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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, and it sucks to have to say it... so many of the characters in this series are shallow stock characters that it quickly becomes impossible to care what happens to most of them. It was easy to care about the characters in Frontier because they were involved and they were very well-developed over the course of the series. Much of Delta's cast could be summed up in so few words you could print their bio on a fortune cookie slip and still have room leftover for lucky numbers. It's really hard to take their personal drama seriously as the only thing separating them from being "Background Girl A" is possession of a name. Macross Delta really is weak tea for a Macross show when it comes to the aerial combat... Frontier didn't skimp on the aerial acrobatics in dogfightig, and it sure as hell didn't skimp on the use of the transformation system. In a lot of ways, it was like the Macross Plus OVA.Most of Delta's dogfights could be mistaken for a far-future sequel to Yukikaze or Area 88. With a few judicious cuts, you could pass the VF-31 off as an ordinary aerospace fighter.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-4 Master File unfortunately offers nothing WRT the Battroid mode height. Sorry.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Captain Ernest Johnson would be a senior citizen if he'd served in the First Space War... but given his age, it seems a safe bet he's a part of the peace children generation born in the aftermath of the war, like Elmo was. I'd say that'd explain him having a model of the SDF-1 on his desk, given that peace children wouldn't be a thing if not for the Macross's effect on the Zentradi. At this point, I think most of us consider the show to be a disappointment on the mecha front. The mecha action's been thin on the ground, and the dogfight choreography has been flat, boring, and utterly lacking in Macross's distinctive high-mobility high-variability combat style. It's like we're only being allowed to watch episode previews for a mecha series between long dull slogs through a badly written Escaflowne slashfic.Of course, after the last few episodes I'd be hard pressed to deny that this show hasn't started to turn into an all-fronts disappointment. It says a lot that I was much more excited for a single picture of a VF-31A Kairos in NUNS livery for the SVF-168 Death Adders in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-4 Lightning III than I was for Macross Delta Ep21. (Said picture mentions the existence of a Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried in its caption... possibly an in-book in-universe tease like the one for the VF-4 book years ago.) I suppose I could sum up my feelings on the second half of the series with a paraphrased quote from Gioachino Rossini... (originally directed at Wagner.) Mister Nemoto has good moments, but awful halves of an hour.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Strictly speaking, we don't know enough of Johnson's background to say with any certainty that he never served in the New UN Forces. His backstory only goes as far back as 2059-2060, when he was a hired trainer for the Windermere kingdom's local defense forces. He had to learn space warfare tactics somewhere, and he's probably 40-50 years old, so he may have done a stint in the (N)UNS somewhere in the 2030's or 2040's.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    In Macross, that's often the way to bet if you intend to lose the bet. The writers love an underdog, and because Earth is almost invariably at a disadvantage in any new Macross story you'll seldom find a dog as under as that one. Of late, it's been the Windermereans benefitting from the underdog status, with their less-advanced variable fighters spanking the hell out of the NUNS and Xaos's finest through the sheer quality of their pilots.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Honestly? I don't think there's one single character who is a concentrated cauldron of wretchedness like Jar-Jar. It's spread out across a bunch of the superfluous cast who are all teaspoon-shallow one-dimensional cardboard standees... Makina, Reina, Kaname, Messer, Keith, Gramia... The Ragnan girl was cute too. Can we trade Makina and Reina for those two?
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That's called bad storytelling, when you leave key aspects of the story out of the actual goddamn series in the hopes of making your audience go out and buy supplemental publications just to know what's going on.This series has gone sharply downhill since Ep13.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    All right... sitting down to watch this one now, with every expectation of being disappointed. If it weren't for the VF-31A's in this episode, it'd be a complete waste of 22 minutes. Negative vote
  9. Seto Kaiba
    My copy will be here tomorrow, at which point I will dig in and try to find you an answer. I don't recall any publications giving the VF-4 an official battroid mode height off the top of my head.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the problems we're seeing with Macross Delta just show that the series was poorly planned-out from the beginning.Macross 7 gives much the same feeling of the writers having realized partway into the show's production that they were going to have a lot of episode count leftover after the end of the plot, and resolved to pad it mercilessly. The difference is that Macross 7 did the padding on the front end, leading to 20 episodes of filler before the plot starts, while Macross Delta seems to be forgetting the actual plot in the name of trying to make us like these flat, boring characters the show is overpopulated by. You could jettison five or six of Delta's core cast and not affect the plot one bit: Messer, Makina, Reina, and the twins don't have any actual role in the plot, and combined they don't have enough actual character traits to fill a 3x5 card. Messer was just an arse, the twins might as well not be present for all the relevance they have, and Makina and Reina are just present to tick off a couple checkboxes on some kind of "Minimum H-Dojinshi Fetish Obligations" checklist. It's like they only planned the series up through the end of Mission 13, and have had to ad lib everything since. There's been no real furtherance of the plot... just a string of breather episodes (14, 16, 17) and exposition dumps (15, 18, 19, 20). It almost feels like this is supposed to be a 3-cour or 2-season series, pacing-wise.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Worse. The Mission 21 preview on the official website has made this episode out to be a retrospective of Tactical Sound Unit Walkure's formative years, one narrated by the group's three useless members: Makina "Masturbation Material" Nakajima, Reina "Discount Yuki Nagato" Prowler, and Kaname "Broken Bird" Buccaneer. As a special bonus for the fans who sat through the last two boring exposition dump episodes, they're recounting all this from the comfort of the ship's brig as a result of their brilliant infiltration plan having been foiled by a rent-a-cop and a single locked door at the end of Mission 20. Honestly, I've never felt more sympathy with Bogue than I do contemplating the summary of next episode. The second half of this series has been such a huge disappointment that I'm 200% on board if Bogue wants to liven things up a bit by vaporizing Walkure's deadweight so Freyja and Mikumo can get back to work.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    As noted earlier, that principle is a pretty common staple of Macross's stories in the wake of the original series from Macross 7 on.The (New) UN Spacy has been suffering the reverse of this since the Macross 7 series moved the focus away from the military. Fans come away with a bad impression of the VF-11 Thunderbolt or VF-171 Nightmare Plus despite them both having long and distinguished service records in-universe because most of what we're shown in animation is the one conflict where they were outclassed by the enemy and got their butts kicked. It's especially bad for western fance, since they miss out on a lot of the manga and serialized novels and so on where some of the damage is undone. They only get to see the VF-11 get love in that first minute or so of Macross Plus Ep1, and the Nightmare Plus as a bad guy's mecha in Macross 30. The Queadluun-Rau looks formidable because it appears so infrequently outside of the Macross II timeline, and every major main timeline appearance's action focuses almost exclusively on a super-ace pilot like Milia, Chlore, or Angers 672. Macross Delta hasn't been a kind mistress to the VF-31, considering it hasn't really let Xaos win a fight yet. The Aerial Knights have kicked Xaos's forces around every single time, and only left Xaos's forces alive because of shenanigans... like Heinz having a strictly enforced bedtime or Roid being an incredible sadist. It's actually done a bit to raise the VF-171's stock, as a result of Var'd VF-171 pilots posing a serious threat to Xaos's 5th Gen VF-31 despite the massive performance disparity because of their training and their Var-induced aggression. When we finally have a more complete picture of the total service history of the VF-31, that picture may change... as it slowly is for the VF-171.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, no... Macross II: Lovers Again and its related titles (incl. 2 PC Engine games, Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song) are their own alternate universe from the main Macross chronology. In the Macross II timeline, technological advancement charts a different and somewhat less bombastic course.To the Macross II timeline, the Meltrandi Queadluun-Rau was simply no more intimidating than a Zentradi Nousjadeul-Ger. Only the exceptional skill that an ace pilot had could make one a serious threat on its own, as was the case with aces Milia 639 and Misty Klaus. In the hands of a grunt, they were shot down in great numbers by the UN Spacy's equally-grunt-operated VF-1 Valkyries, VF-1改 Refined Valkyries, VF-4 Sirens, etc. This same principle of "pilot skills counts at least as much as specs" works for Macross Delta as well. Like how we see that, despite having what's effectively the latest VF on the block, Mirage can have trouble with VF-171's flown by Var-afflicted troops because she's an indifferent pilot. Great googly moogly! Google Translate made a mess of that. Just a brief correction... the Macross II chronology, for reasons never concretely explained, pushed the Megaroad-01's launch date back to 2014. So Macross: Flashback 2012's events "happen", but they happen two years later. This is covered in a bewildering little entry in Bandai Entertainment Bible 51. To be fair, the Takachihof Corporation and Shinsei Industry have rather a lot in common... both being mergers of Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu. Though Takachihof also absorbed some personnel from the destroid manufacturers. They hold the same kind of pseudo-monopoly on VF design that Shinsei had for much of main timeline Macross history. Happened a good deal earlier than that, honestly... the Queadluun-Rau was not any kind of uber-powerful mecha, and the stock VF-1's did well enough against them in the First Space War. The VF-4 Siren and VF-1改 Refined Valkyrie which were introduced in the late 2010's kind of sealed the deal.Exactly when the UN Spacy in the main Macross chronology considers the Q-Rau to officially be "at parity" with their fighters isn't clear, but there could be an excellent case made for somewhere in the 3rd or 4th fighter generation. In short, it's not the mecha that's badass... it's the PILOT. Milia's team is the best of the best. She was the fleetwide ace in both timelines, so she was taking a mecha that was better than the average Zentradi unit but not by much and using it to achieve incredible feats of destruction.It's like in Macross VF-X2, when Mariafokina Barnrose beats a VF-19 in her VF-1X through superior piloting skill. Actually, there's a straightforward official answer to that one... which is one of the very first things said about the Queadluun-Rhea in Macross Chronicle.Y'see... the UN Forces kept a bunch of Queadluun-Rau units in service after the First Space War ended. The reason the Queadluun-Rhea came to be was that, after two decades of beating on their limited supply of Queadluun-Rau units, they had essentially run out of repair parts to keep the fleet in service. They captured and restored the factory satellite as best they could, and General Galaxy was awarded a contract to develop a derivative of the Queadluun-Rau more in line with the UN Forces' design ethos on survivability and defensive ability. One way they dealt with Zentradi who weren't comfortable integrating fully into human civilization was to offer them military service with the NUNS Marines, so they needed to keep the Marines supplied with gear they'd feel comfortable using. From Delta, they've clearly made similar improvements to the Regult and Glaug series battle pods as well. Actually, the VF-XX is also a Family 2 design. It was initially the prototype for the integration of advancements recovered from the Flemenmik factory satellite, but was approved for service on its own merits during testing.(I hesitate to use the word "Generation" to describe the odd development pace in Macross II's timeline. It comes in fits and starts, rather than in smooth progression.) That's not even all of them.In Macross II's timeline it's strongly indicated that the Zentradi and Meltrandi forces have a LOT of equipment that didn't appear in the original TV show and DYRL movie. In some cases, it appears to be that some fleets just use somewhat different mecha from each other or that some fleets have lost the ability to manufacture certain types of mecha. In the notable case of the Migg Pitt, that's something Quamzin's people developed on their own, independent of a factory satellite.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I would assume that, like the VF-1 when carrying RMS-1's or UUM-7's, the answer is "they don't".
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'm not so sure that's a matter of "military realism"... I think that probably has a lot more to do with the way that, from Macross Plus and Macross 7 on, the rank and file soldiers were increasingly "out of focus" in Macross shows. If you look at the main Macross 7 series, the rank and file UN Spacy fighters are all unifom and completely indistinguishable from one another... but the minute a main character is flying one as that character's main ride (e.g. Milia's VF-11C in TOP GAMLIN) suddenly the hero paintjobs are back. The same thing happened to Diamond Force. You had the mook VF-17 (white stripe), the "not quite a mook" one flown by Gamlin with a distinctive stripe (blue or yellow), and the full hero colors treatment for Milia's. The hero colors were back in full force when they upgraded to the VF-22 as well... the stock unit is navy blue, but Max's was powder blue, Milia's was red, and Gamlin's was a dark cyan. Macross Zero did hero colors too. Shin's VF-0A and VF-0D had dramatically different color schemes from the stock models seen in other scenes, and of course Roy's was one of a kind. The same deal is all over the in-continuity video games as well. Giving the unnamed mooks identical or low-detail aircraft is just a way to cut down on the burden of animating aircraft that are only around to go kaboom. It's especially helpful in computer animation, since they can just copy-paste the same damn CG model as many times as necessary... be it a dozen or a hundred. In Macross Zero, where they put a canopy name stencil on the mook model, this inadvertantly led to close-ups making it appear that the same guy (or maybe identical sextuplets who held the same rank) died five or six times in the OVA. I would be prepared to bet money that if we ever manage to get a story where the main cast belongs to the actual military again, we'll see military aircraft with hero paintjobs again.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yep! It's the single-seater version of the VF-0D, a few of which were made for evaluation by the UN Marine Corps. IIRC the only picture of the damn thing outside the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix book is a Tenjin Hidetaka painting done for a model kit.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... tough call. 1. Takachihof VF-2SS Valkyrie II 2. Stonewell/Bellcom VF-4A Lightning III 3. Stonewell/Bellcom VF-1S Valkyrie (DYRL type) 4. Shinsei/LAI YF-30 Chronos 5. Shinsei/LAI YF-25 Prophecy 6. General Galaxy VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX 7. Surya VF-31A Kairos 8. Shinsei VF-19A Excalibur 9. Shinsei VF-11C Thunderbolt III 10. Stonewell/Northrop Grumman VF-0C Phoenix As a side note, I've noticed my preferences mostly coincide with the rides of characters I particularly like. Sylvie Gena, Hikaru Ichijo, Roy Focker, Leon Sakaki, Chelsea Scarlett, Alto Saotome, Aegis Focker, and Mina Forte. Nobody of any import flies the VF-31A or VF-0C yet.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Stick around, it seems like every time I go looking for something in one book I'll end up finding four unrelated but interesting details I wasn't looking for... like how I noticed the thing about the VF-31 being 2-3 years from NUNS service in the Brisingr Alliance while I was looking for some exact words on the exact differences in equipment between the Kairos and Siegfried. Oh, OK...I see where you were going with that. Yeah, the official spec has the VF-25 and VF-27's fixed-forward gunmounts on the outside of the main engine's intake as modular equipment. Initially they were Mauler 25mm beam machine gun systems, and were replaced with Remmington 25mm high-speed machine guns using enhanced armor-piercing ammo late in the Vajra war. Actually, that got me thinking...The VF-31's heavy quantum beam gunpod doesn't seem to have the "beam grenade" mode from the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30 versions of the gunpod. I wonder if the designers at Surya Aerospace chose a model of gunpod without that function to adjust for the fact that the production model VF-31 Kairos is only powered by its two Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. The fighters that do have beam grenade mode for their beam gunpods have two extra engines and/or a fold wave or fold dimensional resonance system supplying them with additional power from fold space. The custom VF-31s from Xaos Valkyrie Works have a fold wave system, so Delta Flight may be capable of equipping a gunpod that can use beam grenade mode... The ordinance container is modular, but I don't believe we've seen one in the Delta Flight aresenal that is a missile container like the YF-30's. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, but it may interfere with the ability to also take the gun pod, since the missile container seems to be a bit bigger than the standard one Xaos uses. At your service! Seems that way, yeah. I did an analysis of the design back when (IIRC it was RedWolf) specs first came to light for the VF-31 Siegfried. The VF-31 seems to be a lighter, but faster, aircraft than the VF-25. In light of now knowing it's a few years away from being the NUNS next main VF in Brisingr's forces, that bears out the theory that Brisingr is a bit stingy or possibly cash-strapped. Dat was me who originally mentioned it, mon.The YF-28 is something alluded to in Macross the Ride, when characters ruminate on Macross Galaxy's illicit acquisition of the YF-29 specs... which they ultimately used to refine their final design for the VF-27. Whether they ever actually built a YF-28 is anyone's guess, it was believed to be the same kind of "hypervariable fighter" as the YF-29, though that may simply be pilot rumors getting around. Nein... but six underwing pylons and two additional pylons on the wing glove is nothing to sneeze at. We didn't list it on M3 because it's an aircraft that may or may not actually exist. It's in-universe hearsay in Macross R, and its existence is not confirmed or denied. (Helpful, right? >_<)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Unfortunately, that's just how Kawamori seems to have written it. Pretty demonstrably untrue in many Macross titles, but hey... Overall complexity went down significantly in the 5th Generation thanks to the introduction of the linear actuator transformation system... it's not an issue for modern VFs of the 2050's and beyond. Plus, the modularity of those weapons systems was considered a significant asset, allowing the fighter to tailor the internal weapons to the situation as well as the external ones.Weight also isn't really an issue... honestly, it hasn't really been an issue since thermonuclear reaction turbine engines were first introduced. Thrust-to-weight ratios in the first few generations of variable fighters were double a modern jet fighter's. In the 4th Generation, thrust-to-weight ratios for most VFs exceeded 10.0, with the VF-171 being the only odd man out (until its -EX upgrade). The 5th Generation VFs have thrust-to-weight ratios that start over 39.0 and go up as high as 61.164. Now that VF development and procurement is decentralized, some technological choices are a matter of the individual discretion of the fleet or world doing the development... but the Brisingr Alliance is not well-off financially, so they seem to be cutting corners on their 5th Generation VF. Most of the bells and whistles are pretty much standard across the galaxy, however. To be fair, the pilot isn't the one pointing anything... body posture it all controlled by the airframe control AI, so what seems easy and natural for a body with a human range of articulation is more limited than what the VF can actually do. The separate guns also have an advantage that they can be aimed independently of the arms, which allows the fighter to employ those guns and the gun pod at the same time too.(The most blatant use of the VF-19's wing glove guns is in Macross 30.) No, my statement was not false. We're shown the railguns firing so fast that it's essentially impossible to tell how fast they're firing, and gunpods are variable rate-of-fire in Macross... with rates as low as 60-120rpm or upwards of 1,200.Also, they're not coilguns. They're explicitly identified as railguns. So... it's fun technical tidbit time again!Y'see... in Macross, overtechnology materials did wonderful things for even relatively conventional things like rotary cannons. The humble GU-11A is chucking those 55mm High-Explosive Anti-ECA shells downrange at 2km/s, and it was one of the slower muzzle velocities among OTM-based large-caliber cannons in the First Space War. That's hypersonic, and for Macross it's on the slow side. The Defender's Type-966 PFG Contraves guns were lobbing their 78mm shells downrange at 3.3km/s. The "New Standard" gun pods of the VF-19 and the VF-22 were chucking their HEACA rounds downrange at 4km/s. To wreak that kind of unholy havoc on a modern variable fighter with kinetic force alone, you need an ultradense shell that's moving at ~6.2km/s+. In all likelihood the VF-31's railguns are achieving something more in line with an existing gun pod (~4km/s) instead, meaning it's highly probable they use the specialized explosive rounds intended for defeating energy conversion armor. Ordinarily with a railgun firing a solid slug, you expect a tiny entrance wound and a large exit wound. Hayate's railguns were gouging craters out of the armor of Uroh's Draken, seemingly close to the surface... which would point to them using explosive rounds. I believe you may have missed my point... almost completely, it seems.You originally asserted that the addition of a beam gun pod invalidated the need for medium or long-range missiles on the Kairos and Siegfried. When I replied, I pointed out Kawamori had indicated the lack of medium or long-range missiles was nothing to do with the beam gunpod and purely a tactical call by Xaos in their belief in saving Var-afflicted troops and not representative of how a Kairos would be operated by the NUNS. The problem with the railguns is that, as the default gun system for fighter mode, they have limited ammunition... something beam weapons that normally do that job don't have to worry about. They don't seem to offer any advantage in performance over more traditional options. The beam gunpod mounted out on the ordinance container also has some severe limitations... the gunpod's line of fire is obstructed in fighter mode (it has to drop down to fire), and the VF-31 can't deploy the container in a high-speed dogfight to use it as a turret. It can only do so during low-speed flight. The VF-31 suffers because it has only the railguns for direct-fire weaponry at close range in fighter mode... where almost every other VF can bring laser or beam cannons and the gun pod to bear at the same time. Chainguns? I'm gonna assume you mean "beam machine guns". Unlike the beam gun pod of the VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30, the VF-31's beam gun pod has not demonstrated any increased-firepower mode for anti-ship use. The gun may not possess the capability. (Poss. a cost-saving move.) That's premature. We don't know how many missiles the VF-31 actually carries under normal conditions. The leg-mounted micro-missile launchers don't appear very capacious... certainly not as much so as the YF-29's, and the missile compartment in the back of the legs looks to be no bigger than the VF-19's.A "huge" payload would be over a hundred missiles internally or pylon-mounted... and it isn't looking like the VF-31 is gonna get there. But at the expense of operational endurance... which is not an issue for the other 5th Generation fighters to date.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    OTM laser and beam machine gun systems are inexpensive and fairly compact, so the increase in airframe size that began in the late 3rd Generation removed a lot of design constraints from the engineering teams developing new VFs. They had enough space that they could easily afford to fit a dedicated gun for the fighter to use in dogfights without compromising the rest of the design.Mind you, it's been shown that the VF-19, VF-25, etc. can bring those guns to bear fairly easily in battroid mode given a target of similar size. Those gun systems aren't really meant for use against miclone-sized targets, but then I could say that of any weapon mounted on a VF. True, but the VF-31's railguns are depicted with a high rate of fire... so it's going to consume ammunition at a significant rate. Its bore is pretty large, so that's going to limit the amount of ammo it can carry as well. Considering the mess the VF-31's railguns made of Uroh's Sv-262, it seems like they're firing Anti-ECA rounds instead of an inert kinetic slug. The VF-31's hands don't retract into the arms, but the arms are not especially large and there are other things that also need to occupy space in the arms as well. Power supply cabling and data bus cables for the hand and the gun, as an example. There's also going to have to be a cooling system to keep the railgun from overheating (you can't air cool in space), and all the moving parts which enable the gun to rotate and stay connected to the ammo feed.Compared to a laser cannon, beam machine gun, or converging energy cannon, all of which would have effectively limitless endurance as long as the engines are running and/or the capacitors are charged, it seems like an odd choice to make the VF-31's dogfighting gun a weapon that can run out of ammo. There's an unspoken asterisk on your remark here... you're not personally aware of a Macross title depicting Queadluun-Raus being shot down by rookies, but just because you haven't seen a thing doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It happened fairly often in the Macross II timeline titles and in the First Space War. Zentradi haven't been antagonists very often in the main timeline, but several titles like Macross R and Macross 30 point to Q-Rau units in the hands of a top ace being on par with a 4th Generation VF at best, but one in the hands of an average pilot is well within the reach of an older generation VF... in no small measure because, like all Zentradi mecha, it's armored like a cream slice. As far as every Queadluun-Rau pilot being an ace, that's questionable. Female Zentradi were made to be pilots with better g-force resistence, but as pilots the actual quality varies from individual to individual. If we take the remarks about the YF-29 being an attempt to surpass the YF-24's performance at face value, the VF-24 must be an absolute monster (as discussed earlier). He didn't seem to have any problem getting individualized paintjobs on the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus. I think it's more a case of Macross having come down with a bit of an anti-authoritarian streak since Macross 7. The military have to follow laws and rules and regulations, whereas a fictional PMC with limitless funding is magically exempt from that and can play at being allies of justice without encumberances like the chain of command or politics.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Noticed something interesting and relevant while I was looking over Great Mechanics G for the differences between the VF-31A/B Kairos and VF-31C/E/F/J/S Siegfried... One of the things Kawamori mentions while discussing the differences (or rather, lack thereof) between the VF-31 mass production type and VF-31 Xaos custom type is that the VF-31 family is, in his view, about 2-3 years (in-universe) from being commissioned. It seems like there may be something to my earlier theory that Xaos is carrying out the field testing on the VF-31 prior to its adoption by the Brisingr Alliance NUNS the same way the SMS Frontier branch office was doing with the VF-25 prior to its adoption by the Frontier fleet's NUNS in Macross Frontier. That, of course, carries with it the slightly obnoxious plot device that, since the war began before the new fighter could be adopted by the NUNS, it's down to the special snowflakes from the PMC doing the testing to do all the fighting.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    The date of publication is 27 May 1984.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The flyaway cost for a VF-1 was originally given as $126 million (2008) in the Sky Angels VF tech manual, from a $50 billion development project.I would assume the VF-27 is probably several times that expensive.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-11 has a gun pointing forward in fighter mode... it's a high-powered 30mm rotary cannon firing Anti-ECA shells. It's an extraordinarily effective weapon. The VF-31's forearm guns are impractical for their own reasons, being that the gun has to rotate 180 degrees to remain usable and being a railgun firing high velocity hard rounds means the weapon's ammunition is aggressively limited by its mounting out on the forearm. Energy weapons would've been more practical, given that they won't run out of ammo. (Xaos is sort of saved in this respect because their engagements are necessarily short.) Um, no.I'm gonna go ahead and operate on the assumption you're not super familiar with the in-depth details of Macross's tech setting. No problem with that, as there's that language barrier. We're here and happy to help lend clarity. There are four types of energy weaponry in the Macross setting. You're familiar with lasers, and particle beams, and plasma weapons. The forearm gun mounts on the VF-22 belong to the fourth family... dimensional weapons, which are also known as super dimension energy weapons or heavy quantum weapons. To produce their destructive effects, these weapons use an exotic form of matter called heavy quantum which exists simultaneously in fold space and our three-dimensional universe. When heavy quantum is excited with a resonance fold, it can drop completely into three-dimensional space... where its mass is so huge that its own gravity will crush it until it fuses. This principle is employed in beam weapons in one of three ways: Heavy quantum reaction cannons excite masses of heavy quantum until the gravity compresses it past the fusion threshold, and focuses the resulting fusion explosion into a hypervelocity beam of fusion plasma made of impossible extradimensional matter. The shot carries incredible kinetic force and heat, a one-two punch so nasty that in many cases a near miss is sufficient to inflict significant damage. This type of weapon goes by a bunch of different names, to reflect the different ways the heavy quantum is focused. This form is the most common type, ubiquitous in starship beam turrets, the colossal "main gun" type applications (e.g. the Macross Cannons of the Battle-class), and in the 4th Generation and later VFs for built-in guns and coaxial guns. Heavy quantum cannons stop short of exciting the heavy quantum into fusing with itself and instead use the fold effect of lob a bolt of super-high mass heavy quantum downrange where the impossible mass moving at speed conveys a kinetic punch that makes the heaviest depleted uranium shell feel distinctly inadequate. This type of weapon is a newer development, used on the gunpods of the VF-27, YF-29, YF-30, and VF-31, the VF-25's Tornado Pack, and also on the SMS Macross Quarter's main gun. Micro-Dimension Eater beam weaponry utilizes a unique form of heavy quantum that can only be produced using fold quartz. The mass is so impossibly huge that it produces a fold effect around itself and collapses back into fold space. It's essentially firing a beam made up of micro black holes which crush the matter they encounter and draw it into fold space. This weapon is one that was developed during the Vajra war, and was employed in the YF-29's turret, in the VF-27's gunpod, and the VF-171EX's beam cannon. The VF-22's forearm guns are in the "Heavy Quantum reaction cannon" type, and use fold effects to fire beams of extradimensional fusion plasma. The official material supports my point, and mentions the Rhea/56 model has basically pushed the enhanced design to its limits... to the point where it needed extra bolt-on propellant tanks, a more potent reactor, and a control system redesign. There's nothing to indicate the Q-Rau is anything like as uber as you contend that it is. We've seen that Q-Raus piloted by elite top aces are equal to the capabilities of VFs piloted by elite top aces, but there's no indication that fodder-piloted units exhibit "game-breaking" performance. "Railguns" is what the official material calls them, so that's what they are. I'd expect overtechnology materials have solved the barrel wear problem that plagues modern railguns decades before Macross Delta, given that some overtechnology materials have been described as being 100 times as resilient as steel at any given thickness (or better).Edit: The third section sounded a bit snarky on review, so I've revised it to the helpful tone I intended. Sorry for that.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    That's hard (impossible) to say... given that we don't know how much energy a fold wave or fold dimensional resonance system produces in dimensional energy conversion. Several gigawatts, at least, but we have no frame of reference to compare the two.The only acknowledged area of difference between a fold wave system and a fold dimensional resonance system is that the latter, when activated, lets the VF it was mounted in fly straight through fold fault barriers. (Which, when you think about it, would be a huge asset in Macross Delta.) You implied a casual relationship between the VF-11 having no built-in forward gun and the VF-14's VF-4-style beam cannons. Considering the ones in the VF-22 are converging energy cannons, and therefore are using basically the same technology as the VF-31's gunpod, I'd say calling it "unimportant" is a grave misjudgment. (As to how they engineer those, given that they're converging energy cannons, a few different possibilities present themselves... possibly as simple as setting the directionality of the resonance fold effect exciting the heavy quanta, or a deflection field may be put at one end of the barrel to contain the reaction. A more complex answer might be one power supply which feeds two barrels installed back to back.) Half-correct.The latest-model Queadluun-Rhea (Rhea/56) has maneuverability performance that is only moderately overshadowed by the low end of what 5th Generation Variable Fighters can do... but it's worth remembering that's the very latest model the Rhea has, and that the Rhea itself is a significant improvement over the Q-Rau model it replaced in terms of engine power, maneuverability, armament, etc. Your comparison's a based on a bit of a faulty assumption, I'm afraid. The VF-19 and VF-22 certainly seemed to be at least on par with Queadluun-Rau units in Macross 7, and they're certainly a hell of a lot more defensible. (The Q-Rau's what you'd call a glass cannon, which is one reason the New UN Forces insisted the reproduction plan General Galaxy led include improved defensive capability and survivability for the operator.) At this juncture, it may be wise to briefly digress to talk about the actual defense procurement situation in the New UN Government in the late 2050's and 2060's.After being reorganized into the New UN Government and New UN Forces, a lot of the government and military's power were devolved to the individual fleets and planets that were member states of that government. Kawamori has, in the past, compared the New UN Government to something more along the lines of the EU... the individual member nations have a good deal more autonomy in governing and maintaining their own militaires than they did before. Those local militaries maintained by the individual fleets and planets are still called the "New UN Forces", but they're kind of like a militia or national guard reserve, while the "real" New UN Forces are the federal forces maintained by the central New UN Government to keep the peace. The individual local governments more or less have a free hand to decide how they're going to arm their forces. Some go with monkey model versions of the federal forces main VF that they buy (or buy rights to produce) from Earth's government. Some went in for an all-Ghost air force in an effort to take the risk to human(oid) life and limb out of the picture. Some (very foolish) had gone full pacifist. Several governments have gone in for developing some new VFs of their own based on the specs shared by the New UN Government, and the fleets and worlds that do that usually seem to have a plan to sell their new toy to their allies. These fleets and local government forces aren't small by any means, and since VFs are the default currency of defense even the smaller production runs done for main fighters would be massive by today's standards. They made over 5,400 VF-1 Valkyries in seven years... that's more VF-1 Valkyries than the USAF has planes of all stripes, and that was one of the smallest production runs. Your typical medium-sized emigrant fleet fields over 2,400 variable aircraft... no small feat in itself, but a large fleet like Macross Frontier or Galaxy could have a military escort fleet five times the size. A "small" production run to supply a single large-scale emigrant fleet's forces could still number a good ten thousand fighters. We do know, however, that the VF-27 was far from the only fighter flown by the Macross Galaxy corporate army... but we also know Macross Galaxy weren't the only ones building them. Uroboros Hunter's Guild chairwoman Mei Ririon had a VF-27 for her personal use in 2060. Officially, they're railguns... but that makes them kinetic energy weapons. Technically the beam gun is too, since it's firing a beam of heavy quantum, which relies on kinetic energy to deal damage. You're drawing a conclusion based on an assumption.Per Kawamori in the 2016 Spring issue of Great Mechanics G, the reason the Xaos forces are armed pretty much exclusively with short-range weaponry is because their tactics focus on recovering pilots sticken with Var syndrome instead of killing them from afar. That's all that is. (Though Messer apparently did not get the memo about not killing.) As far as the number of hardpoints, it's a safe bet it's meant to have four... and the art department just screwed up. The Siegfried custom version and the YF-30 both have four. (Mind you, the VF-31A/B type also has missile bays in the legs instead of multidrones, so there's that too.) The wings have never been dead weight... they contain fuel tanks, cooling systems, verniers, and other important things. That's handled by the super-AI avionics, not the pilot... so probably not an issue. The VF-25 was deployed on multiple worlds by 2060 as well... SMS Sephira had VF-25s in Macross 30.
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