JB0

I HATE inertial damping, precisely BECAUSE it's the easy way out. It's an epidemic excuse that isn't even remotely plausable and removes consideration for the design to do anything other than look good. And inertia damping automatically means you aren't being overly technical. It's the standard Trek solution to a problem: throw technobabble at it. I assume it doesn't exist until it's stated to exist. As of right now, it's not stated to exist in Macross(much to Guld's disappointment, as it would've saved his life). And that people can operate normally in it at all times. If it didn't have artificial gravity, the bridge crew would've drifted away when they defolded into deep space. There's also the catapults on the Prometheus. And combat on the ship's "skin". Destroids could have magnetic feet, but EVERYTHING sticks when it lands. I get the impression that the decks are always parallel to the ground when it lands. Artificial gravity is easy if you're stationary. It gets a lot more complicated if you're moving. You could put gravity generators on the walls in line with the thrust axis, so you could create a counter-pull. But that's complicated. And messy if something malfunctions. Ignoring stress placed on the ship by the thrusters, sure. If the attacker mounting is less sturdy than the cruiser mounting, there could be big problems. ... Or maybe I'm looking at this wrong... Macross City could be built along a different axis than the bridge. If they built it across the thrust axis originally, as would make sense for space travel... then when it's swung around for the transformation, it winds up parallel to the main thrust axis. Makes landing a pain in the rear, though. Same issues I was describing for thrust earlier. Only now instead of your thrust axis plus gravity axis, you're dealing with your gravity axis plus the planet's gravity axis. Antigravs? Certainly, their effectiveness will deminish as you get farther away from Earth, but that also decreases the amount of real thrust you need. Get far enough away that your secondary thrusters can send you flying, and you're good to go.

True... the bunnies WERE all hot and bothered by their captain. The original Macross had a much faster-charging cannon, by all appearances. The Battle 7 also had issues with capital-ship engagements. I accept dreamweaver's justification until such time as I feel compelled to redownload and rewatch Macross 7. Which probably won't be for a long time. Right. Well, sort of. Up and down DO exist once you A. fire up some gravity generators, or B. start accelerating. Once you light the engines, they start pushing everything directly attached to them forward. Everything INSIDE the ship, in a 0G environment, will "fall" towards the engines due to inertia. If you accelerate at 1G, you can walk on the floors just like at home. Or the walls, depending on how you look at it. Stop accelerating, and you start floating again. Slow down, and you fall towards the roof, making really big rooms a Bad Idea. If you add gravity generators, things get more complicated. As I understand things, the SDF-1 is laid out with floors parallel to the thrust axis in both modes(we know for a FACT that the bridge is. And we know that the bulk of Megaroad and modern-era colony ships are laid out in this manner, due to the massive windows domes making everything visible from outside). So the gravity generators are defining down. And when the ship accelerates, it creates a pull due to inertia in a SIDEWAYS direction, relative to the artificial gravity. So apparent gravity becomes a diagonal direction, unless you activate some other system to "correct" for inertia or keep your acceleration low to minimize the effect it has on the passengers. It's really a lousy way to design a spaceship, honestly. But it's the standard layout for TV/movie ships. There's also the possibility of structural stress in attacker mode. The "legs" don't look like they're attached as securely in attacker mode. There may be excessive stress on the "hips" that prevents using the main engines in that configuration.

! My Primus will have something to do other than play with his Micromaster pets!

Didn't one of the ACE games do that?

The problem with the New Macross not being the big guns is... Battle 7 is the ship that stepped up when they needed the big guns. They didn't have a dedicated gunship to blast the super-bulldog, they had to rely on Fire Bomber to immobolize it while the Battle 7 charged up. They DID hint at that, with comments by the zentradi of how travelling in attacker mode limited their speed(acceleration actually, I assume). And it IS shown using secondary thrusters on it's back to accelerate through space instead of it's primary "leg" engines. So they may've gone with it, and just decided that the reduced travel time wasn't worth the constant disruption of civilian life. Especially since it makes sense from both a travel perspective AND a passenger comfort perspective to use the leg engines, so thrust is oriented perpendicular to the floor instead of parallel to it. Keeps down being down instead of off at an angle(unless they used an elaborate set of secondary gravity generators, or *shudder* INERTIAL DAMPERS to counteract the effects of thrust). I'm referring mainly to the absurd amount of time it takes to charge and fire it's main cannon. All the power in the world doesn't mean a thing if you can't hit a target.

They shoulda got Micheal Bay to direct. He'd make sure there was a suitably badass Gort.

Of course, the Quarter's presumed lack of power(an assumption I share) is somewhat offset by the (rather absurd) degree of agility it exhibits. I think it could fly rings around ships the original Macross would plow right into(probably while someone shouted "Daedalus ATTACK!", but still...) The Battle 7 doesn't really have an excuse. It's slow, underarmed, and underpowered. Which is a lousy combination. That was my biggest disappointment with Macross 7. The New Macross class was a massive letdown.

Well, right now the only other SA ship they've found was the one in the factory satellite episode. And they wisely chose not to stop and investigate it since the Supervision Army is well-known for booby-trapping ships. You know, like the Macross was. It could be rather dangerous to run around reclaiming SA vessels. That and... honestly, the Macross seemed a lot more useful than the Battle 7. HOW long did it take to charge the Battle 7's "rifle"? The lag after you decide to fire is a serious tactical hindrance. The original Macross can fire it's cannon almost on a moment's notice.

I don't know that there's ever been a clearly-defined Q-Rau cockpit. Much to my dismay.

Actually, I think he said it looked too much like A hero mech, not that it looked too much like the VF-25. Meanwhile, back in the old days, when we had to walk uphill both ways to watch anime... everyone flew the same QBerting plane, just with a different head and paint job. Hero mech is a silly Gundam ideal, and I'm sad to see it invading Macross.

That's not a very Optimus thing to say. Wait, wrong Matrix.

If I recall, the interviews on ye olde Animeigo DVDs said the original Macross had episodes finish shooting pretty much right before they were scheduled to air. And of course, we know they scrapped a season, rewrote the entire show to abbreviate the main plot arc, then added a season and had to write the post-war arc and some "filler" episodes to pad the episode count back out. Granted the industry runs a bit differently now, but... I suspect it's not THAT different. They just finish rendering instead of shooting cels.

They may start embracing the downloadable game model. It offers them a lower target than the disk games, which've become a bit over-the-top in terms of development requirements. For now... PSP, DS, PS2, Wii. The lower hardware specs set the demands lower, meaning the games can be developed relatively cheaply.

Why would they put fold drives in a ship explicitly assigned to defend EARTH? When they were building massive colony fleets where any fold drives produced would be more useful? There were pretty clear reasons to refit the poor thing. Like the fact that there was a big chunk ripped out of it. And how is multiple Macrosses convoluted? Humanity had an effective, war-tested warship. They needed warships to escort their colony ships. It's VERY simple logic. Yes, I know... there's no documentation that more than 1 was built. But there's no documentation that the original fold drives were ever replaced either. And there IS documentation that the Macross is STILL ON EARTH. The best argument against there being other Macrosses is actually the fact that the design is a lot bigger than anyone but full-scale zentradi needed. Not that there's no documented builds. If they built a series to spec with the original post-refit, it's got a LOT of empty space that they aren't using, and excess mass. It's a bigger target and harder to move, but there's no gain. And they learned in Space War 1 that a dual-purpose combat/civilian ship sucks for the civilians(according tot he Compendium, they lost 18,000 civilians out of 58,000 during SW1). No prior documentation is a weak argument. I seem to recall it being used to prove that the VF-1 had to appear in Macross Zero, since it was going to be a prequel and there weren't any other variable fighters in that time frame. I think we all know how THAT turned out. Right now, the existing canon states that Alto and Ranka did not see what they saw. There's no evidence to support ANY other stance on the issue. The one that best fits what we know(alien intervention, Alto and Ranka see Macross, the only Macross is on Earth), is that they're both experiencing an alien-induced hallucination. Which, if it happens that way, most likely means history lesson time. If it's the Macross, they need a hell of a story to get it there. If it's a real ship, but not the Macross... it takes a smaller story. You forgot the Atari VS Intellivision. And SNES VS Genesis, Apple 2 VS IBM PC, Commodore 64 VS Atari 800, VHS VS Betamax, etc. People will argue over anything, no matter what. The internet's just made it easier to be an apeface about it, since no one's gonna punch you in the face. YES!

All of them bearing the same likeness would be expected, if there's more. They're all based on the same plans(docking the ARMDs to the side was part of the original plans, and was explicitly mentioned in the first episode of the original series). They're all Macross-class vessels, and certainly the Space War 1 vessel will be, by far, the most famous(probably the most famous vessel of any kind, from a human perspective). And with lost vessels being covered up by the government, the characters wouldn't be EXPECTING to find a wrecked Macross-class vessel. If you found a semi truck that turned into a giant alien robot(and didn't believe yourself to be in serious need of medication), would you think it was Staks? Menasor? Or Optimus Prime? And Global was directly responsible for the colonization program. Of COURSE it's related to him. Not that episode titles are entirely trustworthy... "Basara Dies!" springs to mind. Or Frontier's "Miss Macross" and "Bye-bye Sheryl." Both were intentionally misleading(the second was an outright lie). And the preview for "Legend of Zero" implied we were gonna get elaboration on the events of Macross Zero. How can the simplest solution be that this is the Macross when it's been clearly shown to be on Earth, the centerpiece of a galaxy-spanning army, and lacking in fold drives(there's no indication that they were ever replaced)? It would be simpler to send ANY other ship out than the Macross. And there's a documented willingness to divert ships from a colony fleet for emergency operations, which launching the Macross back into deep space would unquestionably be. I'm really not sure why I'm debating the point, other than a tendancy to play devil's advocate. Aside from that it's fold drives were lost in space, and there's no canon mention of them ever being replaced? Because if they do it wrong, they've tainted one of my favorite spaceships. The ending of Zero is a bad example of an explanation. But... I don't want pedestrian and mundane. I just want to not see "End of the Circle" in Real Macross. The storytelling requirements for it to be THE Macross are immensely larger than if it's not. If it is the Macross, and they don't handle it in an absolutely masterful way, they've burned most, if not all, of goodwill the series has earned to date for a poorly-executed fanwank. It's also worth noting that Macross was the show to break free of the final shackles of super robot design elements. The mechs are not one-of-a-kind, infused with magical energies, blessed by the gods, or anything like that. They're just machines, and it's the PEOPLE that make them special. For all the credit Gundam gets for starting the change, it ultimately failed to break away. They had monster-of-the-week syndrome through the entire series, and the major characters still drive one-off prototypes and exotic customs to this day. Macross 7 was a huge backslide in that regard(Gundam Valks!). As was Macross 2, though it at least has an excuse. Zero... well, the MACHINES weren't magical. And while they WERE prototypes, they were a LOT of prototypes(the luckless cannon-fodder flew the same protos as our hero). So it really gets an exemption on the proto status because it's still a level playing field. Does a circus performer EXPECT to fall to his death? No. Does he prefer to work with a net anyways? You bet. Regardless of how you feel about Macross 7, the (embarassing) performance of the Battle 7 in no way reflected on the original ship from younger days. Hooray for a safety net. I haven't seen anything to indicate an arc involving the Macross has been plotted out far ahead of time. There's clearly a plan with the Vajra, but that's different. And... Several story threads were thrown out of the original Macross to shorten it. Then some of them were reimplemented in a different manner to lengthen it again. Scenes were dropped from Macross DYRL because it was running behind. Crazed nonsense was thrown into Macross Plus to extend a movie script into a 4-episode OVA. Macross 7 goes nowhere fast for a long time due to the need to idle while marketing pimps the music. Macross 2 was cut short due to poor sales. Zero is, to date, the ONLY Macross animation that has made it out unmolested(or at least, the only one I don't know of any molestation to). See, that's part of the problem. I see absolutely no LOGICAL way to get the Macross from point A to point B. As far as relevancy goes... there's no story that can't be told with another ship just as easily, unless it's specifically a Space War 1 story. And that won't get the Macross to Gallia 4.

Yes. And all 11 post on this board. Now Vanessa... How does she only have 3?

As Radd noted, that's not how Occam's Razor works. It makes no claims to existence or lack thereof. It just says the simplest answer is the right one. The simplest solution IS, in fact, that there's more than one ship of the class. It's not as fun, and you don't get to fanwank near as hard, but it's the simplest answer. It removes the need to get the Macross off Earth, where it has long been established as residing, specifically in a self-named lake in Alaska, surrounded by a similarly-named city. Moving it would be especially difficult as it's a major historical and cultural touchstone, as well as UN Spacey headquarters. People would NOTICE if it just up and left one day, and the mountains of paperwork would most likely insure that it couldn't be moved faster than protesters could get in gear anyways. And they sure as hell wouldn't send such a significant vessel out on a mission where they risked losing it without a VERY good reason. So that rapidly becomes a VERY complex undertaking. And there's nothing in continuity clearly preventing the existence of a second Macross-class. You can cite a lack of documented Macross clones, but it still crashes against the brick wall of "The Macross is in Alaska." We've SEEN the Macross is still on Earth in the middle of Macross City. This isn't secondary reference materials, backstory, or obscure trivia. This is front and center, throw in a DVD and watch it main product. That's the ultimate canon, right there. I'm not calling it either way until I watch the next episode, because to put it bluntly I don't see ANY plausible conclusion that's reachable with the currently-known facts. The only existing SDF is on Earth. There CAN'T be anything on Gallia-4 unless part of the above sentence is incorrect. Which part is up for debate. If it IS the Macross, they better have a DAMN good story to get it there. Which is why I'm HOPING it isn't the Macross. A random colony fleet accident won't be NEAR as bothersome to me as "Oh, yeah... we yanked the title mech out of a lake, threw it across the galaxy, smashed it up good, and then lost it on some hick planet no one's heard of. No real reason, it just seemed like a good idea at the time."

That's not really so strange. Console and handheld games are typically finicky beasts, being built around the assumption of a constant platform(I'm actually shocked that we haven't seen games breaking left and right from OS updates) . There's several instances on the Saturn and one on the N64 where installing more RAM would render game unplayable, just because they didn't know what to do. Even worse, in the Saturn's case, some games designed for the 1MB RAM cart will choke if you use the 4MB RAM cart, even though the 4MB cart is supposed to be compatible with 1MB games. In this case, I would bet that ANY caching behavior is supplied by the games, not the firmware. Especially given the limited RAM of the PSP. It allows for more intelligent caching behavior, as well as pre-loading. So if the game doesn't know about the extra RAM... Hell, I wouldn't be surprised to see the "new" PSP actively disabling the new RAM until the game checked it.

*laughs* Arrrrgh... I'm gonna have to rewatch that again instead of doing something productive.. But.... Last Starfighter VS Macross Frontier would be so KEWL!!!!111111 *rubs head* Yes. Such absolute 100% certainty. I hope EVERYONE'S wrong, and it's just a mirage. Or a drug-induced hallucination. ... Actually, it'd be nice to see the Magic bicycle get some more air time. I bet Alto could shoot something down in it.

I still can't believe Gamlin got Millia's Valk blown up. He should be executed for that.

They actually DID recognize Sasami! I love Magical Project S. And it's kinda sad when a magical girl spoof is more believable than the actual thing. Anyways, at this point it's really impossible to say what's going on one way or the other. Summary of the situation as it stands now. Fact: There's only one Classic Macross. Fact: It's on Earth. Speculation: The Macross is NOT on Earth and has either vanished since Plus or was replaced by a decoy some time before Plus. Speculation: There's lots of Classic Macrosses, and Alto and Ranka are mistaken in calling this the "real" one, probably just due to it's iconic status. Speculation: They've fallen into the past and this is the original Macross on Earth after SW1. Speculation: It's THE Macross. But one that was battling evil in another dimension. Possibly one that's full of Gunstars instead of Valkyries. This would be awesome beyond words. I now DEMAND Frontier do this. Death blossoms ahoy! Speculation: It's the SDF-2 that was(n't) in Robotech. Haromony Gold DOES own everything Macross-related, after all. Speculation: Whatever your pet theory is. It's just as likely for about a week.

The only problem is... how exactly do you do a bait and switch on that scale without anyone noticing?

I'm confused... why are we having a lengthy discussion about what is CLEARLY the Alus?

I think Macross would beat most Gundams, because Max is clearly a newtype. The real question is what happens when he goes up against Amuro or Char.

No vending machine? BLASPHEMY! Reguld, Glaug... better be a QRau. *looks at pics* And there is. A Phalanx too! ... Why do I love the Phalanx? I must have this game. If only for the hilarity of a Phalanx jumpkicking people.