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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    At the very least, we can write off the odd interior design choices as an interior design fad given that Starfleet ships are fully modular and the modules get replaced on a reasonably frequent basis as upgrades become available (the official justification for the many cosmetic upgrades over the years). I doubt we'll see anything like proper design rigor until the Abrams crew is gone from the franchise for good, but at least this Enterprise shouldn't have the "bigger on the inside" problem the Discovery has.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    https://screenrant.com/star-trek-picard-show-season-3-last-final-confirmed/ Sir Patrick Stewart has confirmed that Star Trek: Picard's third season will be its last. As has become Star Trek's new normal, the official line is "We meant to do that all along", though that doesn't quite tally with previous remarks by producer Akiva Goldsman where it was said that the show's development had considered the first three seasons as a single self-contained story but provisionally planned for 5 or more seasons depending on how long Sir Patrick was willing to continue to reprise the character as a then-80 year old man playing a 94 year old character.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    So... continuing from my previous efforts WRT the old/obsolete lore from the Prometheus and Daedalus, here's an overview of the Sky Angels take on the ARMD. OF COURSE, SOME OF THIS INFORMATION IS OBSOLETE AND NO LONGER CURRENT/CORRECT The ARMD-class space carrier was originally conceived as a space station airbase for fighters located in geostationary satellite orbit and at each Lagrange point to protect Earth and the various important space-based structures like factories, colonies, etc. In their original space station form, they were known and designated as Space Rigs. SR-01 and SR-02 were completed in April 2003 to serve as close defense for the L5 Manufacturing Station. Structurally, the Space Rig design was an armored, but only partly pressurized, complex of hangars and docks. Each side had its own hangars and docks for fighters and auxiliary craft and the lower part of the central hull was thought of as a dock capable of accommodating a space destroyer. At the time, the Macross Strategic System plan called for the introduction of a fold-capable space carrier design between 600m and 800m in length and with a displacement of 500,000t. Plans for this full-scale space carrier were derailed due to cost increases caused by inflation and technical problems surrounding the implementation of a fold system. Construction on the first ship of this class began at the L4 manufacturing station at the end of 2005, with a planned completion in mid-2010 at the earliest. Due to the delays in the planned delivery of its dedicated space carrier class, the UN Forces turned to the Space Rigs as an alternative in order to meet the timing determined for the commissioning of the Macross. The design was reworked into a support aircraft carrier based on the Space Rig structure and existing hulls under construction at the L5 Manufacturing Station were reworked according to this new plan. The revised design was dubbed ARMD - Armaments Rigged-up Moving Deck - and renovation work began in a hurry in 2006. The first and second ships of the ARMD-class were completed and commissioned in Spring 2007. The main refurbishment points separating the original Space Rig design from the ARMD-class carrier design were additional armor reinforcement, the addition of beam cannons and missile launchers, a navigation bridge and a main engine system for maneuvering being fitted to the Space Rig's existing exterior superstructure. Because it was intended to support space fighters with a short activity period, a large delta-V was required and the main propulsion system was built to have a disproportionately high exhaust speed. The SF-3 Lancer II space fighter was the standard at the time, and its tendency to burn all propellant within 1 minute made it impossible to return to the carrier on its own, so the ARMD-class was built with an operational top speed higher than the SF-3's in order to recover them properly. A docking connector for linking up with the Macross was provisionally included so that the ARMD-class could function as support for the Macross's own fighters and a semi-independent operating environment with its own power and maintenance facilities. After commissioning in Spring 2007, ARMD-01 (Harlan J. Niven) and ARMD-02 (Invincible) began to function as a unit training station for the SF-3 and QF-3000 and a test flight station for the VF-1. At the time, it was judged that its maneuverability was low but it was extremely cost effective and versatile. Based on that feedback, all remaining Space Rigs under construction were remodeled to ARMDs, and it was decided to instead form a patrol fleet in collaboration with several space destroyers. Unlike ARMD-01 and -02, ARMD-03 and beyond had additional fighter launch equipment. The spec for the first 8 ARMD-class ships is more or less as we know it from the TV series materials. Specs for ARMD-09 thru ARMD-16 are a bit different in this book... with the standard weapons being replaced by three Zentradi ship-to-ship beam cannons, 4 Bifors anti-ship missile launchers, 2 Zentradi ship-to-ship missile launchers, and 2 large anti-warship reaction missile launchers. Instead of the 270 QF-3000E Ghosts, 78 SF-3A Lancer II's, and 18 Valkyries, the postwar type is said to carry 94 Regults, 24 Super Valkyries, and 120 Ghosts, plus a few Regult variants.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    It certainly is a damn fine looking CG model.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Overlord and In the Land of Leadale aren't two very different stories once they get going in earnest. It's that it's really, stupidly, obnoxiously, immersion breaking-ly obvious at the outset that Ceez didn't so much draw inspiration from Kugane Marugama's breakout hit Overlord as they did simply rip off its entire first couple of chapters and change the names. Even then it wouldn't have been a dealbreaker if Ceez had actually built on what they stole to take the story in some new and interesting direction. Virtually none of those "borrowed" plot points build up to anything and most are quickly forgotten altogether in the face of a dull, listless, form letter of a story and the few that are touched on end in an anticlimax. That none of it has any significance makes it all the more obvious because you're left to wonder why any of that was there or necessary to begin with, y'know? It only stands out - and irritates - because it's an entire gun shop's worth of Chekhov's Guns that never go off. Since most of my meetings today were cancelled, I got back to Komi Can't Communicate. This series really is adorable. If it weren't for the occasional moments of over-the-top humor it'd be the kind of squeaky-clean feel-good story you could show your parents. Less so with the slightly creepy geeky girl who wants to be Komi's dog, or her lesbian stalker, etc.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Past a certain point, I think spoilers are OK... it's a matter of a consensus on how old a series has to be before there's a reasonable expectation most people have seen it. Obviously spoilers for a currently-airing or recently concluded series/movie are bad. But is it really possible to spoil, say, a blockbuster movie that's a decade old? Or two? Or five? For instance, Macross Frontier is now about 14 years old. It's very difficult to discuss certain characters or mecha without inherent spoilers... but is 14 years "old enough" to consider a reasonable portion of the audience will have already seen it?
  7. Seto Kaiba
    We hear he might have a farm there...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    A fair few of them likely ended up as short-distance emigrant ships... there were supposedly a hundred or so fleets like that in addition to the long-distance ones we see more of in the animation.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... it goes a lot deeper than that, to be frank. The more you look at it, the more it becomes obvious Leadale was copying Overlord's homework... just with Leadale opting for lighter and softer comedy focus without any of the genre deconstruction that drives Overlord, and ending up kind of aimless and generic feeling as a result. IMO, it's just a less compelling series as a whole because it doesn't seem to really have anything to show for itself. Gave Police in a Pod a whirl... not sure what to think of it thus far, but the premise is interesting enough that I'm going to keep at it. Not a fan of the art style, which reminds me oddly of Ghost in the Shell: Arise's character designs.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    After the last two new Star Trek shows, I'm not going to get my hopes up. Anson Mount did a very fine job as Christopher Pike on Star Trek: Discovery - to the extent of being the only character in the series who behaved like he was on a Star Trek show and all but completely stole the entire second season - but I have absolutely no confidence in the writers.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    It's quite vague... the only named ship in the 1st Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet in official setting material is the Megaroad-class SDF-2 Megaroad-01. There is, as noted, an unnamed Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleship that is occasionally alleged to be Vrlitwhai's wartime command under a new captain. Unofficial material - e.g. Master File - mentions three ARMD-class space carriers having been attached to the Megaroad-01 fleet: ARMD-09 Haruna, ARMD-10 Minsk, and ARMD-11 Kiev. Beyond that, it's mostly unspecified. ... that's great and all, but none of that had anything to do with the question. ... Megaroad-04 found Windermere IV in 2027 when she was knocked out of a space fold by a fold fault, which isn't quite the same thing. It should be noted that it's not clear if a replacement was constructed or not, since there were 30 large-scale long-distance emigrant fleets in the first two generations... and they're generally indicated to have been led by Megaroad-class emigrant ships. It's actually less unreasonable than you'd think... the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate the US Navy uses has a displacement of 4,165t with entirely conventional materials, and it's a bit under 150m. When you consider that a lot of the Northampton-class's structure is empty space (hangar/munitions bays, engine nozzles, etc.) and it's made out of lighter, much more resilient materials that are said to be 100x or more as tough as an equivalent thickness of steel, 1,200t sounds surprisingly reasonable.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    More than that, the ARMD-class's backstory/development history indicates that the design was originally conceived as a space station. The original concept (in-universe) was that they would be a network of space airfields in geostationary satellite orbit from which space fighters could operate as part of Earth's planetary defenses. Somewhere along the way, some bright spark realized that aerodynamics are meaningless in space and therefore the only thing separating these space airbases from being space aircraft carriers was the installation of a navigation bridge and some proper engines. That slightly reworked design was accepted for use in the Macross Strategic System and the new ARMD-class was born. The final design was intended to accept a fold system, but the first handful hadn't had them installed yet when they were sunk. Later hulls were built with fold systems and used in emigrant fleets and Earth's own space defenses, but they weren't quite as high-endurance as the later Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMD. The later carriers were designed to be spacecraft from the outset, and had more compact and sensible designs for the purpose that factored in advancements in technology, materials, and the basic requirements for stealthiness and so on that accompanied emigrant fleet operations. (Considering the size of some early emigrant fleets, you could also argue that the smaller aircraft capacity of those newer carriers was to avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. Wouldn't wanna lose almost half your force's aircraft support capacity if one ship gets sunk, y'know?)
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I'll take two, please and thank you. Seriously, that is legit the best color scheme for the Draken III so far... should've been Keith's paintjob, since he's the white knight and all.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    No worries. Following trendsetters is pretty normal in even the best of circumstances, we're just seeing it a lot more blatantly in the isekai genre because it's really trendy lately so the number of trend followers that are becoming high-visibility is greater than usual. In all fairness, I grumble about this a LOT when it comes to the glut of isekai titles over the last couple of years given how lazy many of them are. With the current season's fairly weak offerings, I'm rolling up my backlog for the most part. How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom is... well... it feels like it's kind of floundering for want of something to do. The last three episodes have mainly been about tying up loose ends from the previous season, where there was an invasion from a hostile neighboring nation. It's not particularly convincing or entertaining since the prince from the neighboring nation is just a complete prat who is almost never permitted to get out more than the first three words of any given sentence before being told to shut up and he's so far in the wrong that it robs the negotiations of any tension when even his own mediator agrees he's an arse. Continuing to make my way through Ore Monogatari. It's just too pure. It's hard to watch more than one or two episodes in a sitting because of how excessively sweet it all is. In the Land of Leadale still feels like it's fumbling around for something to show the audience. It's clearly taking pointers from Overlord, but visually and narratively it lacks anything to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other western fantasy MMORPG-based isekai titles out there. Leadale is an utterly generic, by-the-numbers, soft western fantasy setting which has nothing distinctive, unique, or interesting to offer. Cayna, likewise, is an utterly generic, by-the-numbers, soft western fantasy isekai protagonist whose only distinctive trait is her loose-at-best relationship with her three NPC "children" that is mostly used for form letter light comedy. It's watchable, sure, but after a few episodes it's really apparent that there is just nothing there. Rent-a-Girlfriend... ech, I'm not sure I can keep watching this one. I hear it gets better, but the protagonist is just such an unlikable bellend that after four episodes I'm heartily sick of him. I get that he's a college kid, but he's so goddamn thirsty he can barely function as a human being. In a bit, I'm gonna tackle one I've been quietly dreading... Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle and Phantasy Star Online 2: the Animation... which collectively adapt the first three episodes of the story from SEGA's MMORPG and act as a tie-in/prequel to the fourth episode of the story. Mainly, I'm dreading PSO2: the Animation because that was where they began flirting with the isekai genre themselves and the whole Mother arc might as well retitle itself Unlimited Cringe Works, though it did at least put a new and unusually bizarre twist on the MMORPG isekai idea by completely reversing the entire concept.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    You're not wrong, on a basic level... but your argument stumbles a bit on the precise chronology. Overlord and In the Land of Leadale did indeed both begin serialization as web novels in 2010. Six months apart, in fact, with Overlord debuting on Arcadia in May and achieving a fair bit of online popularity before In the Land of Leadale debuted on Shōsetsuka ni Narō the following November. It seems unlikely that the high level of similarity is purely coincidental...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    There is some unintended distortion imposed by the Macross Mecha Manual's writeup of the Northampton-class, which cites an unusual/emergency operating condition instead of its normal operating condition. Also, some of the discrepancy is attributable to those older carrier classes using a greater proportion of conventional (pre-OTM) materials and being much less efficient designs which were intended for orbit-based planetary defense rather than high endurance deep space operations. The drop in capacity vs. the ARMD-class is mainly reflective of the difference in size and the various design concessions made to facilitate long-duration deep space operations on an independent basis... whereas the ARMD-class were originally never intended to leave Earth orbit, never mind the solar system, so they are intended to carry the maximum possible VF complement since there is no need to worry about endurance. So, as mentioned above, what's going on there is some slightly misleading writing on the Mecha Manual's part. Under normal circumstances, the Northampton-class stealth frigate's standard configuration carries either no fighters at all or a single platoon (3-4 aircraft) as seen in Macross 7 PLUS "Spiritia Dreaming". What the Macross Mecha Manual has listed is an unusual/emergency operating condition that was used exactly once. For Operation Stargazer, aboard the frigate Stargazer. In that isolated situation, the frigate Stargazer was basically packed to the rafters with Valkyries at the expense of everything else in order to carry out a stealth insertion and a decapitation strike against the Protodeviln's "home" on the Varauta 3198XE system's 4th planet using thermonuclear reaction weapons. It was meant to be a hard-hitting high-stealth operation using only a single ship and the fleet's most elite pilots to minimize risks, though the attack was ultimately foiled by the planet's defenses and the Protodeviln's biological ability to space fold teleporting the one successfully deployed reaction weapon back to the Stargazer, sinking it. As far as the more than 9,000 Northampton-class ships built by the mid-2040s, the Northampton-class was an extremely simple, extremely inexpensive design that was engineered to be highly adaptable and upgradeable. We only see the general duty version and enhanced firepower general duty version in the animation, but the official setting materials say there are a bunch of variants of the design for specific roles like early warning/radar picket duty, anti-aircraft defense, and so on. There is also a PMC-operated light carrier variant of the Northampton-class that appears in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. (The Macross Frontier-era stealth cruiser - no class name known - is also derived from the design of the Northampton-class and may be counting towards that "over 9,000".) Its stealth technologies are essentially exactly the same as those of VFs, just... bigger. Hull shapes which deflect radar waves away from the sending station, radar-absorbent material, and active radar stealth technology.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    ... uh-oh, life is imitating art. 🤣
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, the fan art made by Matt Willis is very clearly not official... though when it comes to sources for that other series, even official material from the creators of Macross et. al. is often mislabeled, misrepresented, or grossly distorted. Better by far to simply pretend any "resources" for that franchise don't exist. Battleships of the Galaxy, the doujinshi by Circle FANKY.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Thanks. It's something I'm used to, whenever the weather changes really rapidly I tend to get a bit bleh... with migraines and such. Mother Nature is in a real bad mood out here right now, so I'm just feeling her wrath a bit more keenly than most. Like a lot of the really in-depth detail, this one has the most detailed answer in Variable Fighter Master File's page. Specifically, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Battroid Valkyrie. Essentially, it's about the angle of the throttle lever... which locks in three positions: Horizontal: Fighter mode 45 Degrees above Horizontal: GERWALK mode Vertical: Battroid mode There's a thumb trigger that unlocks the throttle lever angle to prevent unintended actuation of the mode selector. The aforementioned Master File book has more detail, including diagrams showing how the throttle is used for maneuvering in each mode. What we've been told is that the VF-31AX Kairos Plus is a stock VF-31A Kairos that was upgraded using the remaining spare parts from the VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds. Since it's been indicated in a few places - incl. Master File - that you need a special class of engine for compatibility with a Fold Wave System, I'd assume the Kairos Plus is using the detuned FF-3001/FC2 engines that were originally produced for the Siegfried customs. If they were looking to improve performance, possibly engines detuned less than the ones on the Siegfried were... since the FF-3001/FC2 was originally rated for a base output of 2,110kN when it was deployed on the YF-30 Chronos. (Of course, given the issues that the engines detuned to a maximum output of 1,875kN already caused for the Kairos airframe in the Siegfried Custom type, they wouldn't be able to go too much higher with that without significant frame reinforcement.) So, as I understand it... the reason the Kairos Plus is a thing is that... So yeah, it probably would have been cheaper... but the option to retrofit doesn't seem to have been available.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    It's never not a bad decision to use materials created by fans of that other show when it comes to Macross, Southern Cross, or MOSPEADA. It's a background design only, so details are basically nonexistent.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Sorry, I'm a bit slow today... not feeling well. I'll get to this one, I promise.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Simpler than that, the Flood are simply sci-fi zombies... with all the ho-hum tedium that involves in an era where zombies have been overdone to a second death. Given that Paramount+'s creative approach thus far has been "all style, no substance", that could work in Halo's favor given that Halo's story is pretty unremarkable but its action set pieces will benefit immensely from a $8M/episode budget's worth of Things Exploding.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Miss Kuroitsu feels like it's going to be my stand-out title for this season just because of how relatable it is. I really end up feeling for the protagonist because of all the BS she has to contend with from the middle management at the evil organization she works for, and how unhappy she is to see corners cut on her work because of it all. In the Land of Leadale is not doing a very good job of disguising that it stole its A-plot from Overlord... especially after its protagonist had a breakdown over the revelation that all of the player characters are almost certainly long dead in the world. Its lighter and softer setting helps a bit, but being so overly cutesy clashes with its darker moments in ways which don't quite help it and the protagonist's three "children" (NPCs she adopted in-game) are pretty obnoxious and mostly used for cheap physical comedy. The Strongest Sage With The Weakest Crest is still a bland, boring power fantasy after four episodes. The protagonist Matthias at least justifies his stupid levels of overpoweredness and knowledge by being the reincarnation of a mage who was so powerful a thousand years ago that he is literally worshipped as a god in the present day, though he doesn't seem to have joined up the dots on that one yet. It's still a tedious exercise in watching a smug, swaggering, invincible wankstain of a main character beat up on generic fantasy monsters while assembling the generic isekai fantasy harem. (Like Isekai Cheat Magician, this one's so by-the-numbers you can almost see the barcodes.) Attack on Titan is still Attack on Titan, and therefore an unwatchable mess. Looking at starting My Dress-up Darling later, once we get through Ore Monogatari... assuming Ore Monogatari doesn't kill us all by putting us in a diabetic coma with the disgustingly sweet and pure love story between Takeo and Rinko.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    There is a bit in the Macross Chronicle Zentradi world guide sheet, and a few older artbooks have glossaries of words used in the movie. Not a lot said, tho... the written form of Zentradi is a symbol substitution for plain old English, albeit with some accent marks, and IIRC it's indicated to be a tonal language where the intonation can change the meaning of a word. It's also said to be derived from the Protoculture's own language.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    In the torso, apparently... with the "shoulders" being shown to be where the fighters are recovered before they connected up the Daedalus and Prometheus.
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