Seto Kaiba

Seeing the summaries of the third episode, it's pretty bloody apparent what it feels like... this is Star Trek viewed through the lens of Warhammer 40,000. Not only are the Klingons taking wardrobe tips from the Dark Eldar, apparently experimental stardrives in Discovery are verging on an unshielded warp jump for mutation value. Having read the Section 31 novels in the Relaunch novel continuity, I would once have felt sure that no new Star Trek series could ever be as bad or as corny as those... and I am rapidly revising that opinion in the face of Discovery. Even then, Deep Space Nine kept a very anti-war message the entire time they were doing the Dominion War arc and broke it up heavily with more traditional Trek content so the series wouldn't get bogged down in it. Voyager did the same thing when the audience started to tire of the hostile alien of the week formula and they went for the Borg as a new recurring antagonist. They kept it light, avoiding confrontation whenever possible, and breaking it up with lots of lighter stories. They realized their mistake in Enterprise, and the Xindi War arc's poor reception led to them shifting the focus back to more traditional Trek exploration and science-y stuff for the 4th and planned 5th seasons. Discovery so far seems to be putting on the grimdark as much as possible in the hopes that CG action sequences will cover the pathetically weak writing. 's a frakking Dark Eldar warp beast!

That's a bit morbid, isn't it? In the Robotech version, the Southern Cross Army only had a couple of months to pick up the pieces after the bloodbath of their war with the Tirolians before the Invid got to Earth and absolutely massacred them with only a handful escaping into space. (Kind of a head-scratcher too... who'd handle a recruitment campaign when their entire command structure ended up vaporized?) ... now THAT is just perverse. She's the reason they lost the war in both the original SDC Southern Cross AND Robotech! The word's been spread to a few Facebook groups, but so far no serious show of interest.

Nah, the Klingons in previous Star Trek shows might've been channeling Brian Blessed circa Blackadder season one with all of their grandiose speeches about honor and battle, but there was always an internal logic to their bluster once their more reserved Soviet Russia allegory ran its course in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country. Star Trek: Discovery's Klingons don't seem to have any real consistency to their bluster. It's a lot of impressive-sounding crap, but none of it seems to actually mean anything... especially given that they don't seem to be following any of the established Klingon cultural norms.

But they weren't producing sense... just a lot of bluster and loud noises.

's probably a fan attempt to promote the Southern Cross Army mecha from their D-list apparatus status in Robotech. The Auroran was supposed to be the new hotness in Southern Cross when it was introduced late in the conflict with the Zor to replace the Logan that "word of god" in a small number of official publications says was ineffectual bordering on useless. Robotech canon makes the Southern Cross Army mecha out to be badly designed, inferior hardware across the board but doesn't really explain why outside of the Palladium RPG (which just blames RT's version of Claude Leon). (A total suckerpunch to the Auroran, which was supposed to be the most advanced and capable mecha humanity had at the time in Southern Cross...) ... eh? But Marie is from Glorie, and the Logan and Auroran are both unique to Glorie's military. (Jeanne, IIRC, is an immigrant from Liberte... and IIRC didn't Liberte's reinforcements accomplish the square root of bloody nothing?)

Probably don't need to include YF airframes in it, since by definition those would belong to the same generation as the completed design (unless no completed design exists or the design number ended up changed). Just as well, most of those are nigh-impossible to classify. Oh boy, here I go rantin' again!1 For the sake of convenience, the following rant will be color-coded! VFs that officially exist and have appeared in a Macross official setting work VFs that officially exist and have NOT appeared in a Macross official setting work. VFs that exist solely in non-official works like Variable Fighter Master File VFs whose placement is speculative. Generation 0 - "Prototype Generation" This generation is purely speculative and exists mainly to segregate designs that do not fully comply with the design qualifications for the First Generation Variable Fighter (e.g. thermonuclear reaction turbine engines) and were built principally for evaluation purposes rather than mass produced for actual combat service. YVF-X-0 VF-0 Phoenix (YVF-X-0B) VF-0-NF Sv-50 Sv-51 Sv-51Σ (Unmanned Sv-51) Sv-51Ω (Repurposed incomplete Sv-52 with conventional engines) Generation 0.5 - "Upgraded Prototype Generation" This generation contains designs that exist only in Variable Fighter Master File. These VF designs are upgrades of the 0th Generation prototypes that were upgraded with technology from 1st Generation VFs or otherwise modernized to make them viable for long-duration operation. VF-0+ Phoenix Plus VF-0 Replica (Macross 30) Sv-51 Replica (Macross 30) Generation 1 - "First Generation" The defining traits of this generation are the adoption of Overtechnology, including thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, laser weaponry, energy converting armor, etc. in a production variable fighter. Sv-52 VF-1 Valkyrie VF-X-2 Generation 1.5 - "Upgraded First Generation" First Generation designs upgraded with Second Generation hardware drawn from the VF-4. VF-1 Valkyrie Plus (Blocks 6 and later, incl. VF-1X) VF-3000S Crusader VF-3000B Generation 2 - "Specialization for Emigrant Fleets" The hallmarks of the Second Generation designs include the adoption of Zentradi overtechnology, refinements for regime-optimized performance in either atmosphere or space, "lessons learned" from the First Space War, and optionally the adoption of particle beam weaponry. Most were intended for use by emigrant fleets, with low cost, simplified manufacturing, and parts-sharing. VF-X-3 VF-4 Lightning III VF-3000S Crusader VF-3000B VF-5000 Star Mirage VF-5 VF-6 VF-7 VF-9 Cutlass VF-X-10 V-BR-2 VA-X-3 Generation 2.5 - "Upgraded Second Generation" Second Generation VFs that were modernized to keep them in service alongside Third Generation VFs. VF-4G Lightning III VF-5000G Star Mirage VF-9E Cutlass Generation 3 - "Project Nova and Diversification" The Third Generation VFs are defined chiefly by the Project Nova design contest that decided the generation's main variable fighter as a true all-purpose successor to the VF-1 Valkyrie, but also by the continuing diversification of variable craft design into dedicated Attacker and Bomber roles. VF-11A/B/C/D Thunderbolt VF-14 Vampire VF-15 VF-17A-C Nightmare VA-14 VAB-2 VA-3 VA-110 Variable Glaug VB-6 Generation 3.5 - "Upgraded Third Generation" Third Generation VFs that've been modernized or upgraded with technology drawn from Fourth Generation VFs to keep them viable or evaluate technologies meant for Fourth Generation implementation. VF-11MAXL Thunderbolt VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor VF-16 VF-17D/S/T Nightmare XVF-19 (a modified VF-11) Fz-109 Elgersoln Az-130 Panzersoln FBz-99 Zaubergern Generation 4 - "Project Super Nova: the Advanced Variable Fighter" The Fourth Generation's distinctive design traits are among the best known in Macross. The adoption of the next-gen ARIEL airframe control AI, thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines, fighter-scale pinpoint barrier systems, and native compatibility for fold boosters. This generation was largely defined by Project Super Nova, the ultimately futile contest between the YF-19 and YF-21 at Eden's New Edwards Test Flight Center. The insurmountable technological and performance complications of the two designs led to a third design, the VF-171, becoming this generation's main variable fighter. VF-19 Excalibur YF-21 VF-22 Sturmvogel II VF-171 Nightmare Plus VB-171 Nightmare Plus RVF-171 Nightmare Plus Sv-154 Svard Feios Valkyrie Fz-109G Elgersoln Gustaf Generation 4.5 - "Upgraded Fourth Generation" The Generation 4.5 designs are few, and consist mostly of VF designs that were either upgraded to evaluate tech for eventual adoption by Generation 5 designs, or ones that were upgraded in extremis to make them more effective in combat against the Vajra. VF-19ACTIVE Nothung VF-19EF Caliburn VF-19EF/A Excalibur ADVANCE VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei VF-171-IIIF Nightmare Plus VF-171EX Nightmare Plus Queadluun Alma Generation 5 - "Project Evolution and Decentralized Development" The Fifth Generation of Variable Fighters started development as a response to the disastrous first contact with the insectoid alien race known as the Vajra. Existing VF designs proved utterly inadequate to rival the performance of Vajra drones, and new programs were launched to develop countermeasures for the high-g forces and other major problems with the newly finalized Fourth Generation. The hallmarks of the Fifth Generation are the adoption of fold quartz-based technology like the Inertia Store Converter, Fold Wave System, and Fold Dimensional Resonance System, as well as new technologies like linear actuators, Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, ARIEL II airframe control AIs, EX-Gear cockpits, advanced energy conversion armor, and heavy quantum beam weaponry. YF-24 YF-24 Evolution VF-24 YF-25 Prophecy VF-25 Messiah YF-26 YF-27 Shahar VF-27 Lucifer YF-28 (Existence speculative) YF-29 Durandal YF-29B Percival (NUNS Ver.) YF-30 Chronos YF-30B Chronos (NUNS Ver.) VF-31 Kairos VF-31 Custom "Siegfried" Sv-262 Draken III Queadluun Alma 1. If you could read that in the voice of Krombopulos Michael from Rick and Morty, that'd be great.

Looks to be a Legioss and an Auroran, yeah... fanart of the Robotech version of MOSPEADA's Major Jonathan, who that adaptation made into someone who came back to fight the show's version of the Zor instead of between the Inbit occupation's start and 2nd recapture op.

Well, I've got two potential groups I can advertise this on... potentially three if I can get permission from the admin there. Hopefully that will net a few interested parties, esp. since fans of Palladium's RPG are plentiful on at least two of the three and there's more love for Southern Cross among the RPG fans than anywhere else. Noted. The groups I was going to advertise it on have no love for the "Empire" too, so that should help keep entanglements out of it.

Destroids are a dead-end mechanical concept in the Macross setting... the only way they'd be able to do that would be if they did it during the Unification Wars when destroids were still a viable battlefield concept, and that wouldn't make for lighthearted viewing. That'd be the kind of Gundam-esque, soul-crushing despair-a-thon with Cheyenne and Tomahawk series destroids squaring off against (and massacring) main battle tanks and infantry. (Think MS IGLOO 2: Gravity Front's second episode.) After the First Space War, destroids are basically only useful for target practice and industrial machinery. Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu just capitalized on the lighthearted fish-out-of-water comedy from Full Metal Panic!'s first story arc for a breather before the second arc (animated as Full Metal Panic! the Second Raid) kicked off and subsequently all-but-annihilated humor in favor of Cerberus Syndrome... which Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory is going to continue in its adaptation of the lead-in to the third, final, and darkest story arc of the lot. Macross has always had at least some humor and strictly-humor breather episodes, so it wouldn't be a stretch to stick a Fumoffu-style series out there. (I insist Macross 7 WAS a Fumoffu-style joke series half the time.) Well, that's entirely down to who's writing it... the annoying part is that the OTHER authors working on Macross Delta for stuff like manga did a much better job with its cast than the guys writing the show. Macross Delta: the Black-Winged White Knight does SO MUCH to make the Aerial Knights actually developed and interesting... These shows are aimed predominantly at high schoolers, so they're naturally going to try to make the main character young enough to be relatable to the audience. The... adaptation... aged up many of the characters arbitrarily, but accidentally locked others into younger ages or retroactively made relationships creepy and even criminal. IIRC the only ones for whom there was enough info to surmise ages were their version of Minmay and their version of Jeanne Francaix.

Granted, but whether the show actually capitalizes on it is another matter entirely... Like how Macross Delta tried to portray the New UN Spacy brass as shady and untrustworthy but it all fell flat when their shady, untrustworthy behavior was nothing more than taking a realistic response to the crisis at hand. They were supposed to be dickbags just because they were in authority, never mind that they were doing more good than the protagonists...

It'd be nice, wouldn't it? So... quick question. Does Cap need 30 committed buyers for any one design to get cracking, or just 30 committed buyers total? I can put word around on a couple Facebook groups. (Due to a really annoying turn of events, I've been made admin of a Robotech RPG group, and can advertise this there.)

At the time (2045-2046), yeah... though, via Macross 30, it would appear that humanity achieved a level of weapons technology able to inflict significant, debilitating harm on an Evil series bioweapon by late 2059. Classifying the ancient Protoculture on the Kardashev scale is a tricky proposition, given that we're still largely in the dark about the state of their civilization when it was at its peak and that we don't have anything like an explicitly stated output for a single shipboard generator or total output of the typical heat pile system cluster... further complicated by many of the Protoculture's more advanced biotechnological constructs using fold dimensional energy conversion for power instead. Rough order estimates suggest each Zentradi Army main fleet constitutes a Type 1 civilization or a borderline Type 2 civilization all on its own thanks to their colossal size and fold reactor technology letting them milk far more energy out of a fusion reaction. The only relics of the ancient Protoculture have been computer systems and civilian structures from their crystal spires and togas, sufficiently advanced aliens phase, so it's hard to say what the power demands of their civilization were. Given that they've constructed things like permanent networks for fold travel and the like, I'd say they're on the high end of Type 2 or maybe a low Type 3.

Somewhere between 1 day and 500,000 years. Assuming the Supervision Army is building to similar engineering standards as the Zentradi Army, their ships have only one near term limitation on their operational lifespan... battle damage. Oh my, no... humanity's grasp of overtechnology has a ways to go before it's anywhere close to the level of the Protoculture before their civilization fell. Humanity's come a long way in not-quite seventy years, but they're still energetically reverse-engineering Protoculture technology to derive advances in a lot of fields. There's plenty of innovation going on, but by in large humanity is still reinventing the wheel here.

Assuming the unit is not tragically lost in combat or given a major refurbishment or customization, the typical service life of a variable fighter is averaging about thirty years before the technology in any given VF design becomes outdated enough that it's no longer viable as a frontline unit. That's not quite the same as the actual structural design lifespan, which can exceed fifty years under the attentions of a properly trained maintenance team. At least in the short term, Valkyries can operate for days or possibly weeks without maintenance... but generally don't, since an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The 5th Generation VF designs aim to improve overall durability and reliability by using linear actuator technology in place of the small, fragile moving parts that previously governed transformation. Zentradi mecha pay a price for their extremely low maintenance requirements, though. They have very low survivability, being that they were designed to be cheaply mass-produced for the Zentradi Army and the Protoculture saw their clone soldiers as expendable. There's very little automation of control, and even less redundancy providing a shield against systemic failure, so the burden on the operator is high. They also have a very low operational versatility. Humans attempted to address some of these issues, particularly improving survivability with better armor and defenses, and with the addition of system redundancies to prevent single-point failures from disabling the mecha. On the whole, the only Zentradi Army mecha that really stood the test of time in the New UN Forces was the Queadluun-Rau, which was good enough that the NUNS kept operating them as-is until the capture of the Quimeliquola automated factory satellite and the plan to improve their survivability and performance that produced the Queadluun-Rhea.

The Eugenics Wars was a weird one for sure, but it's not the first Trek to reference the ISS... IINM Sisko had a model of it in his office in Deep Space Nine. That's not entirely fair... I mean, they had some more traditional Trek-style exploration episodes in Season 1, 2, and 4, and they were on course for a more traditional Star Trek formula before the show got canned while Season 5 was still on the drawing board. The show would presumably have gotten to the Romulan War and the actual founding of the Federation eventually... something which the relaunch novels picked up and actually did a better job with. Unfortunately the relaunch fell off the wagon soon after, with the whole "Trip Tucker: Secret Agent" schtick, this weird complexity addiction, and one of the most cringeworthy attempts at forced diversity Star Trek has ever had via a transgender recurring character that read like the author stole it from Tumblr.

Enterprise's OP had a kind of logical continuity to it... not s'much an exploration angle as a "lineage" thing leading up to the titular NX-01 Enterprise even before the show adopted the Star Trek title in full. Nice of them to invent a few to pad the pictures out for that opening too... IIRC they completely forgot to draw the portraits for Archer's room until the day before shooting was due to start and the artist had to make a mad scramble to get at least pencil sketches ready for framing. (One of the relaunch novels offers some more details on some of the original predecessor designs made for that OP, esp. the one with the ring structure... apparently a human attempt to imitate the Vulcan coleoptaric warp drive.)

There is no difference... they're the exact same plane. One of the things that sends me 'round the twist about that design is that there are three separate names for the darn thing in the official publications. The Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa artbook calls it just "VF-19 SMS Ver.", the movie novelization has the fighter down as "VF-19ADVANCE", and the Macross Chronicle mechanic sheet for it has it as "VF-19EF/A Isamu Special". The Macross Chronicle sheet at least acknowledges the "VF-19ADVANCE" thing by making it the name of the VF-19 modernization project that spawned the VF-19EF/A.

Y'know, I looked into that claim... and the person who made it (the ever-unreliable Yui) couldn't provide ANY supporting evidence to back it up. When I inquired, all she could give me was a single link to an almost completely unsourced Wikipedia article that didn't even support her claim. After the last time you asked me to find corroboration for one of her claims, I'd think you would know better than to take her word for anything. I'm not sure where she got the idea that Popy went bankrupt... they were in financial trouble in 1983, sure, but all that came of that was they were absorbed back into their parent company Bandai 11 months before Southern Cross aired. Popy wasn't disbanded, it continued to operate as Bandai Popy and support its existing toy lines until at least 1988. At the time that Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross was in final development and production, Bandai Popy was on the rebound thanks to the reintegration with Bandai and the licensing of their GoLion, Dairugger XV, and Arbegas lines to the American Voltron franchise and Machine Robo to GoBots. Because, as you know, I happen to rather like the Sikorsky X-Wing-based Auroran design. Just because I don't like the story doesn't mean I'm obliged to hate everything about the series. I'm also rather fond of Private Charles and Sgt. Slawski, as I've told you on a number of previous occasions you've dusted off this ad hominem. ;-) Oh, I'm sure there are some old fans who remember the series from the 80's, but it's not something you see being re-aired or seeing any kind of new merchandise for it. It's a forgotten property as far as the industry is concerned. (If you talk to HG staff, Tatsunoko almost needs to be reminded they actually own that series when HG comes to them for approvals.)

The Mauler RÖV-20 is a "laser machinegun", not a particle beam weapon. On the other hand, the Mauler RÖ-X2A on the Strike Pack is a proper particle beam cannon. All told, the most likely factor in making beam gunpods viable was that Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines finally had the excess generator output to enable them to deploy a heavy quantum beam weapon that was more powerful in sustained firing than a projectile gunpod. Generator surplus was always an issue in VFs, which is why energy conversion armor is not enabled in fighter mode and on at only a low level in GERWALK. Macross has never, to the best of my knowledge, shown a VF on the verge of running out of fuel except in Macross Zero... where the fuel consumption rates were MUCH higher because the VF-0 and Sv-51 were using conventional turbine engines for thrust and as a generator. On each occasion, the VFs in question returned to their mothership for refueling and rearming before they ran out. That's much less of a problem for VFs with thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, which have an operating time of hundreds of hours in atmospheric service between refuelings. (This is, per NASA, actually pretty realistic.) It is an odd touch, but it seemed to be fairly effective despite how HUGE the adapter was, and the fact that they had to give up a spare gunpod magazine to carry it. Powerful by modern standards, not s'much by Macross standards. Even for the time, the VF-1's coaxial laser cannons were fairly low powered... mainly because they were a compromise in the design when the scale of the VF-1 made it impossible to fit a small bore machinegun in the head that would fire the same kind of high-explosive anti-ECA shells as the gunpod. The VF-1's lasers are pretty middling for the era, the most powerful energy weapon mounted on a fighter in the First Space War had 150x the output of the Mauler RÖV-20. (It was an anti-ship beam cannon, mind...) Yeah, as noted above the YF-27-5 needed a separate thermonuclear reactor module slung on one wing to drive its beam gunpod because it was only a twin engine design. Three seems sufficient to fire at full power, though, based on Macross Frontier. It's worth noting that one of the reasons VFs don't spam beam weapons in atmosphere is that any way you shake it, flying in fighter mode is a HORRIFICALLY inefficient system... much of the energy is never used to generate electrical power becuase it's wasted as heat or high-energy plasma in the exhaust stream. That's why energy conversion armor is off in fighter mode, and on at a low level in GERWALK mode. Progressively more reactor output can be diverted to power generation as the demands for thrust are reduced, though most of that goes to defensive systems like energy conversion armor and pin-point barriers.

's more an anti-Vajra fighter than anything, but that capability to rival the Vajra in close range combat makes it a pretty damned effective dogfighter in general even if it is rather gun-centric. As far as I am aware, it does not... and I've never been clear on what, precisely, the granulated fold quartz coating on the YF-29's canopy was meant to accomplish. At the very least, the initial YF-29 spec as developed by the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet and the New UN Forces upgraded type designated YF-29B. For reasons unknown, the official spec for the YF-29 lists the canopy as being coated in fold quartz... Macross Chronicle confirms this rather bizarre factoid on Mechanic Sheet MF Movie SMS 04A. The YF-29 implements fold quartz in, as far as we know, eight distinct locations (not counting FAST packs). The T022 inertia store converter located in the airframe nose. As a coating on the canopy. The two fold wave amplifiers located behind the cockpit (on the chest in battroid) The four "Philosopher's Stone" 1,000ct class fold quartz pieces that make up the fold wave system, which are located on the leading edge of both wing roots and on the leading outboard edge of each outer engine nacelle. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried, while useless, suggests the fold quartz in the VF-31's fold wave amplifiers is pulling double duty as the core of its fold wave system. It's unclear where the YF-30's fold dimensional resonance system core was. Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy has several other YF-29s in addition to Rod's and Alto's... though their existence is somewhat debatable given that their pilots (and in one case, the person doling them out) are temporally displaced folks thanks to a seriously messed-up fold fault. The game had a playable generic YF-29 Durandal for its main character Reon Sakaki, Rod Baltemar's NUNS Havamal YF-29B Percival, and character-specific YF-29 upgrades for Alto Saotome, Ozma Lee, and Isamu Dyson. (This does not count the DLC YF-29 that was available to Japanese buyers of the Limited Edition. The 30th Anniversary one is, IIRC, the only YF-29 color variant that doesn't show up in-game.)

This right here is why my keyboards only last about six months on average... The New UN Government and New UN Forces go back and forth on whether specialized VFs or a jack-of-all-trades all-regime VF is better with every new generation of variable fighters. The odd numbered generations always end up with the all-regime multirole ones, and the even numbered generations get the specialized ones. (Funnily enough, this is a habit they appear to have inherited from Macross II: Lovers Again, who beat them to the punch on that little trend by a couple years.) It does, for the most part... though there are some cases of development teams carrying out their own pet projects and experiments independent of major military procurement programs. General Galaxy had a whole team devoted to that, and later sold it to an Epsilon Foundation subsidiary by the name of Dian Cecht, which is responsible for the Sv-154 and Sv-262. By design, a VF kind of bucks the idea of excelling in one role since every single one of them was designed to function as a combat aircraft, VTOL attack craft, and ground warfare robot. But that's only true as an absolute fact for one of those three... the VF-17 Nightmare, which was intended as a long-range strike fighter. The YF-19 and YF-21 were supposed to be very good at long-range decapitation strikes against high priority targets, but it must be remembered that the both of them were developed to be the VF-11 Thunderbolt's replacement and fill the role of main variable fighter of the New UN Forces. Those are a small number of exceptions to the general rule of multipurposefulness though. Ironically, the technical writeup of the VF-4 puts its atmospheric utility chiefly in roles where it would be projected airpower (interceptor and attack roles) and the VF-11 was supposed to be a fighter that was to fill an assortment of strike fighter roles including long-range and anti-ship attacks. The VF-17 was supposedly meant to address its shortcomings in that regard. Hm? The VF-171, VF-25, and VF-31 are all multirole strike fighters intended for fleet (and planetary) defense roles, the YF-29 is a cripplingly overspecialized ultra high performance dogfighter meant for anti-Vajra work and nothing else, and the YF-30 is a technology demonstrator that would be pretty much exclusively an air superiority fighter if its whole raison d'etre wasn't exploration of the Protoculture ruins on Uroboros and evaluating the Fold Dimensional Resonance system.

Y'know, I would've disagreed... then I found a commentary-free plot summary of "The Vulcan Hello", and seeing it all laid out in a neatly worded, objective summary of the episode was a bit of a shock. As long as you don't actually think about what's going on, the pilot for Star Trek: Discovery feels on the weak side but not untenably so apart from the fact that Commander Burnham is dumber than a Pakled and clearly the worst cretin to ever don the uniform. Once you actually examine it... oy... And I haven't even SEEN the second half... but already, I have a feeling Michael Burnham is shaping up to be every bit as obnoxious as Wesley.

Starfleet has pretty consistently agreed on that score ever since Star Trek: the Next Generation... which shows, if nothing else, that Starfleet at least learned SOMETHING from all those times that Kirk's Enterprise sent the CO, XO, and CMO down together and they all got captured. Discovery's set during those cowboy days of exploration, so it's less surprising that they'd send the ship's two ranking officers into danger like that. (Even less so, given that we've known since the earliest of Discovery's teaser trailers that Michelle Yeoh's character was earmarked for death in the pilot.) (IIRC, when Picard was speaking at Riker's wedding in Nemesis, he jokingly complained that Riker leaving to take command of the USS Titan left him stuck with a first officer who was a "tyrannical martinet who will never, EVER allow [him] to go on away missions".) Unfortunately, that's just one drop of piss in the septic tank of bad writing in the Discovery pilot...

Eh... I'm not so sure it's every Protodeviln who reacts positively to Fire Bomber. Gigile, Gavil, and Glavil didn't seem to have much love for it, especially when it started to make Gavil shrivel up like he'd started aging super-rapidly and Glavil would only make that horrible shrieking noise. Gigile's attitude seemed to be pretty much in line with Gamlin's initial reaction "This is awful, I'll only put up with it because the girl I like (Sivil) is peripherally involved". (Still better than Zomd and Goram's ojou laugh... "What if Naga the Serpent were twins, and a fifty meter tall space monster?") Well, maybe in the chest area... most of her is squeezed into what looks like a pleather catsuit, but that hardly diminishes her fetish fuel look. Espionage model indeed... if that look was supposed to go unnoticed, one can only imagine what Protoculture fashion of the period looked like.

It's never been established what exactly was leaking from the battle damage on Kakizaki's VF-1A in that scene where Hikaru goes over Misa's head to send him back to the ship. Given the location of the damage, I'd assume it's probably hydraulic fluid from the landing gear. Hayate was warned about conserving propellant, presumably because he'd never trained in spaceflight before and his extravagant flying style would burn propellant like mad. It'd be rather lethal to run out of fuel in mid-dogfight for all kinds of reasons, including being unable to maneuver and the complete loss of power to defensive systems. Well, arguably the VF-1 Strike Valkyrie beat the VF-4 to the punch there... Anyhoo, one of the main advantages that more traditional projectile guns had over beam weapons for most of Macross history is that OTM armor materials have exceptionally good resistance to heat and ablation, which is boosted by energy conversion armor technology and ablative anti-beam coatings. Consequently, a beam weapon needs to overcome those by brute force, where your solid rounds from a conventional gunpod are only working against the physical strength of the armor (and specialized AP ammo can defeat energy conversion armor). The gunpods also had the advantage of requiring very little power to operate compared to beam weapons, being more resistant to EMP attacks, and being more versatile as different types of shell can be employed... like how the VF-25's gunpod was upgraded from a high-explosive anti-ECA round to a more powerful HEACA round, and then to MDE rounds. The limiting factors on beam weapon deployment were available surplus reactor power while in flight, and the maturity of human laser and particle beam technology. Most fighter-mounted beam weapons are light, high-precision energy weapons meant to be secondary weapons. To put it in perspective, the VF-1's ROV-20 laser cannon transferrred slightly more energy to the target on a per-second basis than one GU-11A round. What finally promoted beam weaponry to gunpod level was a series of dramatic increases in generator output brought about by new generations of thermonuclear reaction turbine engine technology that enabled them to switch to more killy flavors of beam weaponry... specifically, dimensional weaponry. It started on the YF-19 and YF-21, with the option to mount dimensional beam weaponry on the coaxial gun mount and wing root gunmounts. They used heavy quantum reaction beam technology, so those guns were essentially tiny Macross Cannons. When generator technology improved again in the Stage II engines, they had the surplus power to employ the somewhat simpler heavy quantum beam weapons as a gunpod-scale rapid fire weapon, and later advances enabled those to be upgraded to MDE beam weapons when sufficient quantities of fold quartz were available. That series of advances finally put the brute force approach to overcoming the ever-improving energy conversion armor of VFs on a practical, workable level.