No Love for Southern Cross?

[Podtastic]

1 hour ago, Harukajunko said:

Ahhh I coulda sworn the elders were like the Original clones and gave all control over to the other three since they looked so similar but I can't remember been a while since I watched the masters saga

In the novels (and possibly the comics) they were not clones at all, but a triumvirate cabal of original Tirolians that manoeuvred themselves into power during the Great Transition. The Masters were clones and acted as their executive. For everyone other than the Elders (and probably their Elite Guard) the Master Triumvirate is the top of the hierarchy.

The Elders are obsessed with Protoculture because they are obsessed with immortality - quite understandable given how old they must be, and the fact that they are power hungry egomaniacs who appear to lack anything approaching spiritual beliefs.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Podtastic

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I See! The more you learn every day! Sadly from what I understand of quick google searching there was only the Robotech Shadow chronicles in 2nd ed right?

"2nd Edition" was officially branded as the Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles RPG.  The title was... misleading.  At the time Palladium Books re-obtained the Robotech license, the plan at Harmony Gold was for the Shadow Saga to be a 3-5 episode OVA with new episodes coming out every two years.  Because the Shadow Saga was supposed to be the flagship of a revitalized Robotech franchise, Palladium Books obligingly titled their 2nd Edition of the RPG to match and built the core book around the OVA's first episode: Shadow Chronicles. 

Spoiler

Tommy Yune had to make some pretty grandiose promises to Harmony Gold's upper management to get the OVA's first episode funded, one of which was that the subsequent episodes would be funded by investors attracted by the first episode.  When Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles... "met with a lukewarm-at-best reception" is a polite way to put it, I think... he was unable to deliver on those promises and Harmony Gold's management refused to fund another episode themselves so Part II "Shadow Rising" was officially on indefinite hiatus (but in practical terms, was cancelled).

In practice, only the RT2E core book was about Shadow Chronicles.  Three of its five published supplements were coverage for the sagas of the Robotech TV series, one was a sort of halfhearted adventure module and monster manual/generator (Genesis Pits), and the final book (UEEF Marines) could best be called Robotech 1 7/8: In the Immediate Vicinity of, But Explicitly Not, the Sentinels.  One sourcebook - a "spaceships" sourcebook - was quietly cancelled after the author working on it had a falling out with the publisher, leaving the book's manuscript unfinished.

The game had been planned around regular infusions of new content for the Shadow Saga, but when Shadow Rising was cancelled they exhausted most of Robotech's official setting material by the end of the fourth book (New Generation) and the last two books (Genesis Pits and UEEF Marines) ended up being of questionable quality due to the limitations on the content and the lack of material.

 

7 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

followed by sadly the miss handling of the RPG tactics which lead to lots of problems... I know people who never got their stuff from it.

... "mishandling" is an extremely charitable way to put it.

It was a complete fiasco...

Spoiler

... due mainly to Palladium Books mgmt drastically overestimating the game's appeal based on the initial Kickstarter receipts.  

Development, production, and delivery of the "wave 1" backer rewards ran well over budget due to various poor choices and reworks.  Palladium Books tried to recover from that by using the remaining Kickstarter money to fund production of retail stock, in the misguided belief that the game would sell extremely well and the profits from that retail sale would fund the "Wave 2" backer rewards.  Ultimately, they discovered the hard way that almost everyone who was interested in the game had been a Kickstarter backer and the company ended up with huge amounts of unsold retail stock sitting in their warehouse collecting dust.  They spent about two years trying to cover it up, with backer discontent ultimately leading one of their business partners to attempt suicide and Harmony Gold to terminate their license.

 

7 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

ok this one I have to ask, Which are which? do we have pictures of them? I ask since me as a person, don't know any of their names.

It's worth noting that that's all from the non-canon comics and novels.

One of the reasons the situation there is so vague is that the original Southern Cross never really bothered to establish how Zor society worked... and the whole bit about immortality is either a throw-it-in attempt to provide the Zor Lords with a less altruistic motivation at the end or an aborted arc that was lost to time with the show's cancellation.  The original plan for the show was for a big reveal that the Zor were Human All Along and that their weirdness is a product of deliberate reengineering of their society to abolish the causes of the war that put their adopted homeworld Glorie into an ice age.

In the original Southern Cross script, the elders names were Zosuma, Zosumu, and Zosumo.  The Zor Lords themselves (RT: Robotech Masters) were named Dess, Dera, and Demi.  (All the Zor characters follow a similar naming convention, sharing all but the last syllable of their names among all three members of a trinity.)

 

7 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

It's more to explain why they don't have these things all over the place always cloaked. along with the references of the robotech masters having low levels of protoculture so while it's a high power fuel, it's using extra ontop of operating every system of the bioroid.

That's one of the problems with introducing something so obviously useful... you then have to come up with a really good justification for why it isn't used all the time.  

(Mind you, protoculture in Robotech isn't so much a high-output fuel as a high energy-density fuel.  One of the reasons given for why it's seemingly outperformed by nuclear fusion is that it's used in very small amounts, often more like a battery or fuel cell than a high output reactor.)

[Harukajunko]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's one of the problems with introducing something so obviously useful... you then have to come up with a really good justification for why it isn't used all the time. 

I think the idea that the masters are limited in what protoculture they are willing to spend for most of hte conflict is a good enough reason, but it's mostly my own reasoning I'd have to look at what we have written.

 

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... "mishandling" is an extremely charitable way to put it.

Ohhhh I know, I legit just didn't want to sound too mean.

 

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

one was a sort of halfhearted adventure module and monster manual/generator (Genesis Pits), and the final book (UEEF Marines) could best be called Robotech 1 7/8: In the Immediate Vicinity of, But Explicitly Not, the Sentinels

I have only really fully read through Genesis Pits and UEEF marines and I dunno if this is a hot take but UEEF marines Destroids and Z-Series Destroids are some of the coolest looking mecha of all time... I don't like how there's 200 different cyclones though that really all serve the same purpose.

And Genesis pits once again my fave take away is the Gura Invid which may be kinda weird and dumb but I dunno I really like em.

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's worth noting that that's all from the non-canon comics and novels.

Gotcha

[CoryHolmes]

20 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

That pun was terrible but even as a fan of macross 7 it just.. it doesn't fit what we have...

Hey!  I think that pun was fabulous!

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I think the idea that the masters are limited in what protoculture they are willing to spend for most of hte conflict is a good enough reason, but it's mostly my own reasoning I'd have to look at what we have written.

Optical camo is always kind of a pain to work into any setting that has mecha.  Especially RPGs.  It sounds cool, but mechanically it's kind of a pain in the arse to work into a RPG and in practical terms it's actually kind of a rubbish idea.  Giant robots being naturally inclined to be big, heavy, noisy things, even an invisible one is going to be radiating waste heat and a modest amount of engine noise just by running its power plant.  Actually moving basically gives the game away even if the cloak is visually perfect, since it's going to be making noise when it walks both from its motors and the limbs hitting the ground, it'll leave footprints in soft soil and pavement damage on roads that give away its approximate position, and any active sensors are going to give the game away immediately by emitting detectable radiation.  It's more trouble than it's worth, for the most part.  Great for infantry, less so for any vehicle much larger than a motorbike.

Though way too many Robotech plots (esp. RTSC) involve someone or everyone grabbing hold of an idiot ball large enough to have its own atmosphere, I'd like to think that Zor or the Robotech Masters would be smart enough to realize how ineffective optical camo would be.  (Especially against the Invid, who have non-conventional perception abilities and mainly [see/track enemies] via the characteristic emissions of protoculture power systems... something only the Haydonites had the technology to mask.)

 

10 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I have only really fully read through Genesis Pits and UEEF marines and I dunno if this is a hot take but UEEF marines Destroids and Z-Series Destroids are some of the coolest looking mecha of all time... I don't like how there's 200 different cyclones though that really all serve the same purpose.

And Genesis pits once again my fave take away is the Gura Invid which may be kinda weird and dumb but I dunno I really like em.

I wouldn't call it a hot take, but it's definitely fodder for an unpopular opinion puffin meme.

When the books first dropped, I know a lot of fans were upset that they 1. hadn't used the original (legally problematic) Robotech II: the Sentinels designs and 2. that the new designs looked like the IMUs (improvised mecha/kitbashes) from the Genesis Pits book, being visibly cobbled together out of recognizable parts of the Alpha, Beta, and AGACs.  

The Gura Invid were better received, I think in part because many fans tend to forget the Invid mecha are piloted inorganic technology with a distinct pilot who can disembark.  I was kind of ambivalent on the topic, since it wasn't really any different from regular Invid except visually.

[Harukajunko]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Optical camo is always kind of a pain to work into any setting that has mecha.  Especially RPGs.  It sounds cool, but mechanically it's kind of a pain in the arse to work into a RPG and in practical terms it's actually kind of a rubbish idea.

I as a GM and player go rule of cool with it since we already have to disbelive that these fighters have any chance of actually transforming mid flight without ripping themselves apart or going out of control. Also it's alien tech so I dunno maybe that's what's draining more protoculture is the fact it has to double up on it's cooling efforts to stay hidden

For RPG effects it acts as an equipment suite for the mecha, giving an extra 3 dice when making Obscure, Redirection, or other Actions that hide and confuse the enemy. making it a very versitile ability. you do only get 2 uses of this equipment suit and normally a Stealth bioroid requires 1 successes from an observation roll to be seen.

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

the new designs looked like the IMUs (improvised mecha/kitbashes) from the Genesis Pits book, being visibly cobbled together out of recognizable parts of the Alpha, Beta, and AGACs.  

The Gura Invid were better received, I think in part because many fans tend to forget the Invid mecha are piloted inorganic technology with a distinct pilot who can disembark.  I was kind of ambivalent on the topic, since it wasn't really any different from regular Invid except visually.

TBH I really like the way the marines mecha look since they look like a set of designs that would actually be produced by a faction in a mass production style using many of the same parts and design philosophies that they see work incredibly well.

Gura I just really like the idea and the flavor text of the one hive of them in the grand cannon who could only see Lisa's face so they modeled their whole upper cast after them just.. I dunno it hits a nice spot in my brain.

Edited May 19, 2022 by Harukajunko
hit the wrong button

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I as a GM and player go rule of cool with it since we already have to disbelive that these fighters have any chance of actually transforming mid flight without ripping themselves apart or going out of control.

On an individual level, that's a bit more mundane since that's all down to material strength and computer automation... which gets less implausible every time another carbon nanomaterial with metallic properties is invented, and the more AI-based technology integrates itself into daily living.

 

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

Also it's alien tech so I dunno maybe that's what's draining more protoculture is the fact it has to double up on it's cooling efforts to stay hidden

So... slight nitpick as an engineer... running the cooling system harder would exhaust more heat, making it easier to spot.  What you'd want if you intended to stay hidden while you were using a high energy demand system would be a heat sequestration system to store that heat internally in some sealed system until stealth was no longer necessary.  That'd reduce the thermal profile a bit.  (This can be achieved with heat pumps and various kinds of vacuum-sealed thermal vessels, though they have a finite heat capacity and you run the increasing risk of an overheat as long as you're running as a closed system.)

(VFs in Macross do this in space operations, with cryogenic coolant tanks functioning as coolants and heat dumps since radiative cooling is more difficult in space.)

 

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

For RPG effects it acts as an equipment suite for the mecha, giving an extra 3 dice when making Obscure, Redirection, or other Actions that hide and confuse the enemy. making it a very versitile ability. you do only get 2 uses of this equipment suit and normally a Stealth bioroid requires 1 successes from an observation roll to be seen.

So it's written as sort of an all-or-nothing where once you're spotted you stay spotted?

 

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

TBH I really like the way the marines mecha look since they look like a set of designs that would actually be produced by a faction in a mass production style using many of the same parts and design philosophies that they see work incredibly well.

A lot of the discontent was, I think, primarily just because it wasn't the Sentinels designs fans have been so attached to for so long.

IMO, the new designs look a lot less distinctive.

[Big s]

Not gonna lie, most of the stuff you guys have been talking about is a bit over my head. I hadn’t seen a Robotech rug thing since the old palladium days in the early 90’s.

[Harukajunko]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So it's written as sort of an all-or-nothing where once you're spotted you stay spotted?

not exactly you can re hide in the middle of battle, it's all about fictional positioning in SMG's system With each turn having 3 phases. so you could use one of your two base actions to try and hide yourself or instead of mechanically hiding yourself you use it as a 'I'm confusing the enemy and redirecting their fire maybe into an ally of theirs' kinda stuff it allows for more free form playing.

 

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... slight nitpick as an engineer...

I ain't no whale biologist so that's just me doing dumb sci-fi techno babble that I am 100% not trained to do like any star trek engineering officer.

2 minutes ago, Big s said:

I hadn’t seen a Robotech rug thing since the old palladium days in the early 90’s.

SMG's system dropped in 2019 and I'll admit I only found it by accident, but it's fun. not a bunch of calculations like Palladium, more focused on the fictional positioning and roleplay elements of it rather then hardcore simulation.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

though they have a finite heat capacity and you run the increasing risk of an overheat as long as you're running as a closed system.)

could be a good reason as to why you can only use the equipment suite of the stealth system.

 

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A lot of the discontent was, I think, primarily just because it wasn't the Sentinels designs fans have been so attached to for so long.

IMO, the new designs look a lot less distinctive.

I'll be honest having seen the old ones, It might be me growing up past the sentinels era stuff and only seeing the newer ones first, but I don't think the older ones look that great, they look like they are stuff of that era. But I 100% think the new designs look better.

[CoryHolmes]

6 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

Gura I just really like the idea and the flavor text of the one hive of them in the grand cannon who could only see Lisa's face so they modeled their whole upper cast after them just.. I dunno it hits a nice spot in my brain.

+1

 

The Gura Invid felt like they were written by a fan, someone with enough connection to the series to come up with a new tie-in.  I love the idea that there's a trove of intact RDF Mecha down there, just waiting for someone to pillage it.

[CoryHolmes]

On 5/18/2022 at 9:17 PM, Harukajunko said:

 I don't like how there's 200 different cyclones though that really all serve the same purpose.

My favourite Cyclone-variants will always be from the Third Invid War fan supplement.  They took the idea of the Cyclone and stretched it into the next iteration.  A survival-focused Cyclone that's cheap and easy to manufacture as well as field-repair.  A heavy-duty version for maintenance workers with heavy lifting.  A dozen various forearm weapon modules, taking advantage of the flexible mounting options.

 

So much thought went into them.  I ❤️ them so much.

[Harukajunko]

1 hour ago, CoryHolmes said:

 

So much thought went into them.  I ❤️ them so much.

I bet there was I just feel it gets too... specific? like most of them can do the exact same things but say they are for a super specific things but most if not all others do it just as fine.

[Podtastic]

On 5/19/2022 at 6:17 AM, Harukajunko said:

Gotcha

Bear in mind that the vast majority of the Tirolian-Invid war lore comes from these sources. 

 

[JAAD_SMG]

1 hour ago, Podtastic said:

Bear in mind that the vast majority of the Tirolian-Invid war lore comes from these sources. 

 

Yes. We on the writing team are very precise and thorough with our sourcing and research. We pull from every source and then HG has editorial oversight on us as we build a unified setting from everything in their archive to align with their current canon. far more than PB. Our main problem always comes with space in the book. In Macross we just ran out of room. Homefront is almost nothing but lore and the same with what comes after.

[JAAD_SMG]

On 5/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Podtastic said:

The Imperial Bioroid will also appear in my art commission (though probably not very prominently due to it being a battle scene rather than a portrait). 

Just as long as they don't get in the way of my commission, but I'm given to understand that that is unlikely as there is nothing contentious in it.

 

No. Won't be a problem. HG gets final say but as you said, there is nothing in new there. HG is fine with those kinds of things. The Yellow and Purple Bioroids are already existed. The Images for them already existing. In the art approval process, we mostly just have to show what a thing is and all our sources and research for HG to look over. show where we got it from, show what our lore is based on. that kinda thing. it means for things like the Imperial Bioroid, the only hang up on Approval will be if they want to update the design a little (which they have done for some stuff)

On 5/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Podtastic said:

That's cool. Will there be art of both the blue and purple versions? Back in the day younger me selfsplained it as the purple versions being the Elite Guard for the Robotech Elders. Based on the old filecard.

Not at this time. re-colours are easy but take time. If its requested in a backer piece however...

 

On 5/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Podtastic said:

What?? What have you done with the Robotech Elders?

still present and ruling from shadows letting their younger clones serve as figureheads while psuedo enjoying retirement but not really. There was some issue fitting all the text on them. But they are mentioned and acknowledged.

 

On 5/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Podtastic said:

 Seto Kaiba is NOT a Robotech fan.

I can tell.

 

On 5/18/2022 at 6:03 PM, Podtastic said:

Why would something so simple drain Protoculture at a high rate? Protoculture, as I understand it, is meant to be high yield and super efficient. Is it for game balance reasons, like in the Predator Concrete Jungle PS 2 game?

Not meant to be disparaging I assure you. Sacrificing a unit to take out a high value enemy asset behind enemy lines is a viable tactic. (Who has not sacrificed a few Tau Stealth Suits to take out a pesky Gue'la Baneblade or Land Raider in Dawn of War?)

Perhaps the lore for it should focus more on the sniping aspect. I think those ridiculous claws give the wrong impression.

Partially. Stealth is a powerful gameplay mechanic thats not common. The Stealth Bioroid has features which enhance this mechanic. Its Invisibility system is tied to an Equipment Suite which is limited for balance and lore reasons. It also has a standard stealth profile in addition. In essence. it has two stealth technologies. A passive stealth based on its materials and construction and an active in which it engages the chameleon system and becomes near invisible. it can also extend this effect to an attached hover sled. When you combine the two in gameplay, the result is a very powerful ambush predator thats super hard to detect since it requires a large number of successes. So we had to limit it. The idea that it takes a lot of Protoculture was an idea I was outvoted on.

The claws, were not my idea nor was the visual art design for the mecha... and i personally was outvoted on that one. But we made a note that that Precision Rifle is the default armament. So it can kinda do both now. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by JAAD_SMG

[pengbuzz]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... slight nitpick as an engineer... running the cooling system harder would exhaust more heat, making it easier to spot.  What you'd want if you intended to stay hidden while you were using a high energy demand system would be a heat sequestration system to store that heat internally in some sealed system until stealth was no longer necessary.  That'd reduce the thermal profile a bit.  (This can be achieved with heat pumps and various kinds of vacuum-sealed thermal vessels, though they have a finite heat capacity and you run the increasing risk of an overheat as long as you're running as a closed system.)

(VFs in Macross do this in space operations, with cryogenic coolant tanks functioning as coolants and heat dumps since radiative cooling is more difficult in space.)

Too bad they couldn't simply shunt heat into super dimension space or something...

[Seto Kaiba]

14 hours ago, Big s said:

Not gonna lie, most of the stuff you guys have been talking about is a bit over my head. I hadn’t seen a Robotech rug thing since the old palladium days in the early 90’s.

The early 2000s "2nd Edition" RPG was actually pretty good... they (involuntarily) went to some pretty considerable lengths to develop a game that is actually pretty accurate to the setting and story of the Robotech TV series.  It's a massive improvement over the one from the late 80's and early 90's and systemic differences aside it's also way more accurate to the show than the new SMG game is as well.

 

13 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I ain't no whale biologist so that's just me doing dumb sci-fi techno babble that I am 100% not trained to do like any star trek engineering officer.

Well, if you need a whale biologist I know a guy... (no, really)

One method that various content creators have historically had great success with making their content more believable and consistent has been to involve subject matter experts from various fields in their development.  Star Trek was infamous for having a whole panel of consultants for that kind of thing.  Macross drove its development in part with the help of engineering experts.  MOSPEADA, likewise, had a motorcycle enthusiast designer behind the Ride Armor (Cyclone) whose expertise made the design more believable in terms of its presentation.  Harmony Gold tried to do something similar for developing its official setting by tapping experts on the Japanese source material in the 2000s, with some hit-and-miss results due to the incomplete nature of the Southern Cross OSM and some guesswork some of them did.  I got tapped for a few points related to the Macross Saga back in the day, having at the time mostly focused on Macross for my translations.

 

13 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

could be a good reason as to why you can only use the equipment suite of the stealth system.

I'm sure with a bit more thought a few more plausible explanations could be found.

Gotta think about engineering problems like an engineer.

 

13 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I'll be honest having seen the old ones, It might be me growing up past the sentinels era stuff and only seeing the newer ones first, but I don't think the older ones look that great, they look like they are stuff of that era. But I 100% think the new designs look better.

That would make you pretty unusual as a Robotech fan.

Most are still very much hung up on the incomplete Robotech II: the Sentinels series and their desire to see it completed played a pretty significant role in the failures of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and Robotech Academy.

I was definitely well in the minority being happy to see Robotech finally mostly divorce itself from the Macross Saga characters and Sentinels arc via Shadow Chronicles, and got a lot of crap for my (admittedly lukewarm) support for the new OVA as an attempt to make a clean break with Sentinels and have the franchise get on with its life.

 

9 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I bet there was I just feel it gets too... specific? like most of them can do the exact same things but say they are for a super specific things but most if not all others do it just as fine.

That's padding for ya... 

 

6 hours ago, JAAD_SMG said:

Yes. We on the writing team are very precise and thorough with our sourcing and research. We pull from every source and then HG has editorial oversight on us as we build a unified setting from everything in their archive to align with their current canon. far more than PB. Our main problem always comes with space in the book. In Macross we just ran out of room. Homefront is almost nothing but lore and the same with what comes after.

You're drawing on materials Harmony Gold explicitly disowned and labeled as non-canonical and "Robotech in name only", so I don't think you can make that claim with a straight face.

[Harukajunko]

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That would make you pretty unusual as a Robotech fan.

Why Thank you

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Most are still very much hung up on the incomplete Robotech II: the Sentinels series and their desire to see it completed played a pretty significant role in the failures of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles and Robotech Academy.

I'm down that SMG is working to expand upon stuff for Sentinels but not sacrificing anything for it. trying to balance stuff.

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You're drawing on materials Harmony Gold explicitly disowned and labeled as non-canonical and "Robotech in name only", so I don't think you can make that claim with a straight face.

Well they seem fine with us doing it as we are now, then again it's not fully one source or another we have been working to mesh things together to make things make sense... like how some sources say the zentradi never fought the invid which just doesn't make sense logically. or weird placings of events so there's a huge gap or weird inconsistencies.

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The early 2000s "2nd Edition" RPG was actually pretty good...

I couldn't get into it, it always felt restrictive for an RPG not to mention weird rules things that just sometimes reference things but then just nothing.

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

Why Thank you

Careful, you'll be the next one the trollish types brand as "not a fan". 😉 

 

12 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

Well they seem fine with us doing it as we are now, then again it's not fully one source or another we have been working to mesh things together to make things make sense... like how some sources say the zentradi never fought the invid which just doesn't make sense logically. or weird placings of events so there's a huge gap or weird inconsistencies.

Yeah... as I'd mentioned previously, I suspect the difference there is that Harmony Gold is a lot less serious about Robotech's future prospects now that the cat's long since out of the bag on the Shadow Saga's cancellation, the last gasp attempt to save animated Robotech failed on Kickstarter, and they've all but sold the franchise to Big West.

Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, Harmony Gold was taking Robotech seriously for the first time in the franchise's history.  They'd just hired a new creative staff and given them the herculean task of relaunching Robotech as a credible mainstream sci-fi/mecha anime property like Gundam or Macross.  That was actually a pretty damned exciting time to be a fan of Robotech.  They sat down and went through the licensee-created materials from the 80's and 90's and after much review concluded there was no way to incorporate those materials into Robotech proper because the overall level of quality of those works was too poor (and later admitted most, if not all, would never have seen the light of day if there had been editorial oversight back then), that there were too many inconsistences and contradictions, and way too much blatant copyright infringement from Macross and others.  That led them to make a clean break with that old material, disowning all pre-2001 materials except the 85 episode TV series.  I was on the call where they announced that, and I remember the furor that provoked.  But they opted to start fresh, and we got comics at higher levels of quality than we'd ever had before.  They sat down with fan translators and worked out an official setting and reference for same based on the Japanese source material and the Robotech TV series.  There was the promise of a new animated title in the works (what became Shadow Chronicles), and of course the 2006 announcement that Palladium Books reacquired the RPG license with the caveats that their game had to stay firmly within the bounds of the official Robotech setting.

It ended up not panning out, since Shadow Chronicles was supposed to launching point for a new era of Robotech literally and figuratively.  Fans were ambivalent towards it and ultimately it never attracted the investors they needed to fund part 2.  Harmony Gold tried to use the then-recent announcement of the live-action movie license to attract some investors, but that never went anywhere and eventually c.2012 they had to finally come clean that Shadow Rising wasn't happening.  Management shifted its attention to the live action movie proposal, and efforts related to maintaining animated Robotech stagnated or were suspended... before ultimately being abandoned altogether with the crash-and-burn failure of Robotech Academy on Kickstarter in 2014.

I don't doubt for a second that Harmony Gold is fine with what Strange Machine is doing.  The difference between then and now being that Harmony Gold is no longer trying to present Robotech as a professionally-done mainstream anime property the way they were when they were working with Palladium Books.  Standards are much more lax, since animated Robotech exists mainly to maintain the Macross trademark in the US and HG's focus is entirely on the proposed live action movie.

 

12 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

I couldn't get into it, it always felt restrictive for an RPG not to mention weird rules things that just sometimes reference things but then just nothing.

I totally understand... there is a running joke that Palladium's system - esp. RIFTS - is the best game nobody actually plays for exactly those reasons.

You basically play one game using the rules-as-written, and then you start houserule-ing to paper over the cracks and smooth over the speedbumps in the game system.  Once you do that, it's eminently playable and quite enjoyable.  It does, however, have a decidedly simulationist bent as you've noted though that seems to be what a lot of mecha enthusiasts are looking for in an RPG for a mecha anime.

My own homebrews are extensively embroidered with houserules and so much errata (esp. for Macross II) that my players used to joke there was more red ink than black in my copies of the Macross II RPG.  (If I had actually written my notes directly on the books themselves, they would probably be completely right.)

[Harukajunko]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Robotech as a professionally-done mainstream anime property the way they were when they were working with Palladium Books.

I would say that's from palladium frakking that pooch down the river with no paddle, RPG tactics really stung the robotech and Palladium image. but now with our second book and that massive kickstarter for the Robotech war game that just ended (that has a scale model of the SDF-1 and Zentradi flagship with it) I think it's becoming more commerically viable at this rate again.

 

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It does, however, have a decidedly simulationist bent as you've noted though that seems to be what a lot of mecha enthusiasts are looking for in an RPG for a mecha anime.

while I can see this angle, TBH? I never really understood it in a tabletop rpg. I know we had stuff like Mekaton zeta which were jesus christ levels of simulation but when I'm playing a mecha anime game I want the freedom and feel of it when I sit down to play. I dont want to be told 'no I cant help the mechanical crew preform maintenance' or 'it wont matter' because ethier a system says so or because I'm not a mechanic. Hell my first campaign I played a singing Destroid commander who also was developing veritech enhancements with Dr. Lang and the pilots help. I legit couldn't do that as far as I know with Palladium (and I also would have blown my brains out trying to calculate missile velocities)

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Careful, you'll be the next one the trollish types brand as "not a fan". 😉 

Man, I'm already there because I say the ASC sucks hard ass. But I still worked with SMG to make em fun to play.

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I don't doubt for a second that Harmony Gold is fine with what Strange Machine is doing. 

now if only Tommy would speed up confirming the art haha.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

I would say that's from palladium frakking that pooch down the river with no paddle, RPG tactics really stung the robotech and Palladium image. but now with our second book and that massive kickstarter for the Robotech war game that just ended (that has a scale model of the SDF-1 and Zentradi flagship with it) I think it's becoming more commerically viable at this rate again.

Eh... Robotech RPG Tactics undeniably did a bit of damage, but because it was backed mainly by the long-time Robotech and Palladium faithful and neither brand was exactly in great shape reputationally the long term damage was pretty minimal.  It is believed that it hurt the prospects of Robotech Academy, but that was already kind of a cynical stinker dependent on the "do it for Carl" vibes and I'd have been stunned if it met its funding goals either way.

That said, "huge"... well... this feels like a repeat of the same critical mistake Palladium Books made with RPG Tactics.  Namely, judging the success or prospects of a Kickstarter purely on the total funds pledged.  Kevin Siembieda was so gobsmacked by the unexpectedly huge pledge total on the RPG Tactics Kickstarter that was certain the game was an enormous hit in the making that he failed to consider that information in its proper context.  He saw $1.44M and jumped to believing he had a huge hit on his hands, not noticing that princely sum was due not to widespread support but a high cost of entry and the 5,342 backers making disproportionately high pledges to secure multiple game boxes and stretch goal minis.  The average pledge was nearly 3 1/2 times the cost of entry.   The same is true for Minitech's new DOG FIGHT game.  Yeah, they raised an impressive pledge total ($232,730 US), but due to an even more disproportionately high average pledge from a much smaller pool of backers (just 795 people, about 1/7th as many as RPG Tactics got).  The average pledge was more than five times the cost of entry.

When you get right down to it, the numbers don't show Robotech becoming more commercially viable... they show a smaller (and shrinking) number of fans that skews heavily to collector tendencies, willing to buy multiple copies of a game or book and willing to pledge extremely high for backer reward extras.  SMG's Homefront Kickstarter had only 546 backers, 1/10th what Palladium's RPG Tactics got.  That's kind of the expected result, though, given the franchise's persistent failures to get a new series launched to bring new fans in and the dissatisfaction with various sequel efforts and the like.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

while I can see this angle, TBH? I never really understood it in a tabletop rpg. I know we had stuff like Mekaton zeta which were jesus christ levels of simulation but when I'm playing a mecha anime game I want the freedom and feel of it when I sit down to play. I dont want to be told 'no I cant help the mechanical crew preform maintenance' or 'it wont matter' because ethier a system says so or because I'm not a mechanic. Hell my first campaign I played a singing Destroid commander who also was developing veritech enhancements with Dr. Lang and the pilots help. I legit couldn't do that as far as I know with Palladium (and I also would have blown my brains out trying to calculate missile velocities)

Some people like the crunch, what can I say?

Then again, I am a lousy example since I'm an engineer (math nerd) and a translator of mecha anime publications (tech nerd) so the crunch is just WHERE I'M AT.  

One of the most common houserule fixes to the Palladium Mega-Damage system is to address the weirdly unbalanced levels of granularity in skills.  Some border on being Swiss Army skills that can do almost anything, like the pilot boats skill that lets you sail anything from a dingy to a dreadnought with equal ease as long as it's not a sailboat, or the ones that give you proficiency in operating just one system on a complex integrated vehicle like a robot or aircraft (e.g. the radar skills).  Leveling that out and applying common sense there is usually the first fix a GM makes after trying to run Mega-Damage.

(That said, I have seen real-world... incidents... that justify certain limits like not letting just anyone perform maintenance on heavy or specialized machinery.  It is with good reason that they say the safety regulations are written in blood.  There are some systems I've worked on on a daily basis where the servicing is limited to highly trained and safety-qualified personnel only because special tools and training are absolutely necessary to minimize the risk of the system you're servicing maiming you horribly or killing you messily.  Even the relatively mundane appliances around your house like a microwave or TV contain components that can easily kill you if you don't know what you're doing, and heavier machinery can often be exponentially more dangerous.  It's all fun and games until your workplace safety training warns about the kind of injuries you'd normally think belonged exclusively to the critical hit tables in Dark Heresy.)

 

9 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

Man, I'm already there because I say the ASC sucks hard ass. But I still worked with SMG to make em fun to play.

My good fellow, that is one of the most common opinions in the Robotech fandom as a whole.

Harmony Gold actually ran a series of official polls on that topic back in the 2000s, and responses were... well... let's just say a significant majority of the fanbase thinks the ASC is basically where the United Earth Forces sends the soldiers who would be least missed on the front lines, and the leaders most likely take a "lucky" shot when the enemy forces are suspiciously far away.  The idea had some canonical traction even before HG officially canonized it, with the ASC being made up of troops that didn't make the cut for the Pioneer Expedition in Sentinels and their equipment and training later being identified as subpar compared to the UEEF's.  The Spartas gets some richly deserved flak for being a tank that has no protection for its driver, but the Auroran/AGACs gets a LOT of undeserved flak for being a "space helicopter" even though it isn't actually one.

The "No love for Southern Cross?" sentiment extends well into the Robotech world as a result... 

 

9 minutes ago, Harukajunko said:

now if only Tommy would speed up confirming the art haha.

Based on my past experiences there, it's almost certainly not him.  It's legal.

Because of the complex nature of their licensing situation, Harmony Gold's legal counsel gets a distressing amount of work because they have to vet everything to make sure that they won't step on any toes at Tatsunoko, at Big West, or anywhere else.  Their situation might've improved slightly since they bent the knee, but it was so bad back in the day that the official Robotech website was usually the last place to have Robotech-related news because everything had to be multiply signed off on by legal first.

[Podtastic]

On 5/20/2022 at 2:42 PM, JAAD_SMG said:

the only hang up on Approval will be if they want to update the design a little (which they have done for some stuff)

Hopefully there's not too much of that, particularly with the alien stuff. Could be a deal breaker for some of us art backers.

On 5/20/2022 at 2:42 PM, JAAD_SMG said:

Not at this time. re-colours are easy but take time. If its requested in a backer piece however...

It will be in an art piece if the next book is a go.

On 5/20/2022 at 8:42 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Careful, you'll be the next one the trollish types brand as "not a fan". 😉 

Lol. This is classic. 😂

Coming from the guy who said this:

".. the only serious Robotech fans left are the fanatics who can't comprehend why anyone would criticize Robotech"

Edited May 24, 2022 by Podtastic

[Big s]

51 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Spartas gets some richly deserved flak for being a tank that has no protection for its driver

I kinda brought this idea up a couple pages ago. I really think the Sparta wasn’t so much a designed as a tank. It’s more of a fast sled to get a high tech howitzer into position. The thing probably wasn’t covered due to the personal armor the characters had. They also weren’t fighting aliens or gigantic wars until the Zor arrived, so these probably were more used for anti riot situations. The humanoid mode was probably just Incase they needed extra protection. But this is all my own justification for it. 

Southern Cross really doesn’t fit in with Robotech very well since nothing seems designed to combat giant space soldiers or invid hordes. But they make a bit of sense when not thinking about Macross or Mospeada. The military isn’t even a highly functional one with a good amount of delinquents and lack of discipline, probably due to not having an enemy or even threat of an enemy.

[Podtastic]

5 minutes ago, Big s said:

It’s more of a fast sled to get a high tech howitzer into position.

Mobile artillery.

[Big s]

I was thinking something more like this. But the sled mode gets you to the position  and then set up for artillery mode. They’d be further from combat and wouldn’t ideally need heavy armor, not that that’s how they ended up being used in the show since they weren’t the most well trained military. And like I said above they probably didn’t have any real enemies until the zor, so their personal armor would probably be enough protection against small arms in a riot situation.

[Harukajunko]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Based on my past experiences there, it's almost certainly not him.  It's legal.

Last I heard it was actually him and disliking part of the perspective on one of the pieces.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Then again, I am a lousy example since I'm an engineer

HA NERD!

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

My good fellow, that is one of the most common opinions in the Robotech fandom as a whole.

with how loud some groups on facebook is, I really don't get that but maybe it's just a small group of people screaming loudly that their police force has a super duper massive fleet and the UEEF only has like 12 ships and a card board box. Usually this is the same group screaming the Zentradi never fought the invid so I kiiinda ignore them.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's all fun and games until your workplace safety training warns about the kind of injuries you'd normally think belonged exclusively to the critical hit tables in Dark Heresy.)

dark heresy is fun but I'm weird since I don't mind having to pick and choose what I want to be good at.

[JB0]

8 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

I would say that's from palladium frakking that pooch down the river with no paddle, RPG tactics really stung the robotech and Palladium image.

Honestly? They've been digging the hole for like twenty years now.

Back when the anime boom hit and they suddenly "realized" they owned everything Macross-related, they made a lot of ill-advised moves that served mostly to make people mad at them. 

The end result was to drive a wedge between Robotech and the anime community, and a lot of Robotechies being put off the kitbashed rewrite and steered into the glory of 100% pure Macross.

 

And every time it looks like HG's gonna make things right, they turn around and do something else monumentally stupid or transparently spiteful.

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by JB0

[Big s]

38 minutes ago, JB0 said:

The end result was to drive a wedge between Robotech and the anime community, and a lot of Robotechies being put off the kitbashed rewrite and steered into the glory of 100% pure Macross.

Or pure Mospeada or even Pure Southern Cross. There’s so much goofy terminology that’s been thrown around in the last couple pages that I have no idea what’s going on anymore. I get that without talking a bit about Robotech we wouldn’t have too much to talk about on the Southern Cross section, but it’s kinda turned into a default everything Robotech section 

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Big s said:

I kinda brought this idea up a couple pages ago. I really think the Sparta wasn’t so much a designed as a tank. It’s more of a fast sled to get a high tech howitzer into position.

Eh... according to Southern Cross's creators, it's definitely a tank:

• The Spartas's "Sniping Clapper" mode (hover mode) is a high speed light tank.
• "Walker Cannon" mode (the gerwalk-analogous mode) is an anti-aircraft piece.
• "Battle Sniper" mode is an infantry combat mode.

 

11 hours ago, Big s said:

The thing probably wasn’t covered due to the personal armor the characters had. They also weren’t fighting aliens or gigantic wars until the Zor arrived, so these probably were more used for anti riot situations. The humanoid mode was probably just Incase they needed extra protection. But this is all my own justification for it. 

One of the glaring holes in the development of Southern Cross is that it's never really explained why there is a standing army in the first place when the whole reason they had to abandon Earth was a world war that destroyed the planet's ecosystem so badly it couldn't support life anymore and why they're armed with giant robots when there's nothing on Glorie they'd need them for.

Mind you, the Spartas has a multiply-referenced design flaw in that its open cockpit also lacks restraints for the crew.  On at least two occasions people are flung from a moving Spartas due to clipping terrain or a nearby explosion.  It also leaves the pilot and controls exposed to the weather, which on Glorie was not exactly nice.  According to the show's creators, Glorie was in the closing phases of an ice age when humanity found and started terraforming it and it's actually quite nasty with the temperature hovering around the freezing point most of the year (-5C/23F in autumn, a balmy 2C/36F in spring) dipping down to -40C/F in winter and shooting up to over 40C/104F in summer.  And that's at 40 degrees latitude... so imagine that being the norm in Kansas if we were talking about Earth.  Robotech also acknowledged this rather glaring issue in its own material on it, but omitted the extreme weather in favor of just mentioning that weather in general tends to make the pilot's life unplesaant.

 

11 hours ago, Big s said:

Southern Cross really doesn’t fit in with Robotech very well since nothing seems designed to combat giant space soldiers or invid hordes. But they make a bit of sense when not thinking about Macross or Mospeada. The military isn’t even a highly functional one with a good amount of delinquents and lack of discipline, probably due to not having an enemy or even threat of an enemy.

It doesn't, but needs must as the devil drives... and they had to get over 65 episodes somehow.

Robotech's attempt to justify it, as I've mentioned in previous posts, was that the Southern Cross Army was basically the dumping ground for the personnel its leadership felt were least likely to be missed on the front lines of an actual conflict.  It was what happened to you if you didn't make the cut for the real military - the Expeditionary Forces - and got told you had to stay home and mind the house while the grownups were away.  Post-2001, Harmony Gold's official setting took it even further by establishing that the leadership of the Southern Cross Army was just as inept as its rank-and-file soldiery, that the top brass were holding an idiot ball the ENTIRE war because their leader was an absolute xenophobe (and onetime terrorist), and that their equipment was entirely subpar because the brass were so salty about being left behind that they refused to use the same equipment as the UEEF and developed their own with inferior resources as a result.

(Now consider that in both versions of the story, 15th Squad is considered a dumping ground for problem soldiers even by those standards... they're basically Delta House, but in uniform.)

 

9 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

Last I heard it was actually him and disliking part of the perspective on one of the pieces.

Color me surprised... normally, as in "almost invariably", it's legal holding up the show.  I remember their marketing chief having to beg to be allowed to use social media so that he could get news out in a timely manner.

 

9 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

with how loud some groups on facebook is, I really don't get that but maybe it's just a small group of people screaming loudly that their police force has a super duper massive fleet and the UEEF only has like 12 ships and a card board box. Usually this is the same group screaming the Zentradi never fought the invid so I kiiinda ignore them.

It is.  It really is.  You can count the number of highly vocal defenders of the Masters Saga... well... "on one hand" might be pushing it, but you're definitely not going to need all ten fingers.  Unfortunately there also seems to be a very close correlation between how vocally one defends the Masters Saga and how overall toxic they are as a fan, with a lot of that group's members having been banned from many Robotech fansites and Facebook groups for their tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation.  Doesn't stop me from trying to help them with their translation requests, even though I don't really get along with most of them.  

Mind you, they do occasionally make a good point... but even Harmony Gold generally turns a blind ear to their theories.  (The UEEF is nowhere near as big as many Robotech fans believe it is, based on OSM and RTSC sources it was only ever about 600 ships in total, most being small escort warships with crews barely large enough to be a side in a football match.  The entire return fleet modeled in the RTSC animation was only 395 ships, only 31 of which being large warships.)

(It does not help that even Southern Cross's creators are pretty down on the Southern Cross Army as a whole, with what little coverage the series officially got typically taking the time to mention how ineffectual the Southern Cross Army's weapons were in actual combat.  The Logan gets this A LOT, as one of the few things said about it officially is that its combat effectiveness barely rated as an annoyance to the Zor... and the Zor hadn't fought a war in centuries, if not millennia, to the extent of literally forgetting how.)

 

9 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

dark heresy is fun but I'm weird since I don't mind having to pick and choose what I want to be good at.

Yes, but having your marrow flash-boiled until your bones explode like frag grenades is a fate that really REALLY ought to stay confined to the pages of grimdark RPGs, and yet it's something mentioned as a possible fate in safety briefings I have to attend. >_<

[pengbuzz]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... according to Southern Cross's creators, it's definitely a tank:

• The Spartas's "Sniping Clapper" mode (hover mode) is a high speed light tank.
• "Walker Cannon" mode (the gerwalk-analogous mode) is an anti-aircraft piece.
• "Battle Sniper" mode is an infantry combat mode.

All three sound like utter crap mode to me.

 

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

One of the glaring holes in the development of Southern Cross is that it's never really explained why there is a standing army in the first place when the whole reason they had to abandon Earth was a world war that destroyed the planet's ecosystem so badly it couldn't support life anymore and why they're armed with giant robots when there's nothing on Glorie they'd need them for.

Definitely a glaring hole, and on a planet that makes that term rather unfortunate...

 

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Mind you, the Spartas has a multiply-referenced design flaw in that its open cockpit also lacks restraints for the crew.  On at least two occasions people are flung from a moving Spartas due to clipping terrain or a nearby explosion.  It also leaves the pilot and controls exposed to the weather, which on Glorie was not exactly nice.  According to the show's creators, Glorie was in the closing phases of an ice age when humanity found and started terraforming it and it's actually quite nasty with the temperature hovering around the freezing point most of the year (-5C/23F in autumn, a balmy 2C/36F in spring) dipping down to -40C/F in winter and shooting up to over 40C/104F in summer.  And that's at 40 degrees latitude... so imagine that being the norm in Kansas if we were talking about Earth.  Robotech also acknowledged this rather glaring issue in its own material on it, but omitted the extreme weather in favor of just mentioning that weather in general tends to make the pilot's life unplesaant.

So they were basically driving the mecha version of a Ford Pinto around on space-age Siberia...

 

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It doesn't, but needs must as the devil drives... and they had to get over 65 episodes somehow.

Robotech's attempt to justify it, as I've mentioned in previous posts, was that the Southern Cross Army was basically the dumping ground for the personnel its leadership felt were least likely to be missed on the front lines of an actual conflict.  It was what happened to you if you didn't make the cut for the real military - the Expeditionary Forces - and got told you had to stay home and mind the house while the grownups were away.  Post-2001, Harmony Gold's official setting took it even further by establishing that the leadership of the Southern Cross Army was just as inept as its rank-and-file soldiery, that the top brass were holding an idiot ball the ENTIRE war because their leader was an absolute xenophobe (and onetime terrorist), and that their equipment was entirely subpar because the brass were so salty about being left behind that they refused to use the same equipment as the UEEF and developed their own with inferior resources as a result.

(Now consider that in both versions of the story, 15th Squad is considered a dumping ground for problem soldiers even by those standards... they're basically Delta House, but in uniform.)

Perhaps instead of those idiotic winged helmets, they should have simple dunce caps.

 

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(It does not help that even Southern Cross's creators are pretty down on the Southern Cross Army as a whole, with what little coverage the series officially got typically taking the time to mention how ineffectual the Southern Cross Army's weapons were in actual combat.  The Logan gets this A LOT, as one of the few things said about it officially is that its combat effectiveness barely rated as an annoyance to the Zor... and the Zor hadn't fought a war in centuries, if not millennia, to the extent of literally forgetting how.)

The Logan: a heartfelt memorial to the long-distant memory of mankind's past...where being an absolute piece of $#!t could still make you famous.

 

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes, but having your marrow flash-boiled until your bones explode like frag grenades is a fate that really REALLY ought to stay confined to the pages of grimdark RPGs, and yet it's something mentioned as a possible fate in safety briefings I have to attend. >_<

Okay Seto...back away from the man-sized microwave slowly...

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

All three sound like utter crap mode to me.

Dial the snark back, mate... it's in under-bridge territory right now.

It's not like the design staff at Tatsunoko's in-house design group Ammonite weren't trying to do a good job.  Designing a mecha that transforms while still looking slick in each of its modes is ridiculously hard and requires a very specialized skill set and mindset they didn't have.  It's noted in one of the few interviews they did on the series that work on designing the Spartas's transformation alone took Ammonite's three professional anime production designers a whopping THREE MONTHS to resolve despite being fairly basic.  There's good reason Kawamori is one of the few designers out there who makes transformation design their specialty.

It would, in all fairness, be accurate to say that the designs were not well-received either in Japan in its initial/only broadcast and abroad as part of Robotech.

 

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So they were basically driving the mecha version of a Ford Pinto around on space-age Siberia...

... snark aside, kinda?  More like driving a cheap convertible with no seatbelts.

When the emigrants found Glorie, it was basically analogous to Hoth from Star Wars V: the Empire Strikes Back... albeit as the result of a nuclear winter.  If you take Wookieepedia seriously, it's still mostly in Hoth territory in winter (daytime temps at the equator on Hoth supposedly reach a balmy -32C, eight degrees warmer than Glorie's winter average) and is basically in American Northern-Midwest winter mode in Spring and Autumn.

In Earth terms, it's kind of like driving a convertible in the antarctic three seasons out of four.  It's only in summer that Glorie really becomes a not-unpleasant place to live.  That, in and of itself, is kind of rare in sci-fi.  You normally see humans only attempt to settle on planets that are conveniently so Earthlike they resemble central California. 😜

[Big s]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... snark aside, kinda?  More like driving a cheap convertible with no seatbelts.

 

It was the 80’s. No one was wearing seatbelts back when this got made. Things didn’t change until the vehicles started angrily beeping at you if you didn’t put on your belt. I remember quite a few jeep accidents on the street where people were launched from the vehicle after tipping.

[Harukajunko]

2 hours ago, Big s said:

It was the 80’s. No one was wearing seatbelts back when this got made.

gundam and the getter team were

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Color me surprised... normally, as in "almost invariably", it's legal holding up the show.

yeah I think after all that stuff a year or two ago with Big west/tatsunoku/HG and how Funi now has robotech, I think the license is alot more open then it was.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

gundam and the getter team were

So were all the UN Forces mecha pilots in Macross... both Valkyrie pilots and Destroid pilots.

 

2 hours ago, Harukajunko said:

yeah I think after all that stuff a year or two ago with Big west/tatsunoku/HG and how Funi now has robotech, I think the license is alot more open then it was.

Unlikely.  Harmony Gold licensing Robotech to Funimation doesn't change anything about the existing legal situation and the relationships/obligations they have with respect to their licensing partner Tatsunoko Production or Macross owner Big West.  It's literally just them letting Funimation take up the reins of managing the franchise's distribution and some of its merchandise licensing.  If anything, it should actually make the approvals process worse... unless they're using Funimation's legal team instead of Harmony Gold's.

[pengbuzz]

  

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Dial the snark back, mate... it's in under-bridge territory right now.

It's not like the design staff at Tatsunoko's in-house design group Ammonite weren't trying to do a good job.  Designing a mecha that transforms while still looking slick in each of its modes is ridiculously hard and requires a very specialized skill set and mindset they didn't have.  It's noted in one of the few interviews they did on the series that work on designing the Spartas's transformation alone took Ammonite's three professional anime production designers a whopping THREE MONTHS to resolve despite being fairly basic.  There's good reason Kawamori is one of the few designers out there who makes transformation design their specialty.

It would, in all fairness, be accurate to say that the designs were not well-received either in Japan in its initial/only broadcast and abroad as part of Robotech.

 

... snark aside, kinda?  More like driving a cheap convertible with no seatbelts.

When the emigrants found Glorie, it was basically analogous to Hoth from Star Wars V: the Empire Strikes Back... albeit as the result of a nuclear winter.  If you take Wookieepedia seriously, it's still mostly in Hoth territory in winter (daytime temps at the equator on Hoth supposedly reach a balmy -32C, eight degrees warmer than Glorie's winter average) and is basically in American Northern-Midwest winter mode in Spring and Autumn.

In Earth terms, it's kind of like driving a convertible in the antarctic three seasons out of four.  It's only in summer that Glorie really becomes a not-unpleasant place to live.  That, in and of itself, is kind of rare in sci-fi.  You normally see humans only attempt to settle on planets that are conveniently so Earthlike they resemble central California. 😜

...

(they still need a windshield for the cockpit).

Edited May 22, 2022 by pengbuzz