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1.)The southern cross apparently has no scientists. there are no science focused MOS's, or OCC's. nothing compable to the UEDF/UEEF technical officer's Science Officer MOS or the UEEF Marine technical officer's Science officer MOS.
this actually seems to map fairly well to the show, since most of the ASC's research staff seems heavily focused on hardware (developing new gear, or reverse engineering how the enemy stuff works). it just seems odd. but then, if the ASC had had proper science officers (which in the UEEF, include Lore skills and other anthropology type knowledge) the ASC wouldn't have totally bodged the early contacts with the Robotech masters due ot lack of intel on what they were facing.

2.) the Pilot Small and Medium spacecraft skill covers spacecraft "500,000 tons or under". in the UEEF all the warships we have (garfish, ikazuchi, Shimikaze, SDF-4) are well over that. and we know the SDF-3 and Tokugawa would be too. so only the Horizon-t qualifies.
but in the ASC, the Tristar Class battlecruiser is 495,000 tons fully equipped and loaded. which means that every spacecraft we see the ASC use in masters saga, from the shuttles to the full sized warships, can be piloted by the same pilot skill. which makes the ASC's Ship Pilot MOS heavily redundant and slightly pointless, since every TASC member can choose to have pilot:light and medium spacecraft through their OCC skills, and the ship Pilot MOS's skills for heavy and capital/super-capital ships have zero application within the ASC itself.

1). The Show does have Civilian Scientists though. That is a point of contention between Leonard and Emerson when Zor Prime was turned over to Cochrane. Which could indicate several things. Game wise though it could also mean that the military scientists Leonard mentions aren't covered by the current OCC/MOS list and the Civilians would likely just use the Macross era Civilian OCC/package.

2. Though the skill description of S:L&M might give a way out in terms of role "... and includes vessels used for transportation, light troop and cargo haulers, shuttle craft, reconnaissance vessels and other small spacecraft". The Tri-Star (and her sister battlecruisers) might be out of the scope of this skill given they really don't fit the mold of included vessels by use. It's probably also worth noting that the ARMD and Orberth by mass would fall under this skill. What this might mean is that depending on the time period, the mass for a given skill category might be variable (much like what qualifies as a "light" tank around WWII time frame depends on when you look). Which is likely how I would cover it as a period/intent of skill rather than a straight mass range.

i agree the ship thing is probably a bit of a snafu on the part of the author. there i no way in heck that a 1500 foot long ship with dozens of weapons emplacements and 220 fighters aboard* masses less than a ship a third the size with two weapons emplacements and at best a dozen mecha.
the Tristar is closer to the size of the Shimikaze classe and the Ikazuchi in terms of weaponry and compliment. it should have a mass closer to them too.
the Shimikaze (about the same size, but not as heavily armed [not counting the synchrocannon, which was not part of the original design per prelude], and having about 1/10th the mecha compliment) is around 750,000 tons, so i'd say the Tristar's mass should just be outright doubled.


as far as the science officer thing.. while there are some references to civilian scientists, the fact is that Civilians usually aren't easily slotted int othe military's security and classification measures, which makes them tricky to employ fully. and in general, civilian scientists will be located well away from where the action is, and getting their data second or even third hand. and any conclusions they make have to filter through several layers of bureaucracy, with the fate and importance of the results often being decided by officers with no knowledge of what is happening or how important something might actually be.

note that "science officers" in the RPG include stuff like cultural experts, historians, anthropologists, etc. as well as biologists, chemists, and the like. a mix of lore and other technical skills.
we see a few ASC military scientists, but they invariably seem to be more engineer types.


*i actually have quibbles over the mecha compliment of the Tristar.. because it seems really improbable that a ship the size of a modern aircraft carrier could have almost three times the aircraft aboard, especially when the Tristar lacks the ability to park craft on an exposed upper deck. (a Nimitz class carrier is about 1,100ft long and carries 85-90 aircraft, including the helicopters and E-3's. and about a third of those 85-90 have to be parked on deck at any given time because of space issues in the internal hanger deck.)
IMO, the "veritech fighters" and "non-veritech fighters" entries under mecha compliment should have had an "or" in there.. so you could load up 100 veritechs, or 120 non-veritechs, or a mix. though given the Ajax is way bigger than the Logan, you'd think the veritech numbers would go down later in the war when the bigger fighters are being used.
then again, the ASC was a defensive force and we mostly saw them in use in earth orbit. so maybe the listed numbers are just representative of the ASC packing every square foot with fighters, and damn the logistics and maintenance requirements for long duration operations.

something i noticed today.. there is actually no way to make a half-zentraedi character. base racial options in all the books are Human, micronized Zentreadi, or Tyrolian. with UEEF marines adding specific tats for the different Zentraedi sub-types, and the various non-human races

while i understand why the macross sourcebook would lack it, and the UEEF marines book left it out (as the books says, it is too early for any kids to be old enough. given the book is aimed mainly at the late 2020's, this fits), it seems odd that the Masters Saga sourcebook does not mention it, when enough time has passed for the earliest half-zents to have come of age.
even more odd that the core shadow chronicles book or the New Generation sourcebook don't mention it either. those are all set in the late 2030's and 2040's, by which time the first generation of half-zents are adults, even the younger ones born during the early days of the UEEF.

the Half Zent's, and Tirolean's, were added in one of the New Gen books.

It was probably cut due to space of the Manga sized version of Masters.

glitterboy2098 wrote:i agree the ship thing is probably a bit of a snafu on the part of the author. there i no way in heck that a 1500 foot long ship with dozens of weapons emplacements and 220 fighters aboard* masses less than a ship a third the size with two weapons emplacements and at best a dozen mecha.

Well it can come down to materials used in construction, that might explain away some of the difference in mass.

Also the air-wing size comes from the RT.com infopedia (approx. 220), so Palladium has to go with that as the basis.

glitterboy2098 wrote:as far as the science officer thing.. while there are some references to civilian scientists, the fact is that Civilians usually aren't easily slotted int othe military's security and classification measures, which makes them tricky to employ fully. and in general, civilian scientists will be located well away from where the action is, and getting their data second or even third hand. and any conclusions they make have to filter through several layers of bureaucracy, with the fate and importance of the results often being decided by officers with no knowledge of what is happening or how important something might actually be.

note that "science officers" in the RPG include stuff like cultural experts, historians, anthropologists, etc. as well as biologists, chemists, and the like. a mix of lore and other technical skills.
we see a few ASC military scientists, but they invariably seem to be more engineer types.

This may be an indication that the Sciences of the ASC are a separate centralized support organization (like the GMP is from TC, or TASC or ATAC, etc) with their own OCC/MOS. The alternative is that the MOS list is not complete given we lack:
-Medical Doctors/Nurses (not Field Medics or Paramedics, though I suppose they could be used) and Lab Techs.
-administrative and support types (secretaries, accountants, cooks, janitors, etc)

And at least for Science/Medical the MOS is really the only option for many of their OCCs to take Science/Medical skills (beyond math and first aid, if they are lucky).

glitterboy2098 wrote:something i noticed today.. there is actually no way to make a half-zentraedi character. base racial options in all the books are Human, micronized Zentreadi, or Tyrolian. with UEEF marines adding specific tats for the different Zentraedi sub-types, and the various non-human races

New Generation Source Book pg15 has over 1/2 a full-size page devoted to "Human/Zentreadi and Human/Tirolian Hybrids" (the bulk of Zents would be Warrior Infantry w/no attribute modifiers just size/coloration).

That said it might depend on just when Human-Zentreadi off spring would be ready to serve in the ASC (or UEEF). Not just Dana (who would be 16-7 when the Masters arrive), but when that wave hits (minus Dana). Not to mention just how common they might be (TSC suggests they might not be common in the UEEF, and the ASC might be to "young" to have more than a handful given Dana is the only one that gets a mention about 1/2 status IINM while the Masters are remote viewing Zor Prime)

i stand corrected on the half-zent thing, though the fact they are not mentioned or added into the tables in the "how to make your character" section at the start of the books likely means i'm not the only one who missed them.

ok i figured out some of the weirdness surrounding the Tristar.

the robotech.com page for the Tristar lists the weight as "Mass: 459,000 tons (dry, typical)"
while the masters saga sourcebook lists it as "459,000 armed and provisioned"

the problem here is that the robotech.com entry is for "dry".. that is, with no fuel, ammo, food, crew, or fighter compliment present. which given the sheer number of missiles, crew, fighters, and other stores the ship would require, should push that mass well up past 500,000 tons. heck, the fighter compliment alone (ajax and chimera's) adds 5,964 tons, and that is, per the RPG, also "dry" weight, before the addition of fuel, missiles, and ammo. nor does that include the two dozen unspecified suhttlecraft.

i think it likely that a fully loaded Tristar would be close to the mass of a Shimikaze class.. ~750,000 when fulled fueled and equipped.

i also need to retract my statements about the Garfish.. which i had misremembered the mass for. it is actually about 69,000. my memory seems to have tacked on an extra zero.

an unrelated thing i noticed too.. here are twoEU-12 gunpods. there is the one used by the Condor battloid, which is a large bore protoculture powered single blast Particle beam cannon, and a totally unrelated one available to all the ASC battloids that is a small bore rapid fire ion pulse weapon.

an unrelated thing i noticed too.. here are twoEU-12 gunpods. there is the one used by the Condor battloid, which is a large bore protoculture powered single blast Particle beam cannon, and a totally unrelated one available to all the ASC battloids that is a small bore rapid fire ion pulse weapon.

IIRC this had been pointed out in one of the errata threads on the Masters Saga SB. It isn't the only case either as we can also see an example of this with the M-35 Ferret Pistol and M-35 Kodiak Rifle (both in Masters SB, rifle is on the Basilisk PA), and even the M-37 pistol (Masters SB and TSC, Masters SB both are 10mm pistols, but with some noticeable differences in the writeups). The Masters SB also gives us things like the LAR-10/12 (additional types not listed) with model variations that fire different energy "bullets" (laser, particle, plasma, ion) or even borrowing the same name (example "wolverine" rifle between the two books, but at least they aren't the same caliber).

Depending on how certain mecha designations (like VF-#) are supposed to work, there might be overlap elsewhere (ex. ASC battloids could fall into the Destroid lineup resulting in overlap, and if we include the ASC PA suits as part of the line, I don't think they would be, it can further cause issue).

it seems odd that the Space cyclones in the UEEF Marine book use a "protoculture mini-reactor" with a range listed (4000miles) instead of the same single protoculture cell system as all the other cyclones.. or that they have a distance listed instead of a duration in days like all the other PC powered mecha. especially since as a unit meant to operate in orbit and deep space, determining actual distance traveled is very difficult.

4000 miles doesn't seem very long distance either. Without knowing the actual max speed of the vehicle, I'll go with the rough estimate of 200mph double in space. That gives it a running time of 10 to 20 hours of use.

If you do rule it as a Cell, give it a 1 or 2 days use, half if in constant use.

But then again - I have ruled in my games everything except the 1st Generation Human Mecha uses Protoculture Cells. Zentraedi, Invid, and Robotech Masters Mecha use it. Human's 2nd and 3rd Generation Mecha uses it. And that Human's ASC Mecha uses SLMH Hydrogen Fuel Stacks for like the ASC Power Armor describes. Which oddly looks just like a Protocutlure Cell - which allows for it to be tied into the Denver episode of having a fuel cell in a grocery store. And that these fuel cells are interchangeable with Protoculture (no mods needed) but PC powered SLMH designed devices have a duration twice as long.

speeds for the VR-024 Comet (the fastest of the two space cyclones) are 500mph in space, 260mph flying in atmosphere, while in cycle mode. suit mode it can do 300mph in space, and fly at 80mph in atmosphere

add to this the issues of "space has inertia in robotech (as we see in the show)" and you run into the problem that in low orbit you are moving at 17,448.103 mph, crossing 4000 miles in only 14 minutes, though during that your engine would be 'idling' making it hard to determine how much, if any, of that you should count towards your 'range'.

One way to look at the "distance" for endurance when it makes no sense is just solve for time in the speed equation speed = distance / time (or Time = Distance / Speed) for endurance. Though with variable modes and such it probably requires one to pick one and go with it. A limiting factor is likely going to be the life support endurance (6hrs for CVR-3) more than the PC endurance at least in space.

Based on the numbers provided the VR-024 Comet would have 8hrs in Cycle and 13.33hrs in Armor mode (assuming 4000mile range) in space. Unless the CVR suit has greater endurance than CVR-3 (per TSC mainbook, manga) and/or the Cyclone model(s) can supplement it, the pilot runs out of air in 6hrs. In an atmosphere 15.4 and 50hrs respectively. I'd probably limit it to one figure since mode change doesn't seem to influence endurance elsewhere.

Though as Tiree suggested you can just unify the system to standard format.