Seto Kaiba

The Akusho-type is too new... it screams 2030s construction, and seems natively compatible with a late 2030s 3rd Generation emigrant ship. Whether it even has an independent propulsion system is unknown. The Qultra Queleual-class, well... that'd be the obvious choice among Zentradi ships since it's a comparatively lightly-armed ship that is basically a massive box designed to have the maximum possible carrying capacity. If you're looking to haul a lot of stuff in the short term, it's probably about the best option available at the time. They do, though given what we know of fold carbon and the fact that fold quartz was not properly known or understood until the late 2040s it seems unlikely that anyone was out there mining for fold carbon when it could be synthesized in industrial quantities. (The assumption that fold carbon was being mined at all comes from the bizarre statement about the presence of coal mines on one emigrant planet... a material that would be totally useless to a civilization with ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power.) Yeah, Circle FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy Vol.2 gives the ship the unofficial/fan name of "Osaka-class". Max's first command, which he is promoted to at the end of Macross M3 Episode 6, is the stealth space cruiser Haruna. (ステルス宇宙巡洋艦ハルナ suterusu uchuu jun'youkan Haruna) Oddly, this is the second Spacy ship Haruna with the first having been ARMD-10. We're never told what class the second Haruna was, but given the circumstances it's probably also an Algenicus-type stealth space cruiser. It's perhaps worth mentioning that FANKY's attempt to explain the nonexistence of the Frontier stealth cruiser in Macross 7 is that the class was not introduced until ~2041, which would pass the sniff test as a justification for why it is not seen among the Earth defense flotilla in 2040 or the 37th fleet in 2045-6 but is present in the 55th fleet forces. Official media generally suggests that the Macross 7-era ships are mostly products of the very late 2020s and early-to-mid 2030s. The Northampton-class seems to be the oldest, being present in the Macross 1 fleet alongside ARMD II-class space carriers while later fleets had the Guantanamo-class and Uraga-class.

The New UN Spacy stealth cruiser is presented as a distinct class of warship separate from the Northampton-class frigate it's based on. The problem is that it is has only ever officially been referred to as "stealth cruiser", never by any kind of name in official media. It's listed in Macross Chronicle as "Space Cruiser Stealth Cruiser".

Which was initially difficult to explain, but now has an easy/obvious answer in "they're just using larger and/or higher-purity fold crystals in the fold system". Ever since Macross Frontier - or technically Macross Dynamite 7 - the size and quality of the fold crystals used in many forms of overtechnology has been the go-to explanation for differences in performance and capability in almost every major form of overtechnology. High-purity fold crystals are in high demand in the military and private sectors for use in fold navigation, fold communication, cross-dimensional radar, thermonuclear reactors, gravity and inertia controllers, beam weapons, and so many more technologies essential to Humanity's burgeoning interstellar civilization. It certainly explains why the poachers in Macross Dynamite 7 were so determined and so suspiciously well-connected. The previous vague statements about how the products of galactic whales could be used in spacecraft engines almost certainly means they contain very high-purity fold carbon which would naturally be a rare and high-demand material until synthesis processes caught up. It may well be. Jupiter is a gas giant, after all. It may not have a surface you can stand on but that doesn't mean it doesn't have obvious value beyond pure scientific curiosity. It's basically a giant ball of fuel that mother nature obligingly gathered into one place. The atmosphere is principally hydrogen and helium isotopes, meaning collection and processing of atmospheric gases can yield valuable fuels for thermonuclear reactors as well as elemental hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells and combustion engines. (Gundam's Universal Century timeline has permanent colonies around Jupiter for the same purpose, to extract and process deuterium and helium-3 to be shipped back to Earth in the massive tankers of the Jupiter Energy Fleet.) Yeah, we gotta go through that footage and find the first one that gets named and just use that... the same way Star Trek does for ships without an official class name. Available materials suggest they used lightly converted Zentradi ships from the former Vrlitwhai branch fleet. Having remained within a 100ly distance of Earth means they were able to lean much more heavily on Earth for resources to set up their colonies too. There's definitely an element of luck to it. The process of exploration, at least as it's been defined for the audience, is pretty simple. The emigrant fleet folds into a region of space and dispatches pilot fleets from its escort that scout out the nearby star systems for either usable resources or viable planets to colonize. If they don't find a suitable planet among the star systems they've scouted in that region they jump to the next likely area their advance scouting detail identified. They repeat this process until they find a suitable planet. They lack Star Trek-style FTL sensors that can identify habitable worlds from light years away and the means to scan the worlds they pass while folding (because fold navigation is basically teleporting) so a map of the space they're exploring might look like a string of pearls with each pearl being the sphere of space they studied between fold jumps.

That may have more to do with the 55th Fleet doing a lot more exploring and scouting on its way towards the galactic core since their objective was Vajra space for the sake of a fold quartz gold rush. Fold faults may be denser near the core too, which may also account for it. Megaroad-04 crossed the entire galaxy and ended up running into the fold faults surrounding Windermere IV on the far side of the Brisingr globular cluster in 2027, a bit over ten years after departing Earth c.2015/2016. It seems to vary heavily, explicitly dependent on the quality of the fold system (and its fold carbon core), the precision of the fold navigation calculations, and local conditions (e.g. intense gravity fields, fold faults). (For instance, the trip to Gallia IV that would have been almost instantaneous if not for fold faults that turned it into a day-long trip with a week's time loss.) Master File has one of the very few semi-official statements of an actual distance-over-time, with the account of the Spica III incident noting that the ~260 light year distance between Earth and Spica III in the Alpha Virginis system is less than a day's travel time for a high-speed cruiser c.2037. Prior to that, the only other explicit mention of travel time without stops was a speed record for the Eden-Earth run (11.7ly) at 112 minutes from a piece that was done to promote a model kit.

Probably very few, if any at all. The farthest-flung emigrant fleets and planets are said to be literal years away from Earth by space fold due to a combination of distance, system limitations, and route conditions. By the same token, the military component of an emigrant fleet has always at least nominally been under the authority of the emigrant fleet's civilian government and most if not all of it was always meant to stay with the emigrant government as the foundation of its local New UN Forces. The military reforms imposed after the Second Unification War cemented that local control over an emigrant fleet's attached New UN Forces. IINM the only known case of an emigrant fleet ship ending up back in service of the central New UN Forces that we know of is one or more of the Macross-class SDFNs that were used to scout ahead of early emigrant fleets. The SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global ended up back in Earth NUNS hands and was later used as flagship of the 117th Research Fleet for their voyage into Vajra space.

To be accurate, what's described there isn't just Earth's defenses. That's the combined forces of the Solar System Defense Perimeter that protects all of the inhabited planets of the Sol system. Fans often forget - because we are not often reminded - that there are a lot of other places in the Sol system that people live besides Earth's surface. Luna has multiple colonies and at least one military base on it. There are O'Neill cylinder space colonies, factory stations, and multiple factory satellites at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Mars has cities on its surface. There are "satellite city" constructs orbiting Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. There are bases and possibly colonies on the Jovian moons including at least seven on Europa (given that Isamu is assigned to Europa Base 7 at one point). There is at least one base in the asteroid belt. This massive fleet that Master File's describing protects all of that. One thing of note is that there are, at least according to official media, a bunch of variants of the Northamption-class and similar that we have simply not seen. Macross Chronicle mentions the Northampton-class having specialized variants intended for enhanced combat capability, reconnaissance, or early warning/picket duties. The same is likely true of its derivatives, like the NUNS stealth cruiser from Frontier. The aforementioned aegis destroyer is probably the early warning variant Northampton. We've only really had two or three classes of cruiser in-series so far, so odds are the guided missile cruiser is a variant of the 2050s-era stealth cruiser fitted with more missile launchers in place of its beam turrets. There's only really one known candidate for a NUNS-affiliated beam gunboat and that's the Zentradi one. Yeah, perhaps too much so given that it's never even mentioned in Project Super Nova. That's not the kind of thing that's easy to cover up. One important thing to note about the numbers published by/for the Russian and Chinese navies is that they tend to inflate the number of available ships by counting anything the government owns that floats as a Navy ship. Including ships like military-owned conventional motorboats, launches, landers, and ships that are not even technically operational but still kept on the fleet register for morale/propaganda reasons like Russia's infamous drydock queen and only aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov. Yeah, that's a bit large... official media usually says that the Guantanamo-class carries ~45 aircraft and and the Uraga-class ~75 aircraft. It's possible that these air wings are being split across multiple ships in the same taskforce, since some ships like the Northampton-class can carry up to a single platoon of Valkyries in normal operations (meaning just one squadron might be split across 5+ ships). It makes more sense when you consider that, under normal circumstances (at least based on 7 and Frontier) that carriers make up 1/3 or less of a typical fleet formation. The 37th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet's military component amounted to 186 ships with 66 carriers of various grades and 120 escorts. The balance is arguably a little different from that in normal operation since the Battle-class, four Uraga-class, one Guantanamo-class, and one Northampton-class are tied up with emigrant ships of varying types, leaving the operational fleet with 60 carriers (16 Uraga-class and 44 Guantanamo-class) and 119 Northampton-class frigate escorts.

Even if evacuation is your aim, being able to delay the enemy while you prepare that evacuation is pretty important. From that same account in Master File, the 73 ships and ~600 Valkyries of the Spica III New UN Spacy defense force were able to stall the advance of the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet for a period of several hours using their entire stockpile of thermonuclear reaction weapons. Their sacrifice buys enough time for a partial evacuation to be organized and get more than 20,000 civilians offworld and out of harm's way.

He is, but he's also a culture war grifter so accurate reportage is not exactly his thing. 🫤

He often does... with highly questionable accuracy at the best of times.

That's depend on the size of the main fleet... they run from a few hundred thousand to a few million ships. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur relates the story of an encounter with a 120,000 ship main fleet in 2037 as part of the VF-19/VF-22 development backstory. After losing a colony in the Alpha Virginis system to the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet the New UN Forces rounded up every ship and Valkyrie within 300 light years of Earth and proceeded to throw them all at that main fleet spamming pretty much every thermonuclear reaction weapon they could lay hands on until the much-reduced enemy fleet was driven off. Emigrant fleet defense forces of a few hundred ships are meant to be enough to run off or wipe out a Zentradi branch fleet. 2,500+ ships won't run off a Zentradi main fleet the size of Boddole Zer's ~5 million ships, but it will absolutely bring enough hurt to drive off or destroy smaller forces that are more typically encountered.

Presumably it varied a bit depending on how similar the technology in question was to what we already had or whether they were simply practical versions of technology that already existed in theory. After the establishment of OTEC in 2000 and the Earth Unification Government in 2001, the investment in OTM research was both global and massive. Human-made imitations of at least some OTMaterials were available as early as March 2001 (after about 2 years of study), and once they solved certain core principles the dominos started falling faster and faster with a crude OTM thermounuclear reactor being brought online by November 2002, etc. Practical laser weapons seem to have also been developed quite quickly, first seeing use in the mid-2000s. That is a bit different, IMO. Scotty didn't hand the formula for transparent aluminum to a multinational research organization with unlimited funding backed by a world government. He handed it over to a material scientist turned plant supervisor at a small plexiglass manufacturing company in 1980s San Francisco (or Burglingame, per the script). What little information we have on the subject indicates that both US and Russian-made "legacy" fighter designs like the F-14 and Su-27 that were improved with OTM were mainly receiving structural improvements/reinforcements using early/crude pseudo-OTMaterials to make them more durable and slightly stealthier. At least where the F-14++ Tomcat is concerned, it's often mentioned that these were old/retired/mothballed airframes being rushed back into service with whatever improvements could be thrown together quickly due to a critical shortage of viable aircraft. Such improvements were typically limited to replacing certain parts with harder-wearing ones made from early OTM composites, avionics modernization, and newer model engines. Master File opines that the experimental SuX-27 Flanker its writers invented for backstory purposes also received a prototype laser cannon similar to those that would one day be adopted by the Octos and VF-0. We see that MiG-29 deploying early infrared-guided micro missiles, and Master File suggests that those and early hybrid-guided longer-ranged missiles like the OTM-based hybrid guidance AMRAAM2 were also on the table. Since VFs with active stealth had yet to really make their presence known, most of the weapons used were conventional NATO and Warsaw Pact hardware like the AIM-9X, AIM-120D, etc.

Yeah, it's one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments. It doesn't get discussed much because we know basically nothing about it and the Macross Zero CG model(s) for the MiG-29 aren't detailed enough to identify which variant of the MiG-29 is even being used. Even Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix, which goes into much more detail, barely mentions Mikoyan Gurevich's designs in passing since it has almost its entire focus on Sukhoi since they did a lot of the heavy lifting in the Alliance's VF program. (The only MiG it really mentions is an OTM testbed called the MiG-2000 that appears to have nothing in common with the real/proposed MiG-2000, and which is itself mentioned only in passing in a section about a Sukhoi transitional model that rejoices in the uninspiring designation of SuX-27.) The only book I know of that actually mentions this aircraft is the first volume of Tenjin Hidetaka's Valkyries artbook series. On page 43, in a note on the box art for the Hasegawa 1/72 Macross Zero MiG-29 Fulcrum kit from 2002, a brief mention is made that a canard-equipped version of the MiG-29 appears in Ep5. Presumably this unknown MiG-29 with canards is a lukewarm/early OTM adopter similar to the UN Forces F-14++ Tomcat Double Plus that was being used to both return an older model aircraft to service and evaluate some technologies being developed for future use in Variable Fighters. Using the SV-51's missile pod/drop tank units isn't terribly surprising since the SV-51 is backwards compatible with Warsaw Pact hardware and given how ineffective the F-14's weapons were against the active stealth-equipped VF-0 they'd probably want some OTM-based munitions so they could actually fight the Asuka II's VF-0s.

No, in this case it's a fellow Starfleet cadet who just happens to be named Genesis. I mean, that's happened too... but, y'know, eight hundred years in the past during a much better Star Trek series.

So, the newest episode of Starfeet Academy is "The Life of the Stars". Once again, we witness that this incarnation of Starfleet Academy seems to be run in the most incompetent manner possible. What is the point of a bridge simulation where the person serving as captain is not only not leading, but seemingly actively hindering and belittling the students? It can, at least, be said with confidence that the writers room firmly understands the character from Discovery. That is to say, she only opens her mouth to say the stupidest thing possible at any given moment. There's a very good reason that the one and only competent officer to serve on the Discovery in the 32nd century took an instant dislike to her, told her on no uncertain terms to STFU, and ultimately drove her off the ship entirely. Even Reno seems to find her quietly disgusting, comparing her presence to a toothache and describing her manner as "nightmarish". Is it just me, or is this show allergic to depicting competence in even the smallest degree? I actually admire that Darem has the brass ones to point out that not only do none of the cadets really give a damn about Tilly's class. I can sympathize. I feel myself tuning the episode out every time Mary Wiseman opens her mouth. Line of the episode: It's such a weird thing to say, given that she is literally a mind reader. Her entire species are mind readers. It's their entire goddamn hat. Not only that, she's such a powerful mind reader she can accidentally give people brain damage. This scene is so badly written it's giving the audience brain damage. Honestly, I'm with the Kasqians on this one... Oh. My. God. NICE JOB BREAKING IT, B'ELANNA! So one cheap fix handled montage-style we've killed and unkilled a main cast member for shiggles because it's literally faster than giving them actual character development. Honestly tho... this is the second episode where we've had an implicit character assassination for a 90's-era Trek character. First it was turning Ben Sisko into an absent father, now B'Elanna's sadism is giving people centuries of PTSD.

I doubt it... because I really do not believe that Paramount sincerely wants to acquire Warner Bros. It's more than they can reasonably afford to spend and they have to know that it's only going to invite unwanted scrutiny from regulators and antitrust enforcement. It seems unlikely that they would be able to find a party willing to finance the deal and the debt it would require taking on would almost certainly ruin them. If it does make it in front of the courts, it'll likely be Warner Bros shareholders suing Paramount to compel them to close the deal like what happened to the muskrat's unserious offer to buy Twitter.

Kind of suspect this will ultimately fall apart when the question of financing is finally raised for real. After all, Paramount Skydance is still dealing with the debt, cashflow, and valuation problems from the merger of Viacom and CBS into Paramount seven years ago. The merger with Skydance and National Amusements was a fiscal desperation move that only made their problems worse as the organization got even more bloated. I'm guessing Paramount intends to back out after making a show of trying and failing to get financing, content in having denied Warner Bros to Netflix. Basically what the muskrat tried to do with Twitter before he got sued and the courts forced him to close the deal.

Well, after blowing most of the show's budget on the ridiculously elaborate atrium set to the detriment of literally everything else they're naturally gonna shoot the money... Eh... that's such a common trope across Star Trek that it's hardly grounds to complain. Star Trek loves "A form you are comfortable with" for alien-created illusions, hallucinations, visions, and what have you. The Prophets in DS9 used it almost exclusively, only ever creating one original locale in the entire series. TBH, I've been expecting audiences to turn on AI characters for a while now thanks to the public's general overestimation of what modern AI technology is and the widespread (and entirely correct) view that that technology really only produces mindless derivative slop with no redeeming value. A bit unfair to characters like Data or the Doctor, IMO, who are self-aware artificial general intelligences rather than mindless virtual assistants like the computer voice interface... but still expected given the present climate. (In "The Ensigns of Command", Data seems to regard his own artistic experiments as AI slop due to believing he was not capable of originality... even advising Picard to see a different violinist's performance for essentially that reason.)

Around the 2/3 mark on the current season, not a lot of the shows I've tried have had much to show for themselves. I'm particularly frustrated by The Casebook of Arne because, despite its pretensions to being a detective story, it's so badly composed that calling it a detective story feels like a slight against actual detective stories. (Esp. since the answer to each mystery is usually whatever the most obvious supernatural monster is given the circumstances. It basically obeys none of Knox's Ten Commandments for mystery writing so every deduction and every conclusion feels like an arse pull AND baby's first mystery at alternating times. A lot of the suspected isekai and adjacent slop turned out to just be actual isekai and adjacent slop. Jack-of-all-Trades, Party of None is your usual overpowered protagonist affair. A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation is almost the embodiment of tedium. Isekai Office Worker started out interesting but after a few episodes it's basically just the same joke on his lover's overprotectiveness over and over. The Villainess is Adored by the Prince of the Neighboring Kingdom is an otome series with none of the usual parody of subversion, so it's not funny or interesting it's just the adventures of a blatant Mary Sue. I've had a bit more fun with romcoms like Tamon's B-Side, which remains both a romcom and a frank examination of how phenomenally toxic and fake the idol industry is.

Well, in that case you may like Macross II: Lovers Again because it is really just more of that. In terms of themes, tone, and content it's easily the sequel closest to the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie. It's a very "safe" sequel that takes relatively few risks and doesn't do much to change up the established formula. It's very like a Gundam sequel in that regard. That lack of innovation is one of the main criticisms Macross fans level at the OVA. The setting hasn't really changed substantially despite 80 years of in-universe time passing. The mechanical designs are, in large part, 90's updated versions of the original designs instead of anything really new or radically different. Well, like I mentioned above it's a very "safe" sequel that's not really taking many risks with its story. It still has the same themes about idols and song as a form of communication, but mixed in with a plot heavily inspired by Roman Holiday and some new themes about nationalism, xenophobia, and journalistic integrity. The one area where it really diverges from the established formula is that its protagonist is a civilian journalist rather than a soldier, which lets the story go in some new directions. I think most fans would agree that it's merely "pretty good" where most other Macross titles are usually "great". Partly because 6 OVA episodes isn't really enough time to fully develop every character, so the love triangle can feel a bit one-sided. It is the title that hews most closely to the original form of the Macross formula, so if that's what you're after you'll probably enjoy it.

I guess now that Gainax is no more, Anno and Khara have arrived at the realization they have to actually do work. 😅 This May is Khara's 20th anniversary and their filmography's so thin it makes you wonder what they've been doing all that time. This new Evangelion series is only their second actual TV series project in that entire time. Their total non-Evangelion animation output in 20 years amounts to one movie (Mary and the Witch's Flower), 12 TV episodes (GQuuuuuuX), two 45 minute specials (The Dragon Dentist), a 20 minute video game promo (Gravity Rush), and about three-dozen shorts with ~6 minute average runtime.

Sitting down to watch this week's new episode... Ko'Zeine. Honestly, the episode title sounds like a sleep aid. (Not even being sarcastic there, and I work for a company where like 2/3 of the staff have made the joke that our company name ALSO sounds like a medication.) So apparently this one's premise is that the students go home to see family during what we're not going to call Spring Break but is definitely Spring Break? I guess we can't show the cadets going to Cancun (or Risa?) for Spring Break because it would be weird and out-of-place for them to be horny on main like they've been for the last six episodes right after that disastrous training exercise that got so many people killed. Of course, it also bears recognizing that Nahla Ake has been Chancellor of Starfleet Academy's Earth campus for a single semester and she's done such a rubbish job of it that there's now a death toll directly attributable to her irresponsible conduct. Honestly, the acknowledgement that the events of the previous episode were capital T "Traumatic" for the cadets and that they're still processing it even with the help of therapy is a rare thing for Star Trek and shows the writers are thinking. "You've got four pairs of boots in here! You don't even wear shoes!" - my candidate for line of the episode. "SUNSET MOON" is certainly a choice of caption. It makes no sense, even as a placename. "The Khionian Realm" isn't much more helpful. It's another planet subjected to the Piss Filter, because that's how you know you're outdoors... the sky looks like you're viewing it through a yard of cheap pilsner. The fan phrase "Dadmiral" has now graduated to an official part of the Star Trek lexicon after being used to refer to Admirals Paris and Mariner. Maybe the reason Darem's so worried is because all the decor on this moon seems to be shaped like a buttplug. The director's foot fetish is back. This time it's Reno's feet being jammed into the camera. Seriously. I am SO close to calling an exorcist to remove the vengeful spirit of Quentin Tarantino from the studio. Honestly, not a bad episode at all. This series seems to do character writing much better than it does anything to do with space adventure. Another licensed song over the credits this time... "We watch the stars" by Fink. Pretty much, yeah. Starfleet Academy's main problem is that the writing is horribly uneven. When the series wants to do character-focused drama, they actually do a pretty passable job at it. Some of the episodes (e.g. Kraag's focus episode) are almost worthy of the title of Star Trek and could be made quite good with only a few tweaks. But both times the series has tried to do Space Adventure in a vein similar to past Star Trek titles, the bottom has fallen out quality-wise and they've served up some Discovery-tier idiot plots. A secondary problem is that the show's writers want to do humor, but the kind of humor they want to do doesn't seem to be something they know how to integrate into the story organically. So the attempts at humor are very forced and unnatural and you can practically see the writer's wild-eyed desperation and unspoken plea of "Please laugh". Colbert's involvement is purely "humorous" in the sense that he seems to exist in the story purely to serve up "funny" non-sequiturs that aren't actually funny in-context or out. Many of the non-sequiturs involving one particular science officer's badly-behaved pet. (Why this needs to be announced over the tannoy instead of being called in to that officer directly is anyone's guess.)

Holodeck malfunctions, at least, don't require the crew to go and waste time making expensive, idiotic, and entirely unnecessary concessions to a bloodthirsty space pirate to resolve. When the safeties do go out, the program still doesn't go off the rails. The only hazards that exist are those that were already native to the program and simply being NERF'd by the holodeck safeties. Simulating the Miyazaki salvage operation would not have put the cadets in danger of being violently murdered by space pirates unless someone had deliberately programmed in a group of murderously violent space pirates. Otherwise, the only safety risks might be asphyxiating in the event of a hull breach or injury in the event that they had one of Star Trek's trademark exploding consoles. (If you didn't want the students to know they were in a simulation, all you'd need to do is beam them into the simulator from the ship.) "Come, Let's Away" was the story of a completely preventable disaster that resulted in the deaths of a cadet, an Academy instructor, and an unknown but implicitly large number of other Starfleet personnel aboard the USS Sargasso and Starbase J19-Alpha because the Academy chancellors decided to do this training exercise for their first year cadets in the most irresponsible and unsafe manner imaginable. Not only in uncontrolled conditions aboard a derelict ship, but in unsecured contested space no less.

There are two right on the front page... one of which is someone else asking basically the same question.😅 Well, without knowing you it's kind of hard to answer an open-ended question like that. Personally, I would say that Macross II: Lovers Again is just as worthy of your time as any other Macross title. It was kind of the odd man among Macross sequels (at least prior to Delta) in that it didn't take a radically new approach to the setting. It's a fairly safe, conventional sequel that builds on what came before but takes no major risks with it. It presents a rather different view of Macross's future than the sequels that came after, built exclusively on DYRL?.

Oh yes, that's Variable Fighter VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 page 78. There's a blocked-off section on that page that talks about how OTM-based threaded fasteners work and how the Human engineers from OTEC were flummoxed by what the Protoculture had done with a concept as simple as threaded fasteners. Their analysis found two revolutionary concepts: The bolts/screws they studied were machined with zero fit, meaning they were machined so precisely that there were absolutely no gap of any kind between the root and thread of the screw and the socket they engage with. The surface of the bolts/screws and sockets were treated with molecule-thin layers of two different compounds that contact bond to each other via intermolecular forces and secure the bolt/screw in the socket until a certain amount of torque is applied at which point the bolt/screw turns freely (but which will re-bond cleanly once torque is no longer being applied). You've probably seen videos like the below showing off near-zero tolerance machining... but zero fit machining is even more precise than that. The molecular coating is a bit harder. In principle it's a bit like loctite, but somehow built into the screw/bolt and socket respectively and infinitely rebondable. Something like that is a bit beyond our modern technology and would definitely provide a more secure fit than anything we can currently achieve.

There's a pretty good reason given directly in the episode for why they wouldn't be able to send holograms over... the Miyazaki had no power, so the holoemitters that have lined the corridors of ships for emergency hologram use since VOY "Message in a Bottle" wouldn't be operational. (SAM presumably has something like Arnold Rimmer's light bee keeping her program going?) The idiot ball moment is more "Why was it necessary to go to contested space and put the first-year cadets in actual danger when they could have just as easily simulated this using a training ship or just a regular holodeck where they would not be in any danger of being murdered by space pirates?" We know Starfleet Academy has had simulator training since before the holodeck was even a thing... the infamous Kobayashi Maru test that Kirk infamously cheated was one.