Seto Kaiba
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Should have mine sometime today... it's a very Macross midweek, with the VF-31 Master File and DX Sv-262 today, and Vol.9 of the Blu-ray tomorrow.
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CD Japan sent me a shipping notice for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried and Master Archive Mobile Suit: MS-06 Zaku II this morning, so it looks like it's out already... Though I gotta admit, based on what I've seen in terms of spoiler pics from the Variants portion of the book, I am NOT impressed... and am quietly dreading another mess like the VF-4 book.
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Seems unlikely, IMO... thus far, GAGraphic and SoftBank have only really bothered to cover the most prominent variable fighters featured in the various Macross animated titles. They're not really focusing on in-universe importance, they're focusing on the ones that are the most "action figure-ous". Take, for instance, the latest volume that's due out any day now... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried. The book isn't for the actual production VF-31 that was to become the next main fighter of the Brisingr Alliance the way the VF-25 book was about the fighter in New UN Forces hands. Instead, we're getting a book about that handful of hideously garish custom fighters the bumbling clods of Xaos's 3rd Fighter Wing Delta Flight flew while Windermere's Aerial Knights handed them their asses at regular intervals. Plus, considering how bad the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III book was, I'm not sure we should really WANT another one that features a lesser-known VF. The VF-4 book's history sections were little more than a tie-in to Macross Delta, and the technical information in the book was mostly wrong and ignored or contradicted official information and common sense. That's a Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet... it was only like four pages in total. The Variable Fighter Master File books are, well, books... which run to about 128 pages. They may not have any Tenjin paintings like Macross Chronicle did, but they have some fairly good CG and model kit-related art instead.
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Yep... Gamlin used the internal launchers on his VF-17 only rarely, and the VF-171s aren't ever actually shown using them at all as far as I can recall, but they are in fact there. The ports are easier to see on the EX model with its white paintjob. They're on the wing root, just aft of that part that has "NUNS" stenciled on it.
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Well, I'm not sure downgraded is necessarily the right word for it... simplified, refined, or optimized for mass production might be better words, though even they don't really capture the truth of it. You see, the VF-17 Nightmare started out as a 3rd Generation VF when it first debuted toward the tail end of the 3rd Generation development period. The initial models used old style thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and older avionics hardware, but starting from the -D model they were upgraded with AVF-tier hardware including thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines. That arguably puts them into Generation 3.5 along with other pre-4th Gen designs that incorporated AVF advancements like the VF-16. The VF-171 Nightmare Plus, however, is a true blue 4th Generation (Advanced) Variable Fighter with all the technological bells and whistles that implies... meaning that, while the VF-171 is definitely not representing an advancement over the VF-17 in all areas, it is actually technically an upgrade in most respects. Among the design changes that could technically be called downgrades are: The VF-171's FF-2110X thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines are a derivative of the FF-2100X engines used by the VF-17D, but with a 20.96% reduction in maximum instantaneous thrust (in space). This does not seem to actually affect their ability to function as SSTO aircraft, but it definitely does reflect a decrease in acceleration and thrust-to-weight ratio. The VF-171 gained a bit of weight compared to its predecessor, being 12,150kg to the VF-17D's 11,850kg. The VF-171 is slightly slower at altitude, topping out at Mach 3.5+ at 10km instead of Mach 4.0+. The VF-171's design lacks the forearm-mounted laser cannons that were the VF-17's main GERWALK-mode gun option. The VF-171's internal micro-missile launchers were decreased from 4 to 2 compared to the VF-17. On the other hand, the upgrades it got in the process are: The VF-171's transformation is mechanically simpler and more robust than the VF-17's, and enables the VF to employ its gunpod with greater ease in GERWALK mode. This also made it easier to mass-produce. The VF-171's redesigned airframe gained increased defensive capability and increased canopy field-of-view. The VF-171's aerodynamic redesign provided increased maneuverability and operational versatility, enabling the VF-171 to be used in almost every major operational role from fighter to bomber to reconnaissance aircraft to drone mothership. The VF-171 has AVF-tier avionics and a 3rd Generation active stealth system (same type as the VF-19). The VF-171 has a pin-point barrier system for defensive and offensive use. The VF-171's armaments were upgraded across the board, and the laser weapons of the original VF-17 were replaced with beam guns. It also gained six underwing pylons for greater ordinance versatility. All told, the VF-171 gets an unfairly bad rap because it's (almost) never flown by a main character. Its only appearances are near the end of its service life, where it's there to get blasted to show how much better fighters one generation newer are... though we did get occasional shots of awesome like Machida's punch, or the Brisingr Alliance VF-171s shooting down Drakens during their counterattack.
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Contrary to what most fans would expect after the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, the vast majority of variable fighters used by the (New) UN Forces don't actually have command variants. Most of the time, the grunts and their bosses are flying the exact same aircraft, with the VF-25 being the first main VF since the VF-1 to have one. That probably has something to do with keeping maintenance costs down... since its cheaper to not have to maintain a second variant with different hardware for a small number of pilots. After the VF-1, the command variants were mostly kept to the Special Forces VFs like the VF-17 Nightmare or VF-19 Excalibur 2nd mass production type. (Xaos's VF-31s don't count, as they're customs of a milspec model that is one-variant-fits-all, and the VF-27's ace variant is a fake command variant that's pretty much identical to the base model but with slightly different tuning.) Of course, if I really wanted to weasel out of answering that question I could point out that we've thus far only seen three of an unknown total number of local variations of the VF-171 Nightmare Plus that broadly conform to Block II/2055... the Frontier fleet spec (dark blue), the Outer Rim territories spec (khaki), and the EX type (a Frontier spec derivative). It's possible that some fleet or planet out there decided to include a command model and we just haven't seen it.
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Just aesthetics, actually... the YF-30 (and, IIRC, VF-31) don't have the bent/beak nose and they still have ISC. As far as I know, we've never been told what the N in SDFN stands for... but it denotes the mass-production Macross-class ships, since the hull classification symbol SDF was passed to the Megaroad-class emigrant ships starting from SDF-2. The available information indicates that twelve mass production-type Macross-class ships were constructed in the early years of the emigrant fleet operations, to serve as "pilot fish" securing the advance of the actual emigrant ship. We have names and designations for three of those ships so far: SDFN-1 General (Takashi) Hayase, SDFN-4 General Bruno J. Global, and SDFN-8 General Vrlitwhai Kridanik. Some fleets seem to have returned their Macross-class ships at some point after establishing a colony, while others seem to have kept theirs. Uroboros, the planet from Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, was the first planet we saw that kept theirs... it had been parked on the Yuria archipelago in storm attacker mode, and was being used as a city (Vrlitwhai City). The unidentified SDFN on Vivre/Pipure is probably in the same situation.
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Macross Δ BD/DVD Thread (now with delicious English subs).
Seto Kaiba replied to UN Spacy's topic in Movies and TV Series
No kidding. As nice as Macross Delta is, visually, this is the closest I've ever come to considering a Macross purchase a waste of money. I'd almost considered canceling my preorders at one point. The second half of Delta is just such an unholy mess of poor planning and crappy writing that I'm less than happy with value-for-money on my preorders. Even the quality of the liner note booklet contents took a noticeable dive in the show's second half. -
On the VF-1, the engines in the "backpack" that are used to provide part or all of the forward thrust in GERWALK mode aren't really intended for sustained use. They're liquid-fuel rockets with a high maximum thrust but a limited burn time. You wouldn't want to rely on them to provide all your forward thrust, because you'd run out fairly quickly. GERWALKs tend to fly forward partly by leaning forward a bit and having the thrust the main engines produce at an angle to the ground. The backpack thrusters on the VF-25 look, from their animation, to be something more like miniature thermonuclear reaction engines...
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No worries, that's why we've got this thread after all. Yeah, Millard was a member of SVF-1... he was the one I was referring to when I said there were still old members of the Skulls lurking around who could have, but didn't, pass the torch to a new squadron.
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Just a brief addendum to my previous answer... It's been implied a few times, but it's never been out-and-out stated that there's a direct in-universe connection between the UN Spacy's SVF-1 "Skulls" and the old US Navy VFA-103 "Jolly Rogers". Since the SVF-1 Skulls were originally the VF-0 program's Skull Platoon, it's possible that the origin is not even an American reference as the original leader was the Russian ace D.D. "Daisy" Ivanov and a skull insignia is his personal mark on his VF. (Ivanov may have gone with the Jolly Roger to appease the Americans, or he may just be a huge Top Gun fan pleased to be a pilot of what started out as a heavily modified F-14.) The-Show-That-Must-Not-Be-Named did something quite strange. It drew an explicit connection between the two... but in its version, VF-84 is still around in 1999 (the real-world equivalent was disestablished in 1995) and calls itself "Skull Squadron" instead of the "Jolly Rogers". Roy was a member until the squadron was lost when its carrier was sunk by a tsunami caused by the explosive crash of the soon-to-be-SDF-1. Normally if a unit is completely wiped out, they retire the number... but that doesn't exactly happen often in the real world (anymore). One has to wonder what technicality they whipped up to make that work. Strategic Military Services is not a formal military organization, it's a civilian private contractor with no official organization ties to the New UN Forces. It's worth wondering whether they chose "Skull" for its close association with elite units (e.g. the SVF-1 Skulls, who were famous from both history and historical dramas, and Max and Milia's elite "Dancing Skulls" special forces team) or Ozma is simply a rabid fanboy for one of those groups the way he is for Fire Bomber and management decided to roll with it to keep him happy. Also worth noting is that what Ozma commanded was Skull platoon... not a squadron. SMS doesn't seem to organize its troops into anything larger than a platoon, though as such a small outfit this isn't surprising given the platoon is also the smallest sub-unit of the military's own VF squadrons. To give an example, the SVF-1 Skulls in the original series had three of its platoons identified by name: Skull platoon was its lead platoon, Hikaru's first command was its Vermilion platoon, and two background characters who give Shammy a hard time are identified as in the squadron's Purple platoon. All told, the New UN Spacy doesn't seem to consider the SVF-1 Skulls out of action... they've never passed the "Skulls" moniker to any other squadron despite there being veteran pilots from SVF-1 still out and about after the Megaroad-01 left Earth. That may have something to do with how the ship is officially just missing rather than "missing, presumed destroyed".
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Heh... let's do the time warp again, eh? That post is a bit over five months old. I guess it's my fault for not being more precise about my meaning... what I was referring to when I alluded to the UN Forces being a little bit too enthusiastic about having a squadron named the "Black Aces" was the fact that they had actually founded two distinct units with the UN Spacy fighter squadron designation SVF-41 and the name Black Aces. It's not a case of passing the name and heraldry to another unit when a unit is disestablished, they straight up made the SVF-41 Black Aces twice. (No, really!) The UN Spacy's first SVF-41 "Black Aces" was a VF-1 Valkyrie unit stationed aboard ARMD-07 Ranger in the First Space War, and were lost with the ship when the Zentradi sunk her in Earth orbit. Then, years later, a second SVF-41 "Black Aces" shows up as a squadron attached to a new Uraga-class carrier (CV-339 Bruno J. Global) in the 2040s flying the VF-11B Super Thunderbolt III. They actually show up together in the same article in This is Animation: Macross Plus, with the Variable Fighter Squadron Marking section leading off with a Black Aces VF-1J, then just 9 pages later a separate SVF-41 entry for a Black Aces VF-11B.
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That is the helmet section of the EX-Gear suit... normally it doesn't cover the whole head like that, and isn't deployed at all unless the EX-Gear is ejected from the fighter, but Hayate's was specially modified to provide protection because he stupidly refuses to wear a helmet.
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Sometime in the late 2040's, by all accounts... but no one date is given. Based on what Kawamori has said, the decentralization of the New UN Government was a gradual process brought about by the realities of trying to govern effectively when it could take years to get to some of the newly established colonies. The earliest point where we chronologically see a New UN Forces kite is 2048, with the loss of the 117th Research Fleet... though that's the result of Ozma flying a stock CG model VF-171. Originally it was given that the coup d'etat in 2050-2051 (Macross VF-X2) was the cause for the military's reorganization... the novelization of Frontier and Kawamori's Otona Anime #9 interview demoted it to more a symptom of the decentralization, with PO'd UN Forces brass not happy about the military's power being on the decline and convinced (at least publicly) that humanity needed to present a strong, united front centered on Earth to survive in the galaxy.
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In the firepower department, yeah... though since the coaxial guns on the monitor turret are typically the lightest weapon mounted on a VF, it's not exactly a substantial improvement in firepower vs. the base model. The monitor turret variations sometimes come with other extras that boost performance like additional data link antennas or improved sensor systems. Most of the "oomph" usually comes from a noticeably more powerful engine, either by installing a different engine variant or simply tuning the hell out of the existing engine... coupled with removing some or all of the safety-oriented performance limiters in the airframe control AI's cals.
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Apart from the obvious field-of-view problems that would crop up from having a flipping great chunk of the airframe in your eyeline, the biggest issue would be survivability. It wouldn't be especially helpful to put the pilot closer to the bits of the airframe that are most prone to attracting enemy missiles, producing large amounts of waste heat, catching fire, or even exploding. Even with a wraparound monitor-type cockpit, it's sensible to maintain the forward position for the cockpit in the event that the monitors fail and you need to go back to the ever-reliable Mk.1 Eyeball, as happened with Brera's VF-27 in the Frontier movies and happened whenever the Draken IIIs sustained damage in Macross Delta. Increasingly often, there isn't a "cannon fodder" and "elite" setup. As to why they started in the first place... there are a number of different reasons. Part of it was to give experienced pilots an aircraft with a little more oomph since they had the skills to use it to the fullest, esp. while shepherding the less experienced pilots in their platoons. Part could be argued to be using those same experienced pilots as guinea pigs to test potential upgrades slated for future production blocks of the grunt model (e.g. improvements that went into the VF-1B and VF-1A late blocks). Some variants started out as alternative mass production models that didn't shake out quite right (e.g. the VF-1J) or were built for a specific specialized role (the VF-1J again, being the only one that was natively compatible with the GBP-1S). Eventually it settled down such that the "elite" variant is a fake elite variant that doesn't actually differ from the regular model in performance, but offers better communications capabilities so squadron or platoon leaders can better coordinate the troops, as on the VF-25 and VF-31 Custom. EDIT: To clarify that first remark, the only main variable fighter generation to have that ace/grunt dichotomy which was actually expressed in performance was the 1st Generation (VF-1). The 2nd Gen VF-4 and VF-5000 didn't have command variants at all, and neither did the 3rd Gen VF-11 and VF-14. Of the three 4th Gen main VF candidates, none of them had a command model initially and the VF-19 only got one after the fact when Shinsei added one in their space-optimized second mass production type. The 5th Generation is a split between not having command variants (e.g. the VF-31 Kairos) and having a "fake" ace model that doesn't actually differ in performance from the grunt model (e.g. VF-25, VF-31 Siegfried Custom).
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The planet in question was Al Shahal.
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Nothing official yet, though IIRC the Windermerean forces are using the same H&K G36 knockoff that the New UN Forces used in Frontier.
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Unlikely, IMO... the heavy quantum used in the heavy quantum beam weapons that have suddenly become increasingly popular in the 5th Gen VFs has greater mass per unit of volume than any material that exists in realspace, which would tend to give it a huge advantage and firing it can be done while it's in its natural state or as a focused explosion of fusing heavy quantum. I guess the slugs fired by the SSL-9B might count, since they're technically surrounded by a trail of plasma spalling from the round due to the incredibly high voltages it's subjected to in the barrel... (which is truth in television, if the Naval Railgun DARPA is working on is any indication). Yeah, overtechnology materials are a hell of a thing... the initial generation armor used by the VF-0 Phoenix was supposedly comparable to the armor of a main battle tank when energized. If you go to the old figures, the VF-1's 30mm thick armor offered defensive ability 100x that of an equivalent thickness of steel, making it effectively equivalent to 3m of rolled homogenous armor-grade steel. The GBP-1S Armored Pack took that up to 8m, and we're told the VF-17 in its naked configuration had armor strength equivalent to a VF-1 w/ Armored Pack and that wasn't an official AVF given that it was a 3rd (A-C variants) or 3.5th (D/F/S/T) Generation VF once it received burst turbine engines. The VF-19 and VF-22's armor should be comparable to or superior to that, and the VF-171 is noted as being more robust as well. The VF-25 is even better than that, and the YF-29 takes the cake by having the same armor material as the VF-25 but twice as thick and provided with twice the power, for four times the total effect (topping even the VF-25's Armored Pack, which has defensive capabilities rivaling cruiser-grade ship armor). One thing to remember with Macross is that, while weapons don't necessarily LOOK super-killy and create colossal explosions of huge amounts of collateral damage, that doesn't mean they aren't a heck of a lot more powerful than anything we have today. The VF-1's laser cannon is five times the power of the nastiest airborne laser system yet devised, and it was considered a light sub-weapon. There are fighter-mounted beam weapons a hundred and fifty times that powerful on the books, and some that are likely even deadlier than that. You need some heavy damn armor to not die immediately from a hit like that.
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The VF-25G's 55mm SSL-9B Dragunov armor-piercing sniper railgun is kind of an extreme example... but anti-energy conversion armor ammunition has been used on pretty much every non-beam gunpod with the possible exception of the VF-0's GPU-9. You're just not going to get armor that's hundreds of times as tough as an equivalent thickness of steel without some serious specialized ammunition. With the VF-17 as a benchmark, the typical 4th Generation AVF is expected to have armor strength that's at least equivalent to a VF-1 in an Armored Pack... by all accounts, that's closing on equivalent to 9m of armor-grade steel. Consider that the 5th Generation has even better armor than that, and that some (like the YF-29) are implied to have as much as four times as much armor strength as a VF-25. AVFs have legitimately reached a level where they can laugh off practically any modern weaponry.
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Without specialized armor-piercing ammunition, energy conversion armor definitely hands a significant advantage to energy weaponry over projectile weaponry by making the relatively thin armor material as damage-resistant as meters of armor-grade steel. You need an awful lot of brute force to get through that stuff. Even so, the Macross franchise tends to do just about everything bigger. A 5,000kW laser cannon is considered a light sub-weapon, and a 10,000kW beam weapon is considered to be a light defensive gun. The Strike Valkyrie's beam cannon was rated at dozens of megawatts, and all indications are beam gunpods on 5th Generation VFs are rated at hundreds of megawatts in rifle mode and probably thousands in beam grenade mode. Vacuum is an excellent insulator. The air moving through the engine necessarily spreads the heat when the heat is transferred from the reactor to the airstream, so they don't have that vacuum barrier helping keep the heat from the reactor and plasma stream from overheating the rest of the engine... and are blowing the plasma out of the engine to provide thrust, and thus preventing it from remaining in proximity to the engine for long enough to transfer significant amounts of heat. All told, it's a change in the type of damage rather than the amount of damage... 10,000kW is 10,000kJ/s any way you shake it, so it's the same amount of energy being delivered to the target, and in principle they're both heating the target. The advantage in favor of particle beam weaponry is probably the kinetic force the beam carries, whereas the laser weapon does the heating purely with radiation... warming the target instead of explosively disassociating it at the atomic level. Super dimension energy weapons definitely have an advantage over both, since they're basically relativistic plasma weapons that provide both intense heating and nontrivial kinetic energy. Not really an apples-to-apples comparison... Keith took hit hit on the side of the cockpit, whereas Messer took a hit on the canopy itself.
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New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)
Seto Kaiba replied to Tochiro's topic in Movies and TV Series
Variable Fighter Master File did give them one... their iconic "Red Skull" and "Blue Skull" paintjobs, with the Love Birds stencil. -
It says that sub-hovering nozzles were installed, but the VF-22 always had those. Wasn't even considering the X-32B, to be honest... but you've probably got a point there. What I was referring to was the fact that the engines run much of the length of the airframe and the ducting for the intakes is necessarily an odd shape both to accommodate the battroid-mode orientation of the engines and the large rows of exhaust vanes under the engines which are used to provide most of the hovering thrust in GERWALK mode. You're basically stuck with a huge portion of the craft's interior that isn't usable because you have to make room for this unusual engine arrangement. To the best of my knowledge, no official Macross source has shown the VF-22 with under-wing or body pylons... but Master File's depiction isn't really unreasonable (even the F-22 has the option to hang stuff from the wings). It's only been shown using a FAST pack once, in one of the Macross 7 Encore episodes where Milia nicks the Sound Booster packs from a VF-11D Custom. (Exactly how those fit is unclear.) The FF-2450 engines aren't throttled in space... they're throttled in atmosphere. The FF-2450B is rated for 404kN in atmosphere, and 640kN while in space. Every VF has had those. In fact, we see a really weird example of their use in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, during the fistfight between Vrlitwhai and Hikaru's VF-1J. Vrlitwhai tears the head off, and a bunch of other cameras suddenly kick in to replace the lost main camera system, showing perspectives of the fight from different portions of the body. (They're pretty visible on many of the later designs, usually a colored tinted panel that's roughly lozenge shaped on the side of the nose, on the engine nacelle, etc.) Both official spec and Master File have identified these sensor clusters as containing stuff like optical and infrared cameras, laser and LIDAR systems, etc. The capability level expressed in Master File is actually pretty impressive... the VF-19's LIDAR system is able to detect and produce a three-dimensional image of an object 10cm in diameter at 50km.
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That's piracy, man... and the whole bootlegging thing is kinda a verboten topic here.
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Well... to be honest, I'm not really certain that the VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei from Macross the Ride was a modernization at all. After all, the only real upgrade is the flight control system was retrofitted to accept an implant-based BDI system. It gained some weight and the engines were swapped for a newer variant of the FF-2450 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine that produces somewhat less thrust than the earlier variant used on the VF-22 and VF-22S, so it actually has an inferior thrust-to-weight ratio to the production model. (It's honestly a little worrying that the Schwalbe Zwei's engines are the same variant used on the VF-9E Cutlass, the failed attempt to upgrade the VF-9 with AVF technology that was canceled because it developed a disquieting tendency to spontaneously explode in midair. That right there should give any pilot second thoughts about flying it.) If they kept the inertia vector control system, it's also an obnoxiously expensive aircraft to build and maintain. I'm not sure it's a controversial opinion, really, given that the VF-22 is easily the VF that most closely resembles the real-world fighter that was the inspiration for its design (the YF-23 Black Widow). IMO, the VF-22's unique airframe design and emphasis on internal storage and passive stealth makes it much better suited to atmospheric combat and probably puts it at a distinct disadvantage compared to the VF-19 in space. The way the engines are laid out in the airframe is much more space-intensive than the standard approach, and with the limbs and ordinance and even gunpods all stored inside the airframe while in fighter mode its internal space for fuel is greatly diminished. That fuel capacity is endurance in space, and without a standard set of FAST packs it's kind of up Septic Creek with neither boat nor paddle after giving away all that internal space to stuff like the legs, the VTOL exhaust vanes, etc. where its rival has both conformal tanks and optional dorsal boosters on later variants. Not having underwing pylons seems like a pretty big setback too, since that makes its ordinance options more limited Reentry's kind of a non-issue, since pretty much every VF is made of materials that can more than take the heat and even gunpods can go through reentry without needing any special protection. (Plus they have those reentry pods they used in Macross 7 if a high-speed reentry becomes necessary.) The decision by the SV Works and Guld Works to put a heavy armored cover over the clear canopy on the Draken III and Lucifer respectively shows the General Galaxy tendency to go in for more radical, advanced designs that incorporate more overtechnology than what Shinsei's more traditional style does. Canopy materials in Macross are not exactly weak, mind you, as they too are made of overtechnology materials that are many times stronger than steel... on more than one occasion we see canopies stand up to crush forces that are also crumpling the fighter's armor. Shinsei's less radical design addresses the situational awareness aspect by having the holographic HUD on the canopy with the ability to project smaller display screens for zooming in on approaching aircraft, displaying warnings, etc. The solid armor + display has the one weakness that, if the display fails, you're totally blind until you eject the armored cover.