Seto Kaiba

It's hard to measure relative power when the weapon in question's more potent implementations tend to kill anything and everything that gets anywhere near the beam. The chief limiting factor should/would theoretically be the robustness of the power and cooling systems servicing the gun. The more powerful the reactor the more heavy quanta you can collect and the longer you can sustain the resonance fold effect that draws it into realspace, and the downtime between shots is going to drop along with the time it takes to cool the weapon back down between shots. You could say it's broadly true that a bigger super dimension energy cannon means more destructive potential though... as the increase in size generally means it's connected to similarly-increased power and coolant systems. (The only case I can think of offhand where this might not be the case is the YF-27-5's BGP-02 beam rifle... it isn't clear how it relates to the BGP-01 beam rifle used by the production model in terms of firepower, but the YF-27-5 has only two engines and an underwing generator pod to drive it instead of four engines.)

True, but I'm a layperson too... heck, I didn't even take physics in high school or college, and I saw the problem right away. You'd think someone, somewhere along the line would've noticed they were describing something that was literally impossible to achieve... an engine that doesn't need fuel and has unlimited endurance means you've invented perpetual motion, and even grade school kids (or anyone who's watched Mythbusters) know that doesn't work. Perhaps in the sense that it's a ring-topology reaction... but you'd probably get closer to the heart of the thermonuclear reaction turbine concept reading about stellar nucleosynthesis.

I'm kind of disappointed in this video... they didn't even get 60 seconds in before accuracy went out the window. Like any other form of power generation technology, fusion reactors require fuel... the reactants that are fused to produce the energy. Without reactants, you're not going to have a reaction, so the statement about "a next generation of airplanes that doesn't rely on fuel" is pure BS. Likewise, that bit about fusion engines offering "unlimited range, unlimited endurance" is also BS... the fusion reaction can only be sustained for as long as there is reactant to fuse to maintain critical temperature/pressure inside the reactor, after which point it will no longer be possible to sustain the reaction. The range might be long enough to be "effectively unlimited" for practical purposes, like multiple flights around the world, but eventually you WILL run out of reactant and have to refuel. You might get a couple of weeks of continuous flight time, but that's about it. Lockheed Martin really ought to have someone proofread this stuff before they use it to shoot an informational video. I'm not sure there's really a parallel there... the tokamak and stellerator are both thermally-catalyzed magnetic confinement reactors, the thermonuclear reaction overtechnology is moderated and catalyzed gravitationally... and, by design, they're not fussed about maintaining the temperature of the plasma stream past the reaction chamber because it's going to become engine exhaust.

I don't recall them ever actually presenting the term "Variable Fighter" in English in dialog... normally it's 可変戦闘機 (Kahen Sentoki). There's a lot of stuff in Macross which is based loosely upon the practices and designation systems of the United States armed forces... and yes, the fighter designation system in Macross is based on the US's 1962 tri-service designation system. Designations for prototypes and experimental aircraft have been a little weird, YF-# is the most common but we've also occasionally seen YVF-#, and VF-X-# is the most common experimental, but we've also seen XVF-# a few times and one instance of VF-X#.

"Prototype Fighter". The aircraft designation system used in Macross is based loosely on the 1962 US tri-service aircraft designation system.

Well, there's a fun story in that... Y'see... the VF-11 might've first appeared in Macross Plus in 1994, but it wasn't actually depicted with ordinance hung from pylons out on the wing in a narrative Macross title until its appearance in Macross the Ride in 2011. The chapter "Peace Children" shows the VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor (Macross the Ride Visual Book Vol.2 pages 25, 44-45) with two pylons on each wing... one of which has the stealth micro-missile pod sketchley mentioned and the other has a HMM-111CS high-maneuver missile like those seen in Macross Plus. I don't believe that particular tidbit of information has been included in the Macross Mecha Manual entry... yet.

Agh... my wallet! I know I'm gonna cave and end up buying one of these... I've wanted a VF-4 for ages.

My thoughts precisely. As long as Kawamori brings us an interesting story with some likable characters and cool fighters, it's all fine to me.

Probably, yes... these airframes are much, MUCH larger than the original VF-1. Three and twelve are numbers that the creators of Macross seem to like to fall back on when micro-missiles and cramped spaces are involved. My guess would be there's likely a pallet's worth of micro-missiles in each engine nacelle, possibly two since it's a General Galaxy plane. (That's put 24 in each.) Once, a long time ago, I recall seeing the bore for the VF-4's particle beam cannons cited as 60mm... the number stuck with me, but I can't for the life of me remember the source. Sometimes, one source is all these numbers are ever cited in. B-Club Magazine #73, for instance, is the only source I know of that gives a bore for the RO-X2A double-action beam cannon used in the VF-1's Strike and Double Strike pack configurations... 180mm, mentioned almost as an afterthought on page 8 of the "Super Aircraft" featurette there. It doesn't, really... except perhaps in that a larger bore usually means a larger, and therefore more powerful, weapon.

The YF-29 (and presumably YF-29B) has an internal micro-missile capacity of 100 micro-missiles, spread out across twelve Bifors MBL-02S launcher systems. The YF-30 stats don't say how many missiles are in the ordinance container, but my educated guess based on the usual habits for micro-missile launchers in Macross is 3 missiles per launcher port for a total of 108. As the YF-29 and, to a lesser extent, the YF-30 tentatively fall into the rough category of "Super Prototypes" (ala Gundam), I'm not sure if I could classify those missile counts as "expected" from a current-gen VF. The current (5th) generation's production-level platforms don't seem to carry nearly that much ordinance internally. The VF-25 has none at all (but stacks on hundreds of micro-missiles via its Super or Armored Packs), and the VF-27 only has the four launchers on those outer engine pods, but with its Super Pack it probably reaches the same territory as the YF-29.

A little, but then a little is really all there is. The XVF-19-1 is a forward-swept wing evaluation/test plane made by retrofitting a VF-11 Thunderbolt airframe, which was used for CFD test verification and for data collection during the earliest phases of the YF-19's development using the ANGIRAS-GWF204 avionics package (the same one, IIRC, that was used in the YF-19-1, YF-19-2 and later used ARIEL-α). It was completed in September 2038, but as an ad-hoc machine it was unable to transform to battroid mode. There were something like fourteen test builds done, to validate various features like the flight control system, the YF-19's APHS-94 radar, and a rather problematic test build of the FF-2200 engine the YF-19-1 used designated FF-2199.1.00 that experienced problems during test flights.

And you're doin' a damn fine job of it. You'd probably be surprised at the amount of seething discontent over there because Palladium DIDN'T strictly adhere to various "factoids"... they're actually raking Irving Jackson over the coals because of it in one book... THAT'S where we're running into trouble... you're assuming that this aspect of Macross history is some vast, blank canvas. It isn't filled in in as great a level of detail as the periods where the shows or other official stories take place, but we know a fair bit about what caused the fall of the Protoculture, the circumstances behind the emegence of the Protodeviln and Supervision Army, and a lot about the circumstances, organization, and "culture" of the Zentradi's purely military society. Macross 7 and Macross Zero both offer a fair amount of insight into the ancient Protoculture, but the print sources go much deeper. Especially the Macross official chronology materials, which spell out a frank timeline of the Protoculture's internal conflicts and their accidental self-destruction at the hands of their own creations.

He may be recalling the somewhat misleading statement that Macross had contributions from the "nascent" AIC and Gainax. Gainax did technically exist back then, in the form of the university student fan film group Daicon Film... whose members established the studio in '84. Macross was Anno's first real commercial project, IIRC. There was a similar situation with someone from AIC, but I've forgotten the guy's name.

Not a tonne... but with the Macross Mecha Manual's needs driving my acquisitions these days, there's at least enough mass there to make a good-sized human. The weird thing about this objection of yours is that I am actually making a couple solid points about what it actually means... in a lot of the cases where you're throwing speculation around, there are official explanations for how this all fits together. Macross's many talented creative minds are not shy about explaining their personal sci-fi playground in frankly impressive depth. They've given, via the shows and publications, direct answers to many of your musings here... That's where we run into trouble... what you're trying to rationalize is the depiction of the Zentradi in the Macross original series with the depiction in DYRL?, the latter being an in-universe fictionalization intended for propaganda purposes. Especially after the many revelations on Lux in Macross 7, the two different versions of the Zentradi's circumstances are largely incompatible... so trying to fit them together just goes to weird places that aren't really compatible with the setting at all (and fly in the face of the answers to your questions that have already been given in official Macross media). Not just printed facts, I also cheerfully work with what's said in the various Macross series, the novelizations, the manga, and those video games that are accepted as part of the larger Macross narrative. Lotsa good stuff! I cite Macross II because I like Macross II and its setting as much as I do the rest of Macross, and despite being a "parallel world" story it has had a few "nods" to its take on things in later Macross lore... also because, where the ongoing Macross timeline is, for most purposes, building upon the version of events in the original series, Macross II's separate timeline builds upon the version of events in DYRL? instead (and the DYRL? take on the Zentradi and Meltrandi is part of the topic of discussion). The Palladium RPG site isn't exactly welcoming to Macross fan-works either, due to a stringent and strictly enforced policy which prohibits the posting of conversions of copyrighted material to which they don't hold a license...

Nope... Studio Nue was always a design studio only. You may be conflating it with Tatsunoko Production Co. Ltd., who were the ones doing the animation and who outsourced part of the workload to other studios including AnimeFriend, StarPro, and so on.

You opened with a series of demonstrably incorrect assertions that you presented as factual, which anyone who'd actually seen the shows would spot for falsehoods right away... before launching into a downward spiral of gibberish that doesn't actually line up with anything in the official Macross setting or chronology. If it were speculation it'd be one thing, but you presented your... views... as not just fact, but alleged common knowledge. No, it really isn't... Lord is 卿 (Kyou), Supreme Commander is 最高司令官 (Saikou shirei-kan), and the title given for Boddole Zer is 司令長官 (Shirei choukan). No, it's taken directly from the show and official published materials... Exsedol even shows them a chart to indicate what level of the chain of command they can do the most damage at by taking out the various fleet commanders. Yes, a Zentradi main fleet is made up of multiple smaller fleets of varying sizes... the branch fleets, direct defense fleets, and what have you. The smallest unit that is presented is not designated a fleet, however, it's the "division" (specifically Quamzin's 7th Aerial Armored Division from the Boddole Zer main fleet's 109th branch fleet). Officially, the "main fleets" are the collections of smaller fleets attached to a mothership or mobile fortress... thought that is effectively placing them under the command of the main fleet's commander. It's explicitly referenced in dialog multiple times, and the official printed materials as well. Your attempt to dismiss the fact is, however, explicitly not correct based on the official Macross materials. The main fleet is not said to have taken its number from anything except the number of main fleets in existence and/or order of commissioning. Like a field army, their numerical assignment is simply sequential. It's explicitly stated in both the original Macross series and Macross: Do You Remember Love?, as well as many official Macross publications like the official encyclopedia Macross Chronicle, Variable Fighter Master File, and numerous others. There are several thousand remaining Zentradi Army main fleets varying in size from hundreds of thousands to a couple million ships... at the Zentradi Army's peak, there were five thousand Fulbtzs Berrentzs-class motherships in operation. In the modern day, there are 2-3,000 of them still kicking around. Macross Chronicle has a fair bit to say about it, Variable Fighter Master File has a brief bit that talks about an emigrant world that was settled by one of the smaller emigrant fleets being attacked and obliterated by one of the smaller Zentradi main fleets, and so on... (In the Macross II timeline, the UN Spacy encounters four more Zentradi Army main fleets and another Meltrandi Army main fleet between the end of the First Space War and the Mardook invasion in 2091. Two of those invasions are featured in the prequels produced for the OVA... Macross 2036 and Macross: Eternal Love Song. Admittedly, not all of those fleets found Earth entirely by accident either...) With the loss of the Protoculture's orchestrating hand, the Zentradi Army's main fleets are basically independent organizations... no evidence is given for any kind of higher authority above that of the commanders of the main fleets. There were plenty of repercussions... just not for Boddole Zer, as he was too busy being dead. The official Macross chronology mentions that the surviving elements of the defeated 118th Main Fleet is dispersed across a vast area of space thanks to the haphazard nature of their retreat. It's likely that the reason many of them didn't return to attack Earth later on is that they either concluded humans might just be the Protoculture after seeing an entire main fleet laid low like that, and equally likely is that some or all of their forces were "contaminated" by the Minmay attack and didn't want to risk being put on the chopping block by their fellows the way Boddole Zer did to Vrlitwhai, Laplamiz, and Quamzin. (We do know that the UN Spacy has standing orders to either subdue those rogue remaining elements of the fleet via Minmay Attacks or obliterate them outright... attempts to make the Minmay Attack a more precise weapon culminated in Project M and evaluation of the VF-19 Custom by Basara in Macross 7. The Macross II official publications, OVA, and prequels also talk a bit about Earth having to periodically fight returning rogue forces left over from previous main fleets, which became such a regular event in life that it effectively was reduced to the level of spectacle by 2091... the invasion from 10 years previous that inspired Hibiki to become a journalist was one such event, and the UN Spacy clearly thought the Mardook were another rogue Zentradi group up to the point the Minmay Attack didn't work.)

So does the series... and Macross Chronicle... and pretty much every other Macross work to talk about the Zentradi as a whole. The exact number varies a bit, but it's between 1 and 3 thousand fleets, of which Boddole Zer's was just one. (Which one also varies... his was the 118th in the series, and the 425th in the movie.) The attempted character assassination is cute, but inaccurate... the general problem with your posts is a tragic near-total absence of accuracy, to the extent that I have a difficult time believing you've ever actually seen some of these shows. Boddole Zer is never described as the "supreme commander" of the Zentradi Army as a whole... only as the commander of the 118th Main Fleet, or as the mobile fortress/commander of the 425th in DYRL?. (We've seen several other characters of comparable rank and responsibility in Macross.) The Zentradi Army is a military, not a culture... and the women are presented, officially, as being just another form of clone soldier in all official sources. Elite forces, in point of fact, as they were developed near the end of the schism war specifically to operate a new high-performance battle suit called the Queadluun-Rau. It's not so much implied as directly stated, but yeah... there are several thousand more main fleets out and about in the galaxy. The mechanic sheet for the Fulbtzs Berrentzs-class mothership indicates there are between 2 and 3 thousand fleets of several hundred thousand to several million ships still operating. If there was one mothership per fleet, there may have once been as many as 5,000 main fleets at the Zentradi Army's peak. He's not actually referred to as a "Supreme Commander", except in Robotech... That's also not accurate. Refer to Macross Ep.26, in which Exsedol briefs the UN Spacy on the 118th Main Fleet's organization and tactics. One of the things he tells them is to focus on the command ships of each group, because SOP is for a branch fleet to retreat if they've lost their command ship. The ~3 million surviving ships of the 118th Main Fleet didn't flee because they were afraid of anything, they withdrew from the battle zone because the subordinate commanders followed standard Zentradi tactical doctrine and withdrew after the command ships for each unit were sunk, a withdraw that became a rout after their chain of command was decapitated in a spectacular fashion by the destruction of the fleet's mothership.

More like "constantly"... even frigging Wikipedia correctly lists Studio Nue as a design studio.

No... Haruhiko Mikimoto wasn't working for Studio Nue, he worked for Artland. Why would his work on the development of Macross II imply the involvement of a studio he didn't work for...?

You specifically cited Mikimoto's involvement as proof of Studio Nue supporting the production of Macross II in your previous post. He's not a Studio Nue staffer. There WERE returning staffers from other Macross projects working on II, but not from Studio Nue. You might want to consult a dictionary, because "metaphorically" is the correct word to use there. Lad, you've been caught BSing... don't make it worse on yourself. This, right here, revealed you don't know what you're talking about. The IP is not "split up six ways from Sunday". Big West owns the Macross franchise and IP (technically jointly with Studio Nue, but they barely exist at this point), and Tatsunoko has some limited rights to the footage (but not content) of the original series. That's pretty straightforward stuff, really. Macross II is the result of Big West producing a 10th Anniversary OVA on its own, nothing more or less. No, he's said the story of the main cast of the original series is over and done with... Hikaru, Misa, and Minmay. Max is a supporting character.

But do you know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Or how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie-roll pop? Dammit man, I need answers! You do know that there are official romanizations for a lot of the names published in Japanese sources, right? As far as "Fleet of the Strongest Women" goes, that's the most literal translation of the episode title: 最強女の艦隊. And, for the record, that the truth is somewhere between DYRL? and the original series has been Kawamori's boilerplate response to continuity questions about them for ages... From the story cues in the three unaired episodes, they take place around episode 40 in the series... not after the end. The most obvious piece of evidence that disproves your position is that the Battle 7 is still in one piece in "Fleet of the Strongest Women"... it was destroyed in the series finale of Macross 7 and was still under construction more than a year later in Dynamite 7. Additionally, that's not the definition of anima spiritia. Its official definition is spiritia with a "bipolar nature" that its generator controls the polarity of, which is damaging to the Protodeviln. (Also used to refer to people who can produce this bipolar spiritia.) No, that just means the unaired episode has something different at the end... see the above for why your position is impossible WRT the series narrative. *sigh* That's demonstrably not true... there are just as many aesthetics retained from the original series as there are from DYRL? in Macross's sequels. Take, for instance, the filming of "Lynn Minmay Story" in-universe in Macross 7... the Zentradi actors are in costume for a TV series Quamzin and a DYRL? Vrlitwhai. Or the action on Galia 4 in Macross Frontier, where we see Zentradi in armor from DYRL? and the TV series side by side. Or, heck, Milia's TV series VF-1 showing up in Macross 7 repeatedly. In other cases, there are official explanations for the changes in aesthetic between the TV series and DYRL?... such as the VF-1's appearance being two different production blocks (the DYRL? version being a postwar block), or Exsedol's DYRL? appearance in Macross 7 being the result of him abandoning life as a miclone for fear of losing his memories and cerebral capacity. It is not, and never has been, a simple case of DYRL? aesthetics replacing everything from the series. No, it is not. They lost control of the Zentradi as their civilization dwindled in the aftermath of the war with the Supervision Army, but that's different. It's specifically noted in the chronology materials that the Zentradi had trouble engaging the Supervision Army specifically because they'd been indoctrinated to "not interfere with the Protoculture", and the Supervision Army was made up in part of brainwashed Protoculture under the control of the Protodeviln. The Zentradi did fight in the schism war, yes... but it's a key plot point in Macross 7 and thoroughly explained in Macross's official publications that the Supervision Army was formed by the Protodeviln using spiritia-drained and brainwashed Protoculture and the local Zentradi forces of the advanced planet where the Evil-series weapons were developed (the ice planet in the Varauta system). This is explicitly not the case... the Evil-series bio-weapon bodies that drew the Protodeviln into the material universe were made as weapons to fight the schism war, and they were not drawn into our universe and those bodies by the testing accident until PC 2871, at which point the schism war had been going on for at least 11 years. The cause of the schism conflict is given in official chronology as over-expansion in the Stellar Republic leading to internal conflicts. You're arguing against a point nobody made... I said the Zentradi were not averse to coexisting with their opposite genders in the course of duty. There is professional rivalry, jockeying for power, and a fair amount of richly-deserved contempt for Quamzin on both sides due to his belief that orders and rules are something that happen to other soldiers, but the males don't hate the females or vice versa. They absolutely were uneasy about the idea of encountering the Protoculture again because, as Exsedol reminds Vrlitwhai when they discover that Earth's population are miclones, they had ancient orders warning them that nothing good will come from them mixing with miclones or interfering with the Protoculture... which was, itself, Protoculture conditioning to prevent them from trying to focus on non-military pursuits. That has no basis in anything in Macross... There's a LOT more done with Macross's setting than just what's in the anime... both narratively and in terms of setting explanation in official publications. Just because you aren't aware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Just as a piece of friendly advice... if you don't know what you're talking about, don't try to bluff your way through. Big West owns the Macross franchise, they didn't need to circumvent ANYTHING when they worked with AIC to make Macross II. You believe incorrectly... and, also, Haruhiko Mikimoto was an Artland staffer, not a Studio Nue one. Two things... First, the Macross II OVA was made after Kawamori took his leave of the franchise and before they started trying to rationalize the differences between DYRL? and the original series in any serious way. Second, the actual events and setting of both versions of the First Space War are rather different. It's not an identical story at two different run times. The bare basics are (partially) the same, but they're very much two different stories and settings. Please don't confuse what you personally wanted with what the fandom as a whole wanted. Seriously... you're trying to blast Macross II for not being a direct sequel to the original series and having minimal connection to it. Then , in the same breath, you try to praising the other 90's Macross shows for... not being direct sequels to the original series and having minimal connection to it. (I suppose part of your discontent may be in that the Macross II prequels never made it to the states, so you never got to see the return of Britai, and Komilia's 15 minutes of fame as a Valkyrie ace.) We won't... Kawamori has always maintained that their story is done. They have their closure, and have sailed off into the sunset (metaphorically). We saw Max and Milia's kids, yeah... but we see one of 'em take center stage in the Macross II prequels as well. That's not unique.

There is. It's called Macross Chronicle... and it's about 2,560 pages long.

IIRC, "Fleet of the Strongest Women" wasn't actually part of Macross 7 Encore. Putting aside it being an unaired episode, its events are believed to take place around 10 episodes before the end of the series proper. That's actually not true... Kawamori has historically maintained that neither the original Macross series nor DYRL? is the "true" story of the First Space War, but that the truth is somewhere in the middle. In recent years, he's expanded that view to the rest of Macross as well... (The timeline in the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle is based on the TV series' events, and there are explanations behind the various uses of DYRL? designs in later Macross shows.) Actually, it's pretty straightforward... within the Macross universe, Do You Remember Love? is actually a propaganda movie which dramatized the First Space War that was released in February 2031. The goal there was, in part, to drive home the ongoing and severe nature of the Zentradi threat. Essentially, there is no "Meltrandi Army" in Macross... and the Zentradi females themselves were/are basically just elite troops in the Zentradi forces. Their enemy is the Supervision Army. Only in the "parallel world" of Macross II, which treats DYRL? as being (mostly) the true and authentic First Space War story, does the Meltrandi Army exist at all. (The Supervision Army does not exist in Macross II.) The Zentradi aren't hell-bent on eliminating the Protoculture... they have standing orders to leave the Protoculture alone. The Supervision Army is, yes, a force made up of the spiritia-drained and brainwashed Protoculture and Zentradi who were taken prisoner by the Protodeviln. The Protodeviln themselves were stopped by the anima spiritia (people who had the ability to produce spiritia that negatively affected the Protodeviln) and sealed away, but the Supervision Army is still supposedly at large. Not sure where you're getting the existentialist fundamentalist thing tho... That's not accurate at all, I'm afraid... The Protoculture did, in fact, create the Zentradi to do their fighting for them. The Zentradi were well aware of this fact, and had no problem with it, being that they were indoctrinated and brainwashed to concern themselves only with military matters and to avoid interfering with the Protoculture. The schism was between two different factions of the Protoculture (the reason for the schism is not given), but it's mentioned in the ruins on Lux that the Protoculture were a divided people for much of their history. There was warfare between the factions, and the "Evil-series bio-weapon" bodies that became the Protodeviln were a weapon one side created for that conflict. The Protodeviln are energy beings from higher dimension space who were accidentally trapped in those bodies when the experimental power source developed to power the amazing combat abilities of the bio-weapons malfunctioned during testing. They never "assumed control" over anyone in government, the Protodeviln spiritia-drained and brainwashed the Protoculture and Zentradi on the world that the bio-weapons had been developed on, and turned them into the start of a conquering army (the Supervision Army) to supply them with spiritia so they could continue to exist on this plane of reality. Their emergence actually ended the schism by presenting both sides with a common enemy, though most of the Protoculture were wiped out in the fighting. Boddole Zer wasn't even alive when the Protoculture were fighting their schism war, or their subsequent war with the Supervision Army. That was half a million years before the "present day" in 2009, and Zentradi lifespans aren't much different from a human's. (DYRL?'s Golg Boddole Zer is an organic computer rather than an actual Zentradi soldier, but even he's only 120,000.) There was no animosity between male and female Zentradi in the series... the rival "Meltrandi Army" was an in-universe invention made for the 2031 propaganda movie Do You Remember Love?. Operational practices passed down from before the ages when the Protoculture civilization still stood are what keep the males and females segregated in the Zentradi Army, and that's done as a way of keeping them from deviating from their purely military mindset. The Zentradi in the Macross series have a pretty decent handle on professional relationships and body language... they just don't have the appropriate cultural context for any interaction beyond platonic, purely military operations. Also, Milia was not viewed with animosity, but with respect and more than a little awe for her status as their fleet's top ace. (The spy trio in particular were mightily pleased that they were being deployed for their mission by Milia herself...) Actually, the Meltrans are all about top piloting skill... in the Macross universe, the female Zentradi were basically the result of the Protoculture engineers on one side of the schism war building a battle suit with uncontrollably high specs, and then resolving that they'd rather build a better pilot than try to make the Queadluun-Rau less high-spec. Laplamiz's direct defense fleet in the series was part of the fleet group which was responsible for protecting the fleet's mothership. The DYRL? Meltrandi Army warships are not said or shown to be more technologically advanced than their Zentradi counterparts, merely built around a different technological school of thought. The DYRL? Zentradi use a lot of organic design aesthetics and a portion of their technology actually has organic components, while the Meltrandi use purely inorganic technology. On most levels their technology is functionally identical. (If one looks to the Macross II timeline, for which DYRL? is canon, Zentran and Meltran overtechnology is actually compatible to the extent that most human ships in that "parallel world" combine them freely.)

Unfortunately, there's not really a direct correlation between the VF-0's deliverable thrust and its generator output thanks to the use of over-tuned conventional turbofan engines. Going balls-out at altitude, a VF-0A/S is pumping out 30,367.15 kilograms-force (297.8kN) of thrust to keep the airframe moving at 808.848 meters per second. So the P in the equation is equal to F (297.8kN) * d (808.848m) / t (1sec), which means the power of the engines under those conditions is 240,874,934N·m/s (or J/s). That's equivalent to 240.9MW, rounded up, but that's the motive power of the airframe at peak output. The generator power is going to be considerably less than that, because it's probably in the high-pressure compressor stage, and gas turbine generators tend to be less than 50% efficient. Assuming the VF-0's EGF-127 turbofans are on a roughly equal footing to the modern Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan used on the F-22A, that'd give us an approximate efficiency of 40% and therefore a peak output of about 48.175MW per engine. That's a heck of an assumption though, since the efficiency could be as low as 35% (42.153MW/engine) if the engine is not particularly well cooled... or it could even exceed the near-perfect-world 60% efficiency (72.262MW/engine) if there's OTM at play in the generator itself or its thermal system via room temperature superconductors and other supermaterials. That's an awful lot of variance in the range... a delta of 41% means that any guess I made in that range would be little better than throwing darts at the wall while blindfolded, and three sheets to the wind on cheap tequila. Still, ~48MW/engine at peak output isn't that much to play with, and that means ECA alone could potentially be consuming anywhere from 76MW to 130MW to beef up that inch or so of composite armor into something equivalent to a meter-plus thickness of RHA.