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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Almost certainly.The FF-3001/FC2 Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engine has a maximum instantaneous thrust rating almost 30% higher than the FF-3001A variant that was installed in the stock VF-31 Kairos. Even without having to make several adjustments to account for differences in the aircraft design, they'd likely need to detune the engine to prevent its normal maximum operating power from damaging the plane. Who knows what a full-power FF-3001/FC2 engine can do if hooked up to a properly functioning fold dimensional resonance system? Those engines are rated for 2,110kN unassisted... if the FDR system produces a 30% improvement in power they're pushing 2,750kN actual maximum power. To be fair, that was always true... it just wasn't this obvious before because we seldom saw more than two fighter designs from the same generation operating side by side. Usually the UN Spacy forces in any one locale only used one type of main fighter, which made it hard to compare. There were also a few cases of fighters upgraded to a ".5" Generation that muddied the waters a bit, like the VF-17 Nightmare which made that jump when its D variant and beyond were fitted with thermonuclear reaction burst turbines. Now that the New UN Forces have become as decentralized as the New UN Gov't, the number of new main fighters from the same generation has gone up quite a lot. Not counting local variants, the 5th Generation Main VF title is shared locally by at least five or six fighters we know about: the VF-24 which both Earth and the Federal New UN Forces use, the VF-25 developed by Frontier for itself and its allies, Galaxy's VF-27, Uroboros' VF-30 mentioned in Variable Fighter Master File, the Brisingr Alliance's VF-31, and the Sv-262 which the Windermere Kingdom uses. That's not counting units in trial and/or unofficial production like the YF-29. All told, the knife probably isn't a particularly useful piece of equipment... except in situations where precision counts for more than sheer destruction.The VF-27's blade-below-the-elbow was probably a more useful weapon, since it didn't depend on the manipulators. With the pinpoint barrier in the way, there really isn't a lot of appreciable difference between the knife and hand except surface area... either way, what you're doing is using an immovable spatial distortion to smash your way past armor. It's less like cutting and more like breaking something open using a wedge and mallet. Given what we saw the SMS Macross Quarter do in Macross Frontier, I have to wonder why they haven't gone to just using a barrier itself as the blade. It'd make a lot more sense, since that too isn't really dependent on the manipulator, and you could adjust the size and position of that blade to suit your personal tastes and you could deploy it instantly.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    It's a little hard to read the pictures because of the glare, and the description seems like it's mostly focused on the VF-31 being a 5th Generation VF and derivative of the YF-30.All things considered, I'd expect it to be something developed for the Brisingr Alliance NUNS as their replacement for their aging fleet of VF-171 Nightmare Pluses. In Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III there's a VF-31 Kairos in NUNS livery circa 2067, which would tend to support that view. There's also mention of a VF-30, which would seem to suggest the Kairos isn't the first local 5th Gen VF developed from the Chronos either. As far as we know, Xaos is just buying them from Surya Aerospace and has opted to make them their official main fighter.SMS Uroboros developed the YF-30 Chronos with the collaboration of Shinsei Industry, LAI, and the Uroboros AWDAP station... and they would've had to disclose the spec to the New UN Gov't under galaxy law eventually. Shinsei and LAI probably had an agreement with SMS that they'd be allowed to exploit the design to their own ends without the proprietary SMS hardware when they collaborated with Major Blanchett on Uroboros.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Looking back over the specs for the base model Surya Aerospace VF-31 Kairos, I have to say I'm forced to admit I wasn't entirely sure what I was expecting. I'll admit to being mildly annoyed at how, even in the description of the mass production VF-31 variant, the Macross Delta series all but forgot about the New UN Forces. Apart from mentioning the VF-31 is a production model based on the YF-30 developed by a partnership of Shinsei, LAI, and two new companies named Hiotori and Bharat it says nothing about the development of the VF-31 or its intended customer. The VF-31 Siegfried kind of gave us all a false impression of the abilities of the VF-31. I wasn't particularly happy with the "super prototype" YF-29 in the Frontier movies, but I gave it a pass as a fighter that was built to do one job and was too expensive to be produced in numbers. I gave the YF-30 that same pass since it was a technology demonstrator built by a company that had a budget so vast it bankrolled an entire emigrant fleet to pursue some obsession its owner had. It seems a bit... unfeasible... for a company like Xaos that is so cash-strapped it can barely afford to keep its ships fueled once its forces get run out of Brisingr by the Aerial Knights to be able to afford five custom VFs with fold wave systems. It makes more sense that the Aerial Knights would spring for higher quality fighters, since the Windermere Kingdom is massively outnumbered and have to make up the disparity elsewhere. All told, the stock VF-31's not a particularly remarkable fighter. It's almost what you'd expect from an intermediate block VF-25. It's a little bigger and a little lighter than the Shinsei/LAI VF-25, but it's using the same engine with some minor incremental improvement in performance (just +25kN), its control AI is an upgraded Ariel II package, its HMI is the same model of EX-Gear used by the NUNS and SMS for the last ten years, it's using a variant of the same ISC system with minimal performance improvement (+0.5G capacity), it's coaxial gun is the same ROV-127 12.7mm beam machinegun, it's using an upgraded version of the same anti-armor knife, and its missile launchers are the same type used in the SPS-25 Super Pack. In so many ways, it feels like the VF-31 Kairos was an "ala carte" design made by picking existing systems wherever possible to keep costs down. (You could almost mistake it for that delta wing VF-25 that the VF-1 Riders did... the VF-25 Messiah Legacy.) Its only real standout features are in its guns... replacing a conventional rotary cannon with a heavy quantum beam rifle, and adopting railguns as the replacement for what would ordinarily be a beam machine gun or high-powered machine gun with HEACA ammo. They're neglecting the ordinance container and treating it like a glorified gunpod holster. With the two leg bays and four pylons on top of its 36 internal micro-missiles, it's only about on par with the VF-25 for missile capacity... given the VF-25's 8 pylons. The one question I'm left with is, when Xaos Valkyrie Works was upgrading the VF-31 Kairos to make the Siegfried, did they uparmor it as well the way that SMS Frontier did to the YF-29's carryover VF-25 parts? The YF-29's defensive ability was increased to 400% of the original spec for the VF-25 parts used, but it looks like the VF-31 Siegfried is using the exact same energy conversion armor as the stock model. Did Xaos cheap out on defense? Did Messer snuff it because Lady M was too cheap to pay for improved armor on her already pricey showpieces?
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The GU-11 had a helical magazine around the barrels (though separated from the barrels by the cooling system)... but the GU-11 didn't return spent casings to the magazine. It ejected them.To the best of my knowledge, Macross has never had a gunpod identified as returning spent cases to the magazine. The vast majority of gunpods in the Macross metaseries eject spent cases. Caseless ammunition is something General Galaxy seems to have developed a liking for "stealth gunpods" used on their 3rd and 4th Generation designs. The YF-21/VF-22 gunpod (GV-17L) was the first in production terms to be identified as using caseless ammo, though the VF-17's MC-17A is another example... and it's a safe bet the Fz-109's gunpods are as well (identical setup to the VF-17, no external ejector port), and the VF-171's are derivative of the VF-17's. The GU-XS-06 used by the VF-11's Protect Armor Pack is the one odd bird... it has no obvious ejection port, and we know next to nothing about it except the ammo it uses is incredibly high-powered.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Episode 1... Reina is introduced riding in the back seat of Chuck's VF-31E, and when Walkure starts their performance she jumps from the cockpit still wearing the suit.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    An equally valid question would be... is this voted on by readers on a one-person one-vote basis, or is this one of those polls-by-postcard where one person can submit as many votes as they like as long as they're willing to spring for that many postcards?Did Delta score in some of these categories it clearly doesn't belong in, like story, because of a handful of determined fanboys sending thousands of postcards? Some of these categories are eminently deserved, but story? C'mon...
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, interesting. Mine are still penned en route thanks to a customs screwup... sometimes I hate the way FedEx can't seem to agree on one port of entry. It is... and the launchers are apparently a variant of the same model used on the VF-25's SPS-25/MF25 Super Pack: the Bifors CIMM-3. Yep... and it paints a very interesting picture of the VF-31's relationship to other 5th Generation VFs, and the relationship between the stock VF-31 Kairos and the Xaos Valkyrie Works VF-31 Siegfried. I think the biggest thing this clarifies is why Hayate kept getting chastised for being rough on his plane even though the maneuvers he's doing aren't that impressive compared to what we've seen in previous shows. The VF-31 Kairos is essentially a VF-25 equivalent, and Xaos Valkyrie Works heavily modified that design to increase performance above what the airframe was actually stressed for. A 14% increase in maximum instantaneous thrust, the additional output of overboost from the fold wave system, changing out the missile containers for multidrone racks, installing a new Airframe Control AI (the stock machine is using an Ariel II variant, the Siegfried uses Ariel III), and a few other things like changing the wingtips. The stock VF-31 Kairos actually isn't a particularly impressive aircraft for a 5th Generation VF either. Its thrust to weight ratio and ISC performance are very slightly higher, but the same HMI and different versions of the same AI control system, and the VF-25 has a definite edge in carried ordinance. The Cygnus multidrone plates being able to generate pinpoint barriers is the one major technical advancement we've seen in Macross Delta. The rest hasn't really been anything new or remarkable. Delta has done no real innovation, technologically or otherwise, so suspension of disbelief hasn't really been tested much. Come to that, why would she need the rocket belt? She was wearing a flight suit with rockets built into the backpack. Yes, I'm aware of the GAU-8/A's return mechanism... but that's not something that's ever been presented as used on Valkyrie gun pods. The high caliber of their ammo, combined with the need to keep the gun pod streamlined, left the choice between ejecting spent shell casings or using caseless ammo. The vast majority of gun pods went in for the former, and stealth gun pods opted for the latter.Now that there are beam gun pods in common use, the question is academic from the mid-2060's on.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So... what you're saying is the last episode means we need to Kickstarter an exorcism for the Macross Delta staff?That'd make for some interesting news to post... Anyone got anything on the new characters that were just revealed the other day for Macross Delta Scramble?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Just because something is hovering doesn't necessarily mean it's really using anti-grav levitation... and offhand, I don't recall the show ever saying what Walkure's Cygnus multidrone plates are using to stay aloft. They have visible verniers and wings for forward flight.For that to be an antigravity effect, that'd mark an enormous advance in GIC technology... I find it more plausible they're flying by more energy-efficient means like an ionocraft lift effect or simple raw thrust through those verniers. Granted, but as we've seen in the show the battery life is aggressively short and only good for blocking two or three shots from beam machinegun-level guns or micro-missiles before needing to be recharged. In this case, I think it's very safe to say the simplest explanation would be the correct one... Reina was simply wearing an ordinary pilot's suit, as the idea of a "force field" spacesuit ala Dirty Pair or the Star Trek cartoon would require ENORMOUS strides to be made in barrier technology and several other fields of research that simply aren't demonstrated in the show... and unlike those examples, would also carry so many problems that it wouldn't be an attractive alternative to a good old fashioned counterpressure suit and helmet.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I can't screencap it right now, but if you look at the underside of the VF-31s when they're deploying those speaker pods on the Aether's catapult deck you can see the gun pod has apparently been placed on a ventral mount like the majority of other Valkyries use. Projecting over whatever the user happens to be wearing goes all the way back to DYRL?, and in a mobile form in Macross II: Lovers Again. I'd assume the reason for the holosuit was probably something that wouldn't shift around under the hologram and was easy to move in... or possibly something to keep her cool or wick away sweat, since stage lights are inclined to heat the stage up considerably. 'bit of a lost cause then, isn't it? It was established way back in Episode 5 or so that Walkure only has two members who can get the job done: Freyja and Mikumo. Everyone else is too weak to contest Heinz or stop the Var without a fold wave amplifier. Somehow, I have to think that's confirmation bias on their part... their jump in effectiveness coincided with the addition of Mikumo to the group (AKA "the one who actually has ability") and some small growth in professionalism on the part of squad "Broken Bird" Kaname before being kicked out of the lead role in favor of Mikumo.It seems incredibly reckless for Xaos to have ditched proper body armor in an essentially-irreplaceable unit for cling wrap that offers zero protection and makes them look like hookers from a nuru massage parlor. There's no denying Macross Delta is a poorly thought-out mess and Xaos's administration likely couldn't empty water from a boot if IKEA instructions were printed on the heel, but it's flat amazing Walkure isn't in the ICU 24/7. That seems like kind of a glaring contradiction right there... that they can't do the job wearing a holographically-concealed suit of body armor, but there's no difficulty doing it in a military-grade mechanical compression pilot suit complete with breathing mixture tanks, connection points for EX-Gear, and an inbuilt set of verniers? Those multidrones are far from small... given the visual cues available, they look to have a 1.5-2m wingspan when unfolded, and they probably weigh quite a bit. Plus you need two or more and an external power source to generate even small barrier effects. A wearable version of the barrier technology would be, in all likelihood, weigh hundreds of pounds, require an external power source, and be every bit as easy to move in as a sandwich board made of manhole covers.Also, just as a note, barrier technology in Macross is not an "energy force field" like your generic sci-fi shields... a barrier system produces a localized distortion in space-time that matter and energy can't pass through. A personal barrier system, if one existed, would be a pretty poor substitute for a pilot suit... you'd still need a helmet and rebreather so you wouldn't suffocate, given that air can't pass through a barrier. You'd have a difficult time seeing, since most wavelengths of light have a hard time making it through a barrier. You'd also have the problem of being unable to touch anything without great care even if you had the ability to wrap the barrier around each finger, because the barrier has zero give to it and is essentially an immovable object relative to its projector... pressing a button would be the same as the button running into a wall at the speed your hand was moving. Without tactile feedback, you would easily wreck the controls with your barrier-covered hands in a very short span of time.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    The part that bothers me the most about Walkure's holosuits is that we know for a fact from multiple Macross titles that these holographic projectors have no problem creating a costume projection over anything the operator happens to be wearing. We know it can conceal anything the wearer happens to have on, and the projector is more than capable of providing the illusion of bare skin without any actual exposed flesh. Sheryl's holosuit looked like a wetsuit, and Mina didn't even bother with one... so there wasn't a practical reason for the Walkure-issue holosuits to be underwear and a transparent body stocking.Considering that Walkure is a frontline combat unit, shouldn't they be wearing something that offers a little more protection like... y'know... body armor? They seemed to be wearing more protection in the flashback episode, so why'd that go away? It seemed especially stupid once the Aerial Knights revealed they could jam the multidrones and thus deprive Walkure of all defense. (I mean, I know that fanservice is basically what Mikumo, Makina, and Reina were relying on instead of characterization... but it's kind of lame.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    That's actually a really good question... every VF has had infrared cameras as part of its sensor suite, so why the hell are the Aerial Knights wasting their time sweeping the frozen hinterland with searchlights? Maybe, in the epilogue. Odds are he's probably pulling the strings behind the NUNS counteroffensive... being better at saving the galaxy than the protagonists.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    I don't believe it's ever been quantified in explicit terms, no... but the VF-1 uses verniers out on the wingtips for roll control even in atmospheric flight (finally animated as such in Macross Delta Ep.3), so the output of the high-thrust verniers must be pretty damned huge for their size (tens of kilonewtons).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Well, all six launchers are just below the knee... so that may be what's up there.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Did they? I thought they only warned us that the love triangle was going to be done differently... (and by differently, I suppose they meant "not at all").
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe... but then, large-scale applications of hologram technology in starships have been done for reasons scarcely less flimsy than that. I'd suppose the propaganda value of the Do You Remember Love? movie was largely based on the presentation of more Zentradi fleets as a very real, very immediate threat. Unfortunately, a threat that in recent decades seems to have only popped up offscreen. (Though I suppose, as an essentially defenseless training ship, some holographic camouflage ala YF-27-5 might not be an entirely bad idea for ships operating as part of emigrant fleets...) EDIT: Come to think of it... why isn't this used to protect Island ships when they're operating independently of their docked carrier? Throw a barrier up, then turn that sucker invisible. "Target? What target? We're just some empty space, yo."
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the franchise owner certainly seems to care... but then, they really ought to start keeping Kawamori on a shorter leash. Well, they're still doing it in-universe in 2059... using real Variable Fighters for motion capture in battle sequences. Make of it what you will, but there has to be some practical or pragmatic reason they're paying for real variable fighters and helicopters and so on for their movies instead of using CG.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    More like anime's Gene Roddenberry... he's a good idea and concept man who's entirely dependent on others to turn his broad, sometimes absurd concepts into reality with varying degrees of success. Delta is his equivalent of Star Trek: the Next Generation season 1: all the pieces are there, but they've been put together wrong into something absolutely abhorrent. Anime's George Lucas is probably Yoshiyuki Tomino, whose ups and downs led to some legendary (Zeta Gundam, Char's Counterattack) and legendarily bad (ZZ Gundam, Reconguista in G) installments where the quality was largely dependent on how short a leash the producers kept on him during development. After ten years mostly spent watching Macross II get bagged on for NOT having Kawamori at the helm... I'm really, REALLY fighting the temptation to laugh at how a Kawamori-concept series has turned into such a train wreck that fans are looking back fondly on Macross II.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    A good while before that, actually... if you remember, Hikaru VTOL's a VT-1 Super Ostrich with just the ventral verniers in order to get enough ground clearance to transform to GERWALK in Macross: Do You Remember Love?.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    We'll probably have to wait until the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried book comes out to know for sure, since Macross Delta is apparently incredibly determined to neglect the mecha of the series like the proverbial redheaded stepchild.It doesn't look like the VF-31's beam gun pod is set up for beam grenade mode, but it's gotta be generating some serious juice to use the regular mode, and a railgun isn't exactly light on energy consumption either and it's got two of those... You do realize the MC-17C and GU-14B are almost the exact same gun pod, right?The only appreciable differences between the two are the caliber of ammunition and the placement of the removable magazine. Other than that, the two are more or less identical. The CG model even preserved the surface detail of the MC-17 folding stock. That the most common variable fighter in the galaxy and the de facto Special Forces VF both use caseless ammo would suggest that they do, in fact, have the problems inherent in modern caseless ammo quite thoroughly licked. The pamphlet for the 1/72 scale VF-31J model kit had a line in there about the VF-31 being unable to fly in Battroid mode... citing that it could only hover.Based on what we saw last time the show's cast went to Voldor, that's clearly bunk. Hayate's VF-31J was shown flying in Battroid mode as he charged Keith's Sv-262Hs to stop him from one-upping Bogue by gunning down Walkure. Also, VFs with a fraction of the VF-31's engine power have been shown to be easily able to fly in Battroid mode in previous shows. No they weren't, they're still there... just better integrated into the body of the fighter. You can clearly see them being used to provide forward thrust for the VF-25's GERWALK mode in Ep2 of Frontier, and they're very much present in the line art and visible on some of the toys as well.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Much the same as the regular mode... "Blowing crap up with extreme prejudice".As far as I know, the closest any official source has come to identifying a concrete design intent for the beam grenade mode on the VF-27's gun pod was that it had firepower enough to penetrate the armor of the larger types of Vajra. It wouldn't be a stretch, based on what's shown in the series, to say it's an effective analog for a Strike Pack's anti-ship cannon.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It'd take an incredible amount of force to do that... especially since it looks like Windermere is an Earth-type planet in most respects, with gravity at or in the vicinity of 1G. We can say with some certainty that they've licked caseless ammo's issues... given that several models of Valkyrie equip, as standard, gun pods that fire caseless rounds. Mostly Generation 3.5 or 4 designs like the VF-17, VF-22, or VF-171's gun pods.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Buckshot doesn't spread out enough over short to medium ranges... what Messer needed was a goddamn light grenade launcher or flechette gun. As far as active camouflage goes, I think that's probably a no-go. If they're not much improved over Sheryl's rig in Macross Frontier they can make that bodysuit appear invisible in part or in full (done once in an amusing little short comic in Macross Ace), but turning the wearer invisible probably isn't in the cards without more power or a more sophisticated projector. The YF-27-5 had a holographic camouflage system like that, but that had a lot more power behind it. It seems a bit inconsistent, since even in the 90's we were seeing futuristic firearms in the hands of UN Forces, the Varauta troops, and Zolans.How'd the NUNS go backwards from laser machineguns to a rifle from 1995? They use a rifle no more advanced than the FAMAS G2 Shin was brandishing way back in Macross Zero... Dunno 'bout you, but photorealistic CG always comes off looking a bit odd or out of place to me... the articulations are never quite right, features blur unrealistically, etc. Maybe they're just sticklers for authenticity, or maybe they just find using motion capture with a real Valkyrie makes for a more natural CG compositing job in postproduction? Every time they've filmed an in-universe docu-drama so far, they've used real Valkyries either as-is or as motion capture targets for later editing. That should be perfectly possible... but we've seen that Xaos, Delta Flight, and Walkure are not exactly good at what they do.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno 'bout Messer's rifle, but the H&K G36 knockoff has line art from Macross Frontier that shows it ejecting shell casings when firing. I don't think we've had a confirmed caseless gun in Macross since the original series.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Let's just say it wouldn't be the first time in Macross that someone's static display of an old Valkyrie turned out to still be in working order and possessed of enough emergency backup power to transform and maneuver briefly.
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