The main thing I'm wondering is what the hell would possess you to mash three series together like that. You can't even give the normal "budget" answer because messing around like that would cost even more.
They were selling the series as a weekday syndication deal, and, at the time, you needed a minimum of 65 episodes to get that. That's why they mashed the three together. I agree with your friend about the lawyer stuff. Harmony Gold are using their dubbing rights to the 1982 Macross to block imports of everything up to Macross: Frontier, which is the main reason you'll never see an English dub of that. Basically the Americans are claiming their 1982 localization rights gives them exclusive rights to make sequels to Macross for perpetuity. Since this was thrown out by courts in Japan (
yes, Harmony Gold sued Japanese studios in Japan to stop making sequels to their own series), Macross continues to be made there, but it's still contested in many countries.
Their sequels so far have been Robotech: The Movie (a "robotech" redub of "Megazone 23",
YET ANOTHER un-related series / characters), and "Robotech: The Sentinels". Which uses re-cycled footage from Macross, Southern Cross and Mospeada
AGAIN. They even re-use the
entire wedding footage of one couple to be another couples wedding !! The more recent remake is "Robotech: Shadow Chronicles", which is kinda ok as Robotech sequels go, but a bit boring. It only features mecha and character designs from Mospeada, since that's all Harmony Gold have undisputed rights to now.