Seto Kaiba
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Erm... well, I dunno about that. I mean, we've seen one form of life that does live in super dimension space, but it was an energy life form (that would come to be known as the Protodeviln). Other lifeforms from this universe, such as the galactic whales, are supposedly "super dimensional life forms", though they live in the normal universe rather than the higher dimension(s) of fold space and merely possess the natural ability to tap into the super dimension for travel (and presumably self-defense). frothymug rather beat me to the punch here, but it's mentioned (and at one point, shown) in the Macross Frontier television series. It's in one of the last couple episodes. I'll get you an episode number and time index in a future post, at present I have no access to my DVDs due to a slight (recurring) minor family emergency.
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VF-0 or VF-1 (includes variants) which do you like better?
Seto Kaiba replied to leading edge's topic in Movies and TV Series
Call me old-fashioned if you like (and I'll cheerfully cop to it if you do), but I prefer the VF-1. It's a classic. I'm especially fond of the DYRL versions of the A/J/S, and the enhanced versions of same ("Refined Valkyrie") from the Macross II prequel games. While it's a nice design, and it looks damn pretty in Macross Zero, the VF-0 never really did much for me aesthetically. I know that it's meant to test new tech for VFs, and that by 2008 it's testing tech for the VF-4, but in trying to be visually impressive it came out looking too advanced for its period. -
More A's... or at least, best guesses. Can't be too picky when the questions are this specific. Well, as we know from the Macross Frontier series, travelling by zero-time fold is FAST! Regular fold travel is no slouch in the speed department, but the fold quartz-dependent zero-time fold method is supposedly an order of magnatude faster. I would guess that there was a Vajra hive somewhere within a couple dozen or a couple hundred LY of Earth... possibly one where it could go unnoticed by virtue of a dead star (that the Vajra could mine unrefined fold quartz from) or no inhabitable planets so humans would have little-to-no reason to go there. I don't believe there's any official answer, but consider that a "best guess". Assuming that diagram in the first episode is anything like accurate, I'd estimate somewhere upwards of 25,000ly, possibly as much as 40,000ly. That animated chart of the emmigration fleets showed both Frontier and Galaxy near the galactic core, so they're tens of thousands of light years away easily (the Milky Way's diameter being estimated at ~100,000-120,000ly). (On reflection, Macross Frontier's love of arc number-dropping would make 25,000ly seem particularly appropriate, no?) Your guess is as good as mine... supposedly there's more than one planet building them now, so they've probably passed the thirty mark already. If they ever do ascribe some final limit to that class of ships, it'll probably involve some kind of arc number shenanigans. *shrugs* Dunno why anyone'd get snippy over these... they're perfectly reasonable questions, IMO. the sticky point is there's really no definitive answer to any of them (at the present time).
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No biggie. I think I may have sourced your thing about the Dragunov and the ISC tho. Could it have been in the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah book? IIRC, there's a section in there (however brief) on weaponizing the inertia store converter. (I feel your pain tho, I'm getting ready to go back to school for my PhD.)
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You said "dude" twice. Also, remember... I quite readily admitted that my "one isolated incident" evidence was not 100% reliable either. There isn't any double standard at work here, I treated both cases as "isolated incident, needs confirmation/corroboration". I'm trying to be fair to both sides of the issue as much as possible. According to Macross Chronicle, they're workin' on it... whether they've had any success or not, that's for the next Macross title to tell us.
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At some point in the very near future, I expect we'll see McKeever and co. trying to pass the annual PowerPoint presentation itself off as a new Robotech release... or is that already a thing? I've been out of touch with the crazy for so long... Well, if you really wanted to get technical about it... the Robotech fans DO have options. Kind of. In a sick, twisted, entirely unsound sort of way. It's something I've run into quite often during my time on Palladium's Robotech sub-forum. Y'see... what Tommy ultimately wants to do is refashion the Robotech story into what he thinks it should've been all along. This, he does because he believes his version of Robotech will be a huge success rather that meeting an unremarkable end the way Carl Macek's did, thus transferring the (wholly undeserved) "visionary creator" plaudits from Carl to him. The problem with this, other than that it could only happen in the Twilight Zone, is that he's trying to recreate the Robotech universe over the frequent objections of the few long-time fans keeping the franchise limping along. So he's stuck in this weird Schrodinger's Cat situation where he's simultaneously trying to pin down a narrowly-defined official continuity AND claim that everything that went before is still good to avoid hacking off the old-timers who don't like his sh*t. As a result, the more active Robotech old-timers tend to treat the universe as less of a coherent story and more of a big bucket of set pieces and disjointed plot fragments from which they can each weave their own Robotech story. Remember, we're talking about a fandom that's been lied to so often, and is so desperate to validate its faith in a dead property, that its constituent fans can no longer tell the difference between reality and the veil of fictions and elaborate moon logic they've woven around Robotech so they don't feel like they're wasting their time. If they stick with the pattern, once they fire Tommy for being an inept tit who can't make good on his promises... they'll hire an entirely new creative staff and start all over again with another reboot. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
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Glad someone got something outta this mess...
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Only in that one isolated case, really... and even then, the change in engine size isn't something that was really a function of the internalized micro-missile weapons. IINM, the VF-5000's engine isn't all that much smaller than a VF-1's, nor is it any better than the higher-tuned version of the FF-2001 in the VF-1S. As to the miniaturization of the engine tech, that's hard to say whether it's been done or not in the Macross II universe. If they'd given the thrust rating and/or energy output for the Valkyrie II's sub-engine systems (the two smaller, dorsally-mounted engines) then we could say something. It's been implied that their output is roughly comparable to that of a VF-1, but I have yet to find a source that either corroborates that lone implication or says it flat-out, so I'm unwilling to treat it as entirely reliable. Who was making that argument? Has that actually been established somewhere, about the Dragunov? If so, I'd dearly love to know where. Throw a writer a bone? Also, the ISC system doesn't, IIRC, actually dissipate the g-forces into super dimension space... it just temporarily displaces the g-forces beyond a certain safe level and returns them to the airframe in a controlled manner that won't turn the pilot into a tight bag full of chunky human soup like what happened to Guld.
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Well, yeah... that's true. I don't think anyone here has suggested otherwise. The chief advantage(s) of a railgun are that accelerating a kinetic round using electromagnetic force frees the weapon from the limitations imposed by conventional technologies like chemical or pneumatic propellant. With a railgun, you can accelerate a kinetic round to much greater velocities, the practical upshot of which is that (all other things being equal) you get longer effective ranges, greater stopping power, and tighter accuracy. As a side benefit, the materials requirement to produce ammunition are decreased, as you only need the actual projectile... not the projectile, a chemical propellant, a primer, and a cartridge case to hold it together, which is accompanied by a reduction in the weapon's mechanical complexity since it wouldn't need to extract and eject spent cartridge cases. The downsides to railgun tech (in the real world) are the sizable energy requirements needed to one-up chemical propellants (not an issue in this case) and the need for a suitably high strength material for the accelerator rails so they can stand up to repeated high-energy firings (also probably not an issue in this case). EDIT: There's also the question of greater recoil forces generated by those higher velocities, but the defense industry in Macross II seems to have that under control too. Sources for Macross II: Lovers Again don't describe the ammunition used in the ubiquitous railguns of the series, though the SSL-9B Dragunov rifle from Macross Frontier is described a using an ultra-hard metal-jacketed alloy bullet.
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Naturally. All I said was that the presence of internal launcher systems and/or ordinance stowage space is not, in and of itself, representative of any sweeping technological advancement. It can, as you've pointed out, be a function of technological advancement in other areas (passive stealth, for instance), but it can also just as easily not be a factor at all... like how improvements in active stealth on the VF-19 eliminated the need to keep the plane's weapons close to or completely inside the airframe (the Super Pack being the particular focus of that remark). (In general terms, you're absolutely right... I'm just being very specific.) Oy... now that is a tall order. I've been trying to corner him for a while now to talk updates, but we keep missing each other like ships in the night. I'm loathe to do any updates without him, since my art-fu is weak and M3 is his baby. I know the 2092 thing is up there, and has been for a while, but I've got a boatload of material for the Macross II section and I'm slowly accumulating a pile of art stock and material to go into the Macross Frontier movie area and a little stuff that's tentatively for Game and Advanced Valkyrie. It's just a matter of catching him. (Anyone wanna loan me a really big net?) Macross II... yeah, that's a timeline that wildly diverges from where the main timeline is. The influence of Gundam is much stronger and rather more overt and conspicuous there. I had a couple LOL moments reading B-Club 73 and seeing that some of the technological advances which were built into the Valkyrie II family (VF-XX, VF-2A/J/S, VF-2SS, VF-2JA) would probably sound suspiciously familiar to our boy Amuro Ray. No doubt it has lots and lots to do with Macross II's mechanical designers having largely come from Gundam projects like Zeta Gundam and Char's Counterattack. (It's even more blatant if you look at how Chronicle dates it, with Macross II set in what would be "New Era" 0079-0080.) You'd be absolutely bang-on accurate with your counterargument here if it weren't for one little thing... you're assuming that these railguns are using internal batteries as their power source. True, a railgun is going to need huge amounts of energy to achieve a level of accuracy, range, and lethality exceeding that of a more conventional cannon, but energy is one commodity that the Valkyrie II has in spades. It's one of only two VFs in Macross to have a stated reactor output, the other being the VF-1, and that output is huge. Each of its two main reaction turbines has a power output that's just shy of 2,000MW... and since the Valkyries in the "DYRLverse" are armored with ersatz-Gundarium instead of a combination of composite armor and energy conversion armor*, all of that output is free for things like flight and weaponry. So, when your power source is external and frankly excessive, you can achieve the greater destructive potential without having to make the gun pod unmanagably large or aggressively curtailing the magazine capacity to make room for large capacitor banks. EDIT: * It occured to me to clarify this only after I had posted. Macross Chronicle's glossary section asserts that energy conversion armor doesn't exist in the Macross II universe. It's not that they're voluntarily not using it, it's that it flat-out doesn't exist. As a brief aside, the notion of supplying power from an external source for a particularly energy-intensive gun pod isn't unique to Macross II's parallel universe. IIRC, that's how the VF-0's gun pod motor was powered, and the equipment for the YF-27-5 prototype from Macross the Ride makes it look very probable that the VF-27's gun pod is also powered by a tap into the mecha's four engines. (In that case, it's also highly probable that the SSL-9 railgun used by the VF-25 is powering its linear driver off the mecha's engines too.)
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Um, the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA is set in 2092, not 2089. I've been trying for a while now to track down which American-side entity originated the 2089 thing, and thus far the finger seems to be pointed squarely at US Renditions. Anyhoo... I'm not denying that the Valkyries in the main Macross universe are, in most respects, more advanced than those of the Macross II parallel universe. What I'm saying is that engine power isn't the only metric for measuring technological advancement, and that the Macross II valks did have certain areas where they were more advanced than the VFs in the main universe. Both universes had integrated beam weapons turn up at the same time and on the same plane (the VF-4), while things like internalized micro-missile launchers aren't an indicator of technological progression so much as they're an indicator of simply having a larger airframe and thus more internal space. Things like pinpoint barriers, fold wave radar, and all of that jazz... heck yes, that's more advanced than what's on the Valkyrie II. Then again, there are areas where the Macross II valks have a leg-up on their counterparts: like the widespread use of railguns in place of conventional guns, every Valkyrie II being able to act as a mothership for drones rather than just recon variants, the much earlier emergence of those drone-support and beam rifle technologies, etc.. Skipping right to the moral of the story, the question of which timeline's Valkyries are superior depends largely on what criteria you're applying when you're judging what superiority means. As a result, it can easily go either way. Well, let's examine this in detail... the YF-29 has a beam rifle, two machine guns, two beam cannons, its internal micro-missile launchers, and a big damn knife. On the other hand, the VA-1SS has a pair of railguns, two laser cannons, two beam cannons, its internal micro-missile launchers, and what's essentially a big damn energy spear on one arm. All told, they're on pretty level ground in terms of dakka except for the question of missile capacity (the Durendal's lead is by about 36 missiles). Heck, their armament is surprisingly similar in terms of where it's placed on the airframe too, 'cept for the gunpods. Talk about a failure of context... Macross II is a six-episode OVA about a war, while Macross Plus is a four-episode OVA exclusively about the development of new variable fighters, and Macross 7 is a 49+ episode TV series. That's not exactly a fair comparison to make. Macross II does discuss certain aspects of the technological improvements (e.g. railguns) in the published material, the same as Macross Plus and others do.
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Oh, absolutely it does. Just for starters, the practical advantages of railgun technology over conventional guns is an area being avidly explored by real national milities including the US Navy. It's also been a factor in the program histories multiple Macross mecha like the Monster destroids, the Defender EX, and was a factor in the (re)design of the Valkyrie II platform as a space-optimized variable fighter. In a limited fashion, it also comes into play in the VF-25G's choice of armament. (In the last case, the particular emphasis is on the increase in ballistic velocity over what chemical propellant can make possible and the resulting improvement in accuracy and penetration power, whereas the Valkyrie II's case is focused more on the excessive power that made it possible for a Valkyrie to pose a real threat to enemy ships without resorting to reaction ordinance.)
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Oh, absolutely... we've never seen a gun pod in the main Macross universe that could do what the gun pods in Macross II do. Even the railgun on the VF-25G needs a propellant of some description to get the bullet moving, and almost all of the gun pods in the main Macross universe need a cartridge case to keep the whole affair together. Macross II's railguns need neither, reducing the materials requirements to manufacture ammunition and letting them operate without the limitations of a conventional gun... and opening up possibilities like significantly greater velocities than what can be achieved with chemical propellants, faster rates of fire, etc.
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*cough* Um... remember that thing I just said about the VF-4 doing it first? Yeah, the Valkyrie II's weird in that it goes against the usual convention of the battroid being shorter than the fighter is long. The Valkyrie II's 14m in battroid mode, and only 13.5m in fighter... a full 14m if you factor in the Super Armed Pack's big damn railgun.
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So, in short, nothing has changed and there's been no progress whatsoever for Robotech, yes? It gives me a sense of great peace and stability to know that there are certain universal constants, and that Robotech's inability to produce anything remotely resembling success is one of them.
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Erm... what? The YF-21 had beam weapons, yes... but not beam gun pods. If you check the Compendium (or anywhere else), you'll find that the YF-21's gun pods are listed as "Two external Howard/General GV-17L new standard cartridge-less gatling guns". Internal beam weapons weren't anything new when the YF-21 came out, that'd been a thing since the VF-4 in both universes. As far as internal missile bays, that's not really that advanced... its only indicative of the fact that the VF-19, VF-22, etc. are about twice the size of a VF-2SS. EDIT: Pretty much the only type of built-in weapon main timeline Valks have that M2 ones don't is miniaturized converging beam guns, MDE weapons not counting because they're just different ammunition in an existing machine gun or an externally-mounted beam gun.
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Dear god, this thread is still going? How much non-news can we reasonably report? As I understand it, it also "killed the radio star".
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Sure thing. I've had consistently good experiences with HMV.co.jp's English side. Actually, they're lagging pretty far behind Macross II's universe in both respects. The designated marksman railgun (SSL-9B Dragunov) used on the VF-171 and VF-25G in the Macross Frontier series isn't a true ("pure") railgun, its ammunition uses chemical cartridges to get the round moving and then accelerates it further with the linear driver in the barrel. Also, the Macross II universe had beam weapon gun pods as early as the 2030s, which were seen in the Macross II prequel game Macross: Eternal Love Song.
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An outcome that, I think, surprises nobody... Eh? Lack of advancement? Engine output and g-force loadings aren't the only measures of technological advancement in Macross. The Valkyrie II and the other "DYRLverse" mecha are more advanced than the main Macross universe's mecha in some areas, and less so in others. For instance, while the main universe's VFs have far greater advances in engine output, their weapons technology has lagged behind compared to the Macross II mecha, which have advanced railgun tech to the point where they've outright replaced rotary gun pods, etc.. There are also a couple areas wherein technologies overlap, like a "smart" anti-g seat/frame with integrated controls, improvements to the transformation system that dramatically increase durability, etc. Better late than never, right? ^^; (It's been a hectic month.) More or less, yeah... the Macross II universe's UN Spacy seems to have judged the VF-1 sufficient to continue in operation as a main VF during the reconstruction of Earth, serving alongside the VF-4 before eventually receiving a major overtechnology upgrade and becoming the VF-1 Kai (known also as the VF-1R "Refined Valkyrie" family). The VF-4 got a similar upgrade around the same time, which gave it a lot of new tech that'd eventually end up being developed further in VF-XX/VF-2 generation and show up on the Valkyrie II's space-optimized version. (Funnels becoming bits, etc.) Actually... the VF-2SS wasn't developed until the early 2080s. Depending on how you want to split it, it's either the 4th or the 7th VF in Macross II's universe to see large-scale mass production. (It depends on whether you wanna count the refined versions as separate planes in their own right or variants of a basic platform... ie. whether the VF-1 and VF-1R, VF-4 and VF-4S, or VF-2S and VF-2SS are the same planes despite the significant changes in their hardware and airframe design. It's a lot like whether you wanna count the Hornet and Super Hornet as the same or separate planes.)
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Actually, the design for the whatever-you-wanna-call-it the Galaxy bigwigs "live" in looks a LOT like the brains on the command deck of Ingues's mobile fortress in Macross II: Lovers Again.
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Other numbers are shown on 'em in the animation proper... a smaller number stencil under the canopy frame on the side of Max's bird is "SV-003" (presumably Skull/Vermillion 003").
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IIRC, isn't the Stampede Valkyrie an acknowledged inspiration for the VF-25?
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Honestly, that'd be about the only intelligent move left to Harmony Gold at this point... but they'll never do it. One of the sordid little truths that leaked out during the more candid discussions with the people in charge of Robotech is that Harmony Gold's senior management ascribe to a view of the franchise more in line with ours than the highly unrealistic and/or overly optimistic viewpoint being pushed by the idiot brigade they hired to run the franchise. To them, Robotech is just a poor performer with such lousy future prospects that it's not worth investing more than the bare minimum necessary to keep it alive enough to continue generating revenue. As wise as it would be for them to let Robotech slip into obscurity and obsolescence to clear its reputation of the stink of all its failures and the bad karma, the decision-makers at Harmony Gold are also businessmen. Despite all its many sins, Robotech continues to generate a modest income stream from products whose development costs have been covered for decades. To bring the franchise to full-stop for years before trying to reboot it from the ground up would entail both the loss of the revenue stream it currently generates AND a significant investment of time, money, and resources into reviving a property with a 100% catastrophic failure rate in developing original material. Since they know Robotech is a turd with no prospects, they're clearly realists... they'll stick with the assured profits rather than gambling on the uncertain and almost certainly doomed promise of future profits.
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Dunno what the madmen of the Robotech.com Ghost Town preservation society are saying, but the more moderate fans over on Palladium's forums seem surprisingly reluctant to talk about it. The few I've managed to wrangle an opinion out of seem to be of the opinion that it's going to be a turd.
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Oh, no kidding... the more I read of what Carl Macek had to say about Robotech before and after Harmony Gold decided that the time was ripe to "reboot" their failed toy commercial from the 80's and try to pass it off as a completely serious sci-fi/action anime series, the more I think that Carl Macek was basically nothing more than a sock puppet that Harmony Gold used for the purpose of promoting the show and disparaging the original Macross. After his final attempt to revive Robotech got canned in pre-production by Harmony Gold and he was replaced as the creative director by Tommy Yune, his "tune" in interviews and such pulled a 180. He went from the way he was in the late 80's and the early 90's, which was being essentially honest about the show's origins and his involvement, to suddenly buying into the hype that he was anime's answer to Gene Roddenberry and disparaging the source material for Robotech as flawed and inferior to what he envisioned for it. If he really was their sock puppet for all that, it would certainly explain some of the outrageous and fairly obvious lies he told. Still... 's kind of a dick move to repeat a bad idea from the past and then stick a dead man with the blame.