Seto Kaiba

You missed one... the advancements in overtechnology that made the VF-2SS, etc. possible in Macross II: Lovers Again came from reverse engineering (copying) the overtechnology from captured Zentradi factory satellites.

No, why would there be? Harmony Gold's Robotech "creative team" is more or less just a collection of ethically and intellectually bankrupt fanboys who, like their idol Carl Macek, haven't a clue that the industry has moved on in the past 25+ years and looks back at shows like Robotech as examples of bad, obsolete business practices. As >EXO< noted, if the people in charge of the Robotech franchise acknowledged how dire things are, it'd be tantamount to telling their bosses that there's no reason to keep any of them on payroll anymore. Really, who would? I mean, why would any sane investor want to sink his or her money into a project run by people who have going on thirty years of nothing but abject failure to their names? Robotech has virtually zero name recognition and a frankly lousy reputation, so making a surprise comeback isn't exactly a likely prospect. Just on that basis, it's already not exactly the most tempting prospect for a prospective investor... and the mother of all red flags goes up once you've noted that even the Robotech franchise's owners are unwilling put more than the bare minimum amount of money behind it. Who would want it? It'd be a nice change of pace, but that's assuming he actually cares. He's kept a non-performing asset like Robotech around for decades now... I'd call that a pretty serious case of "couldn't be arsed". Robotech's owners seem to be content with the current status quo and the feeble trickle of revenue that Robotech generates by preying on the nostalgia-blinded. Agrama is probably rather more interested in his properties that actually make decent bank, which pretty well means that Robotech isn't even on the fiscal radar. Very likely... either him or Maverick_LSC. Near as I can tell, Steve doesn't actually give a damn about the day-to-day running of Robotech.com. He only gets involved when someone (usually a mod) forcibly redirects his attention to the ever-increasingly dismal activities on the boards. MEMO and Maverick are both keen to suck up to their respective heroes (Tommy and Kevin respectively) in the hopes of getting insider status, so they're the most likely candidates... seeking favor by eliminating fans in the community who have misgivings about the way things are run. I think every sane Robotech fan reaches that point eventually... being a fan just isn't worth the frustration, since the Harmony Gold company line dictates everything and admits no realistic viewpoints, and the absence of actual releases means that the fanbase has nothing to do but bicker and turn on itself. Lies! We all know that you learned everything you ever needed to know about sex in the 80's was taught to you by the Waltrip Sentinels series and the Swimsuit Spectacular!

Unlikely... the management at Harmony Gold is unwilling to invest more than a pittance in a title that has guaranteed sales to the gullible fanboys, and by their own admission outside investors in Robotech are hard to come by. Rebooting the series sounds like a good idea right up to the point where you realize that they'd end up doing it on an even smaller budget than what they're already working with, there being essentially no reason to expect a return on investment from people who can and frequently do screw up what ought to be a sure thing.

Further to my last, I checked... this is in fact the case. As far as Robotech's swiss cheese-canon is concerned, "Lunk" is only his nickname. His real name is listed as "Jim Austin" on his Infopedia page.

Huh... score one for me, I predicted they'd eventually do something like this way back in '07. Over the years since Shadow Chronicles, it's been getting progressively more obvious that "the powers that be" at Harmony Gold are determined to avoid anything that might provide Macross's owners with even a flimsy reason to take them to court. It almost feels like they're afraid Big West is keeping an eye on them and just waiting for them to slip-up, though it's a safe bet they're worried that a legal battle over Macross could destroy the Robotech franchise... either by costing so much that the higher-ups pull the plug on Robotech, or by further limiting their rights to the most only profitable segment of Robotech. Their avoidance of anything which might invite unwanted attention from Macross's owners has been pretty blatant ever since Prelude, when Tommy took every Macross holdover who wasn't critical to the plot and either killed them or put them on a bus.

Dunno... IIRC, the official position is that "Lunk" is just an unflattering nickname for him, and his real name is Jim.

Yeah, my take on him is similarly mixed. Really, I think most of what he does probably isn't intended to be trollish. I don't know if he still does it, but back before I got the boot for "causing pain and suffering" his main problem was that he was annoying the piss out of people with his wanna-be mod routine. The thing about him that always annoyed me was the way he often tried (unsuccessfully) to pass himself off an expert through a mixture of rephrasing the posts of knowledgeable fans (invariably introducing errors along the way) and making sh*t up. IIRC, he was the one who started the rumor that Sayonara no Tsubasa was going to be the last Macross show ever. Bah, Pizza the Hutt wasn't my fault either... I didn't invite him here, all I did was expose him to some proper Macross to see if eroding his ignorance would make him less of a belligerent tit. To a certain extent, it actually worked. What got him kicked on these forums wasn't being a crazy Robotech zealot, it was an incredibly offensive joke he'd told to bash the very same zealots he'd been supporting a month or so before. The only crazy Robotech zealots who ever followed me here to make trouble are perennial idiots MEMO1DOMINION, Maverick_LSC, and dougbendo.

Oh, that mook... yeah, I remember him. I think my first run-in with him was when a friend of mine who was still crazy enough to be reading the Robotech.com forums tried to sic me on him over some crazy comparison he was making between the "new" destroid models in Robotech II: the Sentinels and the destroids in Macross II: Lovers Again based on, IIRC, the wildly-inaccurate stats the Palladium RPG gave for both. Just an exercise in giving me a headache, really... since last time I tried to count the errors in the Palladium Macross II RPG, I gave up out of boredom with three books remaining after the count exceeded 200. Other than that, I think the only times I've seen his posts and/or heard his name come up in conversation was when he started freaking out and screaming at people after someone in a debate pointed out that, in WH40K setting, the Emperor is thought to have been many of the famous historical religious figures (e.g. Jesus) before he ended up as a permanent fixture on his huge bling-y toilet back on Earth. He went completely apesh*t over that and started blathering on about how it was blasphemy. After that, I can't say it surprises me in the least that he's a multiply-banned mega-troll even on Robotech.com. I wonder what made him come here? Is he just missing a healthy sense of self-preservation, or what? Heh... if renegadeleader1 is right, and that's really RiverJack, I suspect "banning" will be his ultimate fate in fairly short order. You have no idea... If you want to hear a funny story, dig this: About a week and a half ago, I got an e-mail from Rhade over at Robotech.com informing me of his intention to appeal my ban and get me reinstated on the forums there.. It seems that things have gotten so bad over there that they're hoping that getting me to come back will bring people back to the forums and revive the place a little. I told him to go ahead, mostly because I was completely unable to tell if he was serious or just taking the piss... but I later found out that he actually meant it. No luck on that front so far (not that any of us would seriously expect there to be)...

"How" they can be so ignorant in this day in age is probably the wrong question to ask here... being ignorant isn't just something endemic to Robotech fandom in general, their ignorance is something that Harmony Gold has been carefully cultivating for years now. Keeping the fanbase as ignorant as possible when it comes to Robotech's origins and actual standing in the industry is the second biggest factor keeping the franchise limping along, right behind the nostalgia of their aging fans. Without the fanbase's willful ignorance, the Robotech fandom would've dried up and died long ago. Apt! It's a good comparison... one that works well with their ignorance and their general belligerence towards anyone who isn't singing from the same psalter they are.

Oh ho... So, when Harmony Gold was faced with a choice between two really bad ideas - redubbing Love Live Alive or slapping together another "original" piece of Shadow Chronicles-grade suck - they decided to up the ante by doing both, thus making twice their usual number of phenomenally bad decisions! I'm not sure if I should be impressed or disgusted.

You left out the part where the "DVD extra" in question is a heavily revisionist and biased version of a story that most of them already own a more honest version of. Essentially, the Robotech fans attending this "premiere" are dressing up and heading over to Harmony Gold to watch the addition of a few more colorful distortions the heavily rose-tinted "company line" on Carl's contribution to one of the most embarrassing chapters in anime history. Oh, it's inevitable... in their desperate attempts to have their show and their company taken seriously, Harmony Gold managed to alienate not only the greater portion of the Robotech fandom, but also significant portions of Macross and Battletech's fan bases as well. In a very real way, they're running out of people they haven't pissed off yet.

Yep... and to reboot Robotech without having Macross in it would be sacrificing the show's single biggest point of appeal for the overwhelming majority of its fans. In short, it's suicide. It does a bit, doesn't it? All the same, isn't that exactly what Robotech is? A really convoluted and stupid Macross fanfic? (If not the series itself, then at the very least Tommy's rebooted Robotech universe is definitely an unnecessarily convoluted and obnoxious piece of fan-fiction.)

Eh... put simply, Claude Leon really got it in the shorts during the adaptation process. At some point in the process of adapting Southern Cross into Robotech, Claude Leon went from being merely inflexible as a leader to being a complete and total arse. Editing and rewriting changed his characterization and made him into an arrogant, caustic, and excessively confrontational commander with a mildly racist/xenophobic attitude. The fan base's antipathy for Commander Leonard definitely contributed to the Masters Saga's position as the least popular Robotech saga by a MASSIVE margin, and it lives on as a part of Tommy Yune's rebooted Robotech universe. Under the new creative director, Leonard upped the ante from just being a jerk and went full-blown villain when the limited comic series Robotech: From the Stars established that he was actually a spy working for Robotech's equivalent of the Anti-UN Alliance and trying to destroy the United Earth Government from within. Among other stuff, Leonard worked to sabotage development of the VF-1, staged attacks on aircraft carrying civilians, and orchestrated an attempted coup that involved hijacking an ARMD and using its reflex warheads to wipe out the three major UEG military bases on Earth (and succeeded in nuking one off the map, and possibly a grand cannon as well). I dunno about the bit where the three mounds are supposed to contain the remains of the SDF-1, SDF-2, and Khyron's ship... they only say it contains the SDF-1, but the new comics show Khyron's ship in another one of the domes, so it's all gravy there. There's no mention of radiation of any kind in the Shadow Chronicles art book tho... What part of that comes as a surprise? Please do... spontaneous cranial explosion sounds like a real pain to clean up after... Heh... he didn't seem to have much trouble in the old Sentinels comics, and they were both pretty much that way even back then.

HE CAN BE TAUGHT! Admittedly, a trenchant remark or two wouldn't do you any good in this situation anyway... you don't just resemble that remark, you're fairly well known as one of the foremost practitioners of that particular "tactic". I didn't even need to say it, someone already beat me to the punch: Hm... well, both are actually the case. When you get right down to it, the former case is most often the truth when it comes to those Robotech stories created on Tommy Yune's watch, while the latter case is almost invariably the case with the Robotech properties released under Carl Macek. The work done under Carl Macek was done quickly and inexpertly, and thus was shot through with so many screw-ups that there were more plot holes than plot points. Tommy came along years later and made his valiant (doomed) effort to spackle over some of the more egregious plot holes by blaming a fair amount of it on inept or outright treasonous leaders (particularly Leonard), or simple naivete on the part of certain characters. When you get right down to it, it's the difference between simply being a lousy writer (of fan-fiction) and being generally inept. Now that's exceedingly generous... what makes you assume there was ever a "quality idea factory" there to begin with? I doubt it's coincidental that the quality of new Robotech material took a nosedive from "poor" to "criminally bad" right around the time that Carl Macek and company started trying to write their own original material. He broke the code! He broke the code! We can only hope.

Bah! As easy as it was to talk you into watching an appalling mess like Robotech, they could get you to watch anything.

Well, yes and no... they're called funnels and they largely work like Gundam's funnels, but they're not controlled via psycommu. The funnels used on the Macross II continuity's VF-4 Siren are controlled by the fighter's fire-control system, kind of like the GN Fangs in Gundam 00. Essentially, they're the ancestors of the Valkyrie II's auto-attacker bits from the Macross II OVA. (There are actually lots of Gundam references buried in Macross II... probably something to do with the mechanical designers having worked on Zeta Gundam and Char's Counterattack)

Let's just say "A wizard did it." and leave it at that... it's far and away the sanest explanation for what's going on.

Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to be baffled by their bullsh*t... Or, to put it another way... I have no bloody idea why there's a city next to it, other than that the crash went down in the middle of the city originally. Honestly, I'm not sure what part of this confuses me more... that they seem to have rebuilt the entire city when they'll just be abandoning it and removing all trace of it from the area when the domes are finished, or that the whole affair somehow up and moved from central Alaska to either Thunder Bay or central Michigan without anyone noticing. Just don't think about it... the more you do, the more confused you'll make yourself. It doesn't make sense, so you shouldn't try to make sense of it. It's like dividing by zero: you can try, but all you'll do is frustrate yourself and make a big damn mess. See what I meant, guys? Nothing makes a Robotech fan RAGE harder than a straight and official answer to a question. A great example of the RT thought process at work here... "Screw evidence! So long as I can claim the evidence is WRONG I can go on claiming whatever I want and expect it to be true!"

Huh... I don't remember radiation having anything to do with it, but then I try to avoid thinking about Robotech whenever I can. Just for you, I checked the official Shadow Chronicles art book on this matter (and then bleached my hands), and it says they built the mounds to conceal the protoculture matrix and contain the spores of the flowers of life.

Oh, my bad. Hell if I know...

IIRC, in legit Southern Cross the three mounds were always that way... they were there to protect and conceal the secret stash of the protozor plants that the Zor Lords left there ages ago.

QFT. Yeah, but one should never underestimate the Robotech fan base's propensity for making up their own bullsh*t answers and then treating them as unimpeachable fact. Robotech fans have invested so much time and energy into inventing their own answers so they can spackle over the show's many plot holes and continuity errors that most of them don't know what the truth is anymore. It's not surprising that the 3-mounds 3-ships theory is still doing the rounds, since somewhere along the way it ended up attributed to Carl Macek. It seems to have received an implicit acknowledgement from the current mook-in-charge tho. Great Scott! Usually when I say something trenchant about Robotech fans, they don't go and hand me a perfect example of what I was talking about right away. In a rare turn of events - well, rare for Robotech anyway - this theory is actually 100% provably false without having to rely on anything like "Word of God" from the cack-handed twits in charge. The canon reboot comics show those mounds under construction, circa 2015, showing that they contain massive chunks of wreckage:

Actually, there are both Super Packs and Strike Packs for the DYRL/II-verse's VF-4 Siren... the former being a fairly traditional set of Super Packs that rest between the engine nacelles in fighter mode, and the latter being a similarly mounted set of packs which are different from the conventional "Strike" setup in that they contain funnels rather than a beam cannon.

Yep... which is, in part, why the emigration fleets send advance forces ahead of the main body of the fleet to scout things out... IIRC, this is what the mass-produced Macross-class ships were originally used for. Yes, the Macross Chronicle technology sheet says as much... but vague qualitative measurements like "only a little" and "small" are not terribly helpful if you're trying to approximate how fast you're really going when you travel by space fold. (Technically, you wouldn't be moving at all, but you get my meaning.) The meaning of things like "only a little" and "small" vary from person to person, which is why I prefer to err on the side of caution and use the few specific, quantitative measurements from the series dialogue. I tried to favor both Misa's and Luca's numbers, but Luca's are skewed somewhat by the fold faults/dislocations that turn what Leon says would be an almost instantaneous trip into a day-long transit.

's more or less a direct quotation from the Compendium, but yes... Eh... for the most part, Macross's creators have been relatively sparing with the details about the mechanics of fold travel. There's a decent bit about it in one of the technology sheets in Macross Chronicle, which did give a rough figure for the elapsed time for travel from Eden to Earth. As given, Eden is 11.7 light years from Earth... a trip that takes 18 to 24 hours real time and 1-2 jumps to make on average. Bear ye in mind, that's 18-24 hours of objective time in real space... since time passes slower in a fold jump, the ship and its crew would only actually experience a fraction of that time. Misa's formula from the series suggests that a crew traveling on the Earth-Eden run would only actually experience about five minutes of time during the 18 hour, 11.7ly flight. Macross Frontier puts forth a different, somewhat less severe fraction that would make the run into something more like a two-and-a-half hour commuter flight. This is by no means an absolute, however... fold travel seems to be affected by a number of factors, like the route taken and the spatial disruptions called fold faults, which can add time to the trip. Depiction of distance is usually too vague to come up with any alternative measures. Either way, fold travel is fast... it's virtually instantaneous over distances that, with modern space travel tech, would take months or years to cross, and fairly zippy on interstellar travel as well. (If you'll forgive my drawing on Star Trek for comparison purposes, it'd take a starship going at Warp 8 slightly over 100 hours to cover the same distance.) I worked out all of the math behind it a while ago, right down to the distances you're talking about, but I did it all on the premise of Misa's numbers, rather than the ones Luca and co. give in Macross Frontier, since their figures are skewed somewhat by the fold faults in the way. I'll hit you up with it via PM in just a second.