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Seto Kaiba

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About Seto Kaiba

  • Birthday August 22

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    http://www.Macross2.net/m3/m3.html
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    MacrossMike

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    Lagrange Terrace (a stable community)
  • Interests
    Anime (duh), Antique Firearms, Cryptography, Mechanical Design

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Zentradi (and Meltrandi) Battle Suits aren't true powered armor. Officially, they're described as being something like a hybrid of powered suits and a battle pod in the sense that they are humanoid in configuration but the operator's body is situated almost entirely in the battle suit's torso and head and the limbs are mostly controlled indirectly. As such, you wouldn't see any blood from damaging the suit's arms or its legs below the knee because none of the pilot's body is in those parts. They're entirely mechanical. You probably wouldn't see blood from one even if you did hit the pilot, though. The cockpit's pretty close quarters but not skintight and the pilot inside it is also wearing an armored space suit. So if the pilot is injured, blood is likely to end up either inside their suit or inside the cockpit rather than leaking out of the battle suit itself. The one exception that sticks out in my memory is from the opening of Macross Plus, where Isamu is fighting against rogue Zentradi and stabs one of their battle suits with his VF-11's bayonet. That gets a LARGE amount of something reddish-orange that might be the pilot's blood. There has been no word on if the New UN Forces have captured a factory satellite that manufactures the Nousjadeul-Ger battle suit. The New UN Forces must have at least a few that are still in good working order, though. The in-universe version of DYRL? was shot with real ships and mecha to an extent, so several Nousjadeul-Ger battle suits were likely used in the filming of the movie c.2030. New Edwards Test Flight Center on Eden seems to have at least two working Nousjadeul-Ger units that we see used in simulated combat testing with paint rounds. Whether they belong to the base proper or were borrowed from a squadron stationed nearby for aggressor duty is never stated. We do know that the New UN Forces captured factory satellites making the Regult battle pod and Queadluun-Rau battle suit, and that those facilities have been used to develop and produce improved versions like the Regult Type-104 and Type-106 and the Queadluun-Rhea/56. The gradual breakdown of the New UN Spacy's captured Queadluun-Rau suits was supposedly part of what prompted the mission to seize and restore the factory satellite that had been making the Queadluuns for the Boddole Zer main fleet. (This also led to the development of the YF-21 and VF-22.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... machine translation has a ways to go before it's ready to properly take over for humans. It's way better than it used to be, but there are some definite context whoopsies and so on in there as well.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    What kind of detail in particular are you looking for? Markings? Equipment placement?
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I've been using a bit of my vacation time to catch up on some of my translations and chase a few nagging open points in what I've translated about overtechnology. In this case, in the descriptions of energy weapons as part of an effort to provide some in-depth explanations of how they work. Laser weapons in Macross have thus far all been presented as real world laser technology that has simply had its performance enhanced by the inclusion of OTM. Master File has made VF-mounted laser weapons out to be a mix of fiber lasers (mostly on the monitor turret) and free electron lasers (nacelle/body mounts). The VF-1's Strike Pack gets identified as a gas-dynamic laser in Master File, and there's also passing mention of research into a Project Excalibur-style reaction bomb-pumped laser missile. Macross Chronicle has shot down my hypothesis that impact cannons are dimensional weapons. Nothing has been forthcoming as of yet about how the plasma cannons of the setting work (since there's all of one of the bloody things, IIRC, on the Nousjadeul-Ger). Particle beam weapons are where things get a bit contradictory. Macross Chronicle seems to imply that particle beam cannons are just juiced up linear accelerators, with mention of them injecting opposite-charged particles into the beam to neutralize the charge so it doesn't diverge due to repulsion forces. Then again, there are other books that mention using Gravity and Inertia Control for beam focusing and acceleration. There's mention of the beams using ionized heavy metal particles in some books, and plasma drawn from the reactor in others. Some mention both and switch between them situationally. So I have a crazy-ish hypothesis to get these seemingly contradictory explanations aligned. Macross's particle beam weapons may be something like plasma wakefield accelerators. Those work by using lasers to create a charge imbalance in a neutrally-charged plasma that creates an ion channel and "wave" of charge imbalance that pushes the lighter electrons out at high velocities. I think both of the above-described cases can be true if they're using a GIC instead of lasers to manipulate the plasma and create the charge imbalances. That only leaves the question of where the plasma is coming from... be it tapped from the compact thermonuclear reactor, or a "beam cartridge" like those described in the VF-31 Master File.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    From that trailer, it looks like audiences will be asking for Refunds for Silent Hill. It seems almost prophetic that YouTube's recommendation bar that pops up at the end of that trailer has Doom: Annihilation on it.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Railguns are a bit of an exception there. They accelerate projectiles to tremendous speeds using the Lorentz force created by running huge amounts of electrical current up one of a pair of parallel conductive rails, across the projectile, and back down the other rail. They don't have to supply that current for very long (per shot) but the amount of power required is pretty huge. Macross's railguns from the main timeline tend to be hybrids, though, using a chemical propellant "starter" and then using a railgun system to boost the projectile's velocity beyond what the propellant can do alone... so they might still work albeit at greatly reduced muzzle velocity. Particle beam weapons also require a lot of power. The relatively low amount of "surplus" power after the demands of propulsion, stealth, and defensive systems is why VFs with beam gunpods have only come about in the 5th Generation thanks to the greater output of Stage II thermonuclear reaction engines. Pretty much the same advantages that made railguns practical as VF-mounted weapons. Of course, the beam gunpod doesn't just need power, it needs a source of charged particles to fire... whether that's drawing on plasma from the VF's reactors directly or the kind of "beam cartridge" described in Master File (or both) the particles have to come from somewhere. A conventional gunpod has the advantage of not needing much power at all to work, being capable of running its motor and electronics off power from the VF side or from internal batteries.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Oof... yeah, the machine translation is definitely having a time with the proper nouns and dialogue containing sentence fragments. It is, in hindsight, more than a little funny that Mirage [...]
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Incidentally, your chapter 3 upload seems to have an access issue?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    That doesn't seem to be the case. After all, the New UN Forces in Macross 7 spent literal years and vast sums of money on Project M for the sake of further developing the Minmay Attack as a military stratagem to be used against enemies without culture and as a way to make peaceful first contact with new alien races who did. The first thing Max does in "Fleet of the Strongest Women" once the enemy are identified as a rogue Zentradi fleet is send in Sound Force for a Minmay Attack. Similarly, in Macross Frontier, the very first suggestion Leon Mishima offers with regard to the Vajra attacks is to have them "listen to a song" (i.e. the Minmay Attack). Earth's insistence on destroying the Chlore fleet feels a bit weird and out of place on its own, though since Macross 7's themes lean heavily into rebelling against authority having an officious jerk to humble is a bit of necessary comedy. Their attitude makes a bit more sense with the extra historical context from Master File, with it having been only about 9 years since the last run-in with such a large rogue fleet and that incident having started with the loss of an entire planet, 73 warships, 600+ Valkyries, and almost 600,000 lives. Telling the crew of Battle 7 to destroy the fleet also makes a bit more sense in that context, since the Battle 7 was the flagship of the fleet mustered against the previous Zentradi fleet 9 years ago and absolutely had been able to take down a fleet that size. Maybe. Then again, considering how many of them there are and how short they seem to be on Isamu's service record even calling them "wars" may be giving them too much credit. That can't be all fleets beefing with each other either... at least one of them is a civil war and another is described as a revolution, suggesting some of it is a single fleet or group of colonists from one fleet fighting another. Others may be run-ins with Zentradi forces like the one at the start of Macross Plus's OVA version.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    There are two main reasons, and a third is mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus... First, laser and particle beam weapons lose some of their range, accuracy, and stopping power in atmospheric use due to the beam's interaction with atmospheric gases. Laser beams suffer energy loss and scattering/defocusing as a result of a phenomenon called thermal blooming as they heat the air they pass through. Particle beams also suffer some power loss due to the beam colliding with and ionizing atmospheric gases in the beam's path. High-velocity hard rounds like the explosive armor-piercing shells used by (and against) VFs are a great deal less affected (particularly since, on impact, the secondary charge will have no power loss at all). Second, laser and particle beam weapons are at a bit of a disadvantage right off the jump because modern VFs have adopted energy weapon-specific defenses in the form of an anti-beam weapon ablative armor coating. This coating is designed to vaporize when struck by an energy weapon, fogging the path of the beam and robbing it of much of its power. The coatings in use from the Frontier era onward are said to be able to reduce the effectiveness of a beam machine gun-grade weapon by 30%. You can of course overpower this by the simple expedient of an excessively powerful beam weapon like the much larger and more powerful beam gunpod, but the explosive armor-piercing shells are totally unaffected by it. Third, Master File contends that a forearm-mounted weapon with high stopping power was considered desirable to minimize the amount of time the VF is nominally defenseless during or immediately after a transformation. A high velocity railgun with explosive armor-piercing ammunition fit the bill nicely.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    AFAIK, that hasn't really been elaborated upon. We know the New UN Government has some kind of system for ranking/classifying the habitability of planets given mention of Vajra being an "A-class habitable planet" but we don't know what criteria they use, what the other classes are, or how long it takes to reach such a determination. A-class planets are said to be few and rare, and the implication from Macross Chronicle and Macross Frontier seems to be that those are ideal or near-ideal Earthlike planets that are suitable for immediate colonization and development. Macross VF-X2 suggests that less suitable worlds (classification unknown) may require years of environmental modification to become suitable for emigration. Presumably the amount of time and effort required to modify a planet's environment to make it suitable are factors in deciding whether a planet is worth colonizing in the eyes of a particular fleet, and whether that investment is containable for the fleet's resources and economy. Macross 7: the Galaxy is Calling Me! has that one unnamed planet that was apparently colonized despite being a marginal case because of the presence of rare and valuable minerals.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I guess that depends on how you want to define "run into". Emigrant fleets operate in a manner intended to avoid such run-ins whenever possible. They operate with a massive early warning picket spread across a wide area around the fleet's main group (as seen several times in Macross Frontier) and also send advance reconnaissance taskforces out ahead of the fleet along its intended course to preemptively identify any threats and locate potentially valuable resources and habitable planets so the fleet can plan accordingly. Based on Master File, if a large hostile force is detected in or entering the area then SOP is to execute an emergency fold to leave the area before being detected. If a ship can't flee the area by emergency fold and is at risk of being captured it's evacuated and then destroyed so it can't be studied. The New UN Forces only really fight Zentradi fleets if it's unavoidable. Like to protect an emigrant planet, or if it's not possible for an emigrant fleet to evacuate the area in time to avoid a confrontation. The same rules of engagement almost certainly apply to the Supervision Army if they're ever encountered. They would probably treat the Supervision Army similarly to the Zentradi and hit 'em with the Minmay Attack while spamming Macross Cannon fire and thermonuclear reaction weapons.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Pedanticness train pulling into the station! I didn't say that no CF model has had "visor"-type optics... I said: While most CF variants tend to have "monoeye face" with a single large polarized cover over a multitude of optics and other sensors, there are a few out there that go against the grain. The VF-4A has a visor-type monitor turret, as does the VF-5000B Star Mirage, and the VF-14A Vampire. The VF-171 Nightmare Plus is also a visor type, as does the Sv-262Ba. ... if not for the VF-5000B's presence on that list, I would say all of the exceptions are General Galaxy's fault.😆 (Well, the Macross II Valkyries all go in on visor types too... since they've largely gotten rid of the A-type head in that timeline as of the 2070s or so.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    If that's a virus, it's absolutely endemic anywhere modern "horror" stories are told... and it's why most modern "horror" isn't remotely scary. Effective horror needs tension, and it's hard to build tension if your characters are falling over each other in a bid to be first to become Purina brand Monster Chow™️. Making sure a monster or killer has a huge body count isn't scary in and of itself. The gore is just gore. If the audience knows where it is at all times because it's constantly mugging for the camera its ability to frighten is thoroughly minimized. Likewise, if the killer's victims consistently exhibit a lack of common sense to the point of reckless disregard for their own safety and/or that of others it's next to impossible to get the audience in their corner to build tension over their fate. Combine those two problems and you have something that's gory but feels a bit like one of those comically over-the-top safety video parodies than something intended to frighten. Alien: Earth's whole plot is full of people doing the dumbest possible thing at any given moment.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's such a weird choice of character, if you think about it. Aisha Blanchett was the director of an SMS branch and an aerospace engineer with a basically unlimited budget and a romance with a SMS pilot... so how'd she end up in the boonies working for a different PMC as a clinical pathologist? Those aren't exactly related branches of science. I guess she's become some kind of Star Trek-y omnidisciplinary scientist. It's weird that they wouldn't just use the existing character that the gaiden manga already established was a Var syndrome researcher and the developer of a fair bit of the Tactical Sound Unit kit... Zola's Dr. Hoyly. Doubly so given that Dr. Hoyly's mentor was one of the leading researchers studying dimensional resonance effects and she was heavily influenced by the work of Dr. Chiba.
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