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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    French for "Course"... used by the film industry to describe a 3 month arc of approximately 13 episodes.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    As I noted over in the other thread, this seems to be a macro version of the fold stones on Uroboros... though the effect used by Windermere seems to be different from the one generated by the ruins, possibly indicative of Sigur Valens generating it instead.In theory, it shouldn't be any different from a normal fold... it's rendering two discrete points in space coterminous by linking them through fold space. Either the bubble of normalized space that normally carries a ship during a fold is sitting in the middle of the fold gate to provide a realspace bridge between point A and point B, or the origin and destination are bridged thoroughly enough that one isn't necessary. The "warp bubble" a fold drive normally generates is a bubble of normalized space around the ship which is then cut off and exchanged for an equivalent volume of space at the ship's destination... the ship isn't being moved, the space containing the ship is. All a "fold gate" is is the transition point from fold space to normal space. No, you're right... energy conversion armor requires a rather substantial amount of energy to run. I'd assume the VB-6's stock engines are tuned to emphasize generator output over thrust production, and are probably fusing their fuel at a faster rate to keep up with the energy demands of such an enormous mecha.As to why they wouldn't upgrade the engines, what I was getting at over in the other thread is that, after upgrading the armor to the same Advanced Energy Conversion Armor used on the VF-25's Armored Pack (which is so expensive the pack is restricted to ranking pilots and aces) they probably had to keep the costs down somewhere... and engines are one of a VF's most expensive parts. (Structural and/or thermal limits may also be a factor, since upgrading to an engine that produced greater thrust would also increase the burden on the engine cooling system and flight-related stresses on the airframe.) Pin-point barriers also require a LOT of power... more than energy conversion armor, if one takes remarks about the YF-19/VF-19A into account. The YF-19 (or VF-19A) needed to devote 60% of its reactor output just to run the barrier system.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Remember a couple days back when I mentioned there were occasionally problems when Chronicle described things in a less-than-clear manner? This is another good example of that.The Macross Chronicle mechanic sheet lists the mass for the SMS VB-6 Custom as 101,900kg, the same as the Ravens model, but also says that the aircraft was lightened by SMS's rework... so that's what that's about! They probably had to economize somewhere... all that Advanced ECA isn't cheap by any means, and a complete retrofit of the control system probably didn't do the general operating account any favors either. Possibly something that was added in a block upgrade in the 2050's... or something along those lines.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    As I predicted several episodes back, the ruins seem to include a macro version of the fold stone system that was present on Uroboros... enabling point-to-point teleportation by space fold for small craft over short distances, presumably by simply making two locations briefly coterminous through fold space. In theory, it isn't any different from a normal fold effect, it's just a static bridging of two locations instead of a temporary one. The ship likely has no need to generate its own protective bubble of normalized space-time (the "warp bubble" of which Chronicle speaks) if the static gate is fully bridging Point A and Point B. However, it's unusual that the one generated by the ruins is a normal fold effect, while the one generated for Windermerean ships is that odd blue-purple vortex instead. Perhaps the one Walkure and Delta Flight used is generated by the ruins, and the one the Aerial Knights have been using is generated by a zero-time fold system on the Sigur Valens.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    At this point, I think I'm probably well within my rights to demand an apology from everyone who bagged on Macross II for not innovating and mixing it up as much as other Macross shows. At least the Macross II staff were trying...Delta's production team seems to be completely phoning it in, to such a worrying degree that the Konig Monster is far from the only scene they nicked whole cloth from Frontier and reskinned. Most of the VF-171 shots were also lifted from the Frontier series... and of course, there's copious reuse of parts or entire CG models from Frontier like the Elysion, the Barette City ship, Cheyenne II, etc. Even the more prominent characters have been fairly blatant copies of Frontier's. Mikumo is trying real hard to be Sheryl 2.0, Freyja and Hayate are less mopey (and better) versions of Alto and Ranka, Keith is now going all creepy overprotective brother (Brera) on Heinz, and Berger Stone seems to be competing with Roid to be the new Grace O'Connor. I was with ya up 'till that last part... that's like cleansing your eyes by dunking your entire head into a poorly maintained, overfull septic tank. Don't do that, they'll just make their own potato vodka instead of writing a decent episode for once...
  6. Seto Kaiba
    The "VF-1R" in Macross is an alternate name for the VF-1改 Refined Valkyrie from the Macross II parallel world timeline story Macross 2036. It's actually not one variant, but a family of (at least) three: the VF-1AR, VF-1JR, and VF-1SR. They're a major evolutionary upgrade of the VF-1 Valkyrie platform that rolled out in the late 2010's, and were developed by the newly formed Takachihof Company. They also sometimes go by the name "Attack Valkyrie" and have a semi-permanent Super Pack like the VF-2SS that combines the features of a Super and Strike Pack (called the Super Pack II).http://www.gearsonline.net/series/macross/2036/ The VF-1SR was flown by Macross 2036 protagonist and player character Komilia Maria Fallyna Jenius, and the VF-1JR was flown by her wingman and love interest Lott Sheen. The other VF-1R is what The Show That Must Not Be Named calls the animation error VF-1A with three lasers.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    sketchley covered the main points in his usual excellent fashion, so I'd just like to make one additional relevant point WRT the VF-171's tech specs: The VF-171 Nightmare Plus, like the other 4th Generation VFs, is outfitted with thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines... an evolutionary upgrade from initial thermonuclear reaction turbine engine designs with greatly improved heat exchange technology and fuel efficiency. On paper, a 4th Generation VF isn't supposed to need a FAST pack for most space ops. They probably just use conformal fuel tanks to extend their range on long range patrols. Why we've come back to FAST packs being a thing in some 5th Generation VFs seems to be more a matter of carrying hundreds of missiles without ruining the fighter's thrust-to-weight ratio than a genuine need to extend the fighter's propellant capacity and acceleration. (Of course, toys have something to do with it as well...) We have no idea... no quantification of the fold wave system's performance has ever been made. I'd assume the VF-31's fold wave system is less bank-breaking since the requirement seems to be one super-high purity fold quartz chunk per engine and the VF-31 has just two engines...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's on page 38 of the BD Limited Edition Macross Delta Vol.2 booklet. ThisConfusesGamlin reposted a picture of that part of the booklet that someone from AnimeSuki took, showing the bit about the series having been put together as a one cour series and extended to two cour partway into broadcast. http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=30860&page=55#entry1299041
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It may have something to do with the fact that this series was originally only intended to be 13 episodes long... as confirmed in the liner notes for BD volume 2.It looks like something similar to what happened with the original series happened with the production of Delta... the ratings were good enough around Ep3-4 for the show to get green-lit for an unplanned extension. The difference being, in this case, they don't appear to have had a bunch of predeveloped surplus plot laying around the way they did with the original series (after it was cut from 49 episodes to 27 and then bumped back up to 36). It feels almost like the writing team is having a Futurama moment. As Fry put it, "It took half an hour to write, I thought it'd take half an hour to read!" Way, WAY too much episode left at the end of the plot each time, so it's padded like a menstruating firehose.
  10. Seto Kaiba
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Apples and oranges, I'd say. The "nose lasers" were one of several animation gaffes to occur in the original series because of the way the animation was farmed out to multiple companies (at least one of which was of iffy quality). The Konig Monster having some manner of machine gun out on the arm appears to be very much intentional, but just wasn't documented correctly when the time came to cover it in Macross Chronicle.The switch to CG models has eliminated a lot of the off-model animation for mecha... leaving just these occasional frustrating failures to write stuff down, though at least TPTB are now being consistent in depicting stuff they haven't written down.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    They're not mentioned in the stats (Macross Chronicle sheets) for the SMS version either,
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Nope! It's frustrating, but in Macross Frontier the SMS VB-6 Konig Monster had some kind of machine gun mounted in each arm. Canaria is shown using them several times, most notably in the series finale, where there's a closeup of her Konig Monster in Battroid mode (IIRC that was the only time it was shown in that mode) firing some manner of machine gun (be it laser, beam, or solid shell, we know not). No forearm-mounted gun is documented in the stats for it but it's clearly shown on more than one occasion. (Not to be confused with the movie trailer-only version that showed a pair of colossal rotary cannons mounted to the inside of the arms, clearly copied from the Cheyenne CG model.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    So... your assertion here doesn't really fit with anything that's been shown in any of the previous Macross titles. Here's why: As noted previously, Macross Delta is extremely odd in that it isn't depicting transformation as a staple of aerial combat in atmosphere. Dogfights in previous Macross shows made liberal use of switching to Battroid for the purpose of shooting down incoming missiles, and GERWALK mode was used many times as a more workable version of Pugachev's Cobra to decelerate suddenly to let an enemy overtake the fighter and get on their tail. Because of fuselage heating due to air friction, the actual usable maximum velocity in low altitude flight has stayed fairly constant, and visual evidence strongly suggests that air combat speeds are in the subsonic regime the overwhelming majority of the time because going very fast matters less than being very agile. Even in the real world we don't dogfight at top speed. You're forgetting that the increase in maximum speed is a function of the increase in overall engine power and maximum instantaneous thrust. As a rule, these VFs have enough engine power that the increasing distance between zero velocity and top speed is balanced by a corresponding increase in the maximum acceleration they can produce by simple brute-force application of thrust. Some of these 5th Generation VFs can accelerate at 30G from a standing start, which kind of turns the loss of momentum from deceleration into a non-issue.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    The Konig Monster has had forearm-mounted guns since Macross Frontier.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Okay, sitting down to watch this one on the big screen... and after the last couple episodes, I have to say my expectations couldn't get much lower. The last few episodes have been R*******-level bad, and the thumbnails my Smart TV is making while the cursor rests on the file are doing nothing to inspire confidence. All told, while a desperate effort was made to recover from the damage inflicted by the last three episodes, I still have to tender an overall Negative vote. Too little, too late, too short, too sh*t. The animation quality was all over the map, blatant reuse... from previous shows no less, and a setup for another bloody "let's go undercover" episode because Walkure haven't proven sufficiently that they suck at that yet.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Ugh... hate that article SO MUCH for all the inaccurate information in it. So many conclusions jumped-to on the basis of a lack of information...For the record, the VF-4 has always been described as being a variable fighter capable of transformation... or at least until some jackass writing a sheet for Macross Chronicle jumped to an erroneous conclusion about it because it wasn't depicted transforming until ten years after debuting in the Macross Flashback 2012 OVA. Go back as far as the prototype's line art in Macross: Perfect Memory and you'll see it's very clearly identified as a Variable Fighter (可変戦闘機). The reason for the stupid conclusion jumped to in that article and in Master File is that the VF-4 simply did not appear again until Macross Digital Mission VF-X, where the G variant was the standard. (Other games subsequently depicted the VF-4 as transformable well before the G variant was a thing in the 2040's. Master File seems to be trying to rationalize this by making the G-variant the standard one from very early on instead of being a 2040's modernization of the VF-4.) As far as Kurakin and Federov, it's worth remembering Master File isn't necessarily official to the Macross setting... and they're certainly not the first ones to be identified as the father of VF design the way Dr. Takachihof was in the Macross II universe. Colonel Takatoku, for one, beat them to the punch in connection with the VF-3 and VF-4. Zentradi engineer Algus Selzaa has also previously been credited as really being the father of General Galaxy's VF program... being the lead developer of the company's first few big sellers like the VF-9 and VF-14 and the main mover behind its Zentradi technology-based design style. Bog standard Super Pack? But we also see, quite frequently, a favorite Kawamori touch of having fighters dogfighting suddenly boost supersonic with the iconic vapor ring so commonly associated with breaking the sound barrier. That strongly points to them being sub-sonic most of the time.Macross Delta is definitely the odd one out in Macross for NOT using all modes extensively in atmosphere. Max made a show of it in Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love?, an equally impressive multi-mode pair of dogfights was the climax of Macross Plus, most of Macross 7 was in space and the show all but ignored GERWALK but Battroid mode was used in flight in atmosphere an awful lot, and Zero was just plain showing off as often as the VF-0s and Sv-51s were transforming in atmosphere. Frontier was mostly in space, but in that show's few atmospheric dogfights they transformed fairly frequently (GERWALK seemed to be a favorite mode there due to strafing side to side). In fact, it's kind of weird that the model kit pamphlet for the VF-31J claims the VF-31 cannot fly in atmosphere in battroid mode... we've seen in previous shows that battroids have had more than enough thrust to fly on their own via raw thrust for a good three fighter generations by that point. They did it all the time in Macross 7... possibly because the choreographers seem to have forgotten GERWALK mode was a thing most of the time.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    As azrael noted, we can't pin it on the Draken III's fuel tanks being small... because almost all of the battles so far have occurred in atmosphere. Thermonuclear reaction turbine engines used on variable fighters are extraordinarily fuel efficient in atmospheric service because thrust is produced by heating intake air with the heat from the fusion reaction instead of venting large amounts of fusion plasma to operate as an ion thruster-augmented fusion rocket. To put it in perspective, a VF-1 Valkyrie's 1,410L of hydrogen slush fuel is good for about ten minutes of maximum thrust in space... but, in atmospheric service, that 1,410L is fuel enough for an effectively unlimited operating range and an operational endurance of something like 700 hours (29 days). The Sv-262 Draken III's a fair bit bigger than a VF-1 Valkyrie, and even though it's losing a fair bit of fuel on the orbital approach and the subsequent return to orbit at the end of combat, the chief limiting factor in its combat endurance would be the physical limitations of the pilot like the need for rest, food, sleep, and using the bathroom. Not quite. The heat transfer isn't done by an electric heating element, it's heat transfer from the reactor (and/or the reactor's coolant system). The heat from the reaction that isn't converted into electrical power in the thermoelectric "Glen effect" primary power generation system is transferred to the intake air by forced convection... transferring that heat to the intake air to produce thrust and, in the bargain, cooling the reactor.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Source found, completely by accident! It's the second-to-last page (#38) of the Macross Delta BD limited edition Vol.2 booklet.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    If true, that certainly explains why Delta's second half was such a mess... it wasn't supposed to exist.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe it's just going to be a 22 minute public apology for the second half of the show being garbage?
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The bit about the VF-22 is a theory on my part... at the time the specs were written, they had not published any information about the g-damping capacity of the Quimeliquola Inertia Vector Control System borrowed from the Queadluun-Rau for the YF-21 and VF-22. It's highly probable, given the VF-22's outlandishly massive g-loading limits compared to production and heavily customized ultra-high performance one-off units from the same period, and would put the structural g-limits for the fighter much closer to other production models of the same era if that number factored in the damping effect of the fighter's inertia capacitor. Well, we can't speak for the entire VF design series in the 20+ range because we don't know what the spec for a potential VF-20 or VF-23 looked like. If they were Shinsei designs they wouldn't have had an inertia capacitor in that period, since that was a uniquely General Galaxy design feature initially... the result of General Galaxy having been contracted to restore the Quimeliquola AWDAP facility in Eden's orbit. It's probably safe to assume the YF-26 was in that range, since it was supposed to be a competing design from the same program that gave us the YF/VF-25 and YF/VF-27. You gotta hand it to Shinsei for what they achieved with applying fold quartz to improving existing inertia capacitor technology... they achieved a 52% improvement in g-force displacement performance with the TO21, and then built on that strong start in later models. Nah... in most fighter-mode dogfights, the pilots aren't going to encounter g-forces sufficient to actually put that kind of massive g-loads on the airframe. They're subsonic most of the time. Barring the fold wave Var syndrome bullet time shenanigans we've seen a few times now in Macross Delta, they probably wouldn't be pushing their aircraft anywhere near hard enough to peak the performance of their inertia store converters for any length of time... except perhaps trying to brake with GERWALK mode from a low supersonic speed in the manner that seems to be the default ending of those bullet time dogfights these days. Macross Plus and Macross Frontier had no problems showing dogfights with LOTS of transformation... Delta's just got crappy dogfight choreography. Apart from something like an Immelmann turn in episode 3, the only air combat maneuver we've seen has been excessive repetition of The Scissors.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Wow. OK, how did I miss THAT? The section's title is literally just his name. Yeah, like I said before that doesn't fit with the other sources that discuss the origins of the Variable Glaug and Neo Glaug. The writer of that sheet got the development timeline backwards, though at least his uncertainty is clear given that he didn't state that backwards relationship as a fact. Macross M3 and Macross R's descriptions both establish that the Neo Glaug was developed for the AVF Program in the late 2030's by the Macross Concern. They used the EVA (Enemy Valkyrie) based on the Glaug which Zentradi rebels created using stolen/leaked overtechnology (from the VF-4) in the late 2010's. The Neo Glaug was created first in production terms, but in the story the Variable Glaug was developed a good twenty years before the Neo Glaug was even conceived. (That isn't to say rogue Anti-UN sympathetic engineers weren't involved... as we've been told they had a hand in helping develop all the EVA units.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Duly noted and recorded, thank you. Every little bit I add to my notes helps when His Marchness decides to start covering Delta. If it's not an imposition, where is Alexi mentioned in the VF-4 Master File? I don't doubt you, but I've skimmed the book a few times now and I haven't found him yet. Is it one of those little marginal notes like the test pilot bios on pg29, or is he buried in a paragraph somewhere? Macross R gave us a bit of long-overdue insight into the world of non-defense corporate culture in the Macross universe... but it was still rather lopsided and oriented toward megacorporations, since the corporations featured were ones rich enough to sponsor their own Vanquish teams.Apart from Oscar Brauhitsch of Team Shinsei, most of the teams were sponsored by corporations that dealt in the civilian domain. The most common were those interstellar shipping concerns like Bilra Transport Co., Viswa & Oder, and Tachyon Express (the latter of which is apparently Space UPS). There were a couple oddballs in there, like Skylab: a food service company that started as a coffee chain on Eden. For a while there I think Kawamori was going a bit Ghost in the Shell with megacorporations influential enough to be a law unto themselves the way Macross Galaxy was as a branch of General Galaxy.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, yeah... now that's a familiar situation. I'm just trying to figure out why one side of the booklet says "General Galaxy SV Works" and the other says a subsidiary of Epsilon Foundation.Incidentally, where was the 29.5G loading for the VF-31's ISC cited? That puts the YF-29 on top of the known ISC systems with: YF-29 - 32.5G Sv-262 - 30.8G VF-31 - 29.5G VF-27 - 27.5G VF-25 - 27.5G
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