Unknown number of years ago, people (humans) travelled to planet Area, and founded a colony on it. They discovered the remnants of an ancient civilisation, superior technology, standard stuff.
Society flourished.
Suddenly, however, Area was attacked by unmanned drones which they called Aggressors. The UCEF (army) eventually managed to drive off the main force of the Aggressors, with a huge cost. What was worse was that they were still around, from time to time warping in above the planet before making planetfall and attacking.
The biggest problem was that the citizens of Area had no idea where the Aggressors came from, so they could only keep on the defensive. Naturally, not the greatest of possibilities, so eventually there were 2 schools of thought on how to resolve this situation:
1. Mass Migration to look for yet another planet that can sustain human life after terraforming;
2. Build an all-purpose shield around the planet.
Eventually the latter opinion won out, so the construction of the Cage began, with it being called the End (a little fuzzy here, will have to check my archives later). System ACE was also built to moniter the integrety of the cage and around it.
Doctor Shiki, main proposer of the Cage idea, then created the Seasons: 4 androids to take command of System ACE as well as controlling the artificial weather conditions and planetary defences of planet Area, the Econ/Icon (needs encyclopedia entries Banpresto ~_~). There were 3 sets of each android made, numbered 1-3 respectively. In order to improve their relations with the human masters, they were created with the Sentimental Circuit which allows the Seasons to have feelings.
Winter 1, being the leader of the Seasons, was also given the Forcible Command, which gives him absolute control over them if necessary.
Anyway, for reasons yet unknown (probably revealed at the end of the game), Winter 1 decided suddenly to eradicate all human life on Area. He created misinformation to confuse the populance first, then moved in to destroy everything in sight with his army of drones.
The humans, of course, regretted being stuck in a virtual prison, but they still could find ways of escape via the orbital elevators that were used to build the cage in the first place. However, there were no transmissions from the initial batch of escapees, so it was concluded that they must have perished by Seasons' hands while escaping the planet.
Helpless, they decided on the last possible recourse, directly escaping using space-time warp technology that the ancient civilisation apparently possessed. Since they have no idea if their bodies could survive such a jump, they created the Ark Alpha, controlled by Autumn 4, who was created as a failsafe without the Forcible Command imprinted in her. The remaining humans stored their personal data (eggs and all) in stasis, and gave her the ability to command the warp when all is ready.
Fast-forward to start of game, where she attempts to initiate the jump, but instead the warp hole brings in Brunhilde, who goes wild and distorts the space-time continuem, causing a backlash that knocks half her memory data out as well as pull our heroes and villians into planet Area.
To get back to their world, they need more of those 11th Dimension thingmagig to enable space-time travel, something which apparently Winter 1 has stored up a bit, considering that they managed to throw everyone back into Macross world...