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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the VF-11D is the two-seater version... though it's worth noting that we've never seen an unmodified one. The VF-11D units seen in Macross 7 as part of the Jamming Birds tactical sound unit's equipment were customized for increased performance and for spiritia warfare, and the one in Macross the Ride was similarly but less severely customized to help it keep up with the air racers it was filming. Similarly, we've never seen an unmodified VF-11MAXL. Mylene's was heavily customized for Sound Force use, though the VF-11MAXL is a very rare, made-to-order unit built in vanishingly small numbers for ace pilots.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far? We've seen five variants of the VF-11... the VF-11A, -B, -C, -D, and -MAXL, and various customizations thereof. The two most common variants are the VF-11B and VF-11C, the former being the variant that Isamu flew in Macross Plus and the latter being the cannon fodder fighter for the Macross 7 series that occasionally equipped the Protect Armor pack. The Macross Plus OVA/movie also showed some unmanned VF-11A units that had been converted into target drones for testing the Ghost X-9 (painted in high visibility orange).
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Seems like a safe bet that planet Ragna's natives are yet another humanoid species engineered by the Protoculture the same way Humanity was...
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The 991? I'm not sure you could say they're cheating their way out of the consequences... from the initial 911, they redesigned the vehicle several times and made modifications to the torque path calibrations in an effort to minimize the problem. In that sense, you could say it's more like what Shinsei Industry did when they put out the 2nd mass production type VF-19 with the redesigned airframe and reworked the control software to improve handling stability. The VF-31 is kind of like the 991 in the sense that, by the time it came out the problem had essentially been licked and further developments were focused on improving the agility and performance of the larger, more stable design instead. (Again, Porsche's not my forte... feel like I'm flailing around a bit with this comparison.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of... well, I suppose you could say that's true of both Shinsei's VF-19 and General Galaxy's VF-22. They were their respective companies' unstable superstar designs that combined a bank-breaking price tag with skittish, overly-sensitive handling and monumental acceleration. (My brain keeps trying to go to Maserati or Viper in comparison to performance auto, but that's my day job talking...) I'm not sure there's a good comparison for the VF-31's FSW versions, since those (and, really, all 5th Generation Valkyries) are preserving that extremely agile, sensitive handling and merely cheating their way out of the consequences with inertial compensation.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    The Macross Frontier series itself glosses over the details of Mihoshi Academy's pilot training program, but the novelization of same indicates that the academy's pilots do conduct practical training using civilian market model VF-1 Valkyries. By that point, the VF-1's price through military disposal sales or direct sale to civilians had long since come down to the point where a civilian without a major corporate sponsor could potentially afford one. Considering that Shinsei's VF-19 was so expensive that even the military balked at the prospect of buying them in numbers, I doubt that even a wealthy vocational school could afford to train students with something like that. In 2058, private citizens were only just getting the opportunity to buy the VF-11 through military disposal sales (as Chelsea Scarlett did at the end of Macross the Ride, but she had to buy three to get enough parts to build one working VF-11). There was already a good deal of commonality thanks to the standardization of controls starting with the VF-4 and back-ported into the VF-1 via the Block 6 and later upgrades. EX-Gear was meant to improve the intuitive-ness and ease of variable fighter controls via a learning computer, electromyographic sensors, and force-feedback to produce the feel of "wearing" a variable fighter. More than that, the basic controls for Valkyries and other mecha has been semi-standardized for over half a century by 2067, so an operator with experience on something as simple as a Workroid or civilian-market Valkyrie could potentially apply that experience to operating something much newer without making a complete arse of themselves. A view pretty much explicitly confirmed in official sources... the difficult handling of the VF-19 was one of the chief factors in it being passed over for adoption as next main fighter. Too many smash-ups and losses of control in training. (Not helped by the price tag and tightened restrictions on arms exports to the emigrant fleets...) Almost twenty years later they're STILL tweaking the design in the hopes of making it something average pilots can handle.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Can't say I've ever seen/read anything to that effect... and I'm fairly certain that's not the case because: The VF-1X Plus Valkyrie didn't exist at the time Macross 7 was animated. It was "created" later, for the Macross Digital Mission VF-X game. Milia's VF-1 in Macross 7 still had the early-type cockpit (up to Block 5), the VF-1X has the upgraded cockpit from Block 6+. The VF-1X has the A-style monitor turret, Milia's VF-1 has a J-style monitor turret. Macross Chronicle identifies it as "VF-1J (Milia's craft)" on the Episode Sheets for Macross 7.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Fair enough. Macross Zero would've made a LOT more sense if that stuff had actually been in the OVA... seriously. This may not help the theory much though, as it seems to suggest the ancient Protoculture's genetic tampering with developing species actually reduced their ability to access and channel higher-dimension energy. There was a long gap between the Protoculture's initial stop on Earth to reengineer early homonids to sub-Protoculture standards and their return to leave the Birdhuman behind (something like a quarter-million years). I wonder if that means the Protoculture's second visit including rounding up a bunch of people who were sensitive to higher-dimension resonance or they reintroduced the trait to the population which already lived there through interbreeding with humans or something like transfusions from the Birdhuman (since the priestesses all have the same blood type which the bio-technological birdhuman does). Y'know... this raises another interesting theory. Is the violence inherent in the nature of Humans and other sub-Protoculture species the result of the Protoculture diminishing humanity's access to higher dimension resonance? Did they, by accident or design, stunt the emotional awareness and empathy of entire species by diminishing or removing their innate ability to connect to each other and communicate through higher dimensions? Is the emergence of the fold receptor factor a product of evolution undoing the Protoculture's genetic lockout on the ability, a result of increased exposure to higher-dimension energy via overtechnology, or an intentional part of the Protoculture's design for the species that would succeed them? Come to that, did they destroy themselves because their resonance ability was underdeveloped or damaged by their tampering with their own genome in such a way that it made it harder for them to unify as a species? This is potentially some deep deep stuff.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Raizo Nakajima was the chief aircraft maintenance officer aboard the CVN-99 Asuka II during Macross Zero... he was responsible for the tuning of the VF-0's jet engines.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    It looks like it might be on a rail, which might mean it's got a flexible belt feed from wherever the ammo is stored. I'm gonna go look at the animation of the guns in GERWALK mode... because you're absolutely right that something looks awry. EDIT: On Arad's VF-31S, it looks like the gun is farther down the arm in battroid mode than that art shows...
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, no... that wasn't a VF-1X of any stripe in Macross 7. That was Milia's old VF-1J from the First Space War (though likely equipped with modern ammo). EDIT: It's worth noting there are a few animation errors in 7 where, in GERWALK or Fighter mode, they accidentally draw it with a VF-1A head, but Macross Chronicle confirms it is indeed meant to be a VF-1J. WRT Master File, the VF-1X Valkyrie is described in the 2nd VF-1 volume (Space Wing) as an improvement from the 2020's, though it's a different model of craft from the VF-1X Plus (sometimes written VF-1X+) which is a later and more comprehensive improvement.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Slight problem... the official chronology indicates that humans were engineered before the war with the Supervision Army started and that the ship that did the work was destroyed and never made it back to report on its activities. Also, we don't know when the Birdhuman-type mecha were developed, but they weren't introduced to humanity until hundreds of thousands of years after the war ended, after humanity had done some significant evolving. Considering the Birdhuman's underlying technology, it's likely it wasn't developed until long after the war ended. (Where in Chronicle does it say humans are ideal for maintaining bio-technology like that?) The genetic memory thing... there's been no evidence of that outside DYRL?, so that may simply be dramatic license on the part of the in-universe movie.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Gamlin didn't think much of Milia's VF-1 when he flew it... I think that might be where that's coming from.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Ah... not really sure where that's comin' from. The non-"Plus" version of the VF-1X was, IIRC, a Master File-only variant that's written up as an upgrade of mothballed Block 4 and 5 VF-1 units reworked with avionics upgrades, strengthened wings, and a slightly more powerful engine as a stopgap measure that was implemented while they were waiting for the VF-5000 to go into production. It wasn't quite as good as a VF-4, but it was still a viable improvement. The VF-1X Plus is a more sweeping modernization that, when equipped with its Super Packs, is on a roughly level footing with a VF-11 in terms of overall performance. Not an entirely accurate summation, I'm afraid... We don't know what the stock VF-1X++ is like, except that its materials are lighter and it's meant for undercover work, because the only one we've seen is one that's been extensively retrofitted and customized for air racing by a man of questionable sanity and an unhealthy enthusiasm for "more power". (At this juncture, kindly mentally insert some grunting if you've seen Home Improvement.) Hakuna Aoba's custom job replaced the stock engines with massively more powerful ones designed for unmanned fighters, a few improvements to maneuverability, and some conformal fuel tanks reworked into holders for booster rockets... all of which reduced the fighter to a highly unstable, borderline-uncontrollable mess that's forever one mistake away from becoming a fireball (as Ride's author put it). The only tech shared with the VF-25 was that the racing custom's FAST pack had an inertia store converter built in. (You may be thinking of Hakuna Aoba's mid-story upgrade, which was a VF-0A that'd been basically reworked from the ground up with the help of Katori Brown-Robbins, General Galaxy's Guld Works, and LAI until it was far more YF-25 than VF-0.) True, the VF-1 that Hayate is flying could be one of any number of variants acquired through military disposal sales or built for the civilian market. I'm not sure where you got the rest from, as it's not really consistent with the training programs we're shown and told about in the various Macross works I've seen and read. Usually the trajectory is Simulator -> Tandem Trainer -> Actual Aircraft. The Macross Frontier novelization had Alto and other Mihoshi Academy pilot students train on detuned VF-1s (identified as VF-1Cs), but that's independent of SMS's training for its pilots. Even when we're shown totally green pilots being trained, they're being trained on a simulator for the model of fighter they're eventually going to fly (like Gamlin training on a VF-11 simulator during basic). It probably helps that the VF-1 is cheap enough and easy enough to repair that a rookie wrecking one won't be a bank-breaking problem for a well-to-do PMC, a top-tier vocational school, or the military.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    I'd guess the real deal... various other Macross titles (most notably 7, but also the novelization of Frontier) have shown old VF-1's being used as training aircraft for new pilots because they're as close to dirt-cheap as a VF can conceivably get.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, not the first time an EX-Gear equipped VF-1 has been mentioned... though I think the first mention was an unofficial proof of concept aircraft or something along those lines. (I think it was in a model hobby magazine.)
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Unlikely, IMO... but not impossible if old man Raizo had a family stashed away somewhere safe during the First Space War. I'd suspect the aviation in-joke would be enough on its own. (She'd have to be his great-granddaughter or something like that...) Hmm... now that's an interesting line of thought! Freyja's rune certainly seems to be sensitive to biological fold waves, and those of the Aerial Knights seem to respond to heightened emotions (excitement?). The ancient Protoculture's response to having built a battle suit too high-spec for most Zentradi to pilot was to engineer a better breed of pilot (the females), so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest the Protoculture tried to engineer a species (or multiple species) which possessed greater-than-average ability to access the super dimension for their war with the Protodeviln. (That would logically entail the question of whether the Windermerians were a failed experiment or the survivors of a successful one...)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    I will be sorely disappointed if we don't get a Mirage AMV set to "Hips don't lie".
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Roid appears to be standing on the bridge of a starship when he issues them their orders... so they may have ridden into the battle zone on the fold effect of an Aerial Knights warship/carrier.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    It'd also play well with the Knights of the Wind's ideology... bigotry and hypocrisy often go hand in hand. Yeah, and Barrette City on Ragna seems to have a fairly well-developed tourism industry independent of Walkure's HQ that seems designed to cater to off-world visitors... that sort of thing doesn't develop overnight.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    ... OK, I'm lost. How could you possibly take "there have been railgun gun pods in that continuity for a decade or two by 2067" to mean anything other than that railguns have been employed in gun pod form for years prior to Macross Delta? I didn't even mention energy weapons...
  22. Seto Kaiba
    LAI works with both Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy on various projects, but throughout the events of Macross Frontier they appear to have been thick as thieves with the Macross Galaxy fleet... supplying the Macross Galaxy fleet with the YF-29 spec to further their own fighter development program, giving Brera somewhere to stash his VF-27 in the Frontier fleet prior to his announcing himself publicly, hooking him up with fold boosters and so on. The exchange did go both ways too. In the movie version, it was Macross Galaxy who supplied LAI with the technology for MDE weaponry. The words "questionable sourcing" come to mind... I'm going through the Macross Galaxy-relevant sheets in Chronicle and so far I've not found a single reference to when Macross Galaxy was launched. Literally nothing, which is kind of shocking considering it waxes poetic about ships that barely even appear. Didn't that date come from the same source that mistakenly identifies Macross Galaxy as the 9th rather than 21st? It's a full generation newer than the City-type, so it shouldn't have been launched before the City-type became the norm. (It would not be the first time Mr March and myself found errors in the Compendium...)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    The way Kawamori describes it in the Otona Anime interview is that it was motivated principally by the sheer logistical difficulties of having colonies that were months or years away by space fold. It was just easier to give them the greater autonomy some of them were already asking for (or fighting over) than try to micromanage the affairs of planets tens of thousands of light years away and just hold onto the biggest military stick so they could wade in and knock heads together if two or more colonies had a serious beef with each other. (Hence the arms export restrictions that directly led to the creation of pretty much all the Valkyries we've seen in Macross Frontier and Macross Delta so far and limited the deployment of the VF-19 and VF-22. Earth keeps the biggest sticks for its forces so they can break up fights.) Delta isn't just far away, it's set in a whole other galaxy... talk about hard to manage from afar!
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. They were a corporate army, but since Galaxy's corporate government was a government under New UN Gov't jurisdiction they were also considered a NUNS garrison and their fighters bear NUNS markings. Per Kawamori, the attempted coup by Garland was pretty much a sideshow rather than the actual reason for the reorganization... the reason he identifies for the reorganization was the inability of the centralized UN Government to govern when humanity had become so spread out. IINM Macross Galaxy doesn't have an official launch date... the graphic in the animation contains several inaccuracies WRT dates of launch (showing, as it does, pretty much every emigrant ship launching simultaneously). Only in the novelization of Macross Frontier... in that version of the story, it was Critical Path who financed the 117th Research Fleet's expedition to the galaxy's center to study the Vajra. Macross Chronicle suggests that LAI is generally believed to have been the fleet's financial backer in show. Considering the Draken III's suspicious resemblance to a Nightmare Plus and technological similarity to a VF-27... there are three possibilities I see: The Windermerians developed the Sv-262 Draken III themselves based on "captured" VF-171's that were taken during the Kingdom of the Wind's coup and the New UN withdrawal from the planet. LAI leaked specs under the table again... like they previously did when they leaked the YF-29 spec to Macross Galaxy and it became the basis for the final VF-27 design. General Galaxy is selling weapons to anti-government forces for black ops testing of new technologies, the way their own corporate army used the YF-27-5.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Thus far? Private security forces that were originally founded to protect interstellar shipping, and which grew beyond their original intent to begin providing security services for governments as well because they were easier to write off if something went horribly wrong. (As Ozma put it, SMS employees killed in the line of duty officially die in accidents, not combat.) Mind you, SMS seems to have been extremely well-funded because they were founded and directly owned by Bilra Transport Co., one of the larger interstellar shipping concerns (which also bankrolled the Macross Frontier fleet's construction). Sort of. He only actually identified the Macross Galaxy fleet's administration as being a corporation rather than a government in the interview in Otona Anime #9. The Macross Frontier fleet has an elected government, but it was financed by a corporation and thus the head of said corporation (Richard Bilra) has a LOT of sway in the parliament. As Macross Galaxy's corporate administration was still technically considered a government, the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army was/is also technically a New UN Forces garrison raised by the Galaxy fleet rather than a PMC. (Hence why their equipment has NUNS markings, while equipment used by true PMCs like SMS doesn't.) No. The Macross Galaxy Corporate Army was always technically a UN Forces garrison... it made the change to calling itself a "New UN Forces" garrison at the same time everyone else did, after the government and military reorganized and added the "New" to the name. Per Kawamori, the reason for the reorg was that humanity had become too spread out for a single, central government to effectively govern and so it decentralized, granted more autonomy to the emigrant fleets and colonized planets. It went from being something along the lines of the US's Federal Government (with the various fleets and planets being member states) to something more along the lines of the European Union.
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