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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    It wasn't my intention to criticize your math, and I apologize if it came off that way despite my intention. I was just affirming that, yeah, that's probably how the M.A.T. group arrived at their original number before using that as a springboard to jump into the more up-to-date details and why the linear scaling of the crew size doesn't quite work as TehPW had posted previously.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That, or something very like it, is probably the math that M.A.T. used when they wrote the original spec for Sky Angels. Of course, when you think about it, it doesn't actually make sense for the size of the crew to scale linearly with the volume of the ship. After all, even if the ship gets bigger there are a LOT of departments that really would not require or benefit from increased staffing. The only areas it'd actually be 100% necessary would be the engine room, the carrier air wing (to support the greater number of aircraft), and the ship's mess. Revised versions of the stats published in Variable Fighter Master File keep a shocking amount of the details I gave previously, but scale the crew and aircraft complements back to more reasonable numbers... 2,700 crew for the Prometheus herself, 2,200 staff in the carrier air wing, and approximately 180 aircraft of various types (primarily Valkyries). Revised numbers put her about on par with a Gerald R. Ford-class supercarrier in terms of regular crew but with about twice the number of aircraft.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Good question... no firm answer? In Ep19 of Super Dimension Fortress Macross the Power-Up Glaug's debut appears to be on something like a catapult, but it's the only example I can recall and it's not clear if it's a catapult. A thousand light years at a time with months of down time inbetween? That's a VERY long drive indeed. Pack some snacks. One thing's guaranteed... Vajra.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not so sure... it wasn't until the Zentradi detected residual fold activity in the Sol system that anyone really sat up and took notice of Earth. If it hadn't been for that Supervision Army ship defolding and crashing on Earth in 1999, Earth could potentially have continued to fly under the radar for centuries. (Colonel Todo in Macross 30 certainly seems to have thought so, anyway...) There is a certain unintentional cosmic horror aspect to it in terms of just how insanely hostile the galaxy is thanks to the Protoculture's screwups, and how stupidly lucky humans are to have lasted as long as they have. (Like a near-miss with extinction when the Birdhuman activated for the first time before forcibly deactivating itself via decapitation.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I know you were motived by nothing but the most earnest desire to help, the factoid wasn't correct or really relevant to the question... and it's not a case of newer material, it's that Google Translate still kinda sucks. 🤣 To hopefully lend some clarity to the matter, the "Supervision" in "Supervision Army" is written 監察 (Kansatsu). The header on that page in the This is Animation Special: Macross 7 book says 査察 (Sasatsu) and 臨検艦 (Rinken-kan). "Investigation - Raid(ing) Warship".
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... yes and no. The Supervision Army began as an improvised military force the Protodeviln created using the Protoculture and Zentradi they captured, drained of their spiritia, and brainwashed to fight for them. There were miclones among them because part of the force was made up of brainwashed Protoculture civilians, but much of their force was composed of Zentradi soldiers who'd been unable to fight back against the brainwashed Protoculture due to their primary directives prohibiting interference with the Protoculture. The Supervision Army gunship that became the Macross is not small because it was intended for a miclone crew... it was just a small class of ship to begin with, a medium-scale gunship analogous to the Zentradi medium-scale gunship. Since much of their force consisted of captured Zentradi, most of their equipment is Zentradi in origin. It's probable that they are in the modern day, they weren't initially. At no point is it referred to as a rare class... a low encounter rate is justified given that the Supervision Army withdrew from the region of space around Earth in the 1960s. ... because, when the original series was made, the lore hadn't been fleshed out yet. It's not a competing theory, so don't cite it like one. No, it was a ship from the Varauta system NUNS. ... and none of what you wrote after this has anything to do with the question! Stay on topic!
  7. Seto Kaiba
    It certainly explains where the UN Forces got the idea to blame South Ataria island's disappearance on the Anti-Unification forces... they were actually expecting, and actively prepared for, an attack on the Macross launch ceremony. (Makes you wonder how big of an attack they thought the AUN remnant could pull off... with hundreds of Valkyries and Destroids on station, at least one supercarrier and massive assault ship on station and battened down in anticipation of a tactical reaction weapon strike, and in Macross the First a SECOND supercarrier... (The Asuka II's sister ship CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    My completionist tendencies are showing, so here's a summary of the Daedalus-class section from the Sky Angels book as well. PLEASE NOTE, THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS LORE THAT IS NO LONGER CURRENT/CORRECT Development of the Daedalus-class semi-submersible amphibious assault ship began around the same time as that of the Prometheus-class, intended for use by the Navy/Marines. In order to address economic policy issues in Japan following Japan's substantial/overwhelming investment in the UN Government's Sea Lane Defense Plan, the planned construction of the Daedalus was moved to Japan's Yashu Heavy Industries shipyard. Key American-manufactured components including the ship's reactor and waterjet turbine engines were built in America and sent to Japan for installation. Construction began in November 2003, with the Daedalus originally scheduled to enter service in mid-2007. Completion was delayed due to design changes from the Macross strategic system and the introduction of OTM. The class was originally conceived as a Marine Corps LPH (Landing Platform, Helicopter) intended to deploy infantry by helicopter but was reworked into a landing ship for Destroids after the introduction of OTM. The Daedalus-class's design with two islands mounted on an airfoil-like structure was a design concession intended to increase the depth the main deck could submerge when the ship operated in semi-submersible mode. The base of the port bridge contains a collection of phased-array radar modules (Aegis Kai type) with an Integrated Tactical Amphibious Warfare Data System installed to facilitate command and control operations over the embarked Destroids. The Daedalus's flight deck can accommodate 22 normal-sized helicopters, 12 Sikorsky Super Sea Stallion heavy lift helicopters, or 12 VTOL aircraft concurrently. The hangar deck is approximately 400m long and 55m wide, with a two-layer structure able to accommodate over 200 MBR-04 or MBR-07 series Destroids and 2-3 HWR-00 series Destroids. There are two large and two small elevators on each side (loading capacity 300t and 100t respectively) and the entire bow functions as a ramp. The amphibious dock well is below the hangar and is four decks high, with enough space to support 20 landing craft. There are also quarters/living facilities for approximately 12,000 marines aboard. During the Macross launch ceremony, the Marine Corps along with the Destroid battalion embarked were protected by multiple layers of watertight bulkheads and radiation shielding in preparation for a possible attack by the remnants of the Anti-Unification Forces. Due to this, the embarked troops were able to survive the unexpected fold jump and the ship finding itself in the vacuum of space. The Daedalus's keel was laid on 12 November 2003. She was launched on 20 January 2008, and commissioned into UN Forces service on 10 June 2008. Her fully-loaded displacement is 570500t. Like the Prometheus, the Daedalus is powered by four Westinghouse A7W nuclear fission reactors providing 520,000 horsepower for 8 waterjet turbine engines. Her top speed is 32+ knots on the surface and 18+ knots submerged. Her normal crew complement is 21,000... including 12,000 marines.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    For giggles, I threw some old lore details for the Prometheus-class in the Super Macross Mecha thread for those who are curious.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Since there was a Newbie thread question about the Prometheus, here are some fun facts from one of the oldest versions of the Prometheus's lore in Sky Angels. PLEASE NOTE, THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS LORE THAT IS NO LONGER CURRENT/CORRECT Development of the Prometheus-class was originally a US Navy project intended to develop an OTM-based next-generation supercarrier for the US Navy, and transitioned to being the planned main aircraft carrier of the UN Navy once the UN Forces were established. Prometheus's keel was laid 18 June 2003 at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Newport News, Virginia. It took five years to complete her construction due to modifications made as part of the Macross strategic system and the introduction of OTM. She was finished and launched in 2008. Prometheus's sister ships CVA-102 and CVA-103 were completed at the Newport News shipyard on 11 December 2009 and 30 January 2010 respectively, but both were destroyed in the orbital bombardment of Earth in February 2010. The Prometheus-class and Daedalus-class were the last class of ships constructed using conventional nuclear fission reactors, due to pushback from the military who opposed using more OTM than was necessary at the start of construction. OTM advocates won out regarding the adoption of waterjet propulsion and the Prometheus-class and Daedalus-class are the first navy vessels to adopt the technology. The Prometheus's reactor complex houses four Westinghouse A7W pressurized water reactors, an improved version of the A4W reactor used by the US Navy's Nimitz-class. The lower portion of the "island" contains a set of phased array radars for the Aegis Kai system, a SPS-12 search radar, SPS-48 3D anti-aircraft radar, SPN-44~49 air traffic control radars, and landing guidance radars. Its defenses include 4 20mm Phalanx CIWS units, 3 Mk.41 10-round missile launchers for Super Sea Sparrow missiles. Plans were underway to replace the Phalanx units with ROV-20 laser cannon emplacements, but not completed at the time the First Space War broke out. The ROV-20s were installed after the Macross's return to Earth in November 2009. Original launch equipment included 4 catapults on the main deck and 2 on the angled deck, all Mk.15 Mod 1 steam catapults. Later retrofitted to a linear (electromagnetic) type. In addition to the six main catapults, there is another launch-only deck directly beneath the bow. The Prometheus-class's armor-plated main deck is designed to withstand a direct hit from a kiloton-class thermonuclear reaction weapon or a short-range detonation from megaton-class thermonuclear reaction weapon. This heat resistance is also used to support VTOL launches of Valkyries from the main deck. There are nine elevators, each outfitted to take two Valkyries at a time. The firing-and-reset interval for the six main catapults is approximately 18 seconds. The double set of arresting gear allows for arrested recovery of two aircraft every 35-40 seconds. The expected endurance of the nuclear fuel in the reactor system is 30 years, or 2-3 million miles. Due to soaring production costs during the Unification Wars and the introduction of initial generation OTM, the total production cost of the Prometheus was $15.002 billion. Original launch date was given as 21 September 2007, and commissioned on 5 May 2008. Standard displacement 456,000t, maximum displacement 511280t. Her four A7W reactors power eight main waterjet turbine engines. Her total output was 520,000 horsepower, acheiving a top speed of 35+ knots on the surface or 16+ knots submerged. Her original listed crew complement is 22,000. Her original listed airwing size is 450 aircraft.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, it is... the Prometheus was designed and built as an overtechnology-based next-generation supercarrier to support large-scale operations involving Variable Fighters. It had quite a few unusual characteristics, like the ability to submerge almost the entire ship and run with only the island containing control tower and bridge above water for stealth purposes, and submerge the entire ship for brief periods. (The Daedalus could do the same thing, and in the manga Macross the First uses that capability in an unconventional way... to ram an Anti-Unification Forces submarine pursuing it.) The UN Forces intention behind building such a large aircraft carrier is not touched on in depth in official setting material. Variable Fighter Master File offers its own explanation in the form of the Prometheus and Daedalus being intended to be the lead ships of their respective classes, with each of the UN Navy's five fleets theoretically having a pair as a heavyweight rapid reaction force in the event of an alien invasion of Earth's surface. Not half as strange as it looks in some fan art pieces that give it Space Battleship Yamato's Yamato and Arcadia of my Youth's Arcadia for arms.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Can't be that bad... it's got almost 5,000 reviews on Steam and an overall Very Positive: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167450/DAEMON_X_MACHINA/
  13. Seto Kaiba
    From the picture and description, it was damaged to the point of being inoperable... but was still able to be restored. It was the No.3 VF-1 production model that had been sent on an unmanned solo flight to Saturn to confirm the durability of the VF-1 and its engines. It was initially believed that it'd been damaged by a Zentradi attack, but was later concluded to have suffered a LOT of micrometeorite impacts passing near Saturn.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Whether they're actually Protoculture or some kind of bio-android is a bit of an unresolved matter... Not that I recall? Master File had a story about an unmanned VF-1 that was launched on a flight thru the solar system before the war that returned after, to the surprise of all.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Macross II: Lovers Again toyed with the idea via the Mardook, who were implied to be the descendants of Protoculture refugees who had been living a semi-nomadic existence like the Protoculture computer in Macross: Do You Remember Love? mentioned. I've often wondered if they were meant to be descendants of that very same group of Protoculture, since their culture had a myth/prophecy about a blue planet that where they would find peace. Whether that's a good thing or not is a YMMV sort of thing. For the main Macross continuity/metaseries... Kawamori's going to do what Kawamori wants to do. I doubt he's going to back down from the position that the Protoculture are gone, though. Not after going so hard on the Cold War allegory in Macross 7, Macross Zero making a big deal out of wanting their creations to not repeat their mistakes, and both Frontier's story and Delta's story making a huge deal out of their legacy, unrealized societal ambitions, terminal decline, and who was meant to inherit their legacy. It'd suck all the wind out of the sails of those story arcs if someone one day just stumbled across a bunch of Protoculture blithely going about their business. It's like finding the Megaroad-01... some mysteries are better left unsolved, because the sheer mundanity of the answer means it'll never live up to the myth built on the question. The legend has outgrown the reality to the point that the reality would only be disappointing.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    No more than to any other piece of Zentradi equipment, really. They have a pretty consistent design aesthetic.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Not that I'm aware... there's basically nothing written about the Recovery Pod. Even its coverage in Macross Chronicle is minimal and mainly limited to statements of the obvious.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, they've been at that for a good while now. It's a fairly safe bet humanity has been studying the Vajra since first contact was made in 2040, or from shortly after that point. The first major study of the Vajra that we know about was the 117th Research Fleet's expedition into Vajra space in the mid-to-late 2040s. That expedition featured prominently into Macross Frontier's backstory as that was where Ranka contracted the V-type bacterium in utero that made her the "Little Queen", where Grace developed the implant network theory, where Ranka and Brera were orphaned in the Vajra's attack on the fleet, and what led the SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global to end up a decaying wreck on Gallia IV. In 2059, Macross Frontier's Island-3 had a xenobiology lab where the Frontier fleet's xenobiology experts studied the Vajra carcasses recovered during the first battle (and probably others). Current official setting material describes the Protoculture as extinct for hundreds of thousands of years. (And the Fulbtzs Berrentzs-class seems to have been largely replaced in continuity with the Boddole Zer-type mobile fortress from the movies.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    At the very least, the Galactic Whales have to have some kind of fold carbon in their bodies and a biological means to contain and manipulate it given that they use fold navigation to travel interstellar distances. They spend their lives soaking up radiation from stars, so it's possible they don't actually need a dedicated power system like a reactor to produce energy for a fold jump. (IIRC, they're described in Macross Chronicle as being a sort of halfway point between a plant and a mineral life form.) Macross Chronicle goes so far as to suggest that as the origin of Overtechnology... the Protoculture coming into possession of Vajra carcasses, studying them, and reverse-engineering their biotechnology. (It's an interesting possibility that even their genetic engineering technology may be derived from the Vajra's control over their own evolution.) I'm not sure that's really conceit... the Protoculture were the first conventionally sentient race in the galaxy and the first ones to develop their own culture. The Vajra absolutely predated them as a spacefaring species, but Vajra are not individually intelligent and show no sign of anything beyond basic biological drives. There is one factoid that suggests the Protoculture originally took a direct hand in controlling the Zentradi. Macross Chronicle mentions that the Fulbtzs Berrentzs-class Zentradi fleet mothership has an area that replicates the environment of the Protoculture homeworld. There wouldn't be any functional reason to have something like that unless the ships were originally designed to have Protoculture living aboard them as well.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, the Boston Dynamics dog series? Yeah, they're the epitome of "tests well, but can't perform". They started out as a DARPA project called BigDog that was supposed to be a sort of robotic pack mule to accompany infantry into areas where wheeled and tracked vehicles were unable to maneuver. It proved to be too noisy, too heavy, and have too short of an operating time to be even remotely practical. It went through a few more demonstrator model phases that performed well on closed courses but had issues in real world conditions. Their first viable version was the Spot, which was scaled down considerably to address all the weight and balance issues, but it's basically a showpiece as expensive as a small car that can do a decent job following basic preprogrammed routines but handles poorly off level ground. It's more or less an overcomplicated bomb disposal robot that isn't actually used for bomb disposal. (You probably have more to fear from the bomb disposal robot, it's got tracks so it's not going to tip over like a dozy cow if you walk up an incline.) There is, however, a very entertaining video by Michael Reeves of him modifying and programming one to "dispense" beer... You might say Boston Dynamics is taking the... ... ... you know what, I'm not going to finish that joke. It's just too easy. Initially, sure... though the Protoculture built on such an insane scale that it's unlikely they cared, and if the miclone and bioplant systems we've seen are any indicator they had some pretty insane recycling technology too. No offense, but I get the general vibe that you're more about that other series we don't talk about here. Assuming you were a Zentradi pilot headed into a surface theater in a Regult, you'd probably be rather unconcerned about it since you'd know the Regult's greatest mobility on the ground comes from jumping/hopping and have been trained to abuse that advantage liberally. (You'd probably be far more upset that you're going to spend your time being jostled around inside that cramped cockpit.) Even in the setting material, humanity can only really guess at what caused the ancient Protoculture to design things they way they did. The original cultural, political, technological, and strategic context that led to the Zentradi military hardware being designed the way it is has been lost to half a million years of time and the general indifference of the Zentradi themselves. Humanity just has to roll with it, because the galaxy is going to be dealing with the fallout of the Protoculture's poor decisions into eternity. It has been addressed, albeit indirectly, a few times.... like Macross Delta mentioning that the New UN Government has a ban on the use of cloning for military purposes that makes Mikumo's creation a crime. Humanity apparently has rather higher moral standards than the Protoculture did.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    To make up for my grievous error in my initial reply to twich, I'll do a quick runthru of the Great Mechanics G stuff tomorrow during my tedious transmission team meetings. (Completely misread his post and dashed off a reply that was about 80% gibberish and 20% misunderstanding. >_< )
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Edit history says it's Azrael doing it, tho. Looks like he's putting in some info from the theatrical pamphlet. That was one of the few details we already had, though the DX Chogokin seems to have thrown some interesting wrenches into the works by having the same model number of railgun as the regular Siegfried.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, absolutely. The amount of time it takes to transition a thousand or more pilots to a new model of fighter alone ensures the VF-171 has quite a few years left to it. That'll only be lengthened by the amount of time it takes for various emigrant governments to decide on a 5th Generation Valkyrie and start building them. For instance, the Brisingr Alliance won't start adoption of the VF-31 Kairos until 2069 or 2070 according to Kawamori. Even as squadrons transition to the new model, the VF-171 will continue in service for years until it has been completely supplanted by the new model in every role. (For instance, the Frontier Government was still in the process of phasing out and decommissioning its remaining VF-11s in 2058, over a decade after they were replaced by the VF-171.) Also, WRT the Regult, it's worth noting that even though it's hard on its pilots due to the comparatively low degree of system automation and has some noteworthy vulnerabilities, it shares a lot of the VF-171's virtues. It's a simple, proven design that's extremely cost-effective and has a high degree of versatility. It can be equipped to fill a wide variety of roles in battlefield operations with minimal design changes. It might not have all the newest and best bells and whistles, but it's rugged, dependable, and its simplicity makes it easy enough to handle that even average operators can bring out the design's potential. That it and its pilots are designed with "acceptable losses" firmly in mind is unavoidable, but while it isn't going to win any awards for survivability it's fast and agile enough to remain threatening with a reasonably balanced armament and the fact that you're never fighting just one... the Regult pilot inevitably shows up to battle with about fifty of his closest friends.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair to the Type-104 and Type-106, none of the Zentradi mecha in the original "stock" state significantly prioritized survivability. Improving that was something that the New UN Forces took as a serious consideration when designing upgrades like the Queadluun-Rhea. Now, in all fairness, there's a pretty big difference between being frugal and being a cheapskate... and what the Brisingr Alliance is being is frugal. The Brisingr Alliance's isolated position out on the fringes of the galaxy and with some areas of intense fold fault activity has done a lot to hinder its economic growth, so the Brisingr Alliance's planetary governments have to make every penny (or whatever their local currency is called) count. Locally developing their own 5th Generation Valkyrie is something they did very deliberately in a bid to create jobs locally and provide some economic stimulus for the cluster by selling their new model as an export fighter as well. While the VF-171 is often treated with a bit of scorn because it compares unfavorably to the new hotness that is the local 5th Generation VF tipped to replace it, it is by no means an inferior or inadequate fighter. It served with distinction for two decades and counting as the main Valkyrie of the NUNS, and is noted to be an effective and highly versatile Valkyrie more than adequate for fighting the Zentradi or most anything else that isn't the Vajra.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    AFAIK, fold faults haven't been established to have any effects besides obstructing fold navigation and fold communication. Macross Frontier's 13th episode, Memory of Global, had something called a "D-Pulse burst" that appears to be some kind of fold wave interference (fold wave EMP equivalent?) that's potent enough to knock out the controls on Alto's VF-25F and disable the long-range detection systems of the 33rd NUNS Marines.
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