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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Something along those lines, yeah. The Anti-Unification Alliance forces that didn't throw in the towel when the separatists in Russia withdrew their support after the Alliance destroyed St. Petersburg with a reaction warhead seem to have been big fans of the trope Bolivian Army Ending. Macross Zero seems to depict the one halfway sane effort, a real Hail Mary effort to revive their cause by stealing the alien relic the UN Government had discovered and weaponize it against them. Macross the First's depiction of a Christmas 2008 attack on South Ataria island was a borderline suicide attack where Alliance forces served as a distraction for an attempt to destroy the island with a reaction bomb delivered by an unmanned SV-51. In Master File, there are not one but THREE suicidal attacks described... including attacks on Alaska Base and Victoria Base, two of the most heavily fortified positions on Earth. Master File's description of the SV-51's final engagement was a single badly-maintained SV-51 making a suicide run on an Alaska Base VF squadron and getting shot down with ease by a former SV-51 pilot who'd defected.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    VFs have several ways to compensate for short runways, like using boundary layer control systems to cheat up their lift coefficients during takeoff. That said, the SV-51's unique fighter mode VTOL system was probably not as useful as the Alliance would've hoped given that the SV-51's rollout occurred after they'd already lost the war for all practical intents and purposes. Between the accounts in Macross the First and Variable Fighter Master File, there's a definite feeling (and in the latter case, at least one outright statement) that the fractured remnants of the Anti-Unification Alliance were basically throwing their lives away in increasingly futile attacks on the UN Forces simply because they couldn't admit defeat or let go of their animosity.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The SV-51 seems to have been unique in that regard. As others have noted, the only time we've seen a VF make the attempt is in Macross: Do You Remember Love? wherein Hikaru's VT-1 Ostrich uses its verniers to "hop" far enough to deploy the legs. A VF's high-thrust verniers do have quite a bit of power, so it's a plausible way to go about it in a pinch. It's just probably a pretty wasteful maneuver propellant-wise and was only really necessary because Hikaru's VT-1 was captured in Fighter mode and couldn't land properly.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Just the Sv-154 Svard... it was originally the LV-7 "Valorous Rapier" from Air Cavalry Chronicles. It was one of three Variable Fighter designs associated wtih Fanelia, which would go on to become the homeland of Escaflowne protagonist Van Fanel and the titular Guymelef. I recall one or two mentions of the possibility for an emigrant ship to be reused multiple times, sent back into space to continue exploring after depositing a colony on a habitable world. The Macross-class SDFNs were supposedly being reused this way, and we know of at least one in-series example of it happening: the SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global that was ultimately seconded to the 117th Research Fleet's expedition into Vajra space. That said, the norm from the animation is having the emigrant ship land on the newly discovered habitable planet and stay there as a sort of prefabricated city. Macross Galaxy's living conditions couldn't have been a complete secret, since the fleet did engage in commerce and technological codevelopment with other emigrant fleets and has hosted at least one major sporting event (the 2058 Vanquish League championships). Emigrant fleets seem to have quite a lot of latitude when it comes to deciding what kind of local government they're going to have, how they'll organize their armed forces, and so on. Macross Galaxy being a cyberpunk-style corporate state - a spacefaring company town - probably raised a few eyebrows in and of itself but also likely excused at least some of the fleet's unusual efficiency-first choices WRT living conditions like the lack of natural spaces and going all-in on synthetic foods instead of devoting resources to maintaining environment ships for things like farming and aquaculture in the eyes of visitors. Visitors to the fleet had at least limited awareness that implants could be used to manipulate a person's senses, but since they could only experience the fleet's cyberspace through AR glasses they probably didn't realize the true extent of the control that was possible. The news that the fleet had legalized implant technology was not a secret, but it doesn't seem to have been something that was headline news since it was an internal decision that only affected Macross Galaxy and there was no evidence (yet) that they were flouting the bans on cyborg soldiers and the like. Essentially, Macross Galaxy never had to get the rest of the New UN Government "off their backs" because everything that was going on fell within the realm of Macross Galaxy's internal affairs. Questionable, perhaps, but not worth intervening in another government's business. The first concrete evidence of actual wrongdoing didn't come out until 2058, when the Frontier fleet encountered an (illegal) cyborg soldier for the first time. That doesn't seem to have become widely known, so the rest of the New UN Government doesn't seem to have become properly aware of Macross Galaxy's unlawful activities until it became clear they were engaging in a war of aggression against the Vajra in violation of the New UN Government's laws. (Even then, consequences probably weren't coming because the fleet was reported destroyed by the Vajra... and in the movie version, they actually were.)
  5. Seto Kaiba
    As attached as Macross is to the pineapple gag, they probably evolved from pineapples.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno if that counts as a weird place... I mean, they're talking about the development of the N64 and its launch titles, and GameTek DID (try to) develop a Robotech game that was supposed to be a Nintendo 64 launch title. That was Robotech: Crystal Dreams. It was the usual 90's Robotech story... a small-time company with a very limited talent pool picked up the license, made overly ambitious plans, promptly failed, went bankrupt, and the next small-time company to pick up the license cancelled the project. GameTek got as far as a brief playable demo and a licensed comic book that cribbed a lot of art from DYRL? before they went under and the new licensee Ocean Software canned it just a few days after the demo debuted.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, that one probably got handed off to some summer intern. That's part of it, yes. The YF-19 and YF-21's new generation of engine technology - thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines - offered a significant improvement over the previous generation(s) of engine technology in terms of thrust output, fuel/propellant efficiency, and power conversion efficiency. This and the increased internal storage offered by the larger airframes of both meant that FAST Packs were no longer strictly necessary to provide the VF with an adequate operating time in space. The minimalist design of the packs allowed additional armament to be mounted with almost no impact to the VF's passive stealth performance (and thus only a minimal burden on its active stealth system) and the smallest possible impact to the VF's maneuverability and acceleration performance. Sometimes... especially if you know the enemy will detect you anyway... it's just better to have MORE DAKKA. The previous paragraph describes what was essentially the tipping point in FAST Pack design. Once VFs had engines and internal fuel capacities sufficient to operate in space for a reasonable amount of time without bolt-on fuel tanks and/or using rocket boosters to take the burden of thrust production off the thermonuclear engines as much ass possible, those now-technically unnecessary fuel tanks and rocket boosters could be repurposed to offset the mass of a truly breathtaking amount of weaponry instead. Not really? General Galaxy's design process seems to be quite deliberate and well-considered. They're not just throwing random stuff at the walls to see what sticks. Their issue seems to be that their designers are much more willing to break with established convention and apply larger amounts of Zentradi overtechnology in their carefully workshopped designs. It hurts them as often as it helps them. Instead of "Improvise. Adapt. Overcome." the General Galaxy corporation seems to have: "Improvise. Adapt. Lose the main fighter contract to Shinsei anyway because we keep forgetting this is a lowest bidder process." The one time they actually beat Shinsei Industry for the main fighter contract was their most orthodox design ever. The Nightmare Plus isn't that old... as of Macross Delta, it's only about twenty years old. It's got another decade or more before it'll actually be phased out of frontline service. The VF-25 is set to come in sometime in the early 2060s, but it'll take YEARS to phase it in and phase the VF-171s out, and the Brisingr Alliance NUNS is set to formally adopt the VF-31 as its replacement sometime in 2069 or 2070, and it'll similarly take years to retrain pilots and retire the old VF-171s. The New UN Forces were still in the process of retiring their VF-11s in 2058, almost thirty years after they were introduced.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... all things considered, probably not a great idea to try to combine them. Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines already have ridiculous amounts of thrust, so there's not really a huge NEED for the performance boost the Inertia Vector Control System had previously offered to the much less powerful (comparatively, but in absolute terms still bonkers over-the-top) thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines from the previous generation. That said, that's kind of where 6th Generation VFs are headed... except instead of multiple inertia control methods, it's a system that synergistically boosts the performance of the engines and inertia store converter, the Fold Wave System.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Past discussions did put a lot of focus on the Inertia Vector Control System's ability to protect the cockpit from g-forces based on remarks in Macross Chronicle's coverage of the Queadluun-Rhea/56 battle suit used by the New UN Forces and SMS... so that's an understandable point. (And admittedly the explanation of the Inertia Vector Control System itself is extremely vague in the few sources that cover it... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-22 Sturmvogel II was the clearest and most complete one, and that came thirty years after the system was first introduced in Macross Perfect Memory.) Which is actually more sensible considering these craft are mainly used in space... since one's top speed in space is limited by only two factors: c and how long your fuel supplies can sustain acceleration. Divide's perpetual beef with itself is that it couldn't pick a side in the Second Unification War... half the planet declared for the pro-autonomy faction (Vindirance's side) and half declared for the pro-centralization faction (Latence's side). Years later, they apparently still haven't settled the matter. Either that, or they've decided their planetary "hat" is to be Space Northern Ireland. The two systems work fundamentally differently, as far as I can tell... so I'm not sure if they could operate together or if the VF could generate enough power to operate both at once.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The Inertia Vector Control System is a device that improves the maneuverability and propellant efficiency of a VF or Battle Suit by manipulating the magnitude of the acceleration forces acting on the airframe. It can't produce new forces on its own, but it can increase or decrease the magnitude of an existing force from something like the control surfaces, verniers, main engines, etc. allegedly without limit as long as there's adequate power available. Using it, a VF that might only be capable of 10G from a standing start could boost that 10G of acceleration to, say, 20G. Or it could allow for rapid deceleration by shrinking that acceleration vector to almost nothing or amplifying the braking force. One example given is that it can manipulate the forces produced by control surfaces and verniers to produce turns that don't decelerate the aircraft. Its ability to protect the aircraft from very high g-forces is incidental, since the change in the magnitude of acceleration vectors is applied uniformly across the airframe. The pilot will still experience any g-forces from the maneuvers unassisted by the system, but they will be insulated from the g-force additions and subtractions the system makes. The Inertia Store Converter is a device that has one job: it protects the pilot and the airframe from excessive g-forces that could cause injury or damage by taking g-forces over a set limit and temporarily storing those forces extradimensionally before returning them to the aircraft in a safe and controlled manner. It doesn't provide any performance boost itself, it just allows the pilot to use the aircraft to its maximum potential safely. So if you want to accelerate at the VF-25's maximum of 30.5G, the ISC will store a portion of that (up to 27.5G for 120 seconds). You'll only feel 3G or so while you're accelerating, but once you stop accelerating you'll feel the returning g-forces at low levels... so instead of 10 seconds at 30.5G, you'll get 10 seconds at 3G and then about 30 seconds of 2G as that energy is slowly restored to the aircraft in a controlled and safe manner. The Inertia Vector Control System's gravitational shenanigans can be achieved with (very high purity) fold carbon, so it can be mass produced at a low rate by the New UN Government. The Inertia Store Converter's more complex gravitational and dimensional shenanigans require fold quartz that the New UN Gov't cannot synthesize, so they are dependent on reserves of fold quartz from Vajra hives and Protoculture ruins. To put it in an American-friendly context, the central New UN Forces are kind of like the main armed forces and the individual emigrant government New UN Forces are like the various arms of the National Guard. Or in a European-friendly context, the central New UN Forces would be like the European Army that Germany wants to have which exists above the various national military forces the European Union's member nations have. Each New UN Gov't member state (be it a fleet or planet) has its own defense force that operates under the auspices of the New UN Forces... but then there's the New UN Forces maintained by the New UN Government itself... the supranational armed forces... that are leveraged when a New UN Government member state is REALLY threatened or when a threat exists that endangers the ENTIRE New UN Government. One of the most frequently depicted arms of the central New UN Forces are the VF-X Special Forces, their elite troubleshooters.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Sudden starts and stops are where g-forces peak to damaging levels a lot of the time... esp. with the pilot. Kind of like how Xaos Valkyrie Works's modification to the VF-31's ISC made it damage the airframe by changing the ISC's discharge mode from continuous to event-based when the load on the aircraft dropped below a set level. Suddenly throwing more g-forces onto the airframe like that was torquing it and causing damage. Yeah, unless the Earth/central NUNS shows up, we'll likely not see the VF-24. Kind of, yeah. Assuming the New UN Forces are dead-set on making something like a fold reheat system or fold wave system a core feature of 6th Generation VFs the way Macross Delta and the VF-31 and VF-31AX Master Files have indicated they are, they only really have a few options available to them. They either have to find the motherlode of fold quartz somewhere in the galaxy, find a way to synthesize fold quartz, or modify these fold resonance effect systems in some way or other that makes them work with high-grade synthetic fold carbon. (I'd assume it's probably going to continue to be the excuse for why 5th Gen VFs will be the standard for a while yet.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    On the subject of Filoni, whether he's a part of the problem or a part of the solution feels to me like it's entirely a matter or individual perspective. I think it really depends on how attached one is to the pre-Disney Expanded Universe and one's tolerance for fanservice... as his Disney-era work is heavy on both.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    One problem among many with the "other series". Macross Chronicle notes that both the artificially cultivated Nature Regeneration Areas and the few small areas where the natural environment had escaped complete destruction at the Zentradi's hands were carefully monitored and managed under the Nature Regeneration Project. Quamzin was able to remain hidden as long as he did because his rebels were a tiny minority among the ~8 million Zentradi living on Earth, he sensibly moved around a fair bit to evade capture, there were no shortage of Zentradi derelicts to use as hideouts or pillage for equipment, and the critically understrength (New) UN Forces were spread very thin as they attempted to pick up the pieces on Earth and plan for future space emigration. If you exclude Zentradi volunteers, the New UN Forces were trying to police an entire star system with around 200-300 Valkyries, a few hundred Destroids, and just two carriers.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Nope... no announcements or notifications I can see. Looks like they also dropped a fair chunk of The Witch from Mercury's dub too. You mean the Gundam SEED Freedom movie? I dunno... I'm in kind of two minds about it. On the one hand, Destiny suffered because it was rushed out to capitalize on the unexpected success of Gundam SEED. On the other hand, IIRC the movie was meant to tie off the bloody stump of the Cosmic Era storyline after Destiny spun in. Whether they'll go for thematic and narrative consistency with the previous body of work or try to apply lessons learned is anyone's guess. In a way, the staff working on Gundam SEED Freedom are rather lucky. Gundam SEED Destiny lowered expectations, they've got years of increasing rose-tint on the glasses of the CE fanbase working in their favor, the story just has to be less incoherent than The Witch from Mercury's, and if they do screw up Urdr Hunt will be along shortly to distract the fans anyway.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    As others have noted, we haven't got any hard info on the actual performance of the VF-24. It's an inference based on several statements about the YF-24 Evolution and YF-29 in official material: Ever since the Sharon Apple Incident in 2040, the New UN Government has placed significant restrictions on arms exports to emigrant governments intended to ensure that cutting-edge weapons don't end up in the hands of anti-government rebels and that the central New UN Forces will always have The Biggest Stick. The YF-24 Evolution that was approved for mass production as Earth's 5th Gen main fighter was a beast that was able to solo a squadron-strength mixed force of 4th Gen VFs and Ghosts in simulated air combat. The New UN Government's restrictions on arms exports led to the YF-24 Evolution spec shared to emigrant governments being redacted in various areas (to preserve the advantage of Earth's version), requiring emigrant governments to fill in the gaps with their own technology that would result in inferior performance. Descriptions of the YF-29 that describe it as having been developed in secret to surpass the YF-24. Especially that last one... even though it's a fairly safe assumption that the production version of the YF-24 Evolution (VF-24A) exceeds the performance of the VF-25 by a not-inconsiderable margin, the implication that the YF-29 is the lengths they had to go to in order to surpass the YF-24 Evolution makes it sound like the YF-24 Evolution (which is produced as the VF-24A) was one hell of an aircraft. Made worse, perhaps, by the confirmation that even as of 2068 the YF-29 is The Strongest Valkyrie and that the New UN Forces are allegedly trying to find a way to mass produce the YF-29 as a possible 6th Generation successor for the VF-24. Ah, you're probably remembering that from when I did a rundown of the VF-31AX Master File earlier in this thread. Master File is not official setting material, but in the case of the VF-31AX book it's also the ONLY source of info we have for the mecha in Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! so we're kinda stuck with it until we get something better. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus offers an explanation of the post-Frontier YF-29 as a backhanded way of explaining Maximilian Jenius's YF-29 in the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! movie. It builds on what was previously established in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy about New UN Forces attempts to replicate the YF-29, and establishes three different YF-29s: YF-29A: the Macross Frontier fleet's original YF-29 seen in Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye. Effectively a one-of-a-kind aircraft that cannot be reproduced due to its fold wave system incorporating ultra-high purity fold quartz from Vajra queens, boasting the highest performance of any YF-29. YF-29B: an improved version of the YF-29 produced in very limited quantities for the New UN Forces. It's a more complete aircraft than the initial prototype and has higher performance in some areas. Master File added the additional detail that its fold wave system is inferior to the YF-29A's because the highest purity fold quartz available by normal means is not able to match the output of the YF-29A's Vajra fold quartz. Max's YF-29 was one of these. YF-29C: a Master File original that has not appeared in animation. Said to be a New UN Forces experiment in making the YF-29 viable for mass production by substituting ultra-high purity synthetic fold carbon for fold quartz. It did technically work... but its fold wave system was only able to achieve 1% of the output of the YF-29A fold wave system. The whole topic, and especially the YF-29C, was something used as part of a larger discussion to illustrate the challenges the New UN Government and New UN Forces face in attempting to develop a 6th Generation main VF... as they've retroactively recharacterized the YF-29 (and possibly YF-30) as 6th Generation prototypes and explain the VF-31AX from the movie as a rushed and sloppy application of prototype 6th Gen VF parts to the battle-damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds. Improvements in fold carbon synthesis will allow for continued improvements in reactor temperatures, engine output, and beam weapons... but without the ability to synthesize fold quartz they're hit a wall in applying technologies like Inertia Store Converters and Fold Wave Systems. With fold quartz only being available from Protoculture ruins or old Vajra nests, the number of ISCs that can be made at a time is limited, and there's no way to guarantee a supply of fold quartz to manufacture fold wave systems. A production-ready 6th Generation VF is something of a pipe dream because of this roadblock.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Potentially. They don't actually state that it will... though if the books for the VF-31 are any indication, it could potentially also be making the structural fatigue issues worse not better.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    All in all, they had a rough patch immediately following the First Space War but they've been doing pretty well for themselves thereafter despite Earth's environment having been wiped out. Humanity is phenomenally stubborn, and since abandoning Earth in the immediate aftermath of the First Space War wasn't in the cards they ultimately decided to not only put in the work to keep the planet nominally habitable but actually attempt to repair its ecosystem as completely as possible using their advanced (and advancing) technology. It'll take them thousands of years, but Earth is also the wealthiest and most industrially and militarily powerful planet in the galaxy so they aren't too bothered by the cost in terms of time and resources. They've got concealed hatches in various places... like that belly hatch in the assault module of the Queadol Magdomilla-class. The Quiltra Queleual-class has hatches at the rear that appear to be their main hangar. The hangar we see Vrlitwhai and the captured Cat's Eye recon plane in seems to be somewhere on the flank of the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-class. WRT the Zentradi's fear of the Protodeviln... I doubt it's anything like instinctive. In Macross 7, Exsedol is the ONLY Zentradi character who displays that intense fear reaction to the prospect of the Protodeviln. Milia doesn't. Veffidas doesn't. None of the half-Zentradi characters do. The reason he's the only one to have this reaction is probably that he's the only one who's really privy to knowledge of what the Protodeviln can do. Back when he was serving in the Zentradi forces, he was the Vrlitwhai branch fleet's records officer and the aide de camp to the fleet's commander. We know, from the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, that he had access to records going back as far as the Stellar Republic dissolution conflict as he was the one to bring up the ancient directive that Zentradi were not to interfere with the worlds of the miclones. I doubt it, TBH. After all, Macross is a fundamentally optimistic story. Earth's environment may be in rough shape, but they're leveraging the most advanced technology in the galaxy to make the planet livable and restore its former beauty a little bit at a time. Quite a lot of people, including some of the galaxy's wealthiest and most powerful, still live there. Focusing on stories elsewhere is a way to keep the story fresh and avoid bogging down the way other franchises have by obsessing over the same handful of characters until the lot of them are old, gray, and broken... It's not the only one... My Fair Minmay makes mention of some decidedly not-kid-friendly after-hours entertainment options aboard the Macross during the war. We only get a detailed look at postwar Earth in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, so this is perhaps an understandable view... though there are multiple cities/towns/villages/etc. even just a few years after the First Space War, and it's likely those grew and spread out after the series ended. Macross City would naturally be the biggest, given that it's the oldest, the planetary capital, and the seat of the interstellar government and military. Well, I wouldn't put it in the past tense... Earth's environment was all but completely destroyed in the Zentradi's orbital bombardment. Humanity and the Zentradi defectors put a lot of effort into emergency measures to keep Earth capable of supporting life in the immediate aftermath of the war, but cleanup and nature restoration efforts are ongoing and will be likely be ongoing for millennia. It's getting better by degrees, but Earth's not gonna be entering any "best kept lawn" competitions anytime soon. There are areas that have been restored to something that vaguely approximates prewar conditions thanks to cloning, genetic engineering, seed banks, and so on... but they're carefully maintained and monitored nature preserves that are being slowly expanded through painstaking human effort. Most of Earth's surface is still a desert even when we see it in 2040, 2059, and 2068. It's only in that other series we don't talk about that Earth magically recovered in an incredibly short period... thanks to footage from other shows representing an Earth where no such event ever happened. Doesn't seem that he does... the Supervision Army were Sir Not Appearing in This Film every time they've been mentioned. Literally the only design we have for the Supervision Army is Miyatake's design for the original appearance of the SDF-1 Macross. There were draft designs done to connect the Zentradi designs to the Vajra's designs, to support the conceit that the Protoculture modeled many of their designs on Vajra biology, but nothing for the Supervision Army. (Come to that, the Varauta designs weren't initially made for Macross either. They were developed as antagonist mecha for the Air Cavalry Chronicles series concept before that project pivoted to the fantasy genre and became The Vision of Escaflowne. They were minimally reworked for use in Macross 7, but even kept the Zaibach Empire designations from the original series concept.)
  18. Seto Kaiba
    This is Macross not Warhammer 40,000 or Gundam... it doesn't get quite that dark here. The Boddole Zer main fleet's bombardment of the Earth's surface was on the level of a global mass extinction event. Anyone who was on the surface was killed. Almost everyone would have been killed in the blast themselves as every population center was destroyed. A few unlucky souls living in particularly remote regions might have lasted long enough to be killed by secondary effects of the bombardment like tidal waves, earthquakes, or to suffocate on the dust, ash, and other pollutants saturating the atmosphere. It's unlikely that anyone on the surface lived long enough to have any concerns about where their next meal was going to come from. The approximately 1 million survivors of the disaster were people who were not on Earth's surface at the time. People like the inhabitants of the Apollo base colony on Luna, the space colonies and factories at the Lagrange points, the civilians and crew aboard the recently resupplied Macross, and the regional command center bunkers located beneath each of the Grand Cannon systems. The survivors were either out in space in partially or fully self-sufficient space habitats, aboard recently resupplied warships, or in massive underground bunkers designed and provisioned to resist a prolonged alien invasion. It took a while for the environmental cleanup efforts to render the atmosphere breathable again, and extreme measures had to be taken to prevent runaway global warming and other catastrophes, and there was rationing in place for a while after that, but there's no evidence that anyone was in danger of starvation. Times were tough, but not insurmountably so.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    "Nobody can raise the alarm if nobody is left alive to raise the alarm." It's undeniably effective, but hardly efficient. (An approach my lamentable lack of skill has left me very familiar with in stealth games like Dishonored or Hitman.) Something like that, yeah... or the rather posh accommodations we saw aboard Vrlitwhai's ship in Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Miclone crew quarters looked less like a berth of a navy ship and more like a fairly posh highrise apartment if Max and Milia's are anything to go by. The main reason why the Supervision Army was able to conquer as much of the Stellar Republic as quickly as they did was because the Protoculture's Zentradi force were unable to engage the enemy for much of the war. You see, the precautionary measures the Protoculture had taken to prevent a Zentradi uprising ultimately worked against them. One of the primary directives the Protoculture had instilled in their Zentradi forces was "Do not interfere with the Protoculture". Faced with an enemy whose forces contained large numbers of brainwashed Protoculture civilians, the Zentradi were effectively powerless to stop them until the Protoculture authorities could rescind that particular directive. They were never able to successfully re-implement those directives after the Protodeviln were sealed, which contributed to the Protoculture's decline and explains why some fleets like Boddole Zer's only remember the directive as ancient history and others (e.g. Macross: Eternal Love Song's Leplendis fleet) still at least follow the spirit of the directive if not its letter.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    It is fanart... and fans do love a really big gun. IMO the weirdest example was the stealth cruiser where they just stuck the Macross Quarter's heavy quantum cannon on the underside. Considering how much space those Zentradi ships have, odds are they wouldn't even need a separate colony ship. I've not seen anything that would substantiate the idea of mixed units like that. There's definitely evidence that the New UN Forces incorporated Zentradi ships and mecha into their organization... like the aforementioned case of postwar ARMD-class space carriers adding nearly a hundred Regults in place of many of the Ghosts and Lancers they previously carried. I'd assume they were probably organized as separate squadrons at least, for the sake of organizational clarity. About all we know about the New UN Spacy Reserve is that it exists, and Isamu once belonged to it before retiring officially and joining SMS. I doubt it... after all, the Protodeviln's rampage across the Stellar Republic was massively destructive but very short-lived. Start to finish, it lasted less than two years. They emerged in late 2871 PC and were ultimately defeated and sealed by the Anima Spiritia in 2873 PC. They didn't have the time, or any real reason, to reengineer and replace the weapons the Protoculture had armed the forces they were capturing and brainwashing with. This wasn't a subtle undertaking either. They conquered hundreds of worlds - over 30% of the Stellar Republic - in just three months and turned those captured defense forces and civilians to their cause by draining their spiritia and subjecting them to mind control. The Protodeviln were much more circumspect the second time around... they waited two years after they were released from imprisonment and conquered Varauta, and used the time to build up and improve their forces. They probably felt they needed the help too. The Varauta colony's tech was not exactly bleeding edge for the New UN Government and Human technology is quite a ways behind the Protoculture's in practically every respect. The Varauta colony was a small one too, they couldn't count on numerical superiority for quick and easy victory. Taking the time to improve the technology of the planet's defense forces and construct new ships and more advanced fighters and conscript more of the population to give themselves a better chance of overwhelming another emigrant planet or fleet. (Of course, they were also deliberately being more restrained in their pursuit of spiritia because Gepernich's goal was to create a sustainable source of spiritia that wouldn't require them to destroy galactic civilization just to survive.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    No, it just mentions that battle pods were found inside the Alien Starship 1 and that their technology was studied, reverse engineered, and ultimately used to benchmark "anti-giant" weapons being developed for the Earth UN Forces. The Regult is the standard battle pod used by the thousands of Zentradi main fleets in the galaxy. Given that the Supervision Army has been kept in the fight by the various factory satellites they captured half a million years ago, most if not all of which were set up to supply the Zentradi forces, it's doubtful their equipment is significantly different from what's used by the Zentradi main fleets. They were probably Regults.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. As revealed in Macross 7, the Supervision Army wasn't some meticulously planned and painstakingly equipped standing army like the Zentradi. It was a messy ad hoc armed force that the Protodeviln threw together on the fly using the ships, mecha, and factory satellites they were able to capture when they attacked a fleet/planet and their soldiers were their spiritia-drained Protoculture and Zentradi victims. The Supervision Army's Protodeviln leaders were only active for around a year before they were sealed by the Protoculture, so the Supervision Army likely didn't have any time to develop original weapons... assuming the spiritia-drained and brainwashed Protoculture civilians who were a part of it initially were capable of doing so in their reduced mental state. The overwhelming majority of the Supervision Army would have been, and likely still is, made up of Zentradi as they were the Protoculture's armed forces. Macross Chronicle makes several offhand mentions in coverage of Macross Zero designs and a few general Technology sheets that suggest that the United Nations investigators and/or OTEC found battle pods aboard the derelict and used them to benchmark offensive and defensive capabilities for development of Earth's "anti-giant" weapons. The Earth Unification Government's decision to develop humanoid robotic weapons approximately 10 meters tall was in expectation of fighting a land war against the giants, and specifically the prospect of engaging in hand-to-hand combat. That pursuit yielded two competing design concepts: Destroids and Battroids. They were initially fairly similar, but would evolve in different directions. Destroids would evolve from their original Mobile Suit-like concept into the walking tanks and artillery pieces we know from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, while Battroid development merged with the nascent Variable Fighter program to become its humanoid robot form.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Still having fun with Birdie Wing... it's not so much taking refuge in audacity as filing for a permament change of address within the borders of audacity. I'm not 100% sure if it's intentional or not, but it almost feels like a sports anime parody given how often it veers into "What do you meani it's not awesome?" territory. When I first watched it, I don't think I really appreciated just how much it skips. Seems like the production committee decided to largely take a pass on any part of the story that doesn't involve goblins... which is a surprising amount for a story named Goblin Slayer. Yeah, it lost me as well. What was it that put you off it? For me, it was when the series stopped being a subversion of the usual isekai tropes and started playing things straight. Naofumi was interesting while he was a hated underdog who pulled the short straw power-wise and not a standard overpowered hero. Once the king was deposed and his name was cleared, he lost a lot of what made him interesting... and that only got worse once he tried combining the leveling methods of the other heroes and quickly outpaced them all.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    A nuance that isn't quite captured by sketchley's answer above is that the (New) UN Army only really has confirmed appearances in two Macross titles to date: the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and Macross II: Lovers Again. As he noted, in Super Dimension Fortress Macross we see the UN Army using tanks and regular infantry. Macross II's final episode shows us destroid defenses being deployed in Macross City under the command of an officer the animation model sheets reveal is a UN Army officer, but Macross II is its own thing. Exactly which branch of the service owns the Cheyenne II's we see in Macross Frontier is unclear, as the CG model lacks markings for the most part, but it's very likely they're operated by the Space Forces as most of the other Destroids we've seen have been. The regular ground forces we've seen are wholly conventional... infantry and tanks. There's a lot we don't know about the organization of the military in Macross... mainly because the show and its related materials are only really interested in the space forces and largely ignores the surface branches. Given how much Macross bases the military organization in-story on real world practices - particularly those of the US armed forces - it's very unlikely that the Army operates any Variable Fighters. Fixed-wing combat aviation in support of Army troops is the purview of the Air Force. Macross Frontier and Macross Delta seem to suggest that Zentradi units operating "legacy" designs like battle pods or battle suits belong to the Spacy Marine Corps. In all likelihood, the regular Army is... well... regular. Tanks, helicopters, and boots on the ground. The branches operating Variable Fighters are the same ones that'd be operating regular fixed wing combat aircraft in the real world, and their space forces counterparts: the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Spacy, the Spacy Air Force, and the Spacy Marine Corps.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... citing Robotech is a bit like citing a particularly awful fanfic. If you want to see Destroids jobbing, you really just have to watch Macross Plus, Macross Frontier, or Macross Delta. On the ground, I guess... a mixture of battle pods, Valkyrie battroids, and conventional armored fighting vehicles. On ships, they've been replaced with beam CIWS and anti-aircraft missile launcher systems.
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