Roy Focker

I can't wait to play with myself.

New moderators are made based on need. The Admins and Mods make suggestions. If nobody objects that member is asked if they would like to be one. Responsibilities is basically visiting the message boards and keeping an eye on things. Steer things back on course if they go too far off topic. Try to defuse situations. The place is very mellow compared to the old days. As far as online fandom goes it is pretty calm.

I used Nagoya and shipping was about 4000 yen. The Valk was price was below my budget so I was okay with shipping.

DHL is fast! I placed an order with Mandarake. Was worried about shipping cost but figured I got a enough good price on my order that expensive shipping wouldn't hurt too much. DHL picked it up and delivered it here in the USA in less than 24 hours.

Besides Macross... There's that photography thing I've been doing. Which I can't really do right now while socially distancing. Waiting for things to improve or come up with some good work arounds. There's those other Toy lines that I collect. Waiting for Hasbro Pulse to send out my preorders. There's all those old RPG books I collect. There's messing around with my PS4. RD2 Online anyone? Does watching YouTube count?

$70 shipping charge? Screw that. You paid in advance. You did your part. They need to cover the difference themselves. Still haven't heard a word about mine from them yet.

Nothing but they are currently closed for the holiday.

There's 2 ways to do a sequel to this movie. 1. Show how the world has change with Sly living in it for past 30 years. Could be very interesting but the Sly being the fish out of water is what made the first movie fun. 2. After 30 years of living Sly is refrozen again for some reason and defrosted in even crazier future. Then the movie just becomes a Boomer complaining about the good days.

From Mandarake's site updated today. United States of America DHL: Available EMS: X SAL: X AIR: X

I've got Strike/Super Packs on preorder. Not sure when I'll ever get them. I really like to order some things from Japan but nothing seems the reliable right now. Going to just have to wait for things to stabilize.

I read that too last night. The cheapest option is gone and we're left with the most expensive ones that may add an extra surcharge. Unless my order is worth a few hundred dollars I doubt I'll be paying to ship anything.

Guess my DX Hikaru VF-1S will be naked without his Fastpacks for even longer now. For the last 2 days I've been browsing websites thinking about stuff to order from Japan.

Maybe instead of 10 hour long episodes they should have made this a 3 hour Picard TV movie.

Episode 9 reminded me of those 1st season episodes from the Next Generation. Where they go to some lame backwards planet where all the people wear a goofy uniform like baggy silk underwear and a vest made out of banana leaves. From the production design this episode is spot on but it doesn't match the rest of the series. Was it one of the lost scripts recycled? Same goes for the Riker family episode. The show's not great and these episodes kills whatever forward movement it had. Nobody knows what they are doing.

The 2 characters who fought each other last night should have bled to death. Both of them collapsed, unable to move for 12+ hours and bled the entire time. They were rescued but their saviors didn't seem to even have a first aid kit to treat them with. Watching an unconscious person isn't going help them if they've got no blood nor will it stop those cut wounds from getting infected.

We've had our share of interesting types of members here. Some are harmful and some are harmless. Both may find themselves unwelcome if try hard enough.

I think Rich Evans was right. Why does this show have to be so bad? Let's put one of our greatest living actors back in one his most iconic roles and toss him in this generic edgy sci-fi show. This most recent episode seemed like it was trying too hard to be an episode of Firefly but without the charm.

Does it come with a tiny little me figure well dressed up like a Zombie?

A Destroid looks like a Tank and treating it as being much stronger than a VF is a logically conclusion. I'd still argue that even without using post series books any publisher can still re-watch the episodes and take notes. Maybe I'm one of the few people who obsesses over the tiny details of the animation. Like the fact that Azonia is seen piloting Mecha in a couple of episodes but this game doesn't give her the Piloting Skill. Everyone's being equally hard to hit is because Savage Worlds itself wasn't created with vehicle combat in mind. I don't blame the writers of the Robotech game for that but they could have also created their own new rules to change that for playing their game. I know I'm sounding overly critical but I do enjoy what they made. I just wish they spent more time writing it.

PS: Something I didn't look at was how it handles transforming Mecha. In the series there's always some practical reason for using one mode of transform over the other. With games there's isn't always clear advantages or disadvantages for using one mode or another. I copied and text the post from Word. I view the forum on white background. I changed the font color.

Warning This a Long Post Had a chance to looks over the stats for the Savage World's version of this game. SMG seems to be a co-publisher. With this post I'm looking how it can do animate accurate mecha combat. In order to play the game you need a copy of the rule book. I'm using the 2nd edition rules. Later edition might correct a few things that I'm unaware of. I'm no expert on this system but I'm well experienced with RPG in general.. I'll begin first with some game terms, AP (Armor Piercing): The number of Armor Points that a weapon ignores. Toughness: The target number a weapon needs to make in order to damage a vehicle. Any Armor points are included in the Toughness and indicated in parentheses. Damage: The dice are rolled as listed. All dice rolls (including damage) are open-ended. If you roll the highest number on a die you can keep rolling and adding it as you keep rolling the highest number. A more accurate attack can give damage bonus too. For the sake of these examples we’ll assume that all combatants rolled normal dice values without any extra bonuses for good rolling. I’ll be comparing Toughness values against Damage for the VF-1, Regult & Tomahawk. VF-1 Toughness: 18 (Armor 4) GU-11 Damage: 3D8 (AP 6) Regult Toughness: 18 (Armor Particle Cannons: 3D10+2 (AP 10) Tomahawk Toughness: 43 (Armor 25) Beam Guns (arms): 4D8 (AP 10) GU-11 vs Regult Scoring multiple hits from burst fire is possible. For these examples we’ll assume only one rounds hits. With an AP value of 6 the GU-11 ignores 6 out of the Regult’s 8 Armor points. We roll 3D8 against the adjusted Toughness value of 12. Dice range for this roll is 3 to 24. Scoring a hit against the Regult’s Toughness that can cause damage is possible. Regult’s Beam Cannons vs VF-1 With an AP value of 10 the Beam Cannon ignores 10 out of the VF-1’s 4 Armor points. We roll 3D10+2 against the adjusted Toughness value of 14. Dice range for this roll is 5 to 32. Scoring a hit against the VF-1’s Toughness that can cause damage is possible. As you can see a VF-1 & Regult can trade shoots that sometimes cause damage and sometimes not. Things fall apart with the Tomahawk. Regult’s Beam Cannon vs Tomahawk With an AP value of 10 the Beam Cannon ignores 10 out of the Tomahawk’s 25 Armor points. We roll 3D10+2 against the adjusted Toughness value of 33. Dice range for this roll is 5 to 32. Scoring a hit against the Tomahawk’s Toughness that can cause damage is nearly impossible. The Regult would have to have rolled a “10” on at least one of those 1D10 in order to get bonus dice for a chance at damage the Tomahawk. Every 4 points you roll against the Toughness Value will cause a wound. If a Vehicle suffers 4 wounds total is it considered wrecked. It is possible to destroy a Vehicle from a single wound by rolling for that result on a damage location table. With Human vs Human non-vehicle combat a single wound can put any cannon fodder character out of the fight. My version of the rule book (2nd edition) doesn’t say if this applies to vehicles or not. Looking back at the GU-11 vs Regult. As you can see with a damage value range of 3 to 24 the GU-11 can not only damage a Regult it can cause multiple wounds have a single shot. A Regult is going a have a very hard time scoring any damage against the Tomahawk. There are Destroids with weaker and stronger Toughness numbers. The belief that Destroids should be very hard to hurt is a mistaken belief that has been around since Palladium Books Robotech RPG was first released. We compare Destroids to a Tanks and treated them the same way - a heavily armored power house. If you watch the animation a Destroid's ability to absorb an attack from a Regult is about the same as VF-1’s ability. High Damage capacity numbers vs low weapon damage numbers was a big problem with Palladium’s Robotech. It took forever destroy Mecha without using a bunch of missiles. Many RPG’s systems will favor Player Character survivability over how the setting’s universe should function. I’ll agree that no Player wants their Character to die from the first hit to the head they take. The problem is that many Games cater to the demands of Players who want to play as any type of Character. For these Players many Games have try to make everything balanced. Players aren’t at a disadvantage for picking a weaker Character type. In my opinion when Games do this they should use some sort of a Player Character special rule for increase survivability. Every Mecha has poor survivability rating against a direct hit but Playing Characters and Main Villains are so lucky that enemies can only score indirect hits against them. The Savage Worlds system does see a difference between heroes and Extras. But with such high Toughness ratings for some Destroids it doesn’t matter if a PC or NPC is piloting. Neither is going to be threaten by an attacking Regult. If I were a Player, I’d always pick the most armored Destroid. I think you’d have house rule and lower the Toughness values for some Mecha. Agile Mecha and Dodging Savage World is quick and easy system. I think it was designed for pulp action not vehicle combat. If you were in a boxing match, you’d roll your Fighting skill dice vs your opponent’s Parry value. The Parry is their fighting skill divided in half + 2. With Ranged combat it is your Shooting skill dice vs the range to your target. A character maybe a little harder to hit if they have the Dodge Edge but, in most cases, hitting Max Sterling with a throwing knife is easy as hitting Ben Dixon at the same distance. Applying this system to Mecha combat and you’ll see that it is as easy to hit a VF-1 as it is to hit a Tomahawk at the same distance. There doesn’t seem to be a vehicle dodge Edge. Mecha does have a stat called Handling Value that provides a bonuses or penalty for piloting rolls. I think you might to house rule that you include a Mech’s Handing for ranged attacks against it. That way a VF-1 is harder to hit than a Destroid with lower Handing. Besides Range the relative Speed of a target can make it harder to hit. They’ve got Speed Stats measured in MPH. You’ve got to figure what it would be per 6 second combat Round. You could run a game using miniatures on your kitchen table as long all Mecha units are walking. Flying Mecha is difficult to use with walking Mecha. Their movement per round flies them right off your kitchen table and into your living room. This has been a problem for all Game Systems unless it is a game that uses abstract Movement rates over accurate ones. Not only do you have to figure Movement rates per Round you have to force all combatant to use the same method of movement or House Rule abstract movement rates or stop the game as you try to recompute things. Now a stupid mistake according to the Savage World stats by Battlefield Press and SMG the VF-1 can’t fly in robot mode. This same mistake was in the original VF-1 stats by Palladium Games. The last version of the VF-1 by Palladium I think did fix this mistake. If they watched episode 35, they would have seen the VF-1 flying in robot mode. I apologise once again for this long post. I enjoy thinking about game mechanics way too much. Overall, I think these publishers did a good job applying the Robotech setting to both Game systems. I do wish they proofread things more and re-watched the series to take notes. Finding the best system for Mecha games isn’t easy. A highly accurate system would be so slow it would be impossible to play. All systems have to compromise somethings. Is it too hard ask them all to compute movement rates per Round for you? Give you both accurate movement rates and abstract movement rates? Plus play test to make sure Mecha can get damaged by weapons that should be able to damage them? I would run a mecha based game with this over Palladium any day but I'm still going to have to house rule a few things.

I recently pick up the Savage Worlds version of this game. I also watched a long review of this SMG on YouTube and looked over some preview files. I think the Savage Worlds and the SMG seem to have a lot of overlap. Both use of the same art work and I think even text. A SMG logo is on the back cover of the Savage World's version. Now let me start with my first complaint. Did they even review the source material? I've been finding fandom facts over actual facts. For example the PDF preview of SMG says Miriya was the one who shot Roy. Watch the episode. By the time Roy it shot she has already been engaged with Max. The Savage World's even has to over explain that humans have funky hair styles and colors because of technology found on the crashed SDF-1. What wrong saying funky hair is just a trait of anime? It doesn't need to be explained. The authors of these games seemed to have been heavily influenced by the previous game, novels and long term internet fan beliefs. Way back in the 1980's and 1990 our access to re-watch Robotech when ever we wanted was somewhat limited. Opinions were formed based on secondary source material. Even now decades later when you can watch any episode of Robotech online these opinions still popup. SMG system is different and looks complex for no reason. Mecha fans tend to be tech heads. They like numbers and stats. When I think systems of mecha gaming I don't really think about a narrative one. I'm the type who likes to flip right the character and vehicle writes up any game I pickup. With SMG there's no instant understanding of what all these stats mean. Rick Hunter has skills like Flash Move, Rally Cry and talents like Lion's Roar. There's no way understand any of it without reading more. Take a first look at character write up with a traditional game and you read things like use Microwave Oven 10 and Animal Balloons 11. You might not understand how to play the game but by just looking at the stats you'll know this character ability to make Animal Balloons is slightly better than their ability to use the microwave. I've also got problems with any system that makes you rolls dice in which you don't just add the numbers up. If I place 2 players who have zero knowledge of any RPG, give them both 2D6 and roll them in a contest against each other both players will assume the highest roll wins. Neither will think to ask things like do my double 2s count more than his 2 & 3? The Savage World version is a more traditional game. I only read it once and haven't test it or really compared the stats among the various mecha. I have an earlier version of the core worlds. I've liked what I've seen with that system. It is very simple to learn. Roll a dice (ranging from 1D4 to 1D12) if you roll 4 or higher you succeed. The only system gimmick is that you use a deck of standard playing cards to see who goes first. After collecting scores of books I keep finding myself liking simple systems with few gimmicks as the older I get. I do like the art they both use.

This 3rd episode was a stinker. Picard's ragtag crew seems too much like a RPG player character party with everyone trying make the coolest character. "My character is rough around the edges, hot shot (blank), former Star Fleet officer with dark past." "Wow mine is too!" And the Rafi character. Her past with Picard seemed forced and rushed. We get one flash back and then see how she hit rock bottom years later. The audience has no real invested interest in this character from Picard's past. Now imagine if this character was replaced by any former character from STNG, DS9 or Voyager. Even if this character never Picard on screen before we the audience knows them. It is hard to care about the rift between her and Picard when we don't know her. I have hard time understanding the Romulans and the Borg cube. Is this a secret operation? Seems somewhat out in the open. What's with that whole Romulan hit team that was sent after Picard? We all go in and get killed with no real plan. Why does Picard have so many hidden phasers around the house? Unlike the last hit team this time he's got a house full of dead Romulan assassins as evidence. Call that News lady from episode one to come over. Picard can get everyone to stop what they are doing and start a major investigation. The teaser for episode 4 looks dreadful. Is the entire episode going to be about them recruiting a black haired Legolas Picard might be my favorite Captain but this series seems idiotic. Every script decision seems based on what would make things exciting and not if it makes that much sense.

And up on YouTube.

I still haven't transformed my Yellow on fears of something happening.