PointBlankSniper

New shield definitely looks the part now. Take your time on this, no rush, no pressure. I'm sure the few of us here understand it's your little pastime project and aren't concerned with the speed of updates Have fun on your trip 😁

I wonder if it will really come out looking like the instructions. The last couple releases showed that the box and manual don't represent the final products lol

I think of the shield as a sacrificial damage sponge to act as a backstop against attacks, because they know things can and will get through the barrier eventually. Not blocking with the shield and surviving a hit is just a luck based bonus that is good for ace pilot stunts, and not advisable tactics lol.

Those are the exact holes I am saying are seemingly even too shallow to hold the fins for the 19P That's what I'm getting at, but in the pessimistic direction. Bandai basically looks like they deliberately designed incompatability into this to quietly announce the refusal of making add ons and variants to milk all the groundwork they already put in, because typical Bandai logic... The HMR telegraphed their intentions with functioning shoulder holes, even though they used the same brand of weird logic to end up with two sets of shoulders on the 19P 🤪 It just doesn't look good on Bandai's part to plan and engineer petty inconveniences into their new molds for both themselves and the customer lol

It really doesn't seem like there are any connection features to accomodate the sound booster... Also gotta wonder if those shoulder holes are cosmetic or if they are deep enough to hold the 19P's speaker fins.

By mecha convention, it's kind of a goofy shield, but IMO it passes for a buckler

I forgot the black part at top on the 25 already already sticks out and has to fight with the chest cover and the neck plate on the way in lol As for the shield, it's not just the hump ending early up the fuselage, but the shield also seems to only start where the hump would have ending on the 25. Its edge seems to line up 1/3 of the way back from the front of the tail fins, where as the 25's starts right at the front where it meets the hinge. The 24's shield definitely looks much shorter than what the 25 has.

NGL, at first, I thought the nose thing was a fat indent with a reverse thrust nozzle because of the internal details towards the rear, but it doesn't check out with top view having an outline following the nose profile, and every interpretation of it has been sensors, so I'm probably wrong. Anyway, judging by the line art, it looks like the cockpit block itself is actually pointed. I think a quick way to eyeball whether there is room for that would be to see peek under the collar on the 25's battroid model. Or just keep them whole pieces regardless and invent a simple toe in pivot should it get in the way later lol

The whole sliding and retracting wing thing came about from trying to explain why there still looks like a swing wing slit at the back of the wing root when it can't have swing wings anymore lol. The folding wingtip was simply from recognizing that rectangle-ish shape looking similar to the wing root hinge for transformation. Ultimately, you gotta ignore me at some point, and pick somewhere to stop at, or the project will never end 😁. Meanwhile, the more I cook, the crazier it gets. Now I've realized a further gimmicks could be had with the super pack, by building on the retract and fold features. Maybe it's encroaching on an armored pack... but w/e lol Let's say the wing tip booster wraps inboard over the folded wing a little. Either a simple brick that cannibalizes the wing span, or hinged to flap open in a small tie fighter or x-wing profile for fighter mode. Then also have a clip on wing root booster like the 25, covering the dog teeth. With enough arbitrary wing span coverage by both sections of boosters, when a wing retracts for battroid, the two boosters could mate up and lock together into one solid block of jet pack, while almost concealing the underlying wings entirely. The individual booster pods need not be big like the piececs that inspired them, they just need to mostly conceal the wing surface and form a block of back boosters. In fact, the pods/boosters similar to the 29's or even smaller might be enough. Now also having taken the 29's pack for inspiration, it can't end there lol. The 29's super has a booster pod under the stabilizer. That doesn't work here, because only the 29 has that wide deck of a wing root to accomodate the backwards retracting wing. What does work, is stealing the 31's trick. The very same over wing pack, right on top of the folded tail stabilizer, you mentioned. It's basically part of the jet pack block without moving. But that's not all. Suppose they brought dorsal cannons to the mix, kind of replicating the 29's (more like the 17's individual cannons tbh) gimmick. If my eyeballing is correct, once the wing roots stand up for battroid, the cannons merely need to swivel 90 degrees through the leg cutouts, to become hip cannons for the battroid. Add telescoping as needed. Since everyone's got their super pack lineage traced back into the 24, we can't leave the 27 out. That can be solved by willfully misinterpreting the shoulders in the bottom view. I think you mentioned having leeway to play around with it too. Sure it looks like the 25's shoulders down there, with how the back of the shoulder mates up with the elbow. But since we can't see depth from that view, we can just say it's actually the top of the shoulders folded over the arms like the 27. With that out of the way, we can then steal the 27's shoulder top super part mount, and slap on w/e equipment there. Could be more boosters, turrets, or missile pods for all I care 😉 Based on the 25 and 29, the circles are equipment plugs. The collar set being for missile pods is standard affair. But for the shield though, I think it would be the perfect chance to slap a short missile container on there, and say that's where the 30 got it's gimmick from, since it doesn't have any packs to draw its lineage from. This has gotten complicated and I hope I don't have to hand draw on MS paint to make sense of it 🤡 At this point, I think I need to stop myself or your pet project will be derailed into obvlion 😁

Bandai almost never completes any line up of a series. Its like their core value at this point.

Crazy ideas: What if for battroid, the dog teeth slides backwards past the front tip of the wing root, then retracts diagonally forward inside of it, like how the 29's wings retracts diagonally backwards to add the super pack wings. If that's not complicated enough, make the wing tip panel fold over itself where the outer aileron sits, like how the 30 and 31 fold under. For no reason other than storage, and makes for a nice backstop for the stabilizers to rest on when they fold down. In fact, those folding joints could be a hardpoints to give it AX style super packs. On the bottom view of the 24's line art, there is a slit shape similar to the wing root's folding joint, that seems to be erroneously missing on one wing, but present on both sides of top view. That's the piece I'm picturing as the joint. On the 31, that piece extends into a double joint before folding, so the funny panel overlap and the slant end shouldn't pose a problem here. If it was normally already an exposed weapon hard point on the bottom side, it would make the whole AX super pack mounting thing simple. After staring at this for a while, I've noticed that the leading edge of the wing and the wing root's tapering inward at the base of the stabilizers seem to be longitudinally mirrored. That is to say, if in battroid mode, with the legs out of the way, the folded and retracted wing tip might actually butt up seamlessly against the stabilizer base. The width spacing checks out perfectly with a brief finger measure check lmao. It's unfortunate that this seemingly perfect alignment serves no purpose in fighter mode since the engine/legs are in the way. Basically it's all an excuse to pretend that's where the derivative models got their wing gimmicks from lol.

Slightly new packaging look must mean they are locked in to w/e stategy or quality standards this release stands for. The 17's arm is peeking out from the side. Since it's ready for show, that one's designs are definitely locked in too lol.

I always had the impression that 24s were deployed from the convos around here, but its nice to know where it comes from is lol Super packs at this point might indeed be getting way ahead of yourself, but I've been wondering what the hypothetical 26 that got canned could have come out like, eversince you started working on the 24 😁

The ECM or data collection thing for the YF-25's head is what I was thinking of. Guess that rules it out from looking too much like a 24. In the same vein, I've been thinking the 24 was intended to be more of a direct drop in replacement to the VF-11 (and 171), more so than the way the 17 was shoehorned into the role through modding it into 171. So I was thinking maybe going a little backwards helps with head design ideas. Then thinking back to Isamu's valks for single laser designs, it suddenly dawned on me, his custom 29 might literally have the closest head possible to the 24... If you want a more cyclops take to Isamu's jewel + visor design, I think the VF-0D is good place for inspiration. For a cyclops with brow look, I'm not sure how you are picturing it, but I think the 25A/G has a bit of that going on too. Maybe you can figure out how to roll all those ideas into one. Don't have much thoughts on the shoulders atm, but I'm wondering if that shield is long enough to fit a knife lol.

I was under the impression that it was kind of just a 25A or G head too, but upon closer inspection, it doesn't seem like it. The A and G don't have those vulcan(?) humps flanking the laser's mount, and the helmet contours are totalle different, not to mention the laser is different shaped. It's actually the 25F that looks closest to it. I think there's something wrong with the 25F line art you used for comparison. The red sensor box where the laser would normally be is totally missing. Inside those black stripes, similar to where the 24 has the vulcan humps, the 25F also has them. I can't tell if they are still there in the 25F's line art. The next closest thing is actually the 31A, having a single laser, and the vulcan humps, but the designs and proportions are off. One thing that's for sure is that the 24 definitely stows its head facing backwards. I'd say hacking (or clipping?) together a laser from 25A or 31A and copying 31A's lack of ears to the 25F's helmet would probably be the simplest approximation for the visible parts of the head. For the hidden parts, I guess you could take inspiration even from the YF-25, since it's the closest link to the 24 that we have. But I think there might have been lore that the YF's head looks intentionally primitive with a giant camera for testing reasons, so it may not truly represent any sort of lineage to the 24's designs.