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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Considering some of the things its passage supposedly caused, that doesn't seem like an unreasonable proposition to me. This thing triggered volcanic eruptions, flattened a swath of Europe, and knocked a kilometer off Everest just by passing NEAR it. It's possible its irregular-ish course was a product of its engines still operating or something of that nature. As we're told in the original series, the ship was abandoned and booby trapped to help cover the retreat of the Supervision Army from our region of the galaxy. We know nothing about the crew's motives, but given that the likelihood of it emerging in the middle of a solar system vs. the vast swathes of empty nothing that make up most of the galaxy, it seems a safe bet they deliberately aimed it at a solar system to give the Boddole Zer main fleet a wild goose to chase on the assumption that it might be fleeing towards one of their bases instead of just jumping in the general direction of "away". Nothing is said about them finding anything of the crew itself, but there was enough leftover equipment and surviving internal architecture for the newly founded OTEC to come to a number of important conclusions from.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. It showed up for the first time in Frontier, but it's never even commented on.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    No definitive number has ever been put on it. It's clearly a lot, given that it's mentioned that the ship's passage through the atmosphere knocked a kilometer off the top of Mount Everest, destroyed both Stockholm and Moscow, cut a wide swath of destruction across all of Europe, Iceland, and Greenland, caused volcanoes to erupt in Canada, and generally made a mess of the South Pacific. Moscow had a population of almost 9.85 million in 1999 and Stockholm had nearly 1.2 million. Europe as a whole was over 675 million at the time. The death toll was likely catastrophic in its own right... made worse by the consequences of such massive destruction.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    I'd suspect the latter. Most of the Master File books have offered a loading table wherein the subject matter VF can carry more than one gunpod... as well as art for same. The VF-25 book offers a table that claims the VF-25 can carry THREE gunpods, and at one point we see Armored VF-1s using multiple gunpods.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    IIRC, the VF-171EX's anti-beam coating is said to be the same type applied to the VF-25. Though the earliest mention of the technology I recall is in Macross Plus. When Isamu reads the specs, an anti-laser coating is mentioned among its defensive systems.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Emigrant ships and fleets are, by the nature of their mission, designed to be as self-sufficient as possible. The New UN Government and the fleet administration take care to ensure that they leave port equipped with everything they need for sustained operations in deep space that could last years or even decades. They have onboard facilities and equipment for obtaining, processing, and recycling resources and to manufacture most anything they could require. As technology has improved, the capabilities and even the nature of those facilities and that equipment have changed.* Under law, all New UN Government member states receive periodic transmissions providing them with information on the latest technological developments and most, if not all, are linked to the Galaxy Network (FTL space internet). Upgrading equipment is largely a matter of cost in terms of time and resources. Some emigrant governments with less resources naturally lag behind others in adopting new technologies as do others that simply don't see the need. For instance, there are some emigrant governments that operate an all-Ghost air force instead of using Valkyries because the cost-performance is better and there's less risk to human life. * For instance, the 5th Generation emigrant ships transitioned from a closed-system chemical plant to an artificial and carefully managed ecosystem "bioplant" as a way of processing many types of resources.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    That's kind of the elephant in the room when it comes to the model kits and so on that give the VF-4 a gunpod. Why? By all accounts, the VF-4's pair of beam guns do the same job but won't run out of ammunition because they're powered by the compact thermonuclear reactors in the engines. The only time the VF-4 has ever been depicted in an official context using a gunpod is in the Macross II timeline's Macross: Eternal Love Song. In that story, the Prometheus II had a pair of VF-4 Sirens that were assigned to Hound Squadron and outfitted with more powerful beam guns in the form of a large beam gunpod for the final offensive against the Burado main fleet's mobile fortress and specifically intended to kill the living command computer. The only potential explanation I can think of for a main Macross timeline VF-4 being outfitted with gunpods would be for an atmospheric engagement. Master File likes to remind its readers that energy weapons suffer performance degradation in atmosphere too as energy from the beam heats the atmospheric gases it's passing through. Since most versions of the GU-11 are not reloadable, you'd have to carry two for an extended engagement.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It's the main problem with Star Trek these days... the people in charge seem to want to make Star Trek into an action series. Not a sci-fi series with the occasional action scene or action elements, but just a bog-standard sci-fi action series like Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica. Not that this is necessarily entirely on the new guys either. There was the increased emphasis on action that began with the last few seasons of Deep Space Nine thanks to its war arc, with Voyager's last few seasons because the writers were burned out on Star Trek and the Borg made a convenient recurring threat that needed no character development by nature, and with the entirety of Star Trek: Enterprise prior to its fourth and final season as it attempted to course-correct away from Scott Bakula getting beat up by aliens every fortnight. Hmm... Star Trek '09: Abrams: 1966 Lindelof: 1973 Orci: 1973 Kurtzman: 1973 Into Darkness Burk: 1968 Beyond Pegg: 1970 Jung: ? Chernov: 1952 Ellison: 1983 Lin: 1971 So basically everyone except producers Jeffrey Chernov and David Ellison (Star Trek: Beyond) is a Gen X-er. Doug Jung's bio doesn't list a birth year. The same holds true for almost all of the producers and writers who have published biographical information from Star Trek: Discovery. There are a couple highly placed baby boomers like Akiva Goldsman, but almost all of them seem to have been born between 1969 and 1973, making them solidly Gen X. Kind of inevitable, really, given that almost all baby boomers are over 60 now.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The painful irony there being that that's exactly what Star Trek: Picard was never supposed to become. The showrunners explicitly promised that Star Trek: Picard wasn't gonna be a TNG cast reunion. They were going to focus on the original characters. Funny how that worked out... Agreed... "All Good Things" wasn't the best final episode we've ever had, but it was a satisfying and logical conclusion to the series that really didn't NEED a follow-up. Picard only exists in the first place because Star Trek: Discovery's first season was so poorly received. It was meant to be a comparatively "safe" show driven by the star power of a franchise veteran to "win back the crowd". I guess we ended up with Jean-Luc Picard because they killed Kirk off in Generations and they felt Patrick Stewart would be more of a draw than, say, Avery Brooks or Kate Mulgrew. In all fairness, that at least can be justified fairly easily. Not only was Dr. Crusher the CMO on Starfleet's most-attacked ship for nearly 15 years (it'd be 16 but for the year Pulaski took over)... ample justification for being handy with a phaser... she's had special forces training in-series in the TNG two-parter "Chain of Command". (The botched raid where Picard gets tortured.) Because the showrunners wish they were working on Star Wars.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    I'd assume there is some mechanical retention mechanism, but I've not seen an explicit statement one way or the other on that one.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    They've never been described as such. It's possible they are a hangar complex made by adapting incomplete ARMD-class spaceframes the same way the Megaroad-class was developed by modifying a Macross-class spaceframe.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    I don't recall ever seeing a name for that one either, officially. Sometimes fanfic names become so widespread that they get mistaken for official information. There are also the occasional folks - I could name names, but won't - who make no effort to distinguish between fan fiction material of their own creation and official material to the point of vandalizing Wikipedia articles with material of their own creation. Daldhanton's organization, Black Rainbow, seems to have ended up in possession of a number of unusual mobile weapons due to amoral defense contractors selling to all takers. The man himself ended up with a Feios Valkyrie because he's a legendary top ace in his own right, hailed as the "All Kill Wizard" during his tenure in the New UN Forces. He's one of the few people who could actually use the Feios to its full potential. Probably not. I'd assume the New UN Forces have ended up in possession of a number of captured enemy designs over the years and simply don't bother recreating them because they don't have anything to offer that can't be done as well or better by the NUNS's own fighters.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    OK, so we've both never heard of it and it's almost certainly a fanfic designation. That makes sense, given that it's not a Varauta design and that designation convention is unique to the Varauta forces.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    Oh, not as such no. It seems to use similar technology to the Paladin Prophecy's lance and the VF-25G's SSL-9B Dragunov sniper rifle, and by extension the VF-31's railguns. (As in, not a true railgun but a rail-assisted chemical propellant firearm.) Assuming someone cared enough to do so, I'd expect it would not be impossible for the New UN Government and New UN Forces to seize either the design schematics or capture a few Feios units intact enough to reconstruct and reproduce one. Why they haven't... well... the Feios Valkyrie's incredible mobility performance that exceeds even the New UN Forces VF-19 and VF-22 is a worse version of the same double-edged sword that doomed the VF-19 and VF-22. It's amazingly high-spec... but as a result, it's a ridiculous airborne deathtrap to all but a tiny handful of supremely skilled pilots. It was a 4th Generation-equivalent Valkyrie and lacked any way to protect the pilot from the incredible g-forces its maneuverability could produce. The Queadluun-Alma is a somewhat different story. It's possible that the New UN Forces could reconstruct the basic design if they were to find where it was manufactured, or if the Fasces flagship Babel had been boarded and captured instead of being sunk by SMS. That said, the only Queadluun-Alma we "see" in the story is effectively a one-of-a-kind aircraft whose incredible combat ability is a product of an impossible-to-reproduce system. Its Astral System allows it to produce an incredibly resilient defensive barrier hypothesized to be strong enough to repel a Macross Cannon, but is only able to do so because it's made out of Protodeviln remains. As I'd never seen that designation before now, I'm guessing it's probably not official. @sketchley would probably know better than me on that topic. The lowercase "z" designations are used only by the Varauta Forces derivatives of captured New UN Forces Valkyries: the FBz-99, Fz-109, Az-110, etc. The Feios Valkyrie was not a Varauta/Protodeviln design. It was something cooked up by the engineers who've defected to various Zentradi rebel/terrorist/anti-government groups and seemingly built on the sly by amoral or opportunistic defense contractors. Its design was a combination of Zentradi overtechnology with a captured/stolen VF-11 prototype. Yeah, probably.... that and quite a bit of other Protodeviln technology that Fasces was using that really doesn't have a benign application. Like the mind control technology they're using on the prisoners they take while masquerading as space pirates in order to build up an army for a war against the New UN Government. Without the spiritia absorption beam, Fasces's Elgersoln Gustavs would just be a middling 3.5th Generation VF with an abnormal number of spikes.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    It's not a very good inertia control system, but yeah. Mind you, even without that almost every detail conspires to reveal what a balance-breaking character Max is. Milia was one of the Boddole Zer main fleet's top aces. Think about what it takes to be a top ace in a fleet with Seven. Billion. Soldiers. She is, by Zentradi standards, an unbeatable badass. Max is just this unassuming-looking dude who shows up to join SVF-1's Vermilion platoon in October of '09. He's got a skill ranking of A but less than 400 hours in the cockpit, the overwhelming majority of which is simulator time. Even his new commander, Hikaru, dismisses him as a "total rookie". And from that inauspicious start, Max proves to be an unstoppable force. Quamzin was probably just BS-ing at the time he told Milia that the miclones had an ace too... but when she finally bumps into him, he wrecks her sh*t so badly she not only doesn't question it she goes undercover as a miclone spy to assassinate him. Milia, a top ace clone soldier literally bred for war and piloting expertise who had years of experience and the very best equipment available, gets REKT by a rando from Planet Nowhere who's been a fighter pilot for all of like two months in what the Zentradi would consider a laughably primitive clunker. The Queadluun-Alma? There is a bit, yes. It has never appeared in previous material though, it's a unique craft that Fasces fields in the finale of the story.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Someone tried a few years back... it was a toy bootlegger looking to go legit that apparently pitched the idea before ever getting a license, and then kind of quietly folded after doing some draft work. I forget the name of the outfit. They struggled quite a bit to get something that actually looked good.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Given how little information there is about the Queadluun-Nona, it's difficult to say. Macross Chronicle mentions that it's a mass production version of the Queadluun-Rau that shares, approximately, the armaments of the Queadluun-Rau... but nothing more. If we assume that the Queadluun-Nona lacks the Inertia Vector Control System that makes the Queadluun-Rau, Queadluun-Rhea, and VF-22 Sturmvogel II difficult to mass produce, it would not have that main roadblock to production at any scale. Of course, its performance would be significantly lower because it would lack the IVCS's ability to protect the cockpit from high g-forces and the propulsion efficiency improvements that system conferred. That extreme maneuverability is the cornerstone of the Queadluun series combat performance, so it would be a much less effective unit even if upgraded... something analogous to the Regult Type-106 seen in Macross Delta.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Not "no one"... just an audience far too small for the mainstream toy and model kit companies to be bothered with. That's why Toynami passed on Southern Cross when they were Robotech's toy licensee during its brief resurgence in the early 2000s. The projected return on investment just wasn't good enough to justify the initial expense. Southern Cross fans are finally having their day now that Robotech's fortunes have fallen to the point that only indie outfits are willing to shell out for licenses. These smaller outfits are willing to deal with production runs an order of magnitude or two smaller than what Toynami and co. planned around.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Unclear. It is noted that several Oberth-class ships did escape destruction due to having been deployed to defend bases like Apollo Base or the L5 Manufacturing Station. That's the last we really hear of them officially. There is a ship in Macross Flash Back 2012 that looks similar to an Oberth-class shown as part of the Megaroad-01's fleet that may be a post-war improved type but no information on that exists. It's possible that there was some limited production of the Oberth-class immediately after the war that was subsequently ended as new ship designs like the Algenicus-type stealth cruiser and Northampton-class stealth frigate were introduced.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    Nope. Presumably she had a distinguished career in the New UN Spacy Special Forces. The only members of the Jenius family to have significant/noteworthy appearances outside the titles they debuted in are Max, Milia, Komilia*, and Mylene. * Via Macross 2036, a canonical game in the Macross II parallel world timeline in which a 17 year old Komilia is the main character, and later a supporting character in its TRPG sequel Macross: Eternal Love Song.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Probably because the Neo Glaug was meant to be an unmanned fighter. Most of the Master File books are written from the perspective of writers on Earth or Eden. In Master File's take on history, the new emblem was not a product of the reorganization of the government and military after the Second Unification War. It apparently predates both, but was not widely used because Earth and the older extrasolar settlements doggedly held onto the old roundel. The novels take the perspective that the change came in with the Second Unification War.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    It did and it didn't... in a sense, it continues on as the Battroid mode of the VBP-1/VA-110 Variable Glaug. Other materials much more commonly depict the Spacy Marines as using predominantly Valkyries... if anything, the Zentradi marines in the anime seem to be the odd men out. No production obstacles are mentioned in terms of the (manned) Neo Glaug used by the Zentradi NUNS Marines in the Frontier novelization and Macross R. The Queadluun-Rhea/56 is probably subject to the same production obstacles as the Queadluun-Rau. Namely, the Inertia Vector Control System is complex and difficult to make, greatly limiting the production volume. IIRC, Master File alleges that the production rate is so poor that only a few dozen working units can be delivered every year. We know the NUNS makes use of Zentradi ships, though incidences of use of Zentradi mecha have been relatively sparse for the reasons previously mentioned (WRT survivability, operator comfort). Partly... it's also modeled on real-world flying wing aircraft, which are very flat by nature. I don't recall, honestly... the CG model used from the games is actually somewhat purplish in the artbooks. ... there are no "abandoned clone cities" in Macross Plus.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah. In Master File, even 5th Generation VFs like the VF-25 are mostly assessed in terms of their survivability when fighting outnumbered against the Zentradi. The Barbarossa's VF-25s scoring several dozen kills each with no losses was considered a HUGE achievement and a ringing endorsement of the VF-25's abilities. That's more a concern regarding cultured Zentradi defecting. The biggest concern seems to be preventing the Zentradi from acquiring any information about Humanity and its growing interstellar civilization. So much so that, in Master File, the NUNS was ordered to destroy emigrant ships that could not escape from an approaching Zentradi fleet in order to prevent any information on humans from falling into that main fleet's hands. Macross Chronicle leans towards the idea that the "Enemy Battle Suit" from Macross Plus is also 500,000+ years old... that it's possibly a design that was unique to a particular region in the Protoculture's vanished civilization.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Not as such, no. When the ancient Protoculture designed the battle pods and battle suits that the Zentradi have been using for the last 500,000 years, little things like survivability or operator comfort weren't priorities. They're uncomfortable to use, they have only the minimum amount of automation necessary, and their defensive capabilities are fundamentally poor because their pilots were considered at least as expendable as the mecha. There's only so much that can be done to address that fundamentally callous design philosophy. The New UN Forces did make limited use of newly built and captured Zentradi mecha after the First Space War and after a while started developing improvements. That said, a lot of the improvements are focused not on improving performance but on improving things like survivability and ease/comfort of operation. The first one we were introduced to seems to have also been the most extensive improvement: the Queadluun-Rhea/56 seen in Macross Frontier. That's a reproduction Queadluun-Rau that's been improved by changing out the weapons, giving it an active stealth system, beefing up the armor, adding redundancy to the control system, improving the control system to accept NUNS munitions and even fold boosters, redesigning the cockpit interior to accept even male pilots, etc. It's also the only one that is really kept pace with VFs because the performance of the original was just so high. We were introduced to several more in Macross Delta via the NUNSM Al Shahal garrison force, though their Regult Type-104, Regult Type-106, and Super Glaug are noted to have only modest performance improvement over the originals. In a word, "Yes".... with a "but". During the First Space War, the VF-1 Valkyrie is said to have downed twelve enemy battle pods/suits for every one Valkyrie lost. Later models improved upon that considerably. Where the "but" comes in is that VFs may far outclass a Regult, a Glaug, or even a Queadluun-Rau one-on-one... but the Zentradi seldom go anywhere in ones and twos. More commonly, it's that one battle pod/suit pilot and anywhere from several hundred to several thousand of his best mates. Quantity has a quality all its own and the Zentradi are big believers in quantity. That, far more than the individual performance of their mecha, makes them a force to be reckoned with. This doesn't do a hell of a lot for the Zentradi in the New UN Forces, but many of them use Valkyries of one type or other rather than remodeled battle pods or battle suits. (The novelization of Macross Frontier and Macross the Ride both suggest that the actual main mecha of the NUNS Marines are the manned Neo Glaug and Queadluun-Rhea/56.)
  25. Seto Kaiba
    The VF-31AX Master File has a so-so shot of it in the writeup of Max's YF-29. It's only a couple inches across, but it is a clean printing of the image. EDIT: It's on page 107.
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