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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Well... no, not in Macross Delta anyway. Using the VF-1 as a training aircraft for new pilots has been previously mentioned in a few places. Most recently in the Macross Frontier novelization, but also in a short story published in Macross Ace called "Actors Sky". In both, the variant used is a detuned-for-civilians version of the late block VF-1A designated VF-1C purchased by Mihoshi Academy for training new (young) pilots who may or may not actually join the military. I guess the logic behind it is that if you're going to stick a green civilian trainee in a Valkyrie for his first solo flight, you might as well make sure it's an aircraft that can be replaced cheaply instead of something with a price tag like the GDP of a small nation.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Hm... not being much of a toy/kit collector, I hadn't noticed the TomyTech kits show a second hardpoint on the forward-swept wing segment. Well, this is definitely a bit bizarre. I mean, I know that Macross Delta's VFs haven't really used anything pylon-mounted thus far, but ordinarily you'd expect the standard front-line combat version to be armed at least as well as the specialist model intended for sound warfare (and usually better). This appears to be an odd case of the reverse being true, since the Kairos uses the same ordinance container system as the Siegfried, despite apparently not needing/carrying multidrones, has two hardpoints instead of four, and is otherwise armed identically. I wonder why they lost the second pair of hardpoints that the YF-30 Chronos had on the outer wing... and why they're bothering with the energy projector when they would stand to benefit far more from something like the YF-30's missile container. (Answered my own question on the fold wave system via Chronicle... the bits on the outside of the aircraft are only peripherally associated with the fold wave system, so not having the glowy fold quartz bits on the outside near the monitor turret apparently doesn't rule out the possibility of the VF-31A/B Kairos having a fold wave system.)
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Can we preemptively tell Bandai to shut up and take our money?
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Possible, though since both "Advanced Energy Conversion Armor" and "Energy Conversion Armor II" are supposed to be different materials from the normal stuff, I'm inclined to suspect that the VF-31 is simply layering on the cheaper regular stuff like the YF-29 did because the advanced material was so bank-breakingly expensive that the VF-25 and VF-27 could only economically use it on their anti-projectile shields. It probably gave up a pair (or more) of hardpoints for that smaller forward-swept wing, kind of like the VF-19F/S did.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    's unusual, but not surprising, that the VF-31 isn't a huge leap forward vs. the fighters we've seen in previous shows. Macross Delta is the first time we've had a new Macross series without also technologically jumping forward at least one VF generation. The VF-31A/B Kairos and VF-31C/E/F/J/S Siegfried are further developments of the YF-30 Chronos, and the YF-30 was developed from the YF-24 spec. same as the YF-25 Prophecy, YF-27 Shahar, or YF-29 Durandal were. Its performance, with a thrust-to-weight ratio of 44.85, sits comfortably between that of the VF-25 and VF-27 without the assistance of its fold wave system. Well, not quite. This is somewhat different from the Overboost mode on older models of variable fighter with thermonuclear reaction turbine engines, which were just the (unsustainable?) "true maximum" output power of the engines. It seems like the feature may have gone away on the thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines, since at that point we started getting thrust in terms of just the maximum possible output. On the VF-31, the 1,875kN thrust figure is the maximum output the engines are capable of without the intervention of the fold wave system, which alters something about the thermonuclear reaction going on inside the engines (perhaps it's replacing the heavy quantum in the reactor with super heavy quantum?) which allows the engines to run at above their normal maximum performance. It also supplies the airframe with power via fold dimensional energy conversion, so the system may be allowing ALL of the energy from the reaction to go into thrust generation or something of that nature. It only yields a 15% improvement in output on the VF-31, but that's still 281.25kN per engine, which is nothing to sneeze at. Variable Fighter Master File and Variable Fighter Episode Archive both suggested that it would/should be by now... though their "not official setting" status means that has to be taken with a grain of salt until confirmed elsewhere, though it is practically a given (IMO) that the Macross Frontier NUNS forces have started to adopt the VF-25 by now.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah... any ship or fighter outfitted with a zero-time fold system or any fighter with a fold dimensional resonance system should be able to penetrate the dimensional fault around Windermere. I wonder if a fold wave system can do the same job, since it's a less refined version of the fold dimensional resonance system? It's a new make, apparently. The question there is "sensor window or something else". Fold quartz is pinkish, those are blue.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... but that Mach 5.5+ top (safe) speed is the aircraft's top speed at 10km (32,800ft), where the atmosphere is still relatively thick and thus aerodynamic heating of the airframe becomes a real concern. They can actually go much faster at that altitude, but without powering up the energy conversion armor and/or using the pin-point barriers they'd start overheating the fuselage and damaging the aircraft. The VF-27 could reach speeds in excess of Mach 9 by using the generator output of its four engines to run its energy conversion armor and barrier system at that altitude. The higher the altitude, the less of a concern aerodynamic heating becomes and the faster they can go... and we know the VF-31 is as capable of launching into a satellite orbit on its own, so its top speed must be at or above 7.9km/s. I think they stopped listing the top speed at higher altitudes because, really, if you can achieve an unboosted ceiling of satellite orbit you're traveling at least Mach 23. Yes, but I don't think it's been established if those are necessary for a fold wave system. The YF-29 had something very similar, but the YF-30 didn't and it was equipped with an enhanced version of the fold wave system. Hence my wondering...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Good point. I probably should've realized that, but for some reason my brain keeps latching onto just that goofy EX-Gear helmet Hayate has because he won't wear the normal one. As it says the fold quartz inserts are unique equipment for Delta Platoon, I'm still left with my most burning question half-answered... now that we know the specially-customized VF-31 Siegfried ver. has a fold wave system, I'm left wondering if the VF-31A/B Kairos also has the system. Probably not, but if it does then that would represent a HUGE leap forward in variable fighter capabilities in the 5th Generation. I'm also somewhat surprised that the forearm shields are made out of normal energy conversion armor rather than the advanced energy conversion armor that was used for the anti-projectile shields on the other 5th Gen VFs and in the VF-25 Armored Pack. I wonder if that'll be finessed in later, more detailed publications or if it's going to be just double-thickness conventional energy conversion armor running at higher power the way the YF-29 did (presumably as a cost save). Now THAT will be something to see... we've known that the 5th Generation VFs are capable of incredibly precise short-range fold jumps, because that was one of the two demonstrations that sold the New UN Forces on the YF-24 Evolution, but that's a level above anything the YF-24 Evolution ever did. (I wonder if that's inspired by Macross 30 using fold boosters as a "get out of dungeon free" card?)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    I should be able to oblige you on that front. I have the DX Chogokin toy, though it's stashed away in a closet since it's too damned big to fit in the display case I have.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Thanks for that. This should be an interesting analysis indeed. Basic Design: Sūrya Aerospace1 Renovated: Chaos Valkyrie Works2 Overall Length: 19.31m - that would make this, IIRC, the second biggest variable fighter behind the Sv-51. Overall Width: 14.14m - narrower than the VF-25 tho. Overall Height: 3.85m - without landing gear, obviously. At 15.33m to the top of the head, the VF-31's also one of the tallest battroids. Empty Mass: 8,525kg - 419kg heavier than the YF-30 Chronos prototype. Airframe Design Load: 29.5g - This is probably actually the ISC output limit, since the VF-19 had a structural g-limit of over 35g and this is substantially tougher. Engine: Shinsei/P&W/RR FF-3001/FC2 Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines - the same engine model used by the YF-30. Maximum output (space): 1,875kN - ... but apparently significantly detuned. The YF-30's FF-3001/FC2 engines were rated at 2,110kN. This can apparently be boosted 15% when the fold wave system is operating. That's 2,156.5kN, slightly more than the YF-30's base output. High Mobility Thrusters: P&W HMM-10A - a newer model than the YF-30's. Maximum Speed: Mach 5.5+ (at 10km, limited by the fuselage's thermal limits). - This has been pretty consistent on all 5th-Gen Valkyries. It's talking about how they also function as part of the wing surface in fighter mode. Very interesting... this is the first time in a while we've had a Valkyrie with a railgun as its main offensive gun system. Usually railguns are an optional or supplementary weapon, like the VF-25's sniper rifle, YF-25 Paladin Prophecy's blaze lance, or Queadluun-Alma's rail rifle. EDIT: Based on what's said in Great Mechanics G Spring 2016, it's likely that only the Delta Platoon's VF-31 Siegfried units have the fold wave system. The stock VF-31A Kairos doesn't seem to. 1. Sūrya is, or so Wikipedia assures me, the chief solar deity in Hinduism. 2. Obviously in this case, renovated for Hayate's use. I wonder if the other VF-31 Delta Platoon units are renovated models or if they're stock.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Books, plural... there are at least three that I'm aware of. I managed to obtain copies of them a while back thanks to the assistance of some very helpful and generous MacrossWorld-ers. They're not RPG books, though... they're "reference dojinshi" (effectively, fan-made technical manuals). I've only translated bits and pieces here and there, since we were more interested in the art when we first obtained them, but I found them to be reasonably well-written. They take a fair few liberties, invented a few new ship classes of their own, and missed some details from the shows themselves, but on balance it makes for an interesting read and good material if you happen to be finessing your own homebrew Macross RPG stats. ... and you're not familiar with the Five Star Stories? Boy are YOU missing out. That's a long-running science fantasy manga series by Mamoru Nagano, whose work you may also be familiar with from Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Brain Powered, and the Tekken game series. It recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, and is currently being serialized in Newtype magazine. If "bullet time Jedi with giant robots in a feudalistic spacefuture" sounds like your kind of thing, message me and I'll point you in the right direction. ... aaaaaaaactually, we do see them do this on a few occasions in the Macross Frontier series. It's a "blink and you'll miss it" thing, but it does happen. I'll get you a screen capture later later today. (It is, however, worth remembering that the 80 mecha maximum capacity is the number given for the Macross Quarter as a whole, not just ARMD-L... and that a fair number of those 80 mecha are Cheyenne II destroids that are stored elsewhere.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I answered this one on the previous page. Short version is "it depends on how big your ship is, how far you want to go, and how much juice you can spare". Al Shahal and Ragna are fairly close, being just 30 light years apart, so it shouldn't take long at all unless they end up in a fight with the Al Shahal NUNS fleet. It's only the long jumps, of hundreds or thousands of light years, that seem to require a significant charge-up.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    ... that's actually not new, we've seen that ability in play at least two or three times before. As with so many other technologies the Protoculture developed, dimensional fault barriers were almost certainly something they came up with by imitating the natural abilities of the Vajra. The Vajra Queen demonstrated the ability to produce a dimensional fault barrier of some substantial size during the final battle of the war between the Vajra and the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet (in the Macross Frontier series). The Birdman, which is believed to have been based on Vajra Queen anatomy, almost certainly possessed that ability as well and used it to contain the detonation of the thermonuclear reaction shells used in Operation Iconoclasm. The fully-functional Evil-series bio-weapon that Havamal recovered on Uroboros also was able to produce a dimensional fault barrier and Colonel Todo used that ability in an effort to prevent the combined SMS Uroboros and SMS Frontier forces from intervening in the weapon's activation (though the YF-30 was able to get through it using its fold dimensional resonance system). The Protodeviln may have also been capable of producing this type of barrier, and that may also explain the barrier produced by the Queadluun-Alma's Astral System, which was said to be able to repel fire from a Macross cannon. This is, at least, the first time we're seeing a starship capable of producing a dimensional fault barrier. I'm still holding out hope that Aether or Hemera will perform the long-overdue Macross Rocket Punch.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    That Thuverl Salan-class battleship was hovering over the parade ground at an army base on the outskirts of Shahal City... that's a bit different from flying a warship a few dozen meters over everyone's houses with the main engines pointing DOWN. Even if they know that it's perfectly safe, buzzing people's houses like that is definitely going to annoy or frighten people.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    That would be an unusually mundane explanation for this series, where it seems like even the most trivial things turn out to have great significance. I doubt that the Draken III has any kind of internal fold system... fold systems are just too big to do that, that's why they piggyback on the fold effects of their motherships. Strictly speaking, fold systems in Macross Delta and Macross Frontier work the exact same way that they did in the original series. It's just that the visual effect for entering and leaving higher dimension space has changed to the more fancy "portal" type we first saw at the beginning of SDF Macross episode 1 that was too expensive to animate every time until computers started doing the heavy lifting. Instead of the ship glowing like a lightbulb for a few seconds before vanishing abruptly, we now see it slowly vanish. The jumps were never instantaneous either, the very first one that gets explained in the series is mentioned to be a trip of close to an hour as Vrlitwhai's ship went to report to Boddole Zer. It's always been possible for folding ships to drag fighters or even other ships along with them. Obviously we first saw that in the original Macross series, and the first time it was done intentionally was in Macross II, when Sylvie tagged along inside the fold effect of Feff's Mardook picket ship to rescue Ishtar. The key bit to remember is that the fold system isn't moving the ship, it's moving the space inside of the fold effect and exchanging it with an equivalent volume of space that exists at the destination as something not dissimilar to teleportation. Normally that volume of space is just enough to encompass the ship executing the fold jump, but it can be enlarged to allow for the transportation of other vessels or other objects in nearby space. If you try to exit that volume of space before the fold ends, you're gonna have a bad time... like Hikaru and Misa did in DYRL?. (It's implied that this is how early emigrant fleets traveled, with fold-capable ships using their fold systems to transport themselves and their fold drive-less escorts.) You know that's totally how he's going to defrost Mirage... stuffy little miss by-the-book is going to learn the Immelmann dance.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It's funny that this comes up as often as it does... but a lot of fans who point of scale problems in Macross often don't have a good grasp of just how HUGE some of these ships really are. I suppose it's hardly surprising, given that most people will never live or work anywhere near something as large as a modern supercarrier... let alone fully appreciate just how vast something like that can be. Many also overestimate the size of the internal features inside ships like the Macross, by relating them to venues in modern cities designed for much larger populations. I'm unusually lucky in this regard, since the office I work in has a footprint not too far off the size of a Macross-class ship in terms of square footage, which makes a great metric for comparison. (The PR blokes brag that it's the second-largest building in the US for internal floor space under one roof, behind the Pentagon). There is a certain amount of artistic license involved in the Macross's internal spaces, but it's nowhere remotely near the level its critics usually claim, except perhaps on the TV series version of the Macross's internal city. The auditorium we see in the original Macross series and the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie is no Madison Square Garden. It can't be more than maybe 61m in diameter, based on the size of its stage, and it's clearly less than half that in height. At that size (roughly half of Madison Square Garden), it'd still be able to hold over two thousand people in relative comfort, and fit neatly into either of the Macross's legs. Based on the available official cutaways, the auditorium is more like 40-50m in diameter, which would still comfortably allow it to seat close to a thousand, which wouldn't be at all unreasonably for a community of approximately 50,000. (We've got two auditoriums on close to that scale in this building, and I can assure you either one would fit neatly into the footprint of one of the Macross's legs.) The Macross Quarter-class's ARMD-L is a hair under 200m long, and has a maximum capacity of approximately 80 aircraft... roughly equivalent to the typical (but nowhere near maximum) capacity of the Nimitz-class, but with a tiny fraction of the crew. It's indicated in official sources that the vast majority of the hangar is NOT sized to accommodate large craft like a Queadluun-Rhea or Konig Monster, and that those are kept in a small, separate portion of the hangar with greater vertical clearance (which also doubles as maintenance space since battle suits take up very little horizontal floorspace). The hangar wasn't designed to take such large craft as the Konig Monster, so it has to be stored with its wings folded up to fit. (It's also worth noting that they're not strictly limited to just using the hangar floor thanks to gravity control...) Can't say I see any problem with the Monster on the Asuka II myself... it's big, but it's not exactly inclined to high-speed maneuvering.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... the parallel you've been trying to draw here is a false one though. You're conflating several different, entirely unrelated illnesses and their equally-unrelated remedies. On Zola, the local bacteria that are so inimical to humans don't come from the galactic whales... but their replication rate is somehow boosted by the presence of the galactic whales. Whether the hot spring that Elma took Basara to had any actual role in his recovery is unclear, since he'd already been treated in a hospital and snapped out of his semiconscious state suddenly after remembering the whale song. There's nothing to indicate the waters in the hot spring actually possess any healing effects at all ("healing" hot springs are popular in Japanese folklore but have little-to-no basis in science). On Uroboros, Sheryl's illness wasn't the result of her v-type infection but rather a locally-caught disease that was treated not with water from the oasis at the northern edge of the Sierra desert, but with medicine made from the species of cactus that grows near the oasis. The fold bacterium that causes Var syndrome in Macross Delta is not the same microorganism as the Vajra bacterium (aka V-type bacterium). The V-type bacterium was absolutely deadly to humanoids unless the infection occurred in the intestines. The fold bacterium that causes Var syndrome doesn't seem to be in any way harmful to humans unless stimulated to reproduce at an abnormally high rate by seidznole-221 or certain types of high-intensity biological fold waves. Whether they're a part of the sub-Protoculture species' natural microbiome or possibly a natural mutation caused by exposure to super dimension space is not clear, but nobody in the series seems to be at all worried about the presence of fold bacteria in their bodies... whereas in Frontier, having a v-type infection was a serious brown trousers moment that led to blood screenings for anyone who came in contact with the Vajra. It's possible... I speculated initially that they were using something similar to the "fold stones" on Uroboros that provided teleportation around the planet. I'll admit, I had never considered that possible meaning for "branch". It seems so bloody obvious now, but until you said it it never occurred to me. Bravo!
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty much how I view it, except instead of a wooshing noise Hayate's brain is looping Safety Dance by Men Without Hats.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    IMO, it's a safe bet that the Macross Elysion and most of the other ships in this series, with the possible exception of the Sigur Valens and Windermerean fleet, are using conventional fold systems instead of the fold quartz-enhanced zero-time fold technology pioneered in 2059. Between the New UN Government's trade restrictions on fold quartz and humanity lacking the technological means to synthesize the stuff, it'd probably be prohibitively expensive if not downright impossible for even a well-to-do civilian corporation to outfit its ships with fold quartz-enhanced fold systems. If the brief looks we've had at the VF-31A Kairos are anything to go by, it looks like Kaos was only willing to splurge on enough fold quartz to outfit five VF-31's with fold wave systems. (Which is fine, since that'd be consistent with the reasons the YF-29 didn't see mass-production, being that its fold wave system needed a vast quantity of fold quartz.)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Good question... that seems to depend on the distance you want to go, the size of the ship, and (peripherally) the amount of energy you can either generate in excess of the ship's needs or can afford to divert from other systems. Al Shahal is only about 30 light years from Ragna, per Hayate back in Ep1, so I'd expect the Macross Elysion to be able to pull a U-turn and take off in hot pursuit of the Sigur Valens and Windermere's fleet in fairly short order if they don't end up embroiled in a fight with Al Shahal's now-mind controlled New UN Spacy fleet. That'll be the biggest potential delay, though I wonder if the reason the Windermere fleet's ships have a different visual effect for fold jumps is that they're using zero-time fold systems. If so, that'd give the Windermereans a bit of an advantage since they'd be able to make the 30 light year trip to Ragna more quickly than the conventional fold system of the Macross Elysion. "I hope so" and "I hope not", respectively.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Well... yes and no. At the time of her launch in February 2009, the SDF-1 Macross had a complement of 212 VF-1 Valkyries of various types. It was after the supercarrier Prometheus and supermassive assault ship Daedalus were connected to the Macross that she gained 587 destroids of various types and extended her hangar capacity by utilizing the Prometheus's hangar and flight decks. The Prometheus had a complement of 150 Valkyries, and carriers practically never operate at their maximum capacity, so the actual combined capacity was probably more than the 362 it would've been without combat losses factored in. The way it's presented in-series, it's generally assumed most of the Macross's own VF-1 complement ended up in the Prometheus. (If you don't count combat losses and you factor in the 51+ new destroids built in the onboard factories of the Macross, it's 362 VF-1's and 638 destroids... which is no patch on the DYRL? version, which theoretically had 524 Valkyries between the docked ARMD-01 Harlan J. Niven and ARMD-02 Invincible.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I can't honestly think of a better place to be during the detonation of a tactical reaction warhead than on the other side of a heavily armored, potentially barrier-protected starship bulkhead. I think a bunch of the houseboats just headed for "anywhere but here" or some kind of mandatory safe distance from the detonation area... though I guess a species that can breathe water doesn't need to worry about drowning.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    There was a similar set of specialized variants in the last series too... the VF-25's main variants were split up into: A: General duty machine F: Attacker/strengthened offensive capability machine G: Designated marksman machine S: Command machine RVF: ELINT/AWACS machine Well, remember, the pre-Island Cluster domeships were much, MUCH smaller than the Macross Frontier's Island-1. The dome was only a couple hundred meters high, and pretty much every example except the original Macross-1 had buildings poking through the dome. It wasn't until the fifth-generation emigrant ships where you had a dome so large that it peaked at multiple kilometers high. Based on its design and appearance, it's almost certain that the emigrant ship that discovered Ragna was one of the initial New Macross-class emigrant ships... either Macross-1 or Macross-2. As I'd explained in an earlier post, we know that by the time Macross-5 was completed and launched the armored shell had become a standard feature and this ship clearly doesn't have one. The whereabouts of the Macross-3 and the Macross-4 are well known, so it must be either Macross-1 or Macross-2. The Varauta system used the normal UN Spacy variant. The Zentradi variant Northampton-class was used by the Macross-5 fleet. Yeah, that struck me as a poor decision too... even if the Macross Elysion was flying almost entirely on gravity control, skimming the rooftops with a skyscraper-sized battleship is hardly going to set the public at ease. They shouldn't have even needed to burn the main engines like that, since the ship is perfectly capable of ascending under gravity control... unless they'd maneuvered out over a colossal clam bed and decided to give the civilians a celebratory clam bake on the way out of town? I know it's obviously meant to be a homage to the original series, but they seem to have forgot that when the SDF-1 Macross did that it was a bit of deliberately risky flying Global ordered to bully the UN Forces brass into letting him disembark the civilians... it was intended to scare people.
  24. Seto Kaiba
  25. Seto Kaiba
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