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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    As most of them can plead "mind control" and point fingers, prosecution probably wouldn't go very far...
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Nope, you're thinking of the New UN Government theories... which we pretty much settled not too long ago with the conclusion that the New UN Government had been a thing since shortly after the war.The New UN Forces became a thing after the Latence mess, which in the novelizations even prompted the formation of an independent watchdog organization to ensure the military didn't get any more unseemly ideas above its station.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, until the applications of fold quartz were discovered in the late 2040's or early 2050's, Windermere probably didn't realize fold quartz was anything other than tacky costume jewelry. Within two years of the first widespread applications of fold quartz, the stuff was made a restricted substance and Windermere's potential windfall became a lot of deadweight.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Because, in the final episode of the series, the ship is revealed to be just fine... Neither really makes sense, since Lady M has supposedly been active since just after the First Space War and the Megaroad-01 is still MIA in 2067... while Mao has been dead since 2048.Plus, if Mao were Lady M she would've been one of the wealthiest individuals in the entire galaxy... and wouldn't have needed to beg Critical Path corporation for money to finance her expedition to Vajra space in the 2040s. The design was kept secret until mid-2059, at which point they HAD to disclose it because, hey hey, it would've been damn near impossible to deny that they'd been mass producing it from the point Galaxy's "survivors" joined up with the Frontier fleet... and certainly impossible after squadrons of VF-27s fought Frontier's forces at the end of the Vajra conflict.Galaxy probably coughed up the plans in an effort to avoid sanctions, or their specs were taken by Frontier when Galaxy forces took shelter there.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, no... the problem is you're assuming the L-5 Manufacturing Station that built the majority of the UN Spacy's early fleet is the same installation as the L-5 Lab Station which Master File alleges existed and was destroyed by the Zentradi.Where the logical flaw in that assumption comes in is that the L-5 manufacturing station is allegedly producing new VF-1s and so on in the period between the First Space War ending in 2010 and the first mission to capture a factory satellite in 2011. (You have to admit, dead workers in a destroyed factory building new fighters and ships for the newly established New UN Government would be a work ethic above and beyond the call of duty...) For the record, the L-5 in question for both the Manufacturing Station and Zentradi factory satellite is Earth-Moon L5. (This is very briefly visible on Exsedol's console while they're folding the factory satellite back to Earth.)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    In pretty much any fleet battle that isn't hopelessly one-sided, you're gonna see the escort ships taking damage or getting sunk. That's far from being the kind of curbstomp battle you're implying, where the capital ships are utterly helpless against enemy fighters. It's usually the Nightmare Pluses getting creamed that's the measure of "look out boys, here comes a serious contender", and even THAT'S not exactly balanced coverage considering that we've never not seen the Nightmare Plus go up against an enemy that doesn't have a monstrous performance advantage.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That largely depends on the capability of the ship's radar, but yes... their limited utility is probably why they fairly swiftly became one of the Option Pack choices for normal aircraft instead of a dedicated aircraft (barring an assortment of amusing unofficial designs in Master File). I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, given that the "Space Wing" VFMF book mentions the L-5 Industrial Station is still very much around in 2029. There's a Zentradi factory satellite at L-5 as well, but to the best of our knowledge that's called the New Frontier shipyards after its capture.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, very likely... though I'd have expected Walkure's equipment to be based on fold quartz instead, since that's a more effective resonator and apparently is better suited to controlling and amplifying fold song. Dr. Chiba's song energy amplification system from the 2040s was built around the core of a fold system and therefore was probably packed to the gills with fold carbon. Personally, I'm not so sure that's actually the case... or at least, that it's not the case when there aren't Villain Sues and copious shenanigans.In Frontier, the New UN Spacy flotilla protecting Island-1 scored quite a few kills on the highly mobile Vajra with their AA guns despite the Vajra in question being far more agile than the typical variable fighter of the day. At the end of the day, only a handful of Vajra actually made it through the anti-aircraft fire to the emigrant ship, and a large share of the blame there rests with a lack of preparedness on the part of the fleet's top brass for venturing into Vajra territory and not bothering to equip their fighters with ammunition powerful enough to hurt the Vajra. We only see ships taking a pasting when the fighter screen has taken a powder. Delta is an exception, but that's pretty much entirely down to the fold songs of King Ketchup giving the Aerial Knights an unfair leg-up and making it all but impossible for the fighter screen protecting the warships to do its job.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    My suspicion is that they simply didn't know the significance (or, rather, lack thereof) when they were given the notes to write the article on... it'd make sense if they were simply told the difference was that one was special because it used fold quartz and the other's design is using fold carbon. To someone not in the know, that would sound like fold carbon were special rather than the basis for a good chunk of the overtechnology in every VF for the last 60 years.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The Macross had actually lost her main sensor system twice over... first she lost her cross-dimension radar when the fold system vanished during the botched fold jump that landed them at Pluto's orbit, and then her main radar when Quamzin "accidentally" shot it.It's not clear how good a ship's cross-dimension/fold wave radar is at spotting small targets like fighters over long distances, and the conventional radar's range is limited by the noise of background radiation and intervening obstacles, so a small craft-mounted reconnaissance and electronic warfare system with a high-powered radar makes a fair amount of sense. (Particularly once they switched from conventional radars to cross-dimension/fold wave ones.) Not sure it's talking about the same installation, to be honest... the base at L-5 was a manufacturing station and shipyard, not a lab, and IIRC the Squadrons book has the VF-1L's being built there in 2011.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    In the closeup of the VF-31A sitting on the Aether's deck when Hayate joins Xaos, there doesn't appear to actually be anything there... just an empty space. You can see the panel line through the space where the crystal and its mount should be. The question then becomes "did the person who wrote the article understand that fold carbon isn't anything special?". IF there's actually a chunk of it mounted there... and there doesn't appear to be, based on the animation and the available model kits.There's no acknowledgement of any kind of fold carbon crystal or system using same in the official specs for the production model Kairos.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Just a point of order, it doesn't actually say the VF-31A/B has a fold carbon crystal in the space where the Xaos custom models have fold quartz. It simply lists fold carbon as "special equipment", which as I noted back in the Newbie thread makes precisely zero sense as fold carbon is an essential component of most any system that uses higher dimension physics... like fold reactors that are the core of the engines, or the beam gunpod.You couldn't build a variable fighter without the stuff. Slight correction... there isn't an overboost feature mentioned in the stats for the VF-31A/B Kairos mass production type.The overboost percentages are entirely attributed to fighters that have fold quartz enhancements. Xaos's customized VF-31s get a 15% improvement in their engine output when their fold wave systems are active. Windermere's Sv-252Hs gets a 30% improvement from its reheat system, which is a kind of poor man's fold wave system focused on engine performance improvement.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, I can have a whack at that when I get home.(I took an extra day after MacrossWorldCon to do a few more tourist-y things before flying home.)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Haven't seen that myself, but I would not be surprised if it were so.After all, Walkure's fold song amplification technology is almost certainly built on research and technologies developed by Dr. Gadget M. Chiba in the 2040s (IIRC Dr. Chiba was alleged to be Lady M's protege). The core of the Sound Energy System he developed to amplify song energy was a super dimension converter from a fold system, which probably contained a fair amount of fold carbon. The "microphone" end of the amplifier ought to have a dimensional resonator that can pick up the fold waves of the singer and boost and/or transmit them to the amplifier for further enhancement.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    What little I've found on the subject seems to suggest that the vast majority of the fold carbon in use is synthetic.I do suspect that there is naturally-occurring (or biological) fold carbon in the setting. My pet theory on the matter is that since galactic whales have a partially crystalline body and are fold-capable, that their bodies contain or are made of fold carbon of unusually high quality. That'd explain the rather bizarre statement that galactic whales were being hunted for the benefits the body of the whale could provide to starships. Just like fold quartz, a higher-purity and larger stone means a better, higher energy reaction and better-quality heavy quantum. I doubt they'll reinvent the wheel for this one... Delta was kind of a minimum-effort series from the mechanical standpoint. The VF-31's systems are mostly nicked from the VF-25 if the stats are anything to go by, and even the Xaos Valkyrie Works custom job is practically a fighter built ala carte from existing systems.They didn't really introduce any new wrinkles to the setting or the existing technologies this time around... it was almost "Macross by numbers".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    There's kind of a fine distinction to be made here.The version of DYRL? that we've seen, the one that was released in '84, is not the version that's actually an in-universe movie. The in-universe film Do You Remember Love? is supposed to be mostly the same as the film in the real world, but it also has content that wasn't in the real film like Max and Milia dogfighting in space and their wedding that's seen in snippets from Macross 7. The actual film Macross: Do You Remember Love? is one of several titles that collectively exist in the vague and nebulous "Whose First Space War is it anyway?" period. All or none may be authentic and correct versions of the war, given Kawamori's view that each Macross title is an island unto itself (though Big West seems to diagree via Chronicle). It would've been interesting, but I don't think even Kawamori is seriously committed to the idea of Macross titles as dramatizations of events rather than depictions of events... I think he'd rather just tell a story instead of trying to explain away every little example of zeerust and their assumptions about the future made decades ago not lining up with reality (like there being no cellular phones in 2009).Like his notion that each Macross series is an island unto itself, it's just a clever way ot telling fans to go away and stop asking him about fiddly little details.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Fold carbon is a (synthetic) substance that's used in overtechnology devices that operate on the higher-dimension physics of fold space. In particular, fold carbon is the catalyst which permits the production of heavy quantum, which is essential to the function of thermonuclear reaction power systems, gravity control systems, converging energy cannons, and so on. It doesn't make a ton of sense to list fold carbon as "special equipment", since having fold carbon on the aircraft is not only not in any way special but a bare necessity for essential systems like the engines and beam gunpod to operate. It's a lot like calling blood "special equipment" on a person... Heat travels pretty effectively in vacuum as infrared radiation... but yeah, the effects of being adjacent to a blast in space will be somewhat less due to the lack of a pressure wave from an atmosphere.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    There's actually a fairly straightforward explanation for that.The VF-0 Phoenix was still being used as a technology demonstrator and testbed aircraft at the time the Mayan Island incident broke out and they were pressed into combat service. The base design of the VF-1 had been pinned down the year before, and development of the VF-X-3 and VF-X-4 had already been going on for several years. The VF-0 has a Block 6+ model cockpit because it was being used to evaluate that production-intent cockpit installed on all but the first few production blocks of VF-1 (and which those early blocks would swiftly be upgraded to). If it helps, think of the Block 5 cockpit as a legacy of the VF-X-1 prototype, something that was better suited to testing than combat use, and was replaced by a more production-worthy design shortly after trial production ended. The "TV" VF-1s had the older cockpit because they were the very first batches of VF-1s off the production lines, rushed off to meet the February launch date only about two months after the first aircraft came off the line. You're really overthinking this "TV production" thing... the only one that's actually applied to is DYRL?.
  19. 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.)
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. 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...)
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