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SebastianP

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  1. SebastianP
    So, a couple of thoughts struck me - suddenly, without warning, I ought to file a police report - while I was playing around with MiniValk (Michael Ryan)'s excellent printable 3D models. The first one was that "hey, don't the side pods on the Megaroad-01 look a bit like the lower half is some kind of ARMD docked side-on to a pylon, sort of like how the Tomcat's wing glove pylons worked, except backwards?" You have the painted flight deck facing outward, you have something that looks more like a pair of humongous engines than anything else, and you even have what looks like the front end of a ship at the back end. The second was that "Hmm, whatever ship that is would be even more asymmetrical than your average ARMD, and would necessitate a left and a right hand configuration for sure, just like the DYRL Macross. The third was that "hey, the SDF-2 Megalord's line art actually *doesn't* have handed versions of the ARMD, they're actually identical in the artwork. And then I almost landed in a rabbit-hole trying to figure out whether there was any evidence on MMM that the ARMDs installed on the DYRL Macross were indeed left-and-right handed in the first place... (it turns out that they are, but only one of the pieces of line art on MMM actually *shows* this - the "SDF-1 Macross attack mode line art". *Every other piece* of DYRL line art only shows the bottoms of the ARMDs, or only the port side. Even the "SDF-1 Macross schematics" actually only shows the port side as the front/back view is split. Anyway, the DYRL ARMDs, and the possible Megaroad ARMDs, are the only ships I can come up with off hand that are "handed" like that, unless you want to be silly and count the integral pieces of the New Macross class as separate ships. Even the Aether and Hemera were identical (their islands are on the same side relative to the deck on both ships in both the TV show and on my tiny Macross Elysion Mechacolle model). And while I'm logged in and actually able to post at all (that was a bit of a mess to figure out, thanks Shawn for helping me with that), I may as well ask - does anyone know what color scheme to pain the ASS-1 in? I'm almost thinking green with yellow blobs in the trenches, but that's Zentraedi colors. What colors did the Supervision Army use?
  2. SebastianP
    Anyone want to take a stab at translating the text that goes with the VF picture?
  3. SebastianP
    Isn't a lot of the recent canon story credited to Ukyo Kodachi these days? (And as an old, old Ranma fan, that name still makes me snicker when I have to write it). Ukyo Kodachi was IIRC credited with both Frontier and The Ride, and IIRC Mac30 too? Don't remember if they were responsible for Delta though, though I do know Delta ran into extensive executive meddling. The one major thing that really would disappear with Kawamori are the VFs, he's the only one who's ever really been able to do those and make them look *good* in all three forms.
  4. SebastianP
    As I just noted in the other thread: 1 - Larger delta wing with a spike (potentially enough to allow the mounting of VF-25 Super boosters?) 2 - Larger canard with a dogtooth 3 - Canopy has been redone, the new one lacks the separate windshield that was on the first generation VF-31s 4 - The sensor crystal things are repositioned, and there's now three on each side and one in the middle, for a total of seven 5 - The mission pod is different, with a longer stinger that protrudes aft of the engine nozzles (seen in the top and bottom view line art) 6 - The arm guns are much bigger, the new ones protrude past the leading edge of the wings 7 - The revised boosters don't just have winglets, they also lack the mounting bracket that was required to mount it overwing the way the originals did. They also either have slots or stripes on the light grey bits on each side. 8 - Forgot this one earlier - both Delta 03 and Delta 06 have a single head laser, Chuck's old machine had two. Delta 6, as far as I can tell, is identical to (new) Delta 3 aside from the paint job.
  5. SebastianP
    I noticed that there's actually a lot that's different on the new Delta 03 and Delta 06 compared to older versions: 1 - The delta wing is bigger than the Kairos, and has a spike that someone pointed out might allow it to use VF-25 Super Parts. 2 - The canards are bigger and has a dog tooth. This was mentioned by someone else earlier, but it's on the list of changes. 3 - The canopy is different. The old one was a two-piece with a separate windscreen over the instrument panel, the new one is one with what looks like a different profile. 4 - The nose sensor cluster is different - the new one has three sensor crystals on each side plus one in the middle for seven total, and they're much closer to the canopy. 5 - The arm-mounted guns are bigger, by quite a bit. In the line art, the muzzles protrude past the leading edge of the wing - they decidedly don't on the original VF-31 models. 6 - Aside from the elimination of the mounting bracket on the boosters, they also have fins, and either slots or stripes on the light grey sections on the sides. 7 - The new mission pod is longer and has some sort of stinger. It also looked really strange in the few screengrabs from the trailer. Random observation - if the boosters attach using the same system as the Lilldrakens, that has some interesting implications - namely, that you might be able to mount VF-31 super boosters under the wings of for example the VF-171 or the VF-30.
  6. SebastianP
    I think the issue with the Macross 7 stuff is that the hero units were very cartoony compared to anything else in the franchise, and the mass production machines not all that well loved. We've got a decent kit of the VF-11 (both B and C versions) and the VF-22, and IIRC you can make a convincing Fire Valkyrie out of the YF-19/VF-19A kit with some custom painting, so what's really left is Mylene's VF-11, the VF-17, the crank-wing VF-19 models (E/F IIRC?) and the Varauta fighters, which are pretty weird looking. It annoys me though that there's still no 1/72 VF-171, given that it was featured in both Frontier and Delta, and all three movies for those shows. It's the CF unit to end all CF units; and plain VFs have been shown to be amazingly popular as model kits (which is why more keep getting made); so why hasn't Hasegawa made one?
  7. SebastianP
    Nice model so far, @Xigfrid. I don't think I'd ever want to attempt to make any of the Macross ships in 3D myself, mostly because of the scaling issues with the official stats compared to the feats seen on screen, since a lot of the ships simply don't have anywhere near the volume needed for the scenes as animated to make sense.... unless "Super Dimension Technology" means "we can make it bigger on the inside like a TARDIS!" and has since the beginning... (Relevant examples being how Macross City's main street, which looks longer than the actual ship's official length, fits into just the leg sections; how the Stargazer managed to squeeze in anything *else* on top of the 37 VFs it's seen launching, such as "engines" or "crew quarters"; where the "Queadluun-Rhea standing room" hangars are on the Macross Quarter's ARMD-L; the weird issue where we can visually scale the Aether to be at least 850-900 meters long based on the known size of the VF-31, but the whole Macross Elysium is shorter than that offically; and of course "where did they fit a *Monster* on the Asuka II?") It almost has me convinced that whoever makes the specs up for the chronicle are out to troll everyone.
  8. SebastianP
    Honestly? Learn to love the glue and the paint. Bandai's various press-fit model kit lines are kind of limited - the model kit department's focus has always been and always will be Gundam, with Macross being a side project they devote some attention to every few years and then leave alone in between. There's not a single model kit line where you can build a complete collection of variants like you can with the DX toys, because there's no plastic VF-25A kit (at least not from Bandai), nor is there a VF-31A or VF-31E kit. And forget seeing anything not from the original series/DYRL, Frontier, or Delta, Bandai don't seem at all interested. Not for models at least. (Toys are a different story.) Hasegawa are glue-and-paint models, but the glue is nothing to be afraid of. I'm more scared of painting myself, because there's so much prepwork that has to be done right first before you can even start if you want a nice result. They also have a substantial number of kits from all over the continuity, and there's only a handful of subjects they *haven't* made yet, or that you can't make by swapping parts around between models. And they'll probably get around to those eventually, since the model kit line is never quite dormant. The other brands, I don't know enough about to really comment on, except that I know Wave has filled in some of the blanks in the Hasegawa lineup (like the VF-4), and it's apparently a nice, if expensive, kit.
  9. SebastianP

    Bandai DX VF-31

    SebastianP replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    The pattern is basically the other way around - if the model kit doesn't come out first, it doesn't come out period. As far as I can tell, not a single one of the DX toys has been released before the model kit of the same subject. Also, unlike the DX toy line, where releases are always on the one to two per year schedule, the model kit lineup tends to release with much shorter intervals so long as Bandai remain interested. As soon as they stop announcing new kits, the line is pretty much dead until there's new animated material to make kits from.
  10. SebastianP
    Are you sure your numbers are correct here? I don't have the book myself, but the picture from the pages you're appearing to refer to is labeled "SYF-31-4~7, 2067", implying that the breakdown is: SYF-31-4 = SYF-31S = VF-31S (Arad) SYF-31-5 = SYF-31F = VF-31F (Messer) SYF-31-6 = SYF-31E = VF-31E (Chuck) SYF-31-7 = SYF-31C = VF-31C (Mirage) With the next page going on with: SYF-31-8 = SYF-31J = VF-31J (Hayate) SYF-31-9 = SYF-31J = VF-31J #2 (Hayate) There's also a color plate showing SYF-31-7 in a low visibility scheme with Delta 04 markings, and SYF-31-3 is shown wearing NUNS colors and is stated in the color plate to be based at New Edwards on Eden. Weirdly, the SYF-31-4 drawing has different outer wings than the VF-31S drawing, and both have single-laser heads. I get the idea that according to the book, VF-31S refers to *all* production forward-swept, FF-3001/FC2-engined versions, and VF-31A to all the delta-winged, FF-3001A versions. Edit: Weird crap is going on here, because I just now noticed that it appears the description for the SYF-31-4 says it was converted into the SYF-31E... I'd pretty much call that a correction of an obvious oversight personally, as the lack of outer wing hardpoints on the VF-31A made little sense to me in the first place. Basically every other VF except the VF-22 and VF-27 (which were exceptional in all sorts of other ways as well) have had multiple hardpoints under each wing, and not having them made the VF-31A the worst strike platform in ages.
  11. SebastianP
    Very nice execution! I kind of wish the VE-11 had a ventral sensor fin like the VE-1, RVF-25 and RVF-171 though, it just looks a little top heavy without one, but that's not a fault of yours.
  12. SebastianP
    I've built three of the VF-25 kits, and one VF-31. First of all, general issues with all the kits: 1. The stickers suck. If you don't get them on exactly where you want them and you have to peel them off and try again, they're not going to stay put. 2. The water slide decals suck *worse*. They're thick, hard and fragile, and they're dithered rather than solid color. Invest in a bottle of Mr Mark Softner, you will need it. 3. The landing gear sucks. The legs are too thick, the wheels are too small, they're molded very simplistically and they're molded in *dark gray*, rather than the white they're supposed to be in. They're just generally ugly. 4. No matter whether you're using the stickers or the decals, you need to apply a fair amount of them during assembly, so choose first, before starting construction. For the VF-25 kits in particular: 1. The shoulder construction is really really fragile, and will most likely be the first thing to break unfixably, as the worst pieces are ABS and can't be glued back together once they break. Transforming the kit too many times *will* cause some of the ABS parts to wear out, as it involves rotating a styrene peg in a thin ABS cuff for 180 degrees every time you transform the kit. Stick to a mode, and if it's on where the arms are out, stick to a pose. 2. The fully collapsed leg is strong enough to hold up on its own in fighter mode. But only the plain VF-25 uses the fully collapsed thigh, the others bend the leg down and then back up again which causes the joint to not support the leg's weight. Not a big deal on the Tornado or Armored, as they have tabs for the legs, but the Super VF-25 lacks the tabs. The only way of displaying the Super VF-25 in fighter mode is on its landing gear. 3. Both the Armored and Tornado packs are really solid in any mode, but *heavy*. Especially the Armored. Don't expect them to do well in Gerwalk, where none of the joints in the entire kit are completely locked, and thus not subject to gravity-induced movement. For the VF-31: 1. None of the parts so far look anywhere near as fragile as the VF-25 bits, and the parts lock together really really well in fighter mode, however... 2. I have as yet been unable to fully transform my VF-31, and I'm unwilling to push it further due to getting stress marks on one of the big ABS pieces in the core of the fighter. Also, bits pop off really easily during transformation - not just wings and fins, but the chest plate is also often not there due to going on vacation to visit the Carpet Monster.
  13. SebastianP
  14. SebastianP
    It was mentioned in an interview that Kawamori made the canards on the Kairos one size bigger to correct for the center of lift being further back on the non-FSW version. It's somewhere on Sketchley's site IIRC.
  15. SebastianP

    Bandai DX VF-31

    SebastianP replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    I can't find my intuos pen, what's it saying about the VF-31A?
  16. SebastianP
    They never made a -25A, and they basically would only have needed to mold a VF-25G in tan instead of blue and ship it with a gatling gunpod to deliver one of those. Oh, and a new decal sheet. As I think I've said before in the thread, a superficial conversion of the VF-31J to a VF-31A involves seven pieces of polystyrene (upper and lower outer wing halves and canards x 2, plus a helmeted pilot figure) unless there's something going on with the head in which case you'd need a few more parts. A completely accurate VF-31A with missiles instead of multidrones? That would require replacing the core ABS parts of the lower leg. Also, based on parts breakdown, every VF-31 kit will have the parts to make an FSW version, as the upper and lower wing panels aren't molded in a section of runner that can be dummied out easily.
  17. SebastianP
    Most of the VFs have this problem actually, due to the lack of horizontal tails. I think only the delta- and forward swept winged VFs - and not even all of them - have enough control surface area to pitch up from a runway take-off, especially not with the landing gear placement on most of them being so far back.
  18. SebastianP
    Just show me where there's standing room for battroids or Queadlunns on that ship?
  19. SebastianP
    *sigh* You say that as if the official specs were any more reliable than the toys or the doujins, for anything except the VFs. The more I look at the actual footage, the more evidence I'm seeing that whoever writes the ship specs are talking out of their asses because the footage doesn't support the official stats. The ARMD-L can't be a mere 200 meters long, therefore the Quarter can't be 450 or whatever. The Aether can't be less than about 600 meters, therefore the Elysion can't be 828 meters. They may have intended them to be that size, but the final product dwarfs the intended size. (even Frontier is rife with animation errors. The first shot of Alto's Super Messiah rising on the elevator in episode 7, which I'm watching right now? There is no elevator with that shape on the overall 3D model of the Quarter...) Edit: Supporting image found: The flight deck is physically not thick enough to hold a hangar, and the actual hull is something along the lines of a hundred meters long and less than twenty wide - IF the ARMD-L is >200 meters. Edit2: Since I just noticed that I added a supporting image for an argument I'd deleted, let's just put the argument back in. I was using the toy as a reference because it was the only one I had at the time for what the underside of the ARMD-L looked like, since all the reviews I've seen say it's really close to the line art except for the ARMD-R being too short in Cruiser mode (IIRC). The toy showed that there was no possibility of a battroid-height rear hangar, because that's where the arm of the Quarter goes. The image above proves the toy accurate in this respect. Also, I figure I should mention that you can't see the elevators on the underside, meaning they have to retract solely into the deck. Which means the deck has to be thick enough to be a hangar, which means it has to be bigger than the 200 meters we're told it is, because the proportions of the deck thickness to ship length can be calculated... It would be so much easier on everyone if the ship designers actually measured the finished design instead of using their initial design targets when writing the specs.
  20. SebastianP
    First off, you missed one turret then, as there's one at the back of the crotch that's only been visible very briefly. Second, I'm not counting anything double, I'm just counting the Aether and Hemera, as well as the BASTER L/R, as part of the Elysion and using the combined turret count. But if you insist: Elysion: 3 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, 12 Twin Super Dimension Energy Cannon turrets Each BASTER-type: 5 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, four large apparent missile tubes, four large axial guns Each carrier: 4 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, 1 Macross Cannon. As a complete fighting unit, the ship has more guns than the Battle Frontier and Macross Quarter Movie version combined, and if I'm not completely mistaken in my math, it can actually fire at least as many guns of each type in any given direction as either of the other ships. And the Macross cannon may not have been fired at full power - either because it didn't have enough time to charge up to full capacity, or because the ship was firing it in an atmosphere. There's also the whole deal with how the Macross cannons of previous ships have been much more impressive at range than up close - I think the shot in episode 13 is one of the closest range Macross cannon shots we've gotten to date, excepting when SDF-1 fires its last shot during the rebuild arc. As for retractable guns - we don't have any official specs saying either one way or the other for the Elysion yet, so it might well have them too. There's certainly plenty of hatches that could be for Destroids, AA guns or missile launchers to pop out of. Not to mention all those tracers that fire out of nowhere in particular on every ship during battle. Also, I don't need to cite the doujin anymore, given that pictures of the DX toy proved that even the doujin was way too optimistic about the internal spaces of the ARMD-L. There's absolutely no way you could fit Rabbit 1 inside the actual ARMD-L - it's too narrow and too shallow in the hull for most of its length, and the place where the hangar would go is where the arm *does* go. I suspect Rabbit 1 and the Queadlunns are actually hangared within the arm, not the ARMD...
  21. SebastianP
    "Handful of turrets" I counted 13 of the twin "Converging Beam" turrets on the Elysion itself (3 on the torso, 5 on each spire); plus another four on each carrier. That's 21 turrets, or 42 barrels - more than on the Battle Frontier, the previous reigning champion of beam spam (12 twins and 4 triples, for a total of 36 barrels). *On top* of that, the Elysion carries twelve twin "Quarter Cannon" turrets, which are much beefier. The Quarter herself only carried ten of these. (and I'm still not convinced the Elysion's turrets aren't bigger versions.) Then there's the *two* Macross Cannons. Basically, the Elysion has more visible weapons than the Battle Frontier and the Quarter (movie version) *combined*. It is *stupendously* heavily armed. (As for lighter weapons, Frontier is supposed to have some guns on each leg but they're only really visible in the overall shots on M3 as small smudges, and not at all in the show due to angles not covering that part; Elysion on the other hand sports six twin turrets on each leg for apparent anti-mecha purposes.) As for the size of the Aether and Hemera, I'm still fairly certain they're bigger than a Guantanamo, and that the stated air wing of the Guantanamo requires TARDIS tech to actually fit inside the ship. The one for the Quarter *certainly* does, as the ship is physically not big enough to fit everything that the specs say it has. The Elysion's arms are the only carriers shown in the show to date that look like they can actually fit the airwing we see them operate...
  22. SebastianP
    Sure you can display the VF alone - *all* of the VF-25 kits come with a full set of parts for the plain version, and all the decals and stickers. (except for the VF-25F Tornado, which only has decals). It's just that you can't just pop the armor off and display it, you have to put the plain parts back on first. I'm pretty sure the VF-31 will work the same way. What I'm not sure about is how they're going to handle the separately sold Super parts, because the VF-25 super parts had the unit-specific bits molded in color for the Ozma and Alto releases, and white for the separate release, and you had to use stickers to color them. But the VF-25 super parts only had four unit-specific color parts to begin with, so it wasn't *totally* awful. The VF-31 has at least 11 parts that are unit-specific in color, and they're all huge, and some of them are really complicated. Covering some of these, like the back end of the boosters, up with stickers is going to be *really* difficult. So what are they going to do? Release individual super parts for each VF appropriately colored runners? Release a single pack with five dfferently colored runners so you can make the one you want? Make only a "Hayate" version? Or will they do what they really should have done with the VF-25s, and release both a super and a plain version of every VF individually? (Because what's the point of an RVF-25 without the super parts, it's literally only seen without them when Alto rescues Luca...)
  23. SebastianP
    If the Elysion was 400-500 meters long, it would be no bigger than the Quarter in ship mode, which does not compute. Plus, the Aether and Hemera would be smaller than Guantanamo-class carriers, which does not compute either. If we accept the 820-something meter height for the Elysion's attacker mode, then the ship mode basically has to be 600 to 700 meters long. And I never got the slightest hint that the colony ship was more than three times as long as the Elysion either way. Meh, we can argue this forever, we'll get official stats from a magazine one of these days.
  24. SebastianP
    I still think the Barette City dome is too small to have been one of those. Even at a minimum, the domes in the Macross 1 shot would have to be something along the lines of 3 km long, and that's without an Uraga at the front. The more I look at the Barette City dome, I get the feeling it's less than two kilometers from one end to the other, based on the known size of the Elysion. If the Elysion had been the size of an NMBC or bigger the way people thought from initial scaling (when someone scaled out the Aether and got 700-900 meters for it alone) - then I'd have bought the idea that the Ragna dome is the same size as the Macross 1 domes. But as it is, it's just way too tiny. I'm not saying the Ragna dome categorically can't have been part of a Macross colony fleet, just that it's not a ship type we've seen before unless it's been totally re-imagined.
  25. SebastianP
    I'm not sure the ship in episode 1 is an Island One-type vessel, whatever that is docked to the front doesn't really look like an NMBC. Hard to tell from the angle though. The ship in Episode 5's pre-opening sequence is definitely the same one we're always seeing on Ragna though (and now in space too) - it has the buildings sticking out of the dome.
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