Seto Kaiba

I know... I know... I'm just using the "flushing them" because I never liked them as a plot device, and thus it's somewhat therapeutic for me to picture them being chucked unceremoniously out the nearest airlock. Max and Milia would probably have had them hospitalized like they did with the captured enemy pilot. On the whole, I probably would've been a lot happier with the plot of ep12-13 if it'd been Varauta soldiers breaking into the ship and hijacking the fold system by force rather than having the somewhat silly (IMO) spirita vampires doing most of the legwork. Unlikely, the whole vampire business didn't really tie into the discovery of spirita regeneration by the U.N. Spacy... that was caused by letting their hospital patient listen to the radio and theorizing based on how Sivil retreated after meeting Basara. Deleting the spirita vampires from the equation probably wouldn't have had any effect on that part of the story at all.

Quite... while I won't belabor the issue of Basara bearing most or all of the hallmarks of a Canon Sue, specifically those of a "God Mode Sue", it's pretty much beyond dispute that had Max and Milia rounded up all the spirita vampires in Gepernich's advance reconnaissance party early on and flushed the lot of them out the nearest airlock they would likely have never discovered the spirita regeneration phenomenon. Without that discovery, we wouldn't have had the spirita farm plan that drove most of the plot later on. City-7's actually surprisingly small... the whole dome has an area of less than 19.5 square kilometers (or about 7.5 square miles if you like imperial notation), and that something like a fifth of its area is devoted to parkland. Since it's highly unlikely the vampires would set up shop in the city proper where anyone could easily spot and report them, it leaves just the sewers, the parkland, and the Akusho area. Remember, this isn't an open community like a city on Earth, where anyone can get in and out without attracting notice... this is a domed city traveling in space... a literal city in a bottle. This would almost certainly make the search substantially easier.

Eh... that might've been a concern initially, but the public relations fiasco and resulting loss of morale caused by repeated failures to catch the "vampires" and the subsequent escalation of their attacks would've reached a break-even point with the potential damage done by sweeping the ship and/or declaring a state of emergency. Once the vampires managed to infiltrate the fold section, trigger an emergency separation of the Battle-7, and fold the city section away from the rest of the fleet the damage to the public's confidence in the government and military would've been far worse than it would've been had they simply swept the ship and had done with it. "We're taking every measure possible to ensure the safety of our citizens" sounds a helluva lot better than "Sorry we dropped the ball and let the enemy abduct 350,000 civilians and repeatedly place them in mortal jeopardy, it won't happen again". By that point, the citizens probably would have been quite happy with a large-scale military intervention... yet the military and civilian police all but ignored the vampires on City-7, and allowed them to conduct further large-scale attacks well up through at least episode 34, a good six months later. When you think about it that way, the people who barged into Milia's office and demanded her removal were probably well justified in that demand. Despite knowing exactly what the vampires look like, and the vampires themselves not taking any pains to disguise themselves and occasionally walking around in broad daylight (Ep33), both the police and the military failed to put a stop to the attacks. Calling their security measures "inadequate" doesn't even begin to cover it. Aside from the fact that Batman can and has used guns and lethal force on occasion, particularly back in the silver age, having Max and Milia more or less ignore the vampire problem on their ship doesn't preserve their integrity as characters, it damages it. Milia is supposedly feels a great maternal protectiveness towards her citizens, and yet she sits on her hands and bitches at Max about the vampire problem, and Max, the slightly uncomfortable set of shoulders on which the duty of protecting the entire fleet rests heavily, sits around and is griped at by Milia while protesting that they don't have enough information. That's not preserving the character, that's sacrificing characterization and the character's perceived competence at their job to inflate a minor nuisance into a major threat so that Basara's singing would be necessary. It would've taken a certain something away from the borderline Canon Sue characterization of Basara and the show's entire magical spirit energy bollucks if Max and Milia were able to upset the whole spirita farm main plot by chucking all of Gepernich's advance scout out the nearest airlock and watching the explosive decompression pop them like party balloons. Eh... I think that too is a case where the damage to the public's confidence caused by inaction exceeded the damage that could've been caused by preventative action. Which is more damaging... a widespread Vajra attack throughout the entire ship, or having NUNS forces flamethrower the bloody things to death before they can cause trouble? If you said the latter, there's probably something wrong with you. The citizens probably would've been patting the NUNS troops on the back and breathing a sigh of relief that their homes and lives didn't get horribly farted up along with the ship they're living in instead of picking through debris and contemplating a growing environmental crisis.

Oh yes, I find it almost perversely amusing that after decades spent obfuscating Robotech's origins and exaggerating the importance of the TV series, Harmony Gold openly admits that Robotech's Expanded Universe was nothing but a series of knee-jerk attempts to wring a few more bucks out of the comatose franchise without getting their "creative team" involved, and that the resulting mess is so badly executed and so inconsistent with the core story that there's no way that they can classify any of it as canon. Well, even McKeever somewhat sheepishly admits that the reason the "expanded universe" titles are essentially non-canon is that they were created with little or no oversight or input from Harmony Gold's creative team. The end result is that their stories often contradict the "core continuity" of the series and each other, incorporating a great many stories, characters, and mecha which simply don't fit with Robotech's story and design aesthetic. Likely the frequent "borrowing" from other copyrighted sci-fi works like Macross: Flashback 2012, Independence Day, etc. is also a factor. If you actually take the time to examine the new Robotech material, you'll see that the only part of Robotech's expanded universe that they're overly picking up and running with is Jason and John Waltrip's Robotech II comics. The new stories pick up literally right where the old Sentinels comics left off when they were canceled, with Edwards going on a backstabbing spree before murdering Kyle and kidnapping Minmei. There are superficial similarities to End of the Circle in RTSC, but the primary title that's Tommy is using as inspiration shaking down for ideas to use is the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Owww... brain hurting... Anyway, I still don't understand why Robotech fans have such a difficult time accepting that the 1,210m long SDF-1 could accommodate 86,000 people in reasonable conditions when they readily and unquestioningly accept numbers that make that look positively conservative by comparison: SDF-1 Macross Length: 1,210m Capacity: 86,000 SDF-3 Pioneer (Post-Refit) Length: 1,240m (counting fins) / approx. 1,200m (w/o fins) Capacity: 120,000 SDF-4 Liberator (fmrly. Izumo) Length: 1,305m Capacity: 180,000 Ark Angel-class Colony Ship Length: 2,140m (w/o antennae and fins) Capacity: 750,000 On what grounds are they taking issue with the SDF-1 when willingly accept that there are ships that are only marginally larger that accommodate as many as 100,000 more people with no problems, or for that matter a ship barely twice the SDF-1's size that accommodates nearly nine times the number of people the SDF-1 can? Did they subcontract all of their shipbuilding out to the Time Lords? Not directly, no... he's still supporting lil' dougie's bitching and openly endorsing dougie's behavior.

For me, seeing Max and Milia reverse roles like that always felt a bit unnatural... like the writers got the character descriptions backwards when they started work on the series. Well, the VF-14 (and presumably its derivatives) were supposedly selected for their excellent performance in space, and thus might be at a slight disadvantage dogfighting against a fighter designed (primarily) for atmospheric combat.

Well now, that's a statement that depends entirely on your definition of "causing trouble", isn't it? One would think that his infrequent attempts to derail this thread by presenting the same ignorant, provably-wrong garbage over and over again in his usual illiterate manner is pretty much the textbook definition of trolling. He can't possibly expect us to take anything he says seriously, so what other explanation does that leave besides malicious intent? There's also his well-known habit of coming here to spy on this and other threads for "dissident behavior" so he can then target those people for bans if they're on sites where he has authority. His activities here aren't any less malicious than they are elsewhere, they're just less blatant. Honestly, I don't think a cordial manner is any excuse for willfully and repeatedly spreading malicious misinformation, and cyber-stalking and trolling anyone who calls you out on it. You've never been in direct conflict with him over anything like that... you've been taking kind of a backhanded approach to needling him (and PTH), which he doesn't seem to fully comprehend. Of course, he's so carried away with delusions of his own cleverness for getting rid of most of the dissenting voices in his Orwellian Robotech fanboy world that he'd probably miss direct insults made right under his nose so long as they didn't call into question his credibility or authority. MEMO pays the bills, but SIGHUP is supposedly the one who does most of the actual work necessary to keep the site running. SIGHUP also doesn't seem to care, as he ignored pretty much every report of Bendo and PTH's harassment. MEMO gets most things his way there anyway, because SIGHUP doesn't seem to care. The only things that seemed to get SIGHUP moving were when the troublemakers went after him personally like PTH did, or when a good half-dozen of the site's most active members were barraging him with complaints.

Well, the record for previous incarnations of this thread is 67 pages, so we're making pretty good progress on that front, albeit unintentionally.

"Cute" definitely isn't a word I would use for it, though "obnoxious" certainly fits the bill. I admit there is a certain amount of entertainment value in watching them flail around like the frothy-mouthed fanatics they are while they try desperately to justify their love of Robotech and convince us the franchise isn't completely bereft of redeeming merits that can't be boiled down to either keeping their nostalgia blinders on 24/7, ignorance of what quality anime is like, or simply being too thick to realize Robotech is imitation-brand garbage and Harmony Gold is just playing them for suckers. Really, it's easy to see why the Robotech fans who come here don't usually last very long. About half of them are people like dougbendo, Maverick_LSC, and MEMO1DOMINION, who are just looking to troll and stir up some drama so they can pretend they actually matter. In the remaining half, you've got the Robotech fans who come here out of the misguided belief that our criticisms of Harmony Gold and Robotech are motivated by ignorance, and that they just need to enlighten us; the fans who honestly can't tell the difference and think Robotech is welcome here; the fans who think this is a hideaway for Robotech fans who've been banned from Robotech.com; and the fans who're vaguely curious about this Macross thing they've heard about and may or may not find something of interest to keep them here. Well, it may be that some of them aren't coming here specifically looking for trouble, and are merely stumbling across this thread while looking for something familiar to talk about to ease their transition to a new community. They then get up in arms after they see that the "HG and Robotech Debates" thread isn't an open chat about Robotech, but rather vocal criticism of Robotech in varying degrees of harshness... some of which they might, in their Harmony Gold-induced ignorance, think is unwarranted or simply untrue. Which, of course, could potentially turn otherwise curious Robotech fans into the frothy-mouthed nutjobs we encounter on occasion. Of course, that's all idle speculation on my part, since I can't recall anyone ever coming here and thinking that the HG and Robotech Debates thread was for something other than criticism and talk about the legal debate. Well, dougbendo does live in a fantasy world... he's made that abundantly clear on his podcast, between threats of violence aimed at me, JT, Robelwell202, and his girlfriend... and the occasional threat that he'll pee on someone. Honestly, I think you give MEMO far more credit than he deserves. An apeface who deliberately attempts to mislead people and tells malicious lies in a cordial manner is still a malicious liar and an apeface. Putting a turd in a chocolate box will not make it edible or do anything to diminish the stench.

This is another unsupported assumption put up as fact... in this case, drawing conclusions about the extent to which Zolan culture and entertainment preferences have been affected by prolonged exposure to Earth's culture using a impractically small sample population. We can't draw any rational inferences about the way human culture has influenced Zolans, since Macross Dynamite 7's story only involves a handful of Zolans directly... many of whom (the Zola Patrol) use human overtechnology out of simple necessity. We only see a handful of Zolan civilians, and Basara only interacts closely with Lawrence and the Hoyly family, and as such it would be unwise to assume that their taste in names and/or entertainment are representative of the entire Zolan population. For all we know, radio dramas like "Zomeo and Zoliet" and human music like Fire Bomber are a niche market on Zola in much the same way anime and jpop are in the Americas. We could take that same assumption even farther and say that the human-sounding names some Zolans have might be the closest approximation of their actual given names to make it easier for non-Zolans to pronounce (presumably the Zolans did have their own language before they encountered human explorers), or nicknames they adopted after humans had difficulty pronouncing their given names. After all, there's a limit to the number of different noises the human(oid) mouth can make... Which may or may not be originally Zolan technology... like the adhesive-firing gun pods carried by their secondhand VF-5000s, they may be simply be a Zolan adaptation or modification of something humanity developed. Obviously the human security forces, who deal not only with criminals but also with terrorists and the like, would probably find using stun beam weapons inadequate in much the same way that some police complain about the inconsistent effectiveness and unreliability of non-lethal technologies like the beanbag gun, rubber bullet, and taser. The Zolan security forces appear to be pretty committed to taking a non-lethal approach to crime, which would probably prompt them to adopt something like that even if it wasn't entirely effective. It is also entirely possible that they used portable sound-energy detection gear to track him down... they did it once before in the Macross 7 "movie".

Eh... there's a world of difference between just being preached at by the Robotech die-hards who come here looking for trouble and actively trying to engage them in discussion. Why bother wasting our time taking them seriously when they can't even form a cogent argument?

Some are just looking for a fight. Others are so wrapped up in self-delusion that they honestly think they can change our minds and instill us with hope for Robotech's future by telling us all how wrong we are to think Macross is the better and more successful show. Isn't that Tom Bateman's anti-HG shindig? I remember he was waxing poetic about how he was going to throw a big private 25th anniversary party, get as much of the actual talent involved as he could, and then leave Steve, Tommy, and the other Harmony Gold mooks to flap in the wind. Hmmm... turns out it isn't the event Tom Bateman was talking about doing last year. I wonder what became of the plans for that? Still, I can't see anyone other than the most die-hard fans wanting to spend $70 for little more than dinner and a panel discussion with the cast. An event like this would've been an ideal platform to make the big announcements about the future of Robotech (assuming, of course, that HG is holding out... unlikely, but still possible) and try to promote new material instead of the endless low-key convention panels that seem dedicated to fluffing Carl and Tommy's egos. It doesn't surprise me that an event like this isn't Harmony Gold's doing though...

The YF-19 No.2 prototype did support internal munitions pallets. Isamu discharges a pair of fairly large missiles from them during his dogfight with Guld over Earth's surface in the Macross Plus OVA. Also, the production model VF-19F/S was shown to support at least one pair of wing-mounted hardpoints for carrying reaction weapons (in episode 44 of Macross 7), so it's possible they could be mounted there as well.

Yeah, I'll second that motion too... Yes, that would leave a rather substantial hole in your theory... Well, the pronunciation used by the commander of Macross-5 in the series itself (ep23 "Sound Force") is definitely "Lux" rather than "Rax". It would make a good deal more sense too, since "Lux" is the Latin word for "Light", and "Rax" is the name of an Austrian mountain range containing Hell Valley and a regional fast food chain based in the American midwest, neither of which is a particularly inspiring thing to name a newly colonized planet after.

Okay... you do realize that unused concept art is non-canon, right? It means nothing. Considering the Protoculture relics scattered on the Vajra homeworld are designs similar to the birdhuman sculptures found during the Mayan island conflict back in 2008, the logical assumption is that biotechnological constructs like the birdhuman are the result of emulating the Vajra. Since the tangible links to Zentradi mecha don't exist outside of non-canon early concept art, it's unwise to infer a link there... Dubious at best... as I said before, the preliminary design art isn't canon and thus forming a theory around it is unwise. I would say that the design similarities between the Stage 2 Vajra and the Regult are only very general things like the knee joint being reverse-jointed. Otherwise, the Stage 2 Vajra has much more in common with the Big Zam than with the Regult. Likewise, the only commonality between the design of the Glaug and the adult (big red) Vajra is that they have a large beam gun mounted up top. Otherwise they couldn't be more different.

Generally speaking, when you see someone making a serious attempt to defend Carl Macek's artistic integrity and the quality of his work it's a pretty good sign that hilarity is about to ensue. Y'know, I had always suspected that Robotech's Minmei was a member of an alien race cursed with the psychic power to turn people into masochists and an irrational compulsion to sing... it's nice to know I'm no longer the sole proponent of that theory. I'd welcome you to MacrossWorld, but since you're already well aware I'm not terribly fond of you for standing by and letting the idiot brigade overrun what may very well have been the last bastion of common sense and impartiality in the Robotech fandom, I won't waste your time with insincere pleasantries. Ah, my bad... of course the inherent hilarity in RobotechX plugging a podcast that is overwhelming critical of exactly the kind of overly-political mess you've allowed the site to become no doubt has your sides splitting with barely-suppressed mirth. I know I'm laughing long and hard over here. Okay, serious points for the realistic outlook... it's a welcome change from the usual course of events we follow when a Robotech fan registers here. They usually come in hard and fast with the denial and insist that all's right and well in the Robotech franchise. Like I said, Robotech's "protoculture" is an all-purpose spackle for filling plot holes of all sizes.

So far, it doesn't look like anyone who actually matters bothered to even acknowledge the existence of Robotech on March 4th, let alone bothered to tell the rest of the world about the show's 25th anniversary. Very few fan sites even took notice and did something special for the occasion, with the sole attractions being a brief announcement from the idiot duo over on RobotechX and the "anniversarycast" on JT's Protoculture Times blog. Harmony Gold didn't even bother to put up anything about the anniversary on Robotech.com's front page. It's certainly possible that they're holding back on some kind of big announcement for one of the bigger conventions, but knowing them there won't be. By all accounts, the only big news this year is Carl Macek's return to Robotech after being fired a decade ago for wasting the company's money on a string of embarrassingly bad projects that all failed long before they could be released. No show of pride in having made their crapshoot franchise last this long. Not even a party for their faithful fans to celebrate the occasion. Just silence and the awkward feeling that they might've finally pushed the fans too far. Give them a little credit, some of them DO know that Harmony Gold has nothing to show for 25 years of ineptitude and failure... they're just too busy being harassed by MEMO and Maverick to crow about it. Presumably yes... Tommy did announce the existence of a sequel project several months before the announcement of the live-action movie project rolled in and put the kibosh on everything. The VAs insist that they were contracted to do three movies, and that Harmony Gold let them know things were on hiatus fairly swiftly. So presumably at one point it was going to be a serious attempt to keep the ball rolling. Wow... issues of grammar and punctuation aside, whoever wrote that needs to ditch the prescription rose-tinted glasses they've been viewing Robotech's history through. What this person is asking for is for us all to give Carl Macek the chance to not royally fart things up like he did on every Robotech sequel he worked on. No, he did not do a good job on Sentinels, he made the Japanese writers throw up their hands and say "fart this poo", then handed care of the script over to a bunch of hamhanded idiots who had only the vaguest clue of how to write sci-fi. No, he did not do a good job on the Robotech story... it's a crummy mess of plot holes and dialogue errors stuck together with copious amounts of all-purpose protoculture-brand plot spackle. For that matter, Tommy did NOT do a good job on Shadow Chronicles either... the animation would've been an embarrassment to any competent studio over a decade ago, and the writing reads like a bad Star Trek-and-Robotech crossover fanfic. So no, you ignorant buffoon whose post I can't be arsed to find, nobody can revive the "old Robotech spirit from back in the day" because it depended entirely on the audience being completely ignorant of what real anime is. There never was any great golden age of Robotech. It was immediately outshined by Transformers as soon as it came out, and never came even remotely close to being popular or iconic. Bringing Carl Macek back into the creative staff ensures one thing and one thing only... that the next Robotech sequel, whenever it comes, will fail before it ever reaches the hands of the fans. So, yes, my fellow Macross fans... let's give Carl Macek a chance... a chance to do what Tommy Yune hasn't yet managed to do: run the Robotech franchise the rest of the way into the ground and put it to rest with what little dignity it still has.

Which isn't the rationale you were espousing before... Okay, you're half-right this time... in truth, Kariba says that his father was a whaler and that he fulfilled his wishes not by created the poaching group, but by expanding it. And posting assumptions as fact is bad practice, as is using them as supporting points while making your argument. You have, thus far, been posting stuff that is simply and demonstrably untrue, mixed with a fair bit of material that can't be supported by any currently-available source. We've been through this once recently already, with someone who posted assumptions as fact, and it didn't end well. Unfounded speculation simply has no place in a debate. If you want to make educated guesses, go right ahead... but don't just guess wildly. Oh yes, and nothing forms or moves in spirals without intervention from the Protoculture... right. Anyway, this wonderful counterargument of yours depends on another unproven assertion... namely, that the Zolans are another species that was manipulated by the Protoculture. It seems likely that they were, but there is no hard evidence of such available in the animation, and no explicit confirmation outside of it. It's the same sort of gray area as the whole "Mardook are the Protoculture" thing, where all the evidence points to it being the case, but the show's creators leave it unanswered. As such, we have no way of confirming whether or not the Protoculture ever encountered the planet Zola and/or the galactic whales. The galaxy is a mind-bogglingly huge place. Also, has there ever been explicit confirmation (in-universe) that the Glaug and/or Regult were based on the Vajra? I'm not aware of any, but then again I haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to the Macross Frontier stuff in Chronicle. Unless there has been, we can't say that's true either... the Vajra have undergone hundreds of thousands of years of guided evolution since the Protoculture encountered them... they could very well have copied some of those ideas from Zentradi mecha they encountered rather than vice-versa.

Under normal circumstances I'd ask what the basis for this unfounded assertion was, but since I can already prove that it's not true let's skip right ahead to the nice juicy fallacies. As shown on Macross Chronicle Macross Dynamite 7 character sheet Etc. 03A "The Galactic Whale Poaching Team/Crew", Kariba's crew includes at least one Zolan. Of course, even if he didn't have Zolans in his crew too, that would be no guarantee of his parentage without independent corroboration from dialogue or observable physical traits. In short, Kariba is most likely human not because his crew is mostly human, but rather because he lacks the distinguishing characteristics endemic to Zolans, Zentradi, and human hybrids. Okay, so pure speculation based loosely on a single line of dialogue about Kariba's father, assumptions based on god alone knows what, a faulty comparison to boot... it's a fallacy hat trick! Because Macross Dynamite 7 doesn't delve into the motivations of Kariba's father (or, in fact, depict him at all), we can't make any definitive statement about how his father viewed the space whales, so let's avoid projecting our own assumptions onto it please. The last thing we need is for someone to take those unfounded assumptions and run with them... we'd end up with a repeat of the Shaloom situation. Insofar as how most people view them, that seems to be rather a projection of your own views onto it again, as Kariba seems to be a pretty transparent Captain Ahab... right down to his white whale fixation. As for the Vajra, have you already forgotten that the U.N. Spacy kept the existence of the Vajra a secret ever since their first encounter with them in 2040? They wouldn't enjoy the support of the tree-hugging environmentalists because their very existence was kept secret, and let's face it... they're not above shooting back when someone starts giving them crap. A series of interdependent, unfounded assumptions. Another unfounded assumption. We have no way of knowing how the Protoculture regarded the space whales, if they even encountered them at all. Not necessarily an indication of common genetic tampering. It could be a simple case of convergent evolution. Note that the existing accounts don't mention the Protoculture dicking around with any of the local wildlife except those they were angling to make into sub-Protoculture species. So, of course, this asserted connection may very well be nothing of the sort. Considering that fold quartz was considered revolutionary in its ability to allow folding through fold faults, I don't think so. If the U.N. had such a valuable resource sitting right under their noses, they would've exploited it by now. It's certainly possible, though it seems somehow unlikely, since that would have to entail a full-blood Zentradi mating with a human-Zolan hybrid, and depending on when Zola was discovered that could potentially be problematic. We also have to remember that Michael's pointy ears are the result of mixing blood from one species that's got spock ears and one that's full blown space elf.

Oh well, ask a silly question... expect a silly answer.

By all means, stay away from the Macross II prequel games then... those borrow rather more heavily from Mobile Suit Gundam than that screen capture does, what with funnels-equipped VF-4s, big honking beam rifles, etc.

But... but... what is the hyperdrive leaking? ... ... ... Midichlorians? Well, the Protoculture Times is doing (or maybe has done by now) a special "anniversarycast", and of course RobotechX had some kind of announcement of the anniversary, but did nothing other than plug the Harmony Gold convention panels. Tho since RTX is basically RT.com Lite, I don't think it counts... particularly since it's run by the Harmony Gold thought police. That isn't new... that's a transforming version of Mospeada's AF-03 Combat. Huh... I'd never thought of it that way before, but I suppose you're right. In the story as in real life, the Robotech defenders can't get their act together and do the job they're being paid to do. One could even go farther and interpret the doomed-from-the-beginning nature of the Pioneer mission as eerily prophetic of the futility of their attempts to make sequels to keep the franchise alive.

Yes, but as hybrids go, his ears are still unusually pointy. Compare his ears, which come to a sharp, distinct point, with the ears of Mylene Jenius, which are distinctly and unmistakably elongated, yet are rounded at the tip. Our pirate captain has neither trait, with normal, rounded ears like every other confirmed pure-human character in Macross 7. There can be exceptions (though we haven't SEEN any), but we shouldn't rush to assume that a character is one of those exceptions unless we have good cause to.

More importantly, why are you asking him to supply your motivations for not waiting for his response? Well, there's no denying that Steve, Tommy, and Tom wrote themselves into a corner story-wise, but several of your assertions here are simply incorrect. In practical terms, this isn't quite true. Yes, any ship or fighter equipped with a shadow device and/or synchro cannon is essentially worse than useless in combat with the Haydonites. Since all Haydonite ships and fighters are equipped with their disruptor wave technology, any shadow technology-derived systems are almost guaranteed to suffer catastrophic failure. The basic, unmodified Alpha fighter (VF/A-6H, -6I, -6Z) has no such weakness, though its guided munitions (its primary weapon) are next to useless due to the shadow field active stealth systems on Haydonite mecha. So it's not the most accurate statement in the world to say that they're useless, since they can perform adequately once their shadow tech systems are disconnected. Also not quite true... the official description of the Ark Angel-class colony fortress in The Art of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles (on pages 116 and 117 if anyone actually gives a shit) does say that it has the "armament and armor of a battlefortress", which in context means that, had it been completed, it would have been comparable to the incredibly pathetic battleships the REF was fielding during the 3rd Robotech War. The breakdown of the completed design does show an incomplete synchro cannon system built into the bow of the ship, and clusters of gun turrets and launch bays identical to those of the Ikazuchi-class heavy carrier from Mospeada. By my count, the Ark Angel-class colony fortress has 28 gun turrets and 16 quick-launch bays, the latter of which should afford it with at least 384 combat-ready Alpha fighters under optimal conditions. Since the ship was only partially complete when it was commandeered to serve as an escape vehicle, we don't know how many (if any) of these weapons systems were even installed, let alone armed, or if the ship's fighter complement had even been delivered. All that aside, contemplating how they intend to cram 750,000 people and upwards of 350 fighters, plus all the relevant supplies, into a ship that's only 2.14km long is best left to those who are completely divorced from reality. Insofar as fuel goes, General whatshisface (Reinhardt?) did say that the REF had enough fuel stockpiled to hold them over for around a year before they'd run out completely. Of course, with Tommy's batch of fuel retcons, they'll probably just switch back to nuclear fusion and call it a day. Not necessarily... they've already done a weak cop-out with the "Super Shadow Fighter", which will probably serve them in good stead as action figure fodder if nothing else. That may very well be all they intend to do in the way of having new mecha for the remainder of the so-called "Shadow Saga". That said, Yune's original designs (Gamma fighter, Silverback) are atrocious crimes against mechanical design and best forgotten in the reeking midden that is the expanded universe of Robotech.

No, they never really seem to get that far... the extent of their work in colonizing outer space seems to have been just plunking down a few military outposts in the outer solar system, and borrowing/renting a compound in downtown Tiresia after they chased the Invid regent's army out. Every planet they encountered that was capable of supporting life already had at least one sentient species squatting on it. Exactly what the initial rationale for this particular alteration to Mospeada's story was seems to have been lost to the ages ineptitude of Harmony Gold's staff. Either the REF expected that they'd use their magic protoculture to undo the damage after the planet was a barren wasteland, or they were working from a "better dead than enslaved" rationale and assuming that the Invid had done irreparable damage to the planet's biosphere. Not exactly an unfounded assumption either, since they changed the composition of the upper atmosphere to make it significantly more difficult for REF ships to make planetfall. Once Tommy stepped in, the rationale became a misguided belief that the neutron-s warheads were much less powerful than they actually were due to misinformation spread by the Haydonites. Assuming the REF did succeed in wiping out Earth and its millions of surviving inhabitants, that would leave only a few million humans left in the entire galaxy, almost all of them soldiers. The only survivors would've been the soldiers on Space Station Liberty, the outer solar system military bases, the military enclave in Tiresia on Tirol's surface, and the orbital drydocks where the REF fleet was retrofitted with shadow technology. Which is perhaps the most harebrained retcon of all... the "children of the shadow" remark was, in its original context, a direct implication that humans had been tainted by "the shadow of the Robotech Masters", presumably a general denunciation on the grounds that humanity would rather have destroyed their objective rather than let someone else have it... a more or less reasonable parallel to the defoliation of Optera by the Robotech Masters. As you yourself pointed out, it really was a case of finding a superficially plausible-sounding explanation for why the VF-4 didn't appear in the Masters Saga and/or New Generation. Tommy Yune tried to expound on this somewhat in the "From the Stars" comic miniseries, where the "complexity" rationale is played up considerably by having the YF-4 suffer from severe mechanical difficulties with its transformation process under combat conditions, which neatly sidesteps the need for Tommy to design a transformation and reasonable-looking battroid mode for Macross's non-transformable VF-X-4. At the same time, the early trials of the Alpha were introduced, albeit indistinctly, and explained somewhat in the extra portion of the collected volume. (The VF-X-6 Genia prototype is seen cruising past in one panel) I'd tell him to leave that sort of thing to the experts, but I don't really want to try to make sense of it either. So... par for the course then? Someone voices a rational complaint, McKeever tells them they're being unreasonable, and his moderator cheering section starts flinging feces like a bunch of amphetamine-fueled chimpanzees.