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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    In the nose, it's where the avionics live.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Officially, no... the VF-25G's avionics bay contains a fire control booster to enhance the precision of the SSL-9B railgun, and the camera system in the monitor turret (head) has been adjusted for long-range precision shooting. Master File takes it one step further by suggesting the actual camera system in the VF-25G's head is different from the one in the VF-25A's, though everything else about the heads is the same. Any VF-25 can, in theory, wield the SSL-9B Dragunov railgun... Alto uses it in the finale of Macross Frontier in his VF-25F. They just can't wield it as precisely as the VF-25G could, with its specially modified optics and fire control booster.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Officially it's unconfirmed. Master File indicates that there was a dedicated sniper variant VF-171 called the VF-171AS.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Well, he is writing for general audiences... one of the bigger problems with the situation, and a source of entirely too much misinformation from the Robotech side of things, is when the situation gets oversimplified and people start drawing conclusions based on the oversimplification. (Especially when that oversimplification is couched in truthful but typically weasel-y language the way some Harmony Gold statements are.) Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing Macross plamodels (Macrosspla?) in bookstores the way gunpla can currently be found.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... as unpopular an opinion as it may be, I'm actually going to argue in favor of the VF-31 Kairos on two specific points: Better overall cost-performance on the VF-31's part, as the VF-31 can swap roles with a simple change of a modular equipment package rather than needing dedicated variants for particular operational roles the way the VF-25 does. Logistics are simplified by having one variant to rule them all, instead of having to build specialist variants for roles like ELINT/AWACS, Command, etc. Better passive stealth design: the VF-31's going to age a little more gracefully than the VF-25 is in the long run. The VF-25 Messiah has some concessions to passive stealth like heat sequestration systems and radar-absorbent material, but most of its stealthiness is derived from its 3rd Generation active stealth system. As radar tech improves, its active stealth system is going to gradually diminish in effectiveness. The VF-31's emphasis on internally-carried weapons and better overall passive stealth design focus means that it isn't going to be impacted as much by the same degradation in the effectiveness of its 3rd Generation active stealth system. For a fleet with money to burn that's looking for the most advanced 5th Generation VF, the VF-25 is the obvious choice. For a fleet that's not flush with cash and that's looking to get maximum long-term value from its investment, the VF-31 is probably the way to go. I'm a guy who likes to get maximum value for money, so I'd go for the VF-31s. By the time the VF-31 is finally adopted by the Brisingr Alliance New UN Forces c.2069-2070, the VF-25 will be over ten years old. It'll doubtless have had some block updates which improved its performance in various areas and ironed out some bugs that've come up in routine operation of large fleets. It'll also probably have almost as many fleet-specific VF-25 specifications as there are operators of it. Thanks. Quamzin's expression there just perfectly captures the last few days I've had at work.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the original one from Macross Ace almost looks like something from a Miyazaki film.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it looks like Star Trek: Picard might be headed into some more trouble. CBS has announced at a separate event after the Las Vegas Star Trek convention that Star Trek: Picard is going to follow the narrative style and format of Star Trek: Discovery over that of the Star Trek: the Next Generation series. They've also revealed that they learned nothing from the commercial failure of the Bad Reboot Star Trek film trilogy or Star Trek: Nemesis. CBS has revealed that most of Star Trek: Picard's backstory is not going to be in the actual show. Instead, all that plot-essential backstory is going to be dumped into a 3 issue limited comic and a prequel novel... the same cockup they made with Star Trek (2009) and Star Trek: Into Darkness, where everything explaining how we ended up here and why was offloaded onto a limited comic series nobody read, leaving the plot surprisingly free of context. Brent Spiner has confirmed his appearance in the series as Data is a glorified cameo that he described as being more a plot point than a character, Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis have confirmed their appearances are a bit part in one episode, and Jeri Ryan has indicated Seven of Nine's involvement is going to be quite limited too. Unhelpfully, it sounds like they're going to be tying into the Star Trek: Countdown comic nobody read that set up the Bad Reboot trilogy as well... with the Romulan Empire studying the Borg for their technology, which was what led to the Narada going from a mining ship to a visual clusterf*ck. There's been a token change of showrunner but it seems that Star Trek still has untreated and near-terminal Kurtzmanitis...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, probably... but the Wyvern was designed for a not-terribly-serious running column in Macross Ace magazine. It was not really intended to be taken completely seriously. The Wyvern 2 is that ill-advised attempt to take a joke machine seriously.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I've just had a run-in with a bug @pengbuzz commented on the other day. Posts seem to occasionally disappear and reappear, causing people to post the same post again. The Newbie and Short Questions thread's recent posts from this morning/last night have an example of this. I've also noticed, on occasion, that on hitting the Submit Reply button the contents of the message are posted but also remain in the editor.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Nine, not counting the pilot.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    That's a quirk of IPB... the IPB rich text editor will retain the source formatting of copied and pasted text (incl. color, background color, size, and any other tags) unless you paste using CTRL-SHIFT-V instead of just CTRL-V. Most BBS software doesn't do that, and thus people copying and pasting stuff to here often find weird formatting when IPB attempts to make sense of whatever tag content was in the original. Since a lot of office applications have started doing the same thing, CTRL-SHIFT-V has become rather more useful than CTRL-V for most purposes. This term is the same in British English as it is in American English, at least according to the Oxford, Cambridge, and Collins English dictionaries... It's a dedicated two-seater Airborne Early Warning model, with some specialized hardware for fold wave-based electronic warfare and purports to be using an advanced version of the Aegis Pack that has a non-rotating phased array radome (a trait Master File's writers seem to really like, as they've incorporated it on several similar units). Apparently not, given that its description essentially describes its reconnaissance methodology as reconnaissance in force (seeing what the enemy's got by shooting at them until they come after you). It's noted to have reinforced energy conversion armor that is beefed up to twice the usual strength of the VF-25 with additional equipment to supply the armor with power. That's another oddity Master File's writers seem to be fond of... "VIP transport" conversions that gut the VF's transformation so it can accommodate a large passenger compartment. The airframe shape isn't actually that different, it's just the transformation's moving parts have been replaced with a static crew compartment and the shield replaced with a generator unit to provide power to the greatly-upscaled ISC system protecting the passengers from its acceleration. A carryover from Macross Ace magazine, actually. In the final analysis, that goofy thing is technically a stealth conversion... namely, one meant to eliminate the low level fold waves emitted by the Gravity and Inertia Control systems at the heart of the VF's compact thermonuclear reactors and make the VF-25 "invisible" to the Vajra's fold wave detection abilities by substituting a reciprocating engine and contrarotating propeller with that larger wing so the VF-25 would be able to function as a low-speed reconnaissance aircraft for surveying the Vajra home planet and Vajra habitat without being perceived as a potential threat. Development was cancelled after hostilities with the Vajra broke out in 2059.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Well, that'd explain why the show mentions that protoculture tastes awful...
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be rather hypocritical of me if I did get annoyed... I'm pretty damned pedantic myself, truth be told. (Ah, the perils of academia...) That's "restoration" you're thinking of, not "retrofitting". As a nautical term, "refit" can go either way... covering either restoration of a ship to its original condition as well as retrofitting it for purposes of modernization or customization, though the latter usage is far and away the more common one. "Retrofit" is a synonym of "Modernize" (per Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    ... dear gods why? So, business as usual? My favorite part is how 99% of the posters aren't even humans... you've got adbots spamming each other's threads incessantly. In other late-breaking news, water is wet!
  15. Seto Kaiba
    At the time (c.2059 August), the handful of VF-25s that had been built to date were trial production units built for operational evaluation testing. The Frontier government contracted the local SMS branch to test those trial production VF-25s in actual combat conditions because there's less red tape involved... especially if somebody dies. Long story short, there were only a double handful of VF-25s in existence and all stationed aboard one ship: the SMS Macross Quarter. (You can see the SMS livery on the side of the nose and on the stabilizer.) We know that the SMS Macross Quarter had at least a few QF-4000s, since Luca had three, and that they had a workaround for the Vajra's high-powered ECM from a fairly early point. There is that, yeah...
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Those are Guantanamo-class stealth space aircraft carriers and Uraga-class stealth escort battle carriers, the two most common classes of aircraft carrier used by the New UN Spacy from the 2030s onward. The Guantanamo-class stealth carrier is a successor to the old ARMD-class space carriers used during the First Space War and the more advanced type seen after the war (sometimes called ARMD II-class), while the Uraga-class is a newer type that is able to operate in space and in water.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    They appear to use the QF-4000 Ghost in that role in the Macross Frontier TV series. The Macross Frontier fleet NUNS used QF-4000 Ghosts to conduct forward reconnaissance of the Vajra homeworld at the end of ep23. That looks to be a stock VF-25A though. IMO, the VF-25F would make a better choice for that kind of role given its enhanced air combat spec includes improvements to avionics and sensors and tunings that boost its agility and acceleration for use in dogfighting and reconnaissance-in-force roles. Variable Fighter Master File included a dedicated reconnaissance model on top of the moderately recon-focused RVF-25.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Not gonna lie, I hit like because you took the time to do the sound effect.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    23 or 24, I think... it's shown flying out of an asteroid field. #3, starting at about 7:45... though it's not quite the classic VF-1 Valkyrie. What we see are a pair of VF-1EX's, training aircraft that've been retrofitted/modified with the EX-Gear cockpit system used by almost every 5th Generation VF.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Being the first the vast majority of Robotech fans ever saw of Robotech, the foundational story arc underpinning the entire Robotech series, and the best of the three adapted shows, it's not exactly surprising that Macross was the one that stuck with Robotech fans. (Kind of a disservice to MOSPEADA, if nothing else, since the titular but perpetually out-of-focus MOSPEADA was wicked cool.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not sure if I should be disappointed by that or not, TBH. I'm about halfway into Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable and I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I enjoyed Stardust Crusaders. If Golden Wind is a return to the Stardust Crusaders form, that's a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. (Not to say Diamond is Unbreakable is bad, it's just got all the formulaic enemy-of-the-week but it lacks any real sense of direction apart from the short-lived quest for the Stand Arrow that was creating all the Stand users in Morioh. Stardust Crusaders felt a lot more focused because there was a clear goal that Jotaro and company were working towards. Diamond is Unbreakable is bizarre, but it doesn't feel like much of an adventure... more like Jojo's Bizarre Neighborhood.) But is he the long-awaited Jojo protagonist smart enough to realize that the enemy Stand user is always the most flamboyantly-dressed person in the vicinity? "Where's the enemy stand user?" "Look for anyone nearby dressed like they mugged a carnival float this morning!"
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The way she's addressed in the TV series, Lady M's presented as if she were a single person rather than an inherited title or alias. (Which makes it weirder still that the Ragna branch of Xaos don't seem to know who she is when everyone else seems to... even the Windermereans in Passionate Walkure.) I can't quite see Mylene putting her music career aside to focus on playing politics with the New UN Forces either...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Oh myyyyyyyy...
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Alto didn't really choose anyone in Macross 30... he came to the future (2060) with Sheryl but, in that scene, is relieved to see Ranka is all right because Ranka had been held prisoner by the New UN Spacy Special Forces 815th Independent Squadron "Hávamál" to ensure Major Brera Sterne's cooperation with their goals. (They similarly held Myung Fang Lone hostage to force Guld Goa Bowman to cooperate with them.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    No... Mainland is just a very large habitat ship where the majority of the Macross Galaxy fleet's civilian population lives. The NMCV-21 Battle Galaxy is the same type of warship as the NMCV-25 Battle Frontier. It's a Battle-class variable stealth space assault aircraft carrier. Each New Macross fleet's Battle-class flagship is built to the same basic design, but no two ships of the class are truly identical due to changes in technology during construction and customization of the design during construction by the fleet government to meet its specific needs or incorporate technology that the fleet government feels it should have. Battle Galaxy looks so different from her sister ship Battle Frontier because its design incorporates a lot of cutting edge and experimental technology developed by the Macross Galaxy corporation that runs the Macross Galaxy fleet as its government. Battle Galaxy would have spent most of its time docked to the Mainland ship the same way that Battle Frontier spent most of its time docked to Island-1. When Battle Galaxy was sunk by Battle Frontier over the Vajra homeworld, Mainland was elsewhere and was not attacked.
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