SDF-1

Robotech Storyline

Origins

Elsewhere in our galaxy, a Tirolean scientist named Zor discovered the protoculture matrix from a plant called the Flower of Life.  The matrix was a powerful organic energy source, leading to the discovery of advanced space travel, and leaps in biological and mechanical engineering.  Entire new races were created, like the fifty foot tall soldier race known as Zentraedi.  The rulers of the Tiroleans, the Invid, utilized this power, but were unable to divine most of its purposes, like Zor had.  The Invid Regis attempted to seduce the secrets from him, but the Regent grew impatient.  The Invid launched an attack on Tirol, wiping out most life there and killing Zor, but not before he managed to launch his warship, containing the secrets of the protoculture matrix, into space. 
 
The surviving refugees of Tirol reformed, becoming known as the Robotech Masters.  Having harnessed the power of protoculture for bioengineering, among other things, they made many clones of Zor in an attempt to use inherited memory to find the ship.  They and the Invid Regis both began a desperate search for the ship Zor had sent away, their way of life now utterly dependent on protoculture.  The Regent, livid with the Regis' adultery and her obsession with evolution through protoculture, split with her, which also split the Invid.  The Regent went back to his conquering with the forces under his command, and the Regis began combing the galaxy with hers.  Both wished to destroy the Robotech Masters for Zor's betrayal.
 
In the year 1999, a massive, alien ship crash landed on Earth.  Scientists explored it and discovered it was filled with incredible technology, and must have been crewed by aliens many, many times larger than a standard human.  Upon further investigation, they realized that it was a warship, and it dawned on humanity that not only were they not alone in the universe, but there were aliens capable of destroying them.   The call for a unified world government to stand against possible alien threat ended the current global conflict, and individual national sovereignty ceased to exist.  All nations fell under the United Earth Defense Council.  The decision was made to rebuild and relaunch the ship, to seek out aliens and hopefully, make them allies.  The military assigned to the ship became known as the RDF, Robotech Defense Force.
 
The mammoth undertaking led to a decent sized city springing up around the ship, and it was named   Macross City.  Military personnel, civilian scientists, engineers, all were called upon to assist.  Despite the most brilliant minds on the planet working round the clock, much of the technology was little understood.  The noted Dr. Emil Lang soon became the foremost authority on the ship. Dr. Lang realized that there was an organic energy source the ship actually created, which he discovered was named protoculture.  The powers of protoculture were astounding, the least of which was the ability to initiate a space fold.  Folding space is bending space-time in order to travel from one place to another.  One well known example is to take a sheet of paper, draw a dot at the top and a dot at the bottom, then fold the paper so the dots touch.  That is an extremely simplified version of folding space.  The prolonged effect of exposure to the protoculture ended up physically changing Dr. Lang, giving him black eyes with white pupils.  No other ill effects were immediately felt.  However, it did prompt him to demand any personnel working in the ship's engineering areas wear environmental body suits.   No other exposure cases were reported.
 
The energy harnessed from the ship led to scientific breakthroughs never before dreamed of, including veritech fighters.  Dr. Lang realized that the ship was capable of multiple configurations, changing in order to better utilize different capabilities.  That discovery was directly responsible for the veritechs, fighters with three different battle modes, changing configuration much like the ship itself could.
 
Little did humanity know that Zor had booby-trapped the ship before launching it.  The day before its official launch, sensors on the SDF autonomously picked up Robotechnology, and immediately fired its main gun, the Reflex Cannon, the enormous interplanetary weapon designed to destroy anything and everything in its path in a beam kilometers wide.  The cataclysmic energies ripped through the island itself before redirecting into space, where it managed to destroy one of the Zentraedi dreadnoughts entirely.  This, understandably, led to immediate panic.  Quickly, the ship's crew ascertained the reason for the ship firing and requested permission to launch ahead of schedule, in order to draw the aliens away from Earth.  
 
It was the initial shot of the First Robotech War. 
 
The First Robotech War
Permission was granted, and after much trial and error the ship managed to lift off the ground using human created anti-gravitational devices.  The devices did not work exactly as intended.  They did lift off, but the ship had not been sufficiently reinforced, and the devices ripped straight through the hull, sending the SDF crashing back to earth.  The military, the Robotech Defense Force, scrambled to defend both the ship and  Macross City, but Captain Henry Gloval knew, judging from the technology of the attacking aliens, it was a losing proposition.  The maneuvering capabilities of the ship were crippled, barely getting them back off the ground.  In desperation, he ordered the use of the completely untested space fold system. 
 
It worked and it didn't.  The ship folded space, creating a barrier around it much, much larger than expected that actually managed to encapsulate ocean, atmosphere, even light.  It also, unfortunately, cut through the island below them, transporting a rather large chunk of  Macross City with the ship.  The water immediately froze around it, preserving air and shielding the shocked occupants of the city from the ravages of open space.  The other problem was the small planetary body next to them was not the moon, their intended target, but Pluto.  They had folded across the entire solar system.  To further complicate things, the folding mechanism had vanished.  They were effectively stranded, left only with human technology to power the ship's engines.  It would be a long, slow journey back to Earth.
 
Eventually, the ship's crew managed to integrate not only the residents, but the actual buildings of their personal chunk of  Macross City, and they rebuilt inside the cavernous ship.  Two naval ships were actually bonded to the ship itself, merging their defenses and armaments into the SDF's.   They were the   CVS-101 Prometheus and the SLV-111 Daedalus sea carriers.
 
Inevitably they were discovered by the Zentraedi, sent by the Robotech Masters to recover the ship and the precious protoculture matrix it contained.  The journey back to Earth became a protracted siege.  During one battle, Captain Gloval ordered the Reflex Cannon to be used, but due to the space fold mechanism disappearing it was impossible to attempt in the ship's current configuration.  He ordered the reconfiguration.  Despite the incredible upheavals of the interior, and the unexpected and violent rearranging of the new city within its hull, the SDF transformed into a giant robot-like structure, the two naval ships now its arms, and it fired its main gun.  The battle was over quickly.
 
The main gun, however, was not always reliable due to the lack of understanding regarding the alien technology.  In one particular battle, when all seemed lost, Commander Lisa Hayes came up with a brilliant tactic when the main gun failed due to interference from a human defense system called the Pinpoint Barrier.  She sent most of their land based fighters, called Destroids,  to the front hold of one of the former naval ships, the Daedelus, and rammed it into the commanding Zentraedi dreadnought.  The bow doors opened and the Destroids released their entire armament of missiles.  The cargo doors shut, and the arm of the SDF was withdrawn in time for the entire dreadnought's destruction.  This became known as the Daedelus Maneuver, and was successfully used many times over the course of the journey back to Earth.  
  
Eventually, they did finally make it back, only to have a cold welcome. It had been determined that the aliens were after the SDF-1, and the SDF-1 only, and had no interest in Earth itself.  The ship was ordered to immediately leave Earth.  Henry Gloval agreed, upon the condition he was able to relocate the civilians of  Macross City on board.  After much trouble, the North American Ontario Quadrant rebelled against the standing order and offered to take the refugees. Before the civilians could be relocated, the Zentraedi attacked in force.  A new system, the Omnidirectional Barrier Defense System was used for the first time on the SDF.  A massive overload and energy backlash occurred, resulting in the annihilation of a 25 mile radius of the North American Ontario Quadrant.  The offer to take in the refugees was immediately rescinded, and Henry Gloval had no choice but to leave Earth with the civilians on board.
 
In the final battle, the Zentraedi used a global weapon called the Rain of Death, which succeeded in exterminating most of humanity.  The humans, however, were not ready to go down without a fight, and not only did they have the SDF-1, but a new super-weapon called the Grand Cannon, capable of even greater destruction than the SDF's Reflex Cannon.  Additionally, they had the  SDF-2 Megalord, the first human prototype based off of the SDF-1, construction mostly completed on the moon during the SDF-1's absence.  With those three weapons, and the help of the Zentraedi defectors, they managed to defeat Supreme Commander Dolza.      
 
After the battle, both SDFs settled to Earth, and New Macross City was built around it, becoming the new Global Headquarters.  Humanity and Zentraedi alike began reconstruction.    Not all enemies had been defeated.  The insane commander Khyron, driven beyond reason by not only the resounding defeat of the Supreme Commander, but by the betrayal of Breetai, launched a suicide attack against New Macross City.  The crew of the SDF-1 immediately responded and managed to defeat what seemed like an attack assured of destroying the entirety of the city, and the fragile beginnings of the Earth beginning to mend itself.  However, the SDF-1 and the SDF-2 Megalord were both devastated, and all hands on board the SDF-1, including Captain Henry Gloval and all his bridge crew minus Lisa Hayes, were lost.   
 
Second Robotech War
During the Second Robotech War, the clone known as Zor Prime, sent to Earth by the Robotech Masters as a spy, discovered the ruins and was exposed to the Flower of Life.  This led to the recovery of the original Zor's memories, and he realized that the Robotech Masters had become just as bad as the enslaving Invid they were fleeing from.  He helped the Earth defeat the Robotech Masters, but lost his life in the process.  The remains of the Robotech Masters detected the approach of the Invid Regis.  That, coupled with their shattering defeat at the hands of Zor Prime, led to their fleeing the system. 
 
Third Robotech War
The Flower of Life essence the Space Fold Systems of the SDF-1 (in the process of being moved to the SDF-2 Megalord) contained managed to germinate on Earth, where humans had created their own reflex furnaces for protoculture production, even though they had no idea the Flower of Life was the origin of their main energy source.  Still recovering from the Second Robotech War, Earth was unprepared for the brutal savagery of the Invid, and the Earth was completely overrun.  Eventually, the Regis managed to discover her people's ultimate evolution through protoculture, and she and her children left the planet. 
  
Other SDFs 
The  SDF-2   Megalord construction was begun shortly on the moon after engineering data on the SDF-1 began to emerge from the research teams.  After the disappearance of the SDF-1, construction continued apace.  The Rain of Death attack stalled construction, but did not halt it, and by the time Khyron launched his suicide attack, the  SDF-2   Megalord was battle ready, although it didn't last long.  It was destroyed alongside the SDF-1.
 
The SDF-3 Pioneer became the main flagship of Rick Hunter and the Robotech Expeditionary Force when they left Earth to investigate the possibility of peaceful interaction with the Robotech Masters or other sentient alien life.
 
Details  

• The ship is 1,210 meters in length.    
• It has a life support system capable of sustaining just over 70,000 people for up to 20 years.  
• Human crew compliment:  800 
• Human civilian compliment:  70,000

 
Main Weapon:  Reflex Cannon or Main Gun
The two forward booms on the ship act as energy collectors, building and focusing a gradual build up until discharge.  According to multiple Robotech RPG  statistics, the beam can travel around 200,000 km and is around 3 km wide.  Successfully used in original configuration only once.  After the disappearance of the Space Fold System, the ship was forced to change configuration in order to successfully use the Main Gun.  
There is no scale of destruction.  The beam utterly destroys everything in its path. 
Recharge: 5 minutes   
 
Secondary Weapons: 
Variety of rail guns, lasers, and missile launch systems. 
 
Main Defense:   Pinpoint Barrier Defense System 
By creating and maintaining up to three discs of coherent energy, three operators are able to use a trackball type of directional system to move the discs over the entire area of the ship.  The discs are able to absorb and deflect most standard attacks from fighters, and when stacked, can defend against major damage from battle cruisers. 
 
Other Defense:  Omnidirectional Barrier Defense System 
This system creates an impermeable barrier around the entirety of the ship, nothing can pass out or in.  It was intended to have the same absorption/deflection capability as the Pinpoint Barrier Defense System, but around the whole of the ship.  However, it had a massive overload on its first use, destroying a 25 mile radius of the North American Ontario Quadrant.  It was never utilized again on the SDF-1, nor put on any other RDF ship.  
 
Hull Defense:  Destroids 
A mecha called the Destroid, a land-based, non-transformable mecha, generally walked the hull during battles.  Using a variety of cannon and mini-missile systems, they defended the ship from enemy fighter attacks.  The majority of the Destroid compliment on board the SDF-1 came from the Prometheus and the Daedalus sea carriers. 
 

Macross City   

Macross City, rebuilt inside the SDF-1, was almost completely maintained by its civilian inhabitants.  Basic services were soon established.  The crew began frequenting the slice of home, and basic services became more complex.  Restaurants, bars, nightclubs, even game arcades were opened.  The military provided police, medical, and maintenance services, the civilians provided recreation, food, and a sense of normalcy to the stranded ship.  They even managed to create a Hollywood style movie studio and produce films.