Beta Fighter, can we do it better?

[ShadowLogan]

Sharing one or two components doesn't mean the entire avionics suite is shared... or even compatible. The Legioss/Alpha is a craft with very different requirements to any other in the setting since it's a close air support attacker rather than a fighter.

To an extent in the real world that is true, however the way Palladium does the "standard avionic/equipment/feature" section is pretty cookie cutter. IINM the BIF shares all the standards with the Alpha, and the Conbat with the Beta. Still if the Alpha shares its Radar systems with another (un-game stat platform) platform it could explain why it would have the capability.

Potentially, but as the RT version cites "cost and complexity" as reasons for turning down a superior multirole fighter it seems rather unlikely to me that they would deliberately include some unneeded and useless features intended for compatibility with a cancelled project.

While the Beta was canceled circa 2022, the Beta project itself is supposedly not as old as the Alpha (I'd also hazard the docking aspect blows "cost and complexity" out of the water). We also don't know what the planned evolutionary development path of the Alpha was originally going to look like, or how it was changed due to the introduction/cancelation of the Beta or contact with the Invid/aliens. I could see the UEEF attempting to develop a MRM-class missile sized for the Alpha concurrent with it, but the missile could have been canceled like the Beta, but the Alpha retained the radar capability because it would require costly changes and delays to the radar. The AIM-54 and the F-111B had a similar development (though in this realworld case it was the reverse getting canceled).

It's not my intention to sound rude, but that kind of argument has never not been wishful thinking..

I agree it's highly unlikely well be seeing new material anytime soon, but the option exists is all I am saying.

Which don't appear to have been anywhere near as effective or powerful as the ones in the Macross Saga...

I suspect two factors could be involved to explain that:
1. There are a variety of warhead yield/sizes if conventional nuclear weapons are anything to go by. So the Conbat might be using a lower yield than used in TMS.
2. The Invid mecha/ships are more resilient than you want to give them credit for

There are no examples of practical alternatives in the setting.

Really...

LRM sized Drones that Zerg Rush the formation firing into it (either missiles or beam weapons). They have drone technology. They have drone technology that can utilize weapons.

This requires more development, but the "Molecular Vacuum" attack used in TRM (then again they don't need to use missiles, they could just use the fold capable ships) has a radius of 2km. This would require more development in setting by the UEEF (in 2029-30 it appears to be a theory, but that gives them time to develop it for 2038 or 2042 or 2044 since it was validated in 2029-30). Putting them on fighter carried LRM would require a reduction in the size of the Fold Generators (I know the UEEF inherits its Fold drives) or finding an alternate means to generate it.

Cluster Munitions. These weapons are designed to cover a wide area. You might need some tweaks for space combat to be viable.

Zentreadi Gravity Mines. Ramp up the intensity, and pull groups of Invid mecha into the missile and potentially each other.

The TLEAD/Beta is designed for a close air support role... and none of the enemies it's used against build what would be considered conventional fortifications.

The Invid build Hives and convert locations into Hives, which those small bombs are not going to do much against, even if we ignore their Force Fields. So they are going to need Anti-fortification/building/Force-Field weapons, unless the plan is to fight their way into every hive the hardway.

Granted, but they were expecting to fight an alien race who had culturally and technologically stagnated, who were in the midst of an energy crisis, and who were used to letting someone else do their fighting for them. The Bioroid is definitely NOT an effective weapon... to the extent that it's rather questionable whether it really IS intended to be a weapon.

The Bioroid effectiveness is best left to another discussion, but given that the UEDF: ASC in 2029 couldn't identify the Bioroids (or the Masters) it really is questionable how the UEEF in 2022 could have properly planned to fight the Masters. It should also be noted that going by the dialogue regarding Zentreadi history in Ep31 the Zentreadi are supposed to have a "civil war" that broke out among themselves should also have pressured the Masters long ago to have adequate defenses should the Zentreadi rebel again.

We do see in RTSC the UEEF take potshots at the Invid ships... though with a conspicuous lack of success.

IIRC TSC and EP84-85 are the only times we see this though. They didn't do it for 10th MD (if the equipment is being replaced why not wait) and 21st. Carpenter might be explainable, but we don't know when the Tok-class was relegated to "transport duty" exactly and it doesn't help that he picked a fight with a fleet of ships each of which is 5x his size (in the animation the Masters didn't deploy Bioroids or other "smaller" vessels, this was a straight up multi-City Ships vs 1 Tok and her fighters and later Earth reinforcements).

Yes, I wanted to outline it as weapons that are capable of consistently dealing Mega Damage rather than ones that might cross that threshold in a freak accident or lucky shot.

Feak accident/Lucky strikes me as the purpose of the Critical Strike Roll (typically x2 damage, though some specific attacks get more). Trying to rationalize how the damage works w/o critical strike rolls IMHO amounts to how square the shot was to the target (the lower the damage roll the more of a glancing nature it is). While rolling max damage for a die roll could be considered lucky, in general the chance of rolling max on a d6 (16.7%) or d4 (25%) is more likely than on a D20 (5%), though the use of enough multiple d6 or d4s could make it more of a lucky result than a D20 if enough need to be rolled. It also avoids the issue of explaining surplus energy in energy storage mediums (ex. if you have 1 shot left in H-90 pistol, is that 6MD stored in the clip or 3.5MD?).

[Seto Kaiba]

To an extent in the real world that is true, however the way Palladium does the "standard avionic/equipment/feature" section is pretty cookie cutter. IINM the BIF shares all the standards with the Alpha, and the Conbat with the Beta. Still if the Alpha shares its Radar systems with another (un-game stat platform) platform it could explain why it would have the capability. [...]

Even so, that the performance of those systems is the same or very similar does not mean the hardware itself is. When it comes to the RPG, that can even be interpreted as acceptable breaks with the actual setting of the series and/or reality in order to streamline gameplay. Those systems may not actually have similar capabilities or performance in the official setting.

While the Beta was canceled circa 2022, the Beta project itself is supposedly not as old as the Alpha (I'd also hazard the docking aspect blows "cost and complexity" out of the water). We also don't know what the planned evolutionary development path of the Alpha was originally going to look like, or how it was changed due to the introduction/cancelation of the Beta or contact with the Invid/aliens.

Well, yes... as lampshaded by the now-cancelled Titan Comics series Robotech Remix, there isn't much about the Alpha and/or Beta's supposed development in the Robotech universe that actually makes sense in context.

Backstory unrelated to the animation aside, Robotech II: the Sentinels definitely leaned towards the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA's viewpoint that the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta were developed and tested together in expectation of entering service together.

I could see the UEEF attempting to develop a MRM-class missile sized for the Alpha concurrent with it, but the missile could have been canceled like the Beta, but the Alpha retained the radar capability because it would require costly changes and delays to the radar. The AIM-54 and the F-111B had a similar development (though in this realworld case it was the reverse getting canceled).

The problem I have with that hypothetical is that the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta are clearly not set up to operate with pylon-mounted weapons. Their wing area is perilously low as it is, and their ground clearance with gear down is abysmally poor. These aircraft were clearly developed around exclusively short-ranged combat with strictly-internal weapons.

I suspect two factors could be involved to explain that:
1. There are a variety of warhead yield/sizes if conventional nuclear weapons are anything to go by. So the Conbat might be using a lower yield than used in TMS.
2. The Invid mecha/ships are more resilient than you want to give them credit for

Variable yields are one thing, the use of ineffective weapons followed by their abandonment is quite another.

The fragility of Invid ships and mecha is pretty indisputable from the animation itself, being frequently taken down with light man-portable weapons.

There are no examples of practical alternatives in the setting.

Really...

Yes, really.

LRM sized Drones that Zerg Rush the formation firing into it (either missiles or beam weapons). They have drone technology. They have drone technology that can utilize weapons.

No such weapon exists in the Robotech, as far as I can recall.

In Robotech, unmanned fighter technology is supposedly quite limited and unreliable. This was also broadly true in the original Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, with the Unmanned Dark Legioss AI being extremely aggressive and having a very limited ability to distinguish friend from foe on the battlefield.

Now if we were talking Macross, that's a different story... that kind of technology absolutely does exist in Macross's sequels. One unused weapon designed for Macross Zero was a Ghost cruise missile armed with its own micro missile launchers, several weapons listed for the VF-19 are missiles armed with high-output laser weaponry or electromagnetic "shotguns", and in the Macross II timeline there are funnels and bits available.

This requires more development, but the "Molecular Vacuum" attack used in TRM (then again they don't need to use missiles, they could just use the fold capable ships) has a radius of 2km. This would require more development in setting by the UEEF (in 2029-30 it appears to be a theory, but that gives them time to develop it for 2038 or 2042 or 2044 since it was validated in 2029-30). Putting them on fighter carried LRM would require a reduction in the size of the Fold Generators (I know the UEEF inherits its Fold drives) or finding an alternate means to generate it. [...]

That requires a warship to pull off, including a large quantity of protoculture fuel to run a fold system. Ships tend not to last very long around the Invid in Robotech, so that would likely not work very well.

In what seems to be an emerging theme, if we were talking Macross then yes... because fold systems in that setting were eventually miniaturized to a size small enough to mount on VFs and fold bombs (dimension eaters) did make their way into the setting starting in Macross Frontier. (Though the destructive effects of a malfunctioning fold system were known as far back as Macross: Do You Remember Love? when the death of Boddole Zer caused his ship's fold systems to break down and accidentally teleport chunks of his ship into higher dimensions until the power failed.)

Cluster Munitions. These weapons are designed to cover a wide area. You might need some tweaks for space combat to be viable.

Cluster munitions are large and unwieldy devices... craft with no underwing pylons and no large bomb bays would not be able to deploy them. To that end, unguided submunitions would have little use in space so you're essentially packaging multiple missiles into a single larger missile, which raises cost without really improving results.

Zentreadi Gravity Mines. Ramp up the intensity, and pull groups of Invid mecha into the missile and potentially each other.

These devices are also large and unwieldy, and it's dubious whether the UEEF could reproduce them given their difficulties reproducing other technologies like fold systems.

The Invid build Hives and convert locations into Hives, which those small bombs are not going to do much against, even if we ignore their Force Fields. So they are going to need Anti-fortification/building/Force-Field weapons, unless the plan is to fight their way into every hive the hardway.

Whether the hives are defensible fortifications in and of themselves is never really touched on. They seem to rely purely on the number of drones stationed there for defense when they don't have the force fields we see protecting Reflex Point. At least one hive was blown up with ordinary man-portable explosives without apparent issue. It may not be out of the question to destroy a hive with the bombs the TLEAD/Beta carries.

The Bioroid effectiveness is best left to another discussion, but given that the UEDF: ASC in 2029 couldn't identify the Bioroids (or the Masters) it really is questionable how the UEEF in 2022 could have properly planned to fight the Masters. It should also be noted that going by the dialogue regarding Zentreadi history in Ep31 the Zentreadi are supposed to have a "civil war" that broke out among themselves should also have pressured the Masters long ago to have adequate defenses should the Zentreadi rebel again.

The question there becomes one of the competence of the troops the real military (UEEF) felt would be least-missed on the front lines of an actual war.

When Robotech attempted to explore that actual plotline about a preemptive strike on the Masters homeworld, the planet was nearly undefended.

IIRC TSC and EP84-85 are the only times we see this though. They didn't do it for 10th MD (if the equipment is being replaced why not wait) and 21st. Carpenter might be explainable, but we don't know when the Tok-class was relegated to "transport duty" exactly and it doesn't help that he picked a fight with a fleet of ships each of which is 5x his size (in the animation the Masters didn't deploy Bioroids or other "smaller" vessels, this was a straight up multi-City Ships vs 1 Tok and her fighters and later Earth reinforcements).

It's possible having ships fire on the Invid happened offscreen or off panel in those previous instances. Mind you, the result was the same... just not enough to stop the Invid from rolling them.

[ShadowLogan]

The problem I have with that hypothetical is that the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta are clearly not set up to operate with pylon-mounted weapons. Their wing area is perilously low as it is, and their ground clearance with gear down is abysmally poor. These aircraft were clearly developed around exclusively short-ranged combat with strictly-internal weapons.

The Beta does have artwork (non-canon) from the OSM depicting the use of pylon mounted weapons that is the source of the RT adoption. Now if we want more realistic placement of hardpoints on the Beta (if the wings are actually non-viable) they can still be retained by moving them to the the forearms (one on the flat bottom, and one more on the angled side, the forearm from rear are pentagon-ish shaped) and upper leg (Rail or Y-Pylon). VTOL restrictions might also need to be put in place (for some locations), but you now have 3 rail/pylon locations per side with the same basic restrictions. A 4th is also possible on the top side of the forearm, but that doesn't change restrictions (though it might only be viable for missiles, and proximity to the forearm guns is a concern I would have).

The Alpha/Legioss, while that is true for conventional locations have you considered more unconventional ones? the Alpha already stores ~1/2 its 190mm SRM payload on the back of the F-mode, so they already of loading practices/hardware to access that unconventional location. Theoretically you could install 1-2 rail/Y-Pylon/Pylon stations to each arm. While the SSF's Fast Packs are "new", the use of said mounting location might not be as FAST Packs are a likely solution designers would have looked at as an alternative to the Beta (perhaps after its 2022 cancelation, perhaps as an alternative during design), allowing for its use as a mounting location for other hardware. And we know the OSM designers considered alternate GPB-1S type add-ons during development as seen in the Iami Files* (pg91-4 of the PDF) that weren't used, though how applicable those are specifically to RT's story is questionable but still an option (I'm not calling for a direct port of any, but they could take an inspired approach as they officially did with the SSF's FP).

*

Spoiler:

I'm using the Imai Files for easy reference, the designs referenced in part/full I've seen elsewhere on the Web. Gearsonline has them in the Production Art section under Legioss, image #55-58.

The fragility of Invid ships and mecha is pretty indisputable from the animation itself, being frequently taken down with light man-portable weapons.

Allow me to rephrase #2, what if Invid Mecha/ships are more resilient to PC/Reflex-based Weapons than you are giving them credit for. We know canonically there are materials that resist laser attacks (TRM) in setting, so PC/Reflex resistant attacks might also be a thing (and said material might be more vulnerable to other types of attacks).

No such weapon exists in the Robotech, as far as I can recall.

I agree, but what I am saying is that they have all the elements required to build one. If the UEEF has it they haven't used it onscreen/panel or even mentioned it.

That requires a warship to pull off, including a large quantity of protoculture fuel to run a fold system. Ships tend not to last very long around the Invid in Robotech, so that would likely not work very well.

I agree it's first (and only) use is with a warship (RT warships could have duplicated the feat against the Invid since Garfish and Ikazuchi have Fold Generators). The question does have to be considered though if the phenomena could be created without the Fold Generator and if the technology (Fold Drive or something else, and this applies to the Gravity Mine)) can be miniaturized for use on a missile. That is why I said it needs some development, in principle they have something that can work, but it hasn't been developed AFAIK (the idea might never have even been considered by RT's writers, sort of like the big plot hole in ST:Voyager that they could have gotten home right after destroying the Caretaker Array**).

**

Spoiler:

In Star Trek: TOS, the first time the USS Enterprise travels in time its the result of an interaction with a Black Star (Black Hole term IINM came about after the ST episode) that tossed them back in time to Earth in 196x. They then use the Warp Drive with a Sun Dive to return them to the 23rd Century. This means they could use the same principle to travel in space, if not time (since the Black Star wasn't near Earth and they ended up at Earth in the past, and returned IIRC to Earth in the 23rd Century. The technique is known to Star Fleet in TNG-era, IIRC it was a season 2 episode with Picard & Shuttle being sent back in time. Its also used again in ST:IV movie.

Cluster munitions are large and unwieldy devices... craft with no underwing pylons and no large bomb bays would not be able to deploy them. To that end, unguided submunitions would have little use in space so you're essentially packaging multiple missiles into a single larger missile, which raises cost without really improving results.

Unguided submunitions can be of use in space. The GU-11's 55mm projectiles are unguided and they are still effective in space. The deployment of the submunitions would create a temporary mine field that the Invid would have to either fly through (ideal, get the timing down, somewhat akin to how Scott used the Beta's bombs in Ep83) or fly around it. The field is also temporary due to orbital mechanics which would eventually disperse the submunitions (presumably you also have them detonate after a certain time to clear them out for safety).

At least one hive was blown up with ordinary man-portable explosives without apparent issue. It may not be out of the question to destroy a hive with the bombs the TLEAD/Beta carries.

The two Hives Scotts group destroyed did so by entering the Hive and attacking the reactor (one of which used man-portable explosives to take out the Brain/Sensor, it did not destroy the Hive proper). The only other two Hives destroyed involved smashing a Garfish into the Hive itself and then blowing the ship up. So yes it is questionable if the Beta's small bombs could do any real damage from the outside.

It's possible having ships fire on the Invid happened offscreen or off panel in those previous instances. Mind you, the result was the same... just not enough to stop the Invid from rolling them.

I agree offscreen/panel use is a given. However given the frequency of use on screen/panel as a guide it wasn't used enough or even properly (10th MD fired to late IMHO) to have prevented the Invid from rolling over them.

[Seto Kaiba]

The Beta does have artwork (non-canon) from the OSM depicting the use of pylon mounted weapons that is the source of the RT adoption.

Yes, I am familiar with it... but you will not find any such under-wing pylons in the OSM's official spec or in the animation.

It's a product of the oft-referenced dodgy sourcing practices used by the fans to whom HG farmed out researching the stats.

Allow me to rephrase #2, what if Invid Mecha/ships are more resilient to PC/Reflex-based Weapons than you are giving them credit for. We know canonically there are materials that resist laser attacks (TRM) in setting, so PC/Reflex resistant attacks might also be a thing (and said material might be more vulnerable to other types of attacks).

It strikes me as extremely unlikely that mecha that can be destroyed with simple man-portable rockets and energy weapons comparable to light man-portable support weapons would be able to soak fire from an ersatz nuclear weapon. The same goes for the ships, with Maia being able to blast sizable holes clean through the hull with the Shadow Fighter's relatively light short-ranged missiles.

I agree, but what I am saying is that they have all the elements required to build one. If the UEEF has it they haven't used it onscreen/panel or even mentioned it.

Only in a basic sense... the types of technology are there, but the degree of miniaturization required has not been demonstrated.

I agree it's first (and only) use is with a warship (RT warships could have duplicated the feat against the Invid since Garfish and Ikazuchi have Fold Generators). The question does have to be considered though if the phenomena could be created without the Fold Generator and if the technology (Fold Drive or something else, and this applies to the Gravity Mine)) can be miniaturized for use on a missile. That is why I said it needs some development, in principle they have something that can work, but it hasn't been developed AFAIK (the idea might never have even been considered by RT's writers, sort of like the big plot hole in ST:Voyager that they could have gotten home right after destroying the Caretaker Array**).

Based on what's said about the state of fold technology in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, it seems to be a pretty definite "No" to miniaturization. Humanity has only just gotten its head around building fold drives that actually work properly. They're still big, bulky systems with immense power demands.

Unguided submunitions can be of use in space. The GU-11's 55mm projectiles are unguided and they are still effective in space. The deployment of the submunitions would create a temporary mine field that the Invid would have to either fly through (ideal, get the timing down, somewhat akin to how Scott used the Beta's bombs in Ep83) or fly around it. The field is also temporary due to orbital mechanics which would eventually disperse the submunitions (presumably you also have them detonate after a certain time to clear them out for safety).

The GU-11 is nothing like a cluster bomb, it's a high-precision rotary cannon that is used sparingly and at short ranges.

Cluster munitions carry the problem of increasing the likelihood of friendly fire if deployed in space, and against a highly maneuverable foe the potential for unguided submunitions to score kills is low and gets lower as range increases. Mass detonation of unviable submunitions just creates a debris problem and wastes resources.

There's no way for the TLEAD/Beta to deploy such a large weapon in any case.

[ShadowLogan]

It strikes me as extremely unlikely that mecha that can be destroyed with simple man-portable rockets and energy weapons comparable to light man-portable support weapons would be able to soak fire from an ersatz nuclear weapon. The same goes for the ships, with Maia being able to blast sizable holes clean through the hull with the Shadow Fighter's relatively light short-ranged missiles.

An example is that the Space Shuttle's Thermal Protection Tiles could protect the vehicle from the intense heat of re-entry, but where vulnerable to physical impact. So yeah I can see a material that can protect from one form of energy (thermal) being vulnerable to another form of energy (kinetic). Materials do come with advantages in terms of different types of strengths or resistances in the real world, and while you can make composite materials to compensate for weakness, it might be that the Invid can't (or won't) compromise on the protection from PC/Reflex weapons.

Only in a basic sense... the types of technology are there, but the degree of miniaturization required has not been demonstrated

The miniaturization I think is there. Within the show itself you have the GMP Golem 'bot (smaller than the Shadow Drone, never mind the Ghost), that was in 2029 that we saw it (not the best example, but it shows how small the tech has become, the role it was in "policing" might also have limited its effectiveness). Then you have the Janice MK1 android from Prelude/TSC who is now AFAIK a pure human built creation (pre-2001 reset she would have been recovered from the SDF-1), or even the possibility of Haydonite/Sentinel contributions. Now J-MK1 is supposed to be a one-of-kind android I'll admit, but it shows that in terms of miniaturization and of pure Earth origin, the technology is there.

Based on what's said about the state of fold technology in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, it seems to be a pretty definite "No" to miniaturization. Humanity has only just gotten its head around building fold drives that actually work properly. They're still big, bulky systems with immense power demands.

That still doesn't rule out finding an alternate means to create said effect. The Fold Drives humanity needs for ships though are intended for multi-use and transport across vast distances, it is plausible though that one intended to create the "Molecular Vacuum" and do so only once could be reduced in size and power requirements.

The GU-11 is nothing like a cluster bomb, it's a high-precision rotary cannon that is used sparingly and at short ranges.

The only thing the GU-11 shares with a cluster bomb is that the projectiles released are unguided, a GU-11 bullet once it leaves the barrel can't steer itself to correct for a moving target meaning at that point it is unguided.

Cluster munitions carry the problem of increasing the likelihood of friendly fire if deployed in space, and against a highly maneuverable foe the potential for unguided submunitions to score kills is low and gets lower as range increases. Mass detonation of unviable submunitions just creates a debris problem and wastes resources.

I agree there are draw backs to the weapon type, but really isn't any different than using bullets or making things go boom, both will create debris that is a potential hazard. Something various stories ignore (unless it's for story purposes).

When used against a highly maneuverable foe that is where the timing aspect comes in. You want the submunitions dispensed at a point in time that limits their ability to react, you can also deploy them such that if they miss they are sent off on a trajectory to render them "safe" from the current operation.

[Seto Kaiba]

An example is that the Space Shuttle's Thermal Protection Tiles could protect the vehicle from the intense heat of re-entry, but where vulnerable to physical impact. So yeah I can see a material that can protect from one form of energy (thermal) being vulnerable to another form of energy (kinetic). Materials do come with advantages in terms of different types of strengths or resistances in the real world, and while you can make composite materials to compensate for weakness, it might be that the Invid can't (or won't) compromise on the protection from PC/Reflex weapons.

While your example is sound, it clearly does not apply.

The Invit/Invid are shown to be quite vulnerable to laser weaponry, even to the level of laser small arms and man-portable support weapons. If those are adequate to produce lethal effects, then there is little doubt than an ersatz thermonuclear weapon or a reflex cannon will outright vaporize them.

The miniaturization I think is there. Within the show itself you have the GMP Golem 'bot (smaller than the Shadow Drone, never mind the Ghost), that was in 2029 that we saw it (not the best example, but it shows how small the tech has become, the role it was in "policing" might also have limited its effectiveness). Then you have the Janice MK1 android from Prelude/TSC who is now AFAIK a pure human built creation (pre-2001 reset she would have been recovered from the SDF-1), or even the possibility of Haydonite/Sentinel contributions. Now J-MK1 is supposed to be a one-of-kind android I'll admit, but it shows that in terms of miniaturization and of pure Earth origin, the technology is there.

While Janice's origin story has changed due to Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23 Part 1, her presentation as a unique creation has not... so I don't think she's a valid example.

AIs capable of operating a vehicle autonomously still seem to require quite large computer systems - e.g. the unmanned Legioss/Alpha or SCA's Garmr - which would tend to argue against that kind of weapon being possible in Robotech. Clearly the UEEF saw utility in unmanned fighters given that the unmanned Legioss/Alpha and its Dark/Shadow version are a thing, but that doesn't address the fundamental logistical problem that they're not set up for an air superiority role any more than the manned Legioss/Alpha or the TLEAD/Beta are.

That still doesn't rule out finding an alternate means to create said effect. The Fold Drives humanity needs for ships though are intended for multi-use and transport across vast distances, it is plausible though that one intended to create the "Molecular Vacuum" and do so only once could be reduced in size and power requirements.

Woah, okay you're headed way deep into the thickets of what-if... let's back it up a bit to what's known to be technically feasible.

I agree there are draw backs to the weapon type, but really isn't any different than using bullets or making things go boom, both will create debris that is a potential hazard. Something various stories ignore (unless it's for story purposes).

When used against a highly maneuverable foe that is where the timing aspect comes in. You want the submunitions dispensed at a point in time that limits their ability to react, you can also deploy them such that if they miss they are sent off on a trajectory to render them "safe" from the current operation.

It's not a resource-efficient weapon, or one that can be deployed from a TLEAD/Beta... in the animation they lack any kind of underwing pylon.

They're not meant for air-to-air combat, they're all about air-to-ground.

[ShadowLogan]

The Invit/Invid are shown to be quite vulnerable to laser weaponry, even to the level of laser small arms and man-portable support weapons. If those are adequate to produce lethal effects, then there is little doubt than an ersatz thermonuclear weapon or a reflex cannon will outright vaporize them.

Not necessarily. First we don't know all the properties of this material or how its constructed to be effective, or if its even a physical material (it could be some type of "force field", technology we know they employ at Hives).

Assuming it is a physical medium, perhaps the difference is like trying to break a single pencil in half vs a group of them at once. Those "light" weapons might be effective because they only interact with a smaller number of "pencils" but due to the wide spread nature of the larger attacks are more resilient. That's speculation, but an idea on how it could be constructed into the mecha such that it has the attributes noted (Kevlar soft armor has a similar vulnerability).

While Janice's origin story has changed due to Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23 Part 1, her presentation as a unique creation has not... so I don't think she's a valid example.

Why would Megazone23 be an issue? I thought she was created for the Sentinels series, I don't remember her being in RT:TUS movie (and I have seen it, though not recently) or any indication that she is some type of avatar for EVE (SDF-1 computer) ala Andromeda.

AIs capable of operating a vehicle autonomously still seem to require quite large computer systems - e.g. the unmanned Legioss/Alpha or SCA's Garmr - which would tend to argue against that kind of weapon being possible in Robotech. Clearly the UEEF saw utility in unmanned fighters given that the unmanned Legioss/Alpha and its Dark/Shadow version are a thing, but that doesn't address the fundamental logistical problem that they're not set up for an air superiority role any more than the manned Legioss/Alpha or the TLEAD/Beta are.

Lets also keep in mind that these examples are also much more complex machines to manage than a non-transformable (MRM/LRM) missile sized drone, all 3 of them have to manage an anthromorphic form and one has to manage multiple configurations (in terms of mode and option for the Beta) so their AI system could justifiably be beefier than one that is required here. We also don't know technically how much of that bulk frame is dedicated to the actual AI.

It's not a resource-efficient weapon, or one that can be deployed from a TLEAD/Beta... in the animation they lack any kind of underwing pylon.

They're not meant for air-to-air combat, they're all about air-to-ground.

I agree the Beta isn't depicted with external hardpoints (well aside from TSC's Synchro-module and booster), but there is no real justification that the Beta (or even Alpha) could not have some form of external hardpoints to mount additional weapons or features. Though even if you want to play it that way, the UEEF does have two other platforms in the bomber role that could (Conbat and the Horizon Shuttle, per the Infopedia it has a bomber variant though specifics are lacking)

While I agree they are meant for air-ground role, I don't see why they could not be adapted for a role in space. Then again instead of unpowered projectiles, you substitute in powered missiles (Rockets can and do deploy more that one satellite per launch) or something else originally geared toward space junk removal or other anti-satellite/ICBM that aren't based on explosives.

[xunk16]

While Janice's origin story has changed due to Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23 Part 1, her presentation as a unique creation has not... so I don't think she's a valid example.

Why would Megazone23 be an issue? I thought she was created for the Sentinels series, I don't remember her being in RT:TUS movie (and I have seen it, though not recently) or any indication that she is some type of avatar for EVE (SDF-1 computer) ala Andromeda.

I do remember there being a link in the development of EVE leading to the OS of Janice... And both were at some point in relation... I think it was in the novels?
And apparently at some point there was a hint of this in Robotech Art 3.
Probably from the Master's Gambit in the RNU.
Wiki not disagreeing or agreeing with me today...

But yeah, I think some part of the code for Janice was, at the very least, developed during the Janus M era by sudying the progress made on E.V.E. after the computer for the SDF-1 was salvaged out of the rubble. I'm trying to remember what was the A.I. for the satellite used during the malcontent era, in order to track calls to the phony Minmei talk-show. I think the E.V.E. avatar became more widely used for propaganda purpose after Minmei discovered her part and canned the show itself. Oh well... Don't quite remember if the first prototype for Janice was online during the Loreleï network thing. I think she was presented to Minmeï in the Sentinels though. So the talk-show thing might just have been research and recording for E.V.E., then taken back to program Janice?
Do someone else have a fresher memory on this?

[Seto Kaiba]

Not necessarily. First we don't know all the properties of this material or how its constructed to be effective, or if its even a physical material (it could be some type of "force field", technology we know they employ at Hives).

Eh... you're headed back into "what if" territory there. I'd prefer to stick to facts and evidence-based deduction.

There is nothing in existing Robotech or OSM material to suggest the Invid/Invit mecha or structures are composed of materials that have any unusual properties. Certainly nothing to suggest they would do any better resisting ersatz (or actual) nuclear weapons than they do laser small arms, explosives, or hard rounds.

If a weapon analogous to Macross's thermonuclear reaction weapons like the reflex weaponry in Robotech's Macross Saga were available, then it ought to be very effective... the only problem being that by the 2nd ERF there are no craft in service capable of fielding them.

While Janice's origin story has changed due to Harmony Gold losing the rights to Megazone 23 Part 1, her presentation as a unique creation has not... so I don't think she's a valid example.

Why would Megazone23 be an issue? I thought she was created for the Sentinels series, I don't remember her being in RT:TUS movie (and I have seen it, though not recently) or any indication that she is some type of avatar for EVE (SDF-1 computer) ala Andromeda.

Per Carl Macek's own remarks on the matter, several of the Robotech II: the Sentinels "original" characters were originally holdover characters from the failed Robotech: the Untold Story movie. When the movie flopped, they were renamed and given new backstories. B.D. Andrews became T.R. Edwards and EVE's android body became Janice. Her AI is supposedly a unique masterpiece creation by Earth's foremost master of robotechnology, so IMO it's not likely that that miniaturization work could be dupicated to create an AI small enough to use as a missile guidance system in Robotech.

Lets also keep in mind that these examples are also much more complex machines to manage than a non-transformable (MRM/LRM) missile sized drone, all 3 of them have to manage an anthromorphic form and one has to manage multiple configurations (in terms of mode and option for the Beta) so their AI system could justifiably be beefier than one that is required here. We also don't know technically how much of that bulk frame is dedicated to the actual AI.

There is that, but the control system we see for the unmanned Legioss/Alpha earlier in the New Generation is the size of a panel van in and of itself and the entire cockpit is supposedly what was replaced with the computer controlling the fighter. Since maneuvering is already heavily computer-controlled even on the manned versions, that suggests the hardware necessary to actually make decisions and form inputs to the flight control system is substantial in size... and we know those AIs are still relatively basic and unreliable.

I agree the Beta isn't depicted with external hardpoints (well aside from TSC's Synchro-module and booster), but there is no real justification that the Beta (or even Alpha) could not have some form of external hardpoints to mount additional weapons or features. Though even if you want to play it that way, the UEEF does have two other platforms in the bomber role that could (Conbat and the Horizon Shuttle, per the Infopedia it has a bomber variant though specifics are lacking)

The Conbat is an obsolete craft, or so it has been presented... and the ships used for the 2nd ERF and beyond are not equipped to carry them. Which is an awkward and unfortunately deficiency in operations when you think about it, unless the armaments the Conbat could carry for the role were either weaker than the reflex weapons used in the Macross Saga to the extent of not having a usefully high yield or were simply no longer available for some reason.

As for the Horizont's supposed and never-seen bomber configuration... that also doesn't actually exist in the animation, and most bombers are not set up to carry or use air-to-air weapons. Proposals like the Rockwell B-1R are extremely unusual in that regard. The same basic deal as the TLEAD/Beta, really.

[ShadowLogan]

Eh... you're headed back into "what if" territory there. I'd prefer to stick to facts and evidence-based deduction.

In which case we're left with a big ? given that Reflex Warheads aren't shown to be as effective in NG as TMS. Either the yield of the warheads being used is not 1:1 for NG as seen in TMS or the Invid have some resistance factor available to them. If we consider a material resistance it is possible to have strong defensive properties in one area but still vulnerable to others, which means they are a possible explanation (we have facts that can support the idea, evidence**). The only other real option is the Invid in RT have Force Fields on their Transport (and only used when they detect certain attacks*) and possibly mecha (personally I don't think mecha have them, but the ships certainly could).

**
If Reflex Weapons are considered Eratz Nuclear Weapons, then we may have some evidence from TRM saga of objects being able to resist that level of destructiveness. "Hyper Cobalt" missiles are launched in Ep38 at a City Ship and don't do any noticeable damage (visually, dialogue says heavy damage inflicted), They aren't identified as such in Ep38 but in Ep58 (externally identical, so possible they don't have the same warhead I admit). Now what is meant by Hyper Cobalt isn't clear, but if they are supposed to be like real world theoretical Cobalt Explosives, they are a nuclear weapon of some type. No evidence of a Force Field is in place (later dialogue suggests the Masters might have a non-visible force field and not just the more common "SnowFlake" system that would be easy to spot), and this is a RT Master City Ship at 7.2km long vs an Invid Carrier at 155m long (the Carrier has like 9.02x10^-7th of the mass of the Cityship) so its raw size might also be a factor.

*supporting this is that the Invid didn't use the Energy Pheonix to just wipeout the UEEF 10th MD or 21st MD or the 3ERF in 2044, they waited until the N-S missiles where headed their way. Or the way RFP used its force field when a large ground force appeared to attack it (compared to the Hives Scott's group took down prior). It might also explain why the beam weapons in Ep84-5 could be successful in destroying an Invid Carrier but not the Conbat's Reflex Missiles (beam weapons gave no lead time, the missiles did and being Reflex gave them selves away unlike the conventional missiles seen in TSC that poked holes).

Per Carl Macek's own remarks on the matter, several of the Robotech II: the Sentinels "original" characters were originally holdover characters from the failed Robotech: the Untold Story movie. When the movie flopped, they were renamed and given new backstories. B.D. Andrews became T.R. Edwards and EVE's android body became Janice. Her AI is supposedly a unique masterpiece creation by Earth's foremost master of robotechnology, so IMO it's not likely that that miniaturization work could be duplicated to create an AI small enough to use as a missile guidance system in Robotech.

I don't remember EVE having an android body in RT:TUS. EVE was a computer system with a computer generated avatar that appeared on monitors (like the stolen MODAT Landry came into possession of) as far as I can recall. I also can't see how the Sentinels characters could be the TUS characters (as ultimately depicted in 2027 IIRC, as originally intended during TMS-era IINM before the canon films rewrite I can but that would have been before the flop test screening).

The thing is for this role, the AI really doesn't need to be as advanced as Jancie or EVE, since we don't need them to manipulate a computer generated images (holographic or on a monitor), have strong social skills, be able to sing (Janice does sing), etc. And we know the Haydonites and Sentinels (specifically the Kabarrans but...) by 2044 are involved with UEEF production of hardware (prelude for Sentinels, Haydonites-TSC) and the UEEF did recover Tirolian technology (at a minimum Bioroids) it put into use, all of which means the Drone in this scenario does not technically have to be of pure UEEF origin.

There is that, but the control system we see for the unmanned Legioss/Alpha earlier in the New Generation is the size of a panel van in and of itself and the entire cockpit is supposedly what was replaced with the computer controlling the fighter. Since maneuvering is already heavily computer-controlled even on the manned versions, that suggests the hardware necessary to actually make decisions and form inputs to the flight control system is substantial in size... and we know those AIs are still relatively basic and unreliable.

Maxwell's Drones you mean? That control center he had was managing multiple units, and likely handled a lot more tasks, so its size should be big. As for the Drone itself, they fly by Autopilot and are an obsolete system by that point (per dialogue). The Shadow Drones are ~15 years more advanced in terms of technology than Maxwell's Drones (assuming they pre-date the Invid Invasion, if they predate the deployment of the SDF-3 that adds ~10 years basically). We may not even need an "advanced" AI for the task at hand, theoretically they could be controlled via remote link (either back to the launching mecha or to another ship/facility) as the Invid don't generally seem to practice radio jamming ("Ghost Town" is the only instance, and even then seems to be limited in scope since the 4 VTs and Garfish could communicate via radio practically on top of them where the jamming signal should be the strongest).

The Conbat is an obsolete craft, or so it has been presented... and the ships used for the 2nd ERF and beyond are not equipped to carry them. Which is an awkward and unfortunately deficiency in operations when you think about it, unless the armaments the Conbat could carry for the role were either weaker than the reflex weapons used in the Macross Saga to the extent of not having a usefully high yield or were simply no longer available for some reason.

As for the Horizont's supposed and never-seen bomber configuration... that also doesn't actually exist in the animation, and most bombers are not set up to carry or use air-to-air weapons. Proposals like the Rockwell B-1R are extremely unusual in that regard. The same basic deal as the TLEAD/Beta, really.

Re: Conbat
Conbat being obsolete is only an issue if you want to consider only a narrow slice of the UEEF's timeline (2042-4), we also know the Conbat is used by the 10th MD prior to this in an action to retake Earth in 2038 and has been the UEEF's primary strike fighter/bomber until the re-introduction of the Beta. I agree it is awkward (and I suspect the Garfish could still launch/retrieve them with at best minor issues even in 2044 along with facilities like ALUCE or SSL), most of the issues that crop up are a result of trying to mish-mash things together based on the OSM as much as possible w/o due consideration and try to wave it away issues with the "technology backslide" that doesn't really hold up.

Re: Horizon.
That is straight from the Infopedia article, there are also other roles assigned to it. Now how the Horizon would be configured for any of these roles is a mystery, as such we can't be sure if it did not appear in the animation or not (ex. in Ep84 either its a new class of ship or the UEEF was operating Horizons w/o the bunkers & A/B, as shown during takeoff from the Lunar Base at the start of the episode, they are also seen at the end of the episode as the massed fleet approaches Earth. They aren't seen in Ep85 among the fleet or TSC, they might be an AE that HG had decided to go with).

While it is also true that MODERN bombers don't typically carry air-air weaponry. WWII bombers did (what you thought all those machineguns where for ground attack?). And WWII (or more specifically Normandy Invasion IIRC) has a strong influence on elements in GCM IINM. I would also add that if bombers are deployed for space combat and intended to engage other spacecraft, anything they use would have to be the equivalent for "air-air" (if attacking a celestial body, they can still do their air-ground attack from orbit).

[Seto Kaiba]

In which case we're left with a big ? given that Reflex Warheads aren't shown to be as effective in NG as TMS. Either the yield of the warheads being used is not 1:1 for NG as seen in TMS or the Invid have some resistance factor available to them.

As there is no evidentiary support in the OSM or Robotech for the Invit/Invid to have any kind of resistance to any specific class of weaponry, we can confidently disregard that hypothesis.

Which, of course, leaves the questions of why the reflex weapons in the comic are nowhere near as powerful or effective as those in the Macross Saga... and why they're abandoned altogether after the disastrous 1st ERF mission. IMO, the most likely explanation is that protoculture scarcity mandated a reduction in yield and the eventual abandonment of the technology. Of course, the OSM answer is that there were not ultracompact thermonuclear weapons in that setting and a regular nuke would've left radioactive fallout that would've been more harmful to humans than the Invit.

If Reflex Weapons are considered Eratz Nuclear Weapons, then we may have some evidence from TRM saga of objects being able to resist that level of destructiveness. "Hyper Cobalt" missiles are launched in Ep38 at a City Ship and don't do any noticeable damage (visually, dialogue says heavy damage inflicted), [...]

That would have to be a case of scientific illiteracy on the part of the writers, I'm afraid.

Cobalt is not radioactive, and cobalt's unstable isotope does not occur in nature and has a very short half life. It can't sustain a fission reaction on its own, and its only use in nuclear weapons is to salt warheads to increase the amount of radioactive fallout by using neutron flux to turn stable cobalt 59 into radioactive cobalt 60 which quickly decays into stable nickel 60. A cobalt bomb would be about the worst possible thing to shoot at a ship, especially in a surface defense role, since the blast yield would be low and radioactive particulate counts would be extremely high. In short, no damage to a warship but lots of personnel damage to the idiots on the ground who fired it.

That would, however, explain the entire Masters Saga... if the UEDF are all suffering impaired judgement because they're dying from radiation poisoning after trying to shoot down the Masters ships with dirty atomics.

I don't remember EVE having an android body in RT:TUS. EVE was a computer system with a computer generated avatar that appeared on monitors (like the stolen MODAT Landry came into possession of) as far as I can recall. I also can't see how the Sentinels characters could be the TUS characters (as ultimately depicted in 2027 IIRC, as originally intended during TMS-era IINM before the canon films rewrite I can but that would have been before the flop test screening).

Originally, Untold Story was supposed to be a Macross Saga side story that tied into Robotech II: the Sentinels. B.D. Andrews and EVE were supposed to join the cast of Sentinels and be regulars on that show. For that purpose, EVE was to be equipped with an android body. When Tatsunoko forced HG to retool the project, that link was severed and the idea was dropped, so Macek simply renamed the characters and carried on.

The thing is for this role, the AI really doesn't need to be as advanced as Jancie or EVE, since we don't need them to manipulate a computer generated images (holographic or on a monitor), have strong social skills, be able to sing (Janice does sing), etc. And we know the Haydonites and Sentinels (specifically the Kabarrans but...) by 2044 are involved with UEEF production of hardware (prelude for Sentinels, Haydonites-TSC) and the UEEF did recover Tirolian technology (at a minimum Bioroids) it put into use, all of which means the Drone in this scenario does not technically have to be of pure UEEF origin.

The problem is that the AI for something like a "Ghost missile" needs to be extremely compact, and able to perform target recognition, prioritization, and attack plotting autonomously.

The UEEF was struggling with those even on a basic level with the Shadow Drones, which have MUCH larger onboard computers. The tech level the UEEF left with had such poor autopilot capability that it couldn't quite manage the docking procedure for the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta even under test conditions.

Maxwell's Drones you mean? That control center he had was managing multiple units, and likely handled a lot more tasks, so its size should be big. As for the Drone itself, they fly by Autopilot and are an obsolete system by that point (per dialogue). The Shadow Drones are ~15 years more advanced in terms of technology than Maxwell's Drones (assuming they pre-date the Invid Invasion, if they predate the deployment of the SDF-3 that adds ~10 years basically). We may not even need an "advanced" AI for the task at hand, theoretically they could be controlled via remote link (either back to the launching mecha or to another ship/facility) as the Invid don't generally seem to practice radio jamming ("Ghost Town" is the only instance, and even then seems to be limited in scope since the 4 VTs and Garfish could communicate via radio practically on top of them where the jamming signal should be the strongest).

If you have to remotely operate your "Ghost missile", why not just have a regular missile or Ghost and not waste resources?

Re: Conbat
Conbat being obsolete is only an issue if you want to consider only a narrow slice of the UEEF's timeline (2042-4), we also know the Conbat is used by the 10th MD prior to this in an action to retake Earth in 2038 and has been the UEEF's primary strike fighter/bomber until the re-introduction of the Beta. I agree it is awkward (and I suspect the Garfish could still launch/retrieve them with at best minor issues even in 2044 along with facilities like ALUCE or SSL), most of the issues that crop up are a result of trying to mish-mash things together based on the OSM as much as possible w/o due consideration and try to wave it away issues with the "technology backslide" that doesn't really hold up.

Considering how little use the UEEF has for the Beta, that isn't exactly a glowing recommendation... it makes it sound like they traded one borderline useless piece of junk for another.

In the animation, the Covert and Condor are both predecessors to the Legioss (Alpha)... neither of them fills a role equivalent to the TLEAD (Beta).

Re: Horizon.
That is straight from the Infopedia article, there are also other roles assigned to it. Now how the Horizon would be configured for any of these roles is a mystery, as such we can't be sure if it did not appear in the animation or not (ex. in Ep84 either its a new class of ship or the UEEF was operating Horizons w/o the bunkers & A/B, as shown during takeoff from the Lunar Base at the start of the episode, they are also seen at the end of the episode as the massed fleet approaches Earth. They aren't seen in Ep85 among the fleet or TSC, they might be an AE that HG had decided to go with).

I know, and we know that the Infopedia is talking out of a decidedly unwholesome orifice on that front.

It's a transport shuttle, a freight hauler. It's definitely not set up for combat. It doesn't even have weapons, come to that. That's the whole reason that it carries a Legioss+TLEAD/Alpha+Beta to be its defense against Invit/Invid attacks. It's point-defenseless!

While it is also true that MODERN bombers don't typically carry air-air weaponry. WWII bombers did (what you thought all those machineguns where for ground attack?). And WWII (or more specifically Normandy Invasion IIRC) has a strong influence on elements in GCM IINM. I would also add that if bombers are deployed for space combat and intended to engage other spacecraft, anything they use would have to be the equivalent for "air-air" (if attacking a celestial body, they can still do their air-ground attack from orbit).

... please tell me this argument is in jest, and I don't have to explain the difference between point defense guns and offensive weaponry to you.

[Jefffar]

There are Modern Bombers capable of carrying offesnive air to air weaponry.

The Su-34 can carry the AA-10 and AA-12 air to air missiles, some versions of which have ranges inexcess of 100 miles.

[ShadowLogan]

That would have to be a case of scientific illiteracy on the part of the writers, I'm afraid.

Cobalt is not radioactive, and cobalt's unstable isotope does not occur in nature and has a very short half life. It can't sustain a fission reaction on its own, and its only use in nuclear weapons is to salt warheads to increase the amount of radioactive fallout by using neutron flux to turn stable cobalt 59 into radioactive cobalt 60 which quickly decays into stable nickel 60. A cobalt bomb would be about the worst possible thing to shoot at a ship, especially in a surface defense role, since the blast yield would be low and radioactive particulate counts would be extremely high. In short, no damage to a warship but lots of personnel damage to the idiots on the ground who fired it.

That would, however, explain the entire Masters Saga... if the UEDF are all suffering impaired judgement because they're dying from radiation poisoning after trying to shoot down the Masters ships with dirty atomics.

I agree the dialogue doesn't make any sense, though IIRC cobalt explosives also make an appearance in NG (want to say "Annie's Wedding"). So who knows just what is being actually referred to I admit, but if we take it as some type of real world analog, it's be in the nuclear category of weaponry. Though I don't think it operates in the traditional role to increase the radioactive fallout in the Robotech design (who knows what the effect would be with the McGuffin known as PC).

The only other things that it could be would be the name of the missile or some type of acronym (both also work with the dialogue). Though regardless we are looking at a potent warhead intended for anti-capital ship duty (per general dialogue, this would include Zentreadi), which likely means Reflex-level.

Then again from an RPG perspective, in these various instances maybe we are dealing with a non-critical strike roll combined with a low die roll for damage and did the equivalent of Roll with Damage (for cap. ships its a Dodge action to reduce damage, which is actually more effective than a normal Roll as its 1/3 in modified dodge vs 1/2 in normal Roll).

If you have to remotely operate your "Ghost missile", why not just have a regular missile or Ghost and not waste resources?

Recall the role of this system, as an Anti-formation weapon. The UEEF doesn't appear to have warheads in stock for this role by 2042, so we are subbing in being able to use a larger number of smaller attacks they do have. Given the survivability the unit it may be intended as a single use system, where the Ghost/SD is intended for reuse (which can make it more expensive on a per unit basis).

It's a transport shuttle, a freight hauler. It's definitely not set up for combat. It doesn't even have weapons, come to that. That's the whole reason that it carries a Legioss+TLEAD/Alpha+Beta to be its defense against Invit/Invid attacks. It's point-defenseless!

The C-130 is a freight hauler, but its also been converted into a gunship, a refueling tanker, an aerial firefighter, various surveillance types, search and rescue, and a few more roles. It has even acted as a "bomber" given that its dropped the GBU-43/MOAB. Most likely the Horizon's multi-roles are tied to the cargo pods and how they are configured, but a pod configured for offensive rolls is theoretically possible.

... please tell me this argument is in jest, and I don't have to explain the difference between point defense guns and offensive weaponry to you.

Partially in jest. And I do understand the difference in defensive vs offensive. What I am getting at though is since we are talking about a space role for a bomber, it would be acting in an "air-air" role if it attacked another object (that isn't a planet or moon) in space. Now the physics involved in such an attack aren't going to be a traditional "bombing run", its going to likely look more like a cruise missile launch which is a weapon system bombers use or possibly something done by a Torpedo Bomber-type (outdated by todays standards, but if WWII has an influence in the OSM this class was in use in WWII and would likely see a resurgence for space combat).

[glitterboy2098]

Iirc Cobalt grenades appear in the new gen episode "the fortress", where rand and Annie sneak into the invid hive to blow up the invid protoculture sensor (which turns out it be the hive's brain)

They were grenade sized cylinders with timers, and their explosions looked to be mini missile sized. Certainly not atomic scale. And the fact that rand and Annie were still in the same room when they set them off suggests that radiation and fallout probably wasn't a huge danger.

There apparently has been some research into conventional explosives made using cobalt compounds (Explosive Werner-type cobalt(iii) complexes according to some of the papers that pop up in Google) as an industrially simplier alternative to TNT and other modern explosives. Presumably these would be less radioactive isotopes of cobalt.



as far as the "hyper cobalt rockets" the ASC had.. when they get mentioned in ep58 "Final Nightmare" they are presented as a weapon of last resort (though the images seen do resemble the missiles fired in "False start" 20 episodes earlier.) It certainly seems possible that the ASC had enhanced radiological weaponry meant to be used to be a "big stick" to threaten the various feudal states Leonard implies to have existed as part of the UEG/ASC at the time. against the robotech masters such weapons would presumably have been considered as a denial weapon to destroy and radiologically deny sites of protoculture stockpiles and other locations that they believed the robotech masters wanted to seize.

as for the similarity to the missiles seen at the start of that portion of the show, i suspect that the actual ballistic missile bodies were a standard design, and they could be fitted with both a more conventional warhead (either large Explosive charge or a normal reflex warhead) and whatever enhanced warhead that the hyper cobalt weapons boasted. presumably a certain number of missiles were fitted with the latter types of warheads at any given time, and located in secure silo's with additional security and requiring special authorization for use.

[Seto Kaiba]

There are Modern Bombers capable of carrying offesnive air to air weaponry.

The Su-34 can carry the AA-10 and AA-12 air to air missiles, some versions of which have ranges inexcess of 100 miles.

Um... the Su-34 is a ground/surface attacker, not a bomber.

Like the proposed A-18 that became part of the F/A-18 or the A-10A, it can carry a small number of air-to-air missiles for self-defense.

Though regardless we are looking at a potent warhead intended for anti-capital ship duty (per general dialogue, this would include Zentreadi), which likely means Reflex-level.

In theory. In practice, it may simply be a powerful conventional warhead... and it may not even be powerful given that it doesn't seem to have actually done any meaningful damage to the ship it was fired at.

Recall the role of this system, as an Anti-formation weapon. The UEEF doesn't appear to have warheads in stock for this role by 2042, so we are subbing in being able to use a larger number of smaller attacks they do have. Given the survivability the unit it may be intended as a single use system, where the Ghost/SD is intended for reuse (which can make it more expensive on a per unit basis).

The problem is that there's nothing to deploy such a weapon from save for one of the larger warships, and those have other heavy weapons that really ought to be just as effective and more precise.

The C-130 is a freight hauler, but its also been converted into a gunship, a refueling tanker, an aerial firefighter, various surveillance types, search and rescue, and a few more roles. It has even acted as a "bomber" given that its dropped the GBU-43/MOAB. Most likely the Horizon's multi-roles are tied to the cargo pods and how they are configured, but a pod configured for offensive rolls is theoretically possible.

In theory. In practice, the role of air support for troops on the ground is already filled by the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta. The Invit/Invid don't use infantry, for the most part, and have little in the way of infrastructure to target with bombing raids, so there's practically no use for a traditional bomber. They ARE needed in their primary role as troop transports and landing craft since the pods that they carry can transport two dozen ground troops and all their equipment.

Partially in jest. And I do understand the difference in defensive vs offensive. What I am getting at though is since we are talking about a space role for a bomber, it would be acting in an "air-air" role if it attacked another object (that isn't a planet or moon) in space. Now the physics involved in such an attack aren't going to be a traditional "bombing run", its going to likely look more like a cruise missile launch which is a weapon system bombers use or possibly something done by a Torpedo Bomber-type (outdated by todays standards, but if WWII has an influence in the OSM this class was in use in WWII and would likely see a resurgence for space combat).

At that point, it's unnecessary in the face of larger warships with ship-to-ship missile launchers like the Garfish.

[Jefffar]

Um... the Su-34 is a ground/surface attacker, not a bomber

It's replacing the Tu-22M Backfire bomber, amoung other aircraft.

[ShadowLogan]

In theory. In practice, it may simply be a powerful conventional warhead... and it may not even be powerful given that it doesn't seem to have actually done any meaningful damage to the ship it was fired at.

While I agree it doesn't appear to have done any damage, I think we can rule conventional warhead option as very unlikely given the UEDF would likely have learned from past experiences (in TMS) as they are setup to handle the Zentreadi in 2029 and would know said option would not work (Ep16).

The problem is that there's nothing to deploy such a weapon from save for one of the larger warships, and those have other heavy weapons that really ought to be just as effective and more precise.

I agree the larger warships should be capable of doing more. As for being able to deploy the unit it really depends on what the requirements are that would drive the design and what this even looks like because we really haven't "defined it" beyond its a drone (likely single use) that is intended to bring a large number of available smaller munitions closer to a act as an anti-formation weapon and it either has an AI or is remote operated. We don't really know the size, so it is hard to say who/what can deploy it (to use a computer upgrade analogy, you're saying we can't upgrade an "old" computer with M.2 SSD even though neither of us has checked the Motherboard to see if it has a M.2 slot).

In theory. In practice, the role of air support for troops on the ground is already filled by the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta. The Invit/Invid don't use infantry, for the most part, and have little in the way of infrastructure to target with bombing raids, so there's practically no use for a traditional bomber. They ARE needed in their primary role as troop transports and landing craft since the pods that they carry can transport two dozen ground troops and all their equipment.

I agree the ship is presented as a primary troop transport, but in terms of a bombing actions there are several factors that could have made a Heavy Bomber variant of the Horizon attractive to the UEEF:
1. The Masters/Unknowns. Off hand I don't recall an entry-date for the Horizon-class, so it could have been conceived when there where a lot more unknowns and the focus wasn't the Invid.
2. In terms of raw carriage mass, a Horizon Bomber could deploy the bomb load of multiple Betas. The Beta's bomb capacity (internal, external maximum is not established AFAIK) is 4 metric tons in RT, with a dry mass of ~30tons. If each bunker is only capable of holding 1 Beta (you can get 3-4 by volume, so I'm under cutting capability here I know), that translates into 7 Beta's worth of bombs it could carry per wing in RT (6 in the OSM). If they could convert the A/B station to bomb carriage that's another 11 (Beta + Alpha mass / 4 tons).
3. The Horizon would have much greater flexibility in terms of bomb load, one of the restrictions mentioned is that internal carriage is restricted by the size of the bay doors (and the chutes). While animation doesn't suggest larger bombs are available to the UEEF, however the Sentinels designs for the UEEF version of the Monster Destroid give it two drum bombs (1E or 2E RPG). The Beta likely can not use those bombs (internally or externally as each has a mass of 2 tons), but a Horizon-based bomber can/could be made to easily enough. This also means you could free up Betas, Conbats, and other fighters from bomber duty.
4. While the Invid don't have traditional infrastructure to bomb, a heavy bomber would still be useful in attacking their Hives or their Force Fields. Given the Invid method to burry perimeter guards/ambushers, there could be underground infrastructure we haven't seen/heard about (requiring something more potent than the Beta's known ordnance). Given the buried nature of Hive defenders, a carpet bombing run might also be useful in clearing them out in advance of an attack (unlikely I admit due to Hive patrols). Against the Regent's Inorganics, which are known to advance in a mass formation (see Sentinels OVA) on the ground without air support leaves them vulnerable to a carpet bombing run.
5. A Horizon with Bomber Pods could swap spent ones for fresh ones if they are available, likely much faster than you could reload a single Beta by hand (never mind the numerical equivalent). Now if a fresh module isn't available is a different matter.
6. Once their troop landing duties are spent, it would free up the craft for other roles. While they could act as helicopter transports, they can also potentially take a more active role.

At that point, it's unnecessary in the face of larger warships with ship-to-ship missile launchers like the Garfish.

Sort of. It gets into a gray area actually due to the mixing of "Air Force" and "Navy" craft type classifications in a space battle. While smaller nimbler Air Force type classifications (your F-15s, F-16s, F-22s, A-10s, A-6s) easily mix, the more cumbersome type classifications (Bombers, Transports) end up with overlap with Naval craft type classification/roles. Bombers end up acting like "light" naval ships (Patrol craft, fast attack craft, minelayer, etc) in this environment due to the environment itself.

[Seto Kaiba]

It's replacing the Tu-22M Backfire bomber, amoung other aircraft.

In some roles, yes... in no small part because the Tu-22M is a half-century old strategic bomber that was problematic to operate even when it was new and isn't particularly well suited to operating as a tactical (light) bomber, an increasingly-important role that fell under the bomber type when it was new but has long since migrated into the attacker role.

While I agree it doesn't appear to have done any damage, I think we can rule conventional warhead option as very unlikely given the UEDF would likely have learned from past experiences (in TMS) as they are setup to handle the Zentreadi in 2029 and would know said option would not work (Ep16).

Y'know, these sitcom-tier jokes really don't work without the canned laughter.

I think we both probably agree the UEDF doesn't learn from its mistakes any more than the UEEF does.

I agree the ship is presented as a primary troop transport, but in terms of a bombing actions there are several factors that could have made a Heavy Bomber variant of the Horizon attractive to the UEEF:
1. The Masters/Unknowns. Off hand I don't recall an entry-date for the Horizon-class, so it could have been conceived when there where a lot more unknowns and the focus wasn't the Invid. [...]

IMO, the point in time when the Horizont was adopted by the military really doesn't matter. Its design, lacking in any kind of defenses beyond a "parasite" fighter for long-haul orbital insertion missions, shows that it wasn't intended to be a combat aircraft itself. It's 100% cargo hauler. Its closest modern equivalent is probably the Sikorsky S-64 or CH-54... especially in terms of being used to deliver a modular cargo pod containing personnel and/or supplies like the modular accommodation units the CH-54 was infamously used to haul.

Destroying infrastructure targets on the Masters homeworld would've been important, but that's where Betas and their napalm bombs and the SDF-3 and her orbital bombardment capabilities would be more useful, precise, and survivable than turning an unarmed troop lander into an ad hoc strategic bomber.

2. In terms of raw carriage mass, a Horizon Bomber could deploy the bomb load of multiple Betas. The Beta's bomb capacity (internal, external maximum is not established AFAIK) is 4 metric tons in RT, with a dry mass of ~30tons. If each bunker is only capable of holding 1 Beta (you can get 3-4 by volume, so I'm under cutting capability here I know), that translates into 7 Beta's worth of bombs it could carry per wing in RT (6 in the OSM). If they could convert the A/B station to bomb carriage that's another 11 (Beta + Alpha mass / 4 tons).

Oh, you're probably underselling it if anything.

But the problem is... those bombs have to come from somewhere. Even if the SDF-3 has munitions factories aboard, they need raw materials to make explosives from. It also means that every one of those bombers lost represents a massive loss of war materiel that could otherwise have armed dozens or hundreds of fighters. Not to mention bombing the Masters cities flat wouldn't make for an easy peace after the initial invasion. The UEEF's goal was to launch a preemptive strike to prevent a second invasion, not commit a genocide. The Beta's small incendiary payload would be a good deal more precise, though not nearly as precise as the VF-1's ability to drop laser-guided precision munitions.

3. The Horizon would have much greater flexibility in terms of bomb load, one of the restrictions mentioned is that internal carriage is restricted by the size of the bay doors (and the chutes). While animation doesn't suggest larger bombs are available to the UEEF, however the Sentinels designs for the UEEF version of the Monster Destroid give it two drum bombs (1E or 2E RPG). The Beta likely can not use those bombs (internally or externally as each has a mass of 2 tons), but a Horizon-based bomber can/could be made to easily enough. This also means you could free up Betas, Conbats, and other fighters from bomber duty.

There is that, but the UEEF doesn't really need a strategic bomber when it can call down an orbital bombardment under normal operating conditions and isn't exactly bent on mass destruction.

4. While the Invid don't have traditional infrastructure to bomb, a heavy bomber would still be useful in attacking their Hives or their Force Fields. Given the Invid method to burry perimeter guards/ambushers, there could be underground infrastructure we haven't seen/heard about (requiring something more potent than the Beta's known ordnance). Given the buried nature of Hive defenders, a carpet bombing run might also be useful in clearing them out in advance of an attack (unlikely I admit due to Hive patrols). Against the Regent's Inorganics, which are known to advance in a mass formation (see Sentinels OVA) on the ground without air support leaves them vulnerable to a carpet bombing run.

The problem there is that the Invit/Invid have the advantage of numbers on the ground and in the air, that the Horizont itself is a slow and ponderous aircraft that would be extremely vulnerable, and that the force fields in question have only been shown to be vulnerable to the synchrotron cannon (I forget the name of the RT equivalent).

5. A Horizon with Bomber Pods could swap spent ones for fresh ones if they are available, likely much faster than you could reload a single Beta by hand (never mind the numerical equivalent). Now if a fresh module isn't available is a different matter.

True, but one would assume a properly-equipped UEEF force would have autoloader carriages to replenish the Beta's bomb bay much more rapidly than hand-loading.

6. Once their troop landing duties are spent, it would free up the craft for other roles. While they could act as helicopter transports, they can also potentially take a more active role.

So, the problem with this is that Horizonts in the animation are too large to be carried aboard other ships. They fly to the area of operations independently, drop off their cargo, and then retreat. That means there's no option to free any given Horizont up for another role because no Horizont can carry more than two pods and going back for more means returning to space and the offworld staging area to pick up just two more. That means you either have to have a dedicated fleet of Horizonts doing nothing but ferry bomb loads down for other Horizonts to use, or you have a single-use bomber Horizont. Either way, you're wasting fuel, time, and resources.

(Of course, as poorly defended as the Horizont is, most Horizonts ended up being "single-use" anyway...)

Sort of. It gets into a gray area actually due to the mixing of "Air Force" and "Navy" craft type classifications in a space battle. While smaller nimbler Air Force type classifications (your F-15s, F-16s, F-22s, A-10s, A-6s) easily mix, the more cumbersome type classifications (Bombers, Transports) end up with overlap with Naval craft type classification/roles. Bombers end up acting like "light" naval ships (Patrol craft, fast attack craft, minelayer, etc) in this environment due to the environment itself.

Eh... not quite. Within the scope of the OSM and the animation, bomber aircraft don't overlap with light warships... they overlap with attackers, using heavy guided munitions for strikes on warships.

[ShadowLogan]

There is that, but the UEEF doesn't really need a strategic bomber when it can call down an orbital bombardment under normal operating conditions and isn't exactly bent on mass destruction.

Do they really though?

In terms of the 2E RPG the UEEF's only real OBWs would be Refex Cannons or Syncro-Cannons, the beam weapons on the Ikazuchi and Garfish (or shared UEDF-class ships) really don't have the same range as the Zentreadi ships so would require the ships to approach really close, and the Shimikazie is a recent development (it has better range than the Ikazuchi gun shared by the SDF-4, but still outclassed by Zentreadi systems). So the reality might be that the UEEF did not have a lot of OBWs available to them prior to Sycnro-Cannons, and the only known ship with a Reflex Cannon in human hands was the SDF-3 (post SDF-1) for 20 some years (2022-2042). And the SDF-3 can't be everywhere, which means UEEF operations can't depend on the OBWs going by the 2E PB RPG (the 1E PB RPG was a different beast as they are on par with edition Zentreadi weapons). Now Series RT it could be different, but given the lack of use in the animation it means they either can't or the range is drastically reduced compared to known Zentreadi ability.

In point of fact the only post Beam weapon style orbital bombardments used post TMS/RoD are: Syncro-Cannon in Prelude attacking Operta's Main Hive, by the Invid when they invaded Earth (ep61), use of Zentreadi ships to burry the SDF-1 in FTS IINM. If the UEEF has these weapons, they seem adverse to using them by all indications, which might make having something like a strategic bomber an attractive option.

The problem there is that the Invit/Invid have the advantage of numbers on the ground and in the air, that the Horizont itself is a slow and ponderous aircraft that would be extremely vulnerable, and that the force fields in question have only been shown to be vulnerable to the synchrotron cannon (I forget the name of the RT equivalent).

Synchroton = Destabilizer (though it might be a "mode" for the Syncrocannons, depending on the influence the OSM has in a more in depth classification)

While the Destabilizers can punch a hole in the barrier, it's a fairly recent (displayed) development (2044) that doesn't explain how the UEEF would tackle the issue prior (for 10th MD or 21st MD had they been successful for example). Orbital Bombardment is an option, but one the UEEF isn't exactly known to use.

As for using the Horizon to bomb targets, I was thinking it would use the fact it doesn't have an altitude limit to fly extremely high. This might put them out of detection range (I'm not counting on it), but most likely it would require the Invid to deploy specialized assets (like Booster Scouts), which an escort(s) might be able to protect them from. It potentially also opens up the use of bombs like JSOW (a glide bomb that from high altitude launch can strike a target 130km away, since a Horizon can fly higher than modern fighter/bombers it could potentially get even more range) which likely means its being released from outside the Hive detection perimeter. Due to the nature of the bombs the Invid might not even be able to detect them in route until its to late.

So, the problem with this is that Horizonts in the animation are too large to be carried aboard other ships. They fly to the area of operations independently, drop off their cargo, and then retreat. That means there's no option to free any given Horizont up for another role because no Horizont can carry more than two pods and going back for more means returning to space and the offworld staging area to pick up just two more. That means you either have to have a dedicated fleet of Horizonts doing nothing but ferry bomb loads down for other Horizonts to use, or you have a single-use bomber Horizont. Either way, you're wasting fuel, time, and resources.

Technically we've never seen it in Bomber configuration so the assumption it is using the Bunker Pods might be in error. They could use specialized racks or pods that are much smaller that mount externally (meaning each Cargo Bunker of bombs could support x-number of flights). They could also be a purpose built variant with internal capacity (the Alpha access room alone is more roomy than the Beta's bomb bay, plus comes with larger opening). Etc, we just don't know.

Eh... not quite. Within the scope of the OSM and the animation, bomber aircraft don't overlap with light warships... they overlap with attackers, using heavy guided munitions for strikes on warships.

Known (non-contested) Bomber Aircraft in the animation/OSM (Conbat, Beta) are more like Fighter-Bombers though which could be considered as attackers and do not really fit into a warship category based on size/tonnage. The thing is the contested Horizon bomber would fall under the heading of a (AF) heavy bomber, and its raw size/tonnage would place it as a (modern) Naval corvette-class, though weapon options (for a space battle) probably make them more like Missile Boats or Torpedo Boats (WWII).

[Seto Kaiba]

Do they really though?

Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles makes a pretty compelling argument for "Yes".

In terms of the 2E RPG [...]

So, yes... in terms of the RPG stats it's a problematic argument because Palladium's Robotech (and Macross II) game lines have a tendency to make human-built space warships much less capable than alien ones, even when there is no actual justification for doing so in-setting. It was especially blatant in the Macross II game, but is still quite noticeable in the Robotech game.

Now Series RT it could be different, but given the lack of use in the animation it means they either can't or the range is drastically reduced compared to known Zentreadi ability.

Or that they had more pressing concerns like swarms of incoming Invit/Invid that would have prevented them from supporting an orbital bombadrment...

Though it's worth noting that, as the flagship and primary troop carrier for the Expeditionary Forces, the SDF-3 would've been at the forefront of most UEEF operations and able to bring its bombardment weaponry to bear if necessary.

In point of fact the only post Beam weapon style orbital bombardments used post TMS/RoD are: Syncro-Cannon in Prelude attacking Operta's Main Hive, by the Invid when they invaded Earth (ep61), use of Zentreadi ships to burry the SDF-1 in FTS IINM. If the UEEF has these weapons, they seem adverse to using them by all indications, which might make having something like a strategic bomber an attractive option.

If mass destructon were actually a goal, certainly... but it doesn't appear to have been in the cards until the end of the 3rd Robotech War.

Most of the UEEF's weaponry shows a clear preference for precision over sheer destructive power. The Legioss/Alpha is configured to fight like an attack helicopter, with short-ranged low-yield missiles and a beam gunpod. The TLEAD/Beta's configured as a gun-attacker for strafing runs and low-altitude low yield bombing. The infantry are equipped with laser small arms and laser-guided missile launchers. Even the synchro cannon's advertised benefit is being more precise and efficient than the reflex cannons it was meant to replace, and we've seen that reflex cannons are used for precision orbital fire support in stories like Prelude. The RPG goes one further and includes the VF-1 in their inventory for its ability to deploy precision guided bombs, among other things.

Synchroton = Destabilizer (though it might be a "mode" for the Syncrocannons, depending on the influence the OSM has in a more in depth classification)

Nope... the Dark Legioss's gunpod is a Synchrotron cannon the same as the turret that featured earlier in the series. The RT version seems to have made it a different class of weapon for some reason.

While the Destabilizers can punch a hole in the barrier, it's a fairly recent (displayed) development (2044) that doesn't explain how the UEEF would tackle the issue prior (for 10th MD or 21st MD had they been successful for example). Orbital Bombardment is an option, but one the UEEF isn't exactly known to use.

Assuming such an obstacle was even present anywhere else...

As for using the Horizon to bomb targets, I was thinking it would use the fact it doesn't have an altitude limit to fly extremely high. This might put them out of detection range (I'm not counting on it), but most likely it would require the Invid to deploy specialized assets (like Booster Scouts), which an escort(s) might be able to protect them from. It potentially also opens up the use of bombs like JSOW (a glide bomb that from high altitude launch can strike a target 130km away, since a Horizon can fly higher than modern fighter/bombers it could potentially get even more range) which likely means its being released from outside the Hive detection perimeter. Due to the nature of the bombs the Invid might not even be able to detect them in route until its to late.

If you already have air superiority, why not just let the warships do it with greater precision and less need for resource-intensive manufactured munitions?

Known (non-contested) Bomber Aircraft in the animation/OSM (Conbat, Beta) are more like Fighter-Bombers though which could be considered as attackers and do not really fit into a warship category based on size/tonnage. The thing is the contested Horizon bomber would fall under the heading of a (AF) heavy bomber, and its raw size/tonnage would place it as a (modern) Naval corvette-class, though weapon options (for a space battle) probably make them more like Missile Boats or Torpedo Boats (WWII).

Modern tonnage classifications almost certainly do not apply... and it's smaller than the smallest regular escort.

[ShadowLogan]

Prelude to the Shadow Chronicles makes a pretty compelling argument for "Yes".

While Prelude has the retrofitted SDF-3 bombard Optera's Main Hive, it does not establish that it is/was common among the UEEF to use this tactic prior.

So, yes... in terms of the RPG stats it's a problematic argument because Palladium's Robotech (and Macross II) game lines have a tendency to make human-built space warships much less capable than alien ones, even when there is no actual justification for doing so in-setting. It was especially blatant in the Macross II game, but is still quite noticeable in the Robotech game.

I do not dispute Palladium's RPG accuracy, but by RAW the 1E Ikazuchi is far more capable of OBW than its 2E version. In a defensive role, a 1E Ik vs 1E Invid Transport has a range of 320,000km in space and can destroy 4 Transports per 15 seconds (average die roll), given the distance and speed of the transport that one Ikazuchi could shoot down ~25,758 (in ~26hrs), vs a 2E Ik vs 2E Invid Transport has a range of 384km in space and can destroy 2 Transports per 15 seconds (average die roll), given the distance and speed of that one Ikazuchi could shoot down ~1 (in ~0.003hr or ~10seconds). And technically I'm short selling the 1E Ik as I omit the Big Laser in the nose and its Missiles in the above.

1E RT Human ships aren't sold short, the REF's 3 ships (SDF-3, Garfish, Ikazuchi) all have Zentreadi equivalent weapons. The only vessels in REF service w/o Zentreadi equivalent weapons are the Horizon-T Shuttle and the Haydonite Shuttle. The ASC books only cover their shuttles, though what they refer to specifically (vs in the Infoepdia or 2E) is hard to say IMHO so they may or may not have sold them short. 2E they sell everyone short, even the Zentreadi.

Or that they had more pressing concerns like swarms of incoming Invit/Invid that would have prevented them from supporting an orbital bombadrment...

Though it's worth noting that, as the flagship and primary troop carrier for the Expeditionary Forces, the SDF-3 would've been at the forefront of most UEEF operations and able to bring its bombardment weaponry to bear if necessary.

Which means either their OBWs are extremely short range (compared to the Zentreadi) or they don't really have them in the series. But if they did have it they should have used it to shoot down Invid Transports at Launch (Ep61, Invasion Comic #1), they would have destroyed the Invid Broadcast Towers ("Ghost Town"), they would have used them to "soften up" the Invid prior to moving forces in. They didn't bring the SDF-3 along for 10th MD or 21st MD either by all indications, nor to help defend the Earth in 2029-30 (and LLA I would suspect).

and we've seen that reflex cannons are used for precision orbital fire support in stories like Prelude.

Typo? I think you mean Syncro Cannons, Reflex Cannons are never used in Prelude. Or do you mean Invasion's sidestory (which I confused with FTS for some reason).

Nope... the Dark Legioss's gunpod is a Synchrotron cannon the same as the turret that featured earlier in the series. The RT version seems to have made it a different class of weapon for some reason.

RT making them a different class of weapon is why I suggested the Disrupter might be a "mode" for the Syncrocannons based on the OSM and HGs desire to "conform" to it. Personally I don't mind that HG split them.

If you already have air superiority, why not just let the warships do it with greater precision and less need for resource-intensive manufactured munitions?

For an organization that utilizes missiles to such an extreme (Condor has 40+, Alpha ~60, Beta 56), I don't think we can play the manufacture card at this point. If it was such an issue, the UEEF mecha wouldn't sport such large payloads and would have instead focused more on beam weapons.

I agree a warship could do the job, provided one is available and has the technical capability to actually carry out the mission. Aside from the RPGs we don't really have an idea of the range/power of available weapons (aside from Reflex/Syncro-Cannons).

Modern tonnage classifications almost certainly do not apply... and it's smaller than the smallest regular escort.

I don't know if the modern tonnage classifications apply or not I admit. However of the ships we have official dimensions/masses on all are Cruiser-types or "Battle Fortresses" or "Carriers" for human ships, no Corvettes. Pretty hard to say if an Armed Horizon could play the role of a light/small warship class as we don't have any to actually compare it to*.

*

Spoiler:

Technically the 2E RPG in the fluff text describes the Tirolian Bioroid Troop Carrier (Masters SB pg254m) as a corvette-class, though in the more formal stat blocks the type/model doesn't consider it as one. By Mass the Horizon and this ship are w/n spitting distance of each other. Weapons, well we'd have to agree on what option(s) exist for the Horizon when it is equipped with weapon system(s) it can use (aside from impromptu showings by carried mecha/vehicles (like the Hoverplatform Syncrocannon, UEEF Destroids, etc). And I doubt we'd be able to agree on the later.

I did check the RT.com Infopedia to see if it could clarify things a bit, and of the 3 Tirolian vessels it lists a Heavy Cruiser, the City Ship, and a multi-purpose vessel (based on the description it isn't the Bioroid Carrier in question, one seen in the Animation, "Half-Moon" IINM). So no help there.

[Seto Kaiba]

While Prelude has the retrofitted SDF-3 bombard Optera's Main Hive, it does not establish that it is/was common among the UEEF to use this tactic prior.

There's nothing in there to suggest that such a fire support operation was in any way unusual... beyond Janice using herself to designate the fire zone.

I do not dispute Palladium's RPG accuracy, but by RAW the 1E Ikazuchi is far more capable of OBW than its 2E version.

That's fine and all, but while HG policed the fluff and basic statistical data the weapon ranges and damage numbers are just as arbitrary in 2E as they were back in 1E.

Which means either their OBWs are extremely short range (compared to the Zentreadi) or they don't really have them in the series. But if they did have it they should have used it to shoot down Invid Transports at Launch (Ep61, Invasion Comic #1), they would have destroyed the Invid Broadcast Towers ("Ghost Town"), they would have used them to "soften up" the Invid prior to moving forces in. They didn't bring the SDF-3 along for 10th MD or 21st MD either by all indications, nor to help defend the Earth in 2029-30 (and LLA I would suspect).

We do see the 3rd ERF flotilla using its cannons to destroy Invit/Invid Shelldo transports in Ep25/85... which demonstrates they do have the capability for long-ranged precision strikes. We can only assume they were either caught completely off-guard by the Invit/Invid attack at the start of the series or that they were using those weapons offscreen.

Typo? I think you mean Syncro Cannons, Reflex Cannons are never used in Prelude. Or do you mean Invasion's sidestory (which I confused with FTS for some reason).

Ah, you're right... "synchro cannons". So much of what's in the New Gen-based materials for RT ends up being "distinction without difference".

It's still a valid question. How would the UEEF have tackled a Force Field prior to the introduction of Destrablizer-class weapons? The UEEF knows the technology is possible since 2009 (SDF-1 had 2 barriers, and post 2030 they'd know about the Masterse). The Invid are known to have the technology at least as far back as 2038 (Invasion Comic #4, the Condor panels). If the UEEF didn't know the Invid had Force Fields why would they have developed this class of weapon?

Whether the barrier technology the humans recovered from Zor's battlefortress works anything like the barriers the Masters use or the Invid forcefields is a question without an answer...

However, as the only hive shown to have those defenses is Reflex Point it seems unlikely that they would've run up against it before. Especially given that their countermeasure for that was retconned to be alien technology they did not fully understand rather than something they developed themselves.

For an organization that utilizes missiles to such an extreme (Condor has 40+, Alpha ~60, Beta 56), I don't think we can play the manufacture card at this point. If it was such an issue, the UEEF mecha wouldn't sport such large payloads and would have instead focused more on beam weapons.

I think we can, because we're talking about orders of magnitude in the difference between these small, ultra-light missiles the mecha use and the classes of munitions necessary for a strategic bombardment. It's like saying there's no difference between manufacturing a 9x19mm pistol round and a 16 inch naval cannon round.

I don't know if the modern tonnage classifications apply or not I admit. However of the ships we have official dimensions/masses on all are Cruiser-types or "Battle Fortresses" or "Carriers" for human ships, no Corvettes. Pretty hard to say if an Armed Horizon could play the role of a light/small warship class as we don't have any to actually compare it to*.

Of course, a large part of the problem there is that the ships in MOSPEADA are not designed to be a space fleet filling equiavlent roles to a blue water Navy's ships. The Ikazuchi-type is the only actual warship present. The inspiration for all of this was the D-Day landings in World War II. As such, the Horizont descent shuttles are effectively assault landing craft like the LCAs used on D-Day, while the Garfish-type are literally munitions and supply transport ships.

The only one of the original three shows used to make Robotech that had a real world-analogous fleet structure was Macross, on both sides. The Zentradi had a battleship-oriented fleet structure while the UN Forces had a carrier-oriented one.

[ShadowLogan]

There's nothing in there to suggest that such a fire support operation was in any way unusual... beyond Janice using herself to designate the fire zone.

&

We do see the 3rd ERF flotilla using its cannons to destroy Invit/Invid Shelldo transports in Ep25/85... which demonstrates they do have the capability for long-ranged precision strikes. We can only assume they were either caught completely off-guard by the Invit/Invid attack at the start of the series or that they were using those weapons offscreen.

There's nothing to suggest these are examples of normal operation either prior to the introduction of Synchro-cannons in 2043-4. While Reflex Cannons are in the UEEF inventory, they do not appear to be as numerous/common as the Synchro-cannon, and we know the RF don't have the scalability and precision of the SC. All you've established is that the UEEF doctrine in 2043-4 has expanded capability compared to 2042 and earlier, not that they did this as regular operations prior.

However, as the only hive shown to have those defenses is Reflex Point it seems unlikely that they would've run up against it before. Especially given that their countermeasure for that was retconned to be alien technology they did not fully understand rather than something they developed themselves.

This is not accurate. Chronologically in terms of media appearance Invid Force Fields:
-"Eulogy" has the Invid Hive with force fields protecting the entrances (it took them by surprise as one guy became trapped in the field, a new role perhaps) circa 2042-3
-"Reflex Point"/"Symphony of Light" at Reflex Point circa 2044
-Invasion Comic #4 (pgs are not #) when the Condor Battloids attack the Hive (not Reflex Point as they are in SA) one panel has a shot being stopped by the barrier and another with a Condor crashing into it. This would be circa 2038. Though why the Garfish wasn't smashed on the force field upon approach I don't know (same issue appears for the one in "Ghost Town").

I think one of the problems is that Reflex Point came under attack by a massive number of troops, in relation to other Hive attacks we see carried out by Scott's group. 4 Veritech Fighters and a Jeep (and/or a Garfish) might not qualify as a "activate force field" level threat by Invid thinking, but a mass charge of cyclones on the ground with a large number of air support (by Condor or Alphas) would.

I think we can, because we're talking about orders of magnitude in the difference between these small, ultra-light missiles the mecha use and the classes of munitions necessary for a strategic bombardment. It's like saying there's no difference between manufacturing a 9x19mm pistol round and a 16 inch naval cannon round.

I agree there is a difference between the individual types of ordnance they would have to produce, but the fact the UEEF is so invested in this type of projectile weapons shows it wouldn't be the show stopper you want it to be. If the UEEF is so concerned about the logistics of supporting a given platform, they wouldn't have their mecha sporting such large numbers of missiles (by my count there are at least 5x different sizes in use: 60mm, 78mm, 190mm, 340mm, 560mm, plus the Garfish and Shim.-class ship's missiles). Plus the UEEF (via Sentinels materials) already supports that they produce two classes of bomb:
-the Beta's that it carries internally (to small IMHO)
-the UEEF Version of the Monster Destroid sports 2x drum bombs (which could be modified with kits for use use by other platforms and to increase accuracy), the RPG lists 2 ton weight/mass per. The 80s designed look is used in LLA (background), so if the 1E RPG is correct about the basic loadout it carries 2x bombs (REF Field Guide identified them in lineart, now if that lineart is official or PB-lineart I don't know though usually PB lineart is signed and official lineart is not and this is not signed). Depending on how the UEEF Marines version of the Monster was supposed to integrate with canon that might give a 3rd.

Theoretically speaking they might also be able to adapt missile shells for bombs (replace the propulsion motor with extra explosive material) that they produce, which would cut down on the "new" production aspect they would need.

Of course, a large part of the problem there is that the ships in MOSPEADA are not designed to be a space fleet filling equiavlent roles to a blue water Navy's ships. The Ikazuchi-type is the only actual warship present. The inspiration for all of this was the D-Day landings in World War II. As such, the Horizont descent shuttles are effectively assault landing craft like the LCAs used on D-Day, while the Garfish-type are literally munitions and supply transport ships.

I agree the OSM roles for these craft is different than it's use in RT. However if the Horizon shuttles in a given configuration can act as LCAs of D-Day, then it stands that different configuration of the Horizon shuttle could also act as the WWII equivalent of a PT Boat (possibly even a heavier type) or bomber (though its theoretical capacity would dwarf even modern heavy bombers) depending on the environment.

For a laugh I noticed something while trying to check on the Sentinels Monster Destroid I stumbled across this that goes here...

Spoiler:

On the Sentinels DVD (Legacy Edition Extras) in the Animation Model Sheets Mecha sub-section, #8/46 has a Ship Size Relation Chart.

Apparently based on this:
-SDF-4 is a Battleship
-Ikazuchi is a Cruiser
-Garfish is a Destroyer
-Horizon it a Frigate.

It also includes quantity numbers (x#) and lengths (#m).

[xunk16]

However, as the only hive shown to have those defenses is Reflex Point it seems unlikely that they would've run up against it before. Especially given that their countermeasure for that was retconned to be alien technology they did not fully understand rather than something they developed themselves.

This is not accurate. Chronologically in terms of media appearance Invid Force Fields:
-"Eulogy" has the Invid Hive with force fields protecting the entrances (it took them by surprise as one guy became trapped in the field, a new role perhaps) circa 2042-3
-"Reflex Point"/"Symphony of Light" at Reflex Point circa 2044
-Invasion Comic #4 (pgs are not #) when the Condor Battloids attack the Hive (not Reflex Point as they are in SA) one panel has a shot being stopped by the barrier and another with a Condor crashing into it. This would be circa 2038. Though why the Garfish wasn't smashed on the force field upon approach I don't know (same issue appears for the one in "Ghost Town").

I think one of the problems is that Reflex Point came under attack by a massive number of troops, in relation to other Hive attacks we see carried out by Scott's group. 4 Veritech Fighters and a Jeep (and/or a Garfish) might not qualify as a "activate force field" level threat by Invid thinking, but a mass charge of cyclones on the ground with a large number of air support (by Condor or Alphas) would.

Simple weight / mass / acceleration limit. The Invid force field is explained as being something that can be overloaded. Usually by using enough energy on enough of its surface. Notably with explosions in most cases. But energy blast in sufficiently numerous numbers could do the trick. A garrfish is just big enough to crack it's potential. A Condor would not. A bit like you can do magnetic levitation, but only under a certain weight on a certain field.
From there, there is two possibilities. Either there is a fuse like mechanism and the shield is deactivated when something too big or too fast happens (to prevent explosions and overloads à la Dune...), or the garfish is simply too much and the shield fails on contact, even at slower speeds.

[Seto Kaiba]

There's nothing to suggest these are examples of normal operation either prior to the introduction of Synchro-cannons in 2043-4.

Can't see a reason why they wouldn't be... especially since the Zentradi are the ones who wrote the book on space warfare in-setting and it was their favorite trick.

This is not accurate. Chronologically in terms of media appearance Invid Force Fields: [...]

So, all on Earth... making them the exception to the UEEF's encounters with the Invid.

I agree there is a difference between the individual types of ordnance they would have to produce, but the fact the UEEF is so invested in this type of projectile weapons shows it wouldn't be the show stopper you want it to be. If the UEEF is so concerned about the logistics of supporting a given platform, they wouldn't have their mecha sporting such large numbers of missiles [...]

Assuming, of course, that those different sizes actually exist in animation... several don't.

Taking a proper animation-focused view of things is massively simpler than the overcomplicated Robotech fanfic materials make it.

I agree the OSM roles for these craft is different than it's use in RT. However if the Horizon shuttles in a given configuration can act as LCAs of D-Day, then it stands that different configuration of the Horizon shuttle could also act as the WWII equivalent of a PT Boat (possibly even a heavier type) or bomber (though its theoretical capacity would dwarf even modern heavy bombers) depending on the environment.

... that doesn't follow even a little, though.

Nothing about a craft designed for efficient and rapid delivery of troops over short distances says "patrol craft" or "heavy bomber". It'd be an especially poor choice for a patrol craft or escort since the damned thing has no defensive ability whatsoever.

[ShadowLogan]

Can't see a reason why they wouldn't be... especially since the Zentradi are the ones who wrote the book on space warfare in-setting and it was their favorite trick.

I agree the UEEF (and UEDF: ASC) should have learned a lot from the Zentreadi playbook. But just because they would know about the "trick" doesn't mean they would be able to execute it as effectively or at all (beyond just the SDF-3 until the introduction of the Syncro-cannon).

So, all on Earth... making them the exception to the UEEF's encounters with the Invid.

But what do we really have in a canon sense for the Regent's Invid?

Assuming, of course, that those different sizes actually exist in animation... several don't.

While the sizes might be off, going by just the depictions one can produce a similarly long list:
-Cyclone RL-6 and GR-103 (IINM they fire the same missile body)
-Cyclone GR-97 (distinct from the previous due to the large fins and long-thin body, the previous Cyclone is more squat with "tiny" if any fins)
-Alpha's main missiles (IINM the Beta's AE missiles duplicate these)
-Alpha's head missiles might be different (I know by the OSM they are an AE, but they are in the animation and canon to RT)
-Beta's any-mode missile bank (lineart has these as very "spherical" where the Alphas are a stack of tubes)
-Garfish's Missile
-while non-animated, you also have the Conbat's missiles (lineart) that was used in the comics (Invasion)
-based on the lineart, the missiles Lunk fires from his AAT-30 (Ep84, the infamous "eat laser" missiles). I'm going to assume they are the same as his intro/flashback M-70 Kodiak's battery (that doesn't fire), though if they aren't and they are as the 2E RPG stated an MRM bank that would be another one.

That's 8 missile types based on animation/comics that would be connected to the UEEF. And this doesn't count the AotSC's 560mm Beta Option OR the Shimakazie-class battery (I don't recall it being used in the animation, but it's supposed to have a battery of them). The Infopedia also gives the Tokagawa-class and Tri-Star-class (noted as a REF vessel*) an assortment of launchers. It also ignores any potential contribution from the "Sentinels Destroids" or other mecha (for ex. the Condor, OSM Liberty Fighter, Wolf's flashback fighter, Point-K fighter) that HG could expand-upon (as unlikely as that is).

*

Spoiler:

Given this bit in the Infopedia it might provide the solution to the UEEF ship schizophrenia from the OSM intended role vs the RT role. The TRM Tri-star (and likely sister classes) form the (numerical) backbone of the UEEF Fleet Warships, with the NG ships being the "planetary invasion" landing ships types. The UEEF just never bothered to deploy the real warships to Earth for some reason to support them on approach (must be to busy dealing with those Space Pirates).

Nothing about a craft designed for efficient and rapid delivery of troops over short distances says "patrol craft" or "heavy bomber". It'd be an especially poor choice for a patrol craft or escort since the damned thing has no defensive ability whatsoever.

If one was to suggest going on patrol in the configuration of a cargo carrier I would agree. However, the Horizon's modular bunker pods would likely be replaced with mission specific modular pods or manufactured variants with those roles in mind. Have you ever considered that the UEEF could trade the "cargo" of a Horizon-T for weapon systems** or powerful electronic systems (for various roles, it could literally transport Macross Saga's ES-11 AND EC-33B by mass at the same time in 1x pod with room to spare). It could also act like the USS Akron and Macon (patrol craft equipped with parasite fighters, the pods would have to bring the self defense guns), each Pod can easily accommodate 3 F-mode Alphas (switch to Battloid and you can x2 that) without stacking them on top of each other.

Now I know your looking for evidence of these actually in use, and there really isn't any aside from the vague mention about it in the Infoepdia.

**

Spoiler:

Some back of the envelope figures based on the 1E PB RPG's lift capacity of 300tons per pod (VOLUME IS NOT CONSIDERED):
-~30x instances of the VHT-1's weapon package (all 3 guns)
-~17x Alpha's weapon package (all)
-~230 of the Silverback weapon options
-~13x pair of Phalanx Artillery Rockets
-~13x pair of UEDF Defender Destroid M-996
-~21x pair of UEEF HLC-90 (Bioroid Interceptor)
-150x of the UEEF Monster's drum bombs or 75x the listed internal capacity of the Beta, lose some for deployment mechanisms and carriage but
-a post 2043 option, but the Syncro-Cannon-sized roughly from the Hoverplatform (Ep83) should fit, you can likely get more than one

Note on Mecha weapon systems, for quick easy use I am going to assume that the dry mass of the mecha is used to mount/control/power them. The reality is though you can likely get more as I'm over estimating the required mass to support them in this role. Then again I am also ignoring available volume so there might be some reduction.

Most of the above options would make for a decent self defense package from enemy mecha/fighters.

Based on rough dimensions (length x height, using the Infopedia Size Chart), the Garfish-class weapons will fit along the length of the cargo pod, though you might not get the same number of barrels/tubes as the Garfish per. The Tri-star (or its smaller cousins in the ASC) might also have weapons that will fit. Mass of individual systems is an issue, which is why I separated it.

Not using the wing pods, you might even be able to fit in the Garfish Turret in place of the A/B station, mass of the turret would be an issue (I have no idea what percentage of mass the turret represents). Though I suppose the UEEF could go with a new turret instead of repurposing the Garfish. Powering it might be an issue.

EDIT: I would also add that there is some precedent for the UEEF to use a "modular" approach to its ships and mecha (Alpha/Beta, FAST Packs for the VFs). The Garfish is stated to also be modular and shown as such due to the science vessel configuration deployed with the SDF-3 in Prelude/TSC, though AFAIK this is not the case in the OSM. Precedent then exists for the modular approach to be used on the Horizon-T as indicated to expand its roles as mentioned in the Infopedia writeup, in fact the Horizon-V version is even more modular than the -T version.

[glitterboy2098]

I would point out that aircraft designed for delivery of cargo and troops have historically made very good bombers and attack craft. The C-130 was designed to be a pure cargo plane.. but the AC-130 gunship is one of the most effective ground attack aircraft in existence. Most of the early WW2 bombers started as cargo planes or airliners.

Just because the horizon-t isn't armed in itself doesn't mean anything role wise. Especially with modular pod based payloads. Need a gunship? Equip a gunship pod. Need electronic warfare? Equip an EWAR pod. Need a heavy bomber? Equip a bomb bay pod.Etc.combat centric pods can easily include point defense turrets and missile batteries to give the shuttle defenses to handle those combat roles.
It really is no different from having a cargo pod vs an infantry pod vs a mecha pod for transport. Heck even then, you can have specialized non-combat pods. A field hospital pod. A field kitchen pod. A barracks pod. A forward refuel and rearmament pod. A couple horizon-T shuttles could deploy an entire modular prefab field base in minutes.

[Zer0 Kay]

I would point out that aircraft designed for delivery of cargo and troops have historically made very good bombers and attack craft. The C-130 was designed to be a pure cargo plane.. but the AC-130 gunship is one of the most effective ground attack aircraft in existence. Most of the early WW2 bombers started as cargo planes or airliners.

Just because the horizon-t isn't armed in itself doesn't mean anything role wise. Especially with modular pod based payloads. Need a gunship? Equip a gunship pod. Need electronic warfare? Equip an EWAR pod. Need a heavy bomber? Equip a bomb bay pod.Etc.combat centric pods can easily include point defense turrets and missile batteries to give the shuttle defenses to handle those combat roles.
It really is no different from having a cargo pod vs an infantry pod vs a mecha pod for transport. Heck even then, you can have specialized non-combat pods. A field hospital pod. A field kitchen pod. A barracks pod. A forward refuel and rearmament pod. A couple horizon-T shuttles could deploy an entire modular prefab field base in minutes.

Lol, I did exactly this, going so far as to have pods already made up for the players.

I guess mine would be a Horizon-U... maybe V. Instead of the ejectable cockpit it had a docked Legios as the control unit, the neck was a thinner solid piece and the was no Cyclone bays inside. The section that was a dock for a Legios on the Horizon-t was turned into a dual core rotating dock for a dorsal and ventral Spartan the dorsal Spartan is mounted upside down (not bad in space, sucks in a gravity well). I figured if the ship is supposed to be a shuttle and not an FTL transport then there is no reason to have the passages to move from one location to another internally. The pods I had statted out were:
Gunship (mounting mostly energy weapons and a couple railguns)
Missile (variable load outs from A Neutron-S to thousands of mini-missiles)
Cyclone Drop Pods (two decks opening the sides and bottom to air drop the cyclones paratrooper style)
Mecha hangars
Veritech Launch Bays (not able to recover, launching alphas out the side)
Rapid Deployment Base components (different pods for various buildings like walls, ATC, radar, armory, etc.)
I didn't have one's stated out for ELINT, EW but now that you mention it that would make sense... so now I will.

Edit: Nope, apparently I did have that idea too, just never wrote it up . viewtopic.php?f=8&t=115534&p=2221885&hilit=horizont#p2221885
Here is what I had written up. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=144666&p=2814876&hilit=horizont#p2814876

[Seto Kaiba]

I agree the UEEF (and UEDF: ASC) should have learned a lot from the Zentreadi playbook. But just because they would know about the "trick" doesn't mean they would be able to execute it as effectively or at all (beyond just the SDF-3 until the introduction of the Syncro-cannon).

I don't see anything stopping them... it certainly worked on Optera.

But what do we really have in a canon sense for the Regent's Invid?

We've got Prelude, which is enough to show their default alignment is Chaotic Stupid and that they're just a less effective version of the Regess's forces.

While the sizes might be off, going by just the depictions one can produce a similarly long list:

Several of those don't actually exist in the official spec and/or animation... but I think I got my point across that it's not THAT many different types of munitions.

Spoiler:

Given this bit in the Infopedia it might provide the solution to the UEEF ship schizophrenia from the OSM intended role vs the RT role. The TRM Tri-star (and likely sister classes) form the (numerical) backbone of the UEEF Fleet Warships, with the NG ships being the "planetary invasion" landing ships types. The UEEF just never bothered to deploy the real warships to Earth for some reason to support them on approach (must be to busy dealing with those Space Pirates).

As I've been stolidly pointing out, the problem isn't with how these ships and weapons are shown to operate in the series... it's with the fan-made material that attempts to force them into roles they were never intended to fill.

There is nothing at all "schizophrenic" about the Mars Base/UEEF ships... they were never a space fleet to begin with, and there was never any reason for them to be even in Robotech. They're a planetary assault force that sails directly from a staging area to the target and attacks. They're not loitering out in deep space for months or years at a time. There's also no reason to have any space warships because the enemy doesn't have any either.

Spoiler:

As for the Tristar-class and Tokugawa-class ships, as they're not present when the UEEF returns en masse to face the Invid in Ep84/85, the most likely explanation is that they either never existed since their presence is alluded to only in fan-made material or they simply got bodied so hard they don't exist anymore like what happens to the Tokugawa-class ships in each appearance they make. As "effective" as they were shown to be, presumably the after-action review was set to Yakity Sax.

If one was to suggest going on patrol in the configuration of a cargo carrier I would agree. However, the Horizon's modular bunker pods would likely be replaced with mission specific modular pods or manufactured variants with those roles in mind. Have you ever considered that the UEEF could trade the "cargo" of a Horizon-T for weapon systems** or powerful electronic systems [...]

While this is certainly possible in a strictly theoretical sense, have you ever stopped to consider that there is absolutely zero reason for this to ever be done in-series?

For starters, the Horizont isn't designed for long-distance spaceflight. It's meant to move troops from a staging area to a combat zone across relatively short distances.

Second, and no less important, is the fact that while you could stick modified cargo pods onto a Horizont in a bid to convert it into an ad hoc gunship or electronic warfare craft the roles that it could fill are either already covered by smaller and more agile craft that can do the same job better or are simply irrelevant:

• The CAS gunship role is already filled twice over by the Legioss/Alpha (a helicopter gunship analogue) and TLEAD/Beta (a CAS attacker with three heavy rotary cannons).
• The light bomber/ground/surface attacker role is already filled by the TLEAD/Beta with its internally-carried bombs for low-altitude precision strikes.
• There's no need for an electronic warfare craft when the enemy don't use conventional means to communicate or detect and track hostiles. There's no radio or radar to jam or intercept.
• There's no need for a strategic bomber because the Invit/Invid aren't individually sentient and thus can't be demoralized by carpet bombings and they don't have any infrastructure to target that'd diminish their ability to make war.

EDIT: I would also add that there is some precedent for the UEEF to use a "modular" approach to its ships and mecha (Alpha/Beta, FAST Packs for the VFs). The Garfish is stated to also be modular and shown as such due to the science vessel configuration deployed with the SDF-3 in Prelude/TSC, though AFAIK this is not the case in the OSM. Precedent then exists for the modular approach to be used on the Horizon-T as indicated to expand its roles as mentioned in the Infopedia writeup, in fact the Horizon-V version is even more modular than the -T version.

Given that said "modularity" consisted of nothing more than exchanging the hangar block for a sensor array, that's not much of an argument for "modularity".

[Zer0 Kay]

While this is certainly possible in a strictly theoretical sense, have you ever stopped to consider that there is absolutely zero reason for this to ever be done in-series? Just as in series there would have been zero reason to use shadow tech... except it works. There is zero reason to do any new concept... unless it works.

For starters, the Horizont isn't designed for long-distance spaceflight. It's meant to move troops from a staging area to a combat zone across relatively short distances.
And what is that range and what is the range of a Legios?

Second, and no less important, is the fact that while you could stick modified cargo pods onto a Horizont in a bid to convert it into an ad hoc gunship or electronic warfare craft the roles that it could fill are either already covered by smaller and more agile craft that can do the same job better or are simply irrelevant:

And while you could convert it into an ad hoc, why wouldn't said ad hoc not be turned into prototype then into defacto modular gunship and ew pods?

• The CAS gunship role is already filled twice over by the Legioss/Alpha (a helicopter gunship analogue) TLEAD/Beta (a CAS attacker with three heavy rotary cannons).
  That is like arguing that an Apache, Cobra or Thunderbolt II fills the role of a Spooky or Spectre
• The light bomber/ground/surface attacker role is already filled by the TLEAD/Beta with its internally-carried bombs for low-altitude precision strikes.
  Cargo bays full of bombs is hardly comparable to a light bomber, A Horizont with bomb bay pods would have a greater capacity than a B-52 with longer range than a Beta. Heck with its trans atmospheric capabilities it has a longer range, longer linger time and faster response time than any modern bomber. I hope you aren't equating the size of the munition to an aircraft either being a Light (tactical) bomber or a Heavy (strategic bomber). It is payload and range and use that is the primary difference. Because of payload strategic (light) bombers are usually... always more agile but it wasn't a thing about hey lets develop a more agile bomber that does... Heck with the B-1 it isn't even much of a difference in speed. In context the role of tactical bombers is made moot by artillery with sufficient range, short time on target and high accuracy, the ability to change targets enroot would also kill the roll of tactical bombers on the other hand doing the same thing with strategic bombers would require a large number of the same weapons.
• There's no need for an electronic warfare craft when the enemy don't use conventional means to communicate or detect and track hostiles. There's no radio or radar to jam or intercept.
  Wait so what do they detect from the protoculture? If it isn't some sort of energy emission then it must be chemical. If it is some sort of energy emission it would still be EW even if it isn't in the X or S micro wave band (common military radar) then it is somewhere else and some form of EW could be developed for it. At worst it could be a freaking enormous protoculture reactor to make it stand out over the other aircraft allowing it to be the primary target. It is a lot easier to counter the enemies attack if you know what they're going to attack.
• There's no need for a strategic bomber because the Invit/Invid aren't individually sentient and thus can't be demoralized by carpet bombings and they don't have any infrastructure to target that'd diminish their ability to make war.Strategic bombing isn't all about demoralization. The B1 is a strategic bomber but is set up for mostly high accuracy loadouts not carpet bombing.
  the difference between tactical and strategic bombers is battlefield vs. means of production, a battle vs. the war, and range. Demoralization happens with a successful run of either type of bomber.
  SO in the case of RT YES, yes they do need strategic bombers so they can take out hives and FOL farms with incendiaries and Genesis pits with bunker busters. Plus a hive mind can be demoralized if the queen really thinks of them as her children there is probably a limit to how many she is willing to loose.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just as in series there would have been zero reason to use shadow tech... except it works. There is zero reason to do any new concept... unless it works. [...]

In all honesty, this is such a bizarre and nonsensical statement I honestly thought you were trolling until I read the rest of your reply.

There was absolutely a pressing reason to use shadow technology. The Expeditionary Forces had spent twenty-odd years in a war of attrition with the Invid Regent where they were at a consistent and significant strategic disadvantage because the enemy could detect them by the exotic energy emissions of their equipment's power sources, and as a sidebar to that they'd also suffered massive losses in two failed attempts to retake Earth against an enemy with the same strategic advantage. They desperately needed countermeasures for the Invid's sensor systems and force fields, and a way to go about executing their last-ditch scorched earth plan if those failed to level the playing field.

The same was largely true for the OSM version of the story, with the Dark stealth technology being vitally important to Mars and the outer solar system colonies plans to liberate Earth without suffering further unsustainably massive losses.

And what is that range and what is the range of a Legios?

Approximately the distance of a one-way flight from Luna to Earth (~384,400km) in inertial cruising.

The Legioss+TLEAD combiner had approximately the same range, again purely in inertial cruising.

Maneuvering under power the range is significantly shorter in both cases.

And while you could convert it into an ad hoc, why wouldn't said ad hoc not be turned into prototype then into defacto modular gunship and ew pods?

It's not designed to operate in those roles, so it would be an ad hoc configuration by definition.

That is like arguing that an Apache, Cobra or Thunderbolt II fills the role of a Spooky or Spectre

Their roles - and even armaments - do overlap a fair bit. The AC-130's advantage lies mainly in its trading speed and agility for greater loiter time by using turboprops instead of turbofans. It needs to be operated from a proper airfield, where the helicopters can operate in the field, and it's much more dependent on having air superiority because it's less able to evade enemy aircraft and can't engage them defensively itself.

The Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta are far better suited to the kind of combat the Mars Colony/UEEF troops are engaging in against the Invit/Invid. Rather than having a large, slow target of a gunship loitering where everyone can see (and shoot at) it and needing an escort to protect it, the Legioss/Alpha is able to operate at very low altitudes and zero airspeed in support of troops on the ground in a self-sufficient manner. The same can be said for the TLEAD/Beta, operating at low altitudes and either high or low airspeeds as a strike craft with a mixture of gunship and light bomber abilities without needing an escort because it has at least moderate air-to-air capabilities.

Cargo bays full of bombs is hardly comparable to a light bomber, A Horizont with bomb bay pods would have a greater capacity than a B-52 with longer range than a Beta. Heck with its trans atmospheric capabilities it has a longer range, longer linger time and faster response time than any modern bomber.

There's a need for a light bomber... filled by the TLEAD/Beta. There is no need for a heavier bomber capable of strategic bombing, because the Invit/Invid don't have any infrastructure to destroy and are indifferent to mass destruction. A longer range... well in the Robotech all three of these craft have effectively unlimited range planetside, and the same goes for the VF-1 that the RPG says is the UEEF's preferred tactical bomber and attack plane prior to the Beta's introduction. As such, they all have loiter times far exceeding the endurance of their crews so that's an irrelevant point too. I would also say that they're all faster than most if not all traditional bombers, so that's not really important either. The key difference is a Horizont gunship or bomber is surplus to requirements, as the close air support role is already filled by two far more suitable craft (the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta) that are both far less vulnerable.

Wait so what do they detect from the protoculture? If it isn't some sort of energy emission then it must be chemical. If it is some sort of energy emission it would still be EW even if it isn't in the X or S micro wave band (common military radar) then it is somewhere else and some form of EW could be developed for it. At worst it could be a freaking enormous protoculture reactor to make it stand out over the other aircraft allowing it to be the primary target. It is a lot easier to counter the enemies attack if you know what they're going to attack.

"Protoculture emissions"... some kind of exotic radiation or such not detectable by conventional methods. Like all things protoculture-related in Robotech, it is incredibly vague because it was all made up on the spot with no forethought. (Though in all fairness, the Invit's energy sensors are equally mysterious and unquantified in the original MOSPEADA, being alien technology beyond human understanding like almost every piece of Invit technology.)

The UEEF didn't actually know how to detect it or prevent its detection until ~2043, so there would not have been any Horizont EW version regardless... and a giant reactor purely for decoy purposes is kind of a massive waste of an already precious fuel source.

Strategic bombing isn't all about demoralization. The B1 is a strategic bomber but is set up for mostly high accuracy loadouts not carpet bombing.
the difference between tactical and strategic bombers is battlefield vs. means of production, a battle vs. the war, and range. Demoralization happens with a successful run of either type of bomber.
SO in the case of RT YES, yes they do need strategic bombers so they can take out hives and FOL farms with incendiaries and Genesis pits with bunker busters. Plus a hive mind can be demoralized if the queen really thinks of them as her children there is probably a limit to how many she is willing to loose.

The B-1 was designed as a conventional strategic bomber and later extensively retrofitted to accommodate tactical bombing roles... that's a little different than what you're talking about.

Strategic bombing is all about mass destruction... destroying infrastructure to cripple an enemy's economy and manufacturing capability and terrify the enemy's civilian populace into submission. There is no advantage to having a strategic bomber in the war against the Invit/Invid. There's no infrastructure to destroy. No factories, no refineries, no mines. You can't demoralize the Invit/Invid because they're a hive mind and have been shown to be indifferent to mass casualties. Most Invit/Invid are highly mobile and flight-capable, so inflicting mass casualties with a bombing raid is surely unlikely or impossible. A large, heavy bomber is unlikely to survive long enough to reach a hive to bomb it since it needs air cover due to lacking defenses itself and will likely end up mobbed in atmosphere just as readily as the Horizonts were in space.

You don't need a strategic bomber to burn the fields... an attacker with tactical bombing capability like the TLEAD/Beta can do that better and more efficiently, since it's more agile, more defensible, and carries a payload of incendiary bombs in the animation.

[ShadowLogan]

We've got Prelude,

So basically nothing then.

Several of those don't actually exist in the official spec and/or animation... but I think I got my point across that it's not THAT many different types of munitions.

Actually they all exists with in the Official ROBOTECH spec and/or animation (even the eat laser ones, though you have to slow down the footage to notice).

There is nothing at all "schizophrenic" about the Mars Base/UEEF ships... they were never a space fleet to begin with, and there was never any reason for them to be even in Robotech. They're a planetary assault force that sails directly from a staging area to the target and attacks. They're not loitering out in deep space for months or years at a time. There's also no reason to have any space warships because the enemy doesn't have any either.

You're right there is nothing "schizophrenic" about those ships, unless you try to shoe-horn in the OSM to unnecessary levels. In the OSM those ships might not have been a space fleet, but in Robotech they are presented as just that: elements of a space fleet with different roles. Presumably the Ikazuchi and Garfish are used in the search for the Masters homeworld, the original target of the UEEF since they did not know where it was.

For starters, the Horizont isn't designed for long-distance spaceflight. It's meant to move troops from a staging area to a combat zone across relatively short distances.

Depends on just how much distance is actually needed for these roles. The craft can fly Moon-Earth-Moon giving it plenty of range in known theatres (operating on Earth for example, once out into space it becomes a bit more subjective), toss in a bit of reality to the spaceflight and you can probably expand that in terms of physical distance (the main hang-up will be life support endurance, but with as much capacity as it has to trade its not really a hang-up).

The CAS gunship role is already filled twice over by the Legioss/Alpha (a helicopter gunship analogue) and TLEAD/Beta (a CAS attacker with three heavy rotary cannons).
The light bomber/ground/surface attacker role is already filled by the TLEAD/Beta with its internally-carried bombs for low-altitude precision strikes.
There's no need for an electronic warfare craft when the enemy don't use conventional means to communicate or detect and track hostiles. There's no radio or radar to jam or intercept.
There's no need for a strategic bomber because the Invit/Invid aren't individually sentient and thus can't be demoralized by carpet bombings and they don't have any infrastructure to target that'd diminish their ability to make war.

The CAS gunship is not covered by the Alpha or Beta. A Horizon gunship (or other armed option) has the potential to outclass any VHT/VF/Destroid 1:1 in terms of firepower since it can deliver multiple versions of (just about) any one of them. The darn thing is a force multiplier, it can theoretically take the place of multiple units in a given role with the use of modular bunkers. It won't be able to dog-fight, but if its properly escorted and/or equipped it won't need to**.

While I agree there is no apparent need for electronic jamming and intercept against the Invid (at this time) a theatre AWAC (I lumped this type in under powerful electronic systems) could still be required, which while it could be handled by the Garfish/Ikazuchi (or other larger vessel) this frees up those ship types for other roles in a planetary environment. I would point out that game mechanically (in 2E) an AWAC can linkup with mecha in theatre and increase their mechanical bonuses, so from an RPG perspective having an Horizon-AWAC would make sense for the UEEF (both the UEDF: RDF and UEDF: ASC have their own AWACs*).

As for the bomber roles the payload capacity of the Horizon hypothetically outclasses a Beta or Conbat (pre-Beta era), you could bring in one Horizon and replace the need for >100x Betas or Conbats. The Horizon has a crew of 10, to replace 1 Horizon Bomber on battlefield would require >100 pilots. Now the Horizon does require escorts, but it just so happens we've freed up 100+ pilots (and this assumes the UEEF didn't take the opportunity to give the Horizon self-defense capabilities with the bomber-pods). The Horizon can also bring in heavier bombs than either the Beta or Conbat. The Beta can be inferred to be ill-equipped to bomb an Invid Hive (even if we ignore the Force Field issue), it won't have the same penetrating power as a larger bomb. If fact both times we know a Beta was involved in attacking a Hive (NYC separated w/3 Alphas, the Mountain Fortress docked w/Alpha) it did not use its bombs, it used an existing entrance to fly inside which would give a pretty good indication of just how useful those small things are in attacking the Hive.

Not to mention that the Bomber/EW roles does not eliminate that the UEEF could have that capability from their time when they prepared to fight the Masters or another unknown threat (other aliens). You're razor focused on the UEEF of 2042-4, but the UEEF existed prior to this period for 20+ years and was originally tasked with taking on another foe (The Masters) and apparently encountered other races (per TRM, off-shoot/relatives of the Zentreadi and Space Pirates that get brandished about when discussing the Masters early on in the series) before the Invid arrived on the scene. These types of modules would have far more value against those threats than the Invid, something the design in the OSM would not have taken into consideration (the only aliens they had to worry about in GCM AFAIK are the Inbit), that means RT would have to either do a new design from scratch or adapt something already in the inventory (and we've seen how much HG prefers they adapt something else rather than a new design).

*

Spoiler:

Compare the leader mecha bonuses from the VF-1S grants compare to the ES-11 or EC-33 when they are acting as AWAC from the RAW TMS SB, the ES-11/33 grants +1 attack and the VF-1S doesn't. In fact the only thing the VF-1S grants that the other two don't is a bonus to parry and perception rolls (both of which aren't as frequently used as Strike/Attack bonuses). Now the EC-33 grants better overall bonuses as compared to the ES-11 (individually some are inferior to the VF-1S).

The ASC doesn't have a "leader" VF, but it does have an nt-B and the VHT model and an armored vehicle which are pretty much on par bonus wise, however again their bonuses are outclassed by the EC-32. Note the EC-32 is unlikely to be used with those ground mecha as it's a space asset, so it would make the AGAC and Logan VFs (and nt Chimera) more effective as it takes the role of "leader" mecha, which if TMS/TSC "leader" VFs are anything to go by would still be outclassed by the bonuses the EC-32 would bring.

**

Spoiler:

I'm using the 1E RPG's size for the Bunkers (and treating it as a regular hexagon based on the width for simplicity) and 2E's size for various weapon systems. The front face of the bunker could mount ports for:
-~2,996x 190mm SRMs (Alpha), by 1E capacity and 2E missile mass it can hold over 6x that IINM (so reloads, subtract some for reloading mechanisms and such)
-~935x 340mm SRMs (Beta, though this size is also roughly the same for for some known MRMs), like SRMs the mass capacity should allow for it's use for a smaller number of MRMs
-~9,810x 105mm Projectile Cannons (VHT-1), though by mass it certainly can not carry this many, but each of those emplacements will have a capacity of more than 30 rounds the VHT-1 has.
-~657x 406mm Projectile Cannons (Monster Destroid), though it certainly could not carry that many. This also provides a good idea on the number of LRMs it could use in place.
-~6 VF-1 Head Turret Systems (and I might have the turret system as to large as I used the B-mode length and assumed a circular footprint)

Now going with the 1E Height does reduce the numbers (and the 1E size compared to the Infopedia for the Horizon-T is off slightly and Infopedia doesn't list the bunker size), but not enough to negate the basic point. This is comparing the raw front facing area, there will be a reduction to accommodate spacing between each port but how much likely depends on the weapon system itself and for the structure. The bunker also has a few faces on the sides (along length) that it could employ in part or full in a similar manner, but each of those has far more area to work with (~6x). Still Horizon Bunker Pod converted to act as a firing platform equates to having multiple mecha in the same role.

[Seto Kaiba]

So basically nothing then.

It's 100% more evidence than you've been able to turn up for your argument.

Actually they all exists with in the Official ROBOTECH spec and/or animation (even the eat laser ones, though you have to slow down the footage to notice).

But, as we've pointed out, the "official" Robotech spec contains many distortions and things which are not actually in the animation... which ties neatly back into my point WRT the TLEAD/Beta about how removing fan fiction additions to the actual official spec eliminates or greatly mitigates the majority of the supposed shortcomings in the designs.

You're right there is nothing "schizophrenic" about those ships, unless you try to shoe-horn in the OSM to unnecessary levels. [...]

Eh... right sentiment, but wrong direction entirely.

To correct your fallacy, there is nothing "schizophrenic" about the ship or mecha designs in question until or unless you attempt to incorporate claims which have no basis in, or directly contradict, the animation or other official materials.

As I have noted previously, many of the "issues" raised here stem not from flaws in the designs but from their having been fundamentally misreprensented in material drawn not from the series but from someone's fan fiction.

Remember, the animation is derived from the OSM. That is the base value of fact here. Anything that deviates from, or contradicts, that has to justify itself with evidence. Even Harmony Gold treats the OSM as a top-tier reference for precisely that reason, and the only reason these deviations were not rejected out of hand by them is they were falsely presented as OSM to Harmony Gold.

In the OSM those ships might not have been a space fleet, but in Robotech they are presented as just that: elements of a space fleet with different roles. Presumably the Ikazuchi and Garfish are used in the search for the Masters homeworld, the original target of the UEEF since they did not know where it was.

Demonstrably false.

As in the OSM, those ships are presented as planetary assault craft not a space fleet. At no point in official material are they ever depicted operating away from either a planetary assault objective (Earth, Tirol, Optera, etc.) or a staging area (Luna, Liberty station). At no point are they ever depicted operating in deep space or even interplanetary space. It's also worth noting that in both the aborted animated Sentinels series and the aborted comic series that's referenced by Prelude, the UEEF knew where Tirol was and went directly there to carry out a preemptive planetary assautl.

Depends on just how much distance is actually needed for these roles. The craft can fly Moon-Earth-Moon giving it plenty of range in known theatres (operating on Earth for example, once out into space it becomes a bit more subjective), toss in a bit of reality to the spaceflight and you can probably expand that in terms of physical distance (the main hang-up will be life support endurance, but with as much capacity as it has to trade its not really a hang-up).

Which is nice, but fundamentally irrelevant as the Robotech version asserts that every craft has a functionally unlimited range in atmospheric service. It's not an advantage in the actual area of operations.

The CAS gunship is not covered by the Alpha or Beta. A Horizon gunship (or other armed option) has the potential to outclass any VHT/VF/Destroid 1:1 in terms of firepower since it can deliver multiple versions of (just about) any one of them.

Apart from the fact that you're arguing against evidence WRT the status of the role... the unspoken "I assume, apropos of nothing" that precedes that second sentence takes all the wind out of your argment's sails. You're assuming, without evidence of any kind. Your entire argument here is circular, with each assumption depending on another assumption and none of them having an evidentiary basis.

The darn thing is a force multiplier, it can theoretically take the place of multiple units in a given role with the use of modular bunkers. It won't be able to dog-fight, but if its properly escorted and/or equipped it won't need to**.

Ironically, you acknowledged the reason it isn't a force multiplier directly after claiming it is one.

It's only a force multiplier if you have uncontested air superiority in the battle space, because this hypothetical gunship has no anti-aircraft defenses and is not agile enough to evade enemy craft as seen in the series proper. Once you're forced to take troops and aircraft off the front lines to protect it, its "force multiplier" status erodes in proportion to the reduction in capability caused by reallocating those resources. If you need multiple fighters to protect it, you have a wash at best, or a force divider.

While I agree there is no apparent need for electronic jamming and intercept against the Invid (at this time) a theatre AWAC (I lumped this type in under powerful electronic systems) could still be required, which while it could be handled by the Garfish/Ikazuchi (or other larger vessel) this frees up those ship types for other roles in a planetary environment.

Assuming that long-range radars and so on can even detect the Invit/Invid.

(They can in the RPG because of concessons to streamlined play, but that may not be true in the series proper where the Invit/Invid seemingly only show up on short-ranged radar.)

As for the bomber roles the payload capacity of the Horizon hypothetically outclasses a Beta or Conbat (pre-Beta era), you could bring in one Horizon and replace the need for >100x Betas or Conbats.

Which sounds impressive on paper, but is all but meaningless in practice because there are no infrastructure targets to drop those bombs on that cannot be done equally well by a TLEAD/Beta and the Invit/Invid themselves are highly agile, mostly flight-capable, and can literally see the craft coming by the exotic emissions of its powerplant. All it accomplishes is to put more eggs in one highly vulnerable basket.

Not to mention that the Bomber/EW roles does not eliminate that the UEEF could have that capability from their time when they prepared to fight the Masters or another unknown threat (other aliens).

I've explained in previous posts why the bomber still makes no sense... the Beta (and Conbat, and VF-1) have tactical bombing covered. The Horizont isn't defensible as a combat aircraft, as seen in the actual series, and a strategic bombing makes no sense if your enemy has no infrastructure to target and no civilians to frighten into submission, and is counterproductive at best if your long-term goal is peaceful relations as it was with the Tirolians. Just ask the Middle East how well strategic bombing endears the locals to the folks running the bomber fleets.

You're razor focused on the UEEF of 2042-4, but the UEEF existed prior to this period for 20+ years and was originally tasked with taking on another foe (The Masters) and apparently encountered other races (per TRM, off-shoot/relatives of the Zentreadi and Space Pirates that get brandished about when discussing the Masters early on in the series) before the Invid arrived on the scene.

No, I'm focused on who the UEEF were intending to fight (the Masters, whose homeworld was largely shorn of its defenses by the loss of the Zentradi) and the Invid they ended up actually fighting. I'm not considering factions that don't actually exist in the series like space pirates.

These types of modules would have far more value against those threats than the Invid, [...]

But the Invid are the only ones they fight, so your argument is purely hypothetical.

(and we've seen how much HG prefers they adapt something else rather than a new design).

But they didn't, so let's abandon the wishful thinking and stick to the facts.

[Zer0 Kay]

Just as in series there would have been zero reason to use shadow tech... except it works. There is zero reason to do any new concept... unless it works. [...]

In all honesty, this is such a bizarre and nonsensical statement I honestly thought you were trolling until I read the rest of your reply.

There was absolutely a pressing reason to use shadow technology. The Expeditionary Forces had spent twenty-odd years in a war of attrition with the Invid Regent where they were at a consistent and significant strategic disadvantage because the enemy could detect them by the exotic energy emissions of their equipment's power sources, and as a sidebar to that they'd also suffered massive losses in two failed attempts to retake Earth against an enemy with the same strategic advantage. They desperately needed countermeasures for the Invid's sensor systems and force fields, and a way to go about executing their last-ditch scorched earth plan if those failed to level the playing field.

The same was largely true for the OSM version of the story, with the Dark stealth technology being vitally important to Mars and the outer solar system colonies plans to liberate Earth without suffering further unsustainably massive losses.

OK, fine... that would also explain why they started up with drones again... but explain the stupid Pegasus

And what is that range and what is the range of a Legios?

Approximately the distance of a one-way flight from Luna to Earth (~384,400km) in inertial cruising.

The Legioss+TLEAD combiner had approximately the same range, again purely in inertial cruising.

Maneuvering under power the range is significantly shorter in both cases.

How the heck? Wait isn't the reaction mass separate from the PC cells? Not much of a shuttle if it can't shuttle is it... more of a transport or ferry.

And while you could convert it into an ad hoc, why wouldn't said ad hoc not be turned into prototype then into defacto modular gunship and ew pods?

It's not designed to operate in those roles, so it would be an ad hoc configuration by definition.

and the C-130 was designed to operate as a gunship? How about the C-47. No they were adapted because they could carry much larger direct fire weapons than fighters or helicopters can. The Horizont would likely have a couple Syncro Cannons and a few dozen gun pods.

That is like arguing that an Apache, Cobra or Thunderbolt II fills the role of a Spooky or Spectre

Their roles - and even armaments - do overlap a fair bit. The AC-130's advantage lies mainly in its trading speed and agility for greater loiter time by using turboprops instead of turbofans. It needs to be operated from a proper airfield, where the helicopters can operate in the field, and it's much more dependent on having air superiority because it's less able to evade enemy aircraft and can't engage them defensively itself.

The Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta are far better suited to the kind of combat the Mars Colony/UEEF troops are engaging in against the Invit/Invid. Rather than having a large, slow target of a gunship loitering where everyone can see (and shoot at) it and needing an escort to protect it, the Legioss/Alpha is able to operate at very low altitudes and zero airspeed in support of troops on the ground in a self-sufficient manner. The same can be said for the TLEAD/Beta, operating at low altitudes and either high or low airspeeds as a strike craft with a mixture of gunship and light bomber abilities without needing an escort because it has at least moderate air-to-air capabilities.
Darn, ya got a point, the UEEF never really achieved air superiority.

Cargo bays full of bombs is hardly comparable to a light bomber, A Horizont with bomb bay pods would have a greater capacity than a B-52 with longer range than a Beta. Heck with its trans atmospheric capabilities it has a longer range, longer linger time and faster response time than any modern bomber.

There's a need for a light bomber... filled by the TLEAD/Beta. There is no need for a heavier bomber capable of strategic bombing, because the Invit/Invid don't have any infrastructure to destroy and are indifferent to mass destruction. A longer range... well in the Robotech all three of these craft have effectively unlimited range planetside, and the same goes for the VF-1 that the RPG says is the UEEF's preferred tactical bomber and attack plane prior to the Beta's introduction. As such, they all have loiter times far exceeding the endurance of their crews so that's an irrelevant point too. I would also say that they're all faster than most if not all traditional bombers, so that's not really important either. The key difference is a Horizont gunship or bomber is surplus to requirements, as the close air support role is already filled by two far more suitable craft (the Legioss/Alpha and TLEAD/Beta) that are both far less vulnerable.
See below

Wait so what do they detect from the protoculture? If it isn't some sort of energy emission then it must be chemical. If it is some sort of energy emission it would still be EW even if it isn't in the X or S micro wave band (common military radar) then it is somewhere else and some form of EW could be developed for it. At worst it could be a freaking enormous protoculture reactor to make it stand out over the other aircraft allowing it to be the primary target. It is a lot easier to counter the enemies attack if you know what they're going to attack.

"Protoculture emissions"... some kind of exotic radiation or such not detectable by conventional methods. Like all things protoculture-related in Robotech, it is incredibly vague because it was all made up on the spot with no forethought. (Though in all fairness, the Invit's energy sensors are equally mysterious and unquantified in the original MOSPEADA, being alien technology beyond human understanding like almost every piece of Invit technology.)

The UEEF didn't actually know how to detect it or prevent its detection until ~2043, so there would not have been any Horizont EW version regardless... and a giant reactor purely for decoy purposes is kind of a massive waste of an already precious fuel source.

Strategic bombing isn't all about demoralization. The B1 is a strategic bomber but is set up for mostly high accuracy loadouts not carpet bombing.
the difference between tactical and strategic bombers is battlefield vs. means of production, a battle vs. the war, and range. Demoralization happens with a successful run of either type of bomber.
SO in the case of RT YES, yes they do need strategic bombers so they can take out hives and FOL farms with incendiaries and Genesis pits with bunker busters. Plus a hive mind can be demoralized if the queen really thinks of them as her children there is probably a limit to how many she is willing to loose.

The B-1 was designed as a conventional strategic bomber and later extensively retrofitted to accommodate tactical bombing roles... that's a little different than what you're talking about.

Strategic bombing is all about mass destruction... destroying infrastructure to cripple an enemy's economy and manufacturing capability and terrify the enemy's civilian populace into submission. There is no advantage to having a strategic bomber in the war against the Invit/Invid. There's no infrastructure to destroy. No factories, no refineries, no mines. You can't demoralize the Invit/Invid because they're a hive mind and have been shown to be indifferent to mass casualties. Most Invit/Invid are highly mobile and flight-capable, so inflicting mass casualties with a bombing raid is surely unlikely or impossible. A large, heavy bomber is unlikely to survive long enough to reach a hive to bomb it since it needs air cover due to lacking defenses itself and will likely end up mobbed in atmosphere just as readily as the Horizonts were in space.

You don't need a strategic bomber to burn the fields... an attacker with tactical bombing capability like the TLEAD/Beta can do that better and more efficiently, since it's more agile, more defensible, and carries a payload of incendiary bombs in the animation.
You keep saying the Invid have no infrastructure. They don't pull the FoL out of their collective butts... it isn't Spice. They Invid are hatched somwhere asare their mecha. As I said before farms and hives are the infrastructure.

The B-1 has never been retrofitted for tactical it has always been capable of it. The B-52 and B-2 in the same way. The B-1 is far more tactical than the 52 or the 2 though. It would be more strategic to use the B2 at high altitude than to send in a B1 with a minimal load.

W/JDAMs

B-2:
Payload: 16
Range w/o IAR: 6000 miles
Speed: 628 mph

B52:
Payload: 20
Range w/o IAR: 8,800 miles
Speed: 650 mph

B1:
Payload: 48
Range w/o IAR: 4600 miles
Speed: 900+ mph

So even though the B1 is faster and more agile the cost is prohibitive. A B2 at high altitude with precision munitions has better loiter time and would have to be found before it could be attacked. While a B52 would be the better solution if we have air superiority as it has an even longer loiter time AND a larger payload. In the same line of thinking a Horizont is built with a shadow system and they had pods full of precision munitions it would be far better for troops support. If they had a constellation of Shadow Horizonts that were drones orbiting the planet in different orbits, even better. An unlimited linger time, near instant ground support and the Invid would have a heck of a time countering it. If they could do this it would be far more defensible than a Beta and more agile as far as ability to hit multiple targets in quick succession. I could just imagine the slogan for the unit on the door to the drone operators room... "UEEF (with the second E and F scratched out and replaced with a P and an S, When you absolutely positively need it destroyed overnight; anytime, anywhere.

[Seto Kaiba]

OK, fine... that would also explain why they started up with drones again... but explain the stupid Pegasus

Y'know, I don't recall if they ever gave an actual reason for the unused robo-pegasus design in the material from the aborted Sentinels series.

I know in the non-canon comics it was supposed to be a vehicle that Dr. Lang created for the Praxians.

How the heck? Wait isn't the reaction mass separate from the PC cells? Not much of a shuttle if it can't shuttle is it... more of a transport or ferry.

In theory, yes.

In practice, the very limited official Robotech material touches on the practical aspects of spaceflight in only the vaguest and most rudimentary way and only in connection with the Legioss/Alpha's need for the TLEAD/Beta to launch itself into orbit or maneuver in space for any significant length of time. The only one of the original three shows to actually address the matter in depth was Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

Admittedly, it's not much of an issue in either the case of the Horizont or the Legioss+TLEAD combiner, since the standard mode of operation was a fairly realistic one involving an engine burn to escape lunar orbit and then coasting to Earth on that inertia. Their actual propellant needs were for that initial acceleration and then deceleration on approach to the planet. There wasn't a need to carry more because there wasn't any expectation of having to make any more than minor course corrections en route.

and the C-130 was designed to operate as a gunship? How about the C-47. No they were adapted because they could carry much larger direct fire weapons than fighters or helicopters can. The Horizont would likely have a couple Syncro Cannons and a few dozen gun pods.

Both the AC-130 and its predecessor the AC-47 were improvised designs. The AC-130 is especially noteworthy for having essentially been slapped together by converting an existing C-130A at Wright-Patterson.

As for their adaptation, it would be inaccurate to say they were adapted because they could carry larger weapons than fighters or helicopters as well. The AC-47 merely carried a greater quantity of less powerful weaponry than the AH-1 Cobra, and even used the exact same model of minigun. The AH-1 actually had heavier weapons options than the AC-47 did. The AC-130's armaments are also not of appreciably greater firepower or capability than that of even a single attack helicopter. Its only option that exceeds what a helicopter can take is that 105mm howitzer, and even that is being rethought in favor of more missile weaponry that the helicopters already carried in abundance.

As far as what could potentially be carried by a Horizont gunship... not a lot. The synchro cannon platform is fairly massive, and not something that would be able to fit on a Horizont. You also have to have power to those proposed energy weapons and crew to man them. That's why the number of guns on these propeller gunships in the real world have been shrinking in favor of missile systems... it requires less manpower. You could probably get a couple crew-served gunpods into each cargo pod, along with a generator to power them, but if you're already having to divert fighters to cover it with the lack of air superiority in the battle space, you're kind of wasting your time since each of those crew could be operating a Legioss or TLEAD with far more firepower than that gunpod.

Darn, ya got a point, the UEEF never really achieved air superiority.

Achieving the kind of air superiority a large, relatively slow, gunship like that needs to be effective against ground targets really wouldn't be possible against the Invit/Invid... they invariably have a very large numerical advantage, and as many of them can fly the kind of pinned-down ground targets those gunships are designed to engage don't really occur in the bizarre asymmetrical warfare which the war consists almost exclusively of.

You keep saying the Invid have no infrastructure. They don't pull the FoL out of their collective butts... it isn't Spice. They Invid are hatched somwhere asare their mecha. As I said before farms and hives are the infrastructure.

Eh... it kind of is Spice when you think about it.

The farms never actually show up in the series - because they didn't exist in the original - and the hives aren't really infrastructure so much as they are a military fortification. You can't really render a hive unable to fight without destroying it outright and killing all the Invit/Invid. There's no way to destroy their ability to produce war materiel without destroying the entire hive. It doesn't really fit in the conventional wartime definition of "infrastructure".

In the same line of thinking a Horizont is built with a shadow system and they had pods full of precision munitions it would be far better for troops support. If they had a constellation of Shadow Horizonts that were drones orbiting the planet in different orbits, even better. An unlimited linger time, near instant ground support and the Invid would have a heck of a time countering it. If they could do this it would be far more defensible than a Beta and more agile as far as ability to hit multiple targets in quick succession. I could just imagine the slogan for the unit on the door to the drone operators room... "UEEF (with the second E and F scratched out and replaced with a P and an S, When you absolutely positively need it destroyed overnight; anytime, anywhere.

The problem is that you could achieve the same with greater precision by having capital ships address beam weapons fire from orbit... while not tying up valuable troop transports.

Of course, the main problem there is that shadow devices were introduced so late in the 3rd Robotech War that there was never an opportunity to consider unconventional applications. They were used in the last battle of the war, and the Invid quit the field of their own volition after foiling the shadow device's stealth properties.

[ShadowLogan]

But, as we've pointed out, the "official" Robotech spec contains many distortions and things which are not actually in the animation... which ties neatly back into my point WRT the TLEAD/Beta about how removing fan fiction additions to the actual official spec eliminates or greatly mitigates the majority of the supposed shortcomings in the designs.

They are still the "official" Robotech specs until HG decides to change them. While I agree the "official" specs need revisions and such, at this point you're just arguing for one set of "fanfiction" over another's.

As in the OSM, those ships are presented as planetary assault craft not a space fleet. At no point in official material are they ever depicted operating away from either a planetary assault objective (Earth, Tirol, Optera, etc.) or a staging area (Luna, Liberty station). At no point are they ever depicted operating in deep space or even interplanetary space. It's also worth noting that in both the aborted animated Sentinels series and the aborted comic series that's referenced by Prelude, the UEEF knew where Tirol was and went directly there to carry out a preemptive planetary assautl.

TSC has the Garfish and Ikazuchi operating as the Fleet Defenders for SSL (not planetary assault).

Prelude has an Ikazuchi operating as a hyper-space tow truck (for the SDF-3, again not planetary assault).

Other depictions ARE pretty limited though in canon. We know in 2014 when Tirol was put in Earth's brackets its location was not known. I know in the Sen. OVA they are supposed to go straight to Tirol (in 2022), but Prelude's timeline maintains in 2022 the location is unknown to the UEEF, even the opening page says it took "decades of struggle" before reaching Tirol.

Apart from the fact that you're arguing against evidence WRT the status of the role... the unspoken "I assume, apropos of nothing" that precedes that second sentence takes all the wind out of your argment's sails. You're assuming, without evidence of any kind. Your entire argument here is circular, with each assumption depending on another assumption and none of them having an evidentiary basis.

It is a fact that the Infopedia writeup states:

Though most combat roles are filled by the Alpha and Beta fighters, the Horizon is also very capable of fulfilling combat roles. Other versions include the "B" bomber-version (Horizon-B) and the "E" Early Warning and Control (EWAC, Horizon-E)

Now HG doesn't elborate much on the actual combat capabilities for the Horizon, but they establish the craft is combat capable. The use of "include" to describe other versions indicates the list is not limited to just bomber and EWAC. The only thing I (and others) have done in terms of capabilities is show what it can theoretically mount and possible additional roles, not that they actually went and created a Pod that did just that. We do not know what said combat configuration(s) Actually look like. We can only speculate, so the claim the resulting craft has no anti-mecha weapons for self-defense can not be verified.

I would also point out that an armed horizon-class isn't intended to act as a Fighter or Fighter-Bomber, at this point its more like a warship (or an airborne version of RT's GMU) in terms of assets. It can't dog-fight, but then neither could a Garfish or Ikazuchi (or the GMU) if brought in theatre to replace it in terms of force structure.

Which sounds impressive on paper, but is all but meaningless in practice because there are no infrastructure targets to drop those bombs on that cannot be done equally well by a TLEAD/Beta and the Invit/Invid themselves are highly agile, mostly flight-capable, and can literally see the craft coming by the exotic emissions of its powerplant. All it accomplishes is to put more eggs in one highly vulnerable basket.

I agree it is impressive (it even outclasses real world heavy bombers), but there is no guarantee the Bomber Version would take it to this extreme either. Limiting it to just ~50 tons (out of the 600+ tons by the 1E RPG) would still create a viable platform (it can carry more bombs than any single Beta/Conbat/VF-1, it can carry bigger bombs than any of them, it leaves room for self-defense capabilities to be added, maneuverability also goes up since it won't have the same mass distribution).

As for targets against the Invid, there are targets: Their Hive facilities. Against the Invid Regent if you can destroy the Hive, you've destroyed the controlling Brain for the local Inorganic Army (and it would shut down). Against the Regis the effect isn't as pronounced (no Inorganics), but its loss also means you don't have to engage so many Invid directly.

The Invid are also known to convert local "resources", we see that in the episode "The Fortress". It is identified as a former ASC facility (per dialogue). While this could be a one-off fluke I admit, it at least establishes a precedent that the Invid have done this at least once, and could do so again in the future or have done so in the past.

But the Invid are the only ones they fight, so your argument is purely hypothetical.

Not exactly. We know the UEEF was originally geared up to fight the Masters, some of the hardware was likely adapted for use against the Invid, some replaced by "new" stuff, and then some relegated to historical note in terms of capability. Given the operational span of the UEEF they likely also had to deal with the "Space Pirates" mentioned in TRM saga, AotSC also mentioned "continued hostilities" that scuttled the Colonization Effort though they don't elaborate specifics (who and when), and TRM saga also mentions there are strains of "micronized zentreadi" scattered out in space (since the ASC is Earth bound, that means knowledge would come from the UEEF)

[glitterboy2098]

In regards to the air superiority issue.. yeah the UEEF never had air superiority on earth during that war. But you'll notice that they go in confident that they will get it. They massively underestimated the level of defense earth had, from pretty much all the dialog. Scott thought Point-K would he able to hold off the invid for over a decade without hiding, despite an even bigger fleet being destroyed in front of Scott's eyes. The crew of Scott's horizont are shocked by how many clam-carriers launches to stop the fleet. Scott and the rest are convinced that soldier town survived because of it's concentration of firepower instead of some sort of deal with the invid.

This suggests that their experiance prior to earth was that such levels of invid defenses are rare, and at least localized air superiority was possible. Which given the regent's forces in the material we have, seems reasonable.. his forces were notnhuge (thus the reliance on in organics, which were almost all ground based) and spread out over many worlds, so a division sized force concentrated at assualting the main hive of a world probably could maintain superiority for as long as needed to fight their way into the hive and destroy the brain controlling the Inorganics.

And it is worth noting that at reflex point they do appear to have local air superiority, even just using the forces already on the ground. The only real threat was the small number of human forms and their high end Mecha, and those don't appear to really turn the tide of the battle much. Just slow it down. That's how we as the viewers know that the general ordering the nuetron-s launch was wrong. Because we could see that his claim that the ground forces were being slaughtered was incorrect, and we were told they had no contact with the ground.

[Seto Kaiba]

They are still the "official" Robotech specs until HG decides to change them. While I agree the "official" specs need revisions and such, at this point you're just arguing for one set of "fanfiction" over another's.

They're demonstrably incorrect, and there is no obligation to treat demonstrably incorrect information that contradicts the series as authoritative even under Harmony Gold's own canon policy.

Mind you, claiming that what I'm arguing for is "fanfiction" is a blatant distortion at best. I'm arguing for the removal of unfounded assertions that have no basis whatsoever in the series and in favor of the most authoritative source of objective fact available.

TSC has the Garfish and Ikazuchi operating as the Fleet Defenders for SSL (not planetary assault).

Correction: Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles has assault ships assuming a defensive posture when the staging area they operate from suffers a surprise attack.

Other depictions ARE pretty limited though in canon. We know in 2014 when Tirol was put in Earth's brackets its location was not known. I know in the Sen. OVA they are supposed to go straight to Tirol (in 2022), but Prelude's timeline maintains in 2022 the location is unknown to the UEEF, even the opening page says it took "decades of struggle" before reaching Tirol. [...]

In the comics that Prelude is a continuation of, they also go straight to Tirol.

Mind you, what's actually said in the first issue of Prelude isn't quite what you've related here either:

In 2022, an expeditionary force departed from Earth on a mission to intercept these threats at their source in deep space. After decades of struggle, this Pioneer Expedition led by Admiral Rick Hunter would reach an uneasy peace at the Robotech Masters' homeworld of Tirol, leaving only the threat of the mysterious Invid race.

This says it took decades to achieve peace out there, not that it took them decades to arrive at Tirol.

(It's also, oddly, incorrect in claiming the expedition was led by Rick... it was explicitly under Lisa's command until the end of Prelude #5, a fact confirmed by the official artbook.)

It is a fact that the Infopedia writeup states: [...]

Yes, it says that... without any actual basis in any official material. It's demonstrably incorrect, like quite a few other things in the Infopedia.

My point has been that if you remove those bits of "embroidery" that fly in the face of facts, reason, and common sense, the perceived failings of these craft largely vanish because they're a product of misconception and misrepresentation and not actual flaws in the design.

As for targets against the Invid, there are targets: Their Hive facilities. Against the Invid Regent if you can destroy the Hive, you've destroyed the controlling Brain for the local Inorganic Army (and it would shut down). Against the Regis the effect isn't as pronounced (no Inorganics), but its loss also means you don't have to engage so many Invid directly.

So why not just let the warships do it from orbit as we see in Prelude? You don't need a dedicated bomber when you can just roll up and flatten the hive with a reflex cannon or other heavy beam weapon as we see the SDF-3 do.

In regards to the air superiority issue.. yeah the UEEF never had air superiority on earth during that war. But you'll notice that they go in confident that they will get it. They massively underestimated the level of defense earth had, from pretty much all the dialog. Scott thought Point-K would he able to hold off the invid for over a decade without hiding, despite an even bigger fleet being destroyed in front of Scott's eyes. The crew of Scott's horizont are shocked by how many clam-carriers launches to stop the fleet. Scott and the rest are convinced that soldier town survived because of it's concentration of firepower instead of some sort of deal with the invid.

Given how the Invid operate, I'm not so sure they were expecting to achieve air superiority so much as they simply (and quite mistakenly) believed they were attacking with overwhelming force.

Almost every Invid combat form can fly, so the only way air superiority is ever truly going to be achieved in a particular theater is after the fighting is over and the Invid are dead.

This suggests that their experiance prior to earth was that such levels of invid defenses are rare, and at least localized air superiority was possible. Which given the regent's forces in the material we have, seems reasonable.. his forces were notnhuge (thus the reliance on in organics, which were almost all ground based) and spread out over many worlds, so a division sized force concentrated at assualting the main hive of a world probably could maintain superiority for as long as needed to fight their way into the hive and destroy the brain controlling the Inorganics. [...]

I'm not sure it's even that, really. If the troops on Bernard's Horizont are any indication, the 2nd ERF seems to have been made up of fresh and inexperienced troops rather than veterans pulled off the front lines of the conflict in the Sentinels worlds. Bernard himself has apparently never seen rain before, or natural landscapes, which makes it very doubtful his rank was earned in actual combat since the UEEF was fighting in a series of planetary assaults that whole time. Combine green troops who've never seen combat before with unrealistic tactical forecasting based on the occupation force being an unknown quantity, and you've got a recipe for self-destructive overconfidence. There seems to have been an assumption that large numbers of ground troops from previous attempts survived, and were simply incommunicado, which also turned out to be untrue.

That they were that blasé about the attack when a fleet just as big had been rolled by the Invid only a few years before is kind of worrying... it makes you wonder if they were even told about it.

(His wonder at natural landscapes is a legacy of the original show's story, in which 1st Lt. Bernard had lived his entire life in a space colony and never seen a planet's surface before except in pictures.)

[Zer0 Kay]

OK, fine... that would also explain why they started up with drones again... but explain the stupid Pegasus

Y'know, I don't recall if they ever gave an actual reason for the unused robo-pegasus design in the material from the aborted Sentinels series.

I know in the non-canon comics it was supposed to be a vehicle that Dr. Lang created for the Praxians.

... So what your saying is they do produce pointless designs

How the heck? Wait isn't the reaction mass separate from the PC cells? Not much of a shuttle if it can't shuttle is it... more of a transport or ferry.

In theory, yes.

In practice, the very limited official Robotech material touches on the practical aspects of spaceflight in only the vaguest and most rudimentary way and only in connection with the Legioss/Alpha's need for the TLEAD/Beta to launch itself into orbit or maneuver in space for any significant length of time. The only one of the original three shows to actually address the matter in depth was Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

Admittedly, it's not much of an issue in either the case of the Horizont or the Legioss+TLEAD combiner, since the standard mode of operation was a fairly realistic one involving an engine burn to escape lunar orbit and then coasting to Earth on that inertia. Their actual propellant needs were for that initial acceleration and then deceleration on approach to the planet. There wasn't a need to carry more because there wasn't any expectation of having to make any more than minor course corrections en route.

And... still not a shuttle, if it can't go back

and the C-130 was designed to operate as a gunship? How about the C-47. No they were adapted because they could carry much larger direct fire weapons than fighters or helicopters can. The Horizont would likely have a couple Syncro Cannons and a few dozen gun pods.

Both the AC-130 and its predecessor the AC-47 were improvised designs. The AC-130 is especially noteworthy for having essentially been slapped together by converting an existing C-130A at Wright-Patterson.

As for their adaptation, it would be inaccurate to say they were adapted because they could carry larger weapons than fighters or helicopters as well. The AC-47 merely carried a greater quantity of less powerful weaponry than the AH-1 Cobra, and even used the exact same model of minigun. The AH-1 actually had heavier weapons options than the AC-47 did. The AC-130's armaments are also not of appreciably greater firepower or capability than that of even a single attack helicopter. Its only option that exceeds what a helicopter can take is that 105mm howitzer, and even that is being rethought in favor of more missile weaponry that the helicopters already carried in abundance.

As far as what could potentially be carried by a Horizont gunship... not a lot. The synchro cannon platform is fairly massive, and not something that would be able to fit on a Horizont. You also have to have power to those proposed energy weapons and crew to man them. That's why the number of guns on these propeller gunships in the real world have been shrinking in favor of missile systems... it requires less manpower. You could probably get a couple crew-served gunpods into each cargo pod, along with a generator to power them, but if you're already having to divert fighters to cover it with the lack of air superiority in the battle space, you're kind of wasting your time since each of those crew could be operating a Legioss or TLEAD with far more firepower than that gunpod.

The AC-47 was initially slapped together with local fabrication. The first AC-130 was produced from project Gunship I the one, noted as being developed at Wright Patterson from a JC-130A was built by Aeronautical Systems Division in 1967, hardly a kitbash even listed as a prototype. Here we go

AC-130A Project Gunship II
4 × 7.62 mm GAU-2/A miniguns
4 × 20 mm (0.787 in) M61 Vulcan 6-barrel rotary cannon
[color=#0000FF]It is the equivalent of 4 Cobras and 4 fighter aircraft in fire power!

AC-130A Surprise Package, Pave Pronto, AC-130E Pave Spectre
2× 7.62 mm GAU-2/A miniguns
2× 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon
2× 40 mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannon
2 cobras, 2 fighters and an artillery piece... yup most helicopters carry that.

AC-130E Pave Aegis
2× 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon
1× 40 mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannon
1× 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer
AC-130H Spectre[100]
2 fighters, 1 light and 1 heavy artillery piece... are you really going to stick to "AC-130's armaments are also not of appreciably greater firepower or capability than that of even a single attack helicopter."?

(Prior to c. 2000)
2× 20 mm M61 Vulcan cannon
1× 40 mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannon
1× 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer
2 Cobras, 1 light and 1 heavy artillery piece.

(Latest armament)
1× General Dynamics 25 mm (0.984 in) GAU-12/U Equalizer 5-barreled rotary cannon
1× 40 mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannon
1× 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer
1 Fighter, 1 Light and 1 Heavy artillery piece

AC-130U Spooky II
1× General Dynamics 25 mm (0.984 in) GAU-12/U Equalizer 5-barreled rotary cannon
1× 40 mm (1.58 in) L/60 Bofors cannon
1× 105 mm (4.13 in) M102 howitzer
Same as above but different tech

AC-130W Stinger II / AC-130J Ghostrider[32]
1× 30 mm ATK GAU-23/A autocannon[101]
1× 105 mm M102 howitzer (AC-130J Ghostrider only as of 2017)[102][103][104]
'Gunslinger' weapons system with launch tube for AGM-176 Griffin missiles and/or GBU-44/B Viper Strike munitions (10 round magazines)[8]
Wing mounted, AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs), and/or GBU-53/B SDB IIs[8] (4 per hardpoint on BRU-61/A rack)[105][106][/color]
Oh nose they've gone and added missiles!!!

Point being not a single one of those is "AC-130's armaments are also not of appreciably greater firepower or capability than that of even a single attack helicopter."

Darn, ya got a point, the UEEF never really achieved air superiority.

Achieving the kind of air superiority a large, relatively slow, gunship like that needs to be effective against ground targets really wouldn't be possible against the Invit/Invid... they invariably have a very large numerical advantage, and as many of them can fly the kind of pinned-down ground targets those gunships are designed to engage don't really occur in the bizarre asymmetrical warfare which the war consists almost exclusively of.
Valid Point

You keep saying the Invid have no infrastructure. They don't pull the FoL out of their collective butts... it isn't Spice. They Invid are hatched somwhere asare their mecha. As I said before farms and hives are the infrastructure.

Eh... it kind of is Spice when you think about it.
Lets see... give psychic power, check. Grants interstellar travel, check. Allows for cloning and genetic manipulation, check... okay it's Spice but it is from the opposite type of environment and still not worm poop.

The farms never actually show up in the series - because they didn't exist in the original - and the hives aren't really infrastructure so much as they are a military fortification. You can't really render a hive unable to fight without destroying it outright and killing all the Invit/Invid. There's no way to destroy their ability to produce war materiel without destroying the entire hive. It doesn't really fit in the conventional wartime definition of "infrastructure".
So there were no farms? What the heck were they here for?

In the same line of thinking a Horizont is built with a shadow system and they had pods full of precision munitions it would be far better for troops support. If they had a constellation of Shadow Horizonts that were drones orbiting the planet in different orbits, even better. An unlimited linger time, near instant ground support and the Invid would have a heck of a time countering it. If they could do this it would be far more defensible than a Beta and more agile as far as ability to hit multiple targets in quick succession. I could just imagine the slogan for the unit on the door to the drone operators room... "UEEF (with the second E and F scratched out and replaced with a P and an S, When you absolutely positively need it destroyed overnight; anytime, anywhere.

The problem is that you could achieve the same with greater precision by having capital ships address beam weapons fire from orbit... while not tying up valuable troop transports.
Excellent point... but they'd have to be shadow capital ships or the Invid just find them, swarm them and go back to business as usuall.

Of course, the main problem there is that shadow devices were introduced so late in the 3rd Robotech War that there was never an opportunity to consider unconventional applications. They were used in the last battle of the war, and the Invid quit the field of their own volition after foiling the shadow device's stealth properties.and solid end point

[Seto Kaiba]

... So what your saying is they do produce pointless designs

Not pointless, just... odd. It made sense in context in the old Sentinels comics.

(After all, good luck getting a nine foot tall space amazon to fold herself into a mecha designed for a person at most 2/3 that size...)

And... still not a shuttle, if it can't go back

True, though in the original it was pretty much intended for a one-way trip...

The reason Mars colony and the outer solar system colonies were so keen to retake Earth in the 2080s was that they were badly overpopulated after accepting a huge influx of refugees from Earth after the Invit conquered Earth in 2050. The Earth Recapture missions were a way to alleviate their population crisis.

The AC-47 was initially slapped together with local fabrication. The first AC-130 was produced from project Gunship I the one, noted as being developed at Wright Patterson from a JC-130A was built by Aeronautical Systems Division in 1967, hardly a kitbash even listed as a prototype. Here we go

It was an improvised design, not something a manufacturer did... it's a prototype purely by designation.

Lets see... give psychic power, check. Grants interstellar travel, check. Allows for cloning and genetic manipulation, check... okay it's Spice but it is from the opposite type of environment and still not worm poop.

But it grows in worm poop (aeriated soil)... so we're halfway there.

So there were no farms? What the heck were they here for?

It's a slightly problematic plot point since the whole "cruel enslavement of mankind on protoculture farms" is 100% offscreen villainy. Consequently, we don't know anything about these farms. They may be inside the hives, or underground, or somewhere else offscreen that may make them difficult or impossible to target.

In the original work, the Invit didn't really see humanity as an intelligent life form and were only interested in the planet as a place to experiment with the next phase of their evolution... which is why Rainy Boy (RT: Dusty Aires) was chopped up and turned into a cyborg by them while they experimented with the human form. Other than that, the Invit's attitude towards humans was basically "don't bother us and we won't bother you".

Excellent point... but they'd have to be shadow capital ships or the Invid just find them, swarm them and go back to business as usuall.

Yup... it's kinda six of one, half a dozen of the other. You could put a damned big nuke on a Horizont in place of a cargo pod and drop it from orbit... but that's probably more resource intensive than just rolling up with a big ol' reflex cannon death ray and start lancing hives like boils.

(Really, it's criminal incompetence that nobody in-universe thought to just mount a battery of Zentradi gun turrets on the moon and take potshots at hives from there... well beyond the range of Invid reprisals.)

[ShadowLogan]

They're demonstrably incorrect, and there is no obligation to treat demonstrably incorrect information that contradicts the series as authoritative even under Harmony Gold's own canon policy.

Mind you, claiming that what I'm arguing for is "fanfiction" is a blatant distortion at best. I'm arguing for the removal of unfounded assertions that have no basis whatsoever in the series and in favor of the most authoritative source of objective fact available.

You get no argument from me that the Infopedia is in need of revision, but we've never been on the same page as to how that revision should be executed or what the end product should look like. From my POV you've argued (correctly) that the uRRG is fanfiction, but you are doing the same basic thing they did (make the OSM background data work with RT as much as possible) which would make your work "fanfiction" to, the term also applies since it is not "official" or "canon" in anyway to Robotech regardless of how "authoritative" you want to claim your assessment is.

While I agree we do not see some of the assertions the Infopedia makes in the animation (and some are Animation Errors in the OSM made non-errors officially for Robotech), there isn't anything in the dialogue that supports or precludes them either or that can be arrived at logically in terms of roles, even if the OSM for that arc doesn't support it. A Horizon bomber for example might not make sense against the Invid (to you), but it could make sense against the UEEF original enemy (the Masters) and still be note worthy from an operational history perspective, especially if the level of OBW capability is being exaggerated (or even the UEEF will to use it). An AWAC (or EWAC as the Infopedia calls it) would also make sense against the Masters and even the Invid (in the realworld we still use AWACs in theatre, even with Satellites in play).

Correction: Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles has assault ships assuming a defensive posture when the staging area they operate from suffers a surprise attack.

In other words you have them acting in the role of a space fleet as they are not ad-hoc defenders, since the UEEF should also have had actual their actual warships deployed to defend the facility proper (but did not). And I think we can say they did have them, given they used the Tokagawa-class (even in 2043-4) and are said to use the Tri-star class.

In the comics that Prelude is a continuation of, they also go straight to Tirol.

Mind you, what's actually said in the first issue of Prelude isn't quite what you've related here either:

I know they go straight to Tirol pre-Reset (comics and novels, even 1E RPG), but I would remind you that Sentinels has been reset to "broad strokes" outside of Prelude itself AFAIK so actual depictions from those comics might not apply fully. A pre-2029 arrival is problematic with the 85EP show given the ASC have no knowledge of the Masters (Tirol being their homeworld, which in the OVA had Bioroid defenders so the UEEF likely would find evidence of the Bioroids) or the Invid (they aliens they actually endup fighting). Though I think the wording in Prelude is poor, it doesn't exactly establish 2022 as the arrival date only the departure of the mission.

So why not just let the warships do it from orbit as we see in Prelude? You don't need a dedicated bomber when you can just roll up and flatten the hive with a reflex cannon or other heavy beam weapon as we see the SDF-3 do.

1st the only known ship in the UEEF inventory of ships to have a reflex cannon is the SDF-3 (and it has 2x), but it wasn't utilized in 2042 or 2038 operations at Earth. Which had the SDF-3 been present for I think we can agree would have more than likely changed the outcome.

2nd other ships by all indications did not get those heavy beam weapons in this category until the introduction of Syncro-Cannons in 2043-4, and even then did not employ them against Reflex Point and other Hives in the final push choosing instead to rely on assets on the surface. Nor did the UEEF use them to take out the Invid Broadcast Towers ("Ghost Town") or in place of the N-S missiles in Ep85.

3rd Reflex Cannons (possibly even some classes of Syncro) may not be ideal for every Hive location due to the area of effect, they would need something with more precision to take out the Hive in New York City for example due to all the civilians in the city. It probably would not be too healthy for forces already on the scene either (as Ep84-5 @ Reflex Point).

4th we have no way to know if the combat roles the Horizon can perform are purpose built Variants (AC-130 type) or the result of modular attachments (ala the Garfish "science" design), so the use of "dedicated" is premature.

5th if we assume pre-Syncro-Cannon the majority of the heavy beam weaponry has short range (exception being Reflex Cannons), this would require you to potentially bring them into the atmosphere where they are harder to operate. They would also require escort fighters, no different than a bomber actually. The advantages a Horizon has potentially over the Garfish and Ikazuchi in an atmosphere are:
-its basic shape suggests atmospheric maneuvering was a factor in its design given it has wings and control surfaces after all (not saying it would be the best, but it would certainly be better than the G/I)
-its a smaller target overall (1:1) when in theatre (it represents a smaller investment in resources to lose)
-since we don't know the range of these pre-Syncro/non-Reflex "heavy beam weapons" (the Garfish in "Ghost Town" didn't fire on the Hive/IBT with the under cannon, reason why isn't known) bombs and missiles might actually offer better range, and gravity bombs tend to be cheaper.
-the Protoculture supply may favor less PC-intensive use of weapons (a PC powered beam cannon vs "conventional" missile/bomb) based on an off-cuff remark in Invasion Comic (#4 IIRC) mentions the PC supply issue for the UEEF (2038-9 well before TSC and the missing SDF-3 leaving them a 1yr supply)
-field of fire, the Ikazuchi has terrible fields of fire in this role (all top mounted). The Garfish is better (forward/underside) but doesn't necessarily offer any improvements over a Horizon with hypothetical weapons

I think the above shows that if the UEEF has widespread availability of Orbital Bombardment Weapons, they are highly reluctant to use them favoring other manpower-intensive options.

Achieving the kind of air superiority a large, relatively slow, gunship like that needs to be effective against ground targets really wouldn't be possible against the Invit/Invid... they invariably have a very large numerical advantage, and as many of them can fly the kind of pinned-down ground targets those gunships are designed to engage don't really occur in the bizarre asymmetrical warfare which the war consists almost exclusively of.

While the traditional role of gunship (and bomber to an extent) don't fit against the Invid, that doesn't mean the basic platforms are rendered irrelevant against the Invid. The real question here really is: how can a Gunship (or Bomber)-class of aircraft remain relevant (what has to change to make them viable again)?

and the hives aren't really infrastructure so much as they are a military fortification.

And for some reason military fortifications (or facilities) shouldn't be seen as valid bombing targets in Robotech, but they can be in the real world?

[xunk16]

(Really, it's criminal incompetence that nobody in-universe thought to just mount a battery of Zentradi gun turrets on the moon and take potshots at hives from there... well beyond the range of Invid reprisals.)

1. Can they really have shot that far with just recycled Zentraedi weaponry? Aren't beam weapons notoriously capricious in terms of their effective range?
2. I do get that most people here thinks the doctrine for the UEEF and ASC was crap, but even then; one might think that creating another Grand Cannon on the moon, even at a reduced cost, would equate to political suicide.

[Seto Kaiba]

You get no argument from me that the Infopedia is in need of revision, but we've never been on the same page as to how that revision should be executed or what the end product should look like.

That it should be made as consistent with what's in the actual show as possible seems like a no-brainer if you ask me... and there's a very simple, very straightforward way to do that.

That is, as I keep harping on, the very reason that people regard Robotech mecha like the Alpha and Beta as inferior or fundamentally flawed. They're looking at them out of their correct context. The Legioss/Alpha is a dedicated close air support attacker with rudimentary air-to-air capability and the TLEAD/Beta is a dedicated close air support attacker with light bomber features. To present the two of them as multirole strike fighters in the same operational context as the VF-1 Valkyrie is naturally going to make them look like arse in comparison. Few are the birds you judge by their ability to swim, and fewer still the fish by their ability to fly.

From my POV you've argued (correctly) that the uRRG is fanfiction, but you are doing the same basic thing they did (make the OSM background data work with RT as much as possible) which would make your work "fanfiction" to, the term also applies since it is not "official" or "canon" in anyway to Robotech regardless of how "authoritative" you want to claim your assessment is.

Perhaps your POV is in need of some corrective lenses? What the uRRG's... I want to use harsher language but we'll call them "writers"... is more or less the opposite of what you describe there. They composed long and elaborate backstories, development histories, and collections of technical details for the ships, mecha, and equipment of the series based on their own literal fan fiction and the "1st Edition" Robotech RPG. There is some OSM information in the mix, but their access to the material was clearly VERY limited and what little they did take was fairly basic information. A lot of what they took contains errors due to them misreading or misinterpreting what was in the few books they had access to.

For example, that's where we get the bizarre idea that the TLEAD's/Beta's rotary cannons are 80mm 3-barrel guns even though that won't physically fit in the space on the design... because they did a sloppy job and misread "30mm" as "80mm". There are similar errors in the size of certain ships, for instance.

My methodology is the polar opposite. I'm advocating the removal of the many baseless claims, misrepresentations, and other fallacies introduced by the uRRG's writers in order to return the specs to a state consistent with what was actually represented in the animation as supported by the materials used in the animation's production.

I'll remind you that even Harmony Gold considers the OSM more authoritative as a resource than parts of Robotech itself. That's why various gaffes in the Robotech series have been officially identified as gaffes, like the Sylphid "Veritech" actually just being a conventional fighter. My methodology is consistent with Harmony Gold's own methods and canon policy.

A Horizon bomber for example might not make sense against the Invid (to you), but it could make sense against the UEEF original enemy (the Masters) and still be note worthy from an operational history perspective, especially if the level of OBW capability is being exaggerated (or even the UEEF will to use it).

The problem there is not just that there's absolutely no precedent for it in the series or anywhere else... which would be enough to dismiss the idea for lack of evidence right there... it's that the idea is pretty ludicrous on the face of it. It only sounds good as long as you examine the idea in a vacuum, devoid of context. Once you start considering the practicalities, and especially its actual usefulness in the operations the UEEF was expecting (and later ended up undertaking) the idea falls apart.

In other words you have them acting in the role of a space fleet as they are not ad-hoc defenders, since the UEEF should also have had actual their actual warships deployed to defend the facility proper (but did not). And I think we can say they did have them, given they used the Tokagawa-class (even in 2043-4) and are said to use the Tri-star class.

Eh... you're assuming they still had any space warships. The Tokugawa is the only ship of that type seen in that period, and like its sister ships it was quickly revealed to be an ineffectual mess so helpless in an actual fight that it was effectively one-shotted.

There's no semblance of coordination or any kind of tactics involved when the UEEF scrambles its planetary assault ships to defend the invasion staging area at Space Station Liberty. They simply sit in formation and get shot. Their designs alone make it obvious they are not configured for traditional ship-to-ship combat, as they'll full of blind spots in their weapons coverage and are mainly set up for bombardment of static targets and ferrying supplies.

I know they go straight to Tirol pre-Reset (comics and novels, even 1E RPG), but I would remind you that Sentinels has been reset to "broad strokes" outside of Prelude itself AFAIK so actual depictions from those comics might not apply fully. A pre-2029 arrival is problematic with the 85EP show given the ASC have no knowledge of the Masters [...]

Given the official - and eminently justified - position that the ASC is basically the dumping ground for troops who didn't make the cut for the real military (the Expeditionary Forces), led by the officers considered least useful to an actual military undertaking, and commanded by an incompetent and tyrannical bigot who had little, if any, communication with the superiors who thought they'd assigned him a do-nothing guard job so simple even he couldn't possibly screw it up...

What makes you assume the UEEF felt any need to share intelligence on the Robotech Masters with the ASC?

They were a token garrison force left behind to guard Earth, and it was expected that the closest they would ever get to actual combat would be reading the UEEF's after-action reports over breakfast.

2nd other ships by all indications did not get those heavy beam weapons in this category until the introduction of Syncro-Cannons in 2043-4, and even then did not employ them against Reflex Point and other Hives in the final push choosing instead to rely on assets on the surface. Nor did the UEEF use them to take out the Invid Broadcast Towers ("Ghost Town") or in place of the N-S missiles in Ep85.

Which is a rather odd claim, given that we see some long-ranged beam weapon strikes in the final episodes of the series and they seem work OK. Perhaps not as long-ranged as the Zentradi warship turrets, but they still ought to be plenty capable of bombardment. Why they wouldn't use them to take out the towers... they don't appear to have known the towers existed, due to the general lack of intel from the surface because everyone was being killed. Why they didn't use them in place of neutron-s missiles is pretty straightforward. It takes a gargantuan fleet to glass a planet like that, and the UEEF just didn't have the ships to do it with their fleet of not-quite-400 ships.

3rd Reflex Cannons (possibly even some classes of Syncro) may not be ideal for every Hive location due to the area of effect, they would need something with more precision to take out the Hive in New York City for example due to all the civilians in the city. It probably would not be too healthy for forces already on the scene either (as Ep84-5 @ Reflex Point).

That's when you land ground forces and take the hive manually... like in the series.

4th we have no way to know if the combat roles the Horizon can perform are purpose built Variants (AC-130 type) or the result of modular attachments (ala the Garfish "science" design), so the use of "dedicated" is premature.

There are no variants, though... at least, not in any official material.

We also know that some of those roles (e.g. gun-attacker, light bomber) are already filled by other, less resource-intensive, aircraft like the TLEAD/Beta.

5th if we assume pre-Syncro-Cannon the majority of the heavy beam weaponry has short range [...]

I'm curious why we would assume this when the weapons of previous sagas that these ships are supposedly at least on par with have no such issue?

The advantages a Horizon has potentially over the Garfish and Ikazuchi in an atmosphere are:

But you're back into apples and oranges territory here... those craft are designed for fundamentally different things.

The Horizont is a transport shuttle meant to ferry ground troops, their equipment, a modest amount of supplies, etc. to a planet's surface.

The Garfish is a large cargo hauler meant to deliver bulk supplies.

The Ikazuchi is a transport for Legioss/Alpha attackers, ferrying them to the site of the orbital drop to provide additional protection for the ground forces making reentry.

-field of fire, the Ikazuchi has terrible fields of fire in this role (all top mounted). The Garfish is better (forward/underside) but doesn't necessarily offer any improvements over a Horizon with hypothetical weapons

... the irony is that this a fine argument for why these aren't space warships. Their gun coverage is either nonexistent or absolute rubbish.

While the traditional role of gunship (and bomber to an extent) don't fit against the Invid, that doesn't mean the basic platforms are rendered irrelevant against the Invid. The real question here really is: how can a Gunship (or Bomber)-class of aircraft remain relevant (what has to change to make them viable again)?

*gestures to the TLEAD/Beta* I think we already have our answer, my good chum.

And for some reason military fortifications (or facilities) shouldn't be seen as valid bombing targets in Robotech, but they can be in the real world?

Fortifications are usually subjects for tactical bombing, we were talking about strategic bombing.

1. Can they really have shot that far with just recycled Zentraedi weaponry? Aren't beam weapons notoriously capricious in terms of their effective range?

Zentradi ships manage it just fine in the first few episodes of the series... the bombardment that levels South Ataria/Macross island comes from lunar orbit, a light second away.

In the original dialog, the pair of picket ships that were destroyed by the booby trap's firing of the SDF-1's main gun were hit at a range of 0.9339 light seconds (280,000km)... and they were shown to be on approach to Earth at the time.

So, all in all, I would have to say the answer is "yes, they really can shoot that far".

I'm not sure where the idea that beam weapons are "capricious" in terms of their effective range came from... there are real-world physics issues with shooting through an atmosphere, but with enough power those become inconsequential.

• I do get that most people here thinks the doctrine for the UEEF and ASC was crap, but even then; one might think that creating another Grand Cannon on the moon, even at a reduced cost, would equate to political suicide.

Not a grand cannon, something smaller and more flexible. A battery of turrets. Maybe an equatorial gun battery around the moon to allow it to sustain fire from any angle.

(And in a moment of quality irony, there was a Grand Cannon on the moon in the Macross OSM. Grand Cannon IV. Only Grand Cannon I was complete at the time the war ended, though Grand Cannon IV was the only one to escape the war unscathed. The original plan called for five... one in eastern Alaska, one in Queensland, one in central Africa, one on the moon in the lunar north polar region, and one in Brazil.)

[Zer0 Kay]

... So what your saying is they do produce pointless designs

Not pointless, just... odd. It made sense in context in the old Sentinels comics.

(After all, good luck getting a nine foot tall space amazon to fold herself into a mecha designed for a person at most 2/3 that size...)
Except they'd be more protected on a make shift saddle on the back of a mech

And... still not a shuttle, if it can't go back

True, though in the original it was pretty much intended for a one-way trip...
spoken, written, drawn or your opinion?

The reason Mars colony and the outer solar system colonies were so keen to retake Earth in the 2080s was that they were badly overpopulated after accepting a huge influx of refugees from Earth after the Invit conquered Earth in 2050. The Earth Recapture missions were a way to alleviate their population crisis.
Still doesn't provide a reason to design a combat shuttle that can't recover or redeploy troops and equipment. THAT would be as stupid as making it so that the covers for the protoculture was welded on because they didn't expect anyone to come back. They're all 86ers going to operation spearhead...

The AC-47 was initially slapped together with local fabrication. The first AC-130 was produced from project Gunship I the one, noted as being developed at Wright Patterson from a JC-130A was built by Aeronautical Systems Division in 1967, hardly a kitbash even listed as a prototype. Here we go

It was an improvised design, not something a manufacturer did... it's a prototype purely by designation.
Where the heck are you getting that? Citation please. Is it an assumption because it was done at a military base instead of someplace like Skunkworks or Convair? That type of thinking would make projects, AQUATONE, OXCART, TAGBOARD, TACIT BLUE and HAVE BLUE as "improvised" as they were "developed" on a military base.

Lets see... give psychic power, check. Grants interstellar travel, check. Allows for cloning and genetic manipulation, check... okay it's Spice but it is from the opposite type of environment and still not worm poop.

But it grows in worm poop (aeriated soil)... so we're halfway there.
Well... most of the way if we're talking about Earthworms... a long way if we're talkin Arrakisworms

So there were no farms? What the heck were they here for?

It's a slightly problematic plot point since the whole "cruel enslavement of mankind on protoculture farms" is 100% offscreen villainy. Consequently, we don't know anything about these farms. They may be inside the hives, or underground, or somewhere else offscreen that may make them difficult or impossible to target.
Wait so there is or there isn't? Just because they're not shown doesn't mean anything. If they say they are then there are, unless they say they're underground or in a hive or out in the open then they are, since they don't we anyone can assume anything and be canonically correct. The only thing we know is they didn't show it.

In the original work, the Invit didn't really see humanity as an intelligent life form and were only interested in the planet as a place to experiment with the next phase of their evolution... which is why Rainy Boy (RT: Dusty Aires) was chopped up and turned into a cyborg by them while they experimented with the human form. Other than that, the Invit's attitude towards humans was basically "don't bother us and we won't bother you".
When you say Invid do you mean the race or that the Regis didn't? Seeing as how she accepted Zor we can assume she is still pouting. So smart, mmm not anymore, hmm, look like Zor, I'll make you my slaves and then we'll see what he says.

Excellent point... but they'd have to be shadow capital ships or the Invid just find them, swarm them and go back to business as usuall.

Yup... it's kinda six of one, half a dozen of the other. You could put a damned big nuke on a Horizont in place of a cargo pod and drop it from orbit... but that's probably more resource intensive than just rolling up with a big ol' reflex cannon death ray and start lancing hives like boils.
Well if they're guided ICBMs why not skip the Horizont?

(Really, it's criminal incompetence that nobody in-universe thought to just mount a battery of Zentradi gun turrets on the moon and take potshots at hives from there... well beyond the range of Invid reprisals.)Indeed, maybe have them arrayed a a few concentric circles and have someone mention "Hey... what do you know it IS a moon AND a battle station."

[Seto Kaiba]

Except they'd be more protected on a make shift saddle on the back of a mech

Robotech's writing was always a little dodgy... its original works more so than the works it adapted.

spoken, written, drawn or your opinion?

Implied, in written materials... esp. in promo materials for the new side story.

Spoiler:

Genesis Breaker's promotional materials published in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA File emphasize the direness of the situation quite a bit. It's said that the Invit invasion of Earth in 2050 wiped out approximately half of the population. The survivors who fled into space overwhelmed the limited resources of the lunar space exploration base and Mars colony, with Mars taking in 200 times the sustainable number of refugees. To ensure survival, the Martian government had to apply totalitarian measures. Everyone was categorized by their skills and education into one of seven job categories and put into involuntary labor to accelerate the terraforming of Mars and later to prepare for the invasion of Earth. The invasions were a way to alleviate the population pressures on Mars... either they'd retake Earth and the refugees could go home, or... well... the population was getting reduced either way.

The protagonists of the spinoff - the titular Breakers - are a paramilitary force originally created by the Martian government's intelligence service to hunt down and suppress (murder) dissenters during that difficult period and are noted to still hold the License to Kill they were granted in that period for that purpose.

As a fun aside, that material also offers explanations for important key terms in the original including the name of the aliens and a correct romanization (Invit), the origin of "Reflex Point", etc.

Still doesn't provide a reason to design a combat shuttle that can't recover or redeploy troops and equipment. THAT would be as stupid as making it so that the covers for the protoculture was welded on because they didn't expect anyone to come back. They're all 86ers going to operation spearhead...

It's not really a combat shuttle... it's not meant to be shot at. Rather, it's meant to be a high-speed orbital insertion craft to deploy ground forces. Presumably if any of the drops had gone to plan they may have been intended to ferry troops from orbit down to the surface as reinforcements became available, but they never got the chance. They weren't equipped to go back to Mars, though. Luna was about the limit of their endurance.

Where the heck are you getting that? Citation please. Is it an assumption because it was done at a military base instead of someplace like Skunkworks or Convair? That type of thinking would make projects, AQUATONE, OXCART, TAGBOARD, TACIT BLUE and HAVE BLUE as "improvised" as they were "developed" on a military base.

It's explicitly listed - even on Wikipedia - as a product of the US Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division. It was a military-developed "airframe enhancement", a product of a division that had the very specific job of doing field modifications like this (which no longer exists). The AC-130A is an aftermarket modification of existing C-130A airframes done at Wright-Patterson by soldiers.

That's very different to AQUATONE, OXCART, et. al. which were developed by private industry in the normal military procurement process.

Wait so there is or there isn't? Just because they're not shown doesn't mean anything. If they say they are then there are, unless they say they're underground or in a hive or out in the open then they are, since they don't we anyone can assume anything and be canonically correct. The only thing we know is they didn't show it.

There are no farms in the animation. The Invit were not there for any mysterious exotic substances in the original story.

That's why I said it's offscreen villainy... even the UEEF troops on the ground in the RT version don't seem to consider "protoculture farms" worth targeting since they're never really mentioned, and an ideal target for the TLEADs/Betas with their bomb bays full of incendiaries.

When you say Invid do you mean the race or that the Regis didn't? Seeing as how she accepted Zor we can assume she is still pouting. So smart, mmm not anymore, hmm, look like Zor, I'll make you my slaves and then we'll see what he says.

So, when I say "Invit" rather than "Invid" I am referring to the original MOSPEADA's version... that's the official romanization given for the kana (about 37 years too late to do any good).

There's no real distinction between the intelligence of the Refles/Regess and their Invit/Invid in either version though. In the original, the Refles and Invit saw humans more as a malevolent, dangerous lifeform than an intelligent species. Their interest in them was purely in charting the course of evolution on Earth in the search of their own evolutionary progression.

Well if they're guided ICBMs why not skip the Horizont?

*waves an arm in the direction of the charged particle warheads (RT: "Neutron S missiles")*

Why not indeed? They did get there eventually, though with a goal that was less precision demolition and more an Earth-scorching "kaboom" to destroy what they felt was an otherwise unassailable Invit stronghold in North America.

Indeed, maybe have them arrayed a a few concentric circles and have someone mention "Hey... what do you know it IS a moon AND a battle station."

(The irony for Robotech fans is Zor was supposedly going to go with exactly that himself at the end of Shadow Chronicles's OVA... building a REALLY BIG GUN to deal with the Haydonites.)

[ShadowLogan]

That it should be made as consistent with what's in the actual show as possible seems like a no-brainer if you ask me... and there's a very simple, very straightforward way to do that.

I agree, but at the same time we have to recognize that the show might only be showing a slice(s) of a given units capabilities*. That would explain the differences between the OSM and RT specs. RT also has to factor in that the ASC (and IMHO by extension the UEEF) should be on par technologically with the TMS saga, they might not appear that way due to the advanced technology of the aliens they encounter (the Masters created the Zentreadi, why wouldn't they be on par or better with them technologically) which renders the OSM specs somewhat suspect and disjointed. There's also the factor related to the potency of the Protoculture in play.

*to use Star Trek: TNG as an example, TNG Enterprise per outside sources is equipped with a deck for Dolphin/Whales and the Captain's Yacht, neither of which are used in the series proper (the Yacht from the E is used in a movie) or mentioned IIRC. The Saucer separation of the Galaxy Class IINM also exists in some form on the Constitution Class (again from sources outside the show, how far back you have to go I'm not sure).

ll remind you that even Harmony Gold considers the OSM more authoritative as a resource than parts of Robotech itself. That's why various gaffes in the Robotech series have been officially identified as gaffes, like the Sylphid "Veritech" actually just being a conventional fighter. My methodology is consistent with Harmony Gold's own methods and canon policy.

The thing is HG is not even consistent in this. That they agree with the OSM in that particular case shows that they at least value input from the OSM, but then go and do things like the Alpha's Head Missiles (AE) and Beta's split chest launchers (AE) or omit the Beta's Laser Bomb Launcher (OSM spec, though I could see them changing it to something else to make sense which they may have done given AotSC/MPC-directions) or the nature of the Beta's front guns (OSM projectile vs RT energy) shows that they do not have a consistent policy in this regard. And if they do not have a consistent policy, it means you can't with any real authority say "X" from the OSM actually applies because HG uses the OSM in an inconsistent manner.

The problem there is not just that there's absolutely no precedent for it in the series or anywhere else... which would be enough to dismiss the idea for lack of evidence right there... it's that the idea is pretty ludicrous on the face of it. It only sounds good as long as you examine the idea in a vacuum, devoid of context. Once you start considering the practicalities, and especially its actual usefulness in the operations the UEEF was expecting (and later ended up undertaking) the idea falls apart.

A horizon Bomber has some precedent coming from the use of the Beta, which is known to drop gravity bombs so that class of weapon is still in use. Having a heavier bomber would then make sense on three fronts: 1. its a historical capability dating back to the planned war with the Masters (technically the Infopedia doesn't say the Bomber role was used against the Invid, only that it was capable of that role which could date back to the time of preparing to fight the Masters), 2. its ability to carry stand-off weapons that the Beta (and Conbat/Condor-VF/VF-1) can not actually carry but that "warships" (Garfish/Ikazuchi) would not be an ideal delivery system. 3. the Beta's role as a useful tactical bomber is questionable at best IMHO based on the animation (it doesn't bomb any Hive) suggesting a need for a better bomb delivery platform.

What makes you assume the UEEF felt any need to share intelligence on the Robotech Masters with the ASC?

1. Politics: From the Sent. OVA where Leonard complains about how much the SDF-3 is taking from Earth's defenses, so they still need to have political support (or Earth based resources dry up). We know from the show proper that there was not universal support for the EF mission.

2. If the Masters are not at Tirol, then providing intelligence to the ASC makes sense if even only for identification purposes. Recall the ASC couldn't identify their enemy (we see labels like mutant Zentreadi strains or Space Pirates tossed around). If the UEEF had been to Tirol, they should have at minimum found remains of Bioroids and hoversleds, if not other examples of their hardware (based on the OVA footage). These guys maybe the "dregs", but they still have a job to do and one the UEEF likely would want them to be successful at should trouble arrive on their doorstep long enough for the UEEF to return.

Why they wouldn't use them to take out the towers... they don't appear to have known the towers existed, due to the general lack of intel from the surface because everyone was being killed. Why they didn't use them in place of neutron-s missiles is pretty straightforward. It takes a gargantuan fleet to glass a planet like that, and the UEEF just didn't have the ships to do it with their fleet of not-quite-400 ships.

No, the UEEF sent "orders" for the forces on the surface to attack the Invid Outposts (Scott takes the orders to mean attacking Broadcast towers, my mistake) in "Ghost Town" that is per the dialogue from Gabby's son as part of the messages they received on the Garfish (prompting the attack on the Invid Broadcast Tower/Hive by Gabby and then later the 3Alphas and 1 Beta with trailing support from the Garfish):
@13:00-13:20
"All Invid Military Outposts must be destroyed... [pause/interference and a bit more]"-UEEF Com Officer (Gabby's Son)
remarks by old timers
"Those towers have to be taken out they're holding up the invasion plans..."-Scott

Why would the UEEF need the survivors from the early attack waves to destroy Invid Military Outposts, when they could do the job from orbit if they had Orbital bombardment Weapons?

I'm curious why we would assume this when the weapons of previous sagas that these ships are supposedly at least on par with have no such issue?

Technically the only ships in previous sagas shown to have the necessary range are the Zentreadi ships, which possibly even out range the the SDF-1 guns based on Ep3 (implied the ship's missiles have greater range than the guns). I would argue the Masters should be technologically on par with the Zentreadi (their creators after all), they may not have the energy reserves to utilize said tactic. UEEF and UEDF:ASC warships are never given a clear indication in terms range, but they are implied to be much shorter than the Zentreadi (at least visually and due to lack of dialogue). I do no dispute they should be able to engage Zentreadi ships, but we do not know how they would go about it precisely (or even the parameters they expect to engage said ships).

But you're back into apples and oranges territory here... those craft are designed for fundamentally different things.

No we aren't actually. The issue is while we can safely say what a Garfish/Ikazuchi brings, we do not know what the Horizon actually brings when it is configured for a combat role. We know combat configurations are supposed to exist, and it is those configurations that should be compared to the Garfish/Ikauchi if they are proposed as alternatives to a combat configured Horizon doing the same job.

[Seto Kaiba]

I agree, but at the same time we have to recognize that the show might only be showing a slice(s) of a given units capabilities*.

No, we actually don't... because we have the production source material that clearly indicates what was and was not considered for the capabilities of various ships and mecha.

What you're positing here is just more wishful thinking... not an argument based on what can be objectively demonstrated to be true, but an open-ended "what if" appeal to what you want to be true.

It's nothing but an invitation to plot holes, since you then have to explain why people haven't been using this clearly advantageous capability all this time.

RT also has to factor in that the ASC (and IMHO by extension the UEEF) should be on par technologically with the TMS saga, [...]

Well, no... it actually doesn't have to, and indeed it canonically doesn't.

*to use Star Trek: TNG as an example, TNG Enterprise per outside sources is equipped with a deck for Dolphin/Whales and the Captain's Yacht, neither of which are used in the series proper (the Yacht from the E is used in a movie) or mentioned IIRC. The Saucer separation of the Galaxy Class IINM also exists in some form on the Constitution Class (again from sources outside the show, how far back you have to go I'm not sure).

This is actually a fantastic example of the fundamental flaws in your proposed methodology... and why the original source material is such a valuable foundation of factual material.

Spoiler:

The existence of the Captain's yacht and crew quarters for cetacean navigators were ideas that were workshopped in the development of Star Trek: the Next Generation and included as part of the official spec of the Enterprise-D used by the writers and model builders. While neither appeared on screen, the possibility of their inclusion was prepared for in production. The Captain's yacht got included on the underside of the studio model's saucer section and on the MSD okudagram in main engineering, and the holodeck hallway set has a door clearly marked as crew quarters for the dolphin crew members. Two episodes - "Yesterday's Enterprise" and "The Perfect Mate" - explicitly reference the presence of cetaceans aboard ship. Cetacean Ops finally made an appearance in an episode of the series Lower Decks.

Saucer separation was a concept that was toyed with from a very early phase of the original Star Trek's development. It was explicitly removed from the Enterprise's specs because it would have been far too expensive to shoot, but the idea didn't die and was also rejected for several movies before finally being officially included in the design of the Enterprise-D. The transporter was created for the series specifically because the original idea for having crew explore planets by landing the saucer section was too expensive.

When a (competent) set of developers are working on a series like that, they sit down and they decide beforehand what can and can't be done in the context of the setting. They decide what a ship or device's capabilities are, what its limitations are, how it works and why. That gives the writers a consistent framework to build on and the animators or model builders something to work from. That's what the OSM is. That's why it's such a valuable, factual resource. It defines what these things are, what they do, how they do it, and what their limits are. It provides a framework of unambiguous, objective fact that can be referenced.

The thing is HG is not even consistent in this.

Which is one of the reasons we're having this discussion in the first place, yes... the whole reason the Beta is seen as "flawed" is because Harmony Gold was misled into presenting it as something that it'd not. It's not a fighter. It's not meant to be fighting other aircraft. It's an attacker and a bomber. That's what it was designed to be. When you remove the embroidery of nonsense tacked on that foundation of fact by fanworks, suddenly everything is a lot more consistent. The inconsistent application of OSM is because the fanfic writers misled HG about what was and wasn't OSM.

A horizon Bomber has some precedent coming from the use of the Beta, [...]

That doesn't follow, even a little... you're literally arguing that because one aircraft uses low-altitude gravity bombs that other aircraft must.

Having a heavier bomber would then make sense on three fronts: 1. its a historical capability dating back to the planned war with the Masters (technically the Infopedia doesn't say the Bomber role was used against the Invid, only that it was capable of that role which could date back to the time of preparing to fight the Masters), 2. its ability to carry stand-off weapons that the Beta (and Conbat/Condor-VF/VF-1) can not actually carry but that "warships" (Garfish/Ikazuchi) would not be an ideal delivery system. 3. the Beta's role as a useful tactical bomber is questionable at best IMHO based on the animation (it doesn't bomb any Hive) suggesting a need for a better bomb delivery platform.

Yet it is never used in this context even when it would be profoundly advantageous to do so... which means you don't have an argument, you have a fanfic plot hole as indicated above.

1. Politics: From the Sent. OVA where Leonard complains about how much the SDF-3 is taking from Earth's defenses, so they still need to have political support (or Earth based resources dry up). We know from the show proper that there was not universal support for the EF mission.

Given that the UEEF was able to take whatever weapons they wanted over Leonard's objections, this reasoning doesn't work... the knowledge that the threat exists seems to have been enough to secure the resources they needed.

2. If the Masters are not at Tirol, then providing intelligence to the ASC makes sense if even only for identification purposes. Recall the ASC couldn't identify their enemy (we see labels like mutant Zentreadi strains or Space Pirates tossed around). If the UEEF had been to Tirol, they should have at minimum found remains of Bioroids and hoversleds, if not other examples of their hardware (based on the OVA footage). These guys maybe the "dregs", but they still have a job to do and one the UEEF likely would want them to be successful at should trouble arrive on their doorstep long enough for the UEEF to return.

But Leonard's own remarks you alluded to in your previous point clearly support the idea that the UEEF did not seriously entertain the idea of Earth being attacked by anyone while they were away... no reason to tell the ASC about the enemy you're planning on facing when they have no reason to expect to ever clap eyes on them themselves. You generally don't brief soldiers on concerns which aren't relevant to their theater of operations.

No, the UEEF sent "orders" for the forces on the surface to attack the Invid Outposts [...]

OK, so you have a boilerplate order to attack Invid installations... that doesn't equate to the UEEF in space having foreknowledge of what Invid installations were where and what types they were.

(If you want to justify it from the OSM, in the OSM the Invit hives and such were impenetrable and all but invisible to conventional sensors because they reflected radar waves, x-rays, lasers, and other forms of radiant energy. The name of the main Invit hive was supposedly coined because of this... it's not "Reflex Point", it's "Reflects Point".)

Why would the UEEF need the survivors from the early attack waves to destroy Invid Military Outposts, when they could do the job from orbit if they had Orbital bombardment Weapons?

Because the last two attempts to enter orbit led to assault ships being mobbed by Invid and sunk before they could take offensive action? This is kind of a very basic plot point.

I would argue the Masters should be technologically on par with the Zentreadi (their creators after all), they may not have the energy reserves to utilize said tactic.

This itself is an illogical point, since the Masters created the Zentradi to do their fighting for them... why would they need to be just as heavily armed?

No we aren't actually. The issue is while we can safely say what a Garfish/Ikazuchi brings, we do not know what the Horizon actually brings when it is configured for a combat role. We know combat configurations are supposed to exist, [...]

Let's correct this... the Horizont doesn't have a combat configuration in any official materials. You have fanfic material that claims it has combat configurations, but none are ever used and there is zero material to support their existence.

[ShadowLogan]

But Leonard's own remarks you alluded to in your previous point clearly support the idea that the UEEF did not seriously entertain the idea of Earth being attacked by anyone while they were away... no reason to tell the ASC about the enemy you're planning on facing when they have no reason to expect to ever clap eyes on them themselves. You generally don't brief soldiers on concerns which aren't relevant to their theater of operations.

While it is true at launch the UEEF wasn't expecting an attack by anyone pre-launch, once at Tirol (post launch) and not finding the Masters at Tirol would indicate a possible threat to Earth was enroute.

This itself is an illogical point, since the Masters created the Zentradi to do their fighting for them... why would they need to be just as heavily armed?

I am saying they are as technologically advanced as the Zentreadi at minimum since they are the source of Zentreadi technology and could reproduce it should the need arise.

Let's correct this... the Horizont doesn't have a combat configuration in any official materials..

The Horizon's combat configurations are stated to exist in official RT materials, that is a fact and one I've cited. The only thing we lack is information on its configuration(s). I do not care if it agrees or disagrees with the OSM, RT borrows from it in a cherry picking fashion as can be seen in previous examples. I am done.

[Seto Kaiba]

While it is true at launch the UEEF wasn't expecting an attack by anyone pre-launch, once at Tirol (post launch) and not finding the Masters at Tirol would indicate a possible threat to Earth was enroute.

... there are a lot of dependent assumptions there to reach a conclusion like that.

I am saying they are as technologically advanced as the Zentreadi at minimum since they are the source of Zentreadi technology and could reproduce it should the need arise.

OK, but that still doesn't mean anything. Having the most advanced technology in the universe doesn't matter a damn if you can't power it, and as I recall that was their whole civilization-wide problem. Therefore it doesn't actually matter if the animation doesn't support the contention since it's a plot point that they can't wield that advanced technology anymore.

The Horizon's combat configurations are stated to exist in official RT materials, that is a fact and one I've cited.

And the problem with that assertion, as noted previously, is that it's a claim without corroborating evidence and a stupidly obvious plot hole...

You can go on for ages claiming that the UEEF may have had some call for a craft capable of deploying heavy ordnance but the fact remains that it was conspicuous by its absence each and every time having such a craft would have been tactically or strategically advantageous. It's strictly apocryphal. More so, even, than any example I could choose since it's never actually appeared anywhere.

It loops back to "why would they need a heavy bomber when there's nothing to heavily bomb" too. The TLEAD/Beta seems to be sufficient for what little they have in the way of need for a bomber.

[ShadowLogan]

@Seto
Re: Horizon
Since we can't agree on the validity of sources its not worth continued discussion.

... there are a lot of dependent assumptions there to reach a conclusion like that.

So the UEEF travels all the way to Tirol, doesn't find what its looking for, and then doesn't inform Earth that their big-bad isn't where they thought it would be (we know Earth and the UEEF are in contact w/each other in 2029)? What would the Masters most likely destination be since they aren't at home? The (only known) site of the PC matrix/factory would make the most sense.

OK, but that still doesn't mean anything. Having the most advanced technology in the universe doesn't matter a damn if you can't power it, and as I recall that was their whole civilization-wide problem. Therefore it doesn't actually matter if the animation doesn't support the contention since it's a plot point that they can't wield that advanced technology anymore.

The Masters are in an energy crunch, but that doesn't mean the technology they can use is any less advanced. The Bioroids technologically use a control setup humanity hadn't seen before (and they would have seen Zentreadi tech). The Masters employ Force Fields, something the Zentreadi are not shown to have (at least in terms of flashy visible systems) but was present on the SDF-1 (pre-Earth crash, Masters speculate about using the ship's barrier system to defeat 4million ships weather this is the same system as the Omni-Barrier or not isn't clear). The Masters have advanced cyber technology (radically different than Earth's "old cyborgs"- per dialogue, and if Earth has examined Zentreadi technology anything they use).

The Masters do use beam weapons from the ship at shorter range, but this might be for efficient energy use. In "Half-Moon" a Cityship drops down into the Atmosphere real close to the ASC position at the Mounds, and they open fire with one shot that has a more destructive effect than the massed fire of Zentreadi OWB in Ep2 on Macross City. I'll grant there are issues like range (obviously), but also have to consider how the weapons behave (what happens when insufficient power is sent to the weapon does it just create a weak "signal" or no "signal", how range effects damage, etc).

It would also flow that if the ASC was technologically capable of successfully engaging the Zentreadi (as implied per dialogue), then for the Masters to have given them such issues would mean that the Masters, even in their energy crunch state, would be technologically on par (at minimum) with the Zentreadi (maybe if the Masters did something like asymmetric warfare we could claim otherwise, but that doesn't seem to be the case). The UEEF would also have to be technologically on par with the ASC since they where going to fight the Masters, and likely would assume Zentreadi level technology would make up their defenses (either Zentreadi leftovers like Reno or for their native use, in position to deal with another possible Zentreadi rebellion or other "micronians" the Zentreadi are supposed to avoid contact with).