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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Probably several millennia, since the Vajra don't seem to have a natural urge to explore the way humanoids do (or maybe by 2059 they're jaded seen-it-all types?). I would guess that they probably do something like the swarm migration they did when the Vajra hive Macross Galaxy attacked left, moving in search of areas with new resources or (later) areas where potential mates were. They evolved a biological space fold mechanism, so I'd guess they probably started the same way the Protoculture did by starting with short-range fold jumps to their nearest neighboring stars, and expanding outwards from that leapfrog style. Probably a good deal less fast in terms of the rate of expansion, since to them every system is potentially usable since they don't need breathable atmosphere or anything like that. Star Trek's Federation was developing plenty of new technologies through the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries. They did incorporate lots of innovations from contacted alien races that they acquired in trade, but they also had both a Federation-level R&D apparatus and a technology-sharing policy among the individual research organizations in the Federation not dissimilar to what the UN Gov't instituted for overtechnology in Macross (and which Nora was so pissed about in Macross Zero). Sisko's job, before landing that posting to DS9, was in R&D at the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars. Harry Kim, in an alternate timeline episode, also worked for R&D in San Francisco doing warp drives for runabouts. It's unlikely that the Vajra's tactical abilities were a response to the Protoculture, since it's noted that the Protoculture's weapons development was largely inspired by the Vajra's capabilities.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Per Macross Chronicle1, their tails are essentially a large biological gravitational field propeller. (I can only assume the tail's "wagging" is involved in shaping the distortions to achieve unidirectional force.) Essentially, a Vajra has a very low-powered warp drive growing out of its butt. 1. Mechanic Sheet Macross Frontier: the Movie ETC 04A "Vajra".
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Outside of a system's Oort cloud, the available matter in the interstellar medium is painfully diffuse... in some environments it's projected to be less than one particle per cubic centimeter. This is one of the reasons the Bussard ramjet isn't considered a realistically viable interstellar propulsion system.1 It's easier by far to collect pre-accreted material from larger in-system or rogue stellar bodies such as comets, asteroids, moons, and planets. Going in-system also offers more diverse materials and heavier elements than are normally found in the interstellar medium, the byproducts of the fusion reactions of the dead stars whose remains re-accreted to form those systems. They have a great incentive to go in-system too, since the naturally occurring fold carbon is said to be a product of a star's death. 1. Also the reason Bussard ramjets aren't used in Macross, and why the Bussard collectors on starships in Star Trek are only used to supplement and VERY slowly minimally replenish a ship's cryotank-stored deuterium or tritium fuel slush while operating away from supply depots. (Despite being profoundly inefficient, they're still better than the process they're using to make antideuterium or antitritium... the Federation's main fuel depot for antimatter is a solar-powered quantum phase inverter on Mercury.)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Let's face it, the Vajra had an incredibly long head start on every spacefaring civilization to emerge in the Milky Way in Macross. They had already long since become an intergalactic "society" at the point in time when the ancient Protoculture was just starting to figure out fire. They've had a few eons of self-guided evolution to optimize themselves and their lifestyle for living in space. They've been around for so long as a spacefaring and highly capable species that it's very strongly implied that the Vajra are the true origin of many of the advanced technologies that humanity has come to collectively know as Overtechnology. It's highly probable the Protoculture discovered the basics of super dimension spatial theory while studying the Vajra, and from that (and possibly the study of Vajra anatomy) were able to reverse-engineer many of the Vajra's anatomical traits with pure technology to create things like fold systems, artificial gravity, dimensional weapons, and an array of other advancements. We do know that the Regult and Glaug are both modeled on Vajra larval forms, and the Birdhuman was modeled on a Vajra queen. It's speculated the Protoculture based their Zentradi warship designs either on the Vahla Ena (space whales) or possibly on Vajra warship forms. One has to wonder, given that they power themselves with fold dimensional energy conversion, if their anatomy even requires what we'd consider conventional cellular respiration. Come to that, if one wants to split hairs, is the Vajra really the insectoid biological lifeform or the distributed consciousness residing in fold space for which all the Vajra insect forms are individual neurons in its brain? Is it possible that the consciousness existed first via the fold bacteria and chose the insectoid Vajra as a host?
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty sure I know the episode you're thinking of, and he did that with a GU-11[A] gunpod he nicked from one of the VF-1A battroids he beat up. Those 55mm HEACA rounds would understandably mess a VF-1 battroid up pretty badly since they were more than a little bit overkill. (But hey, there's no kill like overkill.) The Zentradi Army standard issue infantry rifles are laser or electron particle beam weapons, only dimensional beam weapons can be upgraded to MDE specification. I'd assume they're probably laser or electron particle beam rifles, similar to Zentradi Army standard field issue.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, all over the place. Multiple Macross titles have depicted Vajra swarms nesting both in space and planetside, and we've seen them nesting in all kinds of places like on planetary surfaces, on ancient Protoculture orbital megastructures, on asteroids, inside their starship-analogues (which are themselves living Vajra organisms), and inside wrecked starships of Human and Zentradi origin. The Macross Frontier TV series gave us at least one shot of a Vajra heavy soldier digging in an asteroid for raw fold quartz, so it's logical to assume the Vajra are mining asteroids or collecting necessary resources from the environments in which they build their nests. I'd also assume that, given the opportunity, they recycle the bodies of their dead to recover all the processed materials that were synthesized by the hive's queen (e.g. the refined fold quartz) or those that are processed using the Vajra's own biology like the fold carbon in their heavy quantum beam weapons and the materials in their energy conversion armor shells. That might also explain their apparent propensity for nesting in wrecked starships, since a wrecked fold-capable starship is going to be a rich deposit of silicates, refined metals, and fold carbon from the ship's various fold devices1. The Vajra's adaptation against thermonuclear reaction warheads seems to have been just retaining extra layers of exoskeletal armor and letting them ablate away in the heat of the thermonuclear detonation, possibly by changing the molting pattern to produce a thicker exoskeleton (assuming Vajra molt like some large Earth insects). 1. Such as the Gravity Inertia Control systems inside its thermonuclear reactors (AKA fold reactors), the ship's main gravity control system clusters, fold system clusters, fold wave radar, fold communications systems, heavy quantum reaction beam weaponry, and in the case of the human ships potentially thermonuclear reaction warhead trigger mechanisms.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    I'd assume, based on the performance of the General Galaxy Queadluun-Rhea/56 units deployed by Strategic Military Services in Macross Frontier, that sustained laser machine gun fire could penetrate the armor of the Vajra heavy soldier type if it found a weak spot like a joint. Those guns should be roughly comparable to the equivalent laser machine guns on the Gnerl, Queadluun-Rau, and so on. Based on Alto's performance, to get through the armor by simple brute force you'd need repeated direct hits from a medium or large-bore impact cannon like the ones on the Glaug and Nosjadeul-Ger. The big plasma gun on the Nousjadeul-Ger might be able to get through it as well. Missiles seem to be more effective, at least initially. The GU-17A was effective against the Vajra mobile and heavy soldiers initially, though against the heavy soldiers sustained fire was necessary to guarantee a kill. Once they went to more powerful anti-ECA rounds that were intended for anti-Vajra use rather than standard anti-VF use ammo c. Episode 7 they were reliably able to score kills on Vajra heavy soldier units until the Vajra adapted their armor to resist anti-ECA rounds. Then they switched to MDE shells. Very... though the Frontier fleet anticipated that the Vajra would adapt to MDE shells eventually, given the opportunity, and hence they opted to jam Vajra hive mind communications in the area when MDE-equipped VFs sortied.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yes. As far as we know, the Zentradi Army doesn't have any weapons that use hard rounds. Their infantry-issue "small" arms are all either laser weapons or electron particle beam weapons. Battle pods and battle suits use a mixture of electron particle beam weapons, laser machine guns of various types, impact cannons (an unspecified type of beam weapon I suspect is a dimensional beam weapon), and the occasional plasma cannon. Missiles are the only non-energy weapons they have unless you want to count the lances and halberds used by the Mardook's Zentradi battle suits in Macross II, and those had beam weapons built into them. Their starships are armed exclusively with heavy quantum reaction beam cannons of various scales and missile launcher turrets. The only time we've seen Zentradi using solid-ammo weapons that were actually intended for them (not counting Klan's... stunt) is in the original series, when we see Quamzin's rebels using what appears to be a giant-scale pump-action shotgun that was almost certainly made on Earth. Yep. The Regult's main guns are electron particle beam guns, and the smaller guns are laser machine guns. The Glaug's got four impact cannons, two chin-mounted lasers, and the big electron beam gun.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno. It's entirely possible that other worlds had them and they just never activated because the planets they were on never dug them up or failed to maintain them properly... or it may be that the theory that the Brisingr cluster was one of the last areas settled by the Protoculture is true, and they were never installed to begin with. There were Birdhuman icons found on other planets, like the Vajra homeworld in Frontier, so it's not unreasonable to suspect that there are probably others around. Given what was shown in the Macross Delta series, the belief that Windermere's native people had a manifest destiny as the true and chosen inheritors of the ancient Protoculture's legacy doesn't seem to have been widely accepted even among Windermere IV's elite. The first time it comes up is in King Grammier's speech to motivate the troops right before a major operation to complete the Starwind Sector by capturing Ragna, and even he doesn't seem to really believe it. I think he was probably just using it as a convenient way to tap into the anti-human sentiment that had emerged during Windermere IV's war of independence against the New UN Government in 2060. Some of the Aerial Knights in the Macross Delta series did seem to think that their superior physical abilities made them superior to humans, and after the atrocities accidentally committed during the 2060 war they definitely felt they were morally superior to humanity. By claiming to be the true inheritors of the Protoculture, Grammier could let them see themselves as superior to humanity in one more way... by asserting that humanity's "claim to fame" was a false one. Roid Brehm seems to have been the only one who TRULY believed it. Keith seems to have considered the whole thing a load, and seemed to resent the Protoculture themselves.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, that's what a few books like Great Mechanics DX and the Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa Official Complete Book have suggested... that the YF-29 was developed by the Macross Frontier branches of Shinsei Industry and L.A.I. in a bid to surpass the YF-24 Evolution. Macross Chronicle's Macross Frontier movie mechanic sheets for the VF-27γ Super Lucifer and YF-29 Durandal both generally agree that the YF-29 is the superior aircraft in terms of mobility and combat capability. That said, the VF-27γ Super Lucifer is also described as having abilities approaching those of the YF-29. Its AIF-9V Ghost escorts are described as a craft that normally enjoys an overpowering advantage over normal VFs but found themselves on the receiving end of a similarly one-sided fight against the YF-29. The YF-29 definitely has more weaponry than the VF-27γSP, thanks to that MDE beam cannon turret and the hundred-plus micro-missiles it carries internally even without its Super Packs. My read of the scene is that the fight was that Alto wasn't really trying in his fight with Brera. He takes almost no shots at Brera himself, he just shoots down Brera's Ghosts almost casually and then spends the rest of the dogfight in a vain effort to talk Brera into breaking free of mind control. It's pretty evident that killing Brera wasn't an option on the table in his assessment.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    As noted previously, the benchmark set by the Macross's main gun is over 280,000km... there's no reason to assume that a heavy quantum reaction beam cannon at least as powerful as the Macross's would be less capable in that regard. www.macross2.net/temp/LightSecond.JPG It's possible it has an even longer range than the main gun batteries, or it may simply be more killy out to the same range. Either way, a light second is nothing to sneeze at.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the description in Macross Chronicle and their appearances in Macross media including Macross VF-X2's novelization, Macross Frontier, Macross the Ride, Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, and Macross E, cyborgs in the Macross universe run the full gamut of levels of modification. The most common extent of cybernetic implant adoption is a relatively low-key adoption of non-visible network implants ala Ghost in the Shell, that just connect up the brain to netcom hardware. Virtually every citizen of the Macross Galaxy fleet has this level of cybernetics, with the noteworthy exception of Sheryl Nome, and that was what facilitated mind control over the fleet. Others, like Oscar Brauhitsch from Macross R had basic mechanical replacement limbs or organs to repair old injuries. Very few had any kind of performance-enhancing hardware, like Nicolas Berthier's fiberoptic nervous system upgrades. The "cyber grunts" of the Macross Galaxy corporate army were the most extreme adopters, being either Ghost in the Shell-style full body prosthetic replacement or so close to it as to make no odds. That kind of cybernetic operation was technically illegal, and its illegality the reason for military-grade EX-Gear's existence. It's noted that the VF-27 has an ISC as an unavoidable concession to the fact that one of the few remaining organic components in the pilot is the brain. The VF-27 could theoretically be operated by an unaugmented human using the conventional (backup) controls after the armored shield on the canopy was ejected (at great risk of injury or death, since the usual limiters aren't in place), but to realize its full combat potential the pilot must be a specially g-hardened military-grade cyborg... something only obtainable through the Macross Galaxy military or through the expenditure of a truly incredibly amount of money (ike Ivan Tsari did in Macross E).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Not sure if math failure or Palladium Books joke...
  15. Seto Kaiba
    At least a light second, based on dialog in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series that establishes that the SDF-1 Macross and Vrlitwhai's branch fleet were exchanging fire at distances of approximately 280,000km in "Booby Trap".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, though at least Isamu got chained to a desk in the best posting he ever landed. Kathryn Janeway, however, got the same "reward" with none of the actual benefits in Star Trek. Kicked upstairs and chained to a desk at Starfleet Headquarters to keep her well clear of anything resembling a starship, in the hopes that it'd prevent her from wreaking the kind of havoc she perpetrated on her rampage back to the Alpha quadrant. (Then, in the wake of her death and resurrection by the Q, they banished her back to the Delta quadrant in the hopes that "anywhere but here" would compartmentalize the damage.) *looks at the most iconic pilots for each* The fujoshi. My money's on the VF-27. Looking at the specs without any add-on parts, the General Galaxy VF-27 Lucifer has several distinct advantages over the Dian Cecht Sv-262 Draken III. The VF-27's T/W ratio is about 15% higher than the Sv-262's, its four engines have a more flexible thrust vectoring arrangement, it doesn't suffer from transformation-related problems with fuel capacity. The VF-27 also has a HUGE advantage in that, even though the Sv-262 has a better ISC system, its pilot can control the aircraft directly with their mind and, being a cyborg with superior g-force resistance, can exploit the fighter's engine power to a greater extent than the fleshy meats in the Sv-262's cockpit can. Armaments-wise, they're about on par, though the Lilldrakens are not nearly as flexible as the Goblin II drone the VF-27 has, which can be directly controlled by the VF-27's pilot while they're flying the VF-27. Word.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... in all likelihood, it'll avail them nothing. The arbitration didn't change anything with respect to Harmony Gold's license to the distribution and merchandising rights to SDF Macross. IMO, it's likely an indicator that Catalyst, HBS, and Piranha are starting to realize that the chances of a ruling in their favor are slim at best and they're falling back on the same tactic FASA did in their lawsuit with HG in 1996: file a bunch of separate motions for summary judgement or dismissal using every reason that comes to mind in the hopes that something will pass muster.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    That wasn't the Birdhuman's first encounter with the Mayan islanders and their superstitions, so it may have known what to expect. It was accidentally activated on a prior occasion, in which it halted its own program by separating its head from its body... an event that passed into islander myth.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    They appeared twice in Star Trek television shows... once in TNG's 2nd season ("Contagion") and once in DS9's 4th season ("To The Death"). On both occasions, they harped on the way the Iconian gateways could take you anywhere instantaneously as easily as walking through an ordinary door. That was how the Iconians managed their entire empire.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet 01B "VF Masterpieces seen from their Development Ancestry" points to the YF-19's greater level of design completion vs. the YF-21 as the key factor that led to the New UN Forces declaring it the victor of the Project Super Nova competition. Essentially, the YF-19 No.2 prototype was more-or-less a production-ready aircraft based on more conventional, but highly refined, technologies where the YF-21 had adopted more new technology that hadn't been fully tested and/or was still unreliable like the BDI system. That's been General Galaxy's stumbling block ever since the company was founded in 2017. Their design engineers didn't seem to quite understand that the military was less interested in having all the latest bleeding-edge technology in its main fighters than it was in having the main fighter be a ruggedly dependable mecha that was easy to maintain. Shinsei Industry persistently beat them in design competitions because Shinsei's designs were less radical. General Galaxy only seems like it finally noticed what was going on in the late 2040s, when they finally gave the New UN Spacy just what it'd asked for: a rock-solid, ruggedly dependable, jack-of-all-trades VF based only on proven tech that met requirements without going overboard on feature content... the VF-171 Nightmare Plus. That was the first and only time they beat Shinsei, and thereafter they were back to taking cheap shots at Shinsei behind their backs.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    More a poor man's Iconian Gateway network... something which existed in Star Trek way before the Vajra and Macross Frontier came to be. That last one's just Voyager's signature anti-Borg trick in reverse.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    We don't know what SMS branch office employed Isamu Dyson after he'd retired from the New UN Spacy. All we can say with certainty is that he retired from the New UN Spacy to join SMS after he concluded his participation as the test pilot assigned to Shinsei Industry's YF-24 Evolution program following the successful final demonstration to the New UN Forces in 2057. Considering what had happened to him in the wake of the Sharon Apple incident, he probably considered retiring to join SMS the best decision he'd made since 2040. Exactly where he was and how he got to the Frontier fleet's position so quickly is a mystery... one that I'm inclined to chalk up to Talos's pet theory that the Macross Frontier movies are also an in-universe docu-drama like DYRL?, New UN Government-sponsored propaganda exercise which was meant to make the New UN Forces and SMS look much more heroic and capable than they really were.1 Dunno. It's possible that, since the New UN Government parliament is based on Earth that they've got faster ships than the emigrant fleets. Earth is the most technologically-advanced New UN Gov't member world and has all the best toys, so I wouldn't put it past them to have some zero-time fold couriers for government business. Well... it seems Isamu wasn't joking when he said luck was one of his skills. Col. Johnson from the New Edwards Test Flight Center covered for Isamu (and Guld), taking most of the blame himself. He was helped immensely by a public backlash against autonomous fighters and virtuoids that inevitably resulted and the plaudits that came from his men having stopped both from wreaking further havoc on Earth, the scandal surrounding the discovery that Sharon Apple had been illegally outfitted with unstable bio-neural processing hardware by the Venus Sound Factory and that the AIF-X-9 Ghost's AI was based on some of Sharon Apple's technology, and that the NUNS's brass were grudgingly impressed as hell by the YF-19 and YF-21 doing several things thought to be quite impossible in the space of a single afternoon. Put simply, New UN Government and New UN Forces officials weren't about to argue with results while they were busy covering their own arses.... likely while telling the news what a wonderful person they thought Isamu was and how they just couldn't wait to pin enough medals to him that he'd stand lopsided the rest of his life. As a result, Isamu not only avoided pretty much any disciplinary action beyond a stern talking-to... he got to keep his test pilot job AND he got promoted. Well, arguably that promotion was the real punishment. They kicked him upstairs to minimize his opportunities for getting into trouble by the simple expedient of chaining him to a desk. He still stuck it out a further seventeen years at New Edwards TFC and served as a test pilot for Shinsei's YF-24 Evolution before taking a well-deserved retirement at the rank of Major to join Strategic Military Services. Autocorrect is a hell of a thing. We don't know what became of Myung Fang Lone after the Sharon Apple incident. 1. Most notably, how the movie version of Macross Frontier alters the details of the involvement several New UN Forces senior officers had in the Macross Galaxy fleet conspiracy. Colonel Grace Godunova of the Macross Galaxy corporate army went from being the architect of the conspiracy to being an unwilling cyborg puppet of the Galaxy fleet executives. Likewise, Major Brera Sterne was presented as a mind-controlled slave of the executives rather than a soldier acting of his own volition most of the time. General(?) Leon Mishima was depicted as being an ambitious moron and social climber who was only dimly aware of the Galaxy fleet's conspiracy and actively working to interfere with its execution instead of being one of Grace's co-conspirators and the author of President Glass's assassination and a subsequent coup d'etat. This also let Brigadier General Pelliot (AKA Brigadier General Jean-Luc Tarkovsky in the novels) and 1st Lt. Catherine Glass off the hook as having no connection, direct or otherwise, to a Galaxy conspirator even before the conspiracy became known.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    CDJapan has both tankobon pretty cheap... the whole series'll only set you back about ten dollars plus tax and shipping. The series is also interesting for being the only other story besides Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy to depict VF-27s in the hands of private operators outside of Macross Galaxy.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe so, but you'd think they would've at least programmed their walking apocalypse to get a second opinion before trying to end the world. I mean, what if a disillusioned total misanthrope managed to unearth the damned thing and became the one it interrogated? Nonsense, it was a medical shank. Sterile interrogative violence!
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Potentially. For all we know, the Protoculture may have exterminated the sub-Protoculture species once they deemed that those planets were ready for colonization. By the time they stopped to check in on the project, their goals had changed considerably... with them seemingly having accepted their inevitable extinction and wanting to ensure that any of their creations that developed interstellar capability weren't going to repeat their mistakes. Of course, they chose to do it in a typically draconian manner by leaving a bio-technological WMD sitting around in sleep mode to murder everyone if they failed its secret test of character.
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