Tirolian technology is the basis for almost all advanced technology used throughout this period of history. They Tirolians provided the Zentraedi with all of their technology, but kept nearly all of the knowledge of how that technology worked a secret from the warrior. This was important to ensure that if the ever decided to rise against their masters, they would not have the ability to repair or replace most of their technology. Even though the Zentraedi possessed incredibly advanced technology by Human standards, the Robotech Masters kept the best technology for themselves to give their clone armies a small edge in any combat against the Zentraedi. Strange as it may seem, even with all of their advanced technology, some of the fundamental technologies developed on Earth, such as electronic warfare is completely absent in the Tirolian military forces. Other technologies, such as missile technology and targeting computers, are not as complex as on Earth, but overall, the Tirolians have access to far better technology then the people of Earth, or the Invid, both of which use technology that they acquired from destroyed Tirolian ships. This document describes the ship systems used by the Tirolians and it uses the information in the Standard Ship Systems document. Technology concerning missiles is covered in the Early Tirolian Missiles document.
From computers to shields to electronic counter measures, combat systems are vital to protect a ship from attacks and to allow a ship to hit a target. The Tirolians have some of the most advanced combat systems available during this period in history in this part of the Milky Way Galaxy. While some of these areas are not as advanced as those used on Earth, other areas, such as shield systems, are far beyond what the people of Earth or the Invid developed.
All Tirolians ships are equipped with some level of armor that protects the ship from damage. The type of armor used by the Tirolians is a special ceramic-steel mix that results in an ultra-hard metallic alloy. This alloy is an M.D.C. structure and is the basis of all ship armor, mecha armor, fighter armor, vehicle armor, and body armor used by the Tirolians and was originally developed by them.
Nearly all Tirolian ships have a special double-layered hull. The first, or outer, layer is a normal hull that is equipped on most ships, but there is a second, inner hull that protects the ship from internal damage. While the inner hull does not need to be depleted for a ship to be destroyed, it does reduce the damage a ship would take from internal damage by one category. For example, Moderate Internal Damage is reduced to Limited Internal Damage and Severe Internal Damage is impossible to inflict. However, for an attack against a ship's Hull Region, the attack can destroy the Hull Region normally, but the inner hull beneath that Hull Region must also be destroyed to inflict internal damage. For more details on the rules concerning internal damage, please see Revised Rules for Internal Ship Damage.
All large Tirolian spaceships are equipped with jamming equipment. While the system is active conventional radar, gravity-wave sensors, and missile guidance systems that rely on those sensors will not be able to function properly in the area affected. The jamming also effects communications systems that rely on radio waves. Affected sensor and communication systems will have their ranges reduced to 25% of normal and sensors have a penalty of -60% to all Read Sensory rolls, including the chance of detecting any targets in the area of the jamming within their reduced range, which also includes the ship carrying the active jamming system. If detected, there is a bonus of +25% to a Read Sensory Equipment skill roll to determine which detected ship is the source of the jamming.
The Hexagonal Force Field is a very advanced design and is far beyond the capabilities of the people of Earth. Using this powerful shield system, a ship can generate a number of force fields that can be placed at any point around the ship to protect it from incoming attacks. Once placed, the fields cannot be moved until the next melee, but they can be taken down and replaced by an inactive shield between each attack against the ship. The fields vary in size, but there are usually enough of them to cover a ship twice over, if they could be layered, and each can absorb up to 1000 M.D.C. before they are temporarily disabled. Each field regenerates at a rate of 50 M.D.C. per minute that they are active and 100 M.D.C. per melee they are inactive.
The Tirolians developed a system of hull design that spread Hull Regions across the surface of a ship, this design was duplicated by both the Invid and the people of Earth. When a ship is attacked, the type and strength of an attack determines whether an attack damages only a single Hull Region or whether it damages the ship's Main Body. For more details on the rules concerning Hull Regions please see Revised Rules for Ship Armor and how it applies to the ship's used by the Tirolian in Early Tirolian Ships.
While the Tirolians possessed advanced technology in many areas, in the area of computers, they lacked many of the advances possessed by the people of Earth. Connecting the ship's sensor systems with the weapon systems is the Targeting Computer System. The system is designed to control all of the weapons currently equipped on the ship. To control additional weapons, the system must be modified by computer technicians, which can be easily accomplished with a successful use of the Computer Programming skill, although a targeting computer can generally only be made to support up to 200% more weapons then the original, unmodified system could. The number of ships that can be targeted simultaneously depends on the size and complexity of the system, but generally this is not a problem because a ship can easily switch between targets, the only problem is that many ships can detect when they are being targeted by a ship using systems that they are familiar with. The targeting computer is able to identify friendly targets by using an IFF (Identify Friend / Foe) system; these systems are also useful for identifying enemy vessels with information stored in the targeting computer. With targeting computers, ships receive bonuses to strike for both its direct fire weapons, such as energy weapons, and for missile systems. The bonuses provided depend on ship class, see Early Tirolian Ships for specific strike bonuses.
The Tirolians use several different types of communications, but fundamentally, most are identical to those used on Earth. The Tirolians use radio waves and lasers to transmit short range messages, but for communications that are sent between star systems, the Tirolians use a special device based on the same principles as the Fold Drive. Due to the small differences between the systems used by the Tirolians and the people of Earth, radio and laser communications cannot be used between those two groups, although the Hyperspace Communications Relay can still be used.
Based on the same technology as the Fold Drive, the Hyperspace Communications Relay allows faster than light communication between two objects. However, Hyperspace Communication is still not instantaneous. Audio/Video communication travels through Hyperspace at a rate of about one light-year every 5 seconds, so messages communicated over vast distances can still take days, weeks, or even months to arrive. Unlike most types of communications, the Hyperspace Communications Relay can communicate through planets and other obstructions unhindered. While extremely difficult to intercept, it is possible and the intercepting unit must be either close to the source or the destination of the communication, however, Hyperspace Communications are impossible to jam and the only way to stop an object from sending this type of communications is to destroy the antennas that are needed for the relay to function properly.
Laser communications are much more efficient then radio waves and can be much harder to detect. Lasers can be set for different widths, and narrower beams are much harder to detect, but they also require the origin of the beam to know precisely where the target will be once the beam gets to its destination. With that restriction, narrow beams are usually only used when the destination is not moving, but the only way to detect or intercept such a beam is to physically get in the way of the laser beam. It is very difficult to block laser communications, but it is possible to do so by releasing chaff in the path that the beam much travel through, although the wider the beam, the larger the area that needs to be covered by chaff. Laser communications can be bounced off of satellites to greatly extend their range.
The Tirolians use Radio communications as a backup for their laser communications. Radio communications are easy to jam and intercept, which makes them less then perfect for military operations, but they can be heavily scrambled and encrypted. Radio communications travel at the speed of light, but they cannot travel through obstacles like planets. Radio waves are also relatively easy to detect with other radio equipment, as long as the communication passes within range of the ship's radio equipment. Radio communications can be bounced off of satellites to greatly extend their range.
This category of ship systems do not fit into any of the other categories and are generally related to life support and command and control facilities. The systems in this category are found on nearly all ships.
The Tirolians only use one source of energy on their ships, the Protoculture Reactor. All Protoculture Reactors operate by forcing the seeds of the Flower of Life to undergo a special process, which causes the seeds to release a huge amount of energy that is harnessed by the reactor and distributed throughout the ship.
The Tirolians have extensive knowledge on how to manipulate gravity, and they developed artificial gravity generates soon after they began venturing out into space. These systems are not sophisticated enough to alter gravity within the ship to different levels, so the entire ship must have the same gravitational conditions.
Life Support is the most critical system on a ship or space station and keeps everyone on the ship alive with the environmental conditions that allow them to function. For Tirolians and Zentraedi, this means that the Life Support system consumes carbon dioxide, produces oxygen, processes bodily waste, and keeps the ship at a comfortable temperature. Life Support systems are generally designed to accommodate at least 10% more then their regular crew and troop complement. In emergency conditions, the maximum number of people that can be supported by a Life Support system can usually be exceeded, but not indefinitely.
With propulsion systems, the people of Earth did their best to use the technology taken from the crashed alien ship, unfortunately, they were less then perfect. The first attempt to use the anti-gravity units on the SDF-1 Macross saw those units rip right through the ship's armor, forcing it to use only its chemical rockets for the rest of its time in service. The people of Earth continued to improve their knowledge of the alien technology, and by the time of the Pioneer Mission's launch in 2022 most problems had been fixed and the technology was better understood. Another area where the people of Earth struggled was with the Fold Drives. Scientists and engineers had poured over the Fold Drive on the SDF-1 for a decade but came no closer to understanding how it worked, even worse, the ship's drive disappeared after its first use at the beginning of the First Robotech War. Even at the time of the Pioneer Mission's launch, the people of Earth had no idea how the Fold Drives really worked and they had to salvage all of their drives from derelict Zentraedi vessels in Earth's orbit.
The Tirolians devised a special propulsion system that combines an anti-gravity unit with a chemical drive. The anti-gravity units are used to lower the effective mass of the ship and the powerful chemical drives propel the ship at great speeds. The overall effect is that a ship has a much higher rate of acceleration then the power of its chemical rockets would otherwise indicate. The downside of this drive is that the chemical rockets do need a source of fuel that must be replenished. The reason the Tirolians settled on this form of propulsion is that they were never fully able to develop a complete anti-gravity propulsion system that did not require a huge amount of internal space.
One of the most significant achievements of the Tirolian people was the development of the Fold Drive, a system that allows a ship to effectively travel at speeds faster then light by folding space around the ship. The Fold Drive allows a ship to effectively travel at a rate of 10 light-years per hour, or 1 light-year every six minutes, but the hyperspace navigational equipment that is part of the system cannot safely execute a fold jump of distances greater then 1 kiloparsec (3260 light-years). If the destination is further away, the ship must execute multiple jumps. A ship executing a fold operation can be tracked by a Hyperspace Mass Sensor, but it is impossible to intercept a ship that is in the middle of a fold operation. The Fold Drives used by the Tirolians can only be activated once per hour.
The Tirolians developed some powerful sensor systems, but they continued to use radar waves just as the people of Earth did. The Tirolians used both active and passive sensors and often deployed "pinging" with their active sensors to prevent the ship from being picked up very easily. Passive sensors do not emit any energy and cannot be detected, but many of them are less accurate then an active sensor.
For each sensor, a table is provided that shows the typical ranges for sensor systems equipped on ships used by the people of Earth. Each table is comprised of a sensor class and the maximum range they can detect tiny, small, medium, or large objects. Class I sensors are equipped on corvettes, class II sensors are equipped on frigate-sized ships, class III sensors are equipped on destroyer-sized ships, class IV sensors are equipped on Cruiser or Battlecruiser-sized ships, class V sensors are equipped on Battleship-sized ships, and class VI sensors are equipped on Dreadnought-sized ships or larger. See Early Tirolian Ships for specific sensor classes on ships used by the Tirolians. A tiny object is any object that is less then 150' (45.7 m) or Less then 1000 tons (907.2 metric tons). A small object is any object that is between 150' (45.7 m) and 1000' (305 m) long or between 1000 tons (907.2 metric tons) and 400,000 tons (362,874 metric tons). A medium object is any object that is between 1000' (305 m) and 5000' (1524 m) long or between 400,000 tons (362,874 metric tons) and 18 million tons (16.3 million metric tons). A large object is any object that is greater then 5000' (1524 m) long or greater then 18 million tons (16.3 million metric tons).
Ships used by the Tirolians are designed with the ability to detect Radar, Laser, Microwave, Radio, and all other electromagnetic frequencies. This can be done at 200% of the range of the transmitter. For example, if a ship is in the path of an active radar transmitter without any major obstacles between the two and the transmitter has a maximum range of 27 million miles (43.5 million km), then this sensor system could detect the transmitter at a range of 54 million miles (86.9 million km). One all signals, the ship attempting to detect the signals must be hit by the signal or it will be unable to detect those signals. This means that a wide beam radar cannot be detected on the other side of a planet from the detecting equipment and tight beam signals, such as laser communications, can only be detected if the ship attempting to detect them is in the middle of the beam. This sensor provides a modifier of +100% to detect targets, +80% to track targets, and no modifier to identify targets.
A very large and powerful sensor system, the Hyperspace Mass Sensor can detect and track ships that are using their Fold Drives. The Hyperspace Mass Sensors have a base chance of 75% to detect an active Fold Drive. The location of a detected space fold is limited to an area with a radius of 1.5 light-years, but once a ship is detected, the sensors will continue to track the ship until it arrives at its destination or leaves the detection range of the sensor. The sensors can narrow down the end point or the origin of a fold jump to an area with a radius of only 0.25 light-years. This sensor provides a modifier of +15% to detect targets, +100% to track targets, and -10% to identify targets.
| Sensor Class | Tiny | Small | Medium | Large |
| Class IV | 4 parsecs (13.04 light-years) | 20 parsecs (65.2 light-years) | 40 parsecs (130.4 light-years) | 60 parsecs (195.6 light-years) |
| Class V | 6 parsecs (19.56 light-years) | 30 parsecs (97.8 light-years) | 60 parsecs (195.6 light-years) | 90 parsecs (293.4 light-years) |
| Class VI | 8 parsecs (26.08 light-years) | 40 parsecs (130.4 light-years) | 80 parsecs (260.8 light-years) | 120 parsecs (391.2 light-years) |
The powerful radar arrays used by the Tirolians use radio waves to send emissions out from the ship where they will bounce off of all targets within range. The bounced waves become signals that the sensor can track with a high degree of precision. Unfortunately, radar systems travel at the speed of light, so at long ranges the information returned to a ship can be out-of-date. Also, like radio communications, the radio waves used by the a radar system can be easily jammed with the right equipment, although it is obvious when a radar array is being jammed. This sensor provides a modifier of +30% to detect targets, +30% to track targets, and +15% to identify targets.
| Sensor Class | Tiny | Small | Medium | Large |
| Class I | 3000 miles (4828 km) | 30,000 miles (48,280 km) | 60,000 miles (96,561 km) | 90,000 miles (144,841 km) |
| Class II | 150,000 miles (241,402 km) | 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) | 3 million miles (4.8 million km) | 4.5 million miles (7.2 million km) |
| Class III | 450,000 miles (724,205 km) | 4.5 million miles (7.2 million km) | 9 million miles (14.5 million km) | 13.5 million miles (21.7 million km) |
| Class IV | 750,000 miles (1,207,008 km) | 7.5 million miles (12.1 million km) | 15 million miles (24.1 million km) | 22.5 million miles (36.2 million km) |
| Class V | 900,000 miles (1,448,410 km) | 9 million miles (14.5 million km) | 18 million miles (29 million km) | 27 million miles (43.5 million km) |
| Class VI | 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) | 15 million miles (24.1 million km) | 25 million miles (40.2 million km) | 40 million miles (64.4 million km) |
The Tirolians developed the Subspace Mass Sensor along with many of their other gravity-based technology soon after beginning the exploration of the stars and the technology has not really improved since then. The Subspace Mass Sensor detects the gravity signatures created by an object and can track the movements of those objects. This sensor uses technology related to the Fold Drive, giving the sensor special properties that most gravity sensors do not possess. The Subspace Mass Sensor is not tricked by the presence of strong gravity sources, such as placing a ship near a planet, but its readings are not very details and ships have a penalty of -25% to identify any detected targets. A major advantage of a gravity-based sensor is that it is instantaneous across huge distances and this sensor can compensate for large gravity sources, such as planets and stars, allowing a ship to "see" past such obstacles, which would blind most gravity sensors. This sensor provides a modifier of +40% to detect targets, +40% to track targets, and no modifier to identify targets, which includes the penalty mentioned above.
| Sensor Class | Tiny | Small | Medium | Large |
| Class I | 50,000 miles (80,467 km) | 500,000 miles (804,672 km) | 1 million miles (1.6 million km) | 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) |
| Class II | 100,000 miles (160,934 km) | 1 million miles (1.6 million km) | 2 million miles (3.2 million km) | 3 million miles (4.8 million km) |
| Class III | 500,000 miles (804,672 km) | 5 million miles (8 million km) | 10 million miles (16.1 million km) | 15 million miles (24.1 million km) |
| Class IV | 1 million miles (1.6 million km) | 10 million miles (16.1 million km) | 20 million miles (32.2 million km) | 30 million miles (48.3 million km) |
| Class V | 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) | 15 million miles (24.1 million km) | 30 million miles (48.3 million km) | 45 million miles (72.4 million km) |
| Class VI | 2 million miles (3.2 million km) | 20 million miles (32.2 million km) | 40 million miles (64.4 million km) | 60 million miles (96.6 million km) |
With the rise of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire and the Robotech Masters, weapon technology took precedence with researchers employed by the empire. Initially building from the technology the Tirolians already possessed, the scientists made great leaps, but after many of the initial discoveries, scientific achievement took a back seat with the Robotech Masters, as they dedicated more and more resources to controlling their empire and preventing rebellions from tearing it apart. In the past several centuries, there had been little achievement in this area until the development of the SDF-1 Macross, which was a testbed for many, newly developed technologies, including powerful weapon systems.
All Heavy Reflex Cannons inflict damage based on the equivalent power in tons of TNT, similar to real nuclear weapons. Each kT (kiloton) of TNT that the weapon inflicts causes 1D4x50 M.D., with a Weapon Rating of 100, and has a base beam diameter of 0.5" (1.27 cm), minimum beam diameter is 10' (3 m). If used against a planetary object, the weapon will leave a crater with a diameter of 1' (30.5 cm) and a depth of 0.1' (1.2" / 3 cm) per kT of TNT that the weapon inflicts, with a minimum diameter of 10' (3 m) and a minimum depth of 1' (30.5 cm). In addition to inflicting the damage listed above to everything within the weapon's beam diameter, the weapon also causes damage to objects near the beam. Objects within two times the beam's width take 10% of the listed damage, objects within five times the beam's width take 1% of the listed damage, objects within ten times the beam's width take 0.1% of the listed damage, and objects within twenty times the beam's width take 0.01% of the listed damage. At all ranges, the beam maintains its weapon rating of 100.
For example, the SDF-1 Macross's Heavy Reflex Cannon is very powerful and each blast is equivalent to 60 Megatons of TNT (60 MT or 60,000 kT), which allows the weapon to inflict 3D4x1,000,000 M.D. (1D4x50x60,000 = 1D4x3,000,000 = 3D4x1,000,000) and has a beam diameter of 2500' (762 m); if the cannon was fired against a planetary target, it would leave a crater with a diameter of 60,000' (11.4 miles / 18.3 km) and a depth of 6000' (1.1 miles / 1.8 km). Also, the SDF-1's Main Cannon would inflict normal damage to everything within its beam diameter of 2500' (762 m), while object between 2500' (762 m) and 5000' (1524 m) of the beam's direct center take 3D4x100,000 M.D., object between 5000' (1524 m) and 12,500' (3810 m) of the beam's direct center take 3D4x10,000 M.D., object between 12,500' (3810 m) and 25,000' (7620 m) of the beam's direct center take 3D4x1000 M.D., and object between 25,000' and 50,000' (15,240 m) of the beam's direct center take 3D4x100 M.D., and at all ranges the beam maintains its Weapon Rating of 100.
Heavy Reflex Cannons have two firing modes, the first is the normal mode listed above and the second is a wide spread mode, which doubles the weapon's beam width but only inflicts 10% of the normal damage. If a beam from a Heavy Reflex Cannon passes into, out of, or through a planetary atmosphere, reduce the damage it inflicts to 25% of its normal damage. Also, if the beam hits an energy shield of any type, it inflicts 1000 times less damage, so a beam that inflicts 1D4x50,000 M.D. would only inflict 1D4x50 against an energy shield.