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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Exactly how much time occurs between each case of some jerk finding a Moonlight Butterfly-enabled mobile suit and resetting the world is unclear. The only example we can put even a rough figure on is the Universal Century, implied to be the last one which had finally broken the cycle. Per the character bios in Mobile Suit Gundam UC, the Earth Federation formally changed over to using their Universal Century calendar on the 1st of January, 2045 AD. The events of ∀ Gundam can tentatively be placed via an in-universe history text that put an approximate number of years between itself and the "present day" in the Correct Century as somewhere in the early 7000s AD, with Reconguista in G somewheres around 8160 AD based on my math. Given that the Gundam shows usually point to development of ESP as the next big thing in human evolution and ESPers are always wiped out in whatever Gundam timeline's conflict du jour, that may be an evolutionary roadblock (in addition to a few millennia of a technological step back having undone some of humanity's post-civilization progress). As far as "relatively unchanged", it's hard to say if humanity is or not in some of them. Quite a few characters evidence odd traits that aren't part of our normal gene pool, like an explicit acknowledgement that spacenoids have weird hair colors, or apparent super-strength or super-agility on the part of a few otherwise normal people. "Sequel" might be stretching it, but Tomino has indicated that Reconguista in G is set in the same timeline as ∀ Gundam, just five hundred years or so further down the road. Ameria and several other things from ∀ Gundam are also mentioned, there are a few Gundams that have moonlight butterfly systems present (e.g. the G-Lucifer, the G-Self w/ Perfect Pack), etc. Some horrible stuff apparently went down around the time the moonrace started trying to resettle Earth, ending in sanctioned cannibalism and other atrocities that were only ended by the AG-tech taboo and the Space Umbilical Cord orbital elevator. ... is he... in anguish... or what? Last time I heard a person make a noise like that, it was a friend's college roommate who was having an episode of explosive diarrhea after being tricked into eating half a dozen MRE servings in a single sitting.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Gundam SEED was kind of a "fun with acronyms" moment on that front, coming up with a couple different meanings for GUNDAM IIRC. (My friend Jack Verse is a big Gundam SEED fan, so I've absorbed a bit of information about the series that way, despite having never been able to get through the first half of the first series myself.) Maybe I just have more pop culture-conscious coworkers? I've had a few coworkers at FCA identify my desktop collection of Valkyries (a VF-4G, VF-2SS, VF-171, VF-25, and lately a VF-31J) as being from Macross, a few others who hazarded Robotech as a guess based on the Super Packs, but the majority confuse them for Transformers. (A pretty chill bunch, regardless... I've been using my lunch breaks to speed up my rewatch of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. I've finally gotten to the point where the 00 Gundam has the 0 Raiser and isn't useless anymore.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The bit that's really convenient for Windermereans was a few paragraphs further on... Windermere IV is a planet rich in fold quartz, to the extent that its current (5th) generation main VF - the Sv-262 Draken III - was able to adopt a scaled-back version of the fold wave system for mass production! It doesn't confer fold dimensional energy conversion capability, but Windermere's Fold Reheat technology offers a 25-30% engine power boost... up to twice the engine performance gain offered by the fold wave system in the VF-31 Siegfried.1 1. The Ba variant issued to normal pilots has a reheat system that produces a 25% improvement in main engine output. The Hs variant issued to squadron leaders offers a 30% improvement in main engine output. The VF-31 Siegfried's fold wave system only improves output 15%.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Indubitably. Nein. Thus far, the Fold Dimensional Resonance system has only been implemented on the YF-30 Chronos prototype operated by Rion Sakaki. We know SMS went to considerable lengths to avoid disclosing the specs for the technology, but it's not clear if it either was never disclosed, or wasn't suitable for production due to cost or stability issues. Surya Aerospace's VF-31 Kairos left out any kind of fold wave system derivative when they used the YF-30 as a starting point, and Xaos's own custom version was built with a fold wave system.1 They kept most of the YF-30's other features, including the Brunhilde-type ARIEL II airframe control AI, ordnance container system, etc. No I won't, because it's never been properly explained HOW the fold wave system improves engine performance and so on. I mean, I can guess... but I can't speak with authority on the matter. If I had to guess, I would assume the improvement in performance is coming from either using the fold dimensional energy conversion feature to replace the generator output from the engine's CTR, allowing it to devote 100% of the reaction energy to thrust production, or that the fold waves from the system allow the GIC's dimensional resonator inside the CTR to produce superheavy quantum instead of regular heavy quantum, making the reaction more energetic via better gravitational fuel compression or perhaps substituting heavy quantum for fuel entirely (turning the engine into a low-powered Macross Cannon used for thrust). The non-proprietary stuff in the YF-30 has, like the ordnance container and its choice of airframe control AI (the YF-25's ARIEL II/Brunhilde). Fold quartz adoption is likely to remain constrained to essential systems in the near term, as the New UN Government still restricts [mining/harvesting] and trade in fold quartz to slow down the proliferation of dimensional warheads. Synthetic fold quartz like the Protoculture were eventually able to produce is beyond the capabilities of the New UN Government at this time. The reason given for the change in the design of the aircraft's nose in Macross Chronicle2 is that it was lengthened to improve and refine the fighter's aerodynamic profile in the name of boosting its all-regime performance. Being designed mainly for space, the VF-17 is noted as having been a bit deficient in atmospheric performance and the VF-171 sought to address that. The changes to the transformation were intended to simplify the overall transformation of the VF-171 for the purposes of cost reduction and maintenance simplification of the mass production unit.3 1. Or, if you trust the few non-contradictory portions of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried, the Xaos Valkyrie Works outfitted the VF-31 Custom Siegfried units built for the Ragna branch's 3rd Fighter Wing Δ Flight with a seriously cut-down version of the fold wave system that uses much less fold quartz. It uses the same two pieces of high-purity fold quartz for both fold wave projectors AND the fold wave system core, thus letting them build three VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds with the same amount of fold quartz that'd go into one YF-29 Durandal at the expense of high performance. 2. Mechanic Sheet Macross Frontier NUNS 02A VF-171 Nightmare Plus, bizarrely mentioned under the Battroid Mode section rather than in the Fighter mode section. 3. At least initially, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus was the K.I.S.S. version of the VF-17 ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") meant to economize the design for the kind of large-scale mass production and operation that the VF-17 never got with its sub-1000 unit initial production run. Later improvements made in Blocks II and III boosted its performance such that it was actually superior to the Generation 3.5 VF-17 in almost every respect.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    ... normally I don't pay the slightest attention to American superhero stuff, but this looks so downright bizarre that I think I'm going to have to keep this one on my radar.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    A few shots were also taken at it in Mobile Suit Crossbone Gundam: Skull Heart. Umon Samon had customized his RB-79 Ball to look like a Gundam head (jokingly called the B Gundam), which raised impressive amounts of completely unintentional hell in the Battle of A Baoa Qu when part of Zeon's forces (incl. Anavel Gato's 302nd Patrol Squadron) mistakenly believed it to be the severed head of Amuro Ray's RX-78-2 Gundam and left their position to investigate, allowing Federation Forces that had launched from White Base to slip through the lines while other, more observant forces noticed the scale was off and created a persistent rumor that the Federation had built a GIANT Gundam... resulting in Axis Zeon wasting resources on completing another Zeong in Char's Deleted Affair. Has anyone let them know we get the same damned thing here in the US, except everyone mistakes every robot for something from Transformers?
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe someone's a Macross the Ride/Macross Frontier fan?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Hmmmm... if I'm not careful, this'll end up another slippery slope like when Mr March encouraged me to get a DX Chogokin YF-30 Chronos. I know this is one of those things most Gundam fans don't like to think about, but what with Tomino establishing back in ∀ Gundam that all the Gundam AUs up to that point (pre-SEED) were all various historical periods in the same shared universe there may be something going on there related to the way the same design aesthetic keeps getting applied to uberpowerful mobile suits that emerge right before some utter berk digs up a mobile suit equipped with a Moonlight Butterfly system and resets the frigging world. Genetic memory is a load, but there may be something cultural going on after a half dozen or so apocalypses brought about by suspiciously similar-looking robots. After someone sporting the same look ends your civilization for the fifth time, that look might be intrinsically associated with BAD THINGS. They do seem to have finally kicked the habit once the cycle is broken in the Correct Century and the second millennium of the Reguild Century brings about something approximating lasting peace and prosperity under the AG-Tech taboo until Towasanga and the bloody idiots at Venus Globe go and screw it up by sharing the Rose of Hermes blueprints. Nobody in Reconguista in G goes and wets themselves in fear after seeing the G-Self, no matter how many mooks Bellri shoots down... that story made the G-Self into just a rejected prototype and nobody seems that intimidated by it until it starts acting on its own under the Rayhunton Code. Granted, but in Gundam Wing the only mobile suits built with Gundanium armor are the five mobile suits built for Operation Meteor until like 2/3 of the way through the show when the five doctors all get caught by OZ and forced to build the Mercurius and Vayate. Until that point, and the rollout of the Virgos based on them by Tubarov's men, the Gundams had plenty of time to establish that the iconic aesthetic derived from the XXXG-00W0 Wing Gundam Zero as "The Gundam" while they had more or less a free hand to wreck OZ's sh*t. It's been bloody ages since I last tried to watch Gundam SEED (another attempt to get through it is pending once I finish rewatching Gundam 00), but IIRC isn't Kira like the only one to actually call a mobile suit a Gundam? He gets a dumb look from Lacus for saying it too... Dunno 'bout that, they've all got some pretty similar structural aspects 'round the head. They just look like more complex or angular riffs on the RX-78-2. Plus the Feddies and AEUG keep painting the damned things in that iconic yellow, white, red, and blue. At least Celestial Being had the decency to not only announce that their fancy mobile suits were called Gundams AND write the word "Gundam" all over 'em like a first-year marketing major.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's still the case. Unconventionally, the VF-0 Phoenix seems to have made fuel management available to (or maybe even the responsibility of) the RIO to permit the pilot to focus on maneuvering. Edgar did have to chastise Shin several times in Macross Zero to keep an eye on the fuel consumption. First and Second Generation VFs seem to have kept tandem cockpits around for just three specific cases: Enhanced Attack variants (e.g. VF-4B) to assist in bombing and guided munitions operation. Model conversion training and/or new pilot training Airborne Early Warning and Control variants (e.g. VEFR-1, VE-1) From the Third Generation on, the full tandem cockpit seems to have become purely the territory of the dedicated training aircraft. The VE-11C Thunderseeker had a solo cockpit, as did the RVF-19EF Warning Calibur, RVF-171 Nightmare Plus, and RVF-25 Mainstay. It does look like there's a distinct pattern emerging where there's a N+1 training variant for each mass production variant. You have the -A variant that's the first production unit, then a -B variant that's its tandem equivalent, then a improved production -C unit, followed by a -D tandem variant. The VF-11 and VF-17 bucked that trend by having a low-volume variant that was superseded almost as soon as it was delivered. The VF-11's first mass production type (VF-11A) was superseded pretty much right away by an improved model to address deficiencies (VF-11B) and an economy model for emigrant fleet use (VF-11C), so the tandem cockpit trainer became the VF-11D. The VF-17 had the same issue but one variant later, with the VF-17B presumably being the first conversion trainer and the VF-17C being superseded quickly by a Gen 3.5 replacement, the VF-17D, pushing the N+1 onto the Gen 3.5 command type as VF-17T. Master File does confirm that the VF-19 and VF-25 followed this pattern, which is hinted at in official sources as well though to date no tandem version for the VF-19 has directly appeared. I'd expect that the VF-27 probably doesn't have one, since the VF-27's control is achieved through implants and therefore special controls are not necessary.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I could kind of go for another serious Gundam series where the Gundam isn't so OP that the enemy mooks start crapping themselves when they see one. "It's a Gundam!" followed directly by messy death has become such a thing in the Universal Century, After Colony era, and Anno Domini era that you have to wonder why mooks stick around to obligingly get mulched by a Gundam after spotting it instead of more sensibly legging it and nuking the thing from orbit like a certain bad guy figured out recently. It does kinda look like a more near-future version of Five Star Stories... especially with those wasp waists. The Kimaris especially looks like an A-TOLL Swans and Cobra type, and after upgrading to the Kimaris Vidar, it looks like it's trying pretty hard to be a LED Mirage (Mirage D1). Not nearly as blatant as the ones in 00... after all, they hung a lampshade on it and actually called the guys collecting death flags like they were going out of style "Flag Fighters".
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Only about half, and only after the thing with the Brewers... Akihiro and Chad are the only regulars who were slaves, the rest were just orphans and urchins turned child soldiers who agreed to undergo dangerous cybernetic surgery to get a job at CGS should the implants actually take. Still, that's probably worse... what with the high failure rate, horrible consequences thereof, etc. etc.. Post-Disaster is a really lousy time to be alive even by Gundam standards unless you live on Earth.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... I can kind of understand having a difficult time getting into Mobile Suit Gundam 00, given that it was essentially New Mobile Report Gundam Wing made over in Gundam Evolve's art style. I'm still rewatching that one currently, for the first time since it came out. Iron-Blooded Orphans is definitely one of Gundam's darker installments, and it takes the franchise's "war is hell" message a lot more seriously than most Gundam shows do these days. As a result, its first season drags a fair bit when the writers jump on every opportunity to show how awful life is in the space colonies and on Mars thanks to Earth's oppressive policies, enforced economic inequality, and the corruption of Gjallarhorn. It echoes SEED when it comes to antagonists, with them being either Noble Demon punchclock villains or Complete Monsters with very little middle ground. The main characters hold the idiot ball a bit too often, though that's probably a realistic outcome of a bunch of uneducated child soldiers operating without supervision. The combat feels VERY different from a Gundam show's usual flavor. The absence of any kind of beam weaponry and the armor tech making conventional guns mostly useless makes the battles a lot messier and more brutal. It adds some real weight to the proceedings, since instead of having clean-edged beam saber slices or exploding into censor-friendly pink clouds, the mobile suits from IBO beat each other into submission with edged and blunt weapons until the brutalized enemy MS goes eerily still like a corpse. The cockpit-crushed-in death that was too grim for anyone but total monster Paptimus Scirocco in Zeta Gundam is pretty much the standard in IBO, and the incredibly messy consequences are shown often enough to be kind of unsettling (which was the point). The kid gloves are off in IBO, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I thought it was quite good, though I seem to be something of an exception in that I found season one to be almost as good as season two.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    They've maintained the designation pattern thus far, and Variable Fighter Master File (though not a canon resource) does also spin that into dedicated tandem cockpit training aircraft for the -B and -D on the VF-25. The VF-31B's likely also for model conversion training, though the only info we have on it to date is that it's a thing that exists.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not a fan of it either, truth be told... I've always preferred the dedicated electronic warfare and AWACS variants to be designated VE, as they were up until Macross Frontier introduced the "RVF" designation with the RVF-171 Nightmare Plus. The last main fighter VE variant we had was VE-11 Thunderseeker, the ELINT/AWACS version of the VF-11C Super Thunderbolt. (I refuse to count the VEFR-1 for this purpose, because it was a horrid kludge machine rather than being a purpose-built ELINT/AWACS model, and its nickname of "Funny Chinese" is pretty awful too.) Technically correct (the best kind of correct), though it's worth noting that the VF-31E wasn't even a true variant... Xaos assigned unofficial variant letters to its one-of-a-kind VF-31 Custom Siegfrieds to differentiate them. Also probably worth noting that the VF-31 wouldn't have a dedicated variant for that purpose, since the ordnance container system enables ANY variant to be outfitted with AWACS and ELINT hardware in the space of a few minutes by swapping containers. 'cept for the VF-31A and VF-31B, those are all apparently unofficial designations. Probably deferring to the New UN Forces' [habit/tradition] of reserving -B, -D, or both for a tandem cockpit training variant of their main variable fighter, as they'd previously done for the VF-0, VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-19, VF-25, and potentially VF-31. No word on if the VF-171 did, since it was built on the VF-17 platform that didn't. Also... (https://xkcd.com/1105/) The VF-171 is the worst offender there, since its variant letter is persistently walkabout except in secondary and pseudocanon sources, which mention a plethora of them, identifying the final Block III variant as the VF-171L. IMHO, three Star Trek movies by Jar-Jar Abrams there was four too many. Not to mention the more recent Frontier-era wrinkle of local spec minor variation codes. It can get a bit hairy when you're looking at something like: VF-19C-5/MG21 or RVF-171L-IIIF/MF25 The biggest areas of enhancement are in control and survivability. They replaced the Queadluun-Rau's stock thermonuclear converters with more powerful ones built by General Galaxy, and used the output gains to improve the cockpit's defenses by beefing up the energy conversion armor. The cockpit's life support functions were reinforced, the control system hardware was modernized and brought up to safety standards including the addition of redundant backup control circuits, the avionics were modernized and expanded to add hardware support for fold boosters, and a simple BDI system very similar to the one used on the VF-22 was installed to supplement the physical controls. Attachment points for auxiliary propellant tanks, a 76mm anti-warship impact cannon, and a multipurpose hardpoint for a fold booster or large ordnance (e.g. a thermonuclear reaction missile) was added. Unfortunately, the added complexity didn't help the already complex design's manufacturing issues and relatively few were built. As far as we know, the latest model is the Queadluun-Rhea/56... General Galaxy's Queadluun-Rhea upgrade for 2056, which is what was used by Pixie Platoon in Macross Frontier.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Fittingly enough for a corporation whose name and logo are Greek1, the official translation for the ship's name (マクロス・エリシオン) uses the correct Greek spelling "Elysion" instead of the more modern, Latin-ized "Elysium" spelling. 1. Χάος - spelled Xaos in English in official materials, pronounced "Chaos".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's pretty damned clever. Bravo sir, bravo. I may end up using that when I revise my homebrew RPG stats to include the VF-27 w/ radome.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, Elma Hoyly from Macross Dynamite 7. Dunno how old she is, I don't honestly recall ever seeing an officially-stated age for her in Macross Dynamite 7's publications, but she's approximately sixteen years older than she was in the OVA. I'd assume that'd make her a woman in her mid-to-late 20s. She looks mostly unchanged, apart from being taller and having acquired some curves. When she appeares in Macross E in 2062, she's a biologist who's well-regarded for a paper on the life and migration habits of the galactic whales, and is collaborating with Xaos Pipure branch on Project Thrones (presumably based on her earlier work with Lawrence, and is probably responsible for the development of Xaos's live dome and other early tactical sound unit hardware (probably based on the speaker systems Lawrence developed in Dynamite 7). No explanation is given for how she managed to obtain a VF-19F and customize it into a perfect replica of Basara Nekki's famous Fire Valkyrie though... that's not the kind of thing you can just buy.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    OK, where to begin...? So... no real technical info of any value to be had in Macross Delta: the Black-Winged White Knight volume two, unless you really wanna see the world's worst-drawn VF-22. I can't exaggerate how badly drawn it is, which is WEIRD because they lavish all kinds of detail on the Sv-262Hs just a few pages further in. It looks like one of those superdeformed VF cookies that Ranka made in the Macross Frontier series. They do briefly show the rollout of the Sv-262s though. Macross E has some WEIRD material to chew over though. From last volume's cliffhanger chapter, there are Vajra on Pipure and Ivar Tsari manages to catch one and bring it back to his company's base so they can experiment with biological fold waves on one of them. The weird bit from that sequence is a contradictory depiction of the VF-171 cockpit block. Several art books including the recently released Designers Note have indicated its cockpit hatch in battroid works the same way as the VF-17's with the center chest lifting up. This shows rather a different version, with the cockpit block dropping down along the front of the lower torso, leaving the canopy exposed and the cockpit itself at a steep angle. Mere pages later, they show Kite's ejection seat existing the aircraft using the VF-17 method... but there's an actual SEAT being ejected, in addition to the EX-Gear. (Ivan Tsari manages to salvage a live dome from the wrecked Echo 3). (As an aside, without his freaking luca libre mask, Ivan Tsari/Polivanov looks like a darker-haired version of Kisuke Urahara from Bleach.) If I had to guess, I'd say the artist probably used a DX Chogokin VF-171EX as reference for the art... since he keeps accidentally drawing the Nightmare Plus EX with its intake covers closed even though it's flying in atmosphere at every point in the story. It seems musical instruments have come a ways too, Thrones members Sophie and Shinobu seem to have a entirely holographic instruments (drums and keyboard). Pirika's guitar seems to be the only physically-present instrument of the lot. Ivan Tsari/Polivanov is definitely a full-on cyborg. In Vol.2 he's shown being able to remotely fly his VF-27γ Lucifer while singing from the top of the salvaged live dome he attached to it... with what appears to be a completely ordinary microphone on a stand. It looks like the VF-27 might have a standard radome mounting arm on the lower back just above the connection point for the forearm shield. (RVF-27 ahoy?) He's shown to be even better at tanking hits than Brera was, until one of his own disillusioned mooks offs him with an anti-materiel rifle. It leaves him as half the man he used to be, but apart from some blood (or bloodlike system fluid) from the mouth there are NO conventional organs visible... as if his entire body was purely mechanical. His VF-27 also seems to be capable of bringing its outboard engine nacelle guns and missile launchers to bear in battroid mode by bringing the back plate up to level, almost like a VF-2SS's railgun. The last three noteworthy insights are pretty minor... apparently the (badly drawn) Macross-class ship IS a Macross-class SDFN. No number or original name given, but it was the flagship for the large-scale long-distance emigrant fleet that discovered and settled Pipure. Pipure's autonomous government kept the ship for planetary defense, and eventually retired it. It was then sold off to the Epsilon Foundation's local branch office, who in turn "gifted" it to Ivan Polivanov's Zelgar Heavy Industries. The spiked ring on its back is a large communications antenna cluster used to transmit fold songs as part of Ivan's experiment in using them for mind control. Pipure's local New UN Forces defense force uses the Cheyenne II destroid... and for once they're NOT utterly-worthless cannon fodder (maybe). Lastly, Elma Hoyly is taking her obsession with Basara a bit far. She's somehow managed to get her hands on a VF-19 second production type and has customized it into a replica of Basara's Fire Valkyrie. Looks exactly the same, and has the same equipment... only it's green instead of red, and she calls it the Wind Valkyrie.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    From back on page 8, my copies of Macross Delta: the Black-Winged White Knight Vol.2 and Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E Vol.2 arrived today. I did a quick skim and it looks like there'll be a couple of relevant tech goodies to discuss WRT cyborgs, VF-27s, and the VF-171s cockpit in battroid mode. I'll get 'round to those in a little bit, got one quick task to take care of first.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    ... ave deus mechanicus, the Vajra are insectoid space college students. Besides the occasional run-in with the Zentradi, there really wasn't anything in the Milky Way that we know about that could've threatened the Vajra once the Protodeviln were sealed. Humanity is seemingly the first species in a post-Protoculture Milky Way to discover space fold technology, the first to launch a program of interstellar exploration and colonization in 500,000 years. All the sub-Protoculture species that the New UN Government's emigrant fleets have encountered have been cultures that hadn't even developed rudimentary spaceflight yet. The Zolans were farthest along, having reached a level of development equivalent to the Earth in the first half of the 20th century. Others, like Windermere IV, were still pre-enlightenment societies. But for the Zentradi Army, the Vajra basically had the run of the Milky Way for the half a million or so years between the Stellar Republic's fall and the New UN Government's rise. Maybe in Macross, since humanity likely wouldn't have discovered super dimension spatial theory for another thousand or so years and it would've been longer still before they acquired workable space fold systems and began exploring space. Star Trek, not so much. Humanity had already discovered warp drive before they ever made first contact with another alien species, and the Vulcans withheld everything they reasonably could, as they were afraid of the pace humanity was advancing. They'd already mastered the foundational principles of most of the tech way before the Federation was established and technology-sharing started. There are some cases where they got outside help early on, but that was to counter the interference of uptime factions in the Temporal Cold War trying to alter history. Most of the UFP technology is self-developed, it's just that the self-development is no longer entirely done by the humans because the society and government is no longer entirely human. In Macross, they didn't. They had a ship that fell out of the goddamn sky and was a literal wreck... even with the broken remains of the hardware to study, it took them YEARS and spending much of the planetary economy on analysis of the ship's technology to suss out even the basic principles of its operation and begin to apply them to human technology. In Star Trek, it's an occasional plot device but most of the time the operable tech they acquire isn't compatible without a lot of rework or doesn't work as advertised once integrated. Most Federation advances are developed in the Federation's own labs. (It's not a strictly human society, so why let the humans do all the heavy lifting... they're just one of over 150 member worlds after all.) That's because, between DS9, VOY, First Contact, Nemesis, and the main timeline starting point for the Kelvin timeline, Star Trek's main timeline has run out of credible antagonists and hemmed in by Voyager's reckless use of time travel stories. So much so that the officially-sanctioned Expanded Universe novels (Relaunch timeline) that do go beyond that had some serious grasping-at-straws to do to create a faction that could threaten the Federation... an alliance of the Gorn, Breen, Tzenkethi, Tholians, Romulan remnants, and an original minor power into the Typhon Pact.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Probably several millennia, since the Vajra don't seem to have a natural urge to explore the way humanoids do (or maybe by 2059 they're jaded seen-it-all types?). I would guess that they probably do something like the swarm migration they did when the Vajra hive Macross Galaxy attacked left, moving in search of areas with new resources or (later) areas where potential mates were. They evolved a biological space fold mechanism, so I'd guess they probably started the same way the Protoculture did by starting with short-range fold jumps to their nearest neighboring stars, and expanding outwards from that leapfrog style. Probably a good deal less fast in terms of the rate of expansion, since to them every system is potentially usable since they don't need breathable atmosphere or anything like that. Star Trek's Federation was developing plenty of new technologies through the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries. They did incorporate lots of innovations from contacted alien races that they acquired in trade, but they also had both a Federation-level R&D apparatus and a technology-sharing policy among the individual research organizations in the Federation not dissimilar to what the UN Gov't instituted for overtechnology in Macross (and which Nora was so pissed about in Macross Zero). Sisko's job, before landing that posting to DS9, was in R&D at the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars. Harry Kim, in an alternate timeline episode, also worked for R&D in San Francisco doing warp drives for runabouts. It's unlikely that the Vajra's tactical abilities were a response to the Protoculture, since it's noted that the Protoculture's weapons development was largely inspired by the Vajra's capabilities.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Per Macross Chronicle1, their tails are essentially a large biological gravitational field propeller. (I can only assume the tail's "wagging" is involved in shaping the distortions to achieve unidirectional force.) Essentially, a Vajra has a very low-powered warp drive growing out of its butt. 1. Mechanic Sheet Macross Frontier: the Movie ETC 04A "Vajra".
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Outside of a system's Oort cloud, the available matter in the interstellar medium is painfully diffuse... in some environments it's projected to be less than one particle per cubic centimeter. This is one of the reasons the Bussard ramjet isn't considered a realistically viable interstellar propulsion system.1 It's easier by far to collect pre-accreted material from larger in-system or rogue stellar bodies such as comets, asteroids, moons, and planets. Going in-system also offers more diverse materials and heavier elements than are normally found in the interstellar medium, the byproducts of the fusion reactions of the dead stars whose remains re-accreted to form those systems. They have a great incentive to go in-system too, since the naturally occurring fold carbon is said to be a product of a star's death. 1. Also the reason Bussard ramjets aren't used in Macross, and why the Bussard collectors on starships in Star Trek are only used to supplement and VERY slowly minimally replenish a ship's cryotank-stored deuterium or tritium fuel slush while operating away from supply depots. (Despite being profoundly inefficient, they're still better than the process they're using to make antideuterium or antitritium... the Federation's main fuel depot for antimatter is a solar-powered quantum phase inverter on Mercury.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Let's face it, the Vajra had an incredibly long head start on every spacefaring civilization to emerge in the Milky Way in Macross. They had already long since become an intergalactic "society" at the point in time when the ancient Protoculture was just starting to figure out fire. They've had a few eons of self-guided evolution to optimize themselves and their lifestyle for living in space. They've been around for so long as a spacefaring and highly capable species that it's very strongly implied that the Vajra are the true origin of many of the advanced technologies that humanity has come to collectively know as Overtechnology. It's highly probable the Protoculture discovered the basics of super dimension spatial theory while studying the Vajra, and from that (and possibly the study of Vajra anatomy) were able to reverse-engineer many of the Vajra's anatomical traits with pure technology to create things like fold systems, artificial gravity, dimensional weapons, and an array of other advancements. We do know that the Regult and Glaug are both modeled on Vajra larval forms, and the Birdhuman was modeled on a Vajra queen. It's speculated the Protoculture based their Zentradi warship designs either on the Vahla Ena (space whales) or possibly on Vajra warship forms. One has to wonder, given that they power themselves with fold dimensional energy conversion, if their anatomy even requires what we'd consider conventional cellular respiration. Come to that, if one wants to split hairs, is the Vajra really the insectoid biological lifeform or the distributed consciousness residing in fold space for which all the Vajra insect forms are individual neurons in its brain? Is it possible that the consciousness existed first via the fold bacteria and chose the insectoid Vajra as a host?
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