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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Without the Protodeviln throwing a wrench into the growing tensions between the Stellar Republic and the opposing faction, they'd have probably fought a long and bloody civil war instead of being nearly wiped out and having to join forces to oppose the third party (the Supervision Army) that attacked both sides.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    For what it's worth, the reasons behind the ancient Protoculture repeatedly deciding to bury and seal away the consequences of their folly probably have a lot to do with the swiftness of their civilization's collapse. The Protoculture lost 85% of their population in the space of a year when the Protodeviln appeared, and what was left when the dust settled was a slowly crumbling network of colonized planets, emigrant fleets, and space colonies out on the galactic rim. It seems likely that the reason the Protoculture didn't destroy the delta wave system in the Brisingr globular cluster when their civilization entered the final phases of its collapse was because doing so would've probably entailed completely destroying at least half a dozen habitable planets they'd semi-recently created sub-Protoculture life on. The system was so massive, and so integrated into the crusts and mantles of those planets, that destroying it would've had apocalyptic consequences for the planets even if they didn't outright destroy the planets themselves. The relay station on Windermere IV seen in Macross Delta seems to have fold crystal "roots" spread throughout almost an entire hemisphere of the planet. Why the Protoculture didn't go the extra mile and kill the Protodeviln once their anima spiritia had successfully captured them is a mystery. Spiritia deprivation will absolutely kill a Protodeviln stone dead, and from what we saw when Gigile killed himself on Lux to save Sivil it looks like a dimensional warhead detonation of planet-killing scale might have been enough to do the job. It's possible they were afraid the Protodeviln's seal wasn't strong enough to prevent fold-based shenanigans like Valgo being able to interrupt space folding or Gepernich space folding Max's reaction missile back to the Stargazer in 2046. Perhaps they believed the only way to kill them would be to starve them to death, given how powerful they were even after 500,000 years of confinement without spiritia. (A more ominous theory might be that they intended to starve the Protodeviln and then come back and reclaim the still-living bodies of the Evil series for use in rebuilding their civilization.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    As I understand it from a friend who is a big fan of the Halo franchise, the Forerunners aren't abusive/neglectful precursors so much as abusive/neglectful contemporaries... having apparently reverted humanity and other species to stone age levels after the early Flood containment efforts by those species were mistaken for acts of aggression. TBH, I'm not sure the Protoculture's motives were anything like altruistic. They were, according to the official timeline, re-engineering native species on planets they found to ensure the emergence of sub-Protoculture species who would prepare their worlds for future colonization. It's likely the Birdhuman was left by the Protoculture as insurance that humanity wouldn't develop into a species that could threaten the Protoculture when they returned to colonize the planet, rather than as a guarantee that we wouldn't repeat their own mistakes... since at the time it was left, they hadn't really realized the magnitude of their error yet. There is the (mythologized) mention that the Birdhuman was accidentally activated once before, and that its Kill All Humans program was interrupted by forcibly separating the Birdhuman's head from its body. Given the Birdhuman's mission, "failing safe" would be destroying humanity rather than risk a violent species making it into space. To me, it seems more like the pilot's influence on the system... esp. given that Sara was only able to steer its defensive fire away from Shin after breaking through its "kadun" brainwashing and seeing that she was firing on Shin and not some amorphous monster. One has to wonder what its program dictated if humanity passed its test. Macross Chronicle suggests that when Sara folded it away it went to Gallia IV. It wasn't able to do that alone... it needed the songs of the Mayan priestesses who'd been engineered with the biological fold wave abilities necessary to maintain it in order to regenerate and sustain itself over the intervening millennia. That's not quite what the Birdhuman said, though... it asked if humans had stopped fighting amongst themselves, full stop. The answer was "No", so it decided to destroy humanity. "Are you fighting for any reason? Yes? Then you're possessed by the Kadun of Battle and have to die for the sake of galactic peace." Birdhuman icons are present on several planets including the Vajra planet at the end of Frontier, but as far as we know the only Birdhuman found was the one on Earth. (It's possible others were present, but unable to restore themselves or activate because the tribe tasked with maintaining them had died out or simply abandoned its traditional role.) The horrible part is that they don't seem to have had any of those conversations until AFTER the worst had already happened. They went on their merry way creating weapons of the most atrocious destructive potential and only AFTER things went Tango-Uniform did they seemingly stop to think "Was that a good idea?". I'm sure it wasn't the first major case of cultural discord... given that, in Macross 7, the schism is described as a sort of Cold War-like condition where two different socio-political groups in the Protoculture coexisted but never reached any kind of accord until things blew up into a mutually self-destructive shooting war. Even in DYRL?, it was the culmination of lifetimes of failure to sit down and talk out their problems. Nah, what Vrlitwhai was so stunned by at the start of Super Dimension Fortress Macross was that the supposedly primitive species he'd just discovered had opened fire on him with thermonuclear reaction weapons. To the Zentradi, thermonuclear reaction weapons are long-lost technology. The factory satellites that manufactured them were destroyed by the Supervision Army some 380,000 years before the series. Nope. Yes and no? It's more a question of scale than anything. Humanity doesn't exactly have the firepower to be taking on Zentradi main fleets willy-nilly, but when it comes to isolated infrastructure-type atrocities humans c.2059 do finally have the firepower to safely dispose of a lot of the Protoculture's mistakes via dimensional warheads. That does seem to be the case, given that we've seen that something like a dimensional warhead could potentially even kill a Protodeviln... at the cost of a planet. Humanity's first attempt to dispose of the delta wave system after realizing how stupidly dangerous it was was more restrained, but still boasted enough firepower to erase a city from existence. The second attempt was more extreme, but even less successful.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    What's surprising is that it took the government of the Varauta colony eighteen years to get around to investigating the neighboring theoretically-habitable planet where the laws of thermodynamics were seemingly out to lunch. Varauta was settled in 2025, but the Special Research Unit that investigated the system's 4th planet looking for the origin of the mysterious energy field didn't start work until 2043. I'd imagine a LOT of the technology on Varauta's 4th planet would be pretty damned interesting to the New UN Government's research agencies. Undamaged Protoculture overtechnology in basically pristine condition would be a BIG draw. (Especially given some of the nonsense of theirs we learn about later, like dimensional energy conversion technology or factory satellite manufacturing tech that can violate conservation of mass.) Sort of... if companies like that hadn't had any indigenous peoples to enslave and abuse. Remember, they did leave a bio-technological weapon of mass destruction on Earth for the very specific goal of exterminating us should we repeat their mistakes and make it into space before settling our internal disputes. They'd be pretty shocked to learn that not only did humanity NOT develop the way they'd hoped, but that we'd failed so hard we managed to cripple the weapon that was supposed to destroy us before it could do much of anything. Depending on the experiment, most of their stuff arguably went horribly right. Like, they created the Zentradi to be an unstoppable military force and were then subsequently disappointed to learn they could do nothing to stop them when they'd lost control of them during the war with the Supervision Army. Or the Evil-series they designed to be civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction with infinite endurance ending up operating as civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction of infinite endurance under someone else's control.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    True, but that's Basara's default reaction to anything with a pulse... and several noteworthy inanimate objects, like that mountain. 'bout the only thing he DIDN'T tell to listen to his song was that leaf he randomly ate that one time.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, the ancient Protoculture wasn't always that great about keeping people out of places. Security on the 4th planet of the Varauta 3198XE system was more or less on the honor system unless you count the entropy control field the Protoculture set up to keep the Protodeviln confined also turning the planet into an uninhabitable iceball over the intervening millennia. It might've been enough to keep the planet uninteresting to what remained of the Zentradi forces and Supervision Army, but the fact that its climate made absolutely no sense was always going to grab the attention of a scientifically-literate species like humanity and prompt an investigation. The Protoculture did get better about their seals and Keep Out signs as time went on, though. When they sealed the Fold Evil they'd created on Uroboros they used a multi-layered seal that could only be deactivated with fold songs, released self-replicating designer insectoid bioweapons into their abandoned facilities and the surrounding environment to repel intruders by force, and then isolated the planet behind impassible fold faults. It still didn't do the trick, but it performed better than the "let's just cross our fingers and hope for the best" approach they tried in the Varauta system despite humanity's growing familiarity with the Protoculture's BS. Their effort on Windermere IV and the other worlds of the Brisingr cluster actually worked pretty well, burying all their dangerous toys in higher-dimensional space and then burying the key on an isolated planet on the edge of the galaxy (and humans sensibly tried to blow it the hell up with a dimensional warhead instead of studying it, proving they're getting smarter).
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Knowing him, he'll either mutter mutinously as he's forced to accept promotion to a desk job or get himself killed in a crash. It's with good reason that the usual career trajectory for a fighter pilot gradually trends away from actually flying and towards the administrative tasks that support squadron operations. Given their love of song, I expect their reaction to learning what humanity is and what it's done in the not quite seventy years since they learned they weren't alone in the universe would go something like this: Now that would be a real trick given the ten foot clearance most drive thrus have.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    You mean the "Isamu Special" from Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye? Macross Chronicle identifies it as an extensively modified VF-19EF, a monkey model VF-19E that was used for evaluating some next-gen technologies like EX-Gear but was not outfitted with the very expensive ISC system. The improved engines and rolled-back airframe control AI software with less performance smoothing never did quite cross the line into being an aircraft that could inflict instantaneous G-LOC like the 5th Generation VFs with 30G or more of acceleration. It's something beyond the reach of the merely average pilot, but an aircraft that a highly skilled and thoroughly experienced pilot can conceivably manage without killing themselves horribly. (Even with the stability improvements removed, it's still got all kinds of safeguards in the control AI intended to prevent the aircraft from outright endangering the life of its pilot via its high performance.) There is that, yeah, though the introduction of linear actuator technology in the 5th Generation probably did a lot to reduce that risk as well. I doubt we'll ever get a proper official setting comparison of the materials to real world equivalents. Unofficial or "expanded universe" type works have given some direction there but that's just round number figures like "100x the strength of an equivalent thickness of steel". Given that humanity is still a fractious, occasionally violent species that hasn't resolved its internal differences despite expanding across a fair portion of the galaxy in a terrifyingly short time and managed to do ridiculous things like defeat a Birdhuman with crude reaction weaponry, score a pyrrhic victory over a Zentradi main fleet, accidentally release and then defeat and befriend the Protodeviln, release the Fold Evil, or accidentally activate the Delta Wave System... I'd expect them to be a little horrified at our ignorance and a LOT horrified at our tendency to behave violently. There'd probably be some very panicky Protoculture explaining as quickly as possible all the things humanity needs to stop doing right the hell now before they repeat the Protoculture's mistakes. A good landing is one you can walk away from. A great landing is one where you can reuse the spaceship later.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yup, though it takes some pretty astonishing forces to do that to a VF given that their structural materials are at least a hundred times stronger than steel and later models are often stressed for a G-limit in the dozens. That's an interesting way to think about it. Macross the Ride does kind of paint a picture of Macross Galaxy as a place of rather surprising inequality and poverty. Its government is a corporation, effectively making the fleet a subsidiary of General Galaxy and in a lot of ways a flying extralegal research and development facility. The wealthy and powerful like the Galaxy executives have access to the fleet's best technology and lead very comfortable lives both in the virtual domain and in the flesh. The fleet's lower level employees live in fairly uncomfortable or even harsh conditions that are made less unpleasant for them by implant-induced augmented reality. Their perceptions are filtered and modified by the their implants in some full on Ghost in the Shell-levels of mind screw to do things like make an unused urban space appear to be a beautiful park or make the unpleasant synthetic foodstuffs taste delicious. Unlike the peasants in France during the French Revolution, these folks don't really properly appreciate that they're living in poor conditions because of their implants. Folks without implants, including a very high (compared to other fleets) number of people who've been left unemployed by the fleet's obsession with labor-saving automation, live in harsh conditions and fully appreciate the fact but don't really have a chance at overthrowing the government due to the superhuman abilities of the cyborg soldiers there and the mind control the fleet's executives wield against the populace. General Galaxy sponsored the Macross Galaxy fleet, and the corporation that serves as the fleet's government is effectively a subsidiary of General Galaxy. It's questionable how much direct control General Galaxy had over the Macross Galaxy fleet, but all in all I don't think so. Macross Frontier's story had some fairly blunt points to make about corporate corruption and capitalism's influence on politics, with the two main emigrant fleets in the story both being manipulated, overtly or covertly, by corporate sponsors in a bid to locate and monopolize a precious new resource (fold quartz). Weyland-Yutani used its massive influence to effectively become the government in reality if not in name, where General Galaxy seems uninterested in anything except the business of building things like ships, fighters, gravity control systems, and the like. It was a group of other individuals who kind of hijacked the Macross Galaxy fleet and turned it into a fleet bent on galactic domination via mind control.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Nice. I've got two copies on order already... fingers crossed for no more delays.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Drawn from a common RPG meme... the so-called "Chunky Salsa Rule", that any hit that would reduce a character's head to the consistency of chunky salsa is fatal no matter what other rules say. The first workable ISC prototype wasn't available until around 2057, when Shinsei Industry revived the YF-24 program on their own and completed it as the YF-24 Evolution. Back during Project Super Nova, the New UN Forces did have access to what you might call a low-performance economized version of inertia capacitor technology via the Queadluun-Rau's inertia vector control system. It did the same job, but because it used high-purity fold carbon it wasn't as effective and was still very expensive. General Galaxy, who'd been contracted to restore and renovate the captured Quimeliquola factory satellite after it was moved to Eden, incorporated an inertia vector control system into the YF-21. Great Mechanics DX.9's article on VF Evolutionary Theory does mention that it would be economical to equip the VF-19 with an ISC system. They went ahead with developing new VFs around it instead because the Vajra's abilities were projected to exceed even the VF-19's performance and to preserve defense sector jobs. (Kind of paralleling the way that the development of the F-22 and F-35 plowed ahead despite many design problems to preserve defense industry jobs in the real world.) Given the diverse variations of local specification we've seen from various emigrant governments so far, I would not be even slightly surprised if someone out there were operating ISC-equipped VF-19s. As long as they're designed around those stresses it should be fine... if a pain in the butt to maintain because of the complexity. You run into problems with greater than average frequency when you start exceeding the design tolerances of the airframe on a regular basis. This was/is a noted problem for both the VF-31 custom "Siegfried" and the Sv-262Hs Draken III command type in Macross Delta, as a consequence of the upgrades made to the base VF-31A Kairos and their respective pilots being rough with them while using performance enhancement systems like the Siegfried's fold wave system or the Draken III's fold reheat. Probably a lot like the Varauta forces mecha from Macross 7... because that's basically what they were. They were New UN Gov't mecha upgraded with, and adopting some design stylings of, the Protoculture overtechnology the Protodeviln had appropriated or created for their own use. They do, it's hard to see in many shots but there are several viewscreen panels filling in the footwell similar to the VF-19's (albeit without seamless coverage) and rearview displays to make up for the limited rear visibility. Well, I mean, everything is technically Protoculture-based since overtechnology is something humanity inherited from the Protoculture via that Supervision Army derelict that made an unplanned crash landing on Earth in 1999.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, if this new bird is 5th Generation - or possibly even 6th given that an extra feature in the Macross Delta blu-rays attempts to classify the not-actually-production VF-31 custom Siegfrieds as "Generation 5.5" - then it has an inertia store converter system able to buffer at least 27.5G for at least two minutes if it's manned. Otherwise the massive thrust that its Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines produce would do unpleasant things to the meatbag in the cockpit. If that is its head amidships, it's going to have a weird-as-hell transformation to make that work. (Which would also not be beyond reason, given the weird-as-hell transformation the Draken III had... unconventional transformation designs seem to be another hallmark of General Galaxy/SV Works designs.) The ancient Protoculture were way, WAY beyond building conventional aircraft when their civilization collapsed. Their mecha designs were inspired by Vajra biology, including the fully restored design of the Birdhuman that was based on a Vajra Queen. The head does kind of evoke the Birdhuman's face with its big single monoeye that takes up the entire "face"... though that was also a feature of the SV-51's design in Macross Zero. The closest we've had to a Protoculture aircraft are the Protodeviln reworked versions of the New UN Forces' VF-14, VA-14, and VAB-2. Those were Earth VFs upgraded with some of the advanced tech from the arsenal world where the Protodeviln were sealed away. It's known (see Macross R) that some of that technology wound up in the hands of the remnants of Latence, the Earth supremacist group that staged a coup in Macross VF-X2, and that leftover splinter groups of Latence like Fasces were using upgraded Elgersoln units for some of their forces c.2058. This new VF absolutely has humanity's fingerprints all over it. Given that Absolute Live!!!!!! is advertised as having an all-new story, it seems unlikely that it's a new Windermerean VF (which would mean it was actually just sold to Windermere by a General Galaxy affiliate or middleman under the table). Maybe Macross Galaxy's cyber-nobles are having another go at galactic domination, or selling arms to someone who fancies a go themselves. Yup... the VF-27's used the Brain Direct Interface to project the composite sensor image of the VF's surroundings directly into the pilot's brain, like the YF-21 was supposed to do when the BDI was working properly. The Sv-262 seems to have used a more conventional holographic projection system similar to the footwell displays on the VF-19. In the VF-27's case, it was shown that the armored cover was ejectable and a conventional canopy was underneath. I'm not sure if this one has enough clearance for that kind of redundancy. The cockpit area looks rather flat, similar to the reduced visibility the VF-17 had.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... yeah, I can see how it could look like that. Given his status as a self-confessed Minmay fan, I suspect his motive was more between "is it really her?" and "is she ok?". Isamu, on the other hand, probably would have tried to cop a feel in Hikaru's place.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    It's possible, I suppose. There's been at least one previous model that's had the cockpit in the head itself... the VA-3 Invader. That'd be kinda boring, IMO... the enemy being a drone fighter in Macross Plus only worked because there was an insane AI directly controlling it. Dogfighting against a robot is so impersonal. It does a bit, which would play with the VF-4 resemblance since the Variable Glaug was developed from a stolen VF-4.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Put together a quick analysis of the design in the Mecha Discussion thread for the curious:
  16. Seto Kaiba
    So, first thoughts... As with the initial promotional art from last year, this new Valkyrie's design fairly screams that it's a General Galaxy product... and likely from the SV Works design team. One of the bigger giveaways in that respect is that its Battroid mode has the prominent "conehead" configuration common to almost all of General Galaxy's major VF projects. The 2nd Generation VF-9 Cutlass, the 3rd Generation VF-14 Vampire and VA-14, and the 4th Generation VF-22 Sturmvogel II all have it. It's also something that was present in the work of General Galaxy cofounder Alexei Kurakin before the company's founding (the SV-51 and VF-4 Lightning III) and in the works of the design team he established at General Galaxy to pursue his vision of anti-VF VFs (the Sv-154 Svard and Sv-262 Draken III). Only the VF-17 Nightmare and VF-171 Nightmare Plus really buck that trend, and they were GG's least radical VF designs. (The VF-27 was developed by a subsidiary, Macross Galaxy, based on rival Shinsei Industry's YF-24 Evolution, and so doesn't conform to this norm either.) The actual design is strongly reminiscent of the VF-4 and VF-14. The monitor turret appears to be stowed near the rear of the aircraft in Fighter mode similar to the VF-4, whereas on the VF-14 it was on the underside of the nosecone. The big monoeye design of the monitor turret is strongly reminiscent of the SV-51's, as is the apparent slenderness of the limbs we can see in the second image. The forward fuselage structure in Fighter mode is reminiscent of both the YF-27-5 Shahar Female type and the VF-14. It's difficult to make out on the original image, but in @no3Ljm's brightened pics we can see something that looks like a gun port immediately adjacent to the canopy similar to the main fighter-mode guns on the VF-17 Nightmare and VF-171 Nightmare Plus. There are two areas on the nacelle closest to the viewer that have surface detail that appears to be the mostly-standard stretched hexagonal shape used for internal micro-missile launcher firing ports. You can see one very clearly on the outboard side of the port nacelle right near the leading edge and there looks to be another right near the border of light and shadow smack in the middle of the nacelle. I don't see an obvious rear-facing gun despite that having been a standard feature for quite some time. That doesn't mean one isn't there though, it may be a pop-up type or just a gunport we can't see. The base of the engine nozzle is sporting something that's either a thrust reverser collar similar to the ones on the VF-27, VF-27, YF-30, and VF-31 or a vernier ring similar to what General Galaxy pioneered on the VF-14 and carried over to the VF-17 and VF-171. Given the structural similarities to the VF-4 and VF-14, I am inclined to suspect it's actually the vernier ring, esp. since those VFs it's most similar to were also VFs intended primarily for use in space combat. Instead of a canopy, it appears to have a cluster of polarized sensor covers similar to the VF-27 or Sv-262 but much larger for some reason. I suspect this is still a manned VF, but similar to the VF-27 or Sv-262 they've traded away the visibility of a canopy for the greater survivability of an electable energy conversion armor canopy cover and full 360 degree wraparound monitors.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    So, courtesy of @Tochiro on Twitter, we have our first real look at the new Valkyrie for Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. @no3Ljm did a bit of color-tweaking on the image to make some of the surface detail more visible: The original promotional piece from last year, for reference:
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Who'd have thought rewriting Star Trek: Discovery into a Bad Future where interstellar travel is all but nonexistent would make it difficult to hide the painfully underdeveloped characters behind exciting space action? Especially when the entire Bad Future hinges on a plot hole so large it was literally an interstellar empire for centuries.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Haruhiko Mikimoto Forever, coming "When it's done".
  20. Seto Kaiba
    To answer the question with some helpful context and without the ridiculous faux-academic posturing... In DYRL?, Minmay had already had her big break and become a famous idol singer before she ever met Hikaru. The reason that Hikaru drops, and then unknowingly treads on and breaks, the flashlight from his VF's emergency kit is that he's stunned rigid by the revelation that the girl he'd just rescued was the Lynn Minmay. He is, as he confesses to her a minute or so later, a huge fan of hers. So much so that he develops a nervous stutter when she talks to him directly. Minmay's status as an idol is something that doesn't translate well for western audiences. Western celebrities might end up on a pedestal as a result of their fame as a singer, an actor, an athlete, or what have you... but for idols, be they Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, or Korean, being put on a pedestal is what makes them famous and their career is mainly devoted to staying up there. Idols are celebrities who trade on their image, their physical attractiveness, and their personality more than anything else. Their careers are built on a dedicated, some might say slightly cult-like, fan following to whom they market escapist entertainment. An idol is marketed as a kind of ideal person, someone who is accessible in the sense that you can find them on TV or even shake their hand at an event, but also unattainable. They sell a fantasy of fame and success and themselves as the perfect girl (or boy) that any fan would want as their significant other. Their job is, essentially, to maintain a fan following that worships them from afar. Hikaru is a self-confessed big fan of Minmay's. He's stunned and nervous to even be in her presence because he's essentially looking at his unattainable ideal girl in the flesh.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, the new paradigm for TV shows these days that emphasizes visual quality over all else means that they just don't have enough time to spread these things out... the season's fourteen episodes tops, instead of the more comfortable thirty-plus. An optimist might look at it as the sudden reappearance of someone who's paying more than lip service to Federation ideals reminding these folks of how it used to be in the good old days and prompting them to return to a more idealistic mindset themselves. Eh... past performance being a pretty reliable indicator of future results in most cases, I'd be prepared to bet a nontrivial sum that the crew working under Kurtzman and co. simply didn't think that far ahead. As indicated at length in one of my previous posts, we KNOW they didn't think that far ahead when it comes to "the burn" and warp drive technology. Dilithium's only necessary for warp drive if the reactor powering your warp drive is a matter/antimatter reactor. The Romulan Star Empire's entire fleet had gone to quantum singularity-based warp cores in the 2360s and beyond, and if you want to take unproduced plots from Enterprise's fifth season at face value the Romulans may have been using variants of that technology since the Earth-Romulan War in the late 2150s. The Federation absolutely knew how that technology worked by the 2370s, with Starfleet crews assisting in repairs to Romulan ships on at least a few occasions in TNG. Even if they were entirely dependent on conventional warp drive, "the burn" should have been no more than a mild inconvenience once you got past the initial loss of life. (That's not even getting into why the faster, more energy-efficient, and all-around superior quantum slipstream technology Voyager brought back with it from their time in the Delta quadrant ought to have supplanted it entirely centuries ago... or all the other alternative propulsion and energy generation technologies that we know exist in the time between 2257 and 3189.) TBH, that Discovery survived even one quantum torpedo strike is kind of unbelievable. She's a ship of the 2250s, and quantum torpedos would've been a one-hit kill on most ships of the 2370s.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, and Macross Chronicle indicates those are "Unmanned Stealth Submarines that are owned by the Critical Path Corporation [...]". (Ref. Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet Other 7A) Which doesn't actually contradict my point, as we have another very prominent "evolved Zentradi design" that is explicitly a product of the General Galaxy corporation: the Queadluun-Rhea battle suit used by the New UN Spacy Marine Corps and SMS. Incidentally, we now have a third conflict WRT the Annabella Lasiodora mobile weapon. Macross Chronicle described it as having been manufactured by the Critical Path corporation (Mechanic Sheet Other 06A). Though I suppose we could not rule out that it was developed by General Galaxy and manufactured under license by Critical Path, or codeveloped by the two. Is it? All but one of the references I can find in Macross Chronicle just call it 民間企業 - "private enterprise" or "private sector company". It's described as manufacturer of the Annabella Lasiodora and developer of the Jamming Sound System in Macross Chronicle, which wouldn't be consistent with the company being a PMC. (It's possible that, like Bilra Transport and Xaos, the Critical Path Corporation simply owns and operates its own PMC division.) I wonder if they meant to write 民間の軍需産業 instead of 民間の軍事会社? Apart from the short story "Wired Warrior", the Macross Frontier TV and Movie novelizations also draw that connection. Two separate instances of Manfred Brando are connected to General Galaxy and the Macross Galaxy fleet in the novels, with a pre-death Manfred Brando having been involved in the 117th Research Fleet and investigation into its loss and post-death a copy of his consciousness is among the "cyber nobles" who run the Macross Galaxy fleet. Yes, I know... it is operated by the majority-Zentradi anti-Latence paramilitary/terrorist group Black Rainbow. At the very least, we know that the Pheyos Valkyrie was a semi-original development made by dissident Zentradi from stolen New UN Gov't military technology (like its predecessor, the Variable Glaug). Exactly who manufactures it is unclear. It may be an under-the-table product of General Galaxy or Critical Path, who do appear to be guilty of doing the Anaheim Electronics thing and selling to both the government and anti-government forces. (It's worth noting the reproduction Variable Glaug and its later derivatives were General Galaxy products too.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, interesting. Thanks for your work in sourcing that.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    When it comes to the Annabella Lasiodora, either interpretation of its provenance would rule it out as a specifically-Zentradi mobile weapon IMO. Either it was developed by Critical Path corp. - an Earth-based defense contractor with close ties to General Galaxy and one of the backers of Latence - or it was developed by the Earth branch of General Galaxy and operated by agents of the Critical Path corp. as part of their collusion with Latence. The way the Gjagravan Va is written up suggests the latter case, since Black Rainbow were the operators of that weapon and its developer was unknown in-game. (They were a majority, but not exclusively, Zentradi paramilitary group.) "Mobile Weapon" or "Walking Weapon" might've been used in their cases since they're not easily pigeonholed into the existing categories of "Destroid", "Valkyrie", or "Warship" due to their unconventional forms and size. The Annabella Lasiodora was a lot bigger than the average VF and its six-legged pseudo-warship configuration makes it hard to classify, and the Gjagravan Va had a similar problem as a four-legged walking tank several times the size of a VF. There may be a design lineage of sorts between those weapons and the Zentradi mecha, given that General Galaxy is noted to have strong Zentradi influences in its designs due to the influence of prominent Zentradi engineers like Algus Selzaa. The Gjagravan Va's design recalls the structure and movements of a water strider. Destroids are mainly designed for surface operation, so they wouldn't need better radiation shielding than a VF's. It'd have to be some insanely high winds to make flying impossible for a VF, to an extent that buildings wouldn't remain standing and Destroids would be blown over.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The Macross Frontier short story "Wired Warrior" by Ukyo Kodachi has this as a General Galaxy (Earth branch) development, not a Zentradi mobile weapon.
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