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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far, I don't believe the ARMD-like structure on the side of the Megaroad-class has ever been identified as a separately-operable warship. This is Animation Special: Macross Plus offers the only other known official paintjob for a Valkyrie stationed aboard the SDF-2 Megaroad-01. SVF-184 Iron Chiefs aircraft 306 has "SDF-2" stenciled on its tail underneath the tailcode. The art drawn for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III shows the SVF-1 Skulls aircraft 101 with "MEGAROAD-01" on the stabilizer below the squadron emblem. On "docked" ships like the Macross-class (e.g. the SDF-1), the aircraft carry the name, designation, or both of the ship where they are physically stationed. So on the SDF-1 Macross, art books and Master File have a mixture of "PROMETHEUS" and "MACROSS" stencils depending on where the aircraft was located. Likewise, Xaos's VF-31s identify as being from either the Aether (Delta Flight's aircraft) or Hemera (the rest) rather than the Macross Elysion that had no aircraft support on its own. EDIT: Also... hell of a necropost. "13 years later...".
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It seems to be an ISP thing... I've noticed that I can't access @sketchley's site via my home internet connection, but accessing it from a mobile device without being on WiFi seems to work. For the most part, no. There are very few spaceships in Macross that are actually designed to operate inside of a planetary atmosphere. The vast majority are spacecraft intended for use only in space that can, in a pinch, operate in atmosphere by remaining aloft with gravity control. There are a few exceptions, like the Queadol Magdomilla-class's forward section, which is more or less an excessively large landing craft, and the human-built Uraga-class and Battle-class that are designed to operate as naval vessels as well. Otherwise, planetary operations are mainly sustained via mecha able to make reentry and return to orbit under their own power or using landing craft as the Zentradi do. The reason you don't see many surface-capable space warships is that the Zentradi really don't bother with planetary invasions. The kind of war the Earth Unification Government planned for, a classic "alien invasion" where capturing and controlling a planet's surface was the objective, just doesn't happen because the standard Zentradi approach to dealing with an enemy planetary base is to flatten the whole place from orbit. Some surface-based defenses are OK in case an enemy scouting force does make planetfall, but otherwise there's not a lot of value fighting the Zentradi anywhere but in space. (This was also true in Macross II: Lovers Again, where space warships were essentially limited to water landings. The military's artificial island headquarters included wet docks to accommodate both human-made warships and captured Zentradi ones.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That's part of that largely undocumented decade or two, unfortunately... but given that the Variable Glaug was used by the Dancing Skulls in the late 2010s, and eventually became the basis for an unmanned fighter and then a 4th Generation equivalent manned derivative of that unmanned fighter, it seems a fairly safe bet that the Variable Glaug was at least moderately used during that period. Not really... just the basics of its origin like being based on a stolen VF-X-11 prototype. The equipment used by Black Rainbow, Vindirance, and other paramilitary groups seems to have been largely sourced from defense industry corporations playing both sides of the Second Unification War. It's designed to deploy human-made munitions, so it's a pretty safe bet it's human-designed.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    ARMD II-class is the semi-official name for the movie version ARMD used in Variable Fighter Master File and a couple of other places. It's not so much "designed for space" as "optimized for space". They can still fly reasonably well and fight effectively in an atmosphere, but with less agility than a VF that is designed to be all-regime or optimized for atmospheric service. In the case of models like the VF-19F/S, the optimization for space meant more verniers, abolishing some control surfaces that were not strictly necessary for flight in atmosphere (the canards), and changing the wing design to one that offered better internal fuel storage at the cost of some atmospheric agility.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Yesterday night, I was discussing the direction Picard has taken with a few friends on Discord and it struck me... most of new Trek's problems are because the creators are trying to turn it into something other than Star Trek. Where I've been wrong all along is that, where Abrams was trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars, Kurtzman et. al. are trying to turn Star Trek into Dune. Picard season one's Qowat Milat and Zhat Vash are just halves of the Bene Gesserit. The Qowat Milat got the Bene Gesserit's elite combatant and will-never-tell-a-lie traits, while the Zhat Vash got their ancient conspiracy pulling the strings of galactic government trait and the task of enforcing their off-brand equivalent of "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind". The extradimensional synths are nicked from the contested prequel Legends of Dune, specifically the Omnius AIs that were taken into another universe after attempting to enslave or destroy all human life. Discovery did the same, with the Spore Drive and Stamets basically being knockoffs of the Holtzman drive, spice, and the guild navigators, and arguably based Control on the Omnius as well.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, as half-arsed as Macross Delta was... I doubt they thought that far ahead. By all accounts, the ARMD II-class were the majority of space carriers until the Guantanamo-class was introduced somewhere around the 2030s. (If you buy Master File's account, there were somewhere on the order of 200 of them before the Guantanamo-class was introduced.) Macross 11 is a weird sort of hybrid. It's a City-class, and therefore a 3rd Generation emigrant ship, but it's got a vaguely Island Cluster-like train of smaller environment ships AND a Milky Road. Presumably the small environment ships are a similar type to the Akusho-type that was docked to the Macross 7 and home to Fire Bomber. Sort of... Macross Chronicle refers to the Spiritia Dreaming VF-14 as a "heavily armed" specification VF-14, not a Special Forces Valkyrie.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Exact specifications for the Macross 1 City-class are not given, but as it's explicitly a City-class just without the armored shell it can be assumed with relative safety that it's about 350,000. That type appears in the animation of Macross 7 in the pre-OP infoblurb early in the series. The shot they're in shows at least four ships of that type in Earth orbit, and the one closest to the viewer clearly has a Battle-class docked to it. (Also visible in a printed screen capture in This is Animation: Macross 7 on page 4.) For the record, we're not actually sure what the Island Jackpot is meant to be or how it fits into the history of emigrant ships in the Macross setting. Like a lot of things in Delta, it's simply not explained at all beyond the absolute basics. Island Jackpot is problematic for a bunch of reasons. It's clearly much smaller than the City-class 3rd Generation emigrant ship and the basic timeline of the Brisingr cluster being discovered by humanity would mean that it'd have to be either a 2nd or 3rd Generation emigrant ship. Macross Delta's animators didn't design a new model for it, though. It was a largely unaltered reuse of the Island-1 CG model from Macross Frontier. All they did was scale it down and draw a new interior texture for it. So it clearly isn't a City-class, and the design aesthetic doesn't really line up with anything we know about from that period. It's possible Island Jackpot is an exemplar of the never-seen and never-described 2nd Generation emigrant ship class that was used between the Megaroad-class 1st Generation emigrant ship and City-class/New Macross-class 3rd Generation emigrant ship. Given the available evidence, it appears the Queadluun-Rhea and YF-21 are VERY closely related... with both projects stemming from General Galaxy being contracted to restore the captured Quimeliquola factory satellite to working order in 2035. The New UN Forces project to develop a Queadluun-Rau replacement and a 4th Generation Variable Fighter were largely concurrent developments, and the YF-21 draws heavily on the experience and knowledge General Galaxy acquired from the restoration of the factory satellite that made the Queadluun-Rau for part of the Boddole main fleet. (Since the VF-17 was also mentioned as part of the previous quotation, I should note that while it is from approximately the same time period as the YF-19 and YF-21's development it's actually one generation older. The VF-17 is the last 3rd Generation VF, and was upgraded to nominal 3.5th Generation standing by the time of Macross 7 thanks to various tech upgrades.) Those remarks are based on evidence from the aforementioned Macross 1 scene in Macross 7. There are Northampton-class ships shown in formation with the four Macross 1-type City-class ships. (There is also a partial view of something that appears to be an ARMD II-class space carrier or a derivative thereof in the upper left corner of the shot.) The VF-17 entered service in 2037, though because it was a dedicated Special Forces Valkyrie it was not rolled out in significant numbers. The total number built was supposedly just 718 units. It likely didn't achieve combat readiness until 2038 or later, though that would be hard to pin a precise number on because the time of adoption by various emigrant fleets would be different, but the lower volume of them and the smaller size of the units would make it easier to achieve operational readiness since fewer personnel need retraining. The VF-25 and so on were a rather different situation since those were main Variable Fighters meant to be used by the rank-and-file, while the likes of the VF-17 were for the handpicked chosen few of the elite special forces. 1 million is the population of the entire Macross 7 fleet. 350,000 live in City 7, and the remainder are either soldiers stationed aboard the ~185 ships of the fleet's NUNS defense force or permanent residents of the various auxiliary and support ships accompanying City 7 to its destination like the resort ships, the aquaculture and agriculture ships, the factory ships, etc. (In Macross 7 Trash, this also includes one dedicated cemetary ship.) It's generally indicated that these ships are launched well below their actual maximum operating capacity, on the assumption that they will spend years and possibly decades on searching for an inhabitable planet to colonize. The Macross Frontier fleet, for instance, is noted to be running at around 1/10th of its maximum capacity in 2059 with 10 million people living there. There's no actual hard limit on the size of an emigrant fleet... so it's not clear why some emigrant fleets had multiple primary environment ships and others had only one. Macross 5 was shown with at least three City-class ships plus the same type of auxiliary ships the Macross 7 fleet used, so it's possible its initial population was simply that much bigger that they felt they needed three City-class ships, or they had fewer of the specialty auxiliary ships like the resort ship Riviera and had to incorporate recreational facilities into their main ships. Even Macross Galaxy, a 4th Generation emigrant ship, is noted to have continued using the same type of auxiliary ships as the Macross 7 fleet despite its much larger population and the much larger Mainland-type environment ship. It isn't until the 5th Generation Island Cluster-class that the functions of those auxiliary ships seem to have been absorbed into the main ship via its vastly more sophisticated Bioplant environmental maintenance functions. That's Island Jackpot, and no... we don't actually know what it is. As mentioned above, it's a reuse of the Island-1 CG model from Macross Frontier, but scaled down substantially.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So, it's a LOT from column A... but not without a little from column B. It's unclear if they were out-and-out unique, but the ships of the 35th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet "Macross 5" were definitely odd ones out. The fleet's population was composed entirely of Zentradi miclones and the ships produced for it adopted some Zentradi aesthetics and a greater-than-usual amount of Zentradi overtechnology. The reason I say "a little from column B" is because, as is true for modern supercarriers, no two examples of the Battle-class are truly identical. Even when they're building off of the same plans, little design concessions, modifications, phased-in upgrades, and so on are incorporated into their construction that deviate from the base spec... and that's before you consider intentional design alterations based on the newly-established fleet government's wants and needs. The ships of the Macross 5 fleet aren't the only deviations by a long way. Macross 1's City-class ships lack the armored "shell" seen on later models, and Macross 11 has huge heat dissipation fins and a train of smaller habitat ships. Unfortunately, we don't have precise details about when many designs that were first seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7 entered service, since the period between Flash Back 2012 and Macross Plus is largely devoid of coverage. We know the Queadluun-Rhea was developed in the mid-to-late 2030s and that production could not have begun earlier than 2040 since that was when the factory satellite that was to produce it was moved to its final location and resumed operation. We know the model of Queadluun-Rhea seen in Macross Frontier is a 2056 improved variant. Not really, most are mentioned only in passing... the only one that is discussed in significant depth is Macross Olympia, which is one of the 5th Generation fleets that was involved in codevelopment of the VF-25 after its YF-26 bombed out of their inter-fleet design competition.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Because the Zentradi have been off the proverbial leash for 500,000 years. In order for them to effectively fight against the newly-emerged Supervision Army, the ancient Protoculture had to rescind the directive "Do not interfere with the Protoculture" and were not able to successfully reissue/reinstate the directive after the Protodeviln sealing operation due to the massive losses they had sustained. The Zentradi haven't had actual contact with a Protoculture authority in half a million years, to the extent that the Protoculture's directives are considered literal ancient history, legend, or rumor. Even if emigrant fleets could convince a Zentradi fleet they were the Protoculture or the Protoculture's chosen successors, there's no guarantee the Zentradi would feel any obligation to obey new orders issued by that emigrant government because the directive "Do not interfere with the Protoculture" hasn't been in effective for 500 millennia. If they don't buy the emigrant fleet's bluff, then the emigrant fleet is likely to be lost with all hands. If they really don't buy the bluff, the fact that humanity's signature warship designs are partly based on an old Supervision Army warship class could REALLY come back to bite the entire galaxy if the Zentradi conclude that humans are a resurgent Supervision Army. (Master File has an account about the Macross Valiant fleet that suggests the New UN Gov't has a VERY aggressive policy intended to prevent the latter case. The New UN Forces go to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Zentradi from capturing any human-manufactured starships or anything that might give them information about human settlements and the scope of human space exploration. To such a degree that, in said account, the New UN Forces stage a daring rescue mission to evacuate a residential ship that botched their emergency fold away from a Zentradi fleet and then destroy the ship utterly with dimension eaters so that there was no chance of the Zentradi acquiring any information from its wreckage.) (Both sides of this coin occur in Macross: Eternal Love Song, in which a Zentradi main fleet enters the solar system to use Earth as a weapon against the Meltrandi fleet that's pursuing them. The Zentradi Burado main fleet, albeit motivated by Quamzin, has no real issue with getting Earth caught up in their battle. The Meltrandi Leplendis fleet, however, still respects the directive "Do not interfere with the Protoculture" and actually withdraws from area after concluding that Earth is a possible Protoculture world. leaving them open to a counterattack as they withdraw.)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Ascendance of a Bookworm's new season has finally started, after dropping two compilation episodes on us first. It picks up pretty much exactly where Ep26 left off, with Myne getting ready to move into the cathedral for the winter season. Her self-appointed mission to drag the fantasy world she lives in into the age of bulk-printed literature proceeds apace, with the first new episode featuring an apprentice blacksmith who seeks her out to become his patron, with her almost immediately hitting on the idea of having him make the parts for a mechanical printing press. Her DIY projects are also stirring up some drama among the trade guilds her work is stepping on the toes of. There's some excellent worldbuilding going on here, even if most of it comes in the form of Benno or Ferdinand explaining at length how Myne's latest brainstorm is rocking the proverbial boat.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure it'd be entirely accurate to say it loses the ability... they're just pointed in a less than helpful direction (i.e. pointing at the Valkyrie's body or wing surface due to being fixed-forward launchers situated near the knee rather than the hybrid clamshell type the 29 uses).
  12. Seto Kaiba
    By specs, I'd have to say it's probably the YF-29... since GERWALK mode frees up all of its weaponry at once except for the coaxial machine guns, and it has overall the highest total maneuverability performance and heaviest armor thanks to its top-tier ISC and the wingtip reaction engines.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Not really sure what to make of this question, TBH... do you mean in terms of specs, or just presentation in the anime?
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Maximilian Jenius is unstoppable... the YF-29 is just window dressing.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's a mystery... as others have said, all we're told is that the YF-29B is a higher-performance New UN Spacy Special Forces version of the YF-29 produced on a limited basis for the 815th Independent Squadron HAVAMAL's aces.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Oh. Yeah that's just paint.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Because Ernest Johnson's voice actor passed away... so they needed to replace him.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    He was at least a Colonel in the NUNS when he retired... very likely a Brigadier General or even higher. Not that that has any actual bearing on his rank in Xaos, which is a private civilian outfit. That said, Ozma's YF-29 in Macross 30 was basically a cosmetic difference and the Spacy's version (YF-29B) exceeded its performance and used the Alto-type head.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    After missing the last two years due to COVID, I'm definitely going to try to attend.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Movie Xaos definitely seems to be a much larger, more established organization than their TV counterparts... who had the one Macross Elysion-type ship, a handful of frigates, and not much else. (Of course, given how badly they get rolled by the Aerial Knights I'm not sure that actually makes their situation any better. If anything, it makes the curbstomping they receive less excusable even if the Elysion-type seems to be an older model Macross than the Quarter-class.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Thanks to a moderately slow day, I got to start watching this season's offerings. Started with Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It r=1-sinθ, the second season of Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It. This show is just as weird as I remember it being, equal parts edutainment program about the scientific method in general and occasionally biochemistry in particular, and a love comedy about two of the most willfully oblivious people around. The second season started more or less exactly where the first season left off, though the first episode has a lot more fanservice than I remember it having. The new characters, Chris and Suiu, are a couple and VERY showy about their relationship and public displays of affection that border on public indecency... to the dismay and bewilderment of Himuro and Yukimura. The whole mess - involving measuring oxytocin levels using saliva tests - very quickly winds up a pastiche of Dragon Ball Z complete with a backdrop of a barren wasteland full of plateaus and rock formations. It's just weird enough to draw you in if you let it, and just absurd enough to keep you watching to see what nonsense they'll get up to next.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It's more a concern for fleet size in general... the 1st Generation and 2nd Generation emigrant fleets that used the Megaroad-class emigrant ships were small, with populations in the tens of thousands and only a few dozen ships in total. A fleet like that can't realistically expect to fight a Zentradi branch fleet even with the advantage of surprise, so for that period evasion was basically the only option. (Mind you, the Megaroad-class was far from defenseless... it just wasn't a warship in and of itself. They had Valkyries of their own, but were mostly dependent on escort ships for anti-warship defense. Some of those early fleets were able to bolster their forces somewhat with one of the twelve mass-production Macross-class ships.) Later fleets using the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Generations of emigrant ship had much larger populations and were consequently much better defended. Those fleets were built for long-term operations with plenty of breathing room for population growth. The 3rd Generation City-class could support 350,000 people all on its own and the exemplar Macross 7 fleet (37th long-distance emigrant fleet) had a total population of approximately 1 million and almost 200 escort ships. Its successors went even bigger, with the 5th Generation Island Cluster-class (e.g. Macross Frontier) supporting 10 million while operating at only a fraction of their maximum capacity. (Some of the emigrant fleets from that same period in the non-official setting materials like Master File are alleged to have ~900 warships in their escort details.) Newer generations of Valkyrie, stealthier and higher-performance warships, and simply way more forces in general made having to actually fight a Zentradi force a bit less untenable, but avoidance was still the normal because hey... why take chances with that many lives? There isn't one... that's a translation problem. In short, the same kanji (移民 imin) is used for both "immigrant/immigration" and "emigrant/emigration". Which one you use is dependent on a contextual reading of the sentence and/or situation it's used in. Properly, in this case it should be "emigrant/emigration" since these fleets are departing Earth (nominally a nation) to go establish a new nation on an uninhabited planet somewhere. You're only an immigrant (or immigrating) if you're moving into an existing nation with the intent to take up residence there. Most machine translations just go with whatever Definition #1 for a word is since they're not sensitive to context, so they tend to default to rendering it as "immigrant/immigration" rather than the proper, contextually-correct "emigrant/emigration". (This tendency is a big part of why those translation apps tend to produce Engrish and cases of My Hovercraft is Full of Eels, especially with tonal languages.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    That's basically what I described... the cast was so huge that most of them ended up as specific, but undeveloped, character archetypes that the audience was expected to project onto instead of relate to. They did an OK job developing Hayate, Freyja, etc., but IMO too many characters on the protagonist side were expected to float on by on their resemblance to Frontier characters who were properly developed. Arad being a suspiciously similar substitute for Ozma, Mikumo for Sheryl, etc. In the late series, Roid for Grace and Keith for Brera.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    "This End Towards Enemy".
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Xaos, but yeah... it's shocking how Xaos was basically living paycheck-to-paycheck in the TV series and ran out of money almost immediately once they were ousted from Brisingr, but in there and the movies they seem to have an infinite bank account to fund expensive custom Valkyries. Hm... maybe those two things are connected. Maybe the reason Xaos is flat broke is because they're spending their entire operating fund on these super-expensive ace custom Valkyries.
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