Lynx7725

Instead of producing toys of toys.. I honestly wish they would work towards creating an actual-transforming (i.e. with motorized transformation) version of OP. I mean, actuators are fairly small nowadays and electronics are getting smaller by the day, so it's not unreasonable to do something like that for a 1/24 or 1/16 OP..

Resistance is futile. Your food would be assimilated.

The J? Probably, but I'll wait for it to come out, see any problems with it, then snag it a month later at a discount. At least the MPCs are consistent in this aspect.. their prices always drop somewhat drastically after initial release.

Yer dirty! So by implication you mean she isn't wearing panties at all? ahahaha.. so says the guy who has "Bend over!" in his sig. Not to mention the avatar. If we really want to talk about innuendoes, even the title of this thread is suspect.

Not Mahoro (though appreciated. ) We want to see the green pan... uhm.. haired one!

Hmm. maybe this isn't the right place to discuss this, but I'm starting to become very curious about the strategic and tactical application of naval assets in your realm. Seems like there is no real need for defensive mobile assets (other than small crafts), since small crafts like your Untamed has enough firepower to kill installations (!) and enough range to threaten homeworlds (!!). Depending on your technology (the concept, not the actual implementations) and various other factors, the ways of force projections would be quite interesting to discuss.

Vostok my man...

Heh, if Vostok7, worshipper of all things Milia (or anything with green hair for that matters) complains that a figure of Milia is: You know something is definitely wrong with the figure.

You're right, it annoys me.. because after all this time, it's STILL missing an arm and a leg.

Yeah, I guess.. but by and large the pacing for BGC is pretty good, maybe that's why I liked it. Or maybe that despite cramming a lot of action and stuff into an episode, we do see character development in the series. Sorta. BGCrash, well.. yeah, I caught episode two, and it was.. hmm. campy, I guess. Maybe not the right word, but just not quite BGC-ish. One bad thing about BGC was that it ended up being a arms-race, and that sort of broke the series.. I mean, after the Knight Sabers gotten satelite-busting equipment, it gets sort of unbelievable and the producers kept getting forced to come up with even bigger monsters.

The original BGC had an interesting concept for its time.. instead of the whole show geared towards a definite ending, it has effectively standalone episodes which can be viewed separately. No story arc to follow through, etc. etc., at least for the front few episodes. You can view it as a sort of Knight Saber Ops report, where you pull random missions for viewing. I sort of like this kind of format, maybe that's why I like Witch Hunter Robin too. When BGC tried to go back to the traditional story arc (the Adama story arc, for example, in Crash), it breaks down fairly badly. It's not that BGC can't have a story arc (BGC2040 shows that it can), it's just that the original BGC wasn't written with that in mind.

Hmm. Needs work. EDIT: The valks are fairly nice though.

*Muses* Methinks that it might be better off for Toynami to simply produce the parts, pack them in a nice box, and then market the set as an advanced kit for modellers to put together. Do that, cut the pricing down to say, $40~$50.. lower, probably, especially if you dump the "limited edition" BS, and the Alpha will probably take off. A lot of us here have modelling experience and have little or no fear of putting together/ taking apart "toys".. so it's not a bigger for us to assemble an Alpha (and bypassing the wonky PRC assembly lines). Heck, with half-way decent instructions we probably would do better than the factory! Of course we still have the material problem, but the design is okay to good, it's mainly the assembly issues that are killing the Alpha.

You gotta be kidding. Konya wa Hurricane is still one of my favourite rock songs, and Mad Machine is a personal favourite too. Try picking up the Japanese mp3s for them, not the english versions (if that's what you heard). As for the chara designs, got to remember that these are done in the 80s, so some of the designs follow what is fashionable then. EDIT: hehehe. Post 333 -> halfway to a devil.

I never intended to say either Captain America or Felix "has an upper hand". I think both of them are right about the issue here, just that each is contributing his own experiences to the discussion here. I personally work in IT Quality Management, and I can honestly tell you most upper management view QC measures as a necessary evil... something they don't want to spend effort on, yet is forced to do due to company policy. Of course, politically they smile and wave and cheer whenever a QC initiative kicks off... Given what Felix said, it's highly unlikely a Chinese manufacturer taking on this job as a part-time filler will be willing to expend much on QC measures, and probably will negotiate harshly with Toynami to reduce these as low as possible. The sad part about these kind of outsourcing is that the manufacturer simply takes no pride in the work they do; since they change the products they manufacture in a regular fashion, and also in this case they are unlikely they will ever get to buy a MPC Alpha for their children, it is reduced to a matter of numbers. As in, number of dollars earned per unit produced, and number of units produced. No need to involve pride or work ethnics here. I'm starting to ramble about the evils I see in my work, so I better stop. Back to the issue on hand. As a consumer, I don't really think too much of the Alpha at this point in time. To me, my understanding of the situation points to a few areas which I feel are weak: 1. The charging of such a high price for what is in effect a low-to-mid quality product. This reeks of pure commercial greed on either HG or Toynami's part, which is stupid considering that you can rely on volume rather than pricing. (Of course I cannot substantiate this...) 2. It also implies that Toynami may not have sufficient contacts in China to get a good factory, or have good negotiators that can push through a decent contract. Given that they already produced a significant quantity of MPC, this implies they are actually swapping production facilities and may not have bothered to build up a proper relationships with their vendors.. which from experience, is a darn stupid way of doing things. I dunno, all told it seems that Toynami either made some policies and didn't bothered to review according to the situation, or is suckered into a contract that is unfavourable to them -- and end up passing the pain on to the consumer.

I tend to agree with Captain America. I just like to point out two things which I think has to be considered. First, Toynami has elected to go for a "limited" production run, which basically means the blue Alpha will be the blue-headed stepchild with QC problems, but subsequent Alphas are likely to be much better.. Tough luck for the folks who liked only the blue Alpha. Second, and perhaps more related, is that the labour pool is not the most talented in the world (you don't need to be really), and that it churns fairly quickly if what Felix said was true. This means while the production foreman might build up the necessary knowledge to work out some of the bugs in parts production, the assembly line workers may simply not be around long enough to learn to avoid assembly mistakes. This implies that the design may get better, but the odds of getting a badly assembled Alpha in later batches are, in the best case, merely decreased.

Opps! I was under the mistaken impression that a CVN got by with 2000 people; if that is the case 6000 for a ship this size is reasonable (if a bit low..). That small crafts will be reduced to the size of Hornets is not outside the realm of possibilities, I think, so it's fairly reasonable. Still, the number of small crafts is still stretching my imagination a bit. I guess it is possible to fit so many into the space, I'm just not sure whether there's room for a maintenance team to work on any one given craft, or have enough room to do the mad scramble of bombing/ ammoing up in a combat situation. In addition to this, as there is a community/ social aspect to things, there has to be some social/ communal space too. Depending on how big the civilian population is on the ship, this could eat into valuable space on the ship itself. Since this ship is designed to be part of a battlegroup (but yet somewhat self-sufficient), then some design considerations can be lessened (such as spare parts, expendables, etc.). The ship just need to maintain a sufficient stock for say, 3 months, rather than having huge stores for long-haul passages.

500+ crafts and 6000 staff? Dude, where am I going to put the toilet rolls for the people, much less the spare parts for the vehicles? Had the design been a more "conventional" launch and recovery bay type, I think the size might have been able to take the numbers you quoted.. but because of the pass-through bays (which I presume to mean and end-to-end passage through the ship), the amount of space is reduced. In combat situations, you would need the "flight deck" cleared so that you can conduct flight ops right? So you would need to park the spacecrafts somewhere else.. I guess you can make use of the ceiling above the flight deck and rack them there, but that's a hazard too. One thing though, that long flight deck is a great place to play soccer on. Do you have a shot of your typical attack craft (say, a BSC) in scale next to it? That'll really tell us whether the number of attack crafts you desire to carry would really be feasible. I'm guessing that assuming each craft is on average twice the size of an F-14 (reasonable for a spacecraft, I think, and assuming attack crafts are small, one/ two crew affairs), the current size might be enough to take on 300 spacecraft, but it would be very cramp and a strictly military ship.. hard to guesstimate the number of crew on board there. As for the design, I think it looks good, just that the bow opening still looks strange to me. I'm thinking that the spikes there can be the grappler mechanism to catapult the attack crafts out. BTW, what's the fleet tactics governing the use of this ship? Does this work in fleet engagements or it's supposed to be independent? That makes a big difference in terms of storage/ fuel/ expendables capacity planning, etc. etc. which would influence ship designs.

More or less the same idea I had but you expressed it better.. I'm not fully supportive though, because it becomes a large target and potential kill zone for the attack crafts taking off, and because it's an overdone concept in sci-fi. BTW, how are the attack crafts supposed to launch? Catapult/ mass drivers or under their own power? Uhm. This is where I get a bit skeptical. Just how many attack crafts is this ship supposed to carry? For now, I assume (based on your design requiring 3 launch areas) it's carrying in the vicinity of about 150 attack crafts (roughly doubling a CVN's compliment). Factoring that space attack crafts have to be more comprehensive and probably bulkier, factoring weapons are likely to be bulkier (for more range and damage needed), factoring additional living quarters and facilities needed in space.. I think the ship has to be maybe doubled in size.

Uhm. I am not a true-blue Transfan nor in any way related to the pharmaceutical industry.. I just randomly poked at choices I didn't know and took obvious choices. I don't think this is a good test.. not really fun either.

Oh yes you do. Wings provide: 1. ideal placement points for verniers (due to moments around the CG) 2. a place to stick additional ordnance so that accidental detonation don't harm to hull 3. a place to stick additional sensors so that (with a sufficiently long wingspan) they can be used to provide triangulation and ranging information with accuracy 4. a place to stick comms gear so that you can have good coverage (depending on whether you can stick a omni-directional comms gear in a position where 360 degree sphere coverage is possible). Etc. etc. I didn't say anything about needing aerodynamic wings though. I have some comments on the design, but it's 3am here, I need to work tomorrow.. so I'll save it for tomorrow.

And what law do you intent to prosecute Toynami under? I'm not a lawyer, but there's not much ground to sue. False representation? For the MPC Veritech, maybe, but for the Alpha, I don't quite think there is sufficient grounds. The pricing was announced early, the scale was made known early, the die-cast content was hefty, it's just shoddy worksmanship. And unless the shoddy worksmanship result in death or disability, it's not likely to hold up as a case. Coupled with Toynami's willingness to exchange damaged Alphas for (AFAIK) brand new Alphas, Toynami may be able to walk away with a praise for good customer service (but lousy design/ QC). Toynami ain't above the law, yes, but it hadn't broken any as far as I know.

My guess is that the F2 probably suffered the same fate to some extent. Because you can't have a country taken seriously without some forms of defense -- a totally pacificistic nation will get quickly swallowed up by its neighbours, if for nothing else than for the land. The military purchases definitely will generate noise especially from its neighbours, and that's pretty much why the purchases tend to be low key and touted as a defensive nature. People will make noise when you purchase a F2 coastal defense fighter, but it would be a heck of a lot less noise than if you purchase, say, a Bombcat.

That's akin to asking if the Americans were happy with their F-14 why would they pull the plug in the first place.... Many many factors. I didn't know the F2s were air-refuelable? I would guess they would be but have parts missing (to avoid being accused of being militaristic..). Nothing seriously against the F-35.. Dodo is too harsh a name for that bird, particularly since it hadn't had a chance to show what it can do. I'll reserve Dodo for the A/F-18 Super Bug..

Don't forget as of today, Japan's constitution does not allow the country to engage in offensive operations. A fighter-bomber with air-to-air refuelling capabilities are by nature offensive in nature.. for defense purposes you don't really need the extended range. It's only when you need to strike some target deep in enemy territory that you may need the air-to-air refuelling. Yes, political; but you have to understand that Japan is sitting off the shores of two neighbours who have no reason to like Japan very much: China and North Korean. North Korean in particular has a habit of responding to militaristic gestures with similar if not even more militaristic gestures.