by Pieter Thomassen, with Peter Walker
edited by Tim Wing
Attachments:
- Fulbtzs Berrentzs reference file
- Fulbtzs Berrentzs gallery
Designation: Zentraedi Fulbtzs Berrentzs Home Base
Names and Disposition:
- Fulbtzs Berrentzs Mobile command center and supply depot, destroyed 2011 in Earth orbit
Ship’s Complement:
- Circa 200,000 to 1,000,000 Zentraedi of all types and ages, and circa 500,000 Zentraedi mecha of all types (mainly for training purposes).
Dimensions:
- Length: 510 km
- Width: 510 km
- Height: 890 km
- Mass: 1,200 trillion metric ton
Propulsion Systems:
- Main Power: Reflex Furnaces, protoculture (exclusive)
- Space Fold: A hyperspace system that catapults the base through space-time. The spacefold system is used for travelling from one system to another quickly. Range: Unknown, presumably limitless. However, extreme long-distance jumps are always made in a series of smaller jumps. Although the fold is conformal to the bases’ surface, many thousands of Zentraedi combat starships can be carried inside the central cave.
- Planetary capabilities: None whatsoever.
Endurance and mobility limits:
Range: Effectively limitless through fold drive systems. Protoculture reactors will function for 200 years after a refueling. At the moment of the bases’ destruction, there was about 40 years of protoculture left in the Reflex furnaces.
Weapon Systems:
Defensive fleet: A Zentraedi defense fleet was permanently assigned to the Homebase. This fleet included over 300 Monitors, 3000 Cruisers, 600 Strike Cruisers and 8 Flagships. In addition, several thousands of other Zentraedi ships were usually near the Homebase for pre- and post-deployment supply and maintenance. The Homebase was also the homeport for the Adoclas Fleet, which numbered over a million ships of all types; although large detachments, if not all of this fleet, were often away on assignment and not near the Homebase.
Touwhaug Rasar 481 (approximately 3000): A missile launcher mounted in a pop-up turret, firing anti-mecha/missile missiles, though the projectiles can guide on point-blank enemy ships. When the missiles are released they are already on their intercept vectors, or very close to them. Each turret has a reload time of 3,6 seconds and a magazine with a 100 round capacity. They are mounted for spherical coverage.
The missile system used is the SAA-1 Granite (Gliquoun Touwhaug), a weapon with a conventional blast fragmentation warhead of 278 kg and an atmospheric range of 112 km. at a speed of Mach 7.5. every minute.
Special Equipment of Note:
- Hyperspace communications
- Long-range laser and satellite relay communications
- Long-range radar
- Cloning chambers
- Nous-gran’diel conversion chambers
- Radar and communication dampeners
- Electronic warfare devices.
A tall extension of the base housed a hyperspace sensor, akin to those used by the Motherships of the Tirolians. Apart from being a part of the Tirolian scanning network, this sensor also made it extremely difficult for the Homebase to be surprised by a combat fold-in.
Major areas are devoted to the storage of military supplies, and to the cloning, training and housing of large numbers of new Zentraedi.
Homebase also provided a ‘shirtsleeves’ environment for battle repairs, and the central stalk housed the entire Zentraedi High Command.
Mecha/Air Group Complement:
Thousands of shuttles and tugs to service the central cave and any moored vessels there. Thousands of the latter could be comfortably provided for in a pressurized gravityless environs in the central cave; the absence of meteorites and radiation made this artificial port a suitable place for Zentraedi battle repairs.
About a dozen Tou Redir Sloops modified with a non-conformal fold drive system; these act as translight tugs for the few Zentraedi ships that were damaged so extensively that their fold systems were non-operational but which were still considered salvageable. As the Homebase could not repair these vessels, the tugs were used to fold the ships to the Factory Satellite.
Design Notes:
The Fulbtzs Berrentzs Homebase was a vaguely cylindrical asteroid, with a large protrusions on each end. Consisting of heavy metal ores, the original asteroid was earmarked to be mined by the Tirolians for these metals. However, re-assignment of the asteroid as the future Zentraedi base somewhat changed the standard (outside-in) mining procedure. Rather than starting at the surface, a tunnel was bored through the richest surface vein until about 12km inside the asteroid. From that point on, the innermost half of the diameter was removed throughout the asteroid, save for the core surrounding the longest axis, which was left as a foundation for the heavy equipment that would be mounted. Once hollowed out, the inside of the Homebase was filled with air and even some moisture, precipitating clouds inside. Artificial solar illuminators and heaters were then installed, giving the interior almost Earth-like light and temperature. Excess heat was removed by gigantic thermo-voltaic surfaces, and then shunted to the monopolar heat sink in the fold drive. In the center parts of the central stalk a number of the largest protoculture reactors ever made were housed, to provide power to the environmental and propulsion systems. The entrance tunnel was widened and given heavily reinforced doors, and would serve hereafter as the main lock for the base, capable of allowing a Zentraedi Flagship entrance to the central space. A small number of emergency exits were also built, their precise location a closely guarded secret, and their final kilometers of terminal approaches left undisturbed. Should it ever have become impossible to use the main locks, any ships inside could escape by blowing up the intervening walls and egressing through these exits. However, this would have depressurized the entire base and let to a Massive loss of Zentraedi resources. Consequently, no ships ever exited from these emergency corridors, though one ship once entered the base through one, just before its end. Also included in the main stalk were the offices and quarters of the Zentraedi High Command. As a resupply point, and as a main Zentraedi cloning station, the Homebase sported large storage warehouses near both ends of the central stalk, and extensive cloning and training facilities for all four of the Mass-production Zentraedi types in the interior walls. These 
training facilities included large training spaces and an extensive area devoted to advanced flight training, although the Zentraedi mecha used inside the base were all equipped with fusion turbines (not unlike the Terran engines of choice) as these would put far less of a strain on the ecology inside the base. They did require more maintenance, but the Zentraedi schooling system combined these needs with its needs for exercise maintenance mecha, and both fared well with the situation. There were a number of starship docks available inside the Homebase, however, the Zentraedi never used the Homebase as a major repair station, instead fixing ships up so that they could make a fold to the Factory Satellite or another repair site. Neither were there any major production facilities inside the Homebase (save for new Zentraedi clones); most of its supplies came by a continuous stream of Landing Ships from the various industrial centers of the Mercantile Empire.
History:
The Zentraedi armies were, for the first part of their existence, supplied from the various industrial centers of Tirol’s empire. However, as the Zentraedi armies grew in the wake of the Ci’Vonian disaster beyond any level ever imagined, and after several industrial sites were laid waste by the Disciples of Zor (or the ever vengeful Invid), plans were made to centralize several key parts of the Zentraedi supply lines into a few gigantic and ‘unbeatable’ positions. Of these central parts, the Factory Satellite was commissioned and indeed took over production of the less common Zentraedi ships such as the Monitor, Strike Cruiser and Flagship production, as well as one half of the clone production and much of the expendables manufacturing. The only other project to be finished was the Homebase, a supply depot and clone manufacturing center (in later days, one third of the Zentraedi were cloned here) and also the operations base for the Zentraedi High Command. The Homebase was completed somewhere in the late 19th century.
It was decided that the defense of the new Homebase would not be based on heavily arming the Homebase itself, contrary of what one would expect of the Zentraedi main base. As the Homebase had no maneuverability to speak of, and had far too much strategic value to be risked in combat, any large weapons on the Homebase would remain unused in the best case, and invite the Base commander to enter combat in the worst case. Instead, the Homebase was provided with an organic defense fleet. Should the Homebase ever come under attack from the Disciples of Zor, this fleet would destroy the attacker before the Homebase could fold or, if the attacker was too strong for that, buy enough time for the Homebase to fold to safety. The DoZ had insufficient Reflex Cannons to destroy the Homebase by bombardment, and any smaller weapons such as the heavy and secondary laser cannons or even the nuclear-tipped anti-ship torpedoes had no chance at breaking through the Homebases’s kilometers-thick armor and get to the vitals inside before the Homebase folded out. The only vulnerable spot in the original design were the doors of the main shipping lock. If a concentrated nuclear missile bombardment were to impact on the locks, the torpedoes would soon be passing through the remains of the doors and into the base itself. For this contingency, the doors were made of a 100 meter thick depleted uranium and vanadium mix. Additionally, the doors were doubled, so that there were four such doors at the entrance and four more at the terminus. As a ranged defense against mecha and torpedoes closing on the locks, a large number of anti-mecha and anti-torpedo missile launchers were installed on the Homebase, with over a thousand of them around the lock area. With this defense array, the Masters were convinced the Homebase could not be destroyed before it had had a chance to take flight.
As it happened, the defenses of the Homebase were never tested until the Zentraedi Holocaust in Earth orbit. On the orders of Dolza, the Homebase folded to Earth to oversee the destruction of the micronian culture and the Zentraedi it had infected, an infection of Zentraedi on a far larger scale than had been the case with the Disciples of Zor. Dolza was determined that this time, the infection would be contained before Breetai and his micronian allies could escape the system, as the DoZ had done centuries ago. The risk to the Homebase would be mostly evaded because almost all Zentraedi fleets had been gathered in the Grand Fleet, which was to fold into the Terran system first. However, Breetai and the Terrans refused to cooperate with his plans. With its defense fleet (augmented with the Grand Fleet) engaged in a running battle with the Adoclas fleet under Breetai, and many crew members still somewhat disoriented by Minmei infection, the Macross managed to close with the Homebase. In the last minute, rather than advancing on the lock doors for a Reflex Cannon salvo, as Dolza expected and had planned counters for (surviving records indicate there was a Flagship in the locks, ready to fire its own Reflex Cannon as soon as the SDF-1 entered its firing zone), the SDF-1 rammed the hull of the Homebase near one of the emergency exits, of which the existence and position was relayed to them by the defectors. With the pinpoint shielding enabling the SDF-1 to penetrate the walls without crippling damage, the ship burst into the emergency exit, and following that passage, soon entered the central chamber. With no Zentraedi defenses between the ship and the Homebase’s Reflex furnaces, the SDF-1 wasted no time before letting go with an all-out missile salvo. The Homebase exploded mere seconds after the salvo hit, taking most of the vessels specifically assigned to defend the base down with it.
Robotech (R) is the property of Harmony Gold. The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (R) is the property of Big West Advertising and Studio Nue. This document is in no way intended to infringe upon their rights.
Original artwork by: Shoji Kawamori, Miyatake Kazutaka, Haruhiko Mikimoto and Hidetaka Tenjin.
Acknowledgement is extended to the work of Egan Loo and the Macross Compendium. Egan Loo is given all credit for all quotes and paraphrasing of the Macross Compendium that has been utilized on Robotech Illustrated.
Images Courtesy of Chad Wilson (Marchly) and the Macross Mecha Manual. Chad Wilson is given all credit for all images from the Macross Mecha Manual that have been utilized on Robotech Illustrated.
Acknowledgement is also extended to Peter Walker, Pieter Thomassen and Robert Morgenstern of the unofficial Robotech Reference Guide. Peter Walker, Pieter Thomassen and Robert Morgenstern are given credit for all quotes and paraphrasing of the unofficial Robotech Reference Guide that has been utilized on Robotech Illustrated.
Content by Pieter Thomassen and Peter Walker
Copyright © 1997, 1996, 1995 Robert Morgenstern, Peter Walker, Pieter Thomassen