Seto Kaiba

The exact burn time at maximum thrust varies a bit between sources, but all sources are generally in agreement that the VF-1's internal fuel supply was only enough for 10 minutes or less of burning at maximum thrust. As to the reason, it's a consequence of having constrained the size of the VF-1 Battroid to approximately the expected size of the Zentradi because they were expecting to have to fight infantry in an invasion of the planet's surface. Once they learned that the Zentradi didn't do that kind of thing, the focus shifted towards space-based defense and improved space capabilities. Fighter mode is the same and GERWALK mode looks mostly the same, but Battroid mode looks very much like a VF-1's and the version in Eternal Love Song has a VF-1S-like head, a beam rifle, and funnels ala Gundam. Yes, the Vajra are quite large. Standing up in a bipedal form, the Vajra heavy soldier type - the generic "big red" - is 25m tall to the top of its carapace and 30m to the top of its heavy quantum beam gun. Most Battroids hover around 14-15m.

It's pretty on-brand for a 4th Generation Valkyrie like the VF-171. The 4th Generation brought in, among other things, a new generation of thermonuclear reaction turbine engine that offered vast improvements in efficiency and output. Having more efficient engines that could get more thrust and energy from less fuel was a game changer for Option Packs. Prior to that point, Option Packs like the Super Pack had existed mainly to improve a Valkyrie's endurance in space operations by adding large tanks of fuel slush for the main engines and rocket boosters to reduce the demand on the main engines for the Valkyrie's acceleration. With the more fuel-efficient thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines that were introduced on 4th Generation Valkyries like the YF-19 and YF-21 and put on late 3rd Generation designs like the VF-16 and VF-17, it was no longer strictly necessary to lug around big conformal fuel tanks and rocket boosters to obtain a decent amount of burn time from the reaction engines in space. This change in basic needs reduced Option Packs to a borderline vestigial state on 4th Generation Valkyries, either being abolished by absorbing their functions directly into the aircraft (as on the YF-21/VF-22) or reduced to little more than a bolt-on missile launcher here or there as on the YF-19/VF-19A. The much improved generator output of the new generation of engine technology also meant more power to go around for defensive measures like active stealth, energy conversion armor, and the addition of a VF-scale pinpoint barrier system. Improvements in materials and the availability of more energy for the system meant energy conversion armor greatly improved its defensive ability. It was no longer necessary to bolt big chunks of ECA-backed composite armor to a Valkyrie to achieve excellent defensive potential. The late 3rd and 4th Generation Valkyries with the new engine type could achieve defensive strength rivaling a VF-1 w/ Armored Pack (over 2.5x the defensive strength of the VF-1 alone) without the need for any additional armor at all. The addition of the pinpoint barrier system only improved the defensive situation further, so Armored Packs also went out of style for a while in the 4th Generation's heyday. The VF-171's Armored Pack is a minimialist enhancement that fits with the design ethos of the 4th Generation and the VF-171. It's low-profile, minimizing the additional burden on the active stealth system by minimizing its impact on the aircraft's passively stealthy shape. It up-armors key areas where damage could disable the craft without destroying it: its engines and cockpit. It doesn't add a ton of additional weaponry because the EX type (and Block IIIF) were already upgunned to the max with MDE weapons. It bolsters defense but doesn't impact the VF-171's performance noticeably, which is advantageous because the VF-171 could barely keep up with the Vajra as it was. 5th Generation Valkyries reversed the whole philosophy underpinning Option Packs. Instead of slapping a few missile launchers on big boosters and fuel tanks needed to give a VF enough fuel to operate for long periods in space, they reversed the equation and designed Option Packs around the idea of maximizing offensive capability and using those booster rockets and additional verniers to offset the weight of all that extra weaponry. The Super and Armored Packs for the VF-25, VF-31, etc. actually significantly degrade the Valkyrie's acceleration and maneuverability in exchange for carrying hundreds of missiles and other weapons. The VF-25's Super Pack halves its maximum acceleration. The Armored Pack cuts it to about 1/3 of normal. Probably not, given that the transformation changed considerably. As with so many matters, it depends on the government's priorities. It's noted that early emigrant fleets and recently settled planets used a mixture of different Valkyries. Initially it was a mix of VF-1's and VF-4's, and throughout the heyday of the 2nd Generation Valkyries the VF-4 shared its status with a bunch of others like the VF-5, VF-5000, and VF-9. Those early designs, esp. the VF-1 and VF-4, were intended to be multirole, so they covered both Fighter and Attacker roles reasonably well. Role-dedicated VFs started to branch out in the 2nd Generation and established themselves in the 3rd, with models like the VA-3, VA-14, VAB-2, VB-6, etc. By the time of the 3rd-4th Generation VFs and 3rd Generation of emigrant fleets, you could basically count on a fleet having maybe 3-4 different types of Valkyrie at their disposal in practice. The main fighter (VF-11 or VF-14), a dedicated attacker (e.g. VA-3, VA-14), and a special forces Valkyrie (e.g. the VF-17, VF-19, VF-22). The 4th Generation seems to have changed things a bit, with the VF-171 having a multitude of role-specific variations that allowed a common platform to Jack-of-all-Trades into the majority of roles. We've seen the RVF-171 and the VF-171 designated marksman variant, but there is also mention of a fighter-bomber type in the VB-171 and others. Insofar as replacement vs. addition, there is replacement and retirement of older designs going on... but as is my now-constant refrain, that depends on the government's priorities. As newer models are phased in and squadrons retrain on the new aircraft, older models are gradually reassigned to "second string" duties like serving as training aircraft. Once they either hit the point where they're too obsolete to be any good or the cost of maintaining them exceeds the benefits of keeping them, they're retired and either scrapped for materials, stripped of classified hardware and sold off to civilians, or converted into unmanned target aircraft for live fire training. For example, Chelsea Scarlett in Macross R bought three of the Macross Frontier fleet's retired VF-11B airframes to make her VF-11B Nothung II at the end of the story. In Macross Plus, the Ghost X-9 is shown destroying formations of older VF-11A's that've been converted to unmanned target aircraft specification. (Master File suggests quite a few VF-1's met their end this way, converted into QVF-1 target drones for training with live weapons.) Macross 7 Trash shows the Macross 7 fleet using old VF-4's as training aircraft in Mahara's flashbacks. The Macross Frontier novelization has what is probably the worst offender, the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army uses an eclectic mix of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Generation General Galaxy-made Valkyries that've been modernized and modified to keep them viable. When all is said and done, the march of technological advancement seems to mean a Valkyrie design has around 30 years of life to it before the miltary considers it to be at end-of-life and retires it. In the years immediately following the First Space War, the New UN Government had to make do with what it had. The VF-4 was an excellent space fighter, but only a mediocre atmospheric dogfighter because of its design. The large main wing that incorporated the thermonuclear ramjets and fuel tanks that made the VF-4 very fast in straightline travel and reduced the need for conformal tanks or other optional gear in space made it more stable in atmosphere and thus negatively impacted maneuverability. This is why so many 2nd Generation designs are not all-regime Valkyries like the VF-1, but supplements to the VF-4 that replace it in roles in atmospheric operations where it is an iffy performer like the VF-5, VF-5000, and VF-9. I've read that the VF-4D/S had an unusually high difficulty in CATOBAR operations since its shape was unconducive to the appropriate landing angle to catch the wires. Very little is said about the atmospheric variants. AFAIK, their one and only appearance in an official work has been Macross R, where Bilra Transport sponsored a pilot who uses a disarmed (literally and figuratively) VF-4S. It's something that was released with a garage kit. Officially, the VF-4 doesn't have/use a Super Pack in Macross's main timeline. It doesn't really need one since it already has rocket boosters built into it and its body is designed for much more fuel storage than the VF-1 had. It did have one in Macross II's timeline, but it was closer in design to the original VF-1's (and so was the transformation).

I think they're already well-committed to that point. More like "go see the movies if you want to help Big West understand the Macross fan demographics in the US and get an approximate idea of what our tastes are".

Granted, but compilation movies aren't meant to be a franchise's ambassador to potential new fans even in Japan. They're for people who are already fans, to wring more money out of the initial investment for the sponsor and merchandising partners. Fathom Events is a specialist in limited engagement "event" screenings. For things like a movie returning to theaters briefly for a major anniversary of the property and so on. This kind of thing is what they do. A month or so back, they were the ones who coordinated a limited engagement return to theaters for Star Trek: the Motion Picture as part of it having recently been remastered, and their ad reel that was supposed to run before this showing (and did at the venue I went to) advertised similar anniversary revivals of The Thing and the first Men in Black. My read of it is that Big West is using these limited engagement screenings to sound out which titles have the most resonance with American audiences who know about it already and to "show the flag" by establishing a commercial history for the franchise in the states in preparation for a trademark registration ahead of home video and streaming releases. In short, it's market research.

There was one weird moment with the subtitltes when Alto is visiting Ozma in the hospital. Most of the conspicuous English is subtitled... but when Canaria shows up in her first scene and says "disassociated amnesia" in English, there are no subs, and the subs come back when she says it again in Japanese.

They dropped the ball pretty hard... the ad reel from Fathom that was supposed to be on loop before the screening started pounded home the subject of Part 2 on the 30th with all the subtlety of a piledriver, at intervals of about once every three minutes. It doesn't, but that's by design. The False Songstress and The Wings of Farewell changed the plot up quite a bit and the Vajra are more active participants in the story. The series never really depicted the Vajra as the massive threat they were talked up to be. The movies fixed that, so part 1 is basically introducing the key players and having the Vajra set up their badass credentials by supposedly destroying the entire Macross Galaxy fleet but for a handful of refugee ships. Admittedly for good reason... You have to remember these are effectively compilation movies. The movies are taking it as read that you've already seen the series. Right before the climax, when they try to arrest Grace, it does come out that Frontier and Galaxy are seeking the Vajra homeworld for its resources... meaning fold quartz, though that'll be discussed in more detail in part 2 and the movie assumes you'd already know that from the series. The Vajra are big and dangerous, and the audience knows that Galaxy did something to piss them off, but the movie does set the Galaxy fleet up as the greater scope villains for Part 2.

Nah, just a jab at the terrible ergonomics of general-use corporate office furniture. It's awkward, uncomfortable, lowest-bidder garbage even if you're not a Zentradi-sized bloke like me. (At my job, I have seldom felt as much kinship for Zentradi Regult pilots as when I had to pretzel myself into a Fiat 500e.)

The screening just ended here in my corner of MI. It went extremely well, though the audio mix felt a bit wonky. All in all, I'm extremely happy I went. To think I'd be able to see these in an actual theater. It's positively cause to be giddy.

A line of reasoning which suggests the Protoculture didn't go extinct, they merely went undercover among humans as manufacturers of cubicles and other office furniture.

The kanji they use for it is 重攻撃機 (Juu kougeki-ki), "Heavy Attack Aircraft". It's not a fighter pod, it's more analogous to an attack plane like the A-10A Thunderbolt II or an attack gunship like the AC-130 Spectre/Spooky.

Pretty much, yes... though that was the defense force of an established colony from a 1st or 2nd Generation emigrant fleet. Each successive generation got much larger. Macross M3 introduced a class of space stealth cruiser in the Dancing Skulls mothership Algenicus. Since its class was never identified, most fans refer to it as the Algenicus-class or Algenicus-type. Max's service history also mentions one other cruiser he served aboard, the Haruna (class unspecified). There were also cruisers among the ship designs used by the Varauta colony, which would/should have been a contemporary of the Spica III colony. (The only one mentioned after is the Northampton-derived stealth cruiser from Macross Frontier and later which has never received a class name. It has an informal nickname of the Osaka-class thanks to Circle FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy doujin.) It's actually considered an Armored Pack, not a Super Pack. It's pretty minimal, just some extra armor to protect the legs/engines with some verniers built in and an armored segment to protect above the cockpit with some micro-missile launchers. It's not explicitly said whether or not the AAS-171 Armored Pack could be taken by the base model VF-171 Block II model, but in the Macross Frontier movies the improved Block IIIF (3F) model that is outwardly identical to the Block II is shown using it so the answer is probably yes. Armaments-wise, it's just a couple micro-missiles in the launchers on either side of the cockpit. Nothing major. It's mostly about improving defensive ability. There's a Regult converted for operation by three miclones in the original series... that's how the Zentradi spy trio get away after their mission is done and carry all the stuff they've bought or nicked back to the Vrlitwhai Branch Fleet. That said, given the (comparatively) low level of automation and low survivability of the Regult, the complexity of the Queadluun-Rau's control system, and the usage of the military as a sort of halfway house for Zentradi who had trouble adjusting to Earth's culture, there probably wasn't a lot of demand for miclone-pilotable versions. It's actually a bit surprising that the Zentradi were willing to keep using the Regult given that it's described as being a bit of an ergonomic nightmare... but a dose of the familiar probably went a ways towards keeping them calm.

That's one of the bigger problems with estimating the exact size of the New UN Forces and New UN Government... good luck determining what constitutes a "typical" fleet past about the mid-2020s.

It's a weird place to end a season, that's for sure. With a closing title card like that, I wonder if they'll do a season four or not. Esp. since the light novel doesn't end on such a sad note at that point. It veers more or less straight back into comedy when she meets her new adoptive families and parks there for the duration as she begins a printing-focused rampage with blueblood financial clout behind her. Especially once Karstadt's wife gets involved. If they do pick up from there, it'll be interesting to see how far they run with it... it kind of bogs down after the timeskip between parts 3 and 4. That said, I am glad for a few omissions in the anime version...

For what it's worth, we do see some features that suggest the first few New Macross fleets used the old ARMD II-class as well... so it may be close to the mark. It's probably just an eccentricity of the Northampton-class itself... even in the Macross 7 Trash manga, the docking umbilical's connector is on the side of the bridge tower.

There is that, yes... but what I was getting at has more to do with the problematic writing in Macross Delta. Namely, the tendency of the show's writers to toss out dramatic plot twists and reveals with significant implications and completely forget about them by the end of the episode or even the end of the scene. My favorite example of this being late in the Macross Delta TV series when the main trio are captured and put on trial. Mirage tries to invoke prisoner of war protections under the spacefuture equivalent of the Geneva Conventions and is told flat out she can't because, as a mercenary, she's not a lawful combatant. She is somehow surprised by this despite the fact that that should be common knowledge in her line of work, that she should have learned as much in officer training in the Spacy, and that it is not exactly a new legal development being that laws to that effect have been on the books since 1978's Protocol I almost 90 years previous. The story tries to play this decision off as unfair despite presenting it as legally correct and then it is promptly forgotten as soon as the courtroom drama is over and never mentioned again. It's the same deal with Wright. Yeah, the series harps on at great length about what a great guy he was and that he was the one who unintentionally bombed Carlyle off the map... but it tries to hastily change the topic anytime the subject starts to stray towards Wright's own major contributions to the disaster. He waited until he was in the air with an armed dimensional warhead to start refusing orders and stalled for time by refusing to leave a holding pattern over a major population center and arguing with flight control. Wright may not have pulled the trigger, but he was the one who recklessly gambled with the lives of everyone in Carlyle and lost. The series tries to put all the blame on the Spacy brass who overrode Wright's controls at the last second, but forgets that it established that it was at the last second and that Wright was the one who decided to do circles over a city while carrying the bomb.

There is a saying... "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Wright Immelmann was a good man trying to do what he thought was right. Meaning well is no guarantee that what you want to do to help is necessarily actually helpful or the right thing to do in that situation. He tried to save as many lives as possible because he cared about the Windermereans, but his well-intentioned interference ended up getting millions of civilians killed because of how he went about it. He waited until he was in the air with an armed dimensional warhead to object, which is very much too late to have a good way out. Dropping the bomb would make him a war criminal because those weapons are banned except under very special circumstances (that the situation met, but this was being done covertly). Surrender would leave a dimensional bomb in the hands of an unstable, highly irrational, and increasingly desperate autocrat on the losing side of a war and either get him tried for war crimes, treason, or both if he was still alive after the New UN Forces eventually won by attrition. Not dropping it meant that he was playing the galaxy's most dangerous game of hot potato until one or both sides got sick of his antics and decided to shoot him down. He waited until there was no good answer to have his particular crisis of conscience. Like several other areas (e.g. Xaos unlawfully participating in a declared war) the series is kind of in a rush to skip past the unfortunate implications surrounding the designated heroes. The series did make an effort to drive home that it was a tragedy and a totally senseless loss of life in general. I'm not sure it necessarily tried to make the audience feel bad for Wright or Hayate given that the Windermereans suffered far worse, and they do go out of their way to show Hayate what happened. The Sv-303 Vivasvat is probably not all THAT uber... after all, while it does take out both the Aerial Knights and Delta Flight initially, neither side are exactly first-rate forces. The Aerial Knights were almost entirely combat virgins prior to the 2067 war with the NUNG and all their most experienced pilots died in the war including the White Knight and the knight commander. That Bogue is their top ace says a lot, given that he had never seen unstimulated combat before the events of episode 1 and he was the youngest and the least experienced member of Keith's unit. Delta Flight is similarly bereft of its top ace's skills since Messer died in the war, and its elite troops are mostly washouts from local NUNS forces (not exactly top tier). The unmanned Vivasvat has the advantage of being controlled remotely by a quantum supercomputer AI, so even if it doesn't outclass them too badly on specs it has reaction time and coordination ability in its corner. The YF-29 supposedly stomps them, but then that's with Max at the stick... which goes beyond his usual one man army status to feeling like bullying, with The Strongest Pilot piloting The Strongest Valkyrie.

Diamond Force didn't do much better... not being a main character is a real occupational hazard. That's an excellent question with no clear answer... the circumstances of the development of the new ship classes first seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7 are unclear to the say least. The Elysion-type, no. In Macross Frontier, the Macross Quarter-class was a very recent development. The Macross Quarter in the TV version of the story was the prototype and sole example of the class. It was built at Island-1's pier, with construction starting in December 2055. It was completed at some point in 2057 or 2058, and after some minor retrofits was approved for SMS's use for operational evaluation purposes in c.2059 May. In the movie version it was similarly a very recent addition that only entered service shortly before the story.

The series really doesn't talk about the implications much. They opened by hinting that it was a stupendously bad idea for Hayate to go anywhere near Windermere IV because he was Wright's son, but when it became important to the plot it was mainly focused on the fact that it was the NUNS, not Windermere, who dropped the bomb. The series somewhat understandably avoids an in-depth examination of the fact that Wright's irresponsible and unprofessional behavior got a few million people killed and started a second interstellar war.

Major Wright Immelmann's final (and fatal) mission was supposed to be to drop the dimensional warhead his VF-22S was carrying on the Protoculture ruins near Darwent. Had he followed orders, he could potentially have prevented the events of Macross Delta from occurring at all by disabling or destroying the Delta Wave System and Sigur Berrentzs. There may have been some casualties from dropping a WMD near, but not on, a city... but a lot fewer than what his actions caused. Instead, he deliberately dithered in enemy airspace hoping to be intercepted because he was worried about the risk to Darwent, and he got his wish. He was intercepted. While he was loitering over the city of Carlyle. Yes, this bright spark of a man decided the most appropriate thing to do while carrying an armed dimensional warhead was to fly in circles in the airspace over a major city. His superiors ordered him to proceed to target and he refused, so they overrode his controls but too late to do any good. The bomb ended up being dropped by remote control for reasons unclear - possibly the NUNS brass were worried it would fall into Windermerean hands, or that the crash might cause it to detonate on the ground and cause more damage than the planned airburst - and Wright was subsequently shot down and killed. So his well-intentioned idiocy not only prevented the military from destroying a Protoculture relic that could potentially kill the entire galactic population by accident even if it worked correctly, it also cost the lives of millions of Windermereans in Carlyle when the city was destroyed in the dimensional warhead's detonation, inflicted heavy casualties on the New UN Forces on the planet, blew up into a major scandal which caused both sides to label him as a war criminal, and directly motivated Windermere's subsequent invasion of the Brisingr cluster and all the death and destruction that followed. If he'd followed orders, or even just objected on the ground and been replaced by another pilot, the events of Macross Delta would probably have never come to pass and many of the characters (esp. on the Windermere side) would not have grown up the horribly broken people they were since Keith's mentor and Bogue's family wouldn't have died. "Nice job breaking it, hero."

Fortunately, Macross being Macross, the vast majority of people in the galaxy are actually pretty decent and just want to get along... so truly nefarious plots are few and far between. That said, when applied without malice, the advancements in technology humanity brought does have some pretty significant advantages. With the possible exception of Zola, none of the other sub-Protoculture worlds that've made contact with the New UN Government have to contend with the health and environmental consequences of an industrial age like deforestation, rampant pollution, exposure to toxic chemicals used in manufacturing processes, etc. They got to skip the nasty environmental consequences of things like fossil fuel pollution and radioactive waste management and go straight to high-efficiency wind, solar, and thermonuclear power. For a given value of "dangerous". It's not always immediately evident what insane nonsense they buried where. Like on Uroboros, where an extensive network of ruins were under investigation for ages despite being full of dangerous technorganic murder-bugs because (almost) nobody knew that they were looking at a vast dimensional lock keeping a weaponized time machine in out of anyone's hands. It can be said that the Protoculture gradually got better about their Keep Out signs. Leaving the 4th planet of the Varauta system an uninhabitable iceworld was a good start. When they buried the Fold Evil on Uroboros they left a self-replicating, aggressively territorial swarm of highly proactive Keep Out signs then broke spacetime around the planet to ensure that it stayed that way. On Windermere IV and the other worlds of the Brisingr cluster, they didn't just break spacetime they chucked the dangerous bits of their untested telepathy machine into another dimension. That last was enough for the New UN Forces to think "I know where this is going" and conclude that maximum overkill was the only way to keep whatever the Protoculture locked up from being messed with. (Unfortunately, Wright Immelmann screwed the pooch on that one and turned a bombing run on a museum piece into a war crime.)

One related topic that is very pertinent to Macross Delta... humanity is sharing its advanced technology with the other sub-Protoculture species it encounters as it explores space. The Zolans were the next most advanced species behind Humans, and their society had only advanced to approximately equal humanity's level of development in the first half of the 20th century when they were suddenly catapulted into the interstellar age. Civilization on Windermere IV - and, it's implied, other Brisingr cluster worlds - skipped whole sets of eras in the natural course of their development and jumped from medieval civilizations to interstellar ones. We've already seen that Windermere IV didn't exactly do a great job adjusting, given that their cultural mindset was still heavily entrenched in the medievalness of one generation prior when they declared war in 2060. The New UN Gov't really freaking needs the Prime Directive.

For now, the biggest obstacle to a human-built fold dimensional energy converter would probably be that humanity has yet to develop the technology to synthesize fold quartz the way they currently synthesize fold carbon. It's something they're working on (according to Macross Chronicle) but as of 2067 don't seem to have succeeded with yet. They're still dependent on the fold quartz they find in Protoculture ruins, old Vajra nesting sites, and Vajra carcasses. Even once they reach the point of synthesizing fold quartz, other uses for it will probably take priority for a good while. Like zero-time fold systems and inertia store converters for ships and fighters, high-performance GIC systems for thermonuclear reactors, improved holographic projectors, and the like. (Unfortunately it'll probably also mean a proliferation of MDE weapons, dimension cutters, and dimension eaters since fold quartz will be readily available.)

So... if we're not limiting it to just human-designed mecha and such, then depending on how you want to define "mecha" the answer is potentially in the past. In Macross 7, the Evil-series bioweapons the Protoculture developed were powered by prototype biotechnological fold dimensional energy converters. A botched power test of the converters was what trapped energy beings from fold space in their bodies, forcing them to resort to preying on the Protoculture in order to survive. (The Protodeviln's origin story.) In Macross Zero, the Birdhuman the Protoculture left behind on Earth to destroy humanity if it made it to space without achieving a harmonious society was also powered by a fold dimensional energy converter. Macross Chronicle implied that the Protoculture acquired the technology by studying the Vajra, and that Vajra Queens and likely other Vajra forms power their energy-intensive biotechnologies this way. Its caliber has never been identified, officially. As far as we know, that brute force approach to greater defensive potential by doubling the armor thickness and doubling the power supply was limited to the YF-29. In hindsight, it's actually kind of odd that the YF-29 didn't adopt the Advanced Energy Conversion Armor used in the VF-25's antiprojectile shield and the VF-25's Armored Pack. It's actually kind of odd that those 2nd Generation energy conversion armor technologies aren't mentioned after Frontier either, though perhaps more understandable since the technology was mentioned to be very expensive and the Macross Delta VFs lack forearm shields.

It's a decent drama-preserving handicap, if nothing else. The YF-29's drama preserving handicap was that the cornerstone of its amazing performance - the fold wave system - was absolutely impossible to mass produce because it was built around a prohibitively large amount of ultra-high purity fold quartz of a type that could only reliably be obtained from the carcasses of Vajra queen forms. That was how they justified there being only one of them in the entire Macross Frontier fleet, rather than having the Frontier NUNS flood the battlefield with uber-powerful anti-Vajra Valkyries. Giving the VF-31 Custom "Siegfried" a less capable fold wave system that uses less of that ultra-high purity fold quartz allows them to have a gimmick that ties into Walkure's singing in ways that allow Walkure to affect the battle without it becoming a story-breaker power the way the YF-29's fold wave system would have been or demoting the fold wave system itself to mundanity. Windermere IV has large reserves of fold quartz thanks to having previously been a world settled by the Protoculture, but fold quartz with the requisite size and purity to use in a fold wave system or similar technology is still quite rare. The Sv-262 Draken III has a more conservative take on the fold wave system concept called a Fold Reheat system. The operation of the system isn't described in detail, but it seems to do only one thing: improve engine output. The base Ba model's fold reheat produces a 25% improvement in total engine output, while the Hs command specification uses higher-purity fold quartz provided by the royal family to achieve a 30% output improvement. That improvement is quite substantial, but the Sv-262 itself doesn't seem to be quite capable of sustaining it given that there's one point in the series where it's mentioned that Keith's reckless use of "wind riding" inflicted enough damage to his Sv-262Hs that it needed a major overhaul. By contrast, the Fold Wave System used in the YF-29 and VF-31 Custom is a more multipurposeful system. It improves the performance of thermonuclear reaction engines that were designed to interface with it, but it also provides the Valkyrie with energy via fold dimensional energy conversion and facilitates the detection, interception, and amplification of fold waves. With an active fold wave system, a Valkyrie can draw out the full potential of its engines while also fully powering every other system like energy conversion armor, pinpoint barriers, and beam weapons. Even though the VF-31 Custom's cut-down fold wave system is less capable in terms of total thrust output than the Draken III's fold reheat, it's still noted to be far and away the superior system. (Being able to run the Siegfried's energy conversion armor at full power and activate the pinpoint barriers in fighter mode is itself a pretty huge advantage, since it makes the Siegfried WAY tankier than the Draken III.) It's noted to vary... the fold quartz used in the Ba type's fold reheat system is of a lower quality/purity than the type the royal family provides for the Hs type. How it compares to fold quartz used in the VF-31 Siegfried in absolute terms is unknown. We'll probably find out in September when the Blu-rays drop. I'm sure I'll have lots to rant about then. Mind you, 27mm is still pretty darn close to that territory. The VF-11's gunpod was a 30mm one.

I'm rather curious as well... it's rather atypical for there to be this little coverage a new Macross movie's new mecha. Based on the available info, my assumption is that they're 1. waiting for the limited edition Blu-ray and will put those details in the booklet and 2. the actual difference isn't very large. What we've been told of the Kairos Plus is that it's an improvised upgrade to the stock VF-31A Kairos made after Delta Flight's Siegfried customs were destroyed, built using surviving VF-31A Kairos airframes and spare parts built for Delta Flight's Siegfried customs. I'd expect that the actual specs are largely the same as the Siegfried's, given that the Siegfried's one real area of difference from the Kairos was the adoption of a fold wave system and FF-3001/FC2 engines and the Kairos Plus's main noted difference is better fold quartz for their fold wave systems they acquired while in hiding. (One detail mentioned in Master File is that the VF-31 Siegfried was able to get away with using smaller, lower purity, and therefore much less expensive fold quartz crystals thanks to some optimizations in the fold wave system's design that sacrificed performance for less-tight tolerances on the fold quartz. The performance boost was less than the YF-29's and the Siegfried lacked the ability to trigger the system to activate at any time the way the YF-29 could, but it did still provide a respectable performance boost. Presumably adopting larger, higher purity fold quartz would improve the system's performance boost when active, though given how much of a role Walkure plays in the plot I'd assume it still won't be able to go forcibly activate without an external fold wave source.)