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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    At this point in the story? I don't think so. As per Star Wars's usual idiom, the story of Cassian Andor (incl. Rogue One) is shaping up as a tale told in three distinct parts generally aligned to Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" monomyth. To break it down in those terms: Act 1: Departure - The events that drive Cassian Andor to join the fledgling Rebel Alliance. 1A: The Call to Adventure: We see Cassian living a normal life on Ferrix until his actions on Morlana One catch up to him and Luthen rescues him as he is attempting to arrange passage offworld. 1B: Refusal of the Call: Luthen attempts to recruit Cassian into the Rebellion after fleeing Ferrix, and Cassian refuses. 1C: Supernatural Aid: Not supernatural in this case, but you count either Nemik's thesis or Luthen's kyber pendant as the talisman from a mentor that sets Cassian on his path. That and the promise of a LOT of money. 1D: Crossing of the First Threshold: Cassian participates in the Rebel raid on the Aldhani garrison's vault to steal the sector payroll. 1E: The Belly of the Whale: Cassian is arrested for unrelated crimes he did not actually commit, and serves a sentence in the Imperial labor camp on Narkina V. <- YOU ARE HERE Act 2: Initiation - Cassian's time as a Rebel intelligence officer Act 3: Return - Cassian's final act as a Rebel soldier (Rogue One) Right now, he is just Luthen and Mon Mothma's weapon. It'll likely be in the near future that Cassian becomes a self-wielding weapon.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    The one in the VF-25 Master File? No. It was a rescue operation launched on the spur of the moment by a NUNS ship observing the Macross Valiant fleet's emergency fold away from a Zentradi main fleet it'd found in its immediate vicinity. The carrier Barbarossa and its fighters were operating under ECM in an attempt to remain undetected by as much of the Zentradi main fleet as possible while carrying out the rescue of the environment ship Sentosa's 1,200 crew and passengers and the subsequent destruction of the Sentosa by MDE warhead to prevent any possibility of intel on humanity falling into Zentradi hands.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    One on one, yes... but the reason the Zentradi remain an existential threat to Humanity is that they're practically never going to be fought on a level playing field. It's never just the one Zentradi soldier. It's him and anywhere from several thousand to several billion of his best mates. The VF-1 Valkyrie supposedly had an average K/D ratio of 12:1. The (New) UN Forces could expect to lose one Valkyrie for every twelve Battle Pods or Battle Suits downed. That ratio improved a bit after the First Space War as improvements were made to the VF-1's technology and armaments and grew at a more brisk rate as newer, more capable models were introduced. In its discussion of the historical events leading up to Project Super Nova, Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur mentions that the VF-11A/B Thunderbolt had an expected K/D ratio of up to 25:1 against the Zentradi. It's also noted therein that this was initially considered satisfactory until a run-in with a smallish Zentradi main fleet resulted in the total loss of a New UN Spacy defense force and the planet Spica III in 2037, prompting Project Super Nova. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah relates an anecdote about a rescue mission to save a ship from the Macross Valiant fleet that accidentally defolded in the middle of a Zentradi main fleet during which a force of 37 NUNS VF-25s and 3 SMS VF-25s operating from a single carrier scored 482 kills in a six hour period without a single loss while providing cover for the rescue of 1,200 civilians and one dog. (Yes, the dog is significant to the narrative.) EDIT: It should also be noted that Master File asserts this was a new record for a single engagement at the time, that 27 of the 40 pilots had never seen live combat before, and that all 40 were subsequently decorated for their heroism. Of course, even if you're capable of a 25+ to 1 kill ratio if your forces only have a few hundred to a few thousand Valkyries like most emigrant government forces you're still coming up quite short against a main fleet.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    They've moved the bar on that one a few times... https://xkcd.com/1189/
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Depends who you ask... and whether you're counting the Double Plus version. The VF-1X in Variable Fighter Master File does have some subtle structural and detail differences from the stock VF-1A Valkyrie (Block 6+ type), but most of the differences are "under the hood" so to speak. Being primarily a video game design, the VF-1X in Macross Digital Mission VF-X and Macross VF-X2 isn't really rendered in enough detail to look noticeably different from a regular VF-1. The VF-1X++ seen in Ranka's concert in the second Macross Frontier movie is only seen in Fighter mode but looks no different from a regular VF-1.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Are we talking official franchise ones only, unofficial professional ones, or just fan covers? The Japanese Wikipedia page for the song has an entire section devoted to the song's licensed covers:
  7. Seto Kaiba
    So... I did some digging, and the few official and semi-official remarks we've had about how fast impulse really is are unreasonably fast. Full impulse is said to be 0.25C, or 74,948km/sec. One quarter impulse power would be 0.0625C or 18,737km/sec. The closest I can find to official info for spacedock says it's 4.6km at maximum horizontal cross section. If the above is all correct, they might have UNDERSOLD it. The Enterprise would cover the ~2km separating it from the spacedock door in one ten-thousandth of a second at that speed. No fricking wonder regulations say thrusters only!
  8. Seto Kaiba
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The problem there lies with how the structure of the cockpit interfaces with the rest of the aircraft. Lengthening the cockpit would make the Battroid mode taller and the midsection longer, because the "hips" are actually on the sides of the nosecone.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That's pretty damned amazing! Thanks for sharing. (Part of me wants to joke about it not being the same without spending ten minutes flying in circles around the ship like in TMP, but I have to admit that acceleration at the end does make the objection to impulse in spacedock look a LOT more reasonable.)
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Sort of. The VF-1D's tandem cockpit was an improvised design that made room for the second seat by removing a lot of the escape and survival equipment in the rear of the one-man cockpit block. This made it unsafe to operate in space. The VT-1 Ostrich has an enlarged cockpit space with an elevated second seat so the instructor has full visibility and the full suite of escape and survival options for both pilot and instructor. Making this all fit required some changes to the shape of the nose block and lower chest plate, which in turn necessitated some changes to how the "backpack" folds.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the content of the rest of your post, I think that's really more a "you" problem... you've got a lot of factual inaccuracies there.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    None of that actually contradicts the documentation. It's said that in ideal conditions, short range fold navigation is nearly instantaneous... and the series franchise actually bears this out at several points (esp. Zomd and Goran using it to teleport around). Vrlitwhai's ship folding to join the main fleet was a fold jump of several hundred to several thousand light years, which isn't short range and from what was added later likely passes through several areas of fold fault activity that make the trip take longer. The fold booster used in Macross Plus is noted to be a very poor-quality fold system, all things considered, as it is designed to be one-way use and disposable. Its performance is inferior by far to a shipboard fold system. The titular emigrant ship in Macross Frontier undertakes only long-distance fold jumps in the series, and through areas of heavy fault activity. It is also explicitly acknowledged in the series (by Leon) that folding short distances is nearly instantaneous without fold faults mucking it up (in reference to the trip to Gallia IV). In Macross Delta, we're also usually shown relatively long-distance fold jumps of hundreds of light years. The short-distance ones we see are done offscreen, like the trip from Al Shahal to Ragna. (The Brisingr cluster is also noted to be an area of heavy fault activity, esp. near Windermere IV.) It's because of a change in the airframe shape in the VT-1 and VE-1 to accommodate the full tandem cockpit.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    True, though that seems to be entirely because... So, most of the first two episodes then? Cassian Andor's walking tour of Ferrix really has nothing at all to do with the story outside of a few brief stops to try to establish an alibi.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... if Cassian had been established to be the #1 scumbag on Ferrix I could see it. But he's not. As scum goes, he's some pretty weak stuff by Star Wars standards. He's presented as someone who's generally well-liked on Ferrix despite having a reputation for being a party boy and a bit on the unreliable side. His closest friends seem to be aware, or at least suspect, that he engages in the occasional bit of thievery to make ends meet. He's been to prison once before, but nobody seems particularly fussed by that (since his crime was apparently assaulting Imperial troops who'd just executed several Ferrix citizens for trivial reasons). TBH, I'm not sure I'd say that Cassian or Bix really respected Timm. Cassian definitely doesn't seem to think much of Timm. He's pretty dismissive of him when Timm gets possessive about Bix after Cassian comes to see her about a seller for his stolen starpath unit, more or less blowing him off. Bix, for her part, shows a fair amount of frustration with Timm who she clearly keeps entirely in the dark about her involvement with Luthen's network of rebel agents. I'd say Timm doesn't really respect Bix either, since he definitely doesn't seem to trust her around other men (e.g. Cassan) and is shown following her around town when she goes out and even doing creepy sh*t like watching her sleep from a chair beside the bed. His jealous, possessive behavior clearly irritates Bix and Cassian seems to find his attempts at posturing funny.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    One prologue and four actual episodes into Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury and the only word I can really think of to describe the series is "bland". I'm watching it, but I don't feel like I'm really retaining anything significant from it. It all just sort of slides by like white noise. The only things that really feel distinct from the many previous form letter Gundam sequels and spinoffs is that the protagonist is a girl and the usual roles have been flipped so it's the spacenoids doing the oppressing this time. The rest just feels like we've welded Reconguista in G to Iron-Blooded Orphans by way of another pointless cybernetics taboo, another ridiculously classist and exploitative society, and another school-for-mobile-suit-pilots ... except this one has no clear reason to exist and seems to function mainly as a daycare for rich idiots. I guess it's fitting that a show called The Witch from Mercury takes place at what's basically Giant Robot Hogwarts. They were almost doing something interesting with the duel against Guel Jeturk, but the immediate course correction away from it at the start of the next episode means it's all buildup with no payoff and the entire rest of the fourth episode is just watching someone bully the protagonist until she cries and someone else solves the problem for her out of sheer irritation. Not exactly what I'd call thrilling viewing. It has the potential to get better, and from the general tone I have a feeling we're not going to see it go to the same dark place that Iron-Blooded Orphans did, but it's going to be an uphill battle with such an unengaging protagonist.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... I doubt his motives were anything like noble. He seems like a standard jealous, possessive meathead. From what we know about the community on Ferrix, there was really no way that things were going to end well for Timm by tipping the authorities off about Cassian. Once it came out that he was the one who informed on Cassian, guilty or not, he was going to be an outcast on Ferrix for dropping dime on Cassian in a town that's very anti-authority and it'd be pretty likely that Bix would dump him when she found out he weaponized the Pre-Mor security forces against her friend out of jealousy. That's assuming Cassian didn't take it very personally. If Cassian really is a murderer, then he's just earned the enmity of a killer. If he's not, Cassian's still enough of a thug to at least beat the sh*t out of him for it. Of course, he instead triggered the worst possible scenario since he got the whole town involved and indirectly endangered both Bix and her contact by informing on Cassian while he was trying to flog stolen Imperial hardware to her contact. Bix got arrested for behaving suspiciously out of panic, and like an idiot he charged a squad of armed and more than slightly twitchy Pre-Mor security forces in a blind rage and immediately got shot dead. Worse, because Cassian and his contact had to shoot their way out and fleet the planet, the incident ended up attracting Imperial attention. Preox-Morlana lost governing control of the sector, and the Imperial jackboot came down firmly on the necks of everyone living on Ferrix... putting Bix and the shop owner in danger as rebel agents and at risk of capture and torture. Gotta hand it to him, as unwitting instigators of doom go... few are as unwitting, or witless, as Timm.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    To be fair, they actually have a pretty good point when they say GERWALK mode has very limited utility in space. VFs have high-thrust verniers and/or thrust reversers that can do the same job of rapidly decelerating the aircraft much more efficiently than changing to GERWALK mode. Pretty much. The Macross II timeline's VF-4 Siren was eventually upgraded with a monitor turret similar to the VF-1S's, but it's one of the few examples with a monitor turret like that outside of the VF-1 and models directly related to its development like the VF-0 and VF-3000. On the occasions the topic is discussed, books like Macross Chronicle and Variable Fighter Master File suggest that the VF-1's single 5,000kW laser cannon was considered to be insufficiently powerful as an offensive weapon. 2nd Generation VFs either went with fixed-forward lasers and particle beam guns (e.g. the VF-4, VF-9) or a single rear-facing laser gun for blind spot coverage (e.g. the VF-5000). That trend continued into the 3rd Generation main fighter designs until the late 3rd Gen VF-17 opted to have both rear-facing laser guns and fixed-forward guns at the same time. That approach became the standard in the 4th Generation and forward, though even then the gunpod remains the most powerful gun and thus the option with the highest probability of scoring a kill esp. against well-armored foes.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    The Arnold J. Rimmer energy in this still is overwhelming. "There's a saying amongst the officers: If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to Karn. He aches for responsibility but constantly fails the security exam. Astoundingly zealous. Possibly mad. Probably has more teeth than brain cells. Promotion prospects: comical." Out of context, this looks like Cassian's being lectured on the importance of good grooming by a disappointed hairdresser in a day spa. "You see, Cassian... conditioner is so important."
  20. Seto Kaiba
    There's certainly a sound argument to be made that shooting Skeen, a man who by any rational standard will be missed or mourned by exactly nobody, dead out of disgust is a great deal safer than betraying Luthen and risking him... expressing his irritation... through an immense galaxy-spanning network of spies, saboteurs, infiltrators, insurrectionists, violent anarchists, and terrorists who would all very much like to have 40 million credits to bankroll their war against the Empire.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    TBH, I don't see our views of Cassian Andor as mutually exclusive. Cassian is clearly a very self-involved person. He was clearly embroiled in some shady business on Ferrix well before the series started. They imply he's a thief who steals hardware from ships sent in to be scrapped and resells it. He owes enough money to multiple creditors for one to try coercing him into repayment with the implicit threat of violence. He's gotten in trouble severe enough to be incarcerated by the Empire once before. We do see Cassian do unselfish things... but in the end, the reason is always that it's personal. He makes money by shady means to take care of Maarva because she's his (foster) mother. We see a scene that implies his first arrest and prison term was for assaulting Imperial soldiers to take revenge for his foster father's execution. He commits murder on Morlana One to save his own skin, and ultimately meets Luthen in a bid to rustle up enough cash for him to take himself (and maybe Maarva) somewhere else. He decides to take Luthen up on his offer for an outrageous sum of money that'd let him clear his debts, move his mother somewhere nice, and live comfortably. He kills Skeen out of disgust for his craven nature. Now he's serving an unearned prison term that will doubtless motivate him to further acts against the Empire in the name of revenge. It's a safe bet he doesn't join the Rebellion for the sake of principles... but because it's personal.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Like tachyons and reversing the polarity! Fold faults are a kind of anomaly found in higher dimension space (AKA "fold space"). They're regions of distorted/discontinuous higher dimension spacetime that interfere with fold navigation and fold communications. You could say they're the higher-dimension equivalent of a reef or a pothole in terms of navigational hazards. In principle, they're quite similar to the distorted spacetime that barrier systems produce for defensive purposes, but (mostly) naturally-occurring and entirely confined to higher dimensions. Exactly what causes them is unclear, but they were/are a major obstacle to creating an interstellar civilization because of the challenges they pose for maintaining communications and travel between star systems. Fold communications can be delayed, distorted, or totally disrupted depending on the size and severity of the fold fault(s) in the path of the transmission. The New UN Gov't tries to work around this problem by outfitting emigrant fleets with extremely powerful fold wave communications systems and having them deploy relay pods to route signals around areas with intense fold faults. Fold navigation across a fold fault has its own, much worse, problems. The least of a ship's worries when trying to cross a fold fault during a fold jump is that, if the fault is mild enough to cross, the fold jump will take longer and the error in time measurement between the ship and clocks in realspace greatly increases. For instance, on Sheryl and Alto's trip to Gallia IV in Macross Frontier, a fold jump that Leon notes would have been almost instantaneous in favorable conditions instead takes hours (from the ship's perspective) and the faults add over a week to the time that passed in realspace during the jump. Other potential complications are more life-threatening. Fold faults require a great deal more energy to cross (when they can be crossed at all), which can lead to ships running out of power and becoming trapped in fold space. Crossing a severe fold fault can damage or even destroy the folding ship. Lucky ones might be able to drop back into realspace heavily damaged like Megaroad-04 did when it hit the faults surrounding Windermere IV. Unlucky ones... well... they're simply never heard from again. The safest way to deal with fold faults is to simply avoid them, either by calculating a jump that doesn't cross any or multiple jumps that use the downtime between jumps to cut across the fault's equivalent coordinates in realspace. Fold quartz is an improved/purer form of fold carbon that the Vajra synthesize biologically and the Protoculture later learned how to create synthetically. You could say that it's the key to perfecting fold technology. Fold carbon is an exotic material that is essential for technologies that interface with higher dimensional spacetime (fold space). It occurs in nature as a byproduct of supernovae and as a biological product of certain life forms that have evolved to be capable of fold navigation like galactic whales and the Vajra. Most of the fold carbon in technological use is synthetic. It serves two main purposes: it's the fold wave equivalent of a radio crystal and it's also used as a catalyst to produce a type of ultra-high mass exotic matter referred to as "heavy quantum" that is used for gravity manipulation in things like gravity control systems, thermonuclear reactors, thermonuclear weapons, fold systems, and dimensional beam weaponry. The purity of the fold carbon affects the quality of the fold waves and heavy quantum it can produce. Fold quartz, as an ultra-pure form of fold carbon, produces fold waves that are unimpeded by fold faults and other distortions of higher dimensional spacetime and also produces heavy quantum that exerts MUCH more force than the kind produced by fold carbon. Enough so that a fold system outfitted with fold quartz can cross fold faults without risk and without any disparity between ship time and realspace time, and applying the heavy quantum it produces to a reaction warhead or dimensional beam weapon produces black hole-like gravitational effects that pull matter into fold space (the "dimension eater" and "MDE" weapons of Frontier.)
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Like Sith Lords, there are exactly two filler episodes in Andor... and they are episodes 1 and 2. There's maybe five minutes actual plot-relevant goings-on at the very start of the first episode and nothing remotely important, interesting, or plot-relevant happens again until episode 3. Cassian just goes on a walking tour of the dingy industrial town he lives in and keeps bumping into "colorful" undeveloped stock character locals. Aaaaaaaanyway, on to Season 1 Episode 8 "Narkina 5". They're building a lot of tension in this one. It's pretty clear the sh*t is about to hit the fan in a big way that will lead to further Imperial crackdowns and bring the Rebellion into actual armed opposition to the Empire. Luthen, Saw Gerrera, the unseen Emperor Palpatine, and others are all pouring huge amounts of gasoline into the fire pit and we're just waiting for someone to strike a match. There are some hints that suggest there might be a prison riot or something in Cassian's immediate future, while there's likely to be some overt and very bloody rebel activity on Ferrix soon.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Of course, when it comes to space folds the sticky wicket is that we know in general terms how it works and we know the "why" of various things like the difference in how much time passes aboard ship vs. in realspace during fold navigation, but the exact mechanism by how they exchance the two different sets of coordinates in higher dimensional space is never described in any detail. I'm sure if someone were to ask how it works, we'd get a nonanswer like "it works very well". My best guess, based on the onscreen depictions, is that the higher dimension space the relative coordinates of the destination are either pulled all the way back to overlap the ship's relative coordinates and it then rides that space as it springs back into place or that there's an accordion-like motion going on where the ship is repeatedly smashing two sets of fold space coordinates into each other and riding the exchange from one end to the other as the points overlap. The latter would explain how it's possible to run into a fold fault mid-fold without seeing the spike in energy requirement at the start.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yeah, the first descriptions of how fold navigation work go back to the original series-era materials. The creators of Macross were sci-fi fans and didn't hesitate to throw in the occasional nod here and there to their other favorites like Star Trek, Star Wars, Gundam, Yamato, etc. Its choice of FTL mechanics seems to be based on the Holtzman drives of Dune, which either originated or at least popularized the idea of folded-space teleportation using a higher dimension as a means of getting about the universe quickly. Terms like "Fold space" and so on were coined there. Sort of... the ships usually aren't actually drawn moving... we just see a lot of fancy lighting effects surrounding it on almost every occasion. One of the few occasions where a folding ship was depicted as actually moving in some way during a fold jump was the zero-time fold jump Michael Blanc took to get to Gallia IV. In practice, it's art evolution... the light show has changed as animation technology has improved and allowed for more impressive visual effects. Even the new versions do carry over the traits of the old ones, like the ships glowing as they enter fold space (though they do so gradually instead of all at once now) or the fold effect going beyond the physical bounds of the ship itself and being able to carry objects outside the ship along with it that becomes a plot point in both Macross 7 and Macross Frontier. Of course, you could say that that first and most bombastic space fold is an example of those traits being taken to the extreme since the Macross's first and only fold jump saw it take a chunk of atmosphere, ocean, and planetary crust with it. EVERYTHING in the bounds of the fold effect gets taken along for the ride... even the photons making up the light moving through that region of space. Mind you, it is also slowed down for drama's sake. Much like the space folds in Dune, fold accidents are a thing in Macross complete with a similar remark about early fold systems being unreliable enough that ships tended to go missing every so often. Of course, we also know from a few isolated incidents that when something does go horribly awry the folding ship is usually either destroyed (which, I'd assume, probably undoes the fold) or is knocked out of fold space which somehow resolves the fold jump. Mind you, the possibility of using a fold system to accomplish time travel is implied to be possible in Macross Zero... though it may require fold quartz and some special changes to the fold system or at least the math it's operating on. The Protoculture don't seem to have realized it could do that until their civilization was on its last legs though, by which point the ship had long since sailed regarding widespread adoption of fold technology. Probably a product of Luceno and Daley borrowing heavily from Star Wars and Dune in that particular set of novels.
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