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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    The YF-29's a bit of an odd bird when it comes to guns... The coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret (head) are identified in official spec as ES-25A 25mm high-speed machine guns firing anti-Vajra MDE shells (the same weapon the VF-25's hip guns were upgraded to). No weapon is mentioned as being installed in the hip gun ports, though the port itself still clearly exists in the CG model. The back-mounted TW2-MDE/M25 micro-dimension eater beam cannon fires a stream of microsingularities made up of the superheavy quanta that can only be produced using fold quartz, which draw matter from the target into super dimension space on impact. The gun pod is a heavy quantum beam rifle that operates sort of like a half-arsed Macross Cannon. Instead of drawing heavy quanta into realspace and letting the gravity it produces cause it to fuse and focus the output of that reaction into a fusion plasma beam, the heavy quantum beam rifle stops halfway through the process and just fires a beam of that ultra-high-mass extradimensional matter at the enemy instead. Edit: Cannons on the arms? There aren't any. I know the bit you're talking about, but it's never been identified as a gun. Totally looks like it ought to be one though.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Which one?
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... and that would tend to point the finger squarely at Macross-1, being the only fleet ever positively identified as using a New Macross-class without a shell. Mind you, there's not a ton of possible alternatives for this one. Macross Chronicle indicates that it was only the earliest of the New Macross-class ships that didn't have the defensive shell, and we know the ships in the Macross-5 fleet had them... which means it has to be a pre-Macross-5 ship. We know that it can't be Macross-3 or Macross-4, as those established the colonies on Eden 3 and Sephira respectively. That leaves Macross-1 or Macross-2.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    To do that, it'd have to be a dimension weapon beyond anything covered by the current definition of the term... as it stands, that term covers super dimension energy cannons and dimension eater weaponry. Neither of those would produce something like a fold fault, let alone one capable of isolating a planetary system. I'd suspect there's some ancient Protoculture technology on the planet that is creating the fault.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    From the description given by Captain Johnson and Major Molders, it seems like Windermere may be in the same "kind of inaccessible" straits as Uroboros... he did say it was surrounded by fold faults. (One has to wonder if the fold faults are there by accident or design... to keep others out, or to keep something the Protoculture left on the planet in...)
  6. Seto Kaiba
    On the VF-1 and VF-1, that was probably necessary to ensure they could fight for the maximum amount of time without needing to withdraw for refueling. In the case of the VF-25, it's likely more about the additional armor and weaponry. If you take Master File's stance on the SPS-25S/MF25 Super Pack at face value the advantage is pretty straightforward... when equipped with the Super Pack, the VF-25 can carry almost 20% more weaponry in the pack itself than it could if it had deployed with micro-missile pods on all eight pylons AND the outer two pylons on each wing remain free. That is a LOT of ordinance... over 200 micro-missiles! (All that and it's got extra fuel tanks, boosters, and more powerful verniers...)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    My suspicion, based on the early YF-29 concept art in Shoji Kawamori: The Viewpoint of the Visionary Creator, would be that it was probably not part of plans for the Macross Frontier television series. It's clearly drawn on top of a completed, polished VF-25 design printed off a computer... with the new wings, engines, and tail design roughed in in pencil. (Similarly, with the Macross Quarter, I suspect the others were an idea they had while they were brainstorming the 2nd movie. When they launch the Quarter for the first time in the TV series, they make it sound like the ship was still experimental... and the writeup in Macross Chronicle makes it sound like the ship, like the VF-25's it carries, are merely on loan to SMS for field testing.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    So... I have a question (or a solicitation for recommendations, really). Long story made short, I've come down with the utterly mad idea of putting a few Valkyries on display in my office to add a personal touch. My goal is to have one example of each generation's designated main variable fighter... but I'm a relative newcomer to the toy collecting hobby. I need someone in the know to give me a recommendation for a VF-1 and a VF-11 that won't break the bank (no Arcadias, lovely though they are) and looks slick in fighter mode. Transformation and so on are a non-issue, though I'd prefer something close to 1/60 scale.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The fuel in the tanks (slush hydrogen) is there to feed the compact thermonuclear reactor in the engine... it's the plasma that the reaction produces that becomes the propellant in space flight. The heavy quanta (matter which exists in both dimensions, but has impossibly vast mass that resides principally in super dimension space) produced by the engine's fold carbon coil is maintained by a Gravity Inertia Control system and is used both to initiate the fusion reaction via compression and for containment of the reactant and the plasma the reaction creates. Heavy quanta is nasty stuff, mind... properly excited with a fold resonance effect, all of its mass can drop into realspace and its own gravity will trigger it to rapidly fuse with itself in a fairly violent manner. That's how dimension beam weapons (SD energy cannons, converging energy cannons, they have a bunch of different names) work. Dimension Eaters simply use a kind of the stuff that has even greater mass, so instead of fusing its mass causes it to drop right back into the super dimension (taking anything inside its gravitational field with it).
  10. Seto Kaiba
    Well, it's got guns, it's probably got a countermeasure dispenser somewhere, and we know it has at least six internal micro-missile launchers... seems like that covers all those.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... that's a good point, both Gigile (the "bulldog guy") and Gavil (the one obsessed with "beauty of") really seem to repeatedly take it on the chin from Diamond Force, so I guess that IS an example of them operating as designed.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Just a side note, the Macross-1 fleet is the only one noted as not having the shell.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    It'd have a hard time pulling this one off if it didn't... Appears to be internally stored on the Frontier fleet's VF-171 units prior to the EX upgrade, at which point some units started carrying it externally because the extra armor added to the legs got in the way of the doors. Sort of. It's mentioned with two different models that appear to be either externally identical or mounted in the same case... the GU-14B and MC-17C. Exactly what the difference is, we don't know, but the VF-17's was the MC-17A, so we can say with some certainty that it has the option of using a later variant of what was standard on the VF-17. From that, it seems a somewhat logical assumption that the gun pod we DO see is the GU-14B, as it has eight barrels rather than the MC-17's 7 barrels. In all honesty, that's a question to which the answer will vary depending on the Valkyrie. There are two chief considerations that affect space endurance: the fighter's internal tank capacity and the efficiency of its engines. Larger fighters, such as the VF-14 Vampire, have much more room for internal fuel tanks than small ones like the VF-1 Valkyrie. Also, the 4th Generation VFs (VF-19, VF-22, VF-171) and 5th Generation VFs (YF-24 and derivatives thereof) each received new generations of engine technology that greatly improved efficiency and power vs. what a previous-generation Valkyrie was capable of. The VF-1 Valkyrie has rather limited internal tanks because its size was deliberately constrained to produce a battroid that was approximately the estimated size of the giant aliens that were believed to have crewed the ASS-1. Based on the fuel tank and consumption rate remarks in Variable Fighter Master File, a VF-1's 1,410 liters of internal fuel would give the engines a maximum operation time of approximately 6 minutes and 33 seconds at full power. The additional fuel in the FAST pack's conformal tanks stretches that to a few seconds short of 30 minutes. The VF-11 isn't that much bigger than a VF-1, so I would assume its endurance is similarly limited... but short-duration space operations, and medium-duration operations where there isn't a lot of heavy maneuvering expected should be OK for either. Its larger rival, the VF-14, was built HUGE for space operations so it didn't need FAST packs even with its comparatively inefficient engines. Mind you, thanks to Master File there's the suggestion that just because we don't see extra tanks doesn't mean they aren't there. There's mention in the second volume of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie of an additional internal set of fuel tanks that can be inserted into the VF-1's main and BLCS intakes for the purpose of maximizing its operating time in space. No word on their capacity though, but it has to be at least a few hundred liters. It wouldn't surprise me if that feature were retained on later designs either. The Advanced Variable Fighters equipped with thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines or Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines seem to all be built large enough that they don't strictly need FAST packs for short- or medium-duration space flight, though for most the option seems to remain available for long-range or high-activity space operations (or just when they feel the need to spam missiles like they have some kind of grudge against Ichiro Itano's wrist. On a quick skim, it does seem that way... it's kind of hard to make out because the scan is low-rez, but I do see what looks like 運転時間700時間 (Operation time of 700 hours) in there. That's quite a sprint in atmosphere! 700 hours is 29 days 4 hours! That's 150 seconds of full power burn for the big rocket boosters... but that's a hybrid rocket engine, so it can be throttled and that 150 seconds of "hold onto your butt" stretched into many minutes of less over-the-top thrust. EDIT: You guys have no idea how much I enjoy questions like these... honestly. :-)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    In Macross 7, it seems to have been used to speed up the arrival of the ship's heaviest hitters so they could bring the pain to the relatively small number of enemy fighters in each skirmish. They never really faced an overwhelming-force attack in Macross 7, just lots of little skirmishes here and there. I can't imagine using a regular catapult would take that much longer, but it sure looks cool and makes the heroes stand out, right?
  15. Seto Kaiba
    "Various publications" is the short answer... there's no One Source to Rule Them All (though Macross Chronicle is damn close), but it's a mixture of Chronicle, official series and franchise art books, liner notes, official interviews and coverage in magazines like Great Mechanics, Newtype, B-Club, Hobby Japan, Dengeki Hobby, and so on. Mr March and I each maintain our own personal collections of reference material, though his is oriented more around the highest possible quality line art and mine more around the detail level of the text. Mine is currently sprawling across most of two of the large Sauder shelf units in my study and threatening to annex a shelf or two on the third between all the Delta stuff coming out and the rare old books we're importing to track down specific rare pieces of art. In the case of the particular detail you quoted, that's out of Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet coverage of the VF-17D/S Nightmare from Macross 7. I believe that one changed sheet numbers between 1st and 2nd Edition (Macross 7 UN Sheet 7A in 1st and 8A in 2nd). The Macross Mecha Manual draws on all of those sources, with pains taken to note where old trivia has been supplanted by newer material (most often from Chronicle), additional or contradictory data exists in sources of dubious validity or technical novelty like Master File, and the rare occasions where the official trivia contradicts itself or presents an obvious error in math or logic (such notes usually being explained in detail in the "For Fans Only" section).
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Again, not a more versatile base design... the VF-17 needed substantial tweaking and significant design improvements to achieve high versatility. It was, however, exceptional in its niche role. It would've been a very poor choice for dealing with large numbers of enemies, bombing missions, and anything else that would require large amounts of ordinance. More for "f*** that guy in particular" than "f*** that guy and all his mates". Based on the available material, the best answer I can offer on that score is that in 2060 it seems to have gone beyond simply being a prototype aircraft to being in a sort of limited, likely unofficial, trial production for the use of SMS and NUNS Special Forces. Potentially a "build-to-order" affair, since no two character models are alike (Alto's, Isamu's, and Ozma's all have unique heads) and the NUNS version (used by Rod Baltemar) is said to be an improved version of the YF-29 and is designated as a separate variant (YF-29B Percival).
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, I'd expect the VF-171 line to be a new build... they only made 718 VF-17's... but still, my view was one more geared toward upgrading existing aircraft, since building new VF-19s or 22's was supposedly prohibitively expensive even before the thought of turning them into Generation 4.5 aircraft came along. Compared to the VF-19 Excalibur's 1st mass production type, the VF-19EF Caliburn had roughly the same mass but a substantial improvement in engine power. Not to VF-19F levels (about 7% less), but a hair shy of 20% improvement vs. the VF-19A. Like all "monkey model" variants built aboard the emigrant fleets, it had limiters on some aspects of its performance (target acquisition, etc.). They don't say one way or the other whether it was actually more maneuverable than the earlier type, but I would assume so based on its superior control, more stable engines, addition of a vernier ring, etc. The recurring theme of the VF-19's entire history has been one of getting the aircraft's incredible maneuverability under control. The YF-19 was about as stable as a biscuit raft, and the VF-19A and its family of variants refined the design enough that a skilled ace pilot could potentially get to grips with the aircraft, but not enough for it to be viable as next main fighter. Shinsei's second try with the VF-19E/F type refined the design enough that average pilots could keep it in the air, but not enough for them to make the most of the design. Based on the descriptions in Macross the Ride, the VF-19EF Caliburn achieved the long sought-after happy medium with a less overkill engine, the prototype EX-Gear, and a new (almost 20 years newer) airframe control AI.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, the VF-17 Nightmare was built for an incredibly specific role that the existing Main Variable Fighter (the VF-11) wasn't well suited to... stealthily waltzing right up to the enemy and pinpoint attacks on high-value targets. Its abnormally heavy armor, design emphasis on space performance, and almost exclusively short-ranged armament made it a fairly effective space dogfighter... and that's mostly how it was used in Macross 7. In a way, the VF-171 was kind of the VF-17 having the last laugh in Project Super Nova. The VF-19 and VF-22 were designed for similar operating conditions (though with more versatility), and when those unstable superstars self-destructed the UN Spacy said "We had the VF-17 for this and it worked fine... can't we just make that better at other stuff?". That's actually got a fairly straightforward explanation. Y'see... the VF-19 Custom was built as an experimental platform for a top-secret military research program called Project M, which was researching song energy and developing more direct applications of the Minmay Attack. Basara seems to have simply been a nearly ideal test subject, as he was a singer who was also an exceptional pilot and his trusted foster father and band manager had close ties to the military. Effectively, the secret program was able to hide in plain sight disguised as a prop for a civilian rock band's guitarist, who was apparently too self-absorbed to question where his manager had obtained a state-of-the-art fighter. (Or perhaps clever enough to realize he didn't want to know the answer.) The VF-25's differences and number of variants weren't really that far off what previous generations had... so I can't imagine that Shinsei and LAI were too upset, especially when the special purpose variants still share like 95% of the hardware with the typical mass-production model. That appears to have been torpedoed via Macross R, Macross 30, and Master File. The YF-29 is supposedly part of the reason for the VF-27's final design (specs were leaked to General Galaxy by LAI), the NUNS in 2060 had some YF-29's, and Master File also mentions the YF-29 in connection with the VF-25's development. The rough sketch of the YF-29 in Kawamori's biography is actually VF-25 line art with the wings and body erased and roughed in with the -29 configuration in pencil... so there may be something to that, though the design's origins seem to go back to the early 2000s and the SW-XA stuff done for VF-Experiment. (The Master File YF-29 is in the same colors as the SW-XAII Schneegans.) Master File mentons a YF-26 as a rejected design from the same inter-fleet joint development project that resulted in the VF-25 and VF-27. Its home fleet is identified therein as Macross Olympia, who supposedly dropped the design in favor of the VF-25. There are some allusions to a YF-28 in Macross R, in connection with the data LAI leaked to General Galaxy. Actually, the VF-25 was a joint venture between Shinsei Industry and LAI's branches in the Macross Frontier fleet.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Doubtful, IMO... it takes a lot more doing to send matter (and energy) from our universe into super dimension space than it does to draw heavy quanta from super dimension space into our universe. I suspect that, prior to the 4th Generation, reactors were simply keeping the fusion reaction at a low-enough level that most of the energy could be harnessed by the HamiltonX-Ash4 PGS and the MHD, and what was left could be either harnessed to preheat reactant or vented through exhaust or traditional cooling systems. It isn't until the 4th Generation and the introduction of thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines that we start hearing about them having heat-dissipation problems that necessitate either larger heat sinks or throttling of the reactor itself. It's little tales like this that really ought to crop up in Macross sometime... the trials and travails of the deck crew who have to keep those Valkyries running. A wild child like Hayate Immelman or Isamu Dyson would probably drive the deck crew into paroxysms of fury in prolonged operations...
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Hrm... watched this one late last night, and I was reasonably satisfied with it. It was a good character-and-backstory episode, though I feel that it would've been better if the fight with the Aerial Knights had been allowed to reach a less abrupt ending in the previous episode. The abrupt change of gear left the fight from last episode feeling rather unsatisfying, though to a certain extent the backstory and Freyja material definitely made up for it.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yeah... he and Guld did a lot of reckless, irresponsible things and smashed up two very expensive prototypes, but those two had a serious grudge going on that went way, WAY beyond line of duty combat into at least one genuine attempt at premeditated murder. There was real hate there, which motivated them both to go a lot further than they normally would. He does OK in his YF-19 in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, but he does upgrade to a custom YF-29 (arguably the second best-looking DX of the YF-29, IMO) in one of the later chapters of the game when you go up against a Vajra Bishop-class ship and Sharon Apple. An experienced pilot can make up a lot of the difference in technological performance if he's up against a less experienced enemy, but he was up against two pilots who are at least as talented as he is (Guld and Brera), one of whom was sporting the sizable tech advantage that is the VF-27. (Amusingly, the game actually puts the VF-171 higher on the tech tree than the VF-19 or VF-22.) Powerful enough to exceed the design limits of the VF-19 is something impressive all on its own... that suggests a significantly more powerful weapon in the GU-17. Though muzzle velocity is only one factor, there's the larger round's greater explosive charge would also be a significant factor. Uniquely, of all gun pods, the GU-17 is the only one in which alternate types of ammo that offer superior penetrating power are mentioned. (More are mentioned for older models in Variable Fighter Master File.) On VFs, the point of diminishing returns seems to hover right around 60mm, which is the single largest gun pod firing projectile shells (on the VA-3). (Bores above that seem to be the exclusive provenance of beam weapons, like the YF-27-5's 75mm beam rifle, or the Strike Valkyrie's 180mm beam cannons. WRT the GU-15's caliber, I would expect it to be larger than 30mm... 30mm is the smallest caliber employed in a gun pod by the (New) UN Spacy, and the GU-15 is not exactly small. My theory is that it's likely a higher caliber than the 40mm cannon used by General Galaxy's VF-17. Possibly a return to 55mm, considering Master File suggests that the GU-15 actually holds fewer rounds than a GU-11 in each magazine. The passive stealth construction explicitly helps, per Chronicle, as the YF-19 and YF-21's active stealth systems were not nearly as potent as those on the 2nd Mass Production Types, VF-171, or 5th Generation Valkyries. Still, Isamu has a crystal-clear picture of the YF-21 until the active stealth system goes live, at which point the fighter he's practically sitting on the tail of becomes a thing his radar insists doesn't exist. There are a lot of design differences that that's attributed to... one of which bears mentioning in that "heavier weapon" doesn't always mean "bigger shell". The MiG-15 and MiG-17 were laboring with low-velocity large-bore guns with a low rate of fire and very limited ammunition. Their western opponents were working with more numerous, higher-velocity guns with more rounds per gun. WRT the test conditions, it's worth noting that the test was explicitly NOT designed by the manufacturer... it was designed and set up by the potential buyer (the New UN Spacy), so in all likelihood it was a fair test (or stacked slightly against the YF-24). *shrug* Even so, if we compared them under their respective normal operating conditions, the VF-19 is going to be in a very bad place. Oh that's no question at all... we know the answer to that one, courtesy of Great Mechanics.DX 9. The VF-19 can be upgraded to take an inertia store converter and EX-Gear cockpit system, though the far greater performance of the 5th Generation Valkyries in the face of the Vajra threat was considered justification for the extra cost of engineering a new fighter generation instead of using upgraded 4th Generation Valkyries. It's doubtful many VF-19's were upgraded that way, though, as the excess performance was simply not necessary for most foes (hence the VF-171) and the fleets that were headed into Vajra territory opted for the 5th Gen Valkyries because their performance was considered sufficient to rival the Vajra. However, as the ISC is one of the more expensive parts of a 5th Generation VF, that'd eradicate a good chunk of the "cheaper" aspect of the upgrade (and the VF-19 doesn't have cost-reducing technologies like the linear actuator tech the 5th Gen Valkyries use, so the cost of maintenance would likely be higher).
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Drain the port-a-john into an air-to-ground missile after serving Indian food in the mess... Hellfire indeed.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    This sounds more like a job for a metal band than Basara... perhaps a Metalocalypse - Macross crossover? Yep... and all indications are that a VF-1 should be significantly more efficient than the NASA concept, which was theoretically able to circumnavigate the world on a pound of reactant per engine. (For the record, a VF-1 with full tanks is carrying approximately 264lb of fuel.) The Variable Fighter Master File books mention two ways power is extracted from the reaction... one is a barely-mentioned system called the HamiltonX-Ash4 Power Generation System, the other is a MHD generator. From the description, which is vague at best and makes reference to a "Glen effect" (グレン効果) I'm not familiar with, it sounds like they're using something along the lines of a Seebeck effect thermoelectric generator (involving heating of dissimilar alloys) to directly convert heat from the reaction into usable electrical energy in the former system. Not really exaggerating, but yeah... the fleshy meats are definitely the weak link in the chain, at least until the next-generation model EX-Gear that turns into a toilet. (Y'know, like in Reconguista in G... damn that was weird.)
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Early ones were ion engine-supplemented fusion rockets, though the creators of that series mentioned that the modern ones (24th century) are more like low-power warp drives using fusion plasma for power instead of the output of an annihilation reactor. That's how they work in atmosphere, yes... and as plasma is a superheated gas I suppose you could say it's technically true for space as well (with a little extra help). Oh, it's an incredibly wasteful and inefficient way to go about it... but with the engines generating that much power and them being in no danger of running out of hydrogen anytime soon, they can afford to be a bit blase about it. The sheer inefficiency of it all actually loops back to defensive technologies... older Valkyries don't have the excess juice to run their energy conversion armor or pin-point barriers in fighter mode because the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines are wasting a LOT of energy in the form of heat (or plasma, in space) for thrust production instead of turning that into generator output. Efficiency improved considerably with the move to thermonuclear reaction burst turbines with the 4th Gen fighters and Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines in the 5th Generation, to the point that some state-of-the-art VFs have enough power that they can provide the redonkulous amounts of thrust and still power up those defensive systems to some extent. (Having four engines seems to help...) They're bleeding small amounts off the reaction... probably more to make room for more plasma in the reaction chamber than anything, but "effectively unlimited" is a vague term. If we were to assume an efficiency level close to NASA's projections for hydrogen-boron fusion jet engines, a VF-1 with full tanks (to the Master File's capacity) could fly around the world dozens of times before needing to refuel. I'd call that "effectively unlimited".
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Pretty sure that's just an artistic convention meant to make the Valkyries more visible against a black backdrop. Yeah, the tech manuals go into some excruciating detail on some things. Not always interesting things, mind you... Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 has a half-page aside on how overtechnology materials have affected the designs of threaded fasteners. That's right, it devotes ink to overtechnology bolts. Not the most riveting material, if I do say so myself. (... and I hope you'll forgive that dreadful joke.) When you think about it, the way the thermonuclear reaction engines are described is not altogether different from how Star Trek's impulse engines work... just without the magic, mass-canceling subspace field. Sort of a thrust-vectored hybrid of ion thruster and fusion rocket. You've got a LOT of juice to play with courtesy of the reactors, so you can brute force the thrust with the MPD arcjet by throwing hundreds (or thousands) of megawatts at the problem. (Sky Angels actually sets the 650MW/engine on the VF-1 as its typical output and 1,700MW/engine as its maximum.) Seems to consume fuel at a monstrous rate though... from the description in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.2, a VF-1 in space flight is consuming something to the tune of 1.79 liters of hydrogen per second per engine at peak output. With FAST packs, that gives them a maximum combat endurance a few seconds short of 30 minutes. Presumably that can be extended through judicious use of the rocket engines. ... well, that's actually true. We know they can convert g-forces into extradimensional energy somehow, because that's how the inertia store converter works, and heat isn't nearly as hard to redirect as acceleration forces.
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