doing a bit of homework first.

[keir451]

And people wonder why i stick w/ the older books more than the newer ones?

With the best will in the world... yeah, I kinda do wonder that.

Mainly because the old books are so inaccurate that even calling them Robotech feels like a stretch, and the quality suffered because of a lack of outside support. Whatever its faults, the RTSC game is one massive leap forward in quality and accuracy.

Me, I don't see anything wrong with RT deciding the fold drive there works differently from fold systems in Macross... esp. since on a few occasions in RT they do associate "warp" with it.

Part of it is nostalgia, those RT books were my first introduction to RT and Palladium Books in general, but also because I'm tired of all the retconning BS. I like RTSC for what it is, and I will use it most of it, but I don't agree w/all of it. Despite all the inaccuracies in both RT and Macross II, I have fun playing them, plus where else am I going to get "official" deck plans for my favorite ships? That's also why I've used Steelfalcon's site for so long as until recently his was the only fan translation that was semi-accurate..

[Qev]

I'm not sure why Macross is coming up at all in this discussion, since it's entirely irrelevant to how anything works in Robotech and/or Palladium. They're entirely separate canon.

Er... not wishing to be rude, but is it possible you've forgotten about Palladium's Macross II RPG from the 90s? That's a Palladium product and, while the contents may be about so wide of the mark that even the most basic details of the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's setting are completely wrong, it's still a Palladium Books game (technically) belonging to the Japanese Macross franchise.

Oh, I'd forgotten all about that one! I'd assumed it was set in the Robotech canon. My mistake.

And yeah, the MDE stuff in Frontier is pretty scary. The 30mm MDE shells particularly make me laugh in terror. I mean... seriously? Go-away bullets?! They're going to have a heck of a time coming up with a competitive antagonist for their next series at this rate.

[Seto Kaiba]

Part of it is nostalgia, those RT books were my first introduction to RT and Palladium Books in general, but also because I'm tired of all the retconning BS.

I know I'm splitting hairs here, and believe me I enjoy a good hair-splitting rather more than the next guy, but in order to retcon something you have to have first had an official continuity to begin with. RT didn't have one until they brought Tommy in to straighten out Carl's mess and turn it into what they hoped was going to be a credible sci-fi franchise. You can't retcon a continuity that didn't exist beforehand.

Sure, it was hoping in vain because that ship sailed back when public opinion turned against the rewriting practice in general and Robotech in particular, but at least for a few years they had hope.

Oh, I'd forgotten all about that one! I'd assumed it was set in the Robotech canon. My mistake.

Nope... though it'd be better than anything Harmony Gold produced by a pretty significant margin. That was actually one of the taglines that several magazines attached to Macross II when its promo hit the hobby circles: "Forget Robotech II... Macross II has landed with a vengeance!".

And yeah, the MDE stuff in Frontier is pretty scary. The 30mm MDE shells particularly make me laugh in terror. I mean... seriously? Go-away bullets?! They're going to have a heck of a time coming up with a competitive antagonist for their next series at this rate.

Maybe, maybe not... the MDE weaponry requires fold quartz, which is an extraordinarily rare material that can only be found in a few places in the galaxy. The most common source is the bodies of the Vajra, the ancient insectoid alien race whose defensive abilities are such that MDE weapons were originally invented as a defense against them because almost nothing else could even hurt them.

[keir451]

keir451 wrote:
Part of it is nostalgia, those RT books were my first introduction to RT and Palladium Books in general, but also because I'm tired of all the retconning BS.
I know I'm splitting hairs here, and believe me I enjoy a good hair-splitting rather more than the next guy, but in order to retcon something you have to have first had an official continuity to begin with. RT didn't have one until they brought Tommy in to straighten out Carl's mess and turn it into what they hoped was going to be a credible sci-fi franchise. You can't retcon a continuity that didn't exist beforehand.

Sure, it was hoping in vain because that ship sailed back when public opinion turned against the rewriting practice in general and Robotech in particular, but at least for a few years they had hope.

Let me explain myself a bit better. For it it was almost always Rt, I stated w/ that back when it was on Tv back in the 80's (as did many others) and I felt that Carl Macek did greeat job transferring over a sereis of completely unrelated anime to create a new story. I didn't come across Macross, JN version, until MUCH later when I saw DYRL while I was in the Navy in 93. An as I stated earlier RT was my first introduction to the Palladium system and I really didn't know any better. Now I appreciate Shadow Chron. for the attempt ot restart the franchise but it seems like Tommy's not doing as good a job as Carl did wiht the original series. Despite all the mistakes and screw up by Palladium staff and the American team RT remains one of my favorite sereis and I continue to use the RPG books as they provide me with the most usable information. I don't like seeing things that were clearly depicted in the anime suddenly gettting a rewrite to be better than they were or information from the first books being retconned to be different w/out a reasonable explanation . So I choose to use the older books an the information contained therein as it fits with what I want to do and what I feel is accurate according to the anime.

[Sgt Anjay]

Point of order.

Saying "this has always been true, we just haven't revealed it till now" IS a retcon. You don't have to contradict anything. Not only does it qualify as a retcon, it is in fact the very thing the word retcon was coined to describe by the man who coined it, famed comic book writer and editor Roy Thomas. The "contradict previous continuity"-style retcon came later.

[Nightmask]

Point of order.

Saying "this has always been true, we just haven't revealed it till now" IS a retcon. You don't have to contradict anything. Not only does it qualify as a retcon, it is in fact the very thing the word retcon was coined to describe by the man who coined it, famed comic book writer and editor Roy Thomas. The "contradict previous continuity"-style retcon came later.

Well it would certainly be a retcon whichever flavor of definition you use to state that Robotech and Macross fold drives are really Star Trek style warp drives, since going by the actual animation what we see contradicts any effort to claim that they're really warp drives. So basically we're told what we see in the anime never happened and those ships never just disappeared from one location and reappeared at another we just imagined it and they really traveled at FTL speeds in the universe in spite of that not fitting what we actually see. So you can either go by what you actually see (they fold and effectively teleport from one location to another) or what we're told we're supposed to think happened even though it contradicts what we see (they really just warp traveled at speeds that would make even the Borg with their hyper-space conduits jealous).

Myself I'll go with what we actually see in the anime.

[Seto Kaiba]

Now I appreciate Shadow Chron. for the attempt ot restart the franchise but it seems like Tommy's not doing as good a job as Carl did wiht the original series.

This is another thing I don't get... usually I chalk it up to fans wearing the rose-tinted glasses. While it'd be a massive stretch to say that Robotech has ever achieved anything that resembles success, but Tommy Yune has come far closer and done so far more consistently than Carl Macek ever did. Macek ran the franchise into the ground with a string of failed sequels that suffered far more from poor planning and simple ignorance of his audience than the unfortunate circumstances that also dogged them. Tommy has at least consistently delivered the goods (where it is within his control)... and some of it is almost decent in its own way. It'll never be up to the industry's standards, but bless 'em for trying to understand their industry instead of just swinging for the fences the way Macek did.

(Never mind the licensee-created material was often so shoddy and infringed on copyrights so frequently that Harmony Gold made a concerted effort to dismiss it all and bury it forever... what a disaster.)

I think a big part of the reason the fans are dissatisfied, based on my own experiences on Robotech.com over the years I was there and the subsequent years involved with other parts of the fandom, is that he can't deliver what Robotech fans really want... the continuing adventures of the one cast from the original series that mattered, a Robotech that is Macross in all but name.

I don't like seeing things that were clearly depicted in the anime suddenly gettting a rewrite to be better than they were or information from the first books being retconned to be different w/out a reasonable explanation .

Eh... again, it's not really a retcon. You can't have a retcon if there's no pre-existing facts to change. What we'll charitably call information from the first books being changed was inevitable, since it didn't really resemble Robotech anyway... which was part of the problem.

Point of order.

Saying "this has always been true, we just haven't revealed it till now" IS a retcon.

Point of correction.

The most general definition is to change a previously established fact or facts in a work of fiction. While you are not wrong about your more specific definition, the problem remains that it doesn't fit this case... because this is neither changing the facts, nor the context of the facts. Robotech didn't have any officially established facts until Harmony Gold's clean start in 2001. All that existed prior to that was the mountains of fanon created by individual fan groups.

Well it would certainly be a retcon whichever flavor of definition you use to state that Robotech and Macross fold drives are really Star Trek style warp drives, since going by the actual animation what we see contradicts any effort to claim that they're really warp drives.

For one, nobody is saying that Macross fold systems are Star Trek-style warp drives... that's only Robotech that did that.

For two, the content of the animation in a cut-and-paste nightmare like Robotech is arguably not a wholly infallible source. There are only too many cases where the Robotech story SAYS one thing, which we are expected to take as fact, but the visuals show something completely different. Which one do we trust? The answer is supposed to be "the one with the creator's blessing", but some fans of Robotech have historically been a bit resistant to that idea since for the longest time fanon was all they had. The dialog of Robotech does, on a few occasions, use "warp" to refer to some fold drive-related applications, for instance.

Perhaps a better case of "visuals are not infallible" would be in the recent Star Trek movies. A fan who was aware of the existing source material could easily be forgiven for saying that the visuals for the warp drive effect look more like a quantum slipstream drive than a classic warp drive. Does that mean it isn't a warp drive the way the official information says? No.

So basically we're told what we see in the anime never happened and those ships never just disappeared from one location and reappeared at another we just imagined it and they really traveled at FTL speeds in the universe in spite of that not fitting what we actually see.

For a warp drive, the ship just flat-out vanishing is exactly what we'd expect to see, realistically, thanks to light-speed delays in visuals. The ship would just be gone so fast our eyes couldn't register the movement.


Needless to say, I will cheerfully stick with the official explanation because that's the one that's gonna continue to be used. It's a warp drive, baby... yeah!

[Sgt Anjay]

Point of order.

Saying "this has always been true, we just haven't revealed it till now" IS a retcon.

Point of correction.

The most general definition is to change a previously established fact or facts in a work of fiction. While you are not wrong about your more specific definition, the problem remains that it doesn't fit this case... because this is neither changing the facts, nor the context of the facts.

That is not the "most general" definition, that is simply the type of retcon that most gets people up in arms and thus garners the most attention. The type of retcon I pointed out is neither "mine" nor the "more specific" definition, it is one of the two main types of retcons, as well as the type the word retcon was created to describe. Neither facts nor context of facts have to be changed to be a retcon, all that is required is for continuity to be established retroactively, i.e. after the fact of the original work. It was "always" so in the fictional world even though it hadn't been so out here in the real world when the fictional work was created. Retroactive continuity.

Robotech didn't have any officially established facts until Harmony Gold's clean start in 2001. All that existed prior to that was the mountains of fanon created by individual fan groups.

Robotech, in fact, had a few of different versions put out by the creative teams licensed to produce Robotech product.

None of which, of course, the most recent version of Robotech follow, nor are they obliged to. Of course, this includes the original tv series. After all, Shadow Chronicles notably retcons the events of "Symphony of Light", the last episode, in a way that IS a "change a previously established fact or facts" type of retcon seeing as how important scenes are tweaked.

On the other hand, you are correct in that many things fans claim are retcons are instead (a) differences in the different versions of Robotech, (b) based as much on personal interpretations rather than explicit materials. So yes there is that, but that isn't pertinent to the fact there's more than one type of retcon.

[keir451]

I don't really mind the differences in the anime so much, except for Tommy suddenly deciding that they use "warp drives" instead of the original fold drives. I liked that the fleet survived, but needs protoculture to keep running so they're in a tight spot.
The ONLY time anything like a warp field is created is when Louie combines the Icarus' Shadow cloaking system with the fold drive, the rest is just cinematics.
I dislike more the random changes to the RPG material where we see things like the GMP bot suddenly going from totally ineffective to supposedly being effective, or Cyclone armor suddenly being tougher than before.
Anyway none of this has anything to do with the concept of how well fold drives operate in the Three Galaxies, so let's rein it back in shall we?

[Seto Kaiba]

Robotech, in fact, had a few of different versions put out by the creative teams licensed to produce Robotech product.

None of which, according to Harmony Gold, were made with any involvement from Harmony Gold's creative staff or any kind of official oversight. They are, in Harmony Gold's estimation, not Robotech at all... and thus don't count any more than fan-fiction would.

I don't really mind the differences in the anime so much, except for Tommy suddenly deciding that they use "warp drives" instead of the original fold drives.

Eh... to be mercilessly accurate, because that's kinda my schtick, there was no original stance that the fold drives in Robotech worked the way they do in Macross because there wasn't any official stance on anything prior to 2001.

The ONLY time anything like a warp field is created is when Louie combines the Icarus' Shadow cloaking system with the fold drive, the rest is just cinematics.

It's all cinematics, but the depiction is consistent across the entire film and they do make it clear that they're just using the shadow field to shield the ship from the black hole's gravity so they could use the fold drive to get away. That'd support the idea that that is its normal mode of operation.

Anyway none of this has anything to do with the concept of how well fold drives operate in the Three Galaxies, so let's rein it back in shall we?

True, we have ended up on a bit of a tangent... but the definition of what a "fold drive" in the 3G is the bone of contention.

Phase World says "space fold drive", and that's implied to be the kind that uses gravitational fields and/or other, more exotic forces to fold the fabric of our three-dimensional universe.

The question that remains is, do the factors that cause interference with the 3G's version of space-fold drives affect the other, different varieties of things which are mechanically completely different but also are occasionally referred to (wrongly or otherwise) as "fold drives" of various types?

Rather than folding the fabric of our three-dimensional universe by various means, Macross's version of fold technology pushes the ship into a higher-dimension universe adjacent to our own, and compresses the fabric of that 10+ dimensional realm to get where it's going before returning to our own universe.

Our third variation we'll qualify by calling it the official version of Robotech's fold technology, which creates a bubble of normalized space and then distorts the fabric of our three-dimensional universe so it pushes that bubble of space through space towards its destination not unlike a hand squeezing the back of a wet bar of soap.



So... having identified our esteemed contenders, we must then consider what allegedly interferes with a fold drive in the Three Galaxies. Two candidate problems have been tabled from various books... one, a whole mess of gravimetric interference from more conventional stardrives, and the other being the drive system's power source being antimatter. How do these two concerns affect the smooth operation of a fold drive in the other settings where "fold" technology exists?

In the Macross universe(s), measurable gravitational distortions accompany the jump into or out of super dimension space... but gravity has never been mentioned as having a disruptive effect on the fold system's operation. Throughout the metaseries, we've seen ships successfully fold into or out the lower atmosphere of several Earth type planets, the gravity well of a fairly large star, and even in dangerously close proximity to a dimension eater detonation without incident. Ships in Macross power their fold drives with high-energy capacitors and their thermonuclear reaction power plants, which use the physics from that same higher-dimension universe to carry out a superefficient, super-potent fusion-like process.

In the Robotech universe, we do have a case of an intense gravitational field disrupting a ship's fold drive in operation... requiring the negation of the local gravitational field before the ship was again able to use its fold drive to escape. Because the official explanation for the fold drive's operation indicates that they operate on the fabric of three-dimensional space, distortions in the fabric of said space may affect their operation. Exactly how protoculture works officially... well... it's nonsensical, but it's definitely not antimatter.


So the verdict? Or at least, my verdict? The Macross fold technology would almost certainly work just fine in the Three Galaxies because it operates on the fabric of another universe. Whether the Robotech ones would work fine is a definite maybe... depending on how severe the disruptions the Three Galaxies have in the local gravity from other ships getting around.

[Devjannz]

Personally I don't care how HG says Fold Drives work now, in my games they will still work has depicted in the Robotech series, which in my mind is similar to how the Jump Drives in Battlestar Galactica worked, except that Robotech drives can expand the field and take other ships with them.

[Sgt Anjay]

Robotech, in fact, had a few of different versions put out by the creative teams licensed to produce Robotech product.

None of which, according to Harmony Gold, were made with any involvement from Harmony Gold's creative staff or any kind of official oversight.

We know that's a lie, then. We know for a fact Luceno and Daley met with Macek about the novels, and that they and Palladium were given materials from HG, and that for example the creators of the Graphic Novel and the authors of Robotech Art One got at least some of the same.

Also, the failure of Harmony Gold to direct or oversee the people they authorized to create Robotech products does not change the fact they authorized them to create Robotech products.

HG can create whatever they wish for their current version of Robotech, including and excluding whatever they wish; they have complete control over what is in continuity for it. But they can't retcon reality.