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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, yes... there were a number of fairly significant changes, plus a bunch of changes of less importance.First and foremost, the cockpit was completely redesigned to replace the YF-21's unreliable initial-type BDI system with a traditional control setup supplemented by a support BDI that used a non-contact sensor system. Secondly, the fuselage was redesigned somewhat... particularly the ventral fuselage and the monitor turret. In the former case, the underside of the fighter was retooled to store both gunpods completely internally to improve passive stealth (previously they were just sort of stuck to the underside). The design of the optical array on the monitor turret was changed, though an explanation of why has not been given. Obviously, the canopy was changed per the above. Somewhere along the way, the aircraft got 210kg lighter. Third, the free-transforming OTM composite materials used in the YF-21's wings were scrapped and replaced with more conventional joints (the composites were not production-intent design content even when they were being tested on the YF-21). Lastly, the Macross Chronicle comparison notes that the armaments stations were miniaturized (what precisely this means is unclear.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, more's the pity... I'm not much of a Trekkie anymore. Voyager didn't thrill me, Enterprise just annoyed me, and the new movies had me contemplating a voodoo doll for Jar-Jar Abrams. Officially, yeah... the Macross's fold accident was the result of the boobytrap scrambling several of the ship's original systems like the fold system and gravity control system. That said, it is mentioned one or two of the official publications that trying to fold inside a gravity well is a rather bad idea and probably didn't help matters. Macross Chronicle suggests that folding inside a gravity well can increase the chances of a fold accident and even increase the time disparity between the ship and realspace during the fold jump. Consequently, the (New) UN Forces consider folding inside a planetary atmosphere a terrible idea and rarely attempt it. On an unrelated matter, I've been having fun with thrust-to-weight ratios lately. Some overdue realizations and new information let me get some insight into a few Master File variants that didn't get stats... like the VF-0-NF and VF-0+. If I've worked out the masses correctly, the VF-0-NF actually managed a better thrust-to-weight ratio than the VF-1 by using the Ghost's larger, more powerful, but less efficient engine. If the FF-1999 weren't so blasted heavy it could've been one hell of a fighter... but 8,400kg of engine weight is a bit of a game killer.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Probably an over-estimate considering the detonation was only a few kilometers from Barette City and it didn't even damage the city or the fleet holding station above it. Major Valan of the New UN Forces identified it as a directional tactical reaction weapon, so the yield was likely relatively low. The standard is likely different due to the differing scale of war, but if 10 gigatons is an anti-fleet munition then 4 gigatons is certainly in the "strategic warhead" category rather than "tactical warhead" category. Whether they actually adopted pair-annihilation for more than the highest-yield (or simply largest) reaction weapons is unclear. Macross Chronicle completely fails to mention pair-annihilation reaction weapons, and discusses only thermonuclear reaction weapons. The majority of reaction weapons are probably still thermonuclear, given that antimatter is an incredibly dangerous and finicky thing to store for any length of time. Hydrogen and heavy quantum are both inert, making storing thermonuclear reaction weapons much safer and a lot more logistically sound considering hydrogen and heavy quantum are both readily available. That also comes with the major advantage that you can't set off a thermonuclear reaction warhead by shooting it, so the chances of accidental missile fratricide or friendly fire resulting from a fighter carrying warheads being shot down are nil compared to the high risks inherent in antimatter weapons.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    That's one way to do it, I guess...In Macross 7, they had a very interesting approach to an armed reentry in which they used a one-fighter reentry pod launched from a frigate like a missile. The pod enabled a VF to make a ballistic high-speed reentry and then separate from the pod to maneuver normally. (Some munitions don't seem to mind reentry heat though... Isamu made reentry with packs full of micro-missiles and an underslung gunpod, and the ventral surface is what's normally presented to the planet during reentry.) EDIT: As a thought, any of you mechanically-inclined fellows joining us at MWCon a few days hence? I'd love to put faces to the thoughtful screen names here.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Really? I've been reluctant to rewatch Delta again (because it's awful), but as I recall it the shields are usually destroyed in one hit the minute the barrier goes down... often taking the arm with it. Hayate loses a couple arms that way.The VF-25's shield wasn't often used, but on the few occasions we saw it take powerful hits it was usually still there after (even if the hit was so bad it took the arm out of action). We're still not certain that pylon count is accurate... I, for one, won't be entirely convinced until we get an official writeup in the liner notes or in something like an official art book. The VF-4 had a unique advantage with twelve conformal missile mounts as well, though, unlike the VF-1, VF-11, VF-171, and so on, it couldn't retain all its ordinance while transforming. Xaos's use of the VF-31 Custom in Delta Flight is kind of a lousy example, in light of the fact that stealth is generally the opposite of what they're trying to achieve.Internalized ordinance spaces in Macross normally means an effort to go in for more of a passive stealth focus (e.g. the VF-17, VF-19, VF-22) rather than trusting everything to the active stealth system. Just a note, "space metal" and "hypercarbon" are two terms for the same stuff... like Luna Titanium and Gundarium. (In fact, EXACTLY like Luna Titanium and Gundarium, becuase "Spacemetal" was a riff on "Luna Titanium" to begin with... far from the only Gundam reference you'll find in the older Macross technical books. AMBAC, anyone? Or a VF-4 with funnels?) Hayate lost a VF-31 by being within a couple dozen meters of the expanding blast front of what was certainly a multi-megaton thermonuclear reaction warhead detonation... that his fighter endured being close to something that was essentially a miniature star for something like ten seconds is a fairly impressive endorsement of its heat resistence as well.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    They're pretty scaleable... the lowest yield mentioned to date belongs to the thermonuclear reaction shells used by the Mk.IP Monster destroid, which had a variable yield from 0.1KT to 50KT. (Per Macross Chronicle's Technology Sheet 09A.)The thermonuclear reaction missiles used by the SF-3A Lancer II space fighter are rated for 0.5KT apiece. The Oberth-class space destroyers use missiles rated for 20-100KT, but they're noted as being small for a warship-grade missile. Of course, the former Varauta system fleet mothership had those multi-warhead missiles carrying multiple 10GT warheads. As a note, it's worth remembering that thermonuclear reaction warheads are far more efficient with their energy than a nuclear warhead thanks to those unique super dimension physics involved. Virtually all the energy is released as heat instead of as various other flavors of radiation, so the immediate destructive effect is greater and without the lingering radiological consequences (so they happen to be safer to use around one's own troops). Yeah, the Supervision Army attacked and destroyed the Zentradi Army's reaction weapons factories, and the remaining stockpiles passed their use-by date after the heavy quantum used as the trigger deteriorated. (The Zentradi, not knowing how they worked, presumably hadn't a clue how to recharge the triggers.) Granted, but those are predominantly strategic, rather than tactical, weapons.By any conventional estimate, a 100 kiloton nuclear warhead will produce a fireball 500m in diameter, and guaranteed third-degree burns out to a hair under 4,000m... and that's when they're losing a fair bit of the energy to other kinds of radiation. When you consider that thermonuclear reaction weapons are essentially an OTM-derived, super-efficient pure-fusion warhead and that fireball is basically a tiny temporary star created by heavy quantum and hydrogen, anything or anyone unfortunate enough to be in or near the fireball is going to be vaporized as surely as if they'd taken a swandive into the sun... so you don't need a huge yield to destroy a starship, you just need a direct hit... though even a near miss is going to inflict incredible damage from the intense heat.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-31's engine is identified as the FF-3001A, so I'd assume it's the same size as the one used on the VF-25. I'd assume the micro-missile launchers were installed in the space the VF-25 dedicated to an airbrake and the fighter's countermeasure dispensers... while the missile bays (or the racks for Cygnus multidrones) are probably achieved by extending the back of the leg a bit to gain more clearance above the top of the airframe. (This, of course, raises the awkward question of where the VF-31's chaff, flare, and smoke dispensers are...)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Seems a bit overelaborate when simulator training should do just as well with much less effort... Eh... I'm not sure it's as simple as one fighter or the other having more of any one thing. It'd help if we had more information about the VF-31 Kairos's design and construction... but such has not been forthcoming (yet).Sure, the VF-31 has two antiprojectile shields instead of one. It's difficult to say without a scale comparison, but the shields look a bit smaller and not nearly as thick as the VF-25's shield. We also don't know what they were made from. The VF-31 seems to have been made on the cheap and the shields are part of the wing surface, they may have gone for a lighter and cheaper alternative like layering conventional energy conversion armor even if it didn't offer as much protection as a slab of advanced energy conversion armor. Armaments-wise it's harder to say... the VF-25 has its eight underwing pylons while the VF-31 only has the four, but the VF-31 makes up part of that with a pair of internal ordinance bays and the micro-missile launchers (which, in an incredibly convenient turn of events, have the same capacity as your typical micro-missile pod). All told they're on a mostly even footing... just VF-31s apparently prize passive stealthiness over versatility, and the VF-25s prize versatility over passive stealthiness.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that was my reaction too... "This series was such a monstrous disappointment that it's made me look back more fondly on Macross 7." At least they didn't stick us with a whiny milquetoast like Saji Crossroad or Relina Peacecraft.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's just an animation error in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that The-Franchise-that-must-not-be-named decided to run with to pad out the game and squeeze one more overpriced, low-quality, "limited edition" VF-1 toy out before Toynami went on to other designs. There is a VF-1R in Macross... but it's quite a bit different (it's actually a family of three VF-1 variants: the VF-1AR, VF-1JR, and VF-1SR) and was made for Macross II's first video game tie-in, Macross 2036 for the PC Engine, around ten years before the game in question was developed.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    They did activate the sound boosters successfully at the end of the series. No, I think it really is just bad writing... because the available technical materials (official and otherwise) don't point to any actual technical issue with the low rate initial production VF-25s in service in 2059, unless you'd like to count the Master File view that SMS's VF-25A's were built with wings made from below-spec hypercarbon composites due to Macross Olympia missing a promised delivery date for the material. ... but they didn't remove overboost from the VF-4. The cockpit block used on the VF-1 Valkyrie from Block 6 onwards is identical to the VF-4's production-intent cockpit starting with the Block 0 trial production model. They stopped listing it in the stats, or at least stopped listing it separately around the time Macross 7 aired and they switched to listing engine outputs using "maximum instantaneous thrust in space", but even the VF-17's cockpit art has an overboost setting marked on the throttle lever. We haven't really had well labeled cockpit diagrams since Plus. Since that cockpit design was put into use on many different models of VF, it seems a fair assumption that they all have overboost.(It's worth noting that the throttle lever on the VF-1A-6/VF-4A-0 cockpit has markings up to 240%, where the VF-1A-5 and earlier cockpit's throttle lever's markings only go up to 200%. I wonder if that means we have to amend our VF-1 entries for the DYRL section?) Actually, I would argue that it's perfectly fair to compare the VF-31 against any other production 5th Generation Main VF. After all, they're aircraft from the same generation and built to do the same job and even replace the same old aircraft. You'd be hard-pressed to argue the VF-31 was better than the VF-25 because of the amusing realization we had when the Kairos specs first came to light... a LOT of its systems are "off the shelf" hardware already used by the VF-25. The one thing that has me scratching my head is that the FF-3001A engine used on the VF-31 is listed as "Stage IIC". NO clue what that means. The FF-2999/FC2 engine used on the Sv-262 is listed as "Stage IIG". Oh, there was enough fishy business going on on Frontier thanks to the Bilra Transport Co. having its fingers in every damn pie in the fleet that one can probably be forgiven for assuming there was some inky-fingered pen-pusher on Bilra's payroll involved in screwing up procurement.(I suppose the longer SMS could withhold the VF-25 from the New UN Forces, the longer they could remain an essential part of the fleet's tactical structure.) I dunno, I think he did a good enough job of making hero units stand out even before they were flying different fighters... e.g. Skull Platoon.(Or, if you're feeling fancy, Ray Lovelock's Pink Peckers.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    While the official publications (e.g. Macross Chronicle) do mention the existence of emigrant fleets that have made the QF-4000 (AIF-7) Ghost the main (or only) fighter of their fleet's New UN Forces, the Macross Frontier fleet's not one of them. Their main fighter was the VF-171 Nightmare Plus, intended to be replaced in the near future by the VF-25 Messiah. Moreover, they weren't inexperienced or poorly trained either... they'd fought anti-government terrorists and Zentradi before. They were just fighting WAAAAY outside their weight class against the Vajra. After all, that's what the VF-25 was for... to enable the Frontier fleet NUNS to effectively fight the Vajra. With a more-or-less standardized control layout and EX-Gear that is said to be able to reduce training times significantly, I would have expected them to get VF-25s in the air before the end of the war. Actually, when you think about it, the VF-171EX makes very little sense as its controls were overhauled to be the same as the VF-25's. You'd have troops with much the same learning curve either way. The changes to the controls and the aircraft's performance would've meant even experienced VF-171 pilots would be doing some serious retraining. They didn't start applying fold quartz to weapons until near the end of the war... initially they just switched to a higher-powered ammunition for their standard gunpods. It was only the VF-25s and VF-171EXs that were given those MDE shells and micro-missiles which used fold quartz. The YF-29 never entered official production... that's why it's still YF.So far, the only party identified as having built even a small number of YF-29 units is the rogue New UN Spacy Special Forces 815th Independent Squadron (AKA "Havamal"), and even then they only issued those to their most elite top aces like Rod Baltemar. As bank-breakingly expensive as a fighter with a fold wave system is, it's profoundly unlikely that any production aircraft will ever be fielded with one. (It says a LOT about Havamal's clout that they were able to build more than one... the Frontier fleet could only afford the one they gave to Alto Saotome.) What entered production as the next main fighter varies by region (or fleet). The Macross Frontier emigrant fleet and its allies adopted the VF-25 Messiah, Macross Galaxy adopted the VF-27 Lucifer, Earth and the federal NUNS adopted the VF-24, and the Brisingr Alliance adopted the VF-31 Kairos. (There is one mention of a VF-30 in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III, but I'd take that one with a pinch of salt.) Thus far, we've only seen two New UN Spacy special forces units in this time period. The Macross Frontier fleet's NUNS special forces unit "Round Table" used the VF-19EF Caliburn, and the 815th Independent Squadron "Havamal" used several different aircraft including the YF-29B, VF-19F/S, VF-171EX, and VF-22S.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    That's why I tend to favor the interpretation that Basara was too thick or too self-obsessed to give any thought to Ray Lovelock suddenly turning up with a heavily customized 4th Gen VF that even the military doesn't have yet. If he had, he probably would've noticed early on he was a guinea pig in a secret military test program. I've got a lot more respect for the Jamming Birds than I do for Basara... they were ordinary people who were, as any civilian would be, quite terrified at being sent into battle against brainwashed professional soldiers and actual goddamn monsters. Their problem was simply that they were inexperienced and lacked Basara's complete and utter fixation on singing that was likely all that was standing between him and messing his trousers.By the end of the series, they were doing just fine... and indications are they enjoyed some success afterwards as an idol group.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Yep, he was a New UN Forces VF pilot before he joined SMS.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's certainly frustrating, especially given that the Macross Frontier side story/prequel Macross the Ride has the Frontier fleet go and have over 150 custom VF-19s put together on short notice. You'd think they could have put together a few squadrons of VF-25s before the war ended, especially considering they were raking in fold quartz like mad by killing Vajra. Actually, they were technically both... Sound Force was a military-sponsored irregular unit even before it was formalized. Basara was either savvy enough to realize that he didn't want to know how Ray got hold of a VF-19 Custom, or he was too thick and self-absorbed to care.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, I think a big part of that is the VF-11C itself... an economy model, and one that was up against enemy fighters that were theoretically equivalent to a Gen 3.5 or Gen 4 VF like the VF-17 or VF-19 (respectively). Of course, even the aces flying the VF-17s and VF-19s ended up clobbered, so that's probably Basara's Mary Sue factor kicking in. Yeah, that's the real problem... we keep getting asked to excuse the plot involving enemies that can only be beaten by the latest and greatest VF out there, which is conveniently only used in small numbers by PMCs because they're testing it for the military.Once was annoying, and raised the awkward question "Why didn't you just push the damned thing into production then?". Twice is simply obnoxious, especially when the fighter always seems to find its way into military hands a year or two after the war and the official material doesn't hide the fact that the fighter design and testing are basically done even before the series started.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    I think it's just their way of justifying it being a transformable warship... if it's modular like the Macross-class then the next logical step is to make every module its own ship rather than the main body of the ship and its arms.We had the same thing going on with the Macross Quarter-class as well as the Macross Elysion... they're each five warships put together (the two BASTER gunships, the core body block and the two arms), but the only times we've ever seen one separate from the main ship is the Macross Quarter stowing its carrier on its back so it'd have both hands free for a shot from its gunship, and the Elysion sending one of its carrier arms ahead of it. To be fair, the last two series haven't actually depicted the local New UN Forces as being in any way unskilled or incompetent. They just keep getting asked to fight enemies who have some significant unfair advantage that renders the New UN Forces incapable of actually confronting the enemy. It's always just a plot device to justify the PMC being the heroes, rather than an annoying bunch of weekend warriors who are surplus to requirements.In Frontier, it was the fact that the Vajra's energy conversion armor was so tough the VF-171's weapons weren't powerful enough to get through it. So, of course, SMS has to step in and save the day for no reason other than their main character status granting them access to the latest and greatest VF. (Why the military didn't just repo the VF-25s is beyond me, since they belonged to them in the first place.) A few episodes later they get better ammunition to defeat the Vajra's armor, and then all the sudden VF-171s are killing Vajra by the dozen. In Delta, it was for no reason other than that Prince (later King) Ketchup was singing his freaky opera song and messing with their brains. The minute he takes a powder, the Aerial Knights get their clocks cleaned and are left literally begging for reinforcements by the New UN Forces troops on a half-dozen planets who weren't under mind control. All of the sudden we get treated to local NUNS forces in VF-171s shooting down Aerial Knights Sv-262s despite them being one generation older and substantially lower performance. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a show that kicks PMCs to the curb and brings the military back to the spotlight... but the NUNS aren't being portrayed as slouches. They're just getting the short end of the stick because the writers have a love affair with PMCs. (Amusingly, since Delta portrayed Xaos as being barely competent at the best of times and hilariously and totally inept most of the time, the whole "PMCs are awesome" thing fell rather flat that time... made worse by the fact that, if they had cooperated with the NUNS instead of treating them with unjustified scorn, the war would've been over a LOT faster and with a lot fewer dead people. It was so bad at points that I kept expecting some NUNS officer who'd mentored Ernest or Arad to pop up and say "We trained him wrong on purpose, as a joke".) In a move inspired by an episode of Red Dwarf, my RPG group's players started referring to PMC troops as "Canaries", for their status as expendable troops first into combat to see if it's too dangerous... and, in keeping with same, it's become an acronym for: Corporate Army Nearly Always Retreating Inept and Extremely Sloppy.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, there is a pretty obvious American bias in the (New) UN Forces. They did throw the other key nations of the UN Government a bone when they were deciding on names for the first fourteen ARMD-class ships though. Around half had American Navy reference names, but you also had the Invincible, Clemenceau, Akagi, Minsk, Haruna, and Kiev. (Two were named for the first two prime ministers of the UN Government, leaving six ARMD-class ships with American names.)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    It doesn't have the thrust reverser ring, but it looks like the speaker pod's nozzle may be able to traverse a little... so they may be self-stabilizing.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Let's be plain... this series didn't end, it just sort of lurched to a stop when it ran out of episodes.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Well... the way it's described, the speaker pod launcher sounds like it's likely a cousin of the high-speed armor-piercing rocket launchers commonly found on Armored Pack. The line art for the speaker pods themselves shows they have a small rocket motor affixed to the rear, so the only major difference would be that the speaker pods aren't carrying a lethal load of OTM-based explosives. From the description, it sounds more like the ISC system is temporarily displacing the energy into super dimension space rather than into a specific "capacitor"...
  22. Seto Kaiba
    So... I'm guessing you forgot, or overlooked, when I pointed out that Master File was just regurgitating official material in that case? The technical and continuity article that was published in the official artbook This is Animation: Macross Plus (the "Variable Fighter Aero Report") explains a lot of the technical backstory leading up to the YF-19 and YF-21, including how the TV and DYRL VF-1s fit together and introduces a number of fighters that hadn't even appeared yet (like the VF-5000, VA-3, etc.). That'd be where the idea that the VE-1 and VT-1 were in use in 2009 came from... and it even offers an example or two of squadrons and ships using them from that period. Per Macross Chronicle, the VT-1C was made available as a civilian market variable aircraft circa 2030.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    *coughs and points to the link to M3 in his signature*
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Well, kinda... in VF terms, the DYRL? VF-1 represents the state of technology during the First Space War pretty much everywhere but aboard the Macross. The carrier "air" wings aboard the Macross and Prometheus were among the first to receive VF-1 Valkyries... which were drawn from the very earliest production blocks so their pilots had time to train on their new aircraft. As a result, a lot of their VF-1s belonged to Block 1 thru 5 (the "TV" version). They would have been upgraded gradually to the Block 6 spec had they not ended up cut off from Earth and logistical support.Even before the Macross left port and then accidentially teleported itself and said port to the fringes of the solar system, the carrier "air" wings assigned to the ARMDs and bases on Earth and its moon were receiving fighters from the same early blocks and also an assortment of craft from later blocks as production ramped up and incremental improvements were made in each new production block. So you had some cases like ARMD-02 where they were operating "TV" and "Movie" VF-1s side by side in 2009, with some training squadrons flying VF-1Ds while others had been issued the newer VT-1. After the war ended, the surviving VF-1 Valkyries were gradually upgraded to meet Block 6+ ("movie") specs... and the new VF-1s produced in that period were built to the Block 6 and later production standard. Officially, DYRL? and SDF:M are both equally valid competing views of the First Space War. Neither is a 100% "true" depiction of the events of the conflict, but the official publications generally favor the TV series for continuity purposes even while later shows and other narrative material favors the aesthetics of DYRL? for reasons explained previously.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    That's great, but apart from the very high probability that the Prometheus was where that VEFR-1 came from, I'm not really seeing the relevance... Movie props? There's a key point here I must not be communicating properly... those weren't props.The in-universe movie Do You Remember Love? used real VF-1 Valkyries and Zentradi mecha for its action sequences and stunts. Some of the ships, like Boddole Zer's mobile fortress, were faked up using holographic projections over smaller starships, but otherwise they used real military hardware. That the mecha in DYRL? are real in-universe was a detail established about 22 years back... and the same goes for many of the changes made to characters, etc. Official explanations like that the TV and Movie VF-1 are the same fighter built to two different production block standards came out of that period. (It is, as noted previously, not interchangeable with the real world movie that came out in 1984... as we've seen in-series evidence it contains scenes that were not in the 1984 film like the wedding of Max and Milia.)
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