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".

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.

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.

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.

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? >_<)

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.

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.

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.

The date of publication is 27 May 1984.

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.

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.

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.

Exactly what's going on with the crater at Scarfell isn't clear (yet), since normally dimension eater warheads don't leave behind a space-time disruption like that. I would guess that there may have been more ruins at Carlyle, and what we're seeing in the crater is the severed energy conduits that connect ruins to the planet's core. Going over your post here in detail... I won't say you're completely wrong, but you're darn close to it. Almost every factoid you cited is incorrect. This is mostly incorrect.The UN Forces originally planned to adopt the winning design from the Project Super Nova competition as their next main variable fighter. The decision that the UN Forces brass made to go with an unmanned fighter instead came along at the last minute, a decision that was rescinded almost as quickly thanks to an unpleasant PR fiasco caused by some monstrously irresponsible (illegal) stuff the Venus Sound Factory did that led to Sharon Apple going berserk and taking control of the AIF-X-9 Ghost prototype in 2040. The YF-19 was declared the winner of Project Super Nova and slated to become the next main fighter of the UN Forces... but its adoption, and that of the special forces VF-22, was pulled due to several factors: The YF-19 and YF-21 independently penetrating Earth's defenses made the UN Government uneasy about the idea of such powerful aircraft being in widespread use. Arms export restrictions were tightened as a result, limiting the ability of emigrant fleets and private military contractors to purchase and employ the VF-19 and VF-22 in their forces. Emigrant fleets and PMCs could only employ an assortment of reduced-capability variants ("Monkey Models") in relatively tiny numbers, effectively demoting the VF-19 to a second Special Forces VF model alongside the VF-22. The high maneuverability of the VF-19 and VF-22 exceeded the endurance of average pilots, which caused numerous accidents and crashes during simulated air combat maneuver training with the new fighters early in their adoption by the UN Forces. Consequentially, plans to use the fighters for their rank-and-file pilots were scrubbed because of the loss of control problem. Shinsei put out several refinements to the VF-19 in an attempt to address this problem in the 2nd Mass Production type (VF-19F/S), but ultimately never succeeded in its goal of making the VF-19 an aircraft average pilots could handle easily. That led to the UN Government soliciting bids for a replacement... a contract that ended up awarded to General Galaxy for the VF-171. The VF-19 and VF-22 had a high purchase cost and relatively high cost of maintenance, making them unattractive for operation in large numbers. At no point have the engines, weapons, etc. been identified as factors in its being passed over for adoption by the (New) UN Forces. Indeed, the same style of engines and weapons were used in the VF-17 and VF-171. Whooboy, WRONG.The YF-24 Evolution was the Earth/Federal New UN Forces' planned 5th Generation Main Variable Fighter, the replacement for the 4th Gen VF-171. Under galaxy law its specs were shared (after some censorship) with the emigrant fleets and the colonized planets of the reorganized New UN Government could develop their own 5th Generation VFs independently. The YF-25, YF-26, YF-27, YF-29, and YF-30 were all developed from the YF-24 by individual emigrant fleets or planets. Some, like the 25, 26, and 27, were the intended replacements for the VF-171 for their respective fleets (the Frontier, Olympia, and Galaxy fleets respectively), while others (YF-29 and YF-30) were technology demonstrators and proof-of-concept aircraft. On paper, all but the YF-30 were developed with the goal of being able to successfully oppose Vajra in an armed conflict... and all but the YF-29 and YF-30 were intended to be a mass-production main variable fighter to replace the VF-171. From Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25, the YF-25, YF-26, and YF-27 were all developed for the same inter-fleet joint development program known as Project Triangler. The winning design was to become the main fighter of all 3 fleets, but Macross Galaxy backed out of it in favor of the VF-27 they'd made illicit improvements to using stolen data and illegally pushed into production and Macross Olypmia and Frontier declared the YF-25 the winner. As Macross Frontier indicated, the VF-25 was in operational evaluation prior to its adoption as the new main fighter of the Macross Frontier fleet in 2059. The Master File writeup indicates that the VF-25 was in service in large numbers by 2065. The VF-25 was arguably the most versatile, but it was also the lowest overall performer of the completed 5th Generation designs to date. The advances you're crediting solely to the VF-25 are present on ALL 5th Generation VFs. Nothing in any official source credits the VF-25 itself with being tempermental, only the Tornado Pack itself. *sigh* Wrong again.The Frontier fleet New UN Spacy built a limited number of VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX units as a stopgap measure to improve their fleet of VF-171's, since SMS had run off with most of the low rate initial production block VF-25s... the Nightmare Plus EX was only deployed to elite pilots. The VF-25 was still planned to be the fleet's official next main fighter once it entered mass production... and, as Master File has it, did so after the war ended, becoming the main fighter of several emigrant fleets including Frontier and Olympia, and also used by planetary defense forces on Sewell and other worlds. This particular point exists pretty much entirely in your head, I'm afraid. Um... so, I'm assuming you weren't aware that the Shinsei VF-11 Thunderbolt III and General Galaxy VF-14 Vampire were rival designs developed at the same time? The connection you're inferring doesn't exist.Much like the VF-19 and VF-22, the VF-11 and VF-14 were developed at the same time as candidates for the next main fighter to replace the VF-4. The Project Nova competition ended in a victory for the VF-11, which became the next main VF of the UN Forces. The VF-14 still found a market for itself with emigrant planets out on the galactic frontier thanks to its space cruising performance. ... lolwut?You HAVE seen the VF-22, right? That also has forearm-mounted guns and shields, and it's literally modeled on the Queadluun-Rau in both stylistic and technological terms. The VF-22 has the Q-Rau's inertia vector control system protecting the pilot from g-forces, and its battroid mode is a dead ringer for the Queadluun-Rau it was modeled on. ... you do know that all of the 5th Generation VFs are using technologies that were previously tested in other prototypes, right? The YF-24 validated the ISC and EX-Gear and a bunch of other stuff. The VF-27's BDI was validated on both the YF-21 and VF-22HG, etc. etc.You're making a grand declaration that has no actual basis in fact. ... you missed the memo that modular radomes have been a thing for two full fighter generations by this point? Even the RVF-171 is literally just a VF-171 with an Aegis Pack mounted. The Kairos is late to the party, being at best the fourth 5th Generation VF to be in mass production. Depending on when the VF-24 went into production, that would make the VF-27 the first or second, the VF-25 the third, and the VF-31 the fourth.To date, the only 5th Generation VF identified as unsuitable for mass production is the YF-29... due to the monstrous costs involved in securing sufficient fold quartz to build the fold wave system and other related technologies. I'm also unsure why you're praising the Kairos for abandoning kinetic weapons when it still maintains two solid ammo cannons on the forearms. We're certainly not seeing the Kairos being used to its best advantage either, given that Xaos is less a real PMC and more a glorified bodyguard detail for the members of Walkure. They're distinctly under-armed compared to a military unit.

IMO, it's pretty clear Xaos (official subs spelling) was an unholy mess even with Messer and Mikumo at the top of their game... they're not a super-elite unit, they're the Wal-Mart of mercenaries. Name-dropping Messer will always fall flat. Kaname may care about him, but it's almost impossible for the audience to because his one character trait is that the stick up his ass had a stick up its ass.

I'm having trouble remembering exactly which sheet, but IIRC in Chronicle the Birdman the Protoculture left behind on Earth had a synthetic fold quartz-based power system (probably a dimensional energy conversion system)... It's highly probable that most of the fold quartz in the Protoculture ruins is fold quartz the Protoculture produced themselves rather than hunting the Vajra, whom they allegedly revered.

I did, just a few hours ago.

The Vajra hive encountered by the Macross Frontier fleet has folded off to parts unknown, but they may not be the only Vajra hive in the Milky Way galaxy. Vajra were encountered by SMS in 2060 on Uroboros, and the Frontier series notes that there are Vajra hives located out in other galaxies as well (and they do migrate for mating).Such as it is, if you cross the incredibly suicidal approach of "let's hunt Vajra" off a fold quartz shopping list, the two remaining options to humanity are to pillage worlds where there are large amounts of fold quartz left behind by Vajra hives (as on the former Vajra world the Frontier fleet settled) or by the Protoculture in ruins, or finding a way to synthesize it as the ancient Protoculture did. Synthesizing fold quartz may be a ways off, but it seems that a lot of planets with ruins do indulge in pillaging those ruins for fold quartz. As far as fold boosters go, it's only the "super" fold booster that uses fold quartz. In the overwhelming majority of applications, the material of choice is fold carbon: the low purity synthetic equivalent used in practically every piece of Human and Zentradi overtechnology to implement super dimension physics. Humanity can synthesize fold carbon in industrial quantities, so there's no obstacle to building as many fighters and fold boosters as the budget will permit. Fold Quartz, however, is both a scarce and restricted material, so the construction of fighters and systems that depend on fold quartz is not as sustainable in large numbers for reasons of cost, material scarcity, and legal restrictions.

Strictly speaking, that's a 3-mode variable fighter that's been stripped down and disarmed in a more literal sense than usual for air racing... it's not 2-mode by design.It's debatable whether the Neo Glaug counts, since that's an unmanned VA-110 Variable Glaug, which was a three-mode VF. (It's also a case of the design history being backward, since the Neo Glaug appeared first, production-wise, IIRC.) Nah, nothing so fancy... just a crazy R&D engineer whose love of giant robots led him to start hunting down, importing, and translating Macross books and other stuff back in '01. I do the backend web hosting stuff and some book-hunting, translation, and technical consultation for Mr March's Macross Mecha Manual when I'm not playing mad scientist at my day job.

Thus far, we've been presented with information about most of the branches of the (New) UN Forces... and all indications are that they mostly use the same equipment, though it seems like the planetside defense forces have largely taken a backseat to the space forces given the space-based focus of war. ... since when? We see, right in the original series, that the UN Forces began producing the Regult for their own use shortly after capturing the Esbeliben AWDAP facility from the Zentradi. General Global himself toured the production line not long after its capture. Even Macross the Ride mentions (New) UN Forces-use Regults, and Frontier's backstory material mentions the (New) UN Forces keeping several other types of Zentradi mecha in service for decades after the war. Arguably... though it's worth noting that they were also not particularly successful designs, and weren't (New) UN Forces designs either. That's pretty much the trajectory of the destroid family's decline. Initially, they were developed for surface-based planetary defense on the assumption that the enemy would want to land troops and hold terrain. When the final battle of the First Space War rather explosively put that notion to rest, the destroid's operational role was reduced to shipboard air defense and policing rogue Zentradi on Earth's surface. From there, the destroids basically lost that last niche when the UN Spacy's stealth warship designs went into service and they got replaced by more cost-effective and stealthy integrated point-defense guns and missile launchers. The ships just aren't big enough for destroids to have any practical advantage over the less expensive fixed emplacements. From then on, the remaining destroids were quietly surplussed out of service and became construction equipment, or fell into the hands of anti-government forces. As far as 2-mode variable craft, there are a few of those. The Feios Valkyrie from Macross VF-X and Macross VF-X2 is one. There's also the VF-X-3 Medusa from Macross: Remember Me, and the Macross II OVA's VC-079 Civilian Valkyrie and VF-XX Zentradi Valkyrie. Usually it's GERWALK mode that gets jettisoned, with the VC-079 being the sole exception I know of. It has no Battroid mode instead.

You've got some false assumptions in here, so that may be part of why... Valkyries are expensive, yes... but they're also markedly more versatile than Destroids, and at least as resilient (if not more so). Properly equipped, they can also bring much more firepower to bear. I'll confess I have no idea where you've come up with the idea that Valkyries are not suited for extended periods of land warfare. Not only is Battroid mode explicitly and repeatedly identified as a mode intended for land warfare use in practically every Macross publication to discuss the three-mode configuration, there's nothing to indicate that they aren't perfectly suited to operating on the ground for as long as their fuel holds out (hundreds of hours). We've seen plenty of examples of VFs acting as ground forces in Macross, especially for patrol and security purposes going all the way back to the original series. Macross Delta's titular main unit even uses a VF specifically optimized for ground combat inside cities. Actually, until Macross Frontier and Macross Delta showed us emigrant forces using refurbished old-model destroids for their ground forces, the general line was that Destroids had gone the way of the dinosaur and been replaced by Valkyries and more conventional armored fighting vehicles. It was only Macross II: Lovers Again that showed the UN Forces still using Destroids in the decades following the First Space War. If Destroids are still viable/practical for ground forces, one has to wonder why there have been no new models of destroid developed in the last half-century... and why airbases on planets seem to prefer using VFs for their ground patrols instead of destroids. The only times we've seen destroids in action in later decades was either as targets on the practice range, or damn near ancient models used by emigrant forces which chose them for special reasons... like Frontier wanting a mecha to operate inside its dome system without ruining the pavement. Al Shahal seems to have been the only world in the Brisingr cluster to use them, and they got pasted pretty damn quick by the Marines and their Zentradi mecha. Effective? Maybe. Effectively unnecessary? Pretty much. The problem with destroid practicality is that, for what the New UN Forces normally expects to fight, if the battle in space has been lost then the war is lost. The Zentradi won't bother with a planetary invasion, they just bombard the surface into a sterile desert and go about their business. Mecha in general aren't particularly well-suited to fighting miclone troops, so if they're fighting other human forces arriving from orbit that'll mean the most likely thing the enemy will send is... you guessed it... VFs. That makes VFs for ground troops more practical for defense, since they can intercept the enemy before they reach urban areas and fight equally well on the ground and in the air. Mobility is king on the Macross battlefield, and destroids just don't have that.

All righty... sitting down to view this one on the BIG screen. My vote is Negative. If I want a dustbin full of rambling, disjointed, nonsensical exposition upended into my face, I'll put on Metal Gear.

They already did the Sv-51 in the VF-0 book. Same here! I'm glad I waited to ship a bunch of other stuff... the Sazabi Master Archive, my Evolution Toy VF-2SS Faerie and Nex types, and now Master File.

The Mayan priestesses were for the purpose of maintaining (and, if necessary, activating) the Birdman, as stated in Macross Chronicle.

Maybe so, but its utility in the field is gonna be a lot lower than a Valkyrie's, and the cost'll be higher than the average Destroid's. The whole selling point of Destroids is that they're dirt cheap (old tech materials for the original series suggest the Mk.VI Tomahawk was only marginally more expensive than an inflation-adjusted M1 Abrams MBT) and therefore you can build loads of them. Well, that's actually the reason most Destroids went away... the niche they offered could be filled pretty easily by a VF, especially one equipped with an Armored Pack. The Konig Monster was pretty much the sole example of "we can't have a regular VF do this"... and SMS's attempts to make the Konig more battlefield-worthy for the 2050's was RUINOUSLY expensive, though undeniably effective. They gave it the same armor material as the VF-25's Armored Pack, which is so pricy that the stock VF-25 only uses it for the forearm shield and the Armored Pack itself is restricted to ace pilots only. The Super Defender aside, there was a terrorist group in Macross M3 that did that with an old Mk.II Monster series unit... they upgraded its reactor and equipped it with a barrier system to make it more resilient.

They build replacements using the manufacturing facilities and void docks that are part of the emigrant ship itself... and/or the resources of the dedicated factory ships that accompany some fleets, nearby factory satellites in New UN Forces hands, etc. It doesn't come up in the Macross 7 series proper, but the Macross-7's City-7 actually has dock space for THREE Battle-class carriers... the main dock on the prow, and two maintenance docks on the underside of the City ship. The accompanying factory ships are able to mine asteroids and refine materials to build pretty much anything, and are perfectly capable of constructing new warships of most classes from scratch in surprisingly short amounts of time. Depends on how badly the fleet gets mauled. Some fleets have been lost due to fold accidents or just plain fell off the map, and all the (New) UN Government and its military can really do is throw up their hands and go "Oh well". Fleets that are too badly mauled to continue operating independently can get merged into a nearby emigrant fleet that's still in fighting condition, or taken in by the nearest emigrant planet as happened with the survivors of Macross-5 after it was destroyed by the Varauta forces and rescued by Macross-7. If there's an enemy that they can retaliate against that destroys or cripples a fleet, the federal military may opt to send its own forces in or gather reinforcements from other nearby fleets and worlds to kick the teeth of the offending party in. In a couple cases of staggering good luck, a few fleets that have been downed by accidents have had the fortune to blunder right into an inhabitable planet anyway... like Supika III and Windermere. The technology is pretty much omnipresent... it's used for everything from VF-mounted beam weapons and gun pods right on up the line to the largest starship-mounted turrets and standalone cannons. It's mostly a question of scale. A large-scale super dimension energy weapon like a Macross Cannon is a big, unwieldy thing that takes a long time to charge, draws obscene amounts of power, has a significant downtime between shots for cooling, and takes up a hideous amount of space in your starship. Reaction weapons are, in most cases, a lot more efficient and versatile when you need an earth-shattering kaboom, so the truly huge super dimension energy cannons are made in relatively modest numbers for things like anti-fleet use because the size of the ship needed to accommodate a weapon of that size. That there was somebody, or more likely several somebodies, somewhere in the UN Spacy brass who reviewed Basara as a Project M candidate and said "this anti-authoritarian, autistic arsehole is exactly what we need to evaluate potential weaponizations of the Minmay Attack". Basara is just such a tosser that it's hard to believe ANYONE sanctioned Max giving him (via Ray) a state of the art fighter. Tough call. As a translator, I'd probably have to say it's the tech manuals for the various Macross titles. Those are written with such an obscene wealth of detail that you'd almost swear you could build a VF and make it halfway practical. They get into EVERYTHING, even the effect Overtechnology Materials (OTMat) had on the design of threaded fasteners used in the VF-1's construction.