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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    I know the Vajra Worldguide sheet (24A) mention the ancient Protoculture eventually mastered the manufacture of synthetic fold quartz. I recall reading at one point that the New UN Government was researching the creation of synthetic fold quartz, but there wasn't any indication in the text that they'd succeeded in producing fold crystals pure enough to cross the line separating the fold carbon they were already synthesizing for fold reactors and so on from true fold quartz. The size and purity of fold crystals is the make or break point for their usability, with granular fold quartz being usable for MDE weapons and larger, purer crystals being usable in things like ISCs or fold wave systems. Given Macross Delta's backstory, I'm inclined to suspect that nobody has succeeded in producing synthetic fold quartz by 2067. If a synthetic substitute were readily available, Windermere IV's plan to pin its economic growth on mining fold quartz wouldn't make sense. Fold quartz is presumably what they were paying Berger Stone's Epsilon Foundation with in 2067.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that one or more of the undisclosed technological advancements in the YF-24 Evolution was something along those lines... but we can't say that the VF-24's superior performance isn't simply due to more advanced conventional technologies and a better-designed ISC. Even I occasionally get details mixed up if I don't have my notes on hand. That's one of the reasons I'm taking advantage of this work-from-home situation to get back to work on my website project. It's an opportunity to organize and systemize my notes and get 'em up for the world to view at their leisure. The YF-24 program was kicked off shortly after the New UN Government's first contact with the Vajra in 2040. Whatever the incident entailed, it was enough of a shock for the New UN Government to conclude that even its latest main VFs were probably not up to the task of combating the Vajra and launch development of the next generation of variable fighters with a goal of being able to successfully oppose the Vajra if there should be a hostile confrontation. The Brisingr Alliance's next-generation main fighter program started with Uroboros's YF-30 Chronos, which was a derivative of the YF-24 Evolution and YF-29. They economized the hell out of it, to the point that it's down to around the VF-25's level and could reasonably be mass produced. Yeah, they're not using fold boosters when they attack Al Shahal in Macross Delta's first episode. The fold effect we see them emerge from is the distinctive one that's used for the ancient Protoculture ship Sigur Berrentzs, so presumably that ship is creating the space fold they're using to get around... possibly an extension of its ability to connect to and regulate the fold network in the ruins throughout the Brisingr cluster. Yeah, the Aerial Knights standard model used by Hermann, Bogue, Qasim, and the twins is the Sv-262Ba while Keith, as leader, has the Sv-262Hs. This arrangement is likely something they inherited from the New UN Forces in the ~33 years they were a New UN Government member world. One of those trends that comes and goes in VF design is whether or not to have a specific "command variant" with enhanced communication capabilities for squadron leaders or platoon leaders. The members of a unit other than the commander wouldn't need the extra capabilities, so it wouldn't make sense to have an entire unit made up of just command variants if it meant depriving other units of the additional communications/coordination ability. On the Sv-262, the actual difference in performance between the regular and command variant isn't very large. There's a 5% better output from the fold reheat and some additional weaponry in the form of a pair of lasers, but other than that they're largely identical aircraft.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, it's absolutely possible to use fold quartz to boost a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine's performance. The first instance of this that was depicted was the YF-29's Fold Wave System in Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye, which enabled the fighter to draw energy out of fold space to supplement its reactor output. The YF-30 Chronos has an improved version of this technology called the Fold Dimensional Resonance System. The VF-31 custom Siegfrieds inherited the YF-29's Fold Wave System, albeit apparently with reduced application of fold quartz and seemingly a less extreme performance boost. These two systems improve more than just the engine output though, they also provide additional power to run things like energy conversion armor and pinpoint barriers in fighter mode. The Sv-262 Draken III is, as far as we know, the first production aircraft to include a fold wave performance-enhancement. Its Fold Reheat is a different, more focused application that exclusively improves engine output... but provides up to twice the percentage improvement in engine performance provided by the Xaos custom VF-31's Fold Wave System (25-30% instead of 15%). The Fold Reheat is present on both variants of the Draken III, though the Sv-262Hs command specification offers 5% more improvement in output vs. the version on the standard Ba model. Actually, it's one of the longest development cycles in Macross... it took something like 15 years to mature and miniaturize the technology from the start of the YF-24 program in 2040 to the rollout of the Evolution prototype in 2055. It's a pretty impressive jump, all told. From 2G for 5 seconds to 27.5G for 120 seconds. Thus far, there hasn't been any mention of a YF-23. There is a mention of a possible YF-28 in Macross the Ride in connection with the YF-29 development data Macross Galaxy illicitly obtained from the Macross Frontier fleet via LAI... though ultimately the data was used in the completion of the VF-27.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Not just at the tip... in episode 17 when Brera is explaining the Vajra's adaptive abilities, his VF-27's gunpod has what appears to be two rows of fold quartz inserts on either side of its split barrel. The scene in question is about 17:30 in the episode. I'm writing on my tablet, so I can't take a screencap right now (because I can't figure out how to screencap on this thing). Given what we know about the (military) applications of fold quartz, that's presumably to generate the heavy quantum or produce the fold waves are used to excite/manipulate the heavy quantum. If it's the former, with such a long barrel then its beam grenade ought to be much larger and more powerful than that of smaller beam gunpods. As far as we know, that doesn't appear to be the case. Earth, as the economic and political center of the universe, simply has the most resources and therefore the best toys. They likely have an Inertia Store Converter that's much more advanced and powerful than the ones emigrant fleets can produce, and the cash and manufacturing power to go all-in on redonkulously powerful Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines of the type which gave the YF-30 a thrust-to-weight ratio in excess of 50:1. With their more advanced technology, there's no telling what other highly advanced bells and whistles the VF-24 might have compared to the redacted YF-24 Evolution spec that was shared with emigrant governments. Kinda? The period of unrest in the late 2030s and 2040s between the central New Unification Government and the various member worlds and fleets, combined with Isamu and Guld's little stunt in 2040, led to arms export restrictions aimed at ensuring the central NUNS would remain The Biggest Stick. That's part of why the VF-19 and VF-22 never achieved widespread adoption and instead a third design (the VF-171) became the next (manned) main VF of the NUNS. The Earth/Central New UN Forces shared an incomplete version of the YF-24 Evolution spec with the emigrant fleets and planetary governments under the New UN Government's technology-sharing mandates... the parts they left out are the parts which made the YF-24 Evolution and VF-24 so incredibly powerful. The emigrant governments have the general picture, but had to fill in the various blanks with their own versions of certain technologies... which is how we got the VF-25, YF-26, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31. Not leaked... deliberately shared, albeit in an incomplete form. All 5th Generation VFs are derived in one way or another from the YF-24 Evolution spec, including the VF-25, YF-26, VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, VF-31, etc. You may be thinking of the VF-27, which was based on the YF-24 Evolution but completed using development data leaked from the Macross Frontier fleet's YF-29 program by LAI. Bleh... after much grumbling and arguing with my webhost, I've got the new domain(s) for my new project set up and secured. They dragged that out for WAY longer than was necessary or sane. Now I can finally start uploading test versions of the pages.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Very... but we don't have the necessary information to put an actual number to it. The heavy quantum beam gunpods used in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta are quite shockingly destructive, with the charged "beam grenade" shot being able to inflict significant damage on small warships (or defenseless medium-sized ones). Without quantitative measurements of the various beam gunpod outputs, we can't really say how they compare with certainty... IIRC, it's never really properly established why the VF-27's beam gunpod is so large. It's practically all barrel too, the actual body of the gun doesn't seem to be much larger than those of the other beam gunpods. If I had to guess, I'd assume it's probably meant to facilitate higher-powered discharges more than anything, though the regular shots don't seem to have any more stopping power than those of the more compact models that followed it. The VF-31's beam gunpod seems to lack a beam grenade mode though.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Usually, if something makes its debut in a movie version it's usually established to also be a thing in-setting... though its context may end up being slightly different. For instance, the obvious visual differences between the TV and Film versions of the VF-1 Valkyrie and the Film version becoming the standard going forward was reconciled as the TV version being representative of the VF-1's earliest production blocks (1-5) and the Film version being the production standard for most VF-1's produced starting late in the war and beyond (in Blocks 6 and later). The SDF-1 Macross's design changes between the TV and Film versions were likewise reconciled as being (respectively) the ship's appearance at the outset of the war and what it looked like after it was repaired after the war ended. Exsedol got similar treatment, with his TV appearance being what he looks like in his miclone form and his Film appearance being what he normally looks like as a giant. By all accounts, the YF-29 Durandal absolutely does exist outside of the Macross Frontier movies. Its context may be different, but it definitely exists. Macross the Ride, a prequel to the Macross Frontier series, mentions the YF-29 and we know the Macross Galaxy fleet illicitly obtained YF-29 development data and used it to complete the VF-27. Likewise, SMS's YF-30 Chronos technology demonstrator was based on the YF-24 Evolution and YF-29 Durandal, with its Fold Dimensional Resonance system being a derivative of the YF-29's Fold Wave system, and the YF-30 was the starting point for the development of the VF-31 as well. At least one issue of Great Mechanics G (Autumn 2016) promoting Macross Delta also explicitly places the YF-29 in the VF-31's family tree. No he doesn't... the TW-1 Tornado Pack only exists in the Macross Frontier movies. Alto's final fight in the Macross Frontier TV series has him flying his VF-25F with an APS-25A/MF25 Armored Pack. Kawamori's stance aside, there's also a valid in-setting answer to the question that bears stating.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it probably helps that everyone from space in Genesis Climber MOSPEADA seems to wear a leotard. Genesis Climber MOSPEADA suffered from some executive meddling, but not to the extent that I'd call it a "troubled production". I suspect you might be thinking of Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross... Tatsunoko Production's other attempt to make the Macross lightning strike twice, which did so poorly that the series was earmarked for cancellation after just 16 episodes and ended prematurely 23 episodes into a 39 episode run.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    The impression I always had was that they wore the Riding Suit over their normal clothes.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    There are only two base insignia seen in the official materials... Mars Base's triangle-M logo: and the much less commonly-seen Jupiter Base's heart-J logo that is only seen on the art for the VR-038 and AFC-01Z:
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Apart from the mechanical refinements to the transformation system mentioned previously, a big part of it would have to be simply to accommodate the shapes of the airframes of the various models of variable fighter. The various defense contractors developing new models of variable fighter are constantly experimenting with different airframe designs to see what will best meet the military's needs in quantifiable areas of performance like speed, maneuverability, climb rate, stealthiness, payload capacity, and so on. That has led to some radically different airframe designs over the years to meet the military's latest set of demands for platforms that cover a variety of different roles. So it's partly a "how do we get from here to a giant robot?" question for the design teams as well. The more unconventional the fighter mode, the more unconventional the resulting battroid mode will likely be to accommodate it.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Well, we can't speak for the Zentradi's long-extinct creators... but humanity's rationale for constructing such large examples of super dimension energy weaponry seems to be based on the understanding that they will always and forever be fighting the Zentradi at a significant numerical disadvantage. Your typical emigrant fleet/planet government's defense force has anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred warships at its disposal, and anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand variable fighters, attackers, bombers, and what have you. Even the very largest emigrant fleet described thus far (Macross Valiant) is only about 3/4 the size of a Zentradi branch fleet in terms of the simple number of ships. The superior firepower offered by thermonuclear reaction weaponry and those large-scale anti-fleet super dimension energy cannons like the Battle-class's Macross Cannon level the playing field a bit. Macross II: Lovers Again's Macross Cannon-class gunships and Macross 7's Varauta fleet flagship space carrier are perhaps the most excessive examples of this. The former is basically a massive flying gun battery made up of four Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class fleet command battleships and their heavy converging beam cannons massively uprated to a level where they can wipe out hundreds of ships with a single shot. The latter is simply an exercise in excess, with eight Macross Cannons and eight anti-fleet multi-warhead reaction missiles that are each outfitted with 24 10-gigaton reaction warheads. The Minmay Attack will usually only disorient and confuse a rogue Zentradi fleet, but if you wipe out their command ships while they're dazed and confused they'll retreat and if you wipe them all out your problem is solved at the outset. Having the firepower to do that to branch fleet-sized forces is a good way to ensure your civilian population survives as that's the size of force you're most likely to encounter. Basically, yeah... the remaining Zentradi fleets in the galaxy are still fighting the same war they were fighting while the Protoculture's civilization was collapsing around their ears, and thus far they seem to attack on sight. They and their enemies have been the only show in town for so long that presumably it doesn't often occur to them that there might be other groups that aren't aligned with them or their enemies. Thanks to mass production on an unfathomably huge scale, the Zentradi are still very much occupied fighting the same foes they've been fighting for half a million years. Vrlitwhai's branch fleet stumbled across Earth on a search and destroy mission chasing a fleeing Supervision Army (or Meltrandi) warship. Others simply stumbled across emigrant fleets due to sheer bad luck. In Macross II's timeline, two more main fleets met their end in the Sol system thanks to Zentradi who'd survived the First Space War but not made peace with humans trying to finish what they'd started with progressively less luck as humanity got better and better at dealing with Zentradi forces.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, it's only the larger warships like the Zentradi and Meltrandi mobile fortresses, Macross II's Macross Cannon-class gunships, and the main Macross continuity's New Macross-class gunships and Varauta fleet mothership that have heavy super dimension energy cannons of fleet-busting proportions.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Presumably no more or less so than their Zentradi counterparts. Heavy converging beam cannons don't have quite that level of firepower on ships of that scale... like the Macross's main gun, they can wipe out one ship with a direct hit or near miss, maybe two or three if they're flying in close formation, but not dozens in one go. The long charge-up and cool-down times between shots make them rather less of an overwhelming advantage than you're thinking, and the space that would otherwise have gone to mecha, guided beam cannon turrets, and missile launchers is taken up by the cannon so the ship is probably somewhat more vulnerable than the average ship of the line.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Remodeled, more like... the line art for either version of the design still has the bridge tower, but in the case of the Meltrandi it's not the only class of ship to have one. Presumably the original bridge was laid out more along the lines of what we see of Milia 639's ship.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, their original interest in it - the reason they pursued it to the Sol system - was that it was a ship belonging to their enemy. It was a Supervision Army gunship in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series and a Meltrandi gunship in Macross: Do You Remember Love?. After discovering what'd become of it, their interest shifted from pursuit of an enemy to wondering what the hell they'd just found when they noticed the ship had been rebuilt and the locals started shooting at them with weapons based on lost technology. That got them perplexed enough to decide they needed to capture the ship instead of destroy it.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Well, in Macross: Do You Remember Love? the alien warship that became the SDF-1 Macross belonged to the Meltrandi... but as to its age, it's highly unlikely it's anywhere near that old. The war between the Zentradi and Meltrandi that destroyed the ancient Protoculture civilization had been raging for 500,000+ years at the time Alien Starship One crashed in the South Pacific. Both sides had automated factory satellites constantly providing them with replacement ships, mecha, and troops to offset combat losses. Even the Zentradi Boddole Zer Main Fleet's mobile fortress - a core fleet strategic asset - wasn't that old. Boddole Zer's mobile fortress had only been active for ~120,000 years. A regular ship of the line like the one that became the Macross would not have lasted anywhere near that long because it'd be getting shot at on a regular basis. Odds are it was somewhere between a few years and a couple decades old.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    That'd certainly explain a lot. I think that's my favorite interpretation of this so far... one of those largely fictive "based on a true story" type productions with a budget so low they have to raid the studio's props warehouse for anything that looked remotely right. (In the context of that last part, like how G-Saviour raided the props warehouse for SF props and came away with a lot of stuff from Starship Troopers.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Well, sorta... Kawamori's official stance on canon is basically broad strokes continuity. Except for the Regults and that bit at the end where they talk about "the end of this century", it theoretically fits the existing timeline... it just feels sloppily-made. Say what you will about Kawamori's Schrodinger's canon, but when he does something it's usually tight and consistent within itself.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, the ADR-03-Mk.III Cheyenne was an original design by Junya Ishigaki for Macross Zero... it had no prior appearances. It became the "default" Destroid from Frontier onwards due to it having an existing CG model that could be reused instead of having to model a new Destroid from scratch. EDIT: For the curious, Junya Ishigaki's sketches for the Cheyenne can be found on pages 93 and 94 of his artbook Junya Ishigaki: ROBO no ISHI. The Cheyenne art is mostly dated February and March 2003.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's what I was getting at... asset reuse is a pretty common, widely accepted, and usually-effective way to save money on a production that uses computer animation. Whatever overworked, underpaid animator did that scene grabbed an existing art asset without even taking the thirty seconds to see if this was an aircraft that was even designed to be launched from an aircraft carrier. Macross has been reusing art assets wherever they can get away with it to save money since the switch to computer animation. Macross Frontier reused the Cheyenne CG model with a few tweaks as the Cheyenne II which was then reused unaltered in Macross Delta. Macross Delta also reused the Island-1 CG model from Macross Frontier for the much smaller cityship on Ragna, and reused the NUNS ships essentially unaltered, while putting some minor repaints and cosmetic alterations on the Macross Galaxy fleet's ships for Windermere IV's use. The best cases of art asset reuse are the ones that make perfect sense in context, like the reuse of those ship designs. The Cheyenne II required some mental calisthenics for Frontier's creators to explain its existence, but a lot of the other stuff just works.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Ah. I've never been the podcast-listening type, so that slipped right past me. Yeah, it's a weird set of anachronisms... So, from the profile, this is obviously a Prometheus-class aircraft carrier. As far as we know, the Earth Unification Government only completed one of those: CVS-101 Prometheus. The old Sky Angels technical manual and Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 have both suggested the UN Government had at least two more pairs of Prometheus-class carriers and Daedalus-class assault ships under construction at the outset of the First Space War, but those ship were not set to be completed and delivered until late 2009 or early 2010 and were presumably destroyed before or shortly after completion when the Zentradi bombarded Earth's surface. These, on the other hand, are obviously Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptors... and it obviously doesn't belong where it is, for several different reasons. First and foremost, the Lockheed Martin F-22A can't operate from aircraft carriers. They were designed for Air Force use only, and lack the necessary hardware for CATOBAR, like the launch bar on the front landing gear and tailhooks for arrested recovery. There was originally a proposal for a Navy variant, but that proposal was scrapped in 1991 and these lack a key design feature that was unique to the F-22 Navy variant proposal... variable-sweep wings. Hypothesis: some schmuck animating this on the cheap appropriated an existing F-22 CG model and threw it in without even bothering to consider whether this was a naval aircraft. Secondly, the F-22 would have been obsolete before it ever had a chance to enter military service. The real world F-22A entered service in December 2005, but in Macross's timeline OTM-enhanced fighter designs like the McNell Douglar F203 Dragon II would've been in service for two years already by the time December 2005 rolled around. That's why the UN Forces were using things like F203s and OTM-enhanced F-14s instead of F-22s or F-35s. The 5th Generation jet fighters had their thunder stolen by the 1st Generation Variable Fighters. Tanks are not my forte, but this thing appears to be a UralVagonZavod T-90 main battle tank... the standard MBT of the Russian Army since 1992. I may be wrong in this identification though, so if someone out there really knows their tanks please chime in with your expertise. That's a Stonewell/Bellcom VF-1A Valkyrie. Those didn't enter service until December 2008, after the end of the Unification Wars... why is he here? ... well that's a Viggers/Chrauler MBR-04-Mk.VI Destroid Tomahawk. Not an initial trial production model either, its visor appears to be green instead of red. The first Mk.VI units didn't come off the line until November 2007. ... but this guy's wearing a Unification Wars-era pilot suit model that was designed for use on the F-14++ and VF-0 and flying what looks to be a VF-1A-4. ... then there's this a-hole, who shouldn't be here at all. Why are you here, Regult-san? Your presence is an anachronism. Hotboxing in your Valkyrie's cockpit is, of course, unsafe and probably a violation of regulations. They say something at the end about the end of this century... but, Regults aside, this would have to be occurring in December 2008, eight years after the last century ended. Having Regults present just doesn't work with everything else, chronologically.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed... you'd think they'd at least put in enough effort to come up with some original combat choreography or something. The VF-1 launch sequence is just a reanimation of the launch sequence from the Sega Saturn Macross: Do You Remember Love? game, minus the carrier getting torched from orbit by a Zentradi ship, and a lot of the rest is borrowed from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross OP. When or where is this even supposed to be? You've got a place that looks like it's supposed to be the Middle East and fighters like the F-22 that were only used before the First Space War, but also Regults and Valkyries?
  23. Seto Kaiba
    So... as long as I'm adding notes to things, I found another one. Turns out there's a typo in the Macross the Ride coverage of Hakuna Aoba's mid-story upgrade, the VF-0改. The Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.2 romanizes its name as "Zeak"... but it's actually supposed to be "Zeke", a reference to the Allied reporting name for the Imperial Japanese Navy's famous/infamous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Added a note to my remarks on the SDF-3. While the Macross Frontier animation and print sources like Macross Chronicle have taken the stance that SDF-3 was Megaroad-02, Kazutaka Miyatake has privately expressed support for the idea that the SDF-3 is Vrlitwhai's ship and that particular detail from Sky Angels is also referenced in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 on page 120 in the entry for SVF-789.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Alas, no... it's mentioned only in passing, as a forthcoming next-generation unmanned fighter tipped to replace the QF-3000 series that took such heavy losses in the First Space War. Variable Fighter Master File mentions a similar postwar upgrade to the Ghost that was designated QF-3100.
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