Jump to content

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13057

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    Macross II's director Ken'ichi Yatagai dropped a few hints that were leading in that direction in B-Club Magazine Vol.79's feature on the OVA, but nothing that's particularly definitive. The Mardook are an ancient miclone group with males and females coexisting, who regard their culture as sacred, and their technology surpasses that of the Zentradi and Meltrandi. Considering the state of the setting at the time of writing, it's at least not improbable that the Mardook were the descendants of another group of Protoculture who fled their civilization's collapse and tried to start over. Of course, as Macross II is a "parallel world" story, the yardstick for identifying the Protoculture is somewhat different. They're only "advanced aliens" rather than the "sufficiently advanced aliens" that they seem to have graduated to around Macross Zero.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Okay, there are a couple issues with that... What Master File calls the ARMD II-class are the Do You Remember Love?-style ARMDs. The rebuilt SDF-1 Macross and the twelve new Macross-class SDFNs were always equipped with that type. The new ARMD I and ARMD II docked to the Macross were among the very first ships of that type built in the main continuity. Master File isn't entirely reliable on this, as it forgets that little detail and its version mentions the ARMD II-class as something much newer, cropping up around the time the ARMD's hull numbers reached 200+. There's no indication that the ARMD-class (TV type) were sent out and then recalled in official sources. We have no idea how many were built of each type before the classes was phased out of production in favor of the newer Uraga-class escort battle carriers and the Guantanamo-class Advanced ARMDs. There are still several TV series-type ARMD-class space carriers kicking around in some stories set in the 2040's (e.g. Macross 7 Trash and the game version of Macross Plus). We also see that they were still using some ARMDs in emigrant fleets including the Macross-1 fleet seen in the opening exposition of Macross 7. With respect to the ship in the Macross Delta trailer... it's obvious at a glance that it's a Macross Quarter-class variant. All that's changed is they rounded off a lot of the points (like the front of the torso and pelvis) and stuck one or two extra guns on it. The configuration of the torso block, the shoulders, the head, the BASTER-L and BASTER-R battery ships on the back... look at the closeup 34 seconds in.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Nah, the VF-1D Valkyrie isn't any taller in battroid than any other variant of the VF-1 Valkyrie. Stonewell/Bellcom didn't really make the VF-1D's cockpit block all that much larger, they made room to extend the canopy and add the second seat by taking a good deal of equipment out of the back end of the cockpit block and seating it a little further back in the airframe. Some Macross sources (like Macross II's VF History piece in B-Club 79 and the main timeline's Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1) assert that the reason the VF-1D was swiftly replaced by a dedicated training variant (the VT-1) was that one of the systems compromised to make room for the instructor seat was the escape/survival system... so they couldn't be safely used as training aircraft in space.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    The original (pre-FB2012) rationale for the SDF-2 was that it was constructed at a shipyard on the moon to be the second Macross-class space battleship in the UN Spacy's fleet. It was dubbed Megaroad when construction on the ship resumed after the end of the war, and with the announcement of the Human Emigration Project it was retasked to serve as an ad hoc emigrant ship. Had it been animated as planned in the original Macross series, the SDF-2 Megaroad would've still been a Macross-class military vessel when it was completed, and would've been retrofitted with civilian living space like the SDF-1 Macross was. The bit about the SDF-2's design being modified into the first of a new class of emigrant ships was a later addition to the timeline. The DYRL?-style SDF-1 Macross in Flashback 2012 is supposed to be the SDF-1 Macross... nothing more, nothing less. There wasn't a concrete view of which version of the First Space War was the correct one at the time Flashback 2012 was made. That didn't occur until Macross II and Macross Plus came out, with Macross II treating DYRL? as the more accurate of the two and the supplemental materials that came out with Macross Plus establishing DYRL? as an in-universe movie. The explanation that would ultimately be given for the DYRL? SDF-1 in Flashback 2012 and Macross Plus was that that's what it ended up looking like after the eight month complete overhaul it underwent to repair the damage it had sustained during both the final battle of the First Space War and Quamzin's suicide attack. The ARMD-class space carriers that replaced the naval carriers were simply part of the overhaul... and the Macross had (in-universe) always been intended to have ARMDs for arms anyway. That was my thought as well... that DYRL? was likely filmed using one of the Macross-class SDFNs. It doesn't necessarily need to be the SDFN-01 General (Takeshi?) Hayase, since they could always change the hull number temporarily the way Star Trek IV did when the USS Ranger (CV-61) stood in for the USS Enterprise (CVN-65). They would've had twelve to choose from.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, I'm sure. The original animation in Macross Flashback 2012 was the realization of a set of scenes that had originally been included in the final episode (#36) of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, but were removed in the storyboard phase to keep the episode from exceeding its allotted run time. Ultimately, that meant that the SDF-2 design they created for that episode (see Macross Perfect Memory pg150) went unused and a new design was subsequently created for Macross Flashback 2012, which is the Megaroad-class emigrant ship design. Because Flashback 2012 incorporated some DYRL? aesthetics like the Macross w/ ARMDs, and because it was produced after DYRL?, it tends to get rolled into DYRL? as an epilogue even though it's really more an epilogue to the entire First Space War story arc (and was conceived as an epilogue to the original series).
  6. Seto Kaiba
    The events depicted in Macross Flashback 2012 were originally storyboarded for use in the final episode of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, which was set in 2012. They were dropped from the episode plan due to runtime constraints, but when it was finally animated as Flashback 2012 it was still set in 2012. When Macross II's creators were building their own Macross timeline, they did some weird stuff with Flashback 2012... sort of on the same level with how DYRL? later became an in-series movie from 2031. As they have it, Megaroad-01 didn't actually leave the Sol system until 2014, and the Flashback 2012 OVA was "an episode" which marked the 10th anniversary of the First Space War. (That whole timeline is structured rather differently.)
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Via Macross the Ride, there are at least a few people left in the galaxy who [are/claim to be] descended from Anti-Unification Alliance soldiers who survived the First Space War... like air racer Magdalena Zielonaska, who claims her grandfather was the original pilot of the modified SV-51γ she races in. Her family's got plenty of money and influence too via their ownership of the Vistula & Oder investment bank. So, I guess there's the possibility that this new faction could be a anti-government faction with ties to the original Anti-Unification Alliance. (Or the SV designation could simply indicate that some remnant of Sukhoi Aviation is at large in the galaxy and developing Valkyries for parties other than the central government.)
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Technologically... nothing. Aesthetically? If you like blended-wing designs, the VF-5000 is practically guaranteed to be your 8,300kg, 14m long cup of tea. The only delta-wing Kawamori did prior to the Sv-262? So... we're just not counting the VF-4, VF-11MAXL, VF-17, VB-6, VF-0C/D, VF-171, YF-24, and YF-30? (Those are, respectively, a modified cranked arrow, clipped delta, sawtooth delta, ogival delta, clipped delta, sawtooth delta, clipped delta, and clipped delta.)
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Macross tends to do things on a greater scale than Gundam does... particularly when it comes to things like weapons and power generation. The VF-1 Valkyrie's 5,000KW-class laser cannons are considered a light secondary weapon in Macross, but in Gundam's Universal Century that same 5,000KW power rating would put it on the heavy end of energy weaponry for much of the timeline. Generator output-wise, the VF-1 Valkyrie's producing just under 1,000 times the output of the RX-78-2 (1,300MW vs 1.380MW), and it only goes up from there. (As a side note, while the VF-1's reactor output may seem arbitrary and excessive at a glance, there is actually a good reason for it that's grounded in the physics of space flight. Thermonuclear reaction engines use MHD plasma ion thrusters for propulsive force in space, and that technology requires a LOT of power to get the kind of instantaneous thrust figures the VF-1 produces... we're talking a power requirement as much as 40KW per 1 newton of thrust. To do what it does with that 650MW output, the VF-1's engines have to be upwards of 40% more efficient than even the best modern MHD plasma ion engine... likely significantly more.)
  10. Seto Kaiba
    While this is true for laser and particle beam weapons, it's not quite applicable to weapons which utilize heavy quanta... since those involve more exotic principles and there's not a direct relationship between energy input and energy conveyed to the target. All the lethal force comes from the focused fusion reaction of the heavy quanta. (If we were to sit down and work it out, we're probably still talking probably hundreds of gigawatts of energy conveyed to the target for even the smaller shipboard turret-based implementations.) The more conventional energy weapons (lasers, beam machine guns, etc.) are rated in output wattage on the rare occasions that they're actually quantified. For instance, the VF-1's coaxial lasers are rated at 5,000KW, Master File cites the VF-19's rear-facing beam gun at 9,500KW and the beam cannon on the VF-1's Strike Pack at "dozens" of megawatts, and the SF-3A's anti-ship beam guns are rated at 750MW each.
  11. 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.)
  12. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    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#.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    "Prototype Fighter". The aircraft designation system used in Macross is based loosely on the 1962 US tri-service aircraft designation system.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Agh... my wallet! I know I'm gonna cave and end up buying one of these... I've wanted a VF-4 for ages.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    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.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    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...
  25. Seto Kaiba
    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.
×
×
  • Create New...