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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    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).
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The planet in question was Al Shahal.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nothing official yet, though IIRC the Windermerean forces are using the same H&K G36 knockoff that the New UN Forces used in Frontier.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Variable Fighter Master File did give them one... their iconic "Red Skull" and "Blue Skull" paintjobs, with the Love Birds stencil.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    That's piracy, man... and the whole bootlegging thing is kinda a verboten topic here.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    We're certainly open to new lines of discussion... the Macross Delta stuff has been pretty thin on the ground, and will likely continue to be for a month or two yet (assuming SoftBank breaks the habit of a lifetime and pubishes the VF-31 Master File on time). The only AVF-related topic I've been pursuing in the past few weeks while I wait for Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried is the apparent proliferation of the VF-171EX in the 2060s. For a moderately unstable limited-production VF developed and built in a single emigrant fleet as a hasty modernization to oppose the Vajra, the Nightmare Plus EX is surprisingly well-traveled. The local New UN Forces, the elite NUNS Special Forces unit Havamal, and even the bandits on Uroboros manage to get their hands on them... complete with anti-Vajra weapons. The Macross Delta gaiden manga Macross E also puts 'em in the hands of the Xaos branch office on Vivre/Pipure. It seems like a Gen 4.5 has a lot of appeal in the poorer sectors of the galaxy.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming she exists at all... and isn't just a corgi in a control room somewhere. ... considering how phallic the Zentradi ships are, what makes you so certain it'll be ship girls...?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    The point was that what you're describing is a very general, very generic set of basic tropes common to most mecha shows... not revisited plot elements or recurring characters/factions/etc. At the very, VERY basic level you described, yes... otherwise, not s'much. Macross Zero is actually a good example of what I was talking about in terms of minimal recurring material and an unwillingness to revisit old factions and themes. Roy Focker's secondary character status is the ONLY carryover material in the entire OVA... everything else was all-new: The OVA does not revisit any familiar settings, taking place as it does entirely on the newly-introduced island of Mayan and the oceans surrounding it. The OVA's themes about preserving nature (I guess?) never come up in another Macross title. The OVA is not set during any previously documented era in Macross in-universe history, given that the Unification Wars as depicted in Super Dimension Fortress Macross ended the previous year. The OVA's antagonist is not featured in any previous Macross series, and ceases to exist in-universe shortly after the OVA's events, so they never appear again. The OVA has only one recurring character from a previous series (Roy Focker), and only one character from the OVA is ever mentioned after the OVA (Mao Nome, and only then as a posthumous character that IIRC didn't have a speaking role). All other characters are all-new and are not seen or mentioned again after the OVA. The OVA has no recurring mechanical designs from a previous Macross series, the closest being the HWR-00-Mk.IP Monster which is different enough to be obviously distinct from the Mk.II in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. The OVA's macguffin/plot coupon is never acknowledged again after the events of the OVA, except in a dramatization filmed a half-century later after the events were declassified, which has no bearing on the conflcit in its native series. Basically... Macross Zero demonstrated that Macross's creators will go back to earlier dates on the calendar IF they can set the story up in a way that it's as close to completely separate from any previous Macross story as possible so they're not tied down by existing material.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Considering Isamu served there... you'd probably have to be enough of a frequent flier to the stockade that your CO wants to get rid of you by sending you to Space Siberia.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Well, thus far Macross's creators are opposed to direct sequels and recurring antagonists, so it seems a safe bet we're done with Walkure and the Kingdom of the Wind... or the world's most agonizing Earth Wind and Fire joke. To be frank, what you listed there is almost a perfectly generic plot outline for any mecha series in which the main character isn't already in a heroic (para)military outfit at the start. Swap "love triangle" for "love interest" and take out the bit about idols and you've got a framework for anything from Evangelion to Gundam. Mind you, that's not what I'm talking about... nor are the occasional continuity nods and homages we get to remind the audience that this is part of a bigger franchise. What I AM talking about is that Macross is not a franchise that likes to tread old ground. Discounting the movies that tell an alternate version of the story from a series, the nature of Macross's main theme is such that we don't get recurring antagonists in the franchise. By the end of the story they're either dead or they've seen the error of their ways and stopped the fighting. They haven't had a battle with a Zentradi Army Main Fleet since the original series and DYRL?, sentient virtuoids like Sharon Apple are illegal, three of the seven Protodeviln died and the other four buggered off for parts unknown leaving their slave army behind to be de-brainwashed, Anti-Unification Forces had already disbanded before the First Space War wiped the survivors out, the Vajra buggered off to another galaxy after reaching a mutual understanding with humanity, Havamal was decimated, and the Kingdom of the Wind is reeling after Roid's de facto coup d'etat and having lost a good chunk of their forces including three of their seven top aces and is probably well on its way back to being an economically and politically irrelevant hick planet so far out in the space boonies that you can hear the banjos from orbit. It's largely the same with main and supporting characters. Outside of Max and Milia, it's SOP to have characters never appear again once their story arc is over. Isamu is a rare exception, and they don't even show his face onscreen. Obviously there are practical reasons for it, but every new series offers up a new main fighter for the protagonists too, so barring the occasional continuity nod we don't have any two story arcs that share the same VFs either. The same is done to themes. Macross's creators love to reinvent the wheel... they take the same basic tropes, but stretch them over a story in a different shape every time, which helps keep things fresh. It makes Macross less predictable, at least in pre-production, since we don't have the Gundam-esque consistency of being able to ask "So what are we calling the space Nazis this year?".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    They've appeared on a number of transfer sheets for various Macross model kits... Different versions of the Shinsei Industry logo have appeared in Variable Fighter Master File, on page 119 of the VF-19 book and page 122 of the VF-0 book. The General Galaxy logo appears on page 24 of the VF-22 book.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    In manga form, yes... with modernized aesthetics.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    The Compendium's timeline mentions the ones on Isamu's bio... but we have no in-universe details about those conflicts, so it's basically just repetition of the same information in the screen capture. It also mentions some of the brushfire conflicts that were depicted in Macross M3 and Macross VF-X2 in slightly more detail.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    So... a Macross story about a group of misfits and incompetents who triumph over adversity more by luck than good judgment? We just got done with that. Yes please! I'm sick of having to get my badass lady fighter pilot fix from Macross manga and light novels. Gimme another Milia, Komilia, Sylvie, or Chelsea please!
  20. Seto Kaiba
    I'd call that a victory of sorts, yeah. The poll doesn't quite capture the truth of the matter... there were a lot of us who liked the individual pieces of the show, but felt the writing didn't effectively gel them together into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. As a result, I think there's high hopes for this next series being able to more effectively merge the stunning visuals that've become standard fare with their newest story.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    No, I am not wrong... you are, I'm afraid, and I can prove it. You claim Nemoto didn't write any episode after #14. I'm certainly looking forward to your explanation of this screen capture from Episode 26, which shows him being credited with the screenplay for that episode. Shoji Kawamori did not write ANY of the 26 screenplays used in Macross Delta.In point of fact, Toshizo Nemoto has a solo screenplay writing credit on episodes 1-6, 9, 10, 12-15, 19, 21, and 23-26. He's also credited as co-writing the screenplay for episode 8 with Ukyo Kodachi. Episodes 7, 11, 17, 18, and 22 had their screenplays written by Tatsuo Higuchi. Episodes 16 and 20 had screenplays by Touko Machida. Apart from directing and being chief director, Kawamori's only credits are shared credits for storyboarding on episodes 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 14, 16, 17, and 22, and solo storyboard credits on episodes 13 and 26. I can provide screen captures from the credits to attest to all of these facts. You can't blame Kawamori for the writing in Macross Delta because he demonstrably didn't write it. Like George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry or Yoshiyuki Tomino he comes up with some weird stuff and can really make a hard-to-watch show when he's left to his own devices. That's why, just like all those other blokes I just named, his ideas are developed by other people who actually outline the series and write the screenplays. This new series will likely be no different in that respect. Kawamori will lob a concept over the wall and the designated writers will pick it apart, tweak it into new shapes, flesh it out, and punt it back over the wall as a screenplay for storyboarding. That's how it worked on every Macross series except for Macross II: Lovers Again, which he didn't work on. Franchise seems to be doin' just fine, the DX's are still selling like hotcakes, the video games are coming out regularly, manga titles are in serialization, novelizations coming out regularly, Walkure playing to packed houses and regularly charting near the top... it would seem like, while Delta was not the strongest offering to date, plenty of fans found it eminently watchable and good. So I suppose it's a YMMV thing between your special personal definition of "good" and that of the target audience. Y'know, I'm pretty sure one of the Macross Quarter-class ships mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah was the Macross Half. IIRC there was a Macross One-Third too. Come to that, I'd be down for either another show in the 2060s with a Macross Quarter-class or a historical title set between the original series and Plus ala Macross M3. Hell, I'd love to see them go back and animate Macross 2036... some VF-1 action AND a grown-up Komilia? 's that what that was? I honestly couldn't find an Aesop in Zero, it was either really well hidden by all the Kadun stuff or not there at all. Zero was damned pretty, but would've been a lot better if the plot wasn't so obtuse. That's one reason I want a longer run from this new series, so there isn't the opportunity for there to be too much plot left at the end of the episode... I want to avoid the kind of situation that necessitates either exposition dumps like Delta did or incredible vagueness like Zero resorted to. I am 210% OK with The Seatbelts doing music for a Macross series... just puttin' that out there. Still, I somehow can't help but picture something like TM Revolution being used for a Macross the Ride-style series.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Eh, maybe... but SV2 was actually good at it. I wanna see someone be rubbish.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    We can only hope that Big West is smart enough not to oversaturate the market by leaning too heavily on idol singers. The turnaround time between the end of Macross Delta and the announcement of this new Macross project is so fast, you could almost wonder if Kawamori's going to be involved or if we're headed into another series helmed by someone else. Isn't he still committed to some project over in China that kicked off shortly before Delta ended? It'd be interesting to see what another creator could do with the franchise, since we haven't had an official Macross narrative drawn up without Kawamori since Macross II: Lovers Again and its prequels. My girlfriend had a fun idea for a Macross series... she suggested something like Terrestrial Defense Enterprise Dai-Guard could be done with a less-than-competent PMC, with a bunch of green pilots from a private security company who are only used to routine flights and cargo escorts suddenly get dropped into a combat situation and have to make it up as they go along because nobody expected to ever have to actually fight anyone. It'd be a great subversion of all of stories like the Macross Frontier and Macross Delta series where incredibly well-funded, allegedly-elite PMCs ride roughshod over the military. We already got an OVA that's all flash and no substance with a nonsense plot... it's called Macross Zero.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Will you settle for a yaoi love triangle between three men named Yuri?
  25. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, couldn't the same description of "a serious story with a silly plot" be applied to almost any Macross title? I think that's part of its charm, really. The focus on the love plot over the war plot and solving interstellar conflicts with bouncy pop songs or a power ballad isn't exactly gritty realism in sci-fi. It keeps the story's overall tone light and optimistic and prevents it from getting bogged down with the WAR IS HELL amateur dramatics that most other mecha shows are so fond of. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and that helps keep it fun... along with the knowledge that you're going to get something that passes for an uplifting ending. For me, it's infinitely preferable to Gundam... which sometimes gets so caught up in its WAR IS HELL message that it feels like the staff is out to exact as much misery on the viewer as possible. After watching Macross you can leave feeling pretty good. After watching certain Gundam shows like Victory you leave feeling the need for an antidepressant or maybe a stiff drink. It's become such a staple for that franchise that the rare optimistic Gundam series feels alien and wrong. I'll be quite happy if that state of affairs continues in the new series. Frontier did a good job of keeping it fun. Delta's first half did too.
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