Seto Kaiba

It's one of the acknowledged advantages of the delta wing configuration used on the VF-0C/D, VF-11MAXL, etc... you have more internal capacity for fuel and, if what's said about cooling on other models holds true, room for a larger coolant loop to dissipate heat from engine components that isn't being used to produce power. There are a couple examples of engines made by Daimler and RR, or LAI, but yeah... Shinnakasu Heavy Industry seems to have a lock on the military's thermonuclear reaction engine contracts. Conformal tanks on their own would probably be cheaper, yes... though the simplest way to go about it would be just enlarge the airframe for better internal tank capacity (e.g. the VF-11MAXL). That's because the improvements in armor strength are due to upgrades in the energy conversion armor system, not reinforcement of the airframe itself. I'm sure I could find worse among the stuff I've written on request for various RPGs and MUSHes. As the dethroned "next main fighter", the VF-19 tends to be the go-to source for AVF upgrade parts... though we know little about what the configuration of the VF-17's radar system is. The AVF-tier radars and other composite sensor systems we know about in official or semi-official sources suggest they probably wouldn't fit inside a smaller airframe without compromises elsewhere (like an elongated nose, e.g. the VF-171, which adversely affected stealth). Yes, the VF-171 Nightmare Plus uses a detuned version of the VF-17's burst turbine engines in its "stock" configuration for cost reduction, but as discussed earlier, that doesn't necessarily translate into reduced generator output. The engine may simply be design-limited to reserve more of its reactor output for onboard systems instead of thrust production. Either way, it's still using the more efficient thermonuclear reaction burst turbine technology... so it's at least in the same category, power-wise, as the VF-19 or VF-22's engines. (Also remember that, with its coolant limitations on thrust production, the FF-2450 used on the VF-22 had comparable output to a FF-2110 but more than enough power for active stealth and a pinpoint barrier as well.) The difference should be fairly significant... the VF-19 is said to have needed structural reinforcement to use the GU-17, and it was much more robust than the VF-1 or VF-3000. (If we look to Master File, the difference isn't just 3mm in shell diameter... 58mm vs 55mm... it's also 2km/s in muzzle velocity.)

Well... the obvious, non-story reason for it is that Kawamori wanted something less main character-y for the Macross Frontier fleet's grunts than the VF-19 Excalibur, and settled on a simplified VF-17. The in-story reason is vague and nebulous to say the least. I suppose if you wanted to point to a distinct advantage of the VF-17 in-setting, it'd have to be that General Galaxy's VF-17 is on the low end of the AVF performance "band" without actually being an AVF itself. Its performance pushes the limit of human endurance without actually exceeding what a well-trained pilot can take... whereas the VF-19 and VF-22 both went so far that their excessively high performance caused the pilots to lose control of the aircraft. It also had respectable defensive capability without a barrier, and respectable stealth capability without the 3rd Generation active stealth of the first AVF generation. In short, it's because the VF-17 might as well be sold as "I can't believe it's not AVF!". During the Macross 7 series' second half, Gamlin was still leading Diamond Force... and the trial lot of AVF's built by Three Star for the Macross-7 fleet was three VF-19's (Emerald Force) and two VF-22's (Max and Milia's). Not enough free planes to upgrade the entirety of Diamond Force, so they got to keep their VF-17's until a year or so later in Dynamite 7, when Gamlin finally got his VF-22S. (Diamond Force was probably low-priority for upgrades after being seconded to the City-7 defenses.) The Nightmare Plus had the Aegis Pack for the RVF-171, but yes... the VF-171 doesn't seem to have actually had a Super Pack of its own until the decision was made to enhance them for anti-Vajra use. With both internalized armaments AND wing-mounted ordinance, the VF-171 probably shouldn't have needed a Super Pack in the normal course of affairs. It's already got the more efficient FF-2110A engines, so its need for additional propellant is minimal. It's also probably scaled back a bit because, at the time, the AIF-7S/QF-4000 Ghost was gradually taking over for manned fighters. By all accounts, the VF-171 was a highly versatile design that could easily be adapted to different operational roles with little in the way of modification... and that probably played a role in the absence of FAST packs.

I'm not aware of anything that describes how exactly a thermonuclear reaction burst turbine is different from a regular one, just that the burst turbines were used on the VF-16, VF-17 from the D variant on, and the first AVF generation, and that their key advantages were significant gains in fuel efficiency, improved heat exchange systems, and nearly double the thrust. Combined, that's apparently responsible for the ability to reach orbit unassisted.

Macross Chronicle sort of beats around the bush about how exactly the Vajra get their energy... but between the series' mention of a "fold reactor" in the Vajra's Knight-class ship and the Queen Frontier's "fold quartz dimensional energy conversion" power source, that tidbit sounds like the Vajra are using the fold carbon they naturally produce to extract energy from super dimension space to run the energy-intensive technorganic traits like gravity control flight, their energy conversion armor, beam weapons, etc. What makes energy conversion armor work is supposedly electromagnetic pulses...

That's a good question... in Macross Plus and Macross 7, it seems like the pinpoint barriers are turned off (or at least on hot standby) until they're needed, and then they just appear where they're needed. Usually it's centered on the shield or over a fist. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably semi-autonomous operation (because the pilot's frankly got enough going on as it is). IINM (and it has been a while, so I may very well be), the only time we see fighter-scale pinpoint barriers represented as the original series-style discs was in the Macross 7 series. I believe it was either 2 or 3 discs.

As far as my views go, it's principally because what little official information exists on the practice of upgrading older designs to use AVF-level hardware suggests the end result for all but the most minimal changes is usually an unstable and/or unreliable plane the likes of which would potentially be beyond even the skills of an ace pilot to manage... and are thus unsuitable for mass production. It's not just a matter of raw thrust... but a matter of fuel efficiency. The thing that pushed the VF-17 Nightmare to the level of being able to launch into satellite orbit unassisted was the adoption of a new version of thermonuclear reaction engine technology. It got the FF-2100 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine, which had greatly improved output and, more importantly, fuel efficiency. One of the key design features of the VF-11MAXL was its delta wing, which offered more room for fuel storage... that probably was as much a factor in its orbital capabilities as the new engines. One also has to wonder if the stock VF-11 could meet the cooling requirements of a more potent engine... because even AVFs are struggling with that on their own. They're vague on that subject in general... another instance of it being mentioned but not described in any detail would be on the VF-19EF Caliburn, which had to be reinforced to use the GU-17. Minor upgrades are... you don't usually drop a next-generation avionics package into the fighter and call it a block upgrade. That takes a lot of adaptation. Whether next-generation sensor systems would even fit is a whole other kettle of fish... the VF-19 radar, for instance, is QUITE large and the VF-25's is actually dependent on the shape and composition of the nosecone. WRT the active stealth system, that's probably more a case of sufficient generator output than anything else... you need to throw more power behind the active cancellation to defeat more powerful radars. Electrical output... it's not at all clear what the exact relationship between a reaction engine's generator output and thrust output is. It's not helping that we only have generator outputs for two VF's... the VF-1 Valkyrie and VF-2SS Valkyrie II. For those, the output power to engine thrust relationship seems to be a linear progression, and if we knew the efficiency of the MHD systems in the engines it'd be possible to backtrack from maximum instantaneous output in space to a ballpark figure for generator output for the others if it's still linear for VF's in the main timeline. We're still talking enormous amounts of power here... gigawatts, easily.

Structurally, yeah... the VF-11C is an economized model, but according to Chronicle its performance limits are pretty much identical to the earlier -B variant. 's hard to say... since the VF-11D Custom "Jamming Birds" type, MAXL, MAXL Custom, and VF-11 Thunderbolt Interceptor are all one-off or limited production craft that either belong to civilians or special forces, they're likely getting more intensive maintenance than a normal fighter would get. Well... that's kind of a slippery-slope problem. Once you've replaced the engines, upgraded the airframe and armor materials, put new actuators and verniers in, and installed the AVF-tier avionics and sensor packages, you've basically put most or all of the cost involved in just building a new AVF from scratch into your upgrade program... but with less endurance. Well, yes... but to be fair, actual compatibility with a fold booster was never exclusive to AVF-level craft. Native support for the fold booster was an AVF goal, but even that was kind of low-hanging fruit. A pinpoint barrier system requires an obscene amount of power to operate... even an AVF needs to throw more than half its power output into the barrier to keep it running. So, IMO, it's likely that the VF-11D Custom and VF-11MAXL have similar "Cheats" to get pinpoint barriers working with substantially less engine. The Interceptor model's probably leaning more heavily on the battery than most because it's a air racing plane, and thus needs to preserve engine output. I doubt being factory-installed would make much difference... Yeah, fold communications systems in Macross can be made pretty darn small... every fold-capable ship has at least one, and the military-grade fold communication (left) and relay pod (right) systems are barely the size of missiles, and the relay at least has an interstellar range. Nah... the human-built fold systems in Macross seem to use human-coded software for their operation, which likely varies between models and manufacturers. They're probably a bit gunshy about using alien software after what happened the first time... what with the accidentally starting an interstellar war that nearly wiped out humanity and all. The ones we know about seem to fall into two groups: Anti-government groups which wanted more autonomy for the emigrant planets and fleets. (This group got exactly what it wanted when the government reorganized.) Groups which want to increase the power of the military OVER the government in the name of protecting humanity from extinction (e.g. Latence, FASCES). Actually, that seems to be true for pretty much all FAST packs except the special-use types like the Armored or Tornado packs... Well, yes... because those aren't really FAST packs. It's basically the same arrangement as the VF-0A's Ghost Booster or VF-27's Super configuration from the second Macross Frontier movie... except, unlike the VF-0A, the drone and the aircraft carrying it have thermonuclear reaction engines. (Based on the visual similarity, I can't help but suspect the VF-27's QF-5100 Goblin II drone is a relative of whatever drone formed the basis for Basara's sound booster.) Yep... the boosters in conventional FAST packs are of the rocket variety. Probably still hybrid rockets like the original generation of FAST packs. Well, they're likely charged off the reaction furnaces of the ship before launch... and then kept topped off by the reaction engines of the fighter they're mounted to when not in use. I doubt it. If these were thermonuclear reaction turbines, they'd be described as such... the descriptions given for them make them out to be high-powered rocket motors like those of pretty much every FAST pack save for the Tornado Pack. The answer is almost certainly "because it'd be obscenely expensive". On its own, the APS-25A Armored Pack is so prohibitively expensive that it's restricted to platoon leader-use only. The VF-25's TW1 Tornado Pack is the only one known to have internal thermonuclear reaction engines, and it's said to be even more expensive than the VF-25's Armored Pack. On paper, a FAST Pack is supposed to be a space augmentation system that boosts performance and armament while remaining cheap enough to technically be disposable.

It's legit... part of her Glossary entry in Macross Chronicle. See Glossary Sheet 24.

Well, that depends on the nature of the upgrade... if upgrading an existing design results in increased maintenance downtime and cost as a result of pushing an older design past its limits or including new capabilities it wasn't designed to support, it could end up more expensive to maintain the fleet of older aircraft than to replace them with a newer design that requires less maintenance. Pretty much, yeah... the same basic arrangement as most other tandem cockpit Valkyries. My point is that there really isn't a way to achieve that result without effectively destroying the colony... which takes the "long term" portion out of the equation. This isn't a single-point-of-failure system. An emigrant fleet is one or more emigrant ships and a military escort detail with anywhere from dozens to hundreds of fold-capable warships. Each and every one of those fold-capable ships has at least one fold communications system. So your typical planet on the frontier could have anywhere from 70 to 500 ships chilling out in orbit... assuming they don't also have a factory satellite or two kicking around the Lagrange points the way several are known to. To lose contact with the greater galaxy, you'd need all of those fold communications systems to fail simultaneously... dozens, or hundreds, at once. Even if there's a fold fault or something that's interfering, you just send a ship back to drop relay satellites like we see in Frontier... or just send a ship or two out as messengers requesting assistance the way Macross Galaxy did. Anti-government groups haven't exactly gone away in the aftermath of the government reorganizing (in which many of them got exactly what they were after), but in the 2050s they seem to be less of an issue... and as many of them seem to be content with using existing hardware. A custom Super Pack, yeah... because the Thunder Focus is equipped with a pair of stock VF-11 Thunderbolt engines (FF-2025G), and almost every racer has twice that or better in engine output. Difficult to say, but my suspicion would be "probably not"... at least, not for more than a couple minutes. FAST packs aren't really meant for continuous burn... they've only got enough fuel to yield maximum thrust for a couple minutes. I believe the VF-11's are rated for 5 minutes at full power. The capacitors that drive the VF-25's Armored and Paladin pack equipment might work short-term. We don't know anything about their endurance, but if they're anything like the ones in the VF-11's Armored Pack, then their endurance without being recharged in flight by the fighter's engines would probably be pretty short.

In a VERY limited fashion, yes... the VF-11D Custom's only real AVF-tier modifications were the installation of the same verniers the VF-19 uses, and a pinpoint barrier system. Otherwise, the modifications were relatively minor... like enlarged canards and uptuned (11%) versions of the VF-11's regular engines. Normally, AVF level technology only finds its way into 3rd Generation or older VF's on a one-off basis. Personally, I don't think that scenario is at all likely... even fold faults can't completely obstruct communications between fleets, and with the galaxy network playing a significant part in inter-fleet and inter-world commerce (cultural exports and so on), the complete loss of communication is likely to raise some eyebrows sooner rather than later and prompt an investigation. Every ship with a fold system has fold communications capability... so losing ALL long-range communication would generally mean you've misplaced the entire fleet (and therefore they're probably dead) or some malicious third party is interfering (which is likely to end with either losing the fleet or the enemy losing theirs, which likewise isn't likely to last all that long). Developing a new fighter takes a significant input of capital and an awful lot of time... there are a few cases where anti-government groups or criminals have obtained AVF-level craft, but they don't seem to go in for modification. Obtaining the UN Forces' fighters through illegitimate channels seems to be easier by far (e.g. the poachers in Macross Dynamite 7, who were able to obtain VF-17 Nightmares and reaction weaponry through intermediaries). On the rare occasion where they've had original mecha, they've had help from crooked defense contractors... but developing all-new craft seems to be easier.

Yeah, one lot of 20 craft... a special run for the Jamming Birds unit the Macross 7 fleet garrison established. That's because they didn't change a hell of a lot about them... most of the alterations, barring the engine change, had little or no effect on performance. That's... not really ambiguous. That's explicitly confirmed by the very first sentence of Macross Chronicle's description of the YF-29. Possibly... though that only really seems to have become a factor in the 2050s and on, after the core (New) Unified Forces stopped sharing the latest toys in an unaltered form. It's probably more likely to occur in fleets or emigrant planets that are more distant from Earth... like Frontier and Galaxy, which were basically a galactic radius away from home. On that level, the fleets that had a population of ~1 million of less seem to have favored breaking out support functions into other ships like those seen in Macross 7. It seems like, as time went on, more and more of those functions were incorporated into the central colony ship itself as the ships and their populations got larger. So, for this very specific purpose, I guess you could say that a "small" fleet is maybe 1 million or fewer emigrants and ~200 ships... while a "large" fleet is multiple millions of emigrants (like Frontier's 10 million) and more ships. Well, the SDF-1's situation was unique in that it wasn't really launched for exploration or emigration (in practice). It had to make do with the modest factory it had aboard. I would assume that the Macross-class SDFN's would have a more advanced and robust factory in response to the needs of operating further from Earth, advances in technology, and having less than 1/5th the number of people aboard.

Well, brace for a merge into the Newbie and Short Questions thread... Dunno! The most honest answer is "When (or if) Kawamori decides that the YF-29 should show up as a production aircraft in a future Macross title". As of 2060, it's still a YF. The YF-29B Percival is described as "a state-of-the-art aircraft which improves upon the YF-29 Durandal" in Macross Chronicle. It's said to be issued to Havamal ace pilots, which means it's probably technically in limited (but entirely off-the-books) production... so may fall under the same situation as the VF-27 technically did in Macross Frontier. (In which the Macross Galaxy fleet never disclosed the VF-27 plans to the New UN Gov't, so it's classified YF-27 by them.)

Officially, the answer is "No"... in the 2050's. The UN Government doesn't seem to have been particularly troubled by emigrant fleets having the same level of military hardware as the core UN Forces until emigrant discontent with the government took a sharp uptick in the late 2040's and early 2050's, which culminated in some armed conflicts between the UN Forces and anti-government rebels equipped with AVF-level fighters. Beyond that point, we start to see a proliferation of "monkey model" specs and the UN Forces withholding details of newly developed tech from the emigrant fleets... leading to the VF-19EF, VF-19C/MG21, VF-25, VF-27, etc. As far as we know, yeah... though the modifications were almost entirely spiritia warfare-related. In other respects, the Jamming Birds were using mostly stock VF-11D's. Those, like the other Sound Force birds, were limited production aircraft too... practically one-offs built for special duty. Pretty much, yes... though it's worth noting that that appellation is actually used even for fighters that were (almost) entirely developed in the emigrant fleets... not just for locally produced monkey models or customized variants like the VF-19EF or VF-19C/MG21. In most cases, there's some kind of design firm or defense contractor with an office aboard the emigrant fleet or on the emigrant planet that handles the actual design and production. Macross Frontier had a local Shinsei office and LAI collaborating on design work for the VF-25 alongside the fleet arsenal. Macross Galaxy was already a subsidiary of General Galaxy. Not sure who was administrating the Macross-7 fleet's Three Star factory ship. The smaller emigrant fleets have separate factory ships like the Three Star-type, which are more or less a one-stop shop for the fabrication of anything from daily basic commodities to variable fighters and starships. They're basically agglomerations of both refineries and factories strapped haphazardly to a large central reaction furnace. If there's a need, odds are they've got at least one area to fill it. Larger emigrant ships apparently internalize their factories and so on, within the sublevels of the ship.

Yep... heat from the thermonuclear reaction's plasma stream is used to provide propulsive force, replacing combustion for heating intake air. As Master File has it, the VF-1's engines can also be run as ramjets at high altitude, increasing the service ceiling before they need to cut over to pure space-based propulsion modes. 's more of an "Edge of space" thing... getting over 100km is possible with internal fuel, but if you want satellite orbit, you'd better be prepared to bring a booster. All told, there WERE supposedly limiters installed in the YF-19 and YF-21... it's just that, even with them preventing the pilots from pushing the airframe to the point where the g-forces could kill or incapacitate the pilot, it was still perfectly possible for the pilots to push the airframe to the point where they themselves could lose control of the plane and then crash from a loss of control on their part. Possibly... though he was probably operating with full knowledge that the updated controls would be swiftly adopted by the majority of VF-1 production blocks. Allegedly, many of the fold accidents had to do with mis-calculating the power requirements for a fold (and getting stuck in fold space as a result) or running into impassible fold faults.

Nobody'd buy that... it's several thousand pages of largely illegible handwriting. It's GERWALK without the arms deployed... it's not really used any differently from regular GERWALK mode. (Which doesn't really preclude its impromptu use as a jet with extreme thrust-vectoring, as seen on more than one occasion.)

Admittedly, it was probably a lot easier to ID an enemy pilot based on their style or a particular paintjob when there were only a few dozen operational, combat-worthy VF's in the entire world, and only a handful of people truly proficient in their use. The task of identifying an enemy pilot by his style or paint would be a lot harder when there are thousands or tens of thousands of virtually-identical fighters kicking around.

*Coughs* Survey says "Yes, it totally does". Unlikely... if anything, the reverse was probably true. The YF/VF-19 program's difficulties are generally attributed to the prototype's excessively high performance, and particularly the g-loads pilots were subjected to as the result of its exceptional maneuverability... the issue was that the airframe was hard to control because it was programmed perhaps a little too well, requiring special training to handle an aircraft that was much more responsive than any previous design. I've read a couple different explanations for that one... the one that made the most sense being that, at the time the VF-0's had been retired before being pushed into service due to delays in VF-1 mass production, they had been evaluating refinements meant for the VF-1's later production blocks and successors. (Probably wasn't so much a case of "train like you fight" so much as "Our enemy has a combat-worthy VF in the air, get a transformable fighter combat-worthy YESTERDAY".) What you're thinking of here is the VF-25+EX-Gear, where the EX-Gear's learning computer learns the habits of its user and uses that data to improve control response. The VF-0 is also described as having a learning computer, but it's only really mentioned in connection with the Ghost Booster... due to the complexity of the aerodynamics involved, the learning computer had to sort out the handling on its own in actual flight due to gaps in the simulated data it was "Trained" with.

Robins don't normally whip through the air at hundreds of kilometers an hour though... (it'd be freaking scary if they did, the birds in my yard keep getting blitzed on fermenting berries and dive-bombing each other). Camera systems in Macross are undeniably very VERY good, but I don't think they're quite THAT good... to pick a single enemy out of a crowd and mark it as the commander based solely on visual cues. An identifying mark one can eyeball if you get sufficiently close for a long enough time... from the dialog in Zero it sounds more like D.D. recognized Roy from his distinctive flying style as much, if not more than, his paintjob. (On the other hand, Roy seems to spot D.D. because of his distinctive all-black paintjob and fanged skull-and-crossed-swords... so it could go both ways.) ... okay, you absolutely have me there. Most of the main character dogfights certainly occur at ranges close enough for the pilots to exchange profane hand gestures. The same appears to be true for elite units later on too... where everyone's pretty much painted the same. If Master File was anything to go by (and it may or may not be!), units where the aces engage in "combat peacocking" are the exception rather than the rule... Well, that may actually be a definite Red Baron-type situation... in the series, Milia was renowned even among the male portions of Boddole Zer's gender-segregated fleet for her amazing combat prowess. Macross 7's unaired episode, "Fleet of the Strongest Women" seems to affirm that that she was notorious among other fleets as well... and that she wasn't the only notorious ace the women had either (Chlore). The Macross II prequel games ran with this too... with the Leplendis fleet in 2037 also having its own notorious top ace who went out of her way to paint her machine differently from everyone else.

A good memory for detail, and notes... pages and pages and pages of notes. Seriously, it's like an open-notes college exam over here. The screencap? That's not from the Macross Frontier series. It's one of the early scenes in the second movie. Talos screencap'd it for me ages ago, and until this thread it was collecting digital dust in my Skype received files folder.

Hence the first point in my last post.

Well, that rather depends on whether the fighters with single-axis thrust vectoring are truly single-axis or whether, like the picture above, they've actually got some range of motion in another axis. (I think it's likely that many do.) The SV-51, SV-52, YF-21, VF-22, and YF/VF-27 all use X-31-style multi-axis/three-dimensional arrangements of three thrust-vectoring paddles. The YF/VF-27 and YF-29 also use axisymmetric three-dimensional vectoring nozzles for their outboard engines. Most of the others use pitch-axis thrust vectoring nozzles, though the VF-17/VF-171 have yaw-axis thrust vectoring nozzles instead.

Bingo... especially if, as in the VF-171's case, the single-axis thrust vectoring is actually multi-axis via the present of multiple, stacked sets of nozzles as in this instance.

Unlikely, IMO... as just about every VF which has had detailed coverage has ailerons and either a V-tail or X-tail configuration in which the stabilizers function as ruddervators. (The VF-22 is the only notable exception, being that its wing is essentially one colossal variable cant, variable camber control surface.) The only ones that don't appear to have flaps and ailerons are the VF-5000, VF-9, VF-17, VF-22*, Fz-109F, and VB-6... and in many of those cases, it may be because the line art is at a relatively low detail level and doesn't show any control surfaces. The VF-17 likely has the same control surface arrangement as the VF-171 (which did have ailerons), the Fz-109 likely has the same as the VF-14 (same story), the VF-22 has independently mobile sections of wing that roughly correspond to both but are not distinct from the entire mechanism of the wing, etc. EDIT: The VF-2JA from Macross II: Lovers Again definitely doesn't have ailerons, but its configuration is roughly analogous to the F-14's, being that it has six stabilizers... four vertical/canted, and two horizontal/taileron.

Well, they still carry liquid oxygen because the verniers and other onboard rocket motors (if any) also draw on the hydrogen tanks... but yes, hydrogen-hydrogen fusion moderated/catalyzed by gravity is based on something very concrete. It's also one of several candidates for aneutronic fusion for power generation.

I'll see about accommodating that after I get home. HLJ has it for about $22 (USD), not counting shipping.