Seto Kaiba
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We don't really know what the first VF to be capable of reaching satellite orbit unassisted was. The original VF-17[A,B,C] probably couldn't, since its engines are a LOT weaker than the FF-2100X engines that the VF-17D and later variants got... but there are other, earlier designs that also had AVF-level engine power. The VF-14 was only 750kg heavier than the VF-17D, and the VF-17D's engine thrust was greater by only about 5%, so it's not inconceivable that a VF-14 could've done it. We don't know what the VF-16 weighed, but it had engines with an output of over 400kN (at least 50% greater than a VF-11's), which were orbit-capable when installed in a specially-reinforced VF-11MAXL (Mylene's).
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Yes, the VF-19 and VF-22 were the first production AVFs. The VF-14 is a contemporary of the VF-11... it was the competing design that lost out to the VF-11 in the selection of the next main fighter. That didn't stop it from getting a fair bit of use, though. There's something that looks like a VF-14 visible in the background at New Edwards in Plus, and the Varauta system's UN Forces used the VF-14 as well... until the Protodeviln took over and it became the basis for the enemy fighters in Macross 7. It was HUGE compared to the VF-11, and it had engines that were on par with the AVF-level engines in the VF-17D. (IIRC, Max also flew one in Macross M3).
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Yeah, I honestly don't recall seeing any VF-1S's besides the Skull 001. Mostly -A's, a couple brownie -D's and -J's here and there... but none of the -S.
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Yeah, but for the period (in Macross history) it's appropriate enough... the Project Super Nova designs, the genesis of the Advanced Variable Fighter, were both trying to internalize their armaments as much as possible in the interests of stealth. Later advances in active stealth technology loosened the impact of external ordinance, but that didn't stop most of 'em from stacking on the internalized armaments. My concern, relative to airframe size, was more about getting the additional systems that are part of the AVF technological "tier" into the airframe and the more limited fuel capacity. Since most of the emigrant fleets would be principally concerned with space combat, operational endurance for patrols and combat would definitely be a high priority. Depends what fighter you're talking about there... without resorting to Super Packs, several of the larger AVFs can equal or exceed the carrying capacity of the VF-11 and similar small VFs when it comes to ordinance just using their internal bays. The VF-14 and VF-22 are both on that list... partly due to their relatively large size leaving room for significant amounts of ordinance to be jammed in there.
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Er... yes and no. We actually see both sides of the coin in Macross Plus. On Eden, the UN Forces at the New Edwards test flight center are shown testing the YF-21 against a dedicated, purpose-built target drone. Macross Chronicle literally identifies it ONLY as "target drone". Earth, on the other hand, is shown testing the Ghost X-9 against unmanned VF-11's (I vaguely recall reading somewhere that all those drones were the initial VF-11A type that had been produced in very limited numbers). I'd imagine the dedicated target drones are probably a lot cheaper, and therefore a lot easier to find, than drone-converted VFs (which are surprisingly rare in the setting). That its size is similar to the classic VF-1 is probably an argument against it being an entirely viable AVF upgrade candidate. It's said (in connection with the MAXL variant) that the VF-11 needed to have the airframe strengthened to take the additional thrust of new engines about 2/3 as powerful as what's on most AVFs, and being so darn small would make its armament rather lighter than what most AVFs carry. It wouldn't have nearly as much staying power or carrying capacity as your average AVF (and, IIRC, something about pinpoint barriers is said to screw with the VF-11's sensors on the Thunderbolt Interceptor). If one thing can usually be said for AVFs, it's that they're quite a bit bigger than the designs of the first space war and its aftermath. I'd think the logical choice would actually be the VF-14 Vampire. The airframe's stressed for about twice the engine power that the VF-11's was (in the same ballpark as the VF-17D), and it's said to have a LOT of free space inside the airframe that can be used for upgraded or optional hardware.
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Unless, of course, they've got a decent amount of foresight... one reason the VF-25 was built as an all-regime fight rather than space optimized like the VF-19F. Eh... that depends on what kind of orbit you're talking about. Even the VF-1 Valkyrie was able to at least the edge of space over an Earth-type world without resorting to cheats like an escape booster. Boosters are all about getting the fighters up into space quickly and efficiently without having to ferry them up on a ship. The VF-11 is the last fighter stated to need booster assistance to get into a satellite orbit, but exactly which fighter was first to be capable of doing it unassisted is a great big unanswered question. Most fighters seem to have the capability from thermonuclear reaction burst-turbine engines like those of the AVFs, VF-16, and VF-17 variants starting with the VF-17D. The VF-14 may have possessed the capability as well, considering its engines are almost as powerful as the VF-17D's and their thrust-to-weight ratios aren't that far off. Pretty much every VF in the Macross Frontier-era seems to be orbit-capable, and the VF-171's initial type DOES have a similar engine to the VF-17.
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When distances of a few hundred light years are apparently no more troubling than an international flight is today, odds are that the economy isn't THAT unfamiliar. From what Kawamori has said in interviews, many of the emigrant fleets and worlds are producing their own currency and are more or less self-sufficient economies, internally. "Cultural" exports like music and other media happen over the Galaxy Network (a fold communications analogue to the modern internet), and goods are shipped to and fro by interstellar shipping concerns like Tachyon Express and Birla Transport Co. Ltd. After all, we're told point-blank that Strategic Military Services (SMS) was started by Richard Birla to protect his interstellar shipping business... and Luca rather bluntly tells Leon Mishima that he thinks the reason Birla is fascinated by the Vajra is because he plans to use fold quartz in his shipping business, and gain a virtual monopoly on interstellar shipping with a fleet of ships which can travel through fold faults. That wasn't actually his ulterior motive, but his interstellar shipping business was what gave him the riches that let him bankroll his private army (SMS) and the Frontier fleet. Each emigrant ship is supposedly a unique city-state in space... with its own layout, architecture, and so on. They're built off of the same basic design, but many of the ones we've seen have had their own distinctive touches added to the design, both in terms of architecture and technology. Macross-5 had Zentradi aesthetics and tech everywhere, for instance, while Macross-11 seemed to have a lot more highrise buildings and those massive heat fins on the side of the main dome. As far as the types of emigrant fleet... there's not really a "medium" there. We know, from Kawamori's interviews and some print sources, that there were 100 or so short-range emigrant fleets that used Zentradi and other ships to locate and settle worlds that were discovered within a couple hundred light years of Earth. The long-distance emigrant fleets were on a much larger scale, for exploration thousands of light years from Earth... those are the fleets we actually see, built around Megaroad and New Macross-class ships with millions of civilians. Whether the fleets know where they're going... that's something for the advance scouts to sort out, which is what the SDFN-type mass-production Macross-class ships were originally for, though later fleets used frigates and other ships. They don't know the destination they'll one day reach, but they at least know what's ahead of them so they aren't sailing blind.
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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.
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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.
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AFAIK, it was originally an episode produced for broadcast that was dropped...
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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".
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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).
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'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).
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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.
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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).
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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.)
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
