For the maximum number of pairwise non-defending rooks, Will Sawin proved an upper bound of $(2n/3) + 1$ in his comment to the original question. This bound is attained, at least to within $O(1)$, by two rows of $n/3 - O(1)$ rooks each, starting from around $(2n/3,n/3,0)$ and $(n/3,2n/3,1)$ and proceeding by steps of $(-1,-1,2)$ until reaching the $y=0$ or $x=0$ edge of the triangle. Here's This construction generalizes Sawin's five-Rook placement for $n=6$.
On further thought, it seems we actually achieve $\lfloor (2n/3) + 1 \rfloor$ exactly for all $n$. Here's how thisit works for $n=12$ and $n=15$, with $(2n/3)+1 = 9$ and $11$ respectively:
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. . . R . . . . .
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R . . . . . R . . . . . .
. . . . . R . . . . . . . R .
. R . . . . . . . R . . . . . . .
. . . . . . R . . . . . . . . . R . .
. . R . . . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . . . . R . . .
. . . R . . . . . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . . . . . . R . . . .
. . . . R . . . . . . . . . . . . . R . . . . . . . . . .
Starting from such a solution with $n=3m$, we can add an empty row to get an optimal solution for $n=3m+1$, and remove an edge (and the Rook it contains) to get an optimal solution for $n=3m-1$. So this should solve the problem for all $n$.