SDF-4 Liberator Shadow Dimensional Fortress
Designed as the next generation of Super Dimensional Fortress, although whether it should maintain that designation is now in question. The newest in the SDF-series, the SDF-4 was made to lead the Earth Reclamation Force, thus its name. It was the first battle-fortress designed totally around Haydonite technology, including Shadow technology and synchro cannons, and is also the first successful, human-made dimensional fortress completely constructed from the ground up. The SDF-1 was a partial reconstruction of Zor’s personal battle-fortress, and the SDF-3 was built into the frame of a Zentraedi cruiser. The SDF-2 was destroyed before construction could be completed.
   The question of whether it should still be considered a “Shadow” Dimensional Fortress comes from the fact that the Shadow stealth system has been indefinitely deactivated to prevent Haydonite sabotage. It is only by extreme providence that the Liberator was not pitted directly against  the Haydonites before their treachery was revealed.
   The Liberator serves as the Flagship of the remaining United Earth Expeditionary Forces, playing a triple role as a command and control vessel, as well as a supercarrier and mobile space dock. It was supposed to play a role as a battleship as well, but since the betrayal by the Haydonites was revealed, its main armaments and cloaking technology have all been deactivated, significantly degrading its ability to operate as a front-line combat vessel.
   Quietly, this has come as a relief to some in the UEEF command echelon, who always thought it was unwise  to put the flagship, chief supply vessel and mobile fuel depot front and center in combat as the biggest target on the battlefield. Others, particularly adherents to the Hunters’ school of thinking, are pushing to have the refitted as a front-line combat vessel again, arguing that it is a ralling point and morale booster for forces in combat. Plus the Hunters’ supporters say, you don’t keep your biggest gun in the holster during a fight.
   The Liberator is the largest battle-fortress ever built. At four-fifths of a mile in length (1.3 km) it is twice the length of an significantly larger than that of the SDF-3 Pioneer and is far more heavily armed. The ship is home to more than 1,200 Veritech Fighters and thousands of Cyclones and other ground combat units.
   Designed as a space control vessel, the Liberator is meant to fold in with an accompanying fleet and dominate the space battlefield by obliterating enemy assets, establishing orbital control over planets, deploying its fighter to achieve space and air superiority, serving as a mobile space station and port-of-call for allied forces and garrisoning occupied enemy territory. In the case of Earth, it was meant to deliver a knock-out blow to Reflex Point from high orbit and then serve as the UEEF’s base of operations in Earthspace while any mop-up actions took place. Nobody anticipated the sudden and total departure of the Invid, even in the best-case scenarios.
   Once the liberation of Earth was complete, the Liberator was to have been stationed around Earth, supported by Space Station Liberty, while the Pioneer returned to Tirol orbit, creating  a secured space fold trade route between what the UEEF sees as the two most important planets in the known galaxy. Earth could be rebuilt using technology from Tirol, and Tirol could be replenished using the raw resources of Earth, and the two cultures would be united.
   It was a nice dream. Whether the Haydonites and the disappearance of the Pioneer have shattered that dream or just delayed it remains to be seen.
   Whereas the Pioneer was designed, in part to be both warship and exploration vessel, the Liberator is meant for pure combat. It has little in the way of research and development assets, and although it can carry more passengers than the Pioneer, its accommodations are designed much more along military standards, while the Pioneer carried a large scientific and diplomatic contingent, as well as the families of most of the fleet.
   They say war is the harshest of teachers, and the Liberator was designed around the hard lessons learned through the years of space warfare. It is utilitarian, inelegant and designed for pure functionality. It sports a few of the fliud lines of the Shimakaze, none of the soft curves of a Garfish and none of the slender grace of a Horizon-T. Someone once described it as a massive slab of Robotechnology with engines. It’s a fair description.
   The Primary Hull is built around the largest Synchro Cannon ever constructed. When it was activated it out-ranged and out-powered even the famous “main guns” of the Legendary SDF-1. Backing that up are the three super laser cannons, once located in each of the outrigger hanger sections. It aslo has numerous missile launchers, anti-ship beam turrets and point defense lasers.
   Perhaps its most potent weapon, however is its massive fleet of Veritech Fighters, totaling more than 1,200 fighting craft. It can deploy its fighters from eight rapid launch bays and two more traditional hanger bays (typically used to recovery and shuttle launches). The Veritechs are housed in the two massive flight decks outriggers on either side of the ship.
   It also carries two regiments of UEEF Marines, including a mobile cavalry regiment of Cyclone and silverback Riders for ground deployment, as well as four Horizon-T dropships to deliver them planetside. Most of the ground forces are stationed in the marine barracks section of the ship, detach and land on a planet, providing a prefabricated garrison and command and control facility for the UEEF’s ground forces.
   What a role of the Liberator will be in the search for Admiral Hunters’ flagship has yet to be determined. General Gunther Reinhardt, the current supreme commander of the UEEF in Admiral Rick Hunter’s absence, is loath to place the ship in danger. After the events of the Robotech Shadow Chronicles the movie. The vessel can be found in high orbit over the remains of Reflex Point, coordinating operations for the remains of the UEEF. There has been some debate about the returning to Tirol, but General Reinhardt did not come all this way just to turn around and go back, and without knowing what the Haydonites have planned, he intends to put most of his efforts into protecting  the home world, which he believes is what Admiral Hunter would have wanted him to do.

 SDF-4 Liberator
Model Type: Liberator-Class Shadow Dimensional Fortress
Class: SDF (Shadow Dimensional Fortress)
Ship’s Complement: 6,839
Bridge Crew: Ships Captain (1), Executive Officer (1), Officer of the deck (1), Junior Officer of the Deck (1), Conning Officer (1), Helm (2), Navigation (6), Communications/Sensors (6), Fold Ops (5), and Security (10 Security Corpsmen in CBR-5 armor and armed with M-25C Wolverine Carbines)
Combat Information Center: UEEFMC Lieutenant General (1 currently Lt. Gunther Reinhardt), UEEFMC Brigadier General (1, in charge of troop deployment, strategy and tactics), Colonel (4, acting as seconds to the Lt. General and the Brigadier General), Military advisory Team (12), Commander of the Air Group (1, CAG, Commander of the ship’s air wing), Mechanized Infantry Commander (1, in charge of ground and boarding operations), Comms Team (15), Command Security (20 Marines in CVR-3 armor and armed with M-25C Wolverine Carbines), and ship’s Weapons Crew (20).
Ship’s Operations Crew: Administrative Support (950), Engineering (1,850), Medical Team (820) , Science Team (180), Ship’s Security (400 security Corpsmen wearing CBR-5  and armored with M-25C Wolverine Carbines), General Enlisted (2,300), and Internal Communications (230)
Troops: 28,234
UEEF Naval/Marine Aviators (1224 combat ready pilots and 600 pilots in reserve.
UEEF Fleet Personnel: 14,844 (Various M.O.S. and O.C.C.s)
UEEF Marine Corps 3rd and 4th Regiment: 11,566 (Various M.O.S. and O.C.Cs)
Mecha Complement:
Veritech Fighters: 1,244 total
802 VF/A-6 Alphas (X, I, H or Z variants)
422 VF/B-9 Betas (A or X variants)
Non-Variable Battloids: 288
240 ZBR-10 Mk.I Bioroid Interceptors
48 MBR-12 MK.II Condors
Cyclones: 16,000
1,500  030 series
1,000  040 Series
13,500  050 Series
Silverbacks: 3,000
300 VM-9Es
200 VM-9Hs 2,500 VM-9Ls
LCA-12T Horizon-T: 4, including full crews, mecha and armaments (not counted among the ship’s stores above). Two are located on the bottom level of each carrier arm with their own dedicated drop bays.

M.D.C. by Location:
Forward Hull Section (1/3) �“ 50,000
Synchro Cannon -  15,000
Midships Hull Section (1/3) �“ 40,000
*Aft Hull Section (1/3) 40,000
** Carrier Arms (2) �“ 60,000 each
*** External Garrison Base �“ 40,000
Secondary Super Laser Cannons (3) �“ 8,000 each
****Hull per 40 feet (12.2m) �“ 120
Command Tower �“ 7,500
Interior Bulkheads per 10 feet (3m) �“ 50
Exterior Hatches �“ 100 each
Alpha Launch Bays (8) �“ 2,000 each
Launch Bay Doors (8) �“ 700
Auxiliary Bridge and Flight Control Towers (2) �“ 1,000 each
Midships Recovery/Landing Hanger Doors (2) �“ 2,000 each
Main Thruster Nozzles (26) �“ 2,000 each
Secondary Thruster Nozzles (6) �“ 1,200 each
Particle Cannons (56) �“ 300 each
Missile Bays (30) �“ 250 each
Point Defense Lasers (46) �“ 150 each
*Destroying the Aft Sections of the Hull destroys the engines, setting the ship adrift. The Command Deck is also destroyed , eliminating Primary Weapon Control. The ship can continue to fight from either Auxiliary Bridge, but at a -2 to strike for all weapons systems.
Destroying both Carrier Arms leaves the ship without hangars for its fighters, and is likely to cause the destruction of most Veritech Fighters within the hangars when the arm(s) is destroyed. Only those already deployed in the field escape destruction.
* The Garrison Base can be dropped through re-entry for a controlled landing on the surface of a planet. It can also lift off again and reattach itself to the SDF-4 in low orbit. Destroying the Garrison Base destroys the 3rd regiment, about half of the marines on the ship, unless they are already deployed.
**** Punching holes in the hull will cause the Damage Control Systems to automatically seal off whatever compartment has been exposed to vacuum. Ships are highly compartmentalized to prevent easy decompression of the whole ship.
*****Destroying the Command Tower destroys the Bridge. With the Bridge destroyed, the ship can still be commanded from the Auxiliary Bridge and Flight Control Tower or the Combat Information Center, but all weapon systems are -2 to strike and primary sensors will also be destroyed.

Speed:
Hover: The Liberator is not well-suited for atmospheric operations, and its atmospheric performance is pretty much limited to takeoff and landing.
Flying:
Space: Crusing Speed of 4,567 mph (7,307 km) or Mach 6. Maximum Speed of 9,134 mph (14,614 km) or Mach 12. Maximum interplanetary 1,863,000 mph (2,998,000 km or 1/360th the speed of light ) can be attained within 10 days of sustained acceleration (without the use of Hyperspace Fold Drives).
Maximum Range: Limited only by supplies. The Reflex Furnaces can carry enough Protoculture for up to 15 years of standard operation, although shipboard expendable stores are only good for 24 months of constant deployment with a standard crew and troop complement. However, Protoculture fuel supplies can be quickly depleted through the use of Hyperspace Fold Drives. The Drives generate a fold bubble up to 3.75 miles (6 km) across that can also carry non-fold capable ships within range of the sphere. The amount of Protoculture expended with each fold depends on the diameter of the fold bubble generated and the distance Traveled, up to a limit of 500 parsecs in a single jump. Trips longer than that require multiple folds.
Statistical Data:
Length: 4,282 feet (1,305 m)
Beam: 2,710 feet (826 m)
Height: 1,712 feet (522 m)
Weight: 42,650,000 tons fueled and provisioned
Power Source: 12 Reflex Furnaces powering 32 capital plasma thruster arrays and one MK. X Capital Space Fold Generator.

Weapon System:
1) Type V Capital Class Synchro Cannon (deactivated): This is the largest Synchro Cannon ever known to have been built, and probably the last. Utilizing booby-trapped Haydonite technology, when this weapon was armed it was the largest, most destructive weapon ever mounted on a human starship. The only weapon ever built that was considered more powerful than this was the Grand Cannon. Capable of firing sustained beams and of directing that beam in swaths across the ship’s beams and of directing that beam in swaths across the ship’s forward firing arc, it was designed to destroy the swarms of Invid that typically make frontal massed assaults at UEEF fleets.
   The Cannon has been indefinitely deactivated and detached from all power supplies. Its primary arming components have been placed in storage and the firing aperture has been welded shut in order to ensure there is no way for the Haydonites to somehow remotely re-arm the cannon, which they could then use to detonate the entire battle-fortress in one blast.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Fleet
Secondary Purpose: Planetary Bombardment
Wieght: Not applicable. Part of the ship’s Hull
Range: 250,000 miles (400,000 km) in space, but only 150 miles (240 km) in an atmosphere
Mega-Damage: Destroys Everything in its line of fire. Dodge and other evasive action is the only way to escape annihilation.
Rate of Fire: Once everything two minutes
Payload: Effectively unlimited
Note: these weapons have difficulty hitting small, fast targets like mecha and aerospace fighter craft, even ships as large as horizon-class transports.

2) FESL-10 Super Laser Cannons (3) The secondary weapons of the SDF-4 have become the primary weapons since the Synchro Cannon was disabled. They are its three super lasers. One is mounted in the prow of the garrison base. Each Canon is a cluster of very high-powered, free electron lasers that fire together to create a single, powerful beam. These weapons are used to destroy incoming Invid “Clam” Carriers before they unleash their deadly payload.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Capital Ship
Secondary Purpose: Anti-Installation and Siege Fire.
Range: 120,000 miles (192, 000 km) in space, 250 miles (400 km) in atmosphere.
Mega-Damage: 1D6x1,000 M.D. per super laser blast. Two can be fired for 2D6x1000 M.D. or all three can be fired for 3D6x1,000 M.D. multiple super laser can only be fired at vessels at least 500 feet (152.4 m) in length across their broadest measurement.
Rate of Fire: Each super laser can fire once per minute.
Payload: Effectively Unlimited.
Note: These weapons have difficulty hitting small, fast targets like mecha and aerospace fighter craft, and even ships as large as Horizon-class transports.

3) HPC-SC240 Triple-Barreled, 240mm Particle Cannon Turrets (56): Identical to the main weapons of the IKazuchi-Class Carriers, these weapons are used primary against sub-capital class ships, like cruisers, frigates and destroyers. They are mounted in armored turrets, with 12 on the dorsal hull of the main superstructure and eight on the dorsal hull of each carrier arm and an equal number on the ventral hulls. The turrets have a 360 degree rotation and 65 degree elevation.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Ship
Secondary Purpose: Anti-Installation and Siege Fire
Weight: Not applicable. Part of the ship’s Hull
Range: 30 miles (48 km) in atmosphere, 240 miles (384 km) in space.
Mega-Damage: 1D4x100 M.D. per single blast
Rate of Fire: Twice per melee round (15 seconds)
Payload: Effectively Unlimited
Note: These weapons have difficulty hitting small, fast targets like mecha and aerospace fighter craft, and even ships as large as Horizon-class transports.

4) HM-6 Heavy Missile Launchers (30): these missile Launchers are scattered across the hull under concealed plates.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Ship
Secondary Purpose: Anti-Installation and Siege Fire.
Weight: Not applicable. Part of the ship’s Hull
Range: Per long range missile; average 500 miles (800 km).
Mega-Damage: Per warhead; Varies with type.
Rate of Fire: Singly or in volleys of one, two, four, or six.
Payload: Six in each of the 30 armored magazines, 180 total. The ship can carry another 120,000 missiles in its hold and has munitions facility for the production of up to 400 per day with the proper supplies. Only reflex warheads require Protoculture to create. All other can be constructed using conventional materials.
5) MLWS-40 Rapid-Fire 40mm Point Defense Lasers (46):  Mounted four to a side along the centerline of the ship, these turrets are excellent anti-mecha weapons and do a reasonable job against the fast and nimble Invid Fighter Scouts.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Mecha, Anti-Space Fighters and General Defense
Secondary Purpose: Anti-Ship and Assult
Weight: Not Applicable, part of the ship’s hull
Mega-Damage: 2D6x10 M.D. per single blast
Range: 4,500 feet (1,371 m)
Rate of Fire: Each Blast counts as one attack. Attacks per melee are equal to those of the “gunner” assigned to the weapon position, plus one (typically  4-6 per melee round)/ Each laser is used to attack its own, independent target(s), and MLWS-40s seldom work in tandem with the other three positions to fire upon the same target.
Payload: Effectively Unlimited
Bonus: +1 to strike small opponents from man-sized to mecha, fighters and shuttle craft. This is in addition to the battle groups bonus noted below.
6) Ships Systems of Note: Tactical life support, escape pods for all crew, multiple robot and munitions factories, science laboratories, training facilities and comfortably carry a maximum population of 180,000 in addition to the ship’s crew. External, extendable docking collars allow for multiple ship’s to dock for any repairs just short of those that require dry dock.

7) Battle Fleet Bonus: the Advanced Command And Control Capabilities well exceed those of the Ikazuchi, allowing the battle-fortress to share sensor and tactical data instantly with every ship in the fleet. This grants the fleet a +4 to strike against anything directly engaged by the Liberator and supersedes and similar bonuses provided by smaller vessels.