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How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

keir451 wrote:How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

Phase World pg. 152 "Other cultures of the Megaverse have developed space-fold drives, but this system has a lot of risks. For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies."

eliakon wrote:

keir451 wrote:How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

Phase World pg. 152 "Other cultures of the Megaverse have developed space-fold drives, but this system has a lot of risks. For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies."

Ah! Thanks for the reminder,it's been a while since I pulled out my 3G books so I'd forgotten.

I would use them. Mainly to create a game session or two Involving a fold gone wrong. Can have lots of fun with that

eliakon wrote:

keir451 wrote:How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

Phase World pg. 152 "Other cultures of the Megaverse have developed space-fold drives, but this system has a lot of risks. For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies."

In the MilkyWay Galaxy (HU setting, detailed in the HU:AU and AU:GG gamebooks) Do have space folding travel. However, the travel means have different names due to particulers of how they are done. HyperGravtics, Gateway Stations, and Cruse Mode.
There is also mention of Rifting drives insomuch that while they exist, they are not know to be used much even by races that are Magic Literate.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:

eliakon wrote:

keir451 wrote:How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

Phase World pg. 152 "Other cultures of the Megaverse have developed space-fold drives, but this system has a lot of risks. For reasons unknown, space-fold drives are very likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies."

In the MilkyWay Galaxy (HU setting, detailed in the HU:AU and AU:GG gamebooks) Do have space folding travel. However, the travel means have different names due to particulers of how they are done. HyperGravtics, Gateway Stations, and Cruse Mode.
There is also mention of Rifting drives insomuch that while they exist, they are not know to be used much even by races that are Magic Literate.

Errr, not to make to fine a point....Those aren't space-fold systems. Since in the Palladium Megaverse Space-Fold has a pretty specific meaning (I.E. RT/MII Fold Drives, and the few others who use drives explicitly labeled as a space-fold such as the Ahrkhons and the Intruders.) Although I guess a Rift drive and a Gateway Station could be considered somewhat similar to a point.

I did phrase my comment quite specifically to include wormholes.

Space folding....there are two ways...Making two points that are far away from each other congruent and just changing which point you are at.
Tessering (or Tesseracting) in "A Wrinkle in Time"
Guild Highliner Drives in the Dune universe


..and making a WormHole type Time-space feature.
RT fold-drives They create fold corridors. As per The Shadow Chronicles movie.
Contact's alien Wormhole transit system.
The StarFire series by David Weber and Steve White (There is a fleet battle game that was produced by Task Force Games.) The latest SF novels by Steve White has a Wormhole making device in it.


Standing between the two are the StarGate "gates". They are called wormholes but they act more like rifts.

The 3G Rift drives....these are more like hyperspace drives, as per their descriptive text.

Walking through a rift, as per the Rifts' rifts, is much like tessering, then using the 3G rifts drives are.

keir451 wrote:How well do you think fold drives would work in the Three Galaxies? Would all the dimensional effects interfere with them or would they operate justy fine with a little fine tunig or not work at all?

Well, that rather depends whose definition of "fold drive" you're working from...

The definition of the space fold technology available in RIFTS indicates that technology operates through the folding of space-time in realspace. Dimensional distortions and discontinuities would naturally have a fairly adverse effect on this technology.

Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles offered us the first visual diagram of a ship making a fold jump, a problematic aspect of which being that no actual folding of space-time is occurring. The Robotech fold drive is officially nothing more than a Star Trek-style warp drive moving a normalized bubble of space-time thorough space by the compression and expansion of the space around the bubble.

The Macross metaseries also has a different definition of what a space fold engine is and how that engine achieves faster-than-light travel. It's not realspace that's being folded, as in a RIFTS space fold engine... the actual principle is more akin to an extra-dimensional teleportation effect. The folding ships are folding the corresponding space between their present position and destination in a 10+ dimensional sub-universe until those points overlap, and then jumping into and out of that folded higher-dimensional sub-universe.



My take, based on the facts, would be that a RIFTS fold drive would be affected by whatever causes a fold drive to go wonky in the Three Galaxies. Robotech and Macross fold drives would likely not be affected, due to their different operating principles.

I dunno, it seems pretty easy here. Of all the various drives in the game a tiny handful that are labeled as 'space-fold' systems
Robotech/Macroos, Intruders, Ahrkons are examples. So I would speculate that....those are space-fold drives, and the other drives...are not space-fold drives.
Or to quote Dog_O_War

Dog_O_War wrote: "So if it's not Kellogg's on the box, then it's not Kellogg's in the box."

eliakon wrote:I dunno, it seems pretty easy here. Of all the various drives in the game a tiny handful that are labeled as 'space-fold' systems
Robotech/Macroos, Intruders, Ahrkons are examples. So I would speculate that....those are space-fold drives, and the other drives...are not space-fold drives.

I dunno, man... despite the Palladium Megaversal game system theoretically making all games compatible, what's actually in the books is often consistently inconsistent when it isn't being wildly inaccurate. They refer to three completely different engine technologies with the same term for no clear reason... the fold engines in RIFTS work on completely different principles from the fold drives in Macross, which work under completely different principles from the ones in Robotech, which aren't really fold drives at all.

I wouldn't be so quick to tar them with the same brush because of bad/lazy writing and poor research on Palladium's part...

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:I dunno, it seems pretty easy here. Of all the various drives in the game a tiny handful that are labeled as 'space-fold' systems
Robotech/Macroos, Intruders, Ahrkons are examples. So I would speculate that....those are space-fold drives, and the other drives...are not space-fold drives.

I dunno, man... despite the Palladium Megaversal game system theoretically making all games compatible, what's actually in the books is often consistently inconsistent when it isn't being wildly inaccurate. They refer to three completely different engine technologies with the same term for no clear reason... the fold engines in RIFTS work on completely different principles from the fold drives in Macross, which work under completely different principles from the ones in Robotech, which aren't really fold drives at all.

I wouldn't be so quick to tar them with the same brush because of bad/lazy writing and poor research on Palladium's part...

*Meh* Dunno, the drives in RT and M2 are both clearly called fold drives. The in universe names for both are fold drives, so I would presume that they are, in fact, fold drives. So, if they are both fold drives, then it would imply that there IS a connection, and that yes there is some sort of common denominator to them. I would presume that common connection is....they fold space
The Intruders and Ahrkons drives are just fiat fold drives, so there it doesn't really matter.
But the point of this is this. If your drive is not some sort of fold system, then its not a fold drive. Just like if your drive doesn't use some sort of nuclear process its not a nuclear drive.

Nightfactory wrote:

eliakon wrote:Although I guess a Rift drive and a Gateway Station could be considered somewhat similar to a point.

I'd say so. A Rift Drive seems to operate on exactly the same principle as a Fold Drive.

Except that for some reason Rift Drives are a highly reliable drive in regular use in the 3Gs, and Space-Fold drives are error prone oddity's. But yes from a purely mechanical stand point Rift Drives seem quite similar to Fold Drives. They both bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate space time to move ships from here, to there, with out going any points between.

eliakon wrote:*Meh* Dunno, the drives in RT and M2 are both clearly called fold drives.

Strictly speaking, they're not actually called that... the text of the Phase World book refers to the "space-fold drive" technology that exists in that setting. If you want to be painfully literal about it, what the RPG books for Macross II and Robotech actually say is not "space-fold drive".

The text of the old, completely and depressingly inaccurate Macross II books actually refers to the technology either as "fold system" or "hyperspace navigation system". The former is actually correct for Macross, the latter is not... though the original series also briefly refers to it as the "subspace fold" system or the "spatial transfer" system (the Zentradi name for it). Robotech calls its faster-than-light drive technology the "hyperspace fold drive", though the whole name is an artifact title which was inherited from their translation of the Macross dialogue and doesn't actually reflect the drive's actual function, which is an Alcubierre "warp" drive as diagrammed in the animation of RTSC.

eliakon wrote:The in universe names for both are fold drives, so I would presume that they are, in fact, fold drives.

I'm afraid the first part of your logical argument is where it falls apart... neither the books nor the shows refer to 'em as "space-fold drive(s)", the term used in the Phase World remark. Their actual functions in the official material (since the RPG doesn't describe it) doesn't match the Phase World technology either... the Macross version is not folding normal space, and the Robotech version isn't folding anything.

Therefore, it would be most correct to say that they are NOT space-fold drives.

The Robotech fold drives were already error prone, with tables to roll on for their accuracy. Even the SDF-1 fold system vanishes when they use it for the "first" time. I think making them even MORE likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies is just overkill and unnecessary.

Nightfactory wrote:I have no idea why PB chose to say that fold drives are error-prone (without giving any explanation whatsoever - typical), but that's a rule that I would chuck in a game, personally.

's probably because accidents relating to hyperspace fold travel were a pretty common plot device in the low-quality material Harmony Gold's various licensees produced between the failure of Sentinels and Robotech's continuity reboot in 2001.

Glistam wrote:The Robotech fold drives were already error prone, with tables to roll on for their accuracy. Even the SDF-1 fold system vanishes when they use it for the "first" time. I think making them even MORE likely to malfunction in the Three Galaxies is just overkill and unnecessary.

That's kind of a "depending on the author" thing... back before Harmony Gold brought Tommy Yune in and rebooted the whole Robotech universe, throwing out all the previous licensee-driven work. Some of the material the licensees made had hyperspace fold drives working without a hiccough... others had 'em break down if you so much as looked at 'em wrong. Canon Robotech after the reboot went with an interesting middle ground, attributing the alleged unreliability of fold systems to humanity using principally salvaged power and drive systems taken from Zentradi wrecks early on, and the disappearance of all the unreliability to humanity gaining enough proficiency to independently build new ones.

Mind you, in Robotech, the reason the SDF-1's hyperspace fold system vanished was because they had rebuilt it wrong. After that one incident, there have never been any other depictions of issues with hyperspace fold travel in canon.

Macross, including Macross II, has a slightly more complex explanation in that the drive was in good working order, but General Global ordered a fold jump from inside a planetary gravity well (an unsafe idea at the best of times), with a compromised gravity control system, and not knowing that fold system had been scrambled by the same booby trap that fired the main gun and messed with other systems that were governed by the original alien computers onboard. Humanity had already started to manufacture its own fold systems before the Macross ever launched, their installation was just sidetracked by the events of the first space war... and fold travel is depicted as extremely safe and reliable.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Nightfactory wrote:I have no idea why PB chose to say that fold drives are error-prone (without giving any explanation whatsoever - typical), but that's a rule that I would chuck in a game, personally.

's probably because accidents relating to hyperspace fold travel were a pretty common plot device in the low-quality material Harmony Gold's various licensees produced between the failure of Sentinels and Robotech's continuity reboot in 2001.

I think there was a reference in one of the Phase World books to it possibly being a result of the heavy use of the gravity-manipulating drives that are most common in the 3 galaxies. Given the drives massively distort the fabric of space-time in order to let ships travel at incredibly fast FTL speeds and space-fold drives work by 'folding' space-time to make two separate parts of space-time briefly the same it's likely all that distortion interferes with space-fold systems (although the Intruders apparently have compensated for the problem). There's mention of odd gravity waves traveling about through the galaxies that can actually create 'dead' zones where a CG drive stops working (and the possibility of ALL drives stopping due to the increasing occurrences of such), that could really mess up something that requires pretty precise calculations to hit where it's aiming.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:*Meh* Dunno, the drives in RT and M2 are both clearly called fold drives.

Strictly speaking, they're not actually called that... the text of the Phase World book refers to the "space-fold drive" technology that exists in that setting. If you want to be painfully literal about it, what the RPG books for Macross II and Robotech actually say is not "space-fold drive".

The text of the old, completely and depressingly inaccurate Macross II books actually refers to the technology either as "fold system" or "hyperspace navigation system". The former is actually correct for Macross, the latter is not... though the original series also briefly refers to it as the "subspace fold" system or the "spatial transfer" system (the Zentradi name for it). Robotech calls its faster-than-light drive technology the "hyperspace fold drive", though the whole name is an artifact title which was inherited from their translation of the Macross dialogue and doesn't actually reflect the drive's actual function, which is an Alcubierre "warp" drive as diagrammed in the animation of RTSC.

eliakon wrote:The in universe names for both are fold drives, so I would presume that they are, in fact, fold drives.

I'm afraid the first part of your logical argument is where it falls apart... neither the books nor the shows refer to 'em as "space-fold drive(s)", the term used in the Phase World remark. Their actual functions in the official material (since the RPG doesn't describe it) doesn't match the Phase World technology either... the Macross version is not folding normal space, and the Robotech version isn't folding anything.

Therefore, it would be most correct to say that they are NOT space-fold drives.

I am going to have to beg to differ here. When something is labeled
Fold System (RT 1 pg 109)
Hyperspace Fold Drive and space fold (RT2 Macross Saga pg 147)
Fold System (M2 Deck Plans 1 pg 17)
as just three random spots. That it is, indeed a fold drive, at least as Palladium Books defines the term, which really is what matters here doesn't it? I am sure that many a long and technical discussion could be had about what is the exact nature of the FTL drives in the various anime, but that is not what is at question here is it? What is at question is what PB chose to represent those drives as in their games. And in all three incarnations of the franchise they were described as 'fold drives' which leads me to believe that yes, indeed these are the self same fold drives that are mentioned as being unreliable.

And just as a point of reference how can something not match the description of the Phase World technology, when there is literally no description of that technology at all besides a one sentence mention that it exists?

Nightmask wrote:I think there was a reference in one of the Phase World books to it possibly being a result of the heavy use of the gravity-manipulating drives that are most common in the 3 galaxies. [...]

Hm... well, I could maybe see that interfering with some sci-fi forms of faster-than-light technology, like Star Wars hyperspace and the space-fold drives as described in RIFTS which operate within normal space-time by gravitationally folding realspace. Whether or not that would disrupt the Alcubierre effect hyperspace fold drives used in Robotech is unclear at best, since the Icarus was not dragged out of its warp by the black hole it passed near... it only ran into difficulty after it slowed to its sublight engines near it. In Macross, gravity isn't a significant obstacle to fold jumps provided you account for it in your calculations. We've seen ships fold out of the gravity wells of STARS without issue, and a properly calibrated fold engine can jump into and out of planetary atmospheres with ease.

Gravity manipulation is used pretty extensively in both Robotech and Macross, so I can't see that being something that would be an obstacle to their ships... both of which can reshape local gravity and/or outright exempt themselves from its effects with ease.

eliakon wrote:I am going to have to beg to differ here.

You're certainly welcome to... it won't magically give your argument a factual basis though.

eliakon wrote:Fold System (RT 1 pg 109)

First edition is an obsolete, depreciated edition that even Harmony Gold has disowned as being RT in name only... so we'll say no more of that wildly inaccurate mess.

eliakon wrote:Hyperspace Fold Drive and space fold (RT2 Macross Saga pg 147)

As I have already pointed out, the hyperspace fold drive depicted in Robotech is not folding space in any way, shape, or form. It's a warp drive, pure and simple. The RPG describes the drives as "Hyperspace fold drive" or "fold array" on a consistent basis across multiple books. The one usage of "space fold" is an aberration. "Hyperspace fold" does not equal "space fold".

eliakon wrote:That it is, indeed a fold drive, at least as Palladium Books defines the term, which really is what matters here doesn't it?

The Robotech RPG and Macross II RPG do not define the operation of a "space-fold drive", thus assuming that the definition of a completely different system from RIFTS also applies is probably a bad idea. The definition of the system from the material Palladium produced the licensed game for should be applied to the licensed game, therefore we are not dealing with the same technologies here.

Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Nightfactory wrote:

Seto Kaiba wrote:'s probably because accidents relating to hyperspace fold travel were a pretty common plot device in the low-quality material Harmony Gold's various licensees produced between the failure of Sentinels and Robotech's continuity reboot in 2001.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if you'd hit on it.

Nor would I... because it's been a dog's age since I read ANY of those old Robotech novels or comics, and I can think of AT LEAST five or six cases where some form of hyperspace fold mishap was a major plot point or at least a casually-discussed fact. It came in three basic flavors... some form of drive failure that strands a ship behind enemy lines in a hopeless situation, causes a ship to outright disappear and never be seen again, or outright destroys the ship completely.

After Harmony Gold summarily dismissed the old comics, novels, and other material from the continuity, the status of "unreliable" hyperspace fold drives is in question. The official Shadow Chronicles art book is pretty vague on the subject, except to attribute difficulties in coordinating operations between the UEEF's forces in the field and Earth to salvaged fold systems.

Amusingly, that "unreliable FTL" cliche is one of the few things in Robotech that isn't swiped from the OSM. Humanity didn't possess faster-than-light drive technology in the original MOSPEADA. Unused material from the canceled Southern Cross series was going to explain the Zor's origins as a group of human colonists who'd been lost in space and time and colonized Glorie in the distant past thanks to their first-generation warp drive failing, but they never got as far as the big reveal before the network canned the show over its terrible ratings, and by the time of the series' events in 2120 they'd sorted out any big issues with their warp technology. Macross directly attributed the disappearance of the titular ship's fold system to the booby trap that scrambled the original alien systems, not a defect in the drive itself or fold jumping being dangerous or unreliable.

Nightfactory wrote:

eliakon wrote:Although I guess a Rift drive and a Gateway Station could be considered somewhat similar to a point.

I'd say so. A Rift Drive seems to operate on exactly the same principle as a Fold Drive.

Only up to a point... a fold drive is science based while a rift drive is magic based... a fold drive malfunction normally leaves you somewhere in your home dimmension, whereas a rifts SNAFU is apt to leave you anywhere in the megaverse, but more likely near a major site of transdimensional activity.

Svartalf wrote:Only up to a point... a fold drive is science based while a rift drive is magic based... a fold drive malfunction normally leaves you somewhere in your home dimmension, whereas a rifts SNAFU is apt to leave you anywhere in the megaverse, but more likely near a major site of transdimensional activity.

Again, depends on whose fold drive you're talking about? RIFTS? Certainly. Robotech's? You might well end up being unceremoniously dumped at a random location near your course and your fold drive may well vanish into the ether. Macross's? You either end up making an uncontrolled return to realspace and losing a LOT of time due to the time-space displacement effect, or you end up unable to return to our universe and your ship is destroyed by the radically different laws of physics in the higher-dimension sub-universe.

camk4evr wrote:Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

Glistam wrote:Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

Yeah, if that's the problem with 'em, then both Macross and Robotech's variations on fold technology are in the clear. Macross's fold systems are powered by high-energy capacitors that are recharged off the ship's thermonuclear reaction heat pile systems, which leverage the unique physics that exist in super dimension space (the aforementioned higher-dimension sub-universe) to generate enormous amounts of power from a process similar to nuclear fusion. Robotech is off the hook too, since their "hyperspace fold" (warp) drives are powered by a magic flower's frustrated libido.*


*No, really! This is a somewhat pithy but accurate summation of Carl Macek's official summation of how the Invid flower of life is used to generate energy. The seeds release huge amounts of bio-energy - implied to be life-force - when their ability to grow and reproduce is stifled.

I allow for the Bakalaponan People's Republic(or is that the Peoples' Republic of Bakalapona?)(NO! It's the Republic of the Bakalaponan Peoples!)(You're all wrong! It's the Bakalaponan Republican Peoples!) using an 'Origami Drive' that folds and refolds and folds again space in all sorts of pleasant shapes which, though they don't cut down on interstellar travel times all that much, do make space travel rather more interesting.
However, bear in mind that the BPR, or PRB, or RPB, or BRP, is made of descendants from an abandoned Golgan planetary psychiatric confinement colony, so their Origami Drive is not recommended travel for those with more rational mindsets, or who have reservations about space/time-bending precision apparatus designed and built by congenital sociopaths and psychotics.

Glistam wrote:

camk4evr wrote:Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

personally i don't ascribe to that idea.. i think it is more that since fold drives dive thru multiple dimensions were space has been folded back on itself, they rely heavily on the way space is shaped. contragravitic drives warp space for their propulsion.. and the three galaxies have millions of these operating, thus changing the shape of space as the fold drive ship is moving thru it, destabilizing the process..

glitterboy2098 wrote:personally i don't ascribe to that idea.. i think it is more that since fold drives dive thru multiple dimensions were space has been folded back on itself, they rely heavily on the way space is shaped. contragravitic drives warp space for their propulsion.. and the three galaxies have millions of these operating, thus changing the shape of space as the fold drive ship is moving thru it, destabilizing the process..

That would still exempt Robotech and Macross fold technology, at the very least... the way the Robotech equivalent operates is as an Alcubierre-effect drive plant, which is also changing the shape of space (contraction and expansion of the fabric of space-time), and Macross's fold jumps push the folding ship into another, higher-dimension universe divorced from the physical laws that govern realspace.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:personally i don't ascribe to that idea.. i think it is more that since fold drives dive thru multiple dimensions were space has been folded back on itself, they rely heavily on the way space is shaped. contragravitic drives warp space for their propulsion.. and the three galaxies have millions of these operating, thus changing the shape of space as the fold drive ship is moving thru it, destabilizing the process..

That would still exempt Robotech and Macross fold technology, at the very least... the way the Robotech equivalent operates is as an Alcubierre-effect drive plant, which is also changing the shape of space (contraction and expansion of the fabric of space-time), and Macross's fold jumps push the folding ship into another, higher-dimension universe divorced from the physical laws that govern realspace.

actually in robotech, we see a bubble formed yes, but that's just a protective shell of normal space as the ship enters a hyperspace like multidimensional realm. we see this in both shadow chronicles and the original robotech episodes. the realm is actually called hyperspace in dialog, in fact.

the group using alcubirre metrics is the three galaxies, which is how the contragravitic drives achieve FTL.

glitterboy2098 wrote:actually in robotech, we see a bubble formed yes, but that's just a protective shell of normal space as the ship enters a hyperspace like multidimensional realm. we see this in both shadow chronicles and the original robotech episodes. the realm is actually called hyperspace in dialog, in fact. [...]

Look again, the ship never leaves realspace in Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles.

Likewise, the diagram of the drive plant effect is shown on screen, and it's a contraction and expansion of the fabric of space... the Alcubierre drive effect, known mostly as Star Trek's warp drive.

The crowning touch that the only official description of how a fold drive works in Robotech describes exactly what I've told you... the hyperspace fold drive does not send the ship to another dimension, what occurs is the ship distorts the fabric of space-time to create a bubble of normalized space-time, and then that bubble is pushed through space at superluminal speeds. At no point does it mention or describe that ship leaving normal space. It's an Alcubierre-effect drive. Please see page 40 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles.


Macross's fold systems DO transport the ship into a higher-dimension sub-universe, which the ship's fold system manipulates to circumvent the distance between the ship's current location and its intended destination. The most recent and complete official description would be in Macross Chronicle, 2nd Edition, Technology Sheet 08A "Overtechnology: Space Fold".


The "Hyperspace" in Robotech's "hyperspace fold drive" is something of an editing artifact now that Harmony Gold has established that it's a Star Trek-style warp drive. Or it may be a reflection of the physics used in creating the bubble, in the same way that one could arguably call a warp drive in Star Trek a "subspace warp drive" or "gravitational field displacement manifold".

except that the same visual effects occur in the original series, where character dialog specifies hyperspace. so it is not a alcubirre metric, but rather a alternate realm based system. the "jumping in and out" effect is the ship entering and leaving. in the main series, this was sometimes accompanied by bursts/portals of light, but not always. the shadow chronicles effect is pretty much the same as the original show's. given both are called fold, and both use the same technology, that means the original show still applies to shadow chronicles.

glitterboy2098 wrote:except that the same visual effects occur in the original series, [...]

Wrong. Please check your facts before replying. You're off the mark on multiple fronts with this.

The animation used in Robotech only shows a "fold bubble" ONCE, during the SDF-1's botched trip to Luna that dumped it at Pluto. Otherwise, the visuals could not be more different. The original animation's contents show the ships simply glow and then vanish, in keeping with the way the true creators of all this material actually conceived a fold system's operation... essentially, teleportation. The visual effect of the ship in transit looks NOTHING alike... the RTSC visuals show us the ship in a bubble moving through normal space with starlines whipping past, while the original animation from Macross shows ships vanish and then reappear elsewhere, and the one time we see super dimension space in the original it's a technicolor light show with no visible stars or anything else.

glitterboy2098 wrote:so it is not a alcubirre metric, but rather a alternate realm based system.

Harmony Gold's official material says you're wrong... therefore you're wrong. The one official explanation of fold technology in RT does not support your claim, nor do the visuals.

Nightfactory wrote:If you get a paper-cut from an oragami drive, what effect does it have...........?

I dunno... is the treatment a stitch in time?

A better question is. What is the official, published answer to this, in the relevant source material (Palladium Books, since this is a question about their game, not the source materials that they ADDAPTED) at the time of the reference.
That would be RT1, and M2.
The various supplemental materials from the animators about the shows, while interesting is not relevant to this discussion since what is being discussed is the Palladium Books adaption, not the actual show itself, there is a subtle, and important difference.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

glitterboy2098 wrote:except that the same visual effects occur in the original series, [...]

Wrong. Please check your facts before replying. You're off the mark on multiple fronts with this.

The animation used in Robotech only shows a "fold bubble" ONCE, during the SDF-1's botched trip to Luna that dumped it at Pluto. Otherwise, the visuals could not be more different. The original animation's contents show the ships simply glow and then vanish, in keeping with the way the true creators of all this material actually conceived a fold system's operation... essentially, teleportation. The visual effect of the ship in transit looks NOTHING alike... the RTSC visuals show us the ship in a bubble moving through normal space with starlines whipping past, while the original animation from Macross shows ships vanish and then reappear elsewhere, and the one time we see super dimension space in the original it's a technicolor light show with no visible stars or anything else.

glitterboy2098 wrote:so it is not a alcubirre metric, but rather a alternate realm based system.

Harmony Gold's official material says you're wrong... therefore you're wrong. The one official explanation of fold technology in RT does not support your claim, nor do the visuals.

Okay I'll bite, so what is the official explanation of fold technology? And please cite the source of the material (where was it published, when, and by whom)

eliakon wrote:Okay I'll bite, so what is the official explanation of fold technology? And please cite the source of the material (where was it published, when, and by whom)

Go up a few posts, I already posted it... but I'll repeat it again for you.

The sole, official explanation of hyperspace fold drive operation in Robotech comes from page 40 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, Harmony Gold's official art book for the movie. The book was written by Tommy Yune, Robotech's creative director, published in '07 by Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, CA.

That explanation is that the drive distorts the fabric of space-time to create a spherical bubble containing the ship, which can then be moved through space at faster-than-light speeds. The diagram on that page, a screen capture from the film itself, shows the propulsive effect is the bubble being pushed through space by the contraction and expansion of space around the bubble. It matches, almost perfectly, the way that warp drives work in Star Trek... a pseudo-defictionalized principle known as the Alcubierre effect. The visual effect in the Shadow Chronicles "movie" matches the book's description of Star Trek warp drive effects. No mention is made of the ship entering or leaving hyperspace.

On the other hand, the Macross metaseries has multiple publications that present one, consistently written explanation of how fold travel works in that universe. The most recent and detailed explanation comes from the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle (2nd Edition), on the whole series Technology Sheet 08A "Overtechnology: Space Fold", a four-page fact file. That edition is still in release (80 volumes, the most recent, number 70, was released just this past week), and is published in Japan by DeAgostini and codeveloped and reviewed by Macross's creators at Studio Nue.


Macross uses a higher-dimension sub-universe of 10+ dimensional space-time as the medium to circumvent the distance between the ship's current position and destination in realspace... making that fold technology a form of folded space teleportation that folds another universe's space instead of our own. The animation of the Macross universe usually shows ships disappearing from realspace altogether and reappearing at its destination.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:Okay I'll bite, so what is the official explanation of fold technology? And please cite the source of the material (where was it published, when, and by whom)

Go up a few posts, I already posted it... but I'll repeat it again for you.

The sole, official explanation of hyperspace fold drive operation in Robotech comes from page 40 of The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, Harmony Gold's official art book for the movie. The book was written by Tommy Yune, Robotech's creative director, published in '07 by Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley, CA.

That explanation is that the drive distorts the fabric of space-time to create a spherical bubble containing the ship, which can then be moved through space at faster-than-light speeds. The diagram on that page, a screen capture from the film itself, shows the propulsive effect is the bubble being pushed through space by the contraction and expansion of space around the bubble. It matches, almost perfectly, the way that warp drives work in Star Trek... a pseudo-defictionalized principle known as the Alcubierre effect. The visual effect in the Shadow Chronicles "movie" matches the book's description of Star Trek warp drive effects. No mention is made of the ship entering or leaving hyperspace.

Okay, so now a few questions about that.
1) does it say that the bubble stays in this universe?
2) why do they use the words 'hyperspace fold' in the anime, the website, and the rpg?

Seto Kaiba wrote:On the other hand, the Macross metaseries has multiple publications that present one, consistently written explanation of how fold travel works in that universe. The most recent and detailed explanation comes from the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle (2nd Edition), on the whole series Technology Sheet 08A "Overtechnology: Space Fold", a four-page fact file. That edition is still in release (80 volumes, the most recent, number 70, was released just this past week), and is published in Japan by DeAgostini and codeveloped and reviewed by Macross's creators at Studio Nue.


Macross uses a higher-dimension sub-universe of 10+ dimensional space-time as the medium to circumvent the distance between the ship's current position and destination in realspace... making that fold technology a form of folded space teleportation that folds another universe's space instead of our own. The animation of the Macross universe usually shows ships disappearing from realspace altogether and reappearing at its destination.

So, then this *IS* explicitly a space fold drive, great. We are making headway. We can now say with certainty that 1/3 of the drives under discussion are, in fact, space fold drives.

eliakon wrote:Okay, so now a few questions about that.
1) does it say that the bubble stays in this universe?

Well, it does say that the bubble moves through space at faster-than-light speeds... and doesn't mention anything about the ship entering, leaving, or being involved with hyperspace in any way. So, I'd say that the answer is "technically yes"... though it makes one wonder why they kept the "hyperspace" part of the name.

eliakon wrote:2) why do they use the words 'hyperspace fold' in the anime, the website, and the rpg?

The official explanation from Harmony Gold's creative staff was first made known in 2007 when the RTSC art book came out. Robotech didn't even have an official canon until 2001. In practical terms, the official explanation came about around the time Harmony Gold's creative director Tommy Yune was doing the development work and deciding how to visually present the fold travel. The depiction of folding as a warp drive is probably equal parts Harmony Gold fear of legal action from Macross's owners and the artistic limitations of a budget that would've been barely sufficient for a TV episode a quarter the length.

The usage of the term "hyperspace fold" in the 1985 television series is an artifact of their adaptation of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series to make the Macross Saga. The term that the Macross's captain, Brigadier General Bruno J. Global, uses when he first mentions executing a fold jump is variously translated as "subspace" or "hyperspace" depending on whose subtitles you're looking at. That term doesn't last long, though, and they start using "super dimension space" or "fold space" as the name for that higher-dimension sub-universe. They don't refer to it as a "fold drive", though... because a fold system incorporates more than just faster-than-light capabilities in Macross. The fold system of a starship provides faster-than-light sensor capabilities (fold-wave/cross-dimension radar), communication capabilities (fold-wave radio), and the faster-than-light fold jump capability.

(Global actually comments on the loss of the other fold-related capabilities at a few points in the series, most notably the loss of the fold communications suite.)

eliakon wrote:So, then this *IS* explicitly a space fold drive, great. We are making headway. We can now say with certainty that 1/3 of the drives under discussion are, in fact, space fold drives.

Yes, the RIFTS ones... which fold the fabric of normal space by various means. The Macross fold systems don't fit the RIFTS definition of a space fold drive.

The Macross fold systems are folding something, all right... it's just that it's not realspace, it's the fabric of a 10+ dimensional sub-universe where normal physical laws don't apply. So, as a result, they're not likely to be affected by measures that would interfere with RIFTS-style space fold drives.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

Nightfactory wrote:If you get a paper-cut from an oragami drive, what effect does it have...........?

I dunno... is the treatment a stitch in time?

The paperwork for said treatment being astronomical. And you thought HMOs were bad?

taalismn wrote:The paperwork for said treatment being astronomical. And you thought HMOs were bad?

Is the Doctor from Gallifrey, at least?

the problem seto is that, like you keep reminding people, by HG's policies the show trumps the other source material. therefore, since the show specifies hyperspace, and the various depictions in the different periods are compatible visually, that means that in robotech it is hyperspace, not warp drive.

glitterboy2098 wrote:the problem seto is that, like you keep reminding people, by HG's policies the show trumps the other source material. therefore, since the show specifies hyperspace, and the various depictions in the different periods are compatible visually, that means that in robotech it is hyperspace, not warp drive.

Close, but no cigar my friend... there are several Harmony Gold policies I keep having to remind folks here about, but you're forgetting that this source is direct from the creative director and a reference published alongside the latest installment of the animation. "Word of God" from the show's creators describes a fold drive in RT as operating effectively the same as a Star Trek-style warp drive.

Furthermore, anyone with a working pair of eyes could tell a colander holds water better than your claim that the visual effects are comparable. One is shown to have the ship stay firmly in realspace, and just traveling very fast while in a bubble. The other shows bloody teleportation.

Seto Kaiba wrote:

taalismn wrote:The paperwork for said treatment being astronomical. And you thought HMOs were bad?

Is the Doctor from Gallifrey, at least?

"Damnit, Jim, I'm a Doctor of PHILOSOPHY!!!!"

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:Okay, so now a few questions about that.
1) does it say that the bubble stays in this universe?

Well, it does say that the bubble moves through space at faster-than-light speeds... and doesn't mention anything about the ship entering, leaving, or being involved with hyperspace in any way. So, I'd say that the answer is "technically yes"... though it makes one wonder why they kept the "hyperspace" part of the name.

so what your telling me is that even though it is CALLED a hyperspace drive, and it doesn't actually say that the bubble is left in our universe, that it is, in fact NOT a hyperspace drive, but in fact a warp drive?

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:2) why do they use the words 'hyperspace fold' in the anime, the website, and the rpg?

The official explanation from Harmony Gold's creative staff was first made known in 2007 when the RTSC art book came out. Robotech didn't even have an official canon until 2001.

So, at the time the RT1 books were written then Phase world was written, it probably WAS a 'fold drive' and was not until a retcon 15 years later that it was turned into some other sort of ill defined drive?

Seto Kaiba wrote:The usage of the term "hyperspace fold" in the 1985 television series is an artifact of their adaptation of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series to make the Macross Saga. The term that the Macross's captain, Brigadier General Bruno J. Global, uses when he first mentions executing a fold jump is variously translated as "subspace" or "hyperspace" depending on whose subtitles you're looking at. That term doesn't last long, though, and they start using "super dimension space" or "fold space" as the name for that higher-dimension sub-universe. They don't refer to it as a "fold drive", though... because a fold system incorporates more than just faster-than-light capabilities in Macross. The fold system of a starship provides faster-than-light sensor capabilities (fold-wave/cross-dimension radar), communication capabilities (fold-wave radio), and the faster-than-light fold jump capability.

(Global actually comments on the loss of the other fold-related capabilities at a few points in the series, most notably the loss of the fold communications suite.)

So again, at the time of the publication of the books (and in the RT1 material) it would actually be, what it is called, and a fold drive? Since it wasn't retconned until TSC?

Seto Kaiba wrote:

eliakon wrote:So, then this *IS* explicitly a space fold drive, great. We are making headway. We can now say with certainty that 1/3 of the drives under discussion are, in fact, space fold drives.

Yes, the RIFTS ones... which fold the fabric of normal space by various means. The Macross fold systems don't fit the RIFTS definition of a space fold drive.

The Macross fold systems are folding something, all right... it's just that it's not realspace, it's the fabric of a 10+ dimensional sub-universe where normal physical laws don't apply. So, as a result, they're not likely to be affected by measures that would interfere with RIFTS-style space fold drives.

Errrr, are you reading what your posting?
First off WHAT 'RIFTS definition of a space fold drive'? THERE ISNT ONE OTHER THAN THE NAME.
second, if your drive is CALLED a fold drive, and operates by FOLDING space (real space or hyper)...how is that not a Space-Fold Drive?


So In all likelihood
RT1 drives are the space fold drives in question
M2 drives are also space fold drives
RT2/TSC drives may or may not be.

eliakon wrote:so what your telling me is that even though it is CALLED a hyperspace drive, and it doesn't actually say that the bubble is left in our universe, that it is, in fact NOT a hyperspace drive, but in fact a warp drive?

Yes... that is what I'm telling you, because that's what the official art book for the movie says and what the animation shows. I don't make the news, friend, I only report it. The movie shows, repeatedly, that ships traveling by "hyperspace fold" doesn't leave the universe or anything like that. The bubble and the ship it contains simply speed off into the distance, and is shown surrounded by starlines exactly like we'd see in Star Trek. The text says that the bubble is moved through space, not hyperspace.

eliakon wrote:So, at the time the RT1 books were written then Phase world was written, it probably WAS a 'fold drive' and was not until a retcon 15 years later that it was turned into some other sort of ill defined drive?

Remember, the only explanation of "fold drive" at the time would've come from Kevin's assumptions about the nature of the technology... possibly informed by other science fiction titles. Most of what went into the original edition of the Robotech RPG was guesswork, leavened somewhat with information which came from what few Japanese publications Palladium could lay hands on at its own expense. From what I've seen, the translations they were working from were of appallingly poor quality... verging on what we often call a "blind idiot" translation today.

Harmony Gold didn't have any interest in establishing an official canon for Robotech until Carl Macek finished running the franchise into the ground with Robotech 3000. One of Tommy Yune's jobs when he was hired away from DC Wildstorm was to reboot the mess, kick out the old material, and establish an official canon and determine what's what. The explanation in AotSC isn't a retcon, because you can't do retcons when there's no prior information to change.

So... really, at the time "RT1" was penned, there wasn't an explanation - official or otherwise - for how fold travel actually worked in Robotech. The ONLY source was the Japanese source material, and neither Palladium Books nor Harmony Gold apparently had it.

eliakon wrote:So again, at the time of the publication of the books (and in the RT1 material) it would actually be, what it is called, and a fold drive? Since it wasn't retconned until TSC?

So, again... No. Because there was no official line on ANYTHING Robotech until 2001.

Put simply, the fold drive was simply unexplained until an official explanation was printed in 2007... you cannot retcon when there's no prior information to retroactively change.

Various works by various licensees depicted fold travel as working in a variety of different ways... from a Macross-style teleportation effect to a Star Wars-style hyperdrive, Star Trek-style warp drive, and even a weird sort of wormhole drive that only worked if the ship was moving around a certain speed like the DeLorean out of Back to the Future. Like everything else Robotech back in the day, consistency was in short supply. Harmony Gold's method for cleaning house once they decided to reboot the franchise was to simply say "All that stuff isn't Robotech".

eliakon wrote:First off WHAT 'RIFTS definition of a space fold drive'? THERE ISNT ONE OTHER THAN THE NAME.

The ones described in the Three Galaxies book, which are folding the fabric of normal space...

eliakon wrote:second, if your drive is CALLED a fold drive, and operates by FOLDING space (real space or hyper)...how is that not a Space-Fold Drive?

I'm trying to differentiate between the "space-fold drive" described in the Palladium-original works, which fold the fabric of normal space-time, and Macross's technique, which folds the fabric of the higher-dimension sub-universe used in many Overtechnology systems.

Let's say... the Three Galaxies is a true "space-fold" system, where the Macross version is more of a "dimensional fold" system. RTSC/RT2 "hyperspace fold" systems are just Alcubierre "warp" drives under the definition provided by the movie's creators.

Glistam wrote:

camk4evr wrote:Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

Which explains what happened the first time the SDF1 tried to fold, right?

Svartalf wrote:

Glistam wrote:

camk4evr wrote:Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

Which explains what happened the first time the SDF1 tried to fold, right?

Actually the SDF-1/ Macross use fusion power/"auto-heat pile system" (as it's described in most books) for their power plants vs. the 3G's reliance on antimatter.

What if space is rolled up like a hoho would we then call it a roll drive

Svartalf wrote:Which explains what happened the first time the SDF1 tried to fold, right?

Not even slightly.

In Robotech, the reason the SDF-1's first fold jump was a disaster was because their hyperspace fold drive had been rebuilt incorrectly... so it didn't function as expected, dumping them far from their intended destination and disappearing in the bargain. Humanity didn't really have the ability to manufacture its own fold drives until decades later, so a screwup with the initial reconstruction is perhaps forgivable.

The original Japanese Super Dimension Fortress Macross series named a different culprit in its version of events. Specifically, the reason the fold system didn't work as expected was that it was compromised when the latent booby trap in the ship's original computer systems was activated. Prior to that, the fold system had actually been in good working order. Unlike Robotech, in the original version of events the scientists at OTEC had already figured out fold technology and the ARMD-class space carriers had been designed to accept human-built fold systems... systems which were still being built and tested when the war started.

keir451 wrote:Actually the SDF-1/ Macross use fusion power/"auto-heat pile system" (as it's described in most books) for their power plants vs. the 3G's reliance on antimatter.

Close... but all ships in Macross use thermonuclear reaction overtechnology to generate power. It's like nuclear fusion on a basic level, but the reaction is moderated and maintained using super dimension spatial physics (essentially in a pocket of 10+ dimensional space), which changes the physics of the reaction such that it produces no harmful radiation, can be maintained easily in the plasma state, consumes very little fuel while generating colossal amounts of energy, and doesn't even need its fuel to be nuclear material. Most important of all, it's VERY scaleable... the tiny thermonuclear reaction power systems inside the VF-1's turbines (which occupy only the lower leg of the VF-1) produce 650 megawatts EACH*, and just the 264lb of fuel the VF-1 carries is enough for it to fly around the world dozens if not hundreds of times.**

* Several times the maximum rated output of the nuclear fission reactors powering the Nimitz-class supercarrier.

** I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but NASA's own position paper on fusion turbine concepts suggests this is actually on the conservative side as range vs. fuel mass goes.

Svartalf wrote:

Glistam wrote:

camk4evr wrote:Three Galaxies page 131 says: "Current scientists can't make a stable passageway for ships to traverse. The theory is that the antimatter used to power the drive de-stabilizes the fold process."

Sounds like everything might be fine if a different power source were used. Like maybe Protoculture...?

Which explains what happened the first time the SDF1 tried to fold, right?

When you look at the reaction of the Zentraedi to the idea it's pretty clear that it's from trying to fold while so deep into the Earth's gravity well, since they have that 'No! I can't believe it! No one would dare do that!' kind of reaction, so it's obviously not a good idea to space fold so close to a planet no matter what the power source is. Plus that theory is really just a hypothesis, just an idea tossed out as a possible explanation but not having any real weight or validity as it's untested.

OK, sorry, it's been over a decade since I last viewed Robotech/Macross... my memories are fuzzy at best.