eugimon

Sure, those are mission specifc valks. But even in those capacties, actual dedicated ordinance in the form of missiles and bombs would be much more effective in the mission scenarios that d3v puts forth. Vector controlled rounds, timed rounds, these are all invisioned for urban warfare, shooting around corners, into rooms, etc and hitting soft targets. A bullet that shatters and spreads shrapnel out above a tank would have little benefit. Even a round like a depleted uranium round would lose its effectiveness if you broke it up into dozens of little fletchettes over the target. Remember, a bullet gains its power from how much kinetic energy it has when it arrives on target... you can lose some of that and still be effective against unarmored humans but once we're talking about hardened targets the rules change. But again, how many monsters and nightmares are sortied compared to the number of vf-11 or vf-171s? Again, for the vast majority of pilots, for the vast majority of missions, unlimited ammunition would be far more useful than a limited number of exotic rounds. And I still say, that dragging a beam across the entire length of a target (from initial point of contact) would do far more damage than punching a few holes.. if nothing else because you greatly increase your chance of hitting and destroying vital systems (more time on target). And given the state of technology in Macross, a gauss rifle would be much more effective than any traditional bullet propelled by some chemical reaction. The whole cartrdige can be the actual round, GREATLY increasing the mass, and the rail system itself would deliver the round much faster than is possible by traditional means. In the real world, the US army is already experimenting with gauss rifles for the next gen mainline tank and those rounds (which are just slugs of metal) are already proving much more effective than their more exotic current counterparts. Greater mass + more acceleration = more bang for the buck.

Oh yeah, recoil, another reason why lasers are easier to aim. The pilot doesn't need to compensate for the tendacy of the gun to move itself off aim. As for rate of fire, you have to consider that the higher the rate of fire, either the less total time the pilot can fire the gun, or the smaller the rounds need to be in order to give the pilot a comparable fire time or the larger the magazine. If the pilot can't fire for as long a period of time, well, the drawbacks are obvious. If the rounds are smaller to allow for more total rounds to compensate.. well smaller rounds mean less mass means less kinetic energy which results in less damage done to target. In the real world, this is demonstrated by guns like the p-90 which fire a smaller rounds which were designed to be more effective against personal body armor but which many people believe are nevertheless ineffective due to their apparant limited "stopping power". Of course, larger magazine is probably the easiest solution to implement given that valks carry their guns on the outside and therefore the restriction of airframe space doesn't apply. In regards to rate of fire, even if we say that Macross lasers aren't capable of continuous fire (which we have seen evidence of in SDFM) a computer controlled pulsed laser will still be much more rapid than any mechanical system will be. And you have to figure that the faster you spin the barrels of a gattling gun, the more chance you have for jamming a cartridge. And speaking of cartrdiges, there' no chance of a dud round to jam up the system. And it's one less thing for ground crew to worry about.. storing munitions, moving munitions, loading munitions. Not just time saving but also removes accidents waiting to happen and can improve turn around time.

Well, how often would an air superiority fighter be called on to do stuff like bunker busting or taking out an installation? We should figure not on some hypothetical role but on the express role that a valk does... air (space) superiority with an emphasis on interception. And in that regard more missiles and unlimited ammunition would be far more useful. Yes, for specialized missions, specific munitions would be useful... but for the average valk in its routine mission, having an unlimited ammunition gun that is easier for the pilot to shoot and hit is far more advantageous. Besides, if MF is any sign of things to come, valks can be outfited with specific weapons and armor packs as the mission demands.

the chest missile hatch/system was a bit fragile on the 1st release.

Well, Katie seemed particularly taken back. But I agree, Kevin Smith is like this in everything he's hosted/interviews/etc, so I'm sure they knew exactly what they were getting when they signed him up.

you know, the original origin story for wolverine was going to be that he was actually a mutant wolverine that looked like a human... the Marvel brass squelched that idea. He would have joined spiderman in the list of marvel heroes who's superpower should come out of their ass. But I guess the brass at Marvel wanted to make sure they were the only ones could do that.

sweet, got my shipping notice from fedex, thanks Kevin!

which is funny, because wolverines aren't wolves... they're giant smelly weasles and they don't howl at the moon. Actually, if Wolverine really had the powers of his namesake, he wouldn't just have the claws, but also be able to spray his enemies with a foul liquid out of his ass like a skunk.

James Howlett...

well, if a pilot can paint a target with a ballistic round, while dealing with all the factors that I talked about in my earlier post (mainly drift and the effects of gravity) then painting a target with a laser should be easier (instant, ignores wind and gravity). And lasers have been shown to fire continuously in Macross, in SDFM, they used the head lasers in continuous fire to try and cut their way out of the badolza's ship when they were captured and Hikaru used his head lasers to cut misa out of the alaska base. So we have in show evidence that lasers in macross can behave realisticaly. As for smart munitions... well, I think those are great ideas against soft targets and/or targets that are relatively nearby. But when the round changes direction, unless it has someway to re-accelerate, the change in direction will bleed speed, thus lowering its kinetic energy. Not a big deal when you're hitting something soft and fleshy but when firing on a hardened target, losing energy can effectively render your attack useless, despite the ability to place the round on target. I do agree that the ability to have custom rounds make projectile weapons potentially much more versitile than a laser but even a laser has the ability to dynamically dial in the energy output, which can be very useful. For instance, if you find that your rapid fire laser setting isn't able to pierce the enemy's armor, a short burst yet higher energy setting maybe able to do the job, and this could be handled dynamically by the fire computer rather than having to return to base to re-arm or swap out a magazine. Also, by not having to carry bullets, this could potentially free up weight for larger/more missiles or armor.

Well, there's something else to consider. While a single bullet may do more damage then a laser... consider, a laser is a coninuous beam of light, so while the target is pulling away from you, the laser beam is continuously cutting the target along your line of sight, in relationship to the movement of the target. A gunpod just wouldn't achieve this effect since the bullets fire in bursts and there's lag between each round. And while a gunpod may carry a lot of ammunition, depending on the actual rate of fire, you're only talking a few seconds worth of actual fire time, versus potentially unlimited ammunition for a laser weapon. And since the damage of the bullet will always be dependent upon the speed of the round and the mass of the round, "fletchlet" rounds or rounds of miniscule size will never really be realistic. So rounds will always be large and thus ammunition capactiy will always be dependent upon large containers. As for the other point about capacitors and recharge time. This is a very good point, and one I was always confused about based on other Macross technology shown. Things like the SDF-1's rail cannons and pinpoint barriers on valks must have similarly incredible energy requirements and yet on several instances, those are show to be in near constant use without any detriment or diminishment in ability. So I wonder why the energy management system in those functions can't be ported over to power more powerful laser weapons?

sure, if freaking Beak is in the movie... come on, any character is fair game.

I was actually really excited about Liev Schreiber being in this movie. He's an excellent actor and I think he can nail the cold sadistic side of Creed that was completely missing from the Tyler Mane's version.

A little Kelly Hu is always a good thing, but Striker makes it clear she came along well after Logan broke out of Weapon X in X-men 2.

the movies ignore both earth 616 and the ultimate universe... gambit was not part of weapon X in either universe, nor were emma or beak. The blob was a weapon in the ultimate universe though. It looks like they just needed mutants to flesh out the Weapon roster and decided to give fans some of the mutants they've been screaming for ever since the first X-men movie. I'm hoping the movie doesn't spend too much time on all these peripheral characters. One of the flaws of the x-men sequels was the never ending introduction of secondary and tertiary characters and at the cost of developing the core characters, I thought. I really hope that all these other mutants don't get much screen time other than during a big jail break sequence.

if we had a little weeping icon, I'd post it up.

yeah, and a slew of B list characters and C list characters like Deadpool and Beak.

nope, for most of x-men lore, emma was an x-men foe as the white queen, part of the hellfire club. She went through a redemption arc, ended up as the headmistress of Generation X and then ended up with the x-men, had a psychic affair with Scott Summers and after Jean's (most recent) death has been co-leading the x-men along with scott summers. Her diamond form was introduced relatively recently as her "secondary mutation" which grant morrison introduced along with turning Beast into a big bipedal cat.

1/72 looks a lot better than the DX, imo. Proportions are better and the legs don't appear as blocky and low hanging in fighter mode.

I think it means "dead"...

yeah... but come on, honestly... you could get severly injured in Philadelphia for just about any reason... not just for wearing LA sports gear.

I disagree. A laser is much faster (speed of light versus a few times the speed of sound) than a bullet and travels in a straight line, rather than a tragectory so don't need to lead your target, if the target is in your line of sight, you'll hit it. Over long distance, this benefit is increased as you don't need to worry about rate of the bullet falling down so you don't need to worry about things like the curvature of the planet, gravity, drift, and whether the round will still have enough kinetic energy left when it reaches its destination to do damage (since friction is slowing the round down, thus bleeding energy).

I have to agree with you there, I'll take the short arms over the monkey arms and the feet look much better to those clown feet on the DX.

i think encapsulated plasma is still too advanced for Macross technology.

1/100 arms too short, DX arms too long... 1/72 just right?