pengbuzz

The only thing I can see is the TV head looks a little rounder and the visor looks slightly narrower.

Well, there's this and it's "buy it now": https://www.ebay.com/itm/113479308735?&shqty=1&isGTR=1#shId The kit is grey, but that shouldn't hurt too much (I hope)!

Nobody wants to fund a brand-new RT anything because RT is just a mish-mash of 3 series, and the first one was the most worthwhile out of the three. It's a shame the animation for Macross couldn't be fully updated, but I don't think Tatsunoko is interested in that, as that would be revisiting the past (which Kawamori-san doesn't like to do), and they'd much rather focus on future projects. While RT got me into Macross (and I promptly abandoned RT when I found Macross to be superior), Southern Cross was just... let's just say that if Dana was the last girl on Earth and I were lonely for 500 years, I'd still jump off a cliff rather than talk to her for five minutes. And Mospeada.... that series is so depressing, I'm convinced that all the mechs run on Zoloft.

There are some things some folks just don't do well: apparently, Joel and the Batman franchise were like oil and water.

Or maybe the Zentraedi are trying to hack into the ship's systems to take them offline so the Cylons-- Er, sorry. Wrong franchise.

Found this on ebay for you: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Macross-1-72-VF-1S-Valkyrie-Gerwalk-Model-Kit-IMAI-Robotech-Japan-Roy-Fokker/184334615113?hash=item2aeb330249:g:uogAAOSwUixe7VNm

Exactly: stories need to show failures, goofs, and times when the characters' own actions bring about unintended consequences. Not to mention: if the enemies are just that incompetent, then "mass numbers" is only going to get them so far. You need at least some competency, or they'd never let those guys near a galley or mess, let alone a Mobile Suit. In that vein, our campaign was much the same way: all of us players at one time or another made some brutal mistakes. One example is that my character got another pilot that he was dating killed when a combat maneuver he pulled didn't work (I failed my piloting role with a natural "1" on the 20-sided die), and she saved him by putting herself between him and about 60+ missiles headed his way. The outcome of that was that it showed him up close the consequences of split-second decisions, and that in war, people die due to your decisions. He went on to command a special forces unit for the fleet (six fighters including himself) and investigate and bust the conspiracy on Earth. After getting your head handed to you enough, you either get good by eventually finding a way to overcome, or inevitably, get dead because your number finally came up. And if that never happens, if characters never learn and grow (Imagine if Hikaru never grew beyond his first appearance in Macross when he came to the SDF-1's launch?), then all it becomes is an animated video game (or a paper one if doing an RPG face-to-face). And even video games now have moved past that to some degree.

I cannot imagine they could legally do that for the North American distribution, due to HG having an agreement on that already. I think HG would have to somehow violate their licensing agreement in a major way for Tatsunoko to pull the licensing and give it to someone else.

Good grief! lol Personally, I'd rather see an awesome character in an "okay" mech than an omnipotent mech with a "bleh" character. We had one guy in our campaign who wanted to paint his VF-11 black and then paint stars on it! He called it "star camo". Yeah; he one advantage the 17 has is that its' stealth is a feature; it only dies when the mech is destroyed (according to stats IIRC); the 19 and 22 lose theirs after 50 percent MDC is lost. Hmm...never noticed that in Macross. A worse name would have been "Shouldn't have eaten that pastrami grinder last night!" (that would give me nightmares! ) Yeah... sigh. I consider for the Wraithverge to keep some semblance of "honest" in game and in our universe, to keep the payload reasonable and able to fit within the frame, hidden by the outer stealth layers. Yeah, like the Gilgamesh armor of Macross II (if that's what you mean); in fact, it now that I think of it, I developed it in part to counter those blades being used by that suit. Thanks; we do indeed, because we tend to see the flaws the most and not notice what's good about the work! And yeah: it really is hard to design them! I literally broke 8 swing armatures for the leg to body connector by simply transforming the thing!!! (not all at once though! lol )

Yup; in this case, we were on a definitive roll. In other words: everybody wants to rule the fleet? (cue Tears for Fears). I've seen some designs out there, but not to the extent you describe. Thanks, I appreciate that! And yes: I had to make several, such as the "swing bar" under the shoulder pod that connects the rest of the arm. A necessary "evil", but I still wish I could rework it to a more solid config. That's one thing that bothered me about the 17; the other fighters could do more, but the 17 seemed to me to be stuck in "long range attack". After using one in several instances where we ended up in dogfights (and regretting it), I wished for a better one that was stealth and couldn't find one. Understood; admittedly, it began to sound dumb to me after a few years, but by then I called it that for so long that it became synonymous with the mech in my mind. If it ever came to it though, I could probably shorten it to "Wraith" (pretty sure that name's not taken, at least last time I looked), which would also fit. Yes; I had to move it into the "backpack" in order to get it to fit after thinking about the legs and all the stuff in it. But should it end up an "outie" like it's larger cousin, that's not the end of the world. It is indeed; in the campaign, one NPC flew a VF-19 and the other flew a VF-22 (GM was/is a fan of M+), and the other players has 17's. I didn't want to make something that would look dumb next to the other two. Right; I didn't want to get ridiculous on that, as it's too easy to overpower a mech with built-in "Itano Circuses". Also, the legs were already carrying quite a bit, to the point I had to relocate the gunpod. On the back of WV's leg, the engine housing bulks up a bit as it heads towards the tail. That stores much of the short range missiles, with 1-2 in the side launch pod "at ready" (may need to rework that if missiles would be too large): The inner leg stores the gunpod magazines; a bit of a tight fit, but manageable. Had I carried out the 11/48 scale version I wanted to do, I would have made functional bays to put those in. Yeah; I liked those concepts and decided to run with them. Why fix what isn't broken, right? To be honest, I don't remember why I called them "arm bayonets", since they're conformal blades built into the arm housing (silver edge on the arm housing at wrist and elbow, you can just barely make it out due to age). Their original function was to provide a "last resort" melee weapon that didn't need ammo or power that could be used when all else was gone: The barrier: that was largely for "story effect" to explain why the mech didn't get destroyed in the explosion of a capital ship it was attacking. The barrier saved it, but was burned out in the process. Seto, I really appreciate you taking a look at this for me, and the kindness of your comments in doing so. One thing this project did serve to teach me was to not criticize mech designs too hastily, as the designers often have challenges they need to overcome, and concessions do have to be made (especially with transforming designs!). It's not easy designing something meant for combat, and what can look "cool" may not work or get someone into a jam the designer never anticipated! Thank you.

Ah, gotcha.

I wonder why CG ages? Is it that the elements don't endure time well, or does our perception change?

Sigh... I consider it an utter failure. (You may want to brace yourself... this one probably screams "overpowered" and a bunch of other stuff that denotes noobs, kids and whatnot) (and quite long) (insert llamas joke from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" here) ------------------------------- It was a extended kitbash/scratchbuild that had already taken several years to refine at the point I decided to "unveil it" (Originally designed and built in in 2002!), and it also had stats for gameplay (I'll try to find those later if you're interested; they're in a box somewhere in my closet). I had posted it in a previous incarnation on the forums here about a decade ago, and it got ripped by the folks here at the time. Admittedly, I took it badly , and many called it "butt-hurt" (I don't think I could blame them, although one threatened physical harm on me from what I recall); truth was, I was dealing with my mom dying at the time and that was the last straw), and ended up leaving here. Originally I was under a different username. The fighter itself: it was supposed to be a new type of stealth valkyrie that was to perform better in atmosphere than the VF-17 Nightmare without sacrificing its' stealth capability. Having played the game "Hexen", I came a cross the name "Wraithverge" (the cleric's weapon), and it seemed to fit the mech (so much for originality, right? lol ) So...pics: (These should give you an idea of the mech; it's changed somewhat since these photos, but I haven't had time to take current ones.) The criticism was that the parts were "too round" for stealth/ not shaped correctly. Too many "nooks and crannies" as well. Over the years, I tried solving those issues, but with this one, every time I tried to solve something, it created two more issues. So... I just gave up and largely set this aside. Armament* for it (from what I remember): - 1x 3-barreled Gatling gunpod holding 200 rounds of ammunition (later added alternate Heavy Beam Tube module option), stored formerly in leg; redesign moved position to backpack in fighter mode. - 2x interchangeable magazines (in leg nacelle holding bays) - 24x shoulder micro missiles (6 per launcher, 2 launchers per shoulder) - 24x short range missiles (6 missiles per launcher, 2 side-mounted launchers per leg, main magazine lower rear leg near tail) - 2x small bore laser cannons (1x per arm, 2 firing ports per arm) - 2x medium-bore laser cannons (chest-mounted, just below cockpit in fighter mode) - 2x dual-barrel anti aircraft laser canons (head mounted) - 2x chaff/ flare dispensers (mounted on sides of backpack), 3 chaff/flare per launcher (6x total) - 4x "arm bayonets" (2 per arm, mounted just fore of arm-mounted cannon barrels/ wrist and elbow positions on forearms) - 1x reinforced shield (left arm mounted - 1x electro-transparent metal-based canopy (visually transparent when energized, solid metal otherwise) [because I couldn't make a damned canopy cover for the thing!] Formerly: experimental omnidirectional barrier (burned out first battle) Later development: 1x "Gilead" beam gunpod, ventral mounted (under gunpod) * In the RPG campaign, we were fighting Metal Sirens; the "Black Rose" conspiracy had built them to send after the fleet forces. --------------------------------------------------------- The model now sits collecting dust. Not really interested in redesigning it or doing a new one (was hell the last time, tons of materials wasted during development, fix one problem and create 5 more, etc.) I did the design, built it out, got too complex, too many flaws to count, and I'm tired now. Anyways, life goes on, and some of the valks out there now look better frankly than this. Just not a fan of the VF-25 Messiah, although the later ones after that look a bit better.

Pretty much the same for our GM (as previously mentioned). And it really hurt too, as our story involved an anti-UN Spacy conspiracy that had infiltrated the military and was working to take it completely over. Our colony fleet ended up launching from earth and the remnants of the conspiracy managed to gain a foothold in the fleet and began trying to take that over, with them stealing one of the two Three-Star heavy industry factory ships our fleet had (We largely used the palladium system and had the extended books from Macross II and ship/mecha info from steelfalcon.com). We were in the middle of that story when it got derailed. We combined elements from Macross Plus, 7 and Macross II, and it worked pretty well (Earth largely used the Macross II elements for it's defenses while fielding Macross Plus and 7 elements for colonies and Colonization fleets.) Sounds like a lot of forces pulling in some opposite directions there, with players having to watch their step at every turn! Yeah... I can guess that Jan probably spent a fortune alone on counseling and psychologists. Getting Isamu's retirement probably brought him some measure of satisfaction

I can understand your concern there; I was thinking more of a "one shade off" wash rather than a dark tone/ black simply to bring it out. But if you feel "as is" works, then go for it!

Okay, that would explain how I missed it! Wow... I can imagine Myung probably divorced his sorry rear-end when he had to explain where their life savings went. Not to mention revenge from Jan for all the smart-aleck remarks and whatnot Isamu put him through...

Yeah; MD apparently stand for "Micro Dry"; even with the discontinuation of MD, they still don't have anything that can really print in white and other non-standard colors (aside from the aforementioned laser printer cart- substitution being able to do it in white). I wonder how big a market there is for being able to print non-standard colors? Anyways, looking into seeing what goes wrong with ALPS MD printers and how to fix them. I know a couple of folks who had one apiece and those died on them too.

Sometimes, you find that "once in a lifetime fit" that nothing else will ever replace for you, even if it's somehow "better" performance-wise.

Hey, thanks for the fill-in on that! And yeah: it sucks that it's been on hold for so long. To be frank, it's been like since 2005(!),; every time players went to gather for the sessions, something ALWAYS got in the way at the last sec for at least one critical player or the GM. I had custom-designed a variable fighter from scratch, only for it to be sidelined and never used in game. As for your campaign: that sounds like a pretty interesting take using real-life as something of a basis. it also looks like it allows for an extended storyline and the ramifications of the riots, general unrest, and the investigation (wonder how many toes will get stepped on in that?).

Ah, okay. Thanks for confirming that; btw: where does it mention that? (admittedly, it may have been mentioned in the discussion previously, but I didn't flash on it!)

Let me guess: ALPS printer?

I love the off-white/grey accents on the leading edges. Gonna go break out my VF-1S and see how it looks on it!!

ROFL!!!

Especially with a wash to bring out the panel lines; that should give it that "made of millions of pieces of metal welded together" look.

I can imagine it was quite a mess. I can also imagine the classified meeting where ideas were tossed around as how exactly to explain all of this to the public. And sorry if this sounds a little "out of it", but is the thing about Isamu being a "space trucker" and sinking his life savings into a VF official, or someone's head canon? I haven't read much of the official stuff too much past Macross 7 (the RPG campaign I was in is on an extended hiatus due to the GM having some life issues getting in the way), or liner notes or anything like that.