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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    That's a character from Macross the Musiculture, right? Roli's granddaughter?
  2. Seto Kaiba
    There's no mention of any kind of performance limitation on the VF-22HG's engines... virtually all VF's from Macross Plus onward have had their engine thrust cited as "maximum instantaneous thrust in space". My point is that there's no mention of the cooling limitations the FF-2450B had in the craft that use the FF-2450C... you jumped to a conclusion based on a false premise.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    The difference here being that the emigrant fleets and planets are perfectly at liberty to build a VF-19 or VF-22... but with limiters on the performance of various components. That's not actually true through. When the emigrant fleets were launched, they were equipped with the fighters that were available in large numbers, and suited to their intended purpose. They didn't necessarily get the latest and greatest, or even the same fighter the UN Forces were using as their main fighter. Look to the descriptions of the fighters developed by Stonewell/Bellcom (later Shinsei) and General Galaxy with the emerging emigrant planet market in mind, and what do we see? They're pushing cost performance, not flight performance. In all the fighters produced specifically for the emigrant market, we see the recurring theme of low cost. They went in for fighters that could be bought or built cheaply, and maintained in fighting condition with the limited support infrastructure an early emigrant fleet's ships (or a recently settled planet) could provide. Shinsei and General Galaxy's first big sellers as rivals were both low-cost, lightly armed fighters for planetary defense... the VF-5000 and VF-9, respectively. They might've had some of the high performance main fighters of the era, but most leavened that with more cost-effective fighters like the VF-1, VF-5, or VF-5000. Later on, some opted for more specialized craft whose performance wasn't necessarily better in all respects, over the military's main fighter. The Varauta system, for instance, opted for the VF-14 Vampire instead of the VF-11. After the 2040's, some fleets did away with VF's altogether and used Ghosts exclusively. Others stuck with later, economized designs like the VF-171 over more expensive, less accessible designs like the VF-19 or VF-22. The only planet that seems to have gone consistently for "the best" instead of "the most cost-effective" is Earth. All told, the usage of destroids is somewhat unusual... most destroids were retired and sold off as construction equipment, or found their way to less dignified positions as target practice. Drones and cost-leader VF's like the Nightmare Plus were the rule. Frontier used the AIF-7S/QF-4000 and VF-171 jointly as their main fighters. Considering the debacle the VF-19 and VF-22 turned into, most of the emigrant worlds and fleets were probably chucking a little at the folly of the core forces, splurging on Shinsei and General Galaxy's unstable superstars before bowing to the inevitable with the Nightmare Plus. As far as the UN Forces' potentially running away with itself, that's why after Latence's attempted coup, the government instituted a new watchdog agency to prevent exactly that... and then reorganized the military anyway to put it on a shorter leash. It's not said that it's an overheating issue... or that, if it is, it's internal to the engine rather than the fighter-side coolant loop servicing the engine.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, they never really bothered to go into detail as to why the VF-9E developed the irksome habit of spontaneous detonation... but one can hardly fault General Galaxy for backing away from it as swiftly as its test pilots probably did after the first one blew up. The description in Macross the Ride indicates that controlling it during flight was a monumental challenge, and that their tendency to explode mid-flight was repeatable in practice rather than theoretical. (The VF-9E's issues are apparently what ended General Galaxy's upgrade plans for the VF-9, as Ride notes it's the final variant.) The only schmuck brave or suicidal enough to own/fly one that we've been introduced to is a cyborg from Eden with a fiber optic-enhanced nervous system that boosts his response speed... 'course, the YF-19 wasn't much better, considering it put two of its test pilots in the ground and two more in the ICU before Shinsei found someone capable of handling it.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Actually, didn't we touch on this one earlier in this thread? That's a thing that someone actually tried, in-series. General Galaxy toyed with the idea of improving the VF-9 Cutlass with a modestly detuned variant of the same engine used in the VF-22 (the FF-2450C, rated at 620kN, vs. the 640kN B variant). The resulting airframe, designated VF-9E, is noted as having had a disquieting tendency to explode in midair, which led to the project's cancellation. The VF-9E first appeared in Macross the Ride, as the personal craft of Vanquish racer Nicolas Berthier.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    ... is it bad that I not only found this scenario completely plausible, but that I read it in their voices?
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Well, to be fair, said homeless rock star got it because the UN Forces wanted/needed a mook to handle field testing of Project M hardware, and he fit the bill for being both a dedicated musician who really believed in the Minmay Attack and being too thick or too self-obsessed to realize he was the guinea pig for a military black project. It would've been a neat idea, tho that didn't stop the military from carrying out its own evaluation of the VF-19F/S before they moved to adopt them for Emerald Force. When the military and civilian leaders exhibit a level of ass-kicking commensurate to their authority, why the hell not?
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Not a complete list by any means... but the female pilots are definitely out there. I figured she kinda went without saying...
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Dunno... though I'm sure there's probably some cultural context lurking there, but they seem to show up a lot more in Macross's side stories... and in a few cases as main characters. I suppose it might be a little hard to write romance from the male perspective when one or more of the women involved is perfectly capable of kicking the male lead's ass, though that didn't stop Macross II's creators from giving us an entire platoon of elite female pilots. Mikimoto seems to be on board with the idea of women in the cockpit tho... he gave us Sylvie and Faerie platoon in II, Komilia in 2036, Misty Klaus and Letlade Elendil in Eternal Love Song, Mahara Fabrio in Macross 7 Trash, and that SV-51 pilot in Macross the First. Mikimoto's work aside, there was Nora Polyansky in Macross Zero, Mylene in Macross 7, Canaria and briefly Klan Klan in Macross Frontier, that Captain Ariela in one of the Macross Frontier manga, Chelsea Scarlett, Angers 672, and Maris Stella in Macross the Ride, Mariafokina Barnrose and Suzie Newlet in Macross VF-X2, and Macross 30 had three... Aisha Blanchett, Mina Forte, and Mei Riron. (It's about 50-50 between those who are part-Meltran and those who are full human in the ones I listed, and I'm sure I missed a few.) EDIT: The Variable Fighter Master File books and Episode Archive also make reference to a number of female test pilots.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    My dad's more of a Dr. Gadget M. Chiba... so... The first time I watched Macross 7, it was like ten or eleven years ago. I had only the most rudimentary grasp of Japanese, and I was watching the fansub with those dreadful initial [Central Anime] subs on it. You know, the ones that mistranslated "Planet Dance" as "Parry Stands" for about the first fifteen episodes. Its emphasis on Basara, who I read as basically being Kaifun + Minmay - any redeeming traits either of them might've had put me off the show entirely. Years later, armed with a much better grasp of Japanese, I revisited Macross 7 without the need for fansubs and found it to be a much more engaging show... though Basara's severely autistic behavior was still off-putting. Since there was no official resolution to that love triangle, I unapologetically 'ship Mylene-Gamlin, because damn if the poor guy didn't freaking EARN his happy ending. He's probably the character I feel the worst for... he spends all that time and effort trying to get Mylene to like him, and she's hung up on a pillock who has a hard time differentiating his bandmates from the furnature.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Tough call... Macross as a whole has had some REALLY good casts. For me, it's probably a toss-up between Roy Focker and Sheryl Nome. Roy's that cool big brother figure everybody wanted to have growing up, and he was such a badass as a pilot that they named medals after him and being "Skull Leader" is a mark of badass status in and of itself. Sheryl... well... IMO, she's the most well-rounded of Macross's leading ladies. She's everything audiences loved about Misa, but in a more outgoing package.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Perhaps if Macross were military conspiracy-theorist wank material like Metal Gear Solid... but surprisingly you don't find that kind of paranoia in US or Russian allies who are frankly glad to be able to purchase (or even customize) export variants, even if they're for previous-generation fighters. It's often a lot cheaper than trying to develop new aircraft on their own. What makes you assume that emigrant fleets have ever used (or felt entitled to) "the best gear"? Look to the early years of the emigration program and you see that they don't use the latest and greatest equipment. What they're used to is using equipment that lets them get the job done the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. That's the reason for the existence of the VF-5, VF-7, VF-9, VF-5000, and so on. Comparatively inexpensive to produce, easy to maintain using limited resources, and effective enough to do its job well. The story behind the VF-171 is practically identical... what it brought to the table wasn't the latest uber-high performance, but rather all the same bells and whistles that went into Shinsei and General Galaxy's unstable superstars at a fraction of the price, and with a level of performance that surpassed their previous fighters without becoming unmanageable. That made it the "Goldilocks" fighter that became the next main fighter alongside the AIF-7/QF-4000 Ghost. Fleets can build more potent aircraft if they really want to, but most of them don't seem to really see the need to have Earth's latest bleeding-edge toys. The 37th Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet (Macross-7) didn't bother with AVFs at all until five years or so after it was decided that the VF-19 would tentatively become the next main fighter... and even then they only built a handful on a trial that ended up assigned to the Special Forces. Um... did you forget that Earth as a whole was collectively prepping for a potential alien invasion? If they didn't have the help of the UN Forces, they'd need to defend themselves if Earth were attacked. Yeah, maintaining a comparable level of military capability to the UN Forces gear was part of it, since the Alliance was hoping that they'd be able to preserve the soverignty of whatever nations were backing them, but that turned out to be a pipe dream anyway... since those nations pulled out of what quickly became an unwinnable war. They had a city full of civilians living there, and it was possible to move there for nonmilitary purposes like Minmay did... so smart money says "No, except during the initial investigation", which was, by the way, carried out before the UN Government existed. OTEC was a multinational research and development organization... not a direct organ of the UN Gov't. No, it's explicitly the deaths of her family and the wound she suffered in the UN Wars. That is the only incident that has been mentioned or otherwise described, and it seems to have been very atypical for the UN Forces... no doubt because of the high stakes involved in a dangerous terrorist group that had already showed it was not above nuking heavily populated cities off the map with reaction weaponry (like they did to St. Petersburg, Russia in 2006) or ambushing evacuation fleets to prove a point. Letting advanced alien technology like the Birdhuman fall into the hands of an organization with that little in the way of tactical scruples would be rather dangerous. None have been mentioned in connection with the UN Forces, no. No, the UN Government was a government formed by the common consent of the nations of Earth, drafted via the old United Nations. The UN Wars were brought about by separatists/partisans in various member nations who were opposed to such things as the formation of the "one world" government, the particulars of its constitution, the mandated dissemination of technological gains from OTM research and the uneven dissemination thereof, and a variety of other minor factors for which one nation or ethnic group dislikes another. (It may be a factor that, as noted in Macross Chronicle, the UN Government's most influential backers were the more affluent, developed nations in the West like the US, Britain, France, and Germany... while the Anti-Unification forces' support was strongest in Eastern nations, apparently including parts of Russia, Israel, and Germany. This was only about nine years after the fall of the Soviet Union, so a divide in terms of East-West is not altogether surprising, though it's worth noting that Russia was a founding member of OTEC as well.) Barring Kaifun, who was a massive hypocrite, there don't seem to have been many folks who genuinely felt that way. He had some short-lived shows of support from people who were having trouble coping with the stress of living on post-apocalyptic Earth, but that's about all. Gee... couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that most of Earth's surface was a barren and sterile wasteland, with poor air quality and possible radiation contamination... with little or no access to food, fuel, medical care, etc. If someone wanted to go live in the reactor housings of Chernobyl, you'd stop them too. Anyway... it's telling me I have too many quote blocks, so I'll deal with the rest of the questions succinctly in plaintext. "Why was the origin of the ASS-1 changed? Was it to be some form of disinformation to the masses?" Explicitly, it was done to draw a line under the severity of the Zentradi threat. Where did the idea for the Altira come from? Was it suppose to be an acknowledgment of the Mayan Islands? It isn't said, probably just a nod to Atlantis myths, and a way to work the Protoculture's role in Earth's current situation home without getting into genetic theory. Like those of in Mayan, are there any other known Protoculture ruins site? Are they being investigated/preserved? Yes, the ones on Uroboros, the Vajra home world, Varauta 3198XE's 4th planet, and Lux before it got blown up. Some of the YF-30's technology comes from the Protoculture ruins on Uroboros. What is the UN Forces doing with Biological Weapons research in the past & at this time? Not biological weapons in the modern sense... think more "bio-weapons" in the sense of the Zentradi being "biological weapons". The UN Forces' exact motivations there are unclear. (April 2030AD-MC) The YF-11-2 with equipped fold booster rescued Chairperson Lawrence Yun Kemal. This shows that an AVF-grade is not needed for said missions, though it would make it easier. Would the VF-11MAXL or VF-17 do better if needed to do so in the future (since both can get back into orbit)? The YF-11 didn't have a pinpoint barrier, production-model fold drive, etc., and didn't have the stealth capabilities or defensive ability to carry off a surprise rescue. It ended up being a full-on battle, against heavy opposition. The goal of the AVFs was to do that without needing to blast your way through the enemy's front lines first.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Yes, and this particular shortcoming is acknowledged openly in the Master File materials. While it's true that "bendy-beam" technology does exist in Macross, it's not available on a fighter scale. Like the previous generations of Strike pack, the VF-25's Strike pack isn't really intended to be used against small targets like VF's and other mecha. It's intended to be used against enemy warships and other large targets, so it not being available with the VF in battroid mode is not really a big issue. Please leave your political views out of this discussion, it's very much against the rules. You've gone off half-cocked due to not checking your facts again... First and foremost, the arms export restrictions (which mirror those of the real world with respect to the US and its allies, or Russia and its allies) didn't come out of the blue because "a few hostile took action". They were introduced as the result of the following VERY worrying actions: The YF-19 and YF-21 prototypes, aircraft designed for decapitation strikes and able to be armed with a high-yield thermonuclear reaction or pair-annihilation reaction warhead, were able to independently break through the orbital defenses of Earth, the most secure planet in the UN Government. Internal strife on emigrant planets and between emigrant planets and the UN Government were becoming much more common. (Isamu's service record shows he fought in half a dozen such conflicts already.) An anti-government group staged a coup d'etat that culminated in them hijacking the flagship of the Earth defense fleet, and disaster was only averted by the intervention of another anti-government group and the UN Spacy special forces. Second, the restriction of arms exports to the emigrant fleets and worlds, combined with changes in political policy, did ultimately reduce the frequency and severity of inter-colony conflicts and anti-government groups without hampering the ability of emigrant worlds and fleets to defend themselves. Buying a variable fighter isn't like buying a gun, it takes a lot of effort, resources, and no small amount of money to maintain a high-performance variable fighter. The civilian market variable craft were already limited in performance by design, and if it's only export monkey-models available outside the core military, that means even mecha that are acquired through illicit channels will be comparably detuned to the versions used by the military. Third, you have a massive false parallel in your second point. The Anti-Unification Alliance had the ability to independently make their own military-level VF's because they had 1. stolen the latest VF research when UN Forces soldiers defected, so most of the legwork was done for them, and 2. they were effectively an unofficial national military supported by multiple nations (including an amount of support under-the-table from a superpower or two). The effective anti-government forces that appeared later were a mixture of former soldiers supported by defense industry megacorporations under the table and ones backed by a group of high-ranking officers inside the military itself. The rest of the "hostile actors" really couldn't fight the UN Forces on an equal footing. Fourth, the (admittedly detuned) equipment being supplied to the New UN Forces garrisons in the emigrant fleets and so on is at, more or less, the discretion of the local government. However, the level of equipment used on average is more than sufficient for dealing with the primary threat to everyone's peace and wellbeing (rogue Zentradi forces). There's not that much actual distance between what the "monkey models" give the emigrant forces and what the core military is using anyway... and, in practice, being detuned thus may actually have made them more usable for their intended purpose of defending against the Zentradi by making those advanced weapons less hard on the pilot. That the Zentradi Army largely uses the same space warfare tactics and mobile weapons they used 500,000 years ago during the Schism War and the war against the Supervision Army is broadly true. Zentradi exposed to human culture and proper education do demonstrate that they're as intelligent as any human, though it does bear noting that we don't know the actual origins of the Variable Glaug, and the "Enemy Battle suit" from Macross Plus is actually equipment dating back to the Schism War 500,000 years ago. (From the description, it sounds like an attempt to make a budget Q-Rau for large-scale deployment to the Zentradi forces.) The Variable Glaug may have been (likely was) developed by a defense industry manufacturer or fleet arsenal covertly. That's an awfully paranoid interpretation... considering the history leading up to that point, the Project Super Nova VF's being made specifically for decapitation strikes and hostage recovery would've been a godsend in an age where internal conflicts among worlds settled early on were on the rise. The ability to settle a civil war decisively and with the minimum possible loss of life sounds like an exceedingly humanitarian policy. True to form, that's exactly how we see the VF-19's being used by the Special Forces... quick in, quick out, to bust up terrorists on sparsely populated worlds and prevent small conflicts from exploding into large civil wars after diplomacy has failed. If this were the military industrial complex run amok, we'd be seeing the exact opposite... large occupation forces being deployed. Actually, from the descriptions, it sounds more like the conflicts alluded to in Isamu's service record were internal to, or between emigrant planets. There were anti-government groups, but they mostly fell into the "take hostages and smash sh*t up" category, which the VF-19 and VF-22 proved ideal to addressing without blowing up entire towns. That argument doesn't really hold water... the VF-17 Nightmare was almost entirely dependent on passive stealth, and was not at all suited to the kind of operations the VF-19 and VF-22 were. It would not, as delivered, have been even remotely capable of what the VF-19 and VF-22 were. The key difference between the Ghost X-9 and the successor units based off it (AIF-7S, AIF-9B/V) is hardware, not software. The X-9 prototype used the illegal bio-neutral processing hardware to give it the ability to behave in a truly unpredictable fashion... identical to the final modification made to complete Sharon Apple. The AIF-9V and AIF-7S don't seem to have used that hardware, so even if they had identical software the performance wouldn't be the same. ... they did. That's what the Neo Glaug is. All things considered, I don't think there's anything to his speculation there... this is Macross we're talking about, not Metal Gear Solid. It's fundamentally an optimistic setting, being that the military stuff is mostly window-dressing for a love story. 's that how that went? I know the UN Government banned the construction and development of sentient virtuoids, and attempted to legislate Sharon Apple's music off the shelves altogether (though it didn't last). Macross Chronicle doesn't say much of anything about the legality of the Judah system except that it's unofficial... which means that Luca and co. likely didn't have official sanction to be operating it like that, or if they did that it was an off-the-books/covert affair likely obtained via LAI or Bilra Transport Co.'s immense wealth (esp. since the latter basically owns the Frontier Government).
  14. Seto Kaiba
    I couldn't say for sure without knowing exactly how both aircraft were loaded, but there's no doubt they'd used most of what they were carrying before the Ghost attacked. Isamu, in particular, was probably almost down to foul language before the fight ended... he'd expended 2 of his 3 GU-15 magazines, and lost the gun pod with the (fresh) third magazine in it and his rear-facing laser in a single attack. He'd shot off at least half of his micro-missiles and two CHM-2's, before he ended up losing the leg FAST packs. At most, he was down to the wing-glove laser guns and maybe two more CHM-2's. Guld, it's harder to say, but he definitely shot off most of his internal micro-missile count and probably most of his gun pod ammo when he engaged the Ghost, but that still left him with the bidirectional and rear-facing laser guns, some missiles, and the gun pods before he sacrificed the limbs.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Or a way to justify "new abilities as the plot demands".
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Yep... that's the problem with the later VF's that had modular internal armaments. You can have the same VF, with no visible changes outside, carrying two totally different weapons and you wouldn't know it until it starts shooting. This same issue also exists on the production model VF-22, the VF-171, and VF-25.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    The first time we see the YF-19 firing from the wing glove gun ports, the guns are twin-linked, firing bright red beams at about 120-180rpm... but we see Guld's YF-21 doing the exact same thing, which makes it likely that, for that test, the guns mounted there were the laser machine gun option. The YF-21 prototype's armaments never included the converging energy cannon option.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    It's hard to say for certain, since the weapon isn't discussed in deep detail in any source... the way Isamu uses it, it seems to have a very low rate-of-fire, maybe 60 discharges per minute, but that's pure guesswork on my part. As powerful as converging beam cannons are, one hit is probably all you need for most targets. On the other hand, the one laser weapon to have a stated rate-of-fire of 6,000 discharges per minute.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the Macross Plus animation, I would guess that the rate of fire difference is probably more severe than that...
  20. Seto Kaiba
    That's an excellent question... one I don't really have a complete answer for. If the usual pattern holds, the one thing we should be able to say with reasonable certainty is that a converging energy cannon is going to do a punch quite a bit harder than a laser or particle beam weapon of similar scale. The trade-off for the additional stopping power would presumably be a diminished rate of fire and increased power requirements. (Possibly also some increased cooling requirements affecting rate of fire, since the gun is shooting a beam of extradimensional fusion plasma.)
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Looks like the web host suspended the account again... I wonder if it's just that time of year, or if it's a bandwidth overrun. If sketchley needs or wants somewhere to host his site in the meantime, it'll be our pleasure to make space on M3's servers for him.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    I've translated some of those parts myself, though I don't recall anything being said about Myung's post-Plus status in there...
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Well, yes... most of them are. The YF-19 and VF-221 are the first Valkyries mentioned with the option of having converging energy cannons as their fixed-forward internal guns and/or coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret. 1. Specifically, the YF-19 prototype and VF-22 production model. The VF-19 production model and YF-21 protoype are not mentioned with this option.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Quite a bit of in-series overtechnology taps into or otherwise uses the physics of super dimension space to function: Space fold systems/boosters Fold communications (incl. jamming systems like the Jamming Sound System) Song Energy systems (incl. sound boosters) Fold-wave/cross-dimension radar Pin-point and Omnidirectional barriers Thermonuclear reaction power systems (incl. heat pile systems, reaction furnaces, engines, etc.) Super dimension energy weaponry under its various pseudonyms- Super dimension energy cannons - Converging beam cannons - Converging energy cannons - Guided converging beam cannons - Guided assembled beam cannons - High-angle beam cannons - Heavy quantum cannons - Macross cannons - MDE beam weapons Thermonuclear reaction weaponry (in the trigger mechanism) Dimension Eater (and Micro-Dimension Eater) weaponry Gravity and Inertia Control technology Fold Wave and Fold Dimension Resonance systems (for VF performance enhancement on the YF-29 and YF-30) There's also another form of fold-based power generation that humanity doesn't use yet called fold dimension energy conversion, which appears to be what the Vajra, and possibly Birdhuman and Protodeviln use. The only one I've never heard is the SSL-9 Dragunov 55mm railgun using fold technology to dampen the recoil... Yep... though there are a LOT of weapons of that type in Macross. The smallest are guns that were mounted internally on the YF-19 and VF-22, the largest being the Grand Cannons and the big guns on Zentradi mobile fortresses.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    When they're extended, the antennae are freed up to broadcast the fold wave jamming signal or to receive and amplify fold song. Exactly how it ties into the fold wave system's enhancement of the engines, power plant, etc. isn't 100% clear, but it appears to simply amplify the effects of the system's efforts to optimize output.
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