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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Well... maybe. Walkure were protected by pin-point barriers, which is about the best defense you can get against pretty much anything short of a Macross Cannon. It's safe to say, considering what just two of those micro-missiles do to a VF-171 Nightmare Plus, that being hit by them would be extremely hazardous to your health even in a VF. The fighter Hayate "borrows" is disabled by just two of them, which was enough to incapacitate the pilot and do some unspecified but not totally incapacitating damage to the fighter itself. Technically... Macross Delta Ep.1 at 19:00 is the most recent time we saw a VF vs VF missile "kill". The Al Shahal VF-171 Nightmare Plus that Hayate later uses to rescue Freyja is taken out of the fight by just two micro-missiles from Bogue's fighter in Battroid mode. It doesn't kill the pilot or destroy the fighter, but it does injure the pilot badly enough that he needs medevac and the fighter is out of action. Presumably more hits would've seen them cleaning the fighter up with a dustpan and the pilot with a squeegee. We also got several missile kills in Macross Frontier and its movies, though that was mainly against Vajra targets or Ghosts. I think they've been a bit thin on the ground since the last series didn't really focus on VF vs VF combat, and both Macross 7 and Macross Delta feature pilots who are more concerned with saving the lives of their brainwashed enemies, so they seem to focus more on guns than missiles for kills. Macross Delta has more VF vs VF combat, but missiles are getting short-sold because the VF-31's design did away with the YF-30's missile container for that drone power system they've never used since the first episode. To a certain extent, I think the reason micro-missiles don't seem to be as effective is that we're almost invariably shown ace vs. ace combat when it's two VFs squaring off... and one thing Macross's creators love almost as much as Itano Circuses is showing fighters dramatically evading Itano Circuses. So much so, in fact, that it's usually the way they establish that someone is hot sh*t, like Guld in the YF-21 dodging all those high-maneuver missiles or Messer in the first episode dodging a huge swarm of missiles from Theo and Xao. Missiles are still consistently presented as being incredibly deadly weapons, and when it's micro-missiles we're shown that a kill is simply a matter of getting enough of them on the target, but it's so much more dramatic for a pair of aces to square off at super-close quarters with guns. Some of us do sleep occasionally, lol.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    I have a sneaking suspicion that Kerbal Space Program's physics engine may not be properly handling the projectile velocities and collision detection. Is it actually producing discrete projectile objects or just using graphics of a projectile laid on top of a hitscan field? Even using modern, entirely conventional ammunition it's pretty much impossible for an aircraft to hit itself with shells from its own gun pod because of the physics involved. The muzzle velocity of the bullets coming out of the cannon is relative to the velocity of the aircraft, so the total initial speed of the shell is the aircraft's speed plus the muzzle velocity. With a modern gatling cannon shell like PGU-28/B, to hit yourself with the fired rounds before they clear the airframe the aircraft would have to be pitching down at over Mach 3... and I don't mean "pitching down while flying at Mach 3", I mean that, if you take out all forward momentum, the aircraft's rotational velocity while pitching down at a fixed point in space would have to be at over Mach 3. Even Valkyries don't turn fast enough that they break the sound barrier with their rotational velocity, and the rounds used in Valkyrie gun pods are MUCH faster than anything used today. The GU-11A's shells are traveling at a whopping 2km/s, a little less than double the speed of today's 20 and 30mm anti-aircraft and anti-tank rotary cannon rounds. The GU-15's are moving twice as fast as the GU-11's. It's possible for modern aircraft to accidentally hit themselves long after their rounds clear the airframe, by entering into a ballistic dive and then suffering hits from the falling shells downrange... but even that's rare as all get-out.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    That's not what the Protoculture said, though... the Protoculture archive on Lux in Macross 7 credited the downfall of the Protoculture's civilization to having never been a single, unified society. The overexpansion of the Stellar Republic exacerbated the preexisting divide in their society, and the tensions between the two sides festered until they became battle lines in the Schism War. They didn't unify under one banner until the Protodeviln and their Supervision Army had conquered over 30% of the Republic and enslaved hundreds of billions of people. (They tried, in a predictably jerkass way, to prevent the sub-Protoculture species they created from repeating their mistakes after they passed the point of no return. The Birdman they on Earth was programmed to destroy humanity if they gained space travel capabilities before resolving their internal differences.) Fasces was... well... kinda nutty. It was run by Zentradi, rather than Humans, who were especially enamored of Earth culture. The way it's being presented, I'm not sure their motives are anything so lofty as an existential crisis. They were apparently perfectly happy to work with humanity for decades (and to a certain extent, still are)... so I'm betting that King Gramia's motives for the war are rather more personal, and he's wrapping it up in this dogma of "We're the Protoculture's special-est snowflakes" to make it easier for his people to swallow. (The color of their runes seems to change rather dramatically based on their mood, and Gramia's are ALWAYS red... which seems to be the default state for "angry".)
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I had that exact same thought when I finished Ep11... they're not going to replace Messer because someone is going to defect in the next few episodes. Probably Bogue, as he seems to be most strongly affected by Walkure's songs.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    I'm inclined to suspect that the Sigur Valens is not a Protoculture warship... mostly because the ancient Protoculture had the Zentradi for that, and portions of the Fulbtzs-Berrentzs-class fleet motherships contain habitat blocks dedicated to replicating the ecology of the Protoculture homeworld. It's odds-on that any Protoculture directly commanding a Zentradi fleet would be headquartered on the mothership itself in those areas specifically designed for their use. What I suspect is that the Sigur Valens is actually an ancient Protoculture survey ship like the one that supposedly visited Earth in prehistory and genetically re-engineered Earth's early homonids into humanity. It will still likely be incredibly powerful, because the Protoculture never did anything halfway, but we'll probably find out that the Windermereans and Epsilon Corporation have only scratched the surface of what it can do and there'll be a terraforming or gene lab somewhere in the ship that'll give clues to the origins of the Windermereans themselves. The ship was probably abandoned on Windermere, either because they didn't have time to activate it before fleeing as the fighting between the Zentradi and Supervision Army remnants drew near the Windermere system or because they died out at some point after colonizing the planet and never bothered to dispose of the ship. I guess there's a third potential explanation in that it could be a "come find me when you're grown up" like what the Protoculture programmed the Birdman to do if the human race had passed its test. I do agree that it's unlikely the Windermereans are descended directly from the Protoculture... even they themselves seem to believe that they were another one of the Protoculture's creations, like the Voldorans, Ragnans, Humans, Zolans, etc. The relic that Heinz was using doesn't appear to be fixed to anything... it's sitting in an armature in a chamber that may always have been inside the buried Sigur Valens, or may have been relocated there before launch. Only organic material can fossilize... that relic appears to have always been made from "stone".
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Just a small correction... in Macross Frontier, having to walk laps of the Macross Quarter's hangar in an unpowered EX-Gear suit wasn't training. It was a punishment. The first time we saw it, it was Alto's punishment for being shot down in the simulator (blissfully unaware that Michael had raised the difficulty), and he had laps added for sass. The second time was Michael AND Alto doing laps for sneaking Sheryl aboard the Macross Quarter, with Cathy Glass adding laps to their punishment for sass.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, you'll certainly become well acquainted with the wind afterwards...
  8. Seto Kaiba
    That's a really unbalanced fleet, compared to what we usually see... I wonder if that's because of the combat losses from the last time the Aerial Knights ambushed Al Shahal? Under normal circumstances, in a (New) UN Spacy flotilla there are about twice as many destroyers, frigates, and cruisers as there are carriers. Somehow, I suspect that we're not supposed to empathize with the Windermerean "woe is me" routine. It seems like every time they trot out their white knight schtick (hmm...) about how cruel and exploitative the New UN Government is and how justice demands they liberate the Brisingr cluster, they immediately say or do something to reveal that it's an excuse to cover their real motives. What's more, it doesn't seem like that's much of a secret to the other residents of the Brisingr cluster. The Voldoran head of state called Roid on it a few episodes ago, noting that their Windermerean "liberators" were less knights in shining armor freeing a nation from oppression than they were a band of thugs with a reputation for indiscriminate violence turning Voldor into an occupied territory. He basically pointed out that the Voldorans wouldn't oppose Windermere openly only because they were essentially helpless and held at gunpoint. Windermere's "we are the real victim" line seems to be more an excuse for King Gramia to act on the Aerial Knighthood's apparent belief that they have a manifest destiny as the Protoculture's heirs by a campaign of good ol' fashioned empire-building. I'm left to wonder how quickly their apparently deep-seated racism will turn on the "allies" they claim they're trying to liberate.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, [gg]'s rep said they were going to be a day or two late because he's traveling... and they're usually first out.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe that's why the plot is developing so damned slow... maybe it WILL be the first 2x25 show Macross has had since 7.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    We get a good view in the first Macross Frontier movie, when Ranka is doing that toy advertisement.
  12. Seto Kaiba
  13. Seto Kaiba
    This'll probably get merged into the Newbie and Short Questions thread shortly, but anyway... I've seen nothing about it, apart from acknowledgement of its existence, in animation-relevant sources. IINM, the novelisation of Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa identifies it as a VF-1X++ Valkyrie Double Plus... the same (former) Special Forces variant that Macross the Ride protagonist Hakuna Aoba flew a modified version of before his mid-story upgrade. Unfortunately, that is also profoundly unhelpful because no specs exist for the VF-1X++ in its stock format.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I had a screen capture of it from the last time someone asked about the in-jokes in Ep27... lemme see if I can find it. If not, I'll take another once I get home. 's not so unusual... there are plenty of cafes in Tokyo, and in this day in age it seems oddly prophetic when there's a Starbucks, Biggby, or other coffee house on every street corner in the more cosmopolitan cities and suburbs. (Hell, in the office complex where I work there are two Starbucks and at least one two other independent coffee shops1 inside the building itself, and there are only 14,000 people working here...) In DYRL? the SDF-1 Macross's circumstances are somewhat different. The version in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series was a battleship that acquired the city section as a hasty addition to accommodate the (initially) 58,000 civilians displaced from South Ataria Island. The alternate version in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? movie was a purpose-(re)built emigrant ship that was always meant to have the city section inside it. The use of cars in so small an emigrant ship does seem a bit odd, but that was probably a concession forced by the unusual layout of the ship's interior making installing a subway system somewhat implausible. I'd assume that the military was leaning on the businesses aboard to do everything in their power to help maintain a sense of normalcy, concerts and cafes and car sales and so on, for the sake of maintaining morale among the civilian population who were already having to cope with the reality of being trapped in a large hypercarbon box under relentless attack by aliens (while keeping them ignorant of the fact that Earth was already a total loss). With respect to the actual size of the city, it's worth remembering that the city spread into a number of the Macross's internal spaces, and in a number of places was stacked several layers and tiers deep to make everything fit... plus gravity control let them build on the "walls" and "ceiling" of the habitation blocks, so they weren't limited purely by the available horizontal floorplan. (Mind you, we see this taken up to 11 with Macross Frontier's Island-1, which, in the movies, is shown to have three distinct layers of city, with the two "correctly" oriented ones separated by an upside-down city clinging to the underside of the top layer.) As far as the "destroid/fighter jet" thing, I think they did an OK job justifying that on the grounds that destroids were big, heavy things that were hard to ship anywhere quickly or in numbers, and fighter jets can't hold terrain... so the Variable Fighter became the default currency of war by dint of its ability to act as a fighter and an independent fast-travel mode for a land warfare robot. EDIT: 1. I forgot about the Dunkin' Donuts on 2F in the north wing.
  15. Seto Kaiba
  16. Seto Kaiba
    That'd be in the novelization of Macross Frontier, which also ties Manfred Brando and the Critical Path Corporation to the 117th Research Fleet, Macross Galaxy, and Ozma Lee.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/vf-orguss-valkyrie.htm Like several other little things in that episode, it's an in-joke reference to other projects Studio Nue was working on. In this case, obviously, it was Super Dimension Century Orguss. Earlier in the episode, one of the Zentradi ships in Vrlitwhai's fleet is shown with a skull and crossbones painted on the prow as a nod to Studio Nue's redesign of the Arcadia for the Space Pirate Captain Harlock prequel Arcadia of my Youth.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Sitting down to watch this one now...
  19. Seto Kaiba
    They don't say... but then, the emigrant fleets in Macross aren't launched with a fixed destination in mind. That's why emigrant ships are designed to support and sustain an emigrant population for years or even decades, and basically ended up as space-going municipalities. It's a big galaxy, and worlds that either naturally support humanoid life or can be terraformed to support humanoid life aren't exactly common.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it certainly seems to be going on... but it's about the only characterization either Makina or Reina has had, bordering on being the only dialogue they've had, so I'm not sure that'd count as being low-key. It's pretty obvious they're doing it for fanservice purposes.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I have no problem with the idea of Macross having a same-sex couple kicking around the plot... but I'd rather they didn't make a big to-do about it if and when they finally do. There are few things as calculated to cause irritation as a show doing something like that and then crowing "Ooo look how progressive we are!".
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, in DYRL?, the SDF-1 Macross was built as an emigrant ship and the city was a pre-existing feature when the ship was launched. That bridge was probably as tough as any other similar bridge in a modern city... which speaks volumes of the Valkyrie's structural strength. If you look at it from the "it's a movie" perspective, that shouldn't affect much... the VF-1's would've been filmed using later block VF-1 Valkyries.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, a Variable Fighter's energy conversion armor is enabled in an intermediate power level in GERWALK mode... except on fighters that have a fold wave system or fold dimensional resonance system, where it's operating at full power all the time (even in fighter mode). Crashing through a bridge in DYRL? was a milder crash than the one he had in the original SDF Macross TV series... where he plowed a stalled VF-1D through an entire row of concrete buildings and it came out the other side without any noticeable additional damage beyond what had caused the crash. Some of the older technical material like Sky Angels contends that the VF-1's armor material is approximately 100 times stronger (per unit of thickness) than steel.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of... To the best of my knowledge, there's never been anything like a direct-to-visor "clear cockpit" system on a Variable Fighter in Macross. Most VFs have just had a thoroughly traditional "glass" canopy with either a traditional HUD or holographic HUD projected directly onto said canopy, supplemented with rearview mirrors (or monitors doing the same job) just like on a real-world fighter. The few VFs to get wraparound monitors in fighter mode had honest-to-goodness displays built into the sides of the cockpit. The closest you get to a true "clear cockpit" are the fighters with brainwave control systems, where imaging can be projected directly into the pilot's brain like the YF-21, VF-22HG, or VF-27... though it's worth noting the YF-21 appeared to favor a computer-generated third person view of the fighter rather than the ability to see through the body of the aircraft. The Sv-262 seems to be unique in that it doesn't appear to require cybernetic implants, but uses a full wraparound monitor AND in-cockpit holographics... apparently for purely aesthetic reasons. There is no wraparound imaging monitor in the VF-31's fighter mode, though... so there's no compression involved in the pilot's field of view. What they have is the same arrangement found on the VF-25, YF-29, and YF-30, with a traditional canopy supplemented with on-canopy holographic HUD and the ability to display alternate views like zooms or rear angles either on the main display or in holographic windows that pop up on the HUD.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    There's mention in Macross Chronicle of a transparent, glasslike supermaterial called Herculite, which is used to construct exterior-facing windows and such in starships... dollars to donuts VF canopies are made of the same or similar stuff.
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