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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    A few notes on this:By 2067, most of the New UN Forces warship designs we've seen are closing on four decades old if you don't count modernizations like the ones which the Northampton-class has so visibly benefitted from. Like variable fighters, warships often employ energy conversion armor to beef up their already considerable defensive capabilities. I'm not sure it's so much a question of weapons tech advancing faster as it is a case of a few bleeding-edge 5th Generation VFs mounting beam weapons which have the ability to operate as both a rapid-fire beam machine gun and as a high powered anti-ship beam cannon. Like the Vajra, these few fighters can sometimes dispense capital ship-level firepower at the expense of greatly reduced rate of fire and/or increased cooldown times. The smaller, more compact heavy quantum beam rifles seem to be smaller and preserving existing firepower in an attempt to dodge the problems inherent in the YF-27 and VF-27 gunpods... which were so large that they unbalanced their aircraft or even impeded the function of the landing gear. (Yes, really.) ... I don't honestly recall the VF-171EX having ever been mentioned as having any kind of capacitor system for its weapons. Are you perhaps confusing that with the VF-25's Armored Pack or Tornado Pack? But they've never said that...In point of fact, the 5th Generation VFs only use ASWAG for the antiprojectile shields on their forearms because the stuff's so ruinously expensive. Even the YF-29 opted to double the thickness of the regular armor instead. The only bit of equipment that fully adopted ASWAG advanced energy conversion armor is the VF-25's APS-25A Armored Pack... The Armored Pack itself was never really meant for fighting other VFs. What it was built for was more on the order of anti-warship operations where an excess of firepower and armor would serve better than ultra-high mobility. The VF-25 Armored Pack is kind of a "Why not both?" approach achieved through adding an incredibly powerful set of rocket boosters. A few other points of order...The Heavy Soldier Vajra are shown to have the firepower to destroy a cruiser in one large blast, but they're basically lugging around the same kind of gun the VF-27 is... a heavy quantum beam cannon. It would not be unreasonable to assume they can fire a "charged shot" the same as any VF with a gunpod that's able to use beam grenade mode. Brera destroyed a wrecked Guantanamo-class carrier with a shot from his gunpod's beam grenade... effectively shooting it with an anti-capital ship heavy quantum beam weapon. The vessel wasn't in fantastic shape either, after being sunk by the Vajra it couldn't exactly power its armor or repair all the existing hull breaches. (Plus he shot the ventral stern, probably intending to help the process along by detonating the ship's fuel tanks which are located there... undetonated ordinance left laying about may also have helped.) Keith destroyed a Guantanamo-class by firing in through one of the elevators to the hangar deck, meaning the half-dozen or so missiles he fired into the ship detonated under the armor in an area where there was already a generous supply of unexploded live ordinance, fuel, and oxygen. Master Dex explained this one succinctly enough... the New UN Gov't has a law requiring the disclosure of the specs for newly-developed weapons. Some, like SMS' Uroboros branch, have tried to game the system by designating trial-production VFs as "YF" instead to avoid having to make full disclosure, while Macross Galaxy basically blew the whole process off until they couldn't deny they'd completed the VF-27 anymore.The Frontier fleet would've been obliged to divulge the specs to the YF-29 to the New UN Government, the same as SMS had to do with the YF-30. Luck probably had very little to do with it, considering each of those micro-missiles was probably carrying the equivalent of several hundred kilograms of TNT and were going off in an enclosed, airtight metal box full of oxygen and volatiles. Weapons that use fold quartz aren't using it for a power source, they're using the stuff to produce the "superheavy quantum"... the distilled nastiness which makes dimensional weapons so destructive. Its mass is far greater than that of the normal heavy quantum used to induce fusion or fired from heavy quantum beam rifles, which invariably means it's being used in MDE weaponry and thus being used to produce microsingularities which pull matter out of realspace. It's only fold wave or fold dimensional resonance systems that provide energy to the VF from fold space. All told, it sounds more like it's the specific brainwaves and fold receptor qualities that do the trick... so it's unlikely that he would lose his wind singer abilities as he aged unless his runes weakened with time.Technically, I suppose you could have a tone-deaf wind singer and it'd work just as well. The songs are probably to help the wind singer generate the correct emotional wavelengths and brainwaves.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That much profanity would swiftly earn me the ire of the moderators. I'm of the school of thought that it's better to get something you're dreading out of the way as soon as possible. I can honestly say I haven't been quite so dissatisfied with an anime series since Talos talked me into Stratos 4. The one good thing to come of Macross Delta for me is that it's made Macross 7 a much more appealing series by comparison. 7 might have had a main character who was a complete and utter pillock, but it had a reasonably logical plot progression that felt like the show was building to something (and it did). Macross Delta doesn't feel like it's building up to anything except an unseemly rush to tie up loose ends before the episode count runs out. I suppose if one went into Macross Delta with no prior experience with Macross adjusting their expectations, the series could be mistaken for an utterly mediocre idol anime. If you've calibrated your expectations based on previous Macross shows, then it's just a train wreck. I think that may depend on the distinction between:"The series will end." and "The story will end." We know that we're in the home stretch in terms of episode count, so we know the series will end. Will they manage to scrape together a natural and satisfying conclusion for the story in the time they have left? I'm betting "No". So the series will end, but the story will probably just sort of stop.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Recent sufferers of drill-related head injuries is an awfully niche market to target...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    OK, time to wade into Episode 25 of Super Dimension Disgrace: Macross Delta.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I've put it off as long as I usefully can... time to slog into Macross Disappointment episode 24. Once again, we open on Arad demonstrating that he is really, REALLY bad at his job. Whining about Hayate and co. getting captured, and getting snuck up on by a goddamn civilian wearing enough jangly metal crap on his person to be legally reclassifiable as a wind chime... and Arad doesn't notice until he's practically on top of them. Either the writers are taking the piss, or Berger is engaging in deadpan sarcasm. How lovely that Xaos's most senior operatives had no idea most of their gear was made by the guy supplying arms to the enemy... Roid's menacing Mikumo with one of those knives that looks more like a potato peeler than any kind of serviceable blade. Points to Heinz for at least making a show of fairness in the Windermerean kangaroo court... though even our clueless protagonists are sharp enough to notice this is a show trial before the execution. Dunno why they even let Bogue in the room though, he's got all the decorum of a colicky baby. ... wow, Windermerean Judge #1 finally said the thing I've been waiting for someone to say in this series. Because they're civilians playing soldier dressup and waving guns instead of the actual military, Xaos's staff are not elligible to be treated as prisoners of war. Finally, a character who gets how stupid it is for a PMC to be the protagonist side. The VF-22 in Darwent Castle was conveniently tuned and fueled last night? Talk about a very convenient move on Berger's part... all to extort from Xaos. It really is sad how stupid the show's protagonists are, that even this late in the series they're being played for fools by everyone. Even now, they're getting a "The reason you suck" speech from Windermere... and it really is funny how completely on the mark it all is. (Even funnier is how they're obviously gonna fail at their "tactical live".) The longer this drags on, the more I'm cheering for the bad guys in the hopes that they just kill everyone and end this farce. I know they won't kill Makina, but for a minute there I had hope that we'd finally jettison some of the deadweight from this series. That's a LOT of blood though. She was only shot a few seconds ago and there's already a freaking lake of it. Hey, I called it way back at like Ep13! Freyja's burning up her lifespan every time she sings.. and now she's finally starting to experience accelerated aging as a result. The mecha parts of this were just a freaking joke... so short as to be barely worth mention, and mostly recycled footage. Yep... givin' this one a richly-deserved negative vote. Of late, it's been a lot easier to cheer on the Aerial Knights. At least they're competent.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Okay, rewatching this one before I start my slog into 24 and 25... It STILL bugs me that there's no obvious source for those searchlights on the Sv-262 CG model... I only hope they fix that in the Blu-Ray. The longer this series drags on, the more I loathe the 2nd OP for the lie that it is. It has much, MUCH more mecha in it than the show itself. 'course there's the problem of Arad saying that Windermere intercepted them with much greater force than expected... apparently forgetting that they were only intercepted by two or three Drakens. These are the worst tacticians in Macross history, bar none. In a way, I'm kind of bothered by Freyja being a Ranka fan since she's basically just a new version of Ranka that isn't a whiny useless doormat. (Hell, I'd go so far as to say Freyja's wasted on this series, and should have been in Frontier instead... whereas Makina and Reina are clearly just wasted screen time.) Wow, the railgun holes Bogue gouges in the landscape are bigger than I remember... some of the hits have to be six or seven feet across. O_o I love how it never occurs to Arad that 2/3 of their team, including the only two members of Walkure who are worth a damn, being captured is a problem or might reflect that their whole infiltration plan was a stupid idea. I have to admit, the only good part of this episode is the reveal of WHY Bogue is so goddamn butthurt about humanity... he lost family in the destruction of Carlyle. At least one of his sisters.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Episode 26 is a 24-minute long public apology broken up by the writing staff being made to apologize for their monumental incompetence. An announcement, Macross II novelization style, that Macross Delta is a "parallel world" series and not part of the official chronology. No announcement of a Macross Delta movie. Or... and I appreciate what a forlorn hope this is... A conclusion that wraps up the majority of the plot threads in a way that doesn't feel like knee-jerk desperation. Lady M is not a pre-existing character. Apart from Freyja, Walkure shuts the hell up for the entire episode and lets us have some mecha action for once. Bogue finally succeeds in offing Reina, Makina, and Kaname. Keith or Roid is killed by Hayate, preferably after a suitably impressive aerial dogfight. Berger Stone and Epsilon Group get taken apart by the New UN Gov't for treason. and the hail mary... The Xaos staff are arrested and imprisoned for impeding the New UN Forces in their defense of Ragna, before the government covers the whole thing up and they're released to join the NUNS Special Forces (ala Stardust Memory).
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Well, I've obtained Episodes 24 and 25. On a scale of 1 to The Exorcist, how bad is this going to make me want to puke?
  9. Seto Kaiba
    It hasn't been that allfired long since the VF-27's gunpod was introduced... so I imagine there wouldn't be a heck of a lot of difference unless they cut the fire rate to make the individual hits bigger. It'd be interesting, but I can't help but think it'd be inconsistent with the Aerial Knights' mobility-oriented tactical ethos. This may be another article that's overdue for an update with Macross Chronicle trivia... Based on what's said on the Macross Chronicle mechanic sheet for the aircraft, it sounds more like the ES-11D has a pair of normal jet engines and a pair of what are probably rocket motors with integral propellant tanks out on the wings. It only actually refers to them as a "space propulsion system". I'll have to do some digging in older art books, but I don't recall the engine pods ever being labeled outside of a tiny and quite illegible label in Entertainment Bible 27 and Entertainment Bible 51. Well, the Macross Chronicle mechanic sheet is worded vaguely enough that it could be interpreted to mean that... and Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 does outright state that the ES-11 had to be converted for space use (and that the space conversion was unique to the SDF-1's lot). Well... that's debatable. Theoretically, the VF-31 should be every bit as versatile as the VF-25 or any other main fighter, considering the ordinance container system developed by Major Blanchett of SMS lets the fighter swap the "built-in" weapons hardware as easily as it would a FAST pack. In some cases, like Chuck Mustang's VF-31E, the ordinance container is clearly subbing for systems that would ordinarily have been the exclusive territory of FAST packs. I do agree Xaos isn't using it to anywhere near its full potential though. As far as the Sv-262s getting shot down by Nightmare Pluses, it's good to remember that Windermere's forces are few and relatively green. They're a hick backwater that's massively underdeveloped because of the fold faults surrounding Windermere IV, and apart from their war of independence against the New UN Government their only real combat experience prior to this new declaration of war was helping the NUNS repel a Zentradi invasion. Training counts for at least as much, if not more, than raw specs... and without King Ketchup's fold songs boosting their abilities to the realm of "bullet time superman" and crippling their opposition, they don't seem to be all that uber a fighting force. Considering they've basically cheated their way to occupying all of Brisingr, they were probably quite arrogant. "Pride cometh before the fall", and all that.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Doesn't seem like Isamu had to pay out at all... given that he was apparently flush enough with cash to bankroll the development of the VF-19ADVANCE in the 2050's after retiring from the New UN Forces as a Major. He literally supplied his own plane when he joined SMS. ... I'm really surprised that people don't remember Millard taking the blame. He actually talks to Lucy about it shortly after Guld departs to chase Isamu in the OVA.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    I, for one, welcome our avian overlords. I honestly doubt we'll get any in-series revelation of Lady M's identity. We're one episode from the end of Macross Delta (thank goodness), and there are so many dangling plot threads left to resolve in the series that Lady M's identity borders on inconsequential. I'd wager we might get some proper hints toward her identity in the next edition of Macross Chronicle, whenever that comes out, the way we did with Mariafokina Barnrose... but her relevance to the story is kind of minimal besides being the twit who made a few bad judgment calls and bankrolled the circus of suck called Xaos's Ranga branch office. Every time Macross's creators have tried to introduce a mysteriously well-connected character with origins in the First Space War, they've invented a new character instead of reusing an old one. That's how we ended up with Timothy Daldhanton, Naresuan, etc. An anomalous number of them seem to be former subordinates of Vrlitwhai's.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    So, sight unseen, I can take this to mean the best and most succinct summary of the episode is "Don't fail to miss it"?
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly, I'm so sick of this show I haven't even watched Episode 24 yet. Nah, emus have a winning track record in war... Lady M's track record is pretty awful.(Don't believe me? Look up "Emu war" on Wikipedia...)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Safe bet this'll get merged into the Newbie and Short Question thread... Basically, because she and Isamu used to be lovers and he ran away from home to join the military... though there's also a little bit of bitter jealousy there, since Isamu was able to follow his dream to fly and she wasn't able to follow hers to be a singer. Jet exhaust can be pretty damned destructive at short distances. At over 100 feet, jet exhaust from a single jet airliner engine can flip cars or toss a grown man around like a leaf in a storm. We're talking tornado-force winds. (There are several episodes of Mythbusters that explore this in some detail, including using jet turbines as an ersatz EF3 to EF5 tornado, and to recreate an incident where a taxi was thrown end over end after driving across an airport access road that ran behind an active runway.)It's not at all surprising that the wake of two near-supersonic fighter jets could break glass at only a few dozen feet away. The exhaust velocities from thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are higher than those of a normal jet engine. As for the destruction they caused, there's no mention of them having killed anyone (presumably the towers were evacuated when the attack alert came in, or the residents were away at the ceremony), and because Millard took the blame and the UN Spacy had to cover up the illegal hardware in the Ghost X-9, that kind of got swept under the rug. Isamu remained in the UN Spacy and served as one of the test pilots for the YF-24 program in 2057. As of 2059, he retired at the rank of Major and was flying for SMS. His tone, and the way he phrased it. Not sure what you're asking here? The YF-19 had an incredibly tight turning radius, but any VF can loiter almost indefinitely in GERWALK mode.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Arcadia included a decal sheet to add the FB2012 scheme and markings to your VF-4G if such is your desire. That's what I did with the VF-4 on my desk at work.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure why they'd need a battery, since the fighter's two reactors should be more than equal to the task of powering the gun... but what you've described is pretty much what deploying the ordinance container gets you in GERWALK mode apart from the size issue.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Just a point of order, the Macross Mecha Manual is Mr March's project. I provide all manner of logistical support for it, like importing and translating art books and providing the webhosting services, but his is the orchestrating intent and artistic talent that makes the site what it is. Well... sort of. At least initially, gunpod firepower was calibrated on the sort of organic mental process of "I know I can make armor of X strength, therefore I need to develop weapons capable of piercing armor that strong in case I meet an enemy as well-armored as I know I can be."The GPU-9 35mm gunpod was built with the expectation of defeating energy conversion armor as strong as a VF-0's. The GU-11A did much the same thing, intending to defeat an enemy with an armor strength comparable to the VF-1's energy conversion armor... which turned out to be in the ballpark for Zentradi Army's Esbeliben Regult. After the war, they could calibrate their expectations against practical knowledge of Zentradi capabilities, and focus on optimizing a gunpod's other attributes like operational endurance. Overall, the rate of fire actually went down between the GPU-9 and GU-11... by about 50%. That may have had something to do with the increasing incidence of having to fight terrorists and other anti-government forces who were equipped with Valkyries of their own... since armor strength on VFs didn't stay static after the First Space War. Given the design of the VF-31's ordinance container system, we kind of have... the VF-31's using a heavy quantum beam gunpod, which could be upgraded to MDE spec fairly easily.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That's probably not helped by Macross Chronicle and this book both adhering to the same erroneous line that the VF-4 couldn't transform until the VF-4G. (A conclusion apparently reached because the VF-4 wasn't depicted transforming until almost a decade after its first appearance.) It is a glorious fighter mode...
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe this is Kawamori's revenge on western fans for being nicknamed "The Holy Floating Head"... we get a Macross series that's just a bunch of heads talking.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    "Focker, no relation" would be the best summary... he was born in 2024, though his family is not mentioned. Nonsense, he'd look crummy in a blue and yellow dress...
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Because the development of weapons has kept pace or exceeded the pace of development for armor.Yes, these VFs have incredibly heavy armor that protect them from the kind of firepower that would turn the best modern main battle tank into so much metal confetti... but the weapons being thrown around are equally crazy. Gunpods in Macross aren't firing anything as prosaic as depleted uranium or AHEAD rounds (except the GPU-9, which only had to contend with armor as tough as an ordinary MBT). They're firing special armor-piercing explosive shells made to penetrate that ultra-tough energy conversion armor, containing OTM explosives that deliver ten times or better the energy than modern equivalents. Or other guns are emitting lasers, particle beams, superdense fusion plasmas, or extra-dimensional matter of impossible mass with ratings in the tens or hundreds of megawatts. Armor-grade steel will burn like paper at a fraction of the energy involved here. To really put it into perspective... a one second burst from a GU-11A gunpod will convey just shy of 11 times the kinetic energy that the DARPA railguns convey with a single shot, and it's one of the lightest gunpods in the whole Macross setting. Delta gave a pretty good example of how killy guns have become in Ep23. When Theo (or Xao?) fires at the main trio to stop them from escaping, he gouges a circle of holes around them... with each hole being several feet across. He did that with hypervelocity shells fired from a railgun... the shells are 25-27mm-class. That's how powerful these guns are. A 25mm chunk of metal hit the ground so hard it made a crater a couple feet deep in hard winter soil... and that is their LIGHT weapon. Small wonder that same kind of shell made Messer soup even after losing most of its energy penetrating the armored canopy. The "threat", as you put it, is that these VFs are firing at each other using weapons that more than capable of destroying a VF with their capabilities... and/or inflicting significant harm on a heavily-armored warship. Well... you're not wrong that there's bad writing involved, but you arguably ARE wrong about where that bad writing is in play.The problem with Macross Delta's dogfights is that, with one exception, they've been entirely between two squads of named, main characters. There are no grunts in play on those occasions, or the grunts are elsewhere, so there's two sides with equal levels of plot armor facing off with the inevitable lack of any real consequences. The writers don't want to kill main characters off, but they also don't want to include redshirts the way previous Macross titles did. The "wind riding" thing can be done by both sides, so it doesn't help matters... it just makes the inevitable draw a little more impressive to look at. Why? It was an article of faith long before Frontier and Delta came out that destroids were an idea that didn't really fit the realities of the battlefield. Mobility is king, and destroids are by their very nature an insufficiently mobile platform.Even Frontier noted the Cheyenne IIs were basically useless and only included because of the specialist needs of the Island Cluster-class ship and SMS's Macross Quarter. They should not have been on Al Shahal, due to the general lack of an advantage for having them there. The Zentradi had ground forces because the Zentradi equipment was originally designed for providing defense for the Protoculture's settlements and also to fight wars over territory like the Schism War that damn near ended the whole Stellar Republic. Their equipment was still designed mainly for wars in space, but they had ground capabilities for those occasions where land warfare would be necessary... just like a Valkyrie's battroid mode. I wasn't aware of the abbreviation until I took that to Google, so I learned something. Its appearances were relatively few, but it's worth noting that we shouldn't assume that the small slice of its operation in the show is a representative sample of its normal usage. (The same can fairly be said of almost any mecha the series presents, given how mind-bogglingly huge the Macross setting has become.)We don't see them at all until the battle is already joined... they're never shown on station in peacetime inside the domes, unless you count the special parade duty they pulled in the series, where their cannons were replaced with special gear for firing ceremonial salutes. To be fair, the same problem will exist for destroids or even battroids if they don't maneuver... and the Battroid has a much greater freedom of maneuvering in that kind of environment, as they're not constrained by the street plan and can maneuver over it or even use it to their advantage (e.g. the VF-1As shown taking cover behind a building during the initial battle against the Zentradi).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    You gotta remember that a VF's armor is some seriously tough stuff... calling armor "sub-par compared to VFs" covers a MASSIVE range of armor strength once you're looking at 4th Generation or later VFs. Just as an example, if we were to assume the Cheyenne II had armor equivalent to 1/2 the battroid-mode defensive ability of a VF-171, that doesn't sound as impressive as it is. Half a VF-171's armor strength is a 33% improvement over the 1st and 2nd Generation VFs and the Tomahawk destroid. About 2-3 times the armor strength of the VF-25 is in full blown cruiser-level battleship armor territory. (Also, it's "Al Shahal" with a shah- sound, from the katakana. I don't speak any Arabic, so I'll confess I have no idea what the significance is. Were you mentally connecting it to the abbreviation for the Israeli army?) That's kind of an unfounded declaration in and of itself, given that the units are seldom actually seen inside the domes at all... and we only see a fraction of the ~30 islands in the Macross Frontier.(Island-15 "Reno" doesn't count, since most of the VFs kept there are owned by civilians.) It's also not even clear how many of the few Cheyenne IIs seen inside Island-1 are New UN Forces-owned, as SMS has their own complement of 'em. EDIT: It's also quite possible that there are no Cheyenne IIs stationed inside the domes under normal circumstances either... and that they sortie out from the Battle Frontier when an alert is called, the same way we've seen VF-25s enter the city from the Macross Quarter's dock. Both of its Macross Chronicle mechanic sheets are very precise that its main use was/is anti-air defense... though combat against flying targets inside of the islands is also lumped into "air defense". The movie sheet goes farther to say it was also rendered basically useless by the high mobility evidenced by the Vajra (or late-gen VFs) and was only really useful for throwing up walls of fire to narrow the enemy's line of advance. I'm including every in-continuity appearance of the Zentradi thus far... but I feel I haven't communicated effectively. Specifically, you seem to be laboring under the misconception that the Gnerl (AKA "Air Battle Pod") was the Zentradi Army's main "fighter" and that there was some circumstance that saw that role adopted by the Regult. The official publications make it quite clear that is not the case... and are quite clear about the Regult having been the Zentradi Army's main all-regime mecha going back to before the fall of the Protoculture's Stellar Republic. The Gnerl is described as being a supplemental craft that compensates for the Regults and Glaugs being unremarkable performers in atmospheric flight. On the ground or out in space, the Regult dominates the Zentradi inventory. There's no reason to deploy "Gnerl support" in space beyond slightly added to the numerical advantage, because it's a vacuum, where aerodynamics matter not one bit and the limbs of the battle pods offer significant advantages for maneuvering and combat. You're right about one thing... sending in the destroids is illogical as hell on the battlefields of Macross. They were a concept based on a rather fundamental misconception about the nature of warfare before first contact in 2009.At best, you could attribute the drubbing the Cheyenne IIs got to the New UN Spacy Marine garrison force almost certainly being a federal unit like those troops stationed on Gallia IV, and those destroids being the local scrubs of the Al Shahal NUNS. Undeniably... and there are so many options that the choice to employ the Cheyenne II makes zero sense. Oh, it's undeniably bad writing... mainly because, unlike the Macross Frontier fleet, there is absolutely no practical reason for Al Shahal to own a Cheyenne II series destroid, let alone a battery or more of 'em. They were a thing on the Frontier fleet because SMS needed mobile AA guns for their borrowed Macross Quarter-class ship and because the fleet wanted something that could operate safely inside the domes without messing up their pavement. None of the other Brisingr Alliance member worlds seem to use those destroids. The pavement on Al Shahal seems to be stressed to handle a jumping dancing Workroid based off the same platform, while laden with cargo, so they almost certainly aren't constrained by pavement damage worries... Animation, yes... media, no.Variable Fighter Aero Report in This is Animation Special: Macross Plus has paintjobs and brief histories of several Spacy Marine VF squadrons, and a couple more are mentioned and shown in various Variable Fighter Master File volumes and Tenjin's "Valkyries" art books.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Funnily enough, if you'd looked up the abbreviations individually over on the Compendium or, really, checked any Macross artbook or tech manual that mentions them, you'd have realized that index page you cited is incorrect for those abbreviations. It's "Spacy Air Force" and "Spacy Marine Corps". This is also incorrect. The UN Army is also seen in Macross II, where characters are shown with uniform patches that clearly read "ARMY". The Army troops also have a distinctive uniform variant in a different color from the Spacy and other branches (khaki). The most visible one (and the one featured in the art books) is the UN Army colonel who commanded Earth's defenses in the last episode. I don't recall it mentioning them as Marines... can you cite a page? I recall them identified as beloning to the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army. Also don't recall any explicit identification of the Cheyennes in Zero being UN Marine Corps property... they're badged UN SPACY, but the model was used by multiple branches of the UN Forces including the Marines, Army, Navy, and Spacy. I think you may be jumping to some conclusions here... To the best of my knowledge, no comparison has been drawn between the armor of the Cheyenne II and the New UN Forces battlepod derivatives... so that right there is an unfounded assumption.Apart from the Monster, the original generation Destroids were reasonably mobile... certainly as much so as the Cheyenne, but nowhere near as much as a battlepod or VF. It was not often shown, however, since the destroids had an unpleasant habit of standing still and shooting. A bad habit they still have in the 2050's and 2060's. Your source? We've seen Valkyries used as ground-based protection in normal duty even during wartime, going back as far as the original series. The Grand Cannon 1/Alaska Base surface side installation had a VF-1 guard detail, we've even documented their unique color scheme on M3. There was a VF-1 guard detail outside the base inside the SDF-1, outside New Edwards on Eden, patrolling the city on occupied Voldor, etc. etc. etc. Most of the galaxy would seem to agree with you... though the Frontier fleet apparently felt there was still a niche there, because official material has described the Cheyenne II as principally being for air defense. You don't have to like it... but it IS official. More that their role could be done better by Valkyries... but hey. You... may want to go rewatch the original series. The Gnerl was much, MUCH less common in air and space battles than battle pods and battle suits. The bloody thing didn't even appear in DYRL?... and I don't recall it in any other Macross titles besides Macross M3 and Macross 30, whereas the Regult is EVERYWHERE. Even in Macross 30, the Regult is a MUCH more common unit than the Gnerl or any other Zentradi mecha.Regults were the most common unit in the Zentradi army, explicitly described as the Zentradi Army's main mecha. Yeah, they die a lot... but it's worth remembering two facts: 1. In DYRL, the VF-1s had to thin the herd with reaction weapons to have any hope of surviving. (The standard DYRL load in line art, toys, etc. is four RMS-1 thermonuclear reaction missiles and two UUM-7 missile pods). 2. For the first 2/3 of the original series and a good chunk of DYRL, the Zentradi were deliberately pulling their punches in the name of studying humanity. IIRC the VF-1 achieved a 12:1 kill ratio against the unmodified Regult when the Zentradi weren't fighting seriously... and presumably the ZBP-104 and -106 have received significant defensive upgrades as the Queadluun-Rhea did when it was developed from the Queadluun-Rau. After all, the New UN Forces don't consider their Zentradi soldiers expendable and don't clone 'em by the billion the way Zentradi main fleets do.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The UN Forces and New UN Forces are divided into seven branches... you've got some of the names wrong. The four terrestrial branches are your standard Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The other three are the Space Forces, that being the Spacy, Spacy Air Force, and Spacy Marine Corps.To date, I don't believe the NUNS Marines have been associated with destroids... the only mecha we've ever seen associated with them are variable fighters and Zentradi mecha. ... you sure you watched the same show we did? The niche is one thing, but to characterize their effectiveness as anything other than "abysmal" would be to stretch the truth to an astonishing degree. Armor will only do so much, being highly mobile is what keeps you alive in Macross... which is why those destroids die in droves even fighting against battle pods.A battle pod or battroid could do the job of fighting inside the islands just as well (or better), the only problem is they'd muss up the pavement... and a fastidious Frontier Government apparently considered that a step too far. I feel like an English teacher whenever I have to make this point, but a canon is something you can get behind... a cannon is something you should never try standing in front of.Also, you'd be misquoting me if you did... remember, the point was Kawamori's down on the idea of inter-series canon. He considers each Macross series an island unto itself. So what's written in coverage for a mecha in the context of a series (e.g. a Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet) would be quite valid. The other English teacher nitpick (and I hate doing that, because I'm only an adjunct faculty member in summer semester and only in Computer Science), is I said that the Cheyenne II's operating profile is still mainly air defense. It can do other things, and really an AA gun becomes an anti-everything gun if the enemy is close enough, but it's mostly for shooting at flying enemies. No, I'm pretty much bang-on. You're forgetting the Zentradi 500,000 year war with the Supervision Army has been fought almost entirely in space... they're not the best space fighters out there, but battlepods are very much a deadly space fighter when used properly (which usually entails "send a load of those at the enemy"). In fact, the official materials mention they're kind of lousy on land because of their high center of gravity and low stability due to the leg design. (That's why they prefer to jump instead of running.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The Cheyenne II's a modernized ADR-03-Mk.III Cheyenne... but its equipment and its operating profile is largely the same. Macross Chronicle's mechanic sheet identifies it as still being mainly for air defense. Those particle beam guns it has are enough to improve its abilities against hard targets, but that only makes it an air defense robot with a little extra firepower. That's kind of an interesting assumption given the general absence of destroid units in all but a few remote regions. It's not clear why Al Shahal wanted the Cheyenne II, but Frontier opted for them on the basis of a very specific niche need rather than general usefulness or cost-performance.Likewise, the maintenance of Zentradi hardware is also predicated on more than just cost-effectiveness. Namely, the need for equipment that suits the combat style and physical proportions of the Zentradi soldiers of the NUNS Marines. Mind you, it's been explicitly said of at least one of /those/ units that the reason the military kept them around is their exceptional performance. I'd imagine the high-mobility performance of the ZBP-104 and ZBP-106 is something to write home about as well. The dialog would point to them being two separate units... one is the Zentradi NUNS Marines and the other is some Al Shahal ground force unit. Perhaps in the relatively underdeveloped or cash-strapped Brisingr Alliance... The New UN Forces generally doesn't use destroids anymore... so that's more of a case of Al Shahal fielding destroids for no clear reason, when destroids are a generally ineffective combat platform. The Zentradi Marines are using mecha that account for the realities of space warfare that destroids were never suited to.
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