Seto Kaiba
-
Posts
12922 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Gallery
Everything posted by Seto Kaiba
-
Depends... what time frame are we talking about? Maybe 20 years after the first space war, I could see some less affluent emigrant fleets or planets using the service life extension program variants like the VF-1P and VF-1X, probably alongside similarly old VF-4's. After 40-50 years, I think the VF-1 would probably have been completely retired by the military and relegated to civilian usage... like the VT-1C in the Macross Dynamite 7 OVA or the VF-1C in the novelization of Macross Frontier. I think the last thing we saw them being used for by the UN Forces was for shipbuilding circa 2047, not counting special forces variants.
-
Not quite... the EX-Gear control system works more or less the same way as the controls on earlier models of VF, it's just a more precise version. The pilot isn't controlling the mecha's limbs directly with the throttle, joystick, pedals, and eye-tracking system, a sophisticated AI-based avionics package is then interpreting the various joystick-waggles and so on into a desire to "move in that direction" with a particular posture, and sorts out all the kinesthetics needed to make it happen. Manually controlling a limb for a particular maneuver is a delicate and rather complex business, as we saw in the original series and Frontier. The system uses a learning computer in the EX-Gear to make the controls as smooth and intuitive as if the pilot were wearing the fighter. On the Arm Slaves of Full Metal Panic!, the semi-master slave motion trace system has the mecha replicating the motions of the operator's limbs inside the cockpit. The pilot's limbs are encased in armatures that record the motions of their limbs, and all that measured data goes to an assisted motion management program that translates the relative movements of the pilot's limbs into positioning commands for the mecha's limbs by amplifying them by a pilot-specified factor (the "bilateral angle"), so the pilot can move the mecha's limb a lot without having to make a similarly extreme gesture in the cockpit. (The preferred BMSA for an "ace pilot" in the series was 3.5, meaning every motion made in the cockpit is amplified by 3.5x... so if Sousuke raised his arm up 10 degrees, his M9 would raise its arm 35 degrees. That's why it's a "semi" master slave system... a full master slave system with a BMSA of 1 would be the Mobile Fighters in G Gundam.) Yep... and they allegedly (non-canonically) selected the VF-1 as the basis for it because of an abundance of practical performance data. It didn't pan out, however. Yes, but the Variable Fighter Master File books are not part of the official setting, and tend to be at least a little at odds with what's actually down in the animation-related materials (e.g. what the VF-19E is). That particular tidbit could still be true, in light of what's shown about the Macross Galaxy fleet using 'em in Macross the Ride tho... they produce their own locally "improved" version (the VF-19C/MG21) as a sort of "Take that!" aimed at Shinsei, which is used by Pegasus squadron. Er... you're probably thinkin' of the New UN Government there. The Galaxy Network was the inter-fleet and inter-planetary fold communications network that handled personal and business communications, mass media, etc. Earth was still the de facto figurehead world of the New UN Government, though the government itself had become decentralized and Earth was deliberately withholding certain technological advances from the emigrant fleets and planets to maintain an edge. All told, the fleets seem to have had a pretty free hand in choosing how to arm their local New UN Forces garrisons... they could either produce (under license) the latest and greatest toys used by the central forces back on Earth (or monkey models thereof) which their factory ships could produce (the VF-19s and VF-22s in Macross 7); or they could use those blueprints to jumpstart a development program for a custom variant (VF-19C/MG21, VF-19EF) or an all-new fighter (VF-25, VF-27, YF-30). Admittedly, international (interplanetary?) law requires them to disclose the existence and specifications of those weapons to the central New UN Government... which the Macross Galaxy heads decided to forego by deploying a fake prototype and keeping all their advances in the actual VF-27 secret.
-
AFAIK, it was originally an episode produced for broadcast that was dropped...
-
Not s'much the ISC, but its less powerful sibling... the Inertia Vector Control System, which from what's been said about it could take about 7G off the airframe at maximum power. The ISC pulls 27.5G off the airframe, a huge improvement. Survey says "Yeah, probably". The Macross Frontier VF-19EF Caliburns in Macross the Ride that were built for SMS and the NUNS in 2058 were built with EX-Gear cockpits, though that may have partly been because they were using them to evaluate equipment for the YF/VF-25 as on the VF-19ACTIVE Nothung. That said, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus variant in use in 2059 was an AVF as well, but did not possess EX-Gear until it was retrofitted to accept it in the VF-171EX upgrade. EX-Gear is a sort of improved cockpit system... it uses a combination of a learning computer and monitoring of electrical impulses in the pilot's muscles to greatly improve the precision and ease of control of a VF, supposedly to the extent of providing a control feel almost like "wearing" the VF. It's also got some survival kit features like a simple cold sleep function, small medical kit, and distress beacon, while also functioning as a sort of "self-rescuing" ejection seat that turns into a flight-capable powered suit. I think the way one of my friends put it was "It's a core fighter you can wear".
-
That's... something else entirely. The thing in Battlecry was based on an animation error in the original Macross series and used to pad the game out. Macross's Refined Valkyrie predates it by about 10 years, and is much cooler lookin: (Exemplar is Komilia's VF-1SR, third pic shows VF-1JR, VF-1SR, and VF-1AR head configs). Well, there were a variety of reasons behind the VF-171 being adopted over the VF-19 in most regions... one of the big ones was loss-of-control issues when they were in the hands of inexperienced pilots. Isamu's VF-19EF/A (also sometimes known as VF-19 ADVANCE) was sort of a special case, and was financed privately for Isamu's use with only two units produced. Macross the Ride, Macross 30, and the novelization of Macross Frontier all depict limited numbers of VF-19s in SMS's hands, but mostly they're the dumbed-down "monkey model" units. I think the largest number mentioned in connection with adoption of the VF-19 is the 154 VF-19EF Caliburns the Frontier fleet built for its NUNS forces and SMS in the 2050s. In general... they're usually "monkey model" variants produced locally by one particular emigrant fleet or planet for their own use, such as the Frontier fleet's VF-19EF Caliburn family or the Galaxy fleet's VF-19C/MG21. Others, like Aisha Blanchett's VF-19E, Isamu's VF-19 ADVANCE, and Chelsea Scarlett's VF-19ACTIVE Nothung are proof of concept machines, one-offs, or generally encompassed under the umbrella of "Ace custom". (If there are any specific variants from sketchley's site you want sourced or would like more info on, he or I can happily do that for you.) 's not actually a new technological development in Macross... the Inertia Store Converter is just the Queadluun-Rau's/YF-21's/VF-22's inertia vector control system on steroids. Tech's been in the setting for ages. Supposedly the ISC's backwards compatible with the VF-19 too, but wasn't adopted on such due to economic concerns.
-
Well, it would be consistent with the official (or semi-official) examples of older designs being updated for ongoing use in the (New) UN Forces in the main series timeline. Typically, the upgrades are made to keep older aircraft viable after the latest and greatest envelope-pushing fighters come out. Macross Frontier had examples of this in the VF-171EX Nightmare Plus EX, a remodeled VF-171 that had been enhanced with tech and materials from the latest and greatest VF the government had earmarked to replace it, which pilots criticized as noticeably stop-gap in its engineering despite significant gains over the base model. Mind you, there are examples of modernized older designs fighting just fine on the front lines (like the VF-1P/X, VF-4G, etc.), but sometimes the design just isn't able to adopt every new advance... like the VF-171EX not being compatible with the inertia store converter, or the VF-9E, which became dangerously unstable in the process of being upgraded to AVF levels. Incidentally, I thought of another example of this kinda thing happening in canon... the VF-1R "Refined Valkyrie" family of designs from the Macross II prequels. It was a VF-1 airframe that'd been modernized in pretty much every respect, with postwar technological advances and Zentran/Meltran tech which shared the main variable fighter role with the VF-4 through the 2020s and 2030s. The command variant, the VF-1SR, was the player character mecha in Macross 2036 and the signature mecha of Komilia Maria Jenius. My gut feeling on an emigrant fleet using an upgraded VF-0 or VF-1 would be that it would probably be upgraded to fill a particular niche in operations... like the VF-1X+'s use in "covert" operations*, or the VF-171EX's filling an immediate need for an anti-Vajra fighter... and thus would probably land in the hands of some smallish specialist unit like Diamond Force or Round Table in limited numbers. * I just can't say "covert operations" in the context of a twelve meter tall robot with a straight face...
-
Curiously... the answer to this one from official or non-setting sources seems to be "No". The VF-1X Valkyrie Plus from Macross Digital Mission VF-X is 13,850kg or 14,100kg empty depending which source you consult (600-850kg heavier), and the Master File VF-1P Freya Valkyrie variant is 13,800kg (550kg heavier). Probably just as a front-line unit for a force that doesn't want to shell out for the rights to build the latest and greatest new design from Shinsei or General Galaxy.
-
Actually, another Kawamori-made instance of this popped into my mind earlier... the SW-XA1 Schneeblume concept from VF-Experiment. That had a (not official) backstory that it was a VF-1 that had been basically redone with modern materials and stealth design choices with materials and technology from around the time Project Super Nova was getting off the ground. (IINM, it shares tech with the VF-17).
-
's actually happened to a few VFs in Macross on a one-off basis officially... principally in Macross the Ride. Mind you, it usually bears a somewhat realistic consequence in that upgrading an old design to performance levels well above what the designers actually had in mind makes it awfully unstable. Examples include Hakuna Aoba's VF-0 Kai "Zeak", his VF-1X++ Valkyrie Double Plus, and Nicolas Berthier's VF-9E Cutlass. The VF-1X++ was so unstable that "one mistake could turn the airframe into a fireball", and the VF-9E was a planned production model that was scrapped because it had a disquieting habit of exploding in midair. Other attempts to upgrade older VFs to AVF levels don't seem to have had quite so many catastrophic issues... like the Anthony Clemens' VF-11 Thunderbolt Interceptor (which had a VF-16 engine and barrier, at the cost of sensor issues), or the VF-0 Kai "Zeak" (which was a VF-0A airframe upgraded with modern materials and VF-25 engines).
-
Just going from what we've seen thus far, the various emigrant fleets seem to have had a pretty free hand in determining how to arm their military escort detail. A less-extreme version of this sort of thing has happened before. Megaroad-13's garrison force, which settled in the Varauta system, opted to go for the VF-14 Vampire over the UN Spacy's current main fighter... the VF-11. Variable Fighter Master File sort of ties the whole YF-24 thing together with "Project Triangler", which was a multi-fleet joint venture to develop next-generation variable fighters based on the YF-24 Evolution spec. It's not part of the official Macross setting, but it's still an interesting effort to tie the VF-25 and VF-27 into one project... which had Macross Frontier, Galaxy, and Olympia each developing their own prototype with the theoretical goal that the fleets would adopt one of the three (YF-25, YF-26, YF-27) as the next main fighter.
-
IIRC, that's not really a theory... that's part of the actual backstory for the YF-24 Evolution. I know Great Mechanics.DX 9's VF Evolutionary Theory article makes a few remarks here and there about the New UN Forces having [withheld/not disclosed] certain technological advances that went into the YF-24 Evolution when they shared the specs with the emigrant fleets. 'course, the way it's written it could also be taken as going both ways... that the emigrant fleets don't always disclose the technological advances they make to the New UN Forces either (as in the case of Macross Galaxy's VF-27 Lucifer). Let's not forget that "locally produced variants" are a thing too... Macross the Ride shared a few of them with us, like the VF-19EF Caliburn (a Macross Frontier fleet variant of the VF-19E), the VF-19C/MG21 Excalibur (a Macross Galaxy-specific VF-19C).
-
Character Art Appreciation Thread III
Seto Kaiba replied to Vepariga's topic in Movies and TV Series
Looks vaguely like it, but probably not... the weapons and head are all wrong, and the art quality is real iffy. Probably fan-art, IMO. -
Character Art Appreciation Thread III
Seto Kaiba replied to Vepariga's topic in Movies and TV Series
Well, I can tell you right off the bat that those first two aren't even Macross... that's clearly an AFC-01 Legioss armo-fighter, from the series Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. It's almost certainly fan-art too, looks like the artist was trying to "Macross-ize" the Legioss by exaggerating the stabilizers, giving it armaments reminiscent of Macross's VF-1 Valkyrie, and a head that looks like it's somwhere between Macross II's VF-2SS Valkyrie II and Patlabor's AV-0. Pretty sure the other two are from Macross: Remember Me... the SDR-04-MkXV Destroid Maverick and the QF-9ie Ghost II. -
Well... if the coverage in Macross Chronicle and Variable Fighter Master File is anything to go by, the MiM-31 and F203 were not retconned out of existence or replaced by the F-14+ Kai and SV-51. There's plenty of room, in-universe, for both to exist side by side. It's not like planes just get replaced when a new model comes out, the old ones get upgraded in various areas while newer designs are gradually phased into service. The F203 Dragon II was a new design introduced in 2003, so the UN Forces would've continued using large numbers of the pre-OTM fighters they already had... upgrading them with various improvements as technology advances. There were, after all, like 700 F-14s out there to play with. Likewise, the MiM-31 was probably a lot more common than the SV-51... the latter having only an estimated 40 units produced in total. (As a fun side note, Volume 1 of the VF-1 Master File identifies F203s as part of the Prometheus's aircraft complement, a Navy variant with an alternate designation of F/A-20N.)
-
There's a decent image of the compressor on page 41 of Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1, Another one here: http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/vf-1j-valkyrie/vf-1j-internal.gif
-
The VF-25 is a solid multi-role fighter, yeah... though the VF-171 Nightmare Plus is no slouch in that regard either. Both are very versatile platforms and have special-purpose variants for things like AEW/AWACS, UCAV control, designated marksmen, etc., but the VF-25 wins hands-down in terms of performance. IMO, it's relatively safe to say that the YF-29 could hold its own in a fight against enemies other than the Vajra. In Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, the (rogue) New UN Spacy special forces unit "Havamal" issued their elite pilots an improved YF-29 designated YF-29B Percival, which was more than capable of going toe-to-toe with the VF-25, VF-27, YF-29, and YF-30.
-
I don't think anything has been definitively identified as the reason... but the most likely culprit is the fighter's fold wave system. Not directly, no... he's a Zentradi Minmay fan, and therefore likely a veteran of the first space war. The novelization of Macross Frontier identifies Richard Birla as having originally been the commanding officer of one of the ships in Britai's forces during the first space war. That depends on what aspect of performance you want to look at. If you're talking raw engine power or thrust-to-weight ratio, the YF-29 is the clear winner... with a net thrust of 7,150kN and a T/W ratio of 61.164 empty. The next nearest competitor is the YF-30, with 4,220kN and a T/W ratio of 53.085.
-
Yep... as far as I'm aware, Macross 7 was the last time the designation "ARMD" was used. Guantanamo-class ships with visible designations (via holographic displays) in Macross Frontier are shown with CV or CVR hull codes instead. Mind you, it wasn't just the ARMD designation that carried over into later titles. The brief view of the Macross-1 fleet we're shown early in Macross 7 contains what is clearly an ARMD II-class carrier, and Macross 7 Trash briefly showed a modified ARMD-class carrier in the Macross-7 fleet.
-
Yep. Er... remember, they never got to actually be the ship's arms until a few years later, in a separate Macross title. No, I meant the "ARMD" hull code fell out of use... we know that they made a great many of the ARMD-class (and ARMD II-class) space carriers. The "ARMD" hull code is used on two (three) classes of ship... the TV series ARMD, the movie ARMD (known as the ARMD II-class in VFMF), and one other... The Guantanamo-class (officially AKA the Advanced ARMD-class) still carried the hull code "ARMD" through at least Macross 7's era. Production line art for Macross 7 has the exemplar Guantanamo-class ship (the Maizuru) identified as ARMD-362. Understandable, and the official material does mention that the Megaroad-class ships are less-than-ideal in terms of their overall structural strength (IIRC the exact way they phrase it is something to do with the hull's rigidity), which, in connection with minimal armament, makes them unsuited to combat. Of course, overtechnology materials like hypercarbon/spacemetal and herculite are terrifyingly tough. The old Sky Angels book (which first asserted the SDF-3 to be Britai's ship) tried to put a rough RHA equivalency on it... something to the tune of a 100:1 advantage in durability compared to armor-grade steel. 1.2 inches (30mm) of OTMat armor was equivalent to 9.8 feet (300cm) of the conventional alternative on the VF-1, and even if starship armor isn't sterner stuff than that, the thicknesses involved are definitely going to work to the ship's advantage. Macross Chronicle suggests that the state of human shipbuilding advanced by leaps and bounds in the aftermath of the first space war, and the Megaroad-class benefited from that. Slap a barrier system on it (it almost certainly had one) and what you've got might not be a battleship, but it's probably worthy of being called a fortress. (... and, on consulting a dictionary, "fortress" makes a lot of sense when defined as "a fortified town".)
-
Hmm... true, that bit down there near the stern does look a fair bit like an ARMD-class space carrier, but I can't find anything in the printed materials that suggests the Megaroad-class colony ships had docked ARMDs. My guess would be that's probably just part of the hull, either a stylistic coincidence or the result of someone (in-universe) cutting corners on the design by using appropriating parts of the ARMD-class's design (or possibly incomplete ARMDs themselves) to make a quick and dirty hangar. We've only seen that general part of the ship up close once... in Macross M3's opening, but in that animation Max and Milia were shown launching from those two black slits right below the top of the "outrigger", well away from the ARMD-lookin' bit. As hull codes go, "Super Dimension Fortress" is awfully vague... so I don't think it necessarily has to entail the ship having any real combat ability at all. Almost all the other ships with known hull codes are based on real world ones that identify their actual combat role in familiar terms (carriers, frigates, etc.). It kind of implies that the ship is protecting something inside itself... which would make sense when you consider that it ended up containing a city, and the Megaroad-class was little more than a city in a bubble with engines on one end. Possible... but I'm not sure that's the source. Docking to a larger ship isn't really part of the "ARMD" designation though... just that it's one big carrier deck with engines and weapons installed. That's a pretty fair description of almost every carrier out there... though it seems likely that the reason it's qualified that way is that the ARMDs were originally designed to be stationary orbital airstrips for planetary defense. Not sure why they let it fall out of use...
-
Well... if it's the Robotech ones, they haven't had any new material to argue about in thirty years, so... 's there actually a source for that? I know Chronicle says the Megaroad-class's armaments were light/negligible, but I don't recall anything that says the Megaroad-class had attached ARMDs. Pretty sure they've standing on an old bit of lore there, about the DYRL version (and, IIRC, possibly the series version) having originally been intended for extrasolar exploration. That's also from the opening bit in Macross Frontier alluded to earlier... and corroborated by Macross Chronicle, same as the Megaroad-class's SDF hull code. Carriers in Macross using the real-world CV ain't new... though presumably they went with NMCV to differentiate them from the (much smaller) carriers using other flavors of CV. The ARMD-class space carriers carried the dual code of ARMD/SCV initially (goes back to at least Sky Angels in '84), and then they dropped the leading S somewhere between then and the Guantanamo-class (which is ARMD/CV). After that, it appears it dropped the ARMD entirely, so all carriers are just using CV and mission specific variations thereof. (The Uraga-class is seen using CV and CVS, the Guantanamo-class uses CV and CVR, the Valhalla III-type uses VCV, etc.) I'd have to double-check, but I'm pretty sure that's the work of just one (well-intentioned) fan... yui. She's not always accurate, but she's a fan of both shows (IIRC she's an army kid?) and tries to add their stuff in separate sections on the Japanese Wiki pages for Macross, Southern Cross, and MOSPEADA. Really, I think that ship sailed a loooooooong time ago... certainly long before Macross Frontier. The creators of Macross had already earmarked the SDF-2 as an emigrant ship before Masahiro Chiba's doujinshi set down the idea that Britai's ship was the SDF-3. True, they didn't decide that it wasn't going to remain a Macross-class ship until later, but since Sky Angels was just a doujinshi I don't think they felt much obligation to follow what was in there. I think the deal was likely sealed by the time Macross 7 went to air, and they established that there had been at least a dozen later Megaroad-class ships, and the Megaroad-class had been thoroughly established as a Macross-class derivative. My guess would be SDFN came about because SDF was already earmarked for the Megaroad-class emigrant ships, and they felt it'd have more resonance than if they went the New Macross-class round and used MCV. That's almost as bad as the actual meaning of ARMD... Armaments Rigged-up Moving Deck.
-
Huh... well, that explains that then. I'm sure we all remember the big fuss when we got our first glimpse of what turned out to be the SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global in Macross Frontier. There was a LOT of confusion over what that ship represented, due in no small measure to the then-common belief that the SDF-1 Macross and the partially-complete SDF-2 were the sole existing examples of the Macross-class. (Mass-produced Macross-class ships having previously been something unique to the Macross II-verse.) I don't remember, did they actually use the designation SDFN in the dialog? I'll have to review it later. It certainly explains that guy's confusion... especially since hull codes are prone to occasional changes in real life. IIRC, the last USS Enterprise (a one-off Enterprise-class carrier) had its hull code changed twice during its service life... from CVA-65 to CVAN-65, and then to CVN-65. Did we ever clear up what the N is in SDFN? Oh, it's absolutely true that the fansub people tend to screw up the terminology a lot... though it's easy to forgive them, since the majority of them aren't really what you'd call die-hard Macross fans with access to the kind of information we have. It's a little bit less easy to overlook it when regional distributors/licensees screw up like that. US Renditions screwed up so hard they even got the year the show was set in wrong, and misspelled the name of the antagonists despite being supplied with the correct spelling IN ENGLISH.
-
I dunno... if the SDFN-4 Global was his first port of call for objections, my guess would be that the guy in question may have just not been aware of the mass-production Macross-class ships (SDFNs) were part of a separate numbering sequence from the old SDF-1 Macross and the Megaroad-class colony ships. After all, Alto and company don't really get all that specific about what the SDFN-4 was beyond it being the old flagship of the 117th Research Fleet and a "first generation Macross". Since it's relatively common knowledge that the Megaroad-01 was converted from the Macross-class SDF-2, he may have taken the SDFN-4 to be the SDF-4, and therefore assumed that the SDFs after SDF-2 went back to being Macross-class ships. Just a theory...
-
Er... my friend, we HAVE seen the SDF-2 on screen on at least three separate occasions. Once, at its debut in Macross Flashback 2012... and then again in setting summations at the start of episodes of Macross 7 and Macross Frontier. There are probably a couple others I'm forgetting from various video games, etc. We've also seen at least a representation of the SDF-3 courtesy of Frontier, which identifies it as a Megaroad-class emigrant ship. As far as the Megaroad-class ships being designated SDF-#, that bit's fairly straightforward... "Megaroad" is the ship's name (as well as the name of their class), but it's not a proper military hull code/pennant number. Codes like that are used to identify both the identity and type/role of ship at a glance... a more information-rich unique identifier than just a name. It's one of those minor bits of military realism that crop up in the otherwise fanciful Macross setting. Hull codes/pennant numbers for most of the known classes of ship have cropped up at one point or another, so it'd be weird if the Megaroad-class ships DIDN'T have them. Since the original Megaroad-class ship had its inauspicious beginnings as a half-built Macross-class ship, they seem to have kept that SDF designation after the SDF-1 Macross was retired... perhaps as a nod to the Macross's role as the first ship with an internal city.
-
He's said a lot of different variations on the same basic thing in interviews and so on... the individual Macross series take place in related alternate universes or are differing interpretations/dramatizations of the "true history", and so on. It explains away various examples of zeerust and other minor inconsistencies. There's still an "official setting", which basically amounts to the chronology (shared history) and other aspects of continuity. If there wasn't an official setting, there wouldn't be any point in the disclaimer that the Master File books Kawamori supervised carry, which says they aren't part of the official setting. I'm inclined to lean towards the SDF-3 being Megaroad-02 because the series is, at least, supposed to be part of the "official setting" and it's corroborated by Macross Chronicle. Pretty much, yeah... though they've been favoring the DYRL designs for a long time now... since at least Macross Plus, unless we're counting Macross II, which favored DYRL as the more accurate of the two versions of Space War 1 as the foundation of its own version of Macross history.
