JB0

Arcee has a beret. Consequently, I've only been able to give her stupid poses while going "I am ze french auto-boot!"

Viper mixed both approaches. It was an apparently-stock Viper that TRANSFORMED INTO a future-car through the miracle of badly-planned CG animation.

"Oy, there's a regular black car behind us, no worries! I mean heck, it doesn't even have a driver it couldn't POSSIBLY be a threat!" I happen to agree with you, though.

The later ones pick up. Honestly, I'm not too fond of the Rincewind books. I recommend Feet of Clay. That was one of my favorites. Reaper Man and Soul Music were good too.

If you don't know what you need to learn, then it will probably be very hard. You need to know a programming language, for starters. That actually covers a lot of ground, since you learn logic and math computer-style while learning to program. Most likely you'll learn C or C++, for the same reason everyone had an NES. It's number one. You'd need a sound/graphics API too, like Allegro or DirectX. Hypothetically, those 2 elements should cover it. They are, sadly, a lot more complex than they sound. Programming is not something you can just pick up and do. As far as tweaking the game mechanics and characteristics.... do you even know what those are, specifically? Or are you just planning on approximating it based on look and feel? Not that a best guess is a bad thing, since you aren't trying to make a straight Vasteel port.

Actually.... NEC had no clue what they were doing, hardware-wise. And on the US side, they had no idea what they were doing, period. Not marketing, distribution, or software licensing(though 2 and 3 were hurt by the Nintendo America chokehold of the era) There's about 3792 variants of the PCEngine/TurboGrafX hardware. Almost all of them are J-only. The Duo is are just another variants. With the (rather large) plus of an integrated Super CD-ROM expansion. Meaning it could play any CD game except for the Arcade Card titles(and the Rondo of Blood "mini-game"), and save HuCard and CD games with no additional hardware(a base PCEngine/TG16 couldn't save cartridge games without a peripheral, though the US and both Japanese CD-ROM expansions integrated said peripheral). It was the cleanest way to play (essentially) the entire TG16/PCEngine library. The original CD-ROM adapter required a "System Card" to boot. The initial System Card 1.0 was, to put it bluntly, a disaster. It was buggy and unusable, and nothing really supported it. Hence, System Card 2. Which also added more RAM, if I recall. This was followed by the "Super System Card 3.0" which added more RAM than 2.0. This was also integrated into the redesigned CD expansion and Duo, so you no longer needed a boot card if you had one of those. And then there was the Arcade Card. With, you guessed it, more RAM. There's also a redesigned Duo called the Duo-R. And a rebadged Duo-R called a Duo-RX. Because NEC MUST repackage everything to further market confusion! The only two real "steps up" were the SuperGrafX(J-only(despite the name) marginal upgrade and flop) and PC-FX(J-only completely new platform and flop). Anyways, now that I've nerded out.... I'm sure Vasteel could be modded. Depends how elaborate you want to go, though. A simple sprite swap would be easy, but not very impressive. Creating a genuinely new game would be far harder, and better served by writing a new game from scratch.

It seemed like a 1.5 situation to me. Sara is PARTIALLY separate from the computer. She WAS an independent entity, but she also clearly wasn't herself. They weren't totally merged, but there was a significant overlap. If that makes any sense. Either way, the birdman didn't seem capable of full operation without a human "pilot."

It's not really "siding with" Sara. She's an integral part of the system and it relies on her evaluation of the situation. Of course, she's not totally herself while her brain is mixed with the computer, and she wasn't in the best state of mind to start with. Ultimately, though, Sara is the final fail-safe. The system REQUIRES a human core, and that human can shut it down at any time for any reason. Granted the man-machine fusion makes them less likely to do so, but they still CAN.

Truth in advertising laws.

I think making the hard drive optional was the single dumbest decision MS made on the 360. The XBox got it so RIGHT(not just integrated save space for the first time since the Saturn died, but a cache/buffer area too!), and then they go and F it up for the 360! "Improved" is debatable. You can argue layout back and forth. I personally love the S layout and abhor the DualShock360 layout, especially with the "orphaned" start and select buttons(Unrelated: WHY does select still exist? WHY?!?!?!). What you CAN'T argue is that the 360 d-pad sucks horribly. Again, MS nailed it on the XBox S pad, so why'd they have to go back and screw it up?

A. It's not a loophole. B. They didn't, except in the untested case of "owning a PC is illegal because it can be used to break copy protection." I've actually read the DMCA. Every self-contradictory paragraph of it.

Same here. Except my "for fun" is "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack-roooooooooooss" like at the end of the title sequence.

But they come with SWAG, which seems to be fairly expensive. And the head lasers seem to get significant usage in fighter mode(which is where they're most conveniently mounted). No, the primary argument was that they added a buttload of maneuvering thrusters. The VF-1 was rather clearly a terrestrial fighter first and foremost. A little of column A, a little of column B. At the time the VF-1 was developed, humanity had VERY little experience in extra-planetary conflict. They were just guessing at what a space fighter needed. The zentraedi had mecha designed by a race with centuries of space warfare experience. They were, understandably, far better suited to the environment than the VF-1, and at the same time far less suited to terrestrial combat. An unfortunate side-effect of basing the plane off the VF-1? Maybe a compromise to ensure a simpler transformation(stick them on the sides of the legs and it seems they'd tend to jam into the wings with a VF-1-styled transformation, and cut into hardpoint space). Though it's worth noting that the VF-11's FAST packs are wider and squatter than the VF-1's, which reduces the effect. By using two smaller rocket bells isntead of one large one, they keep the thrust closer to the center of mass. And removing the "drip tray" under the nozzles lowers them further. Sot ehre's some subtle differences that reduce the effect. Really, the booster they used in MacPlus for the YF-21 missile dodging scene was a lot better design. One above, one below, end result is balanced thrust. Of course, the fact that it interfered with transformation made it pretty darn useless. It's an assumption made not on tech level, but on form factor. If the gunpod were a rail gun, it would HAVE to be self-powered, asimply because there's no good way to connect it to the fighter's electrical system in GERWALK and battroid mode. ... And now I get the idea of putting an induction system in the hand and grip. Which solves the issue nicely. *kicks self* Why, if bullets are so much better, do NO zentraedi mechs carry ballistic weapons? Electron beams, lasers, "impact cannons"(Whatever the hell those are, they aren't set up so ammo feeds are possible), but not a bullet in sight. Missiles are pretty useful secondaries. I was arguing was bullets VS lasers. Not lasers VS everything. Also: The Quel-Quallie has rapid-fire electron beams. But no one likes it. They still leave the bullets and missiles far slower than photonss. And the computer's ALREADY in the line ready to adjust things for the pilot. He just has to designate his target and fire. (See Macross Zero's anti-missile sequence) I assume there's a bit of adjustabilty in the guns even in fighter mode. I'd tend to believe it's because the VFs are jacks of all trades. Bullets are better in an atmosphere, lasers and particle beams are better in space. Slap both on the same fighter and call it a day. As technology advances that's becoming less the nature of the VF. The VF-4 was mankind's first attempt at purely energy weapons, and the 17 and 21/22 use them heavily. .... Hmmm... The special forces planes depend on energy weapons and the mainline fighters depend on gunpods(VF-4 excepted). That's an odd coincidence, though I don't think it really says anything. Also: Harder to make, but particle beams are pretty spiffy. Most of the velocity of a laser, but with the added benefit of mass. Especially once you step up from electrons to protons. And then on to atomic ions, and up the periodic table to heavier ones! Someday you'll be able to smack someone upside the head with a stream of relativistic uranium. And it will be glorious!

Touche, and touche again. Was quick and sloppy math. Though for the bullets I was assuming the numbers I found were muzzle velocity, which should reduce error. Why WOULDN'T engagements take place at a light-second? There's nothing getting in the way of visibility or anything, and we DO have weapons that are quite usable at those distances. Though the only space battle with a really goof scale reference was in Daedalus Attack. Saturn's rings are a usable measure, though they're relatively tiny(like .12 light-seconds from the innermost to outermost edges). Though.... that was a pretty tight fit. The Macross is almost as tall as Saturn's ring system. The final battle took place somewhere between the Earth and the Moon(since the moon was spared the orbital bombardment). No real sense of scale. And I know we aren't talking Voyager speeds. I was getting the real-world upper limit for ballistic VS photon comparison out of the way. Seconded on both counts. Especially since there's nothing to pollute in space. Nuclear weapons become viable options for a lot more operations. And while there's no atmosphere to help shock wave propagation, the EM radiation isn't hindered one bit by lack of atmosphere. *checks* Huh. I THOUGHT there was an ECM package listed in the VF-1 specs, but I don't see one. Inertia cares not for gravity. The advantages of the missile's smaller mass and lack of squishy operator still work in it's favor just as effectively.

The zentaedi DID have access to nukes, but they never had control over the production of them. The PC destroyed the weapon factory to deny the zentraedi that resource. Hence why they're a legendary weapon now. Recoil is the primary reason. Yes, there's workarounds. These workarounds also complicate the weapon and require significant maintenance to keep them functioning properly. It's not much of an issue in a terrestrial environment, but in space every tiny bit of recoil you absorb has to be countered by your reaction mass, which reduces your operating time. Economical is still highly debatable, given that electricity is so plentiful as toe be essentially free in a Valkyrie. The FAST packs also add... what, 20 verniers and a metric butt-ton of reaction mass? They do NOT add greater afterburner speed, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is they're rockets, not jety engines Top speed isn't even a valid concept in space. The main rockets on the FAST packs increase the Valk's "delta-v". More reaction mass = more velocity changes = longer operating times. They also increase it's acceleration, due to the ability to expend more reaction mass at once. The fact that the FAST pack was even DEVELOPED speaks to a deficiency in the original design. The VF-1 was under-armed, under-fueled, and under-thruster'ed for the situations it found itself in. And the fact that the main FAST pack engines are offfset from the fighter's center of mass accents their jury-rigged hack status. They can't thrust straight backwards, because it would send the fighter spinning in circles instead of straight. When they're in use part of the reaction mass is completely wasted just keeping the fighter level(which is likely why the design has the rocket bells angled upwards instead of pointed straight back). Had they been an intended design feature, a mounting point level with the plane's body would almost certainly have been provided for more efficient thrust. Even if they were railguns, they would likely operate on self-contained batteries. The zentraedi DO have high-rate-of-fire energy weapons. See the QRau's arm guns for an excellent example. Also note that lasers/beam guns/energy cannons can be fired in fighter mode, while SWAG is a battroid/GERWALK-only feature. A real laser will only lose power as a function of focus. Photons retain energy even after billions of years in space. (I'm ignoring doppler as Macross has avoided high-fraction-of-C travel, and has yet to show combat occuring during a fold, which operates under different laws of physics anyways). A perfectly-focused laser would be equally potent years after being fired, but that wouldn't be very useful except for bragging rights. Similarly, a kinetic energy weapon in space will lose power only due to the influences of gravity(solar wind being negligible in a combat scenario). You listed things as if trajectory correction was ONLY an issue for lasers. And a smart bullet would need a rocket engine, verniers, and reaction mass to correct course in space. Which would make it.... a missile with no warhead. How does speed not matter? You can see FAR farther in space than an atmosphere. You can, and WILL, have engagements where targets are separated by light-seconds. Good luck leading an enemy target with your bullets. Let's explore this situation a bit. Math, meet discussion. Discussion, meet math. The Voyager 2, the fastest object mankind has ever made, travels a mere 16 km/s. Light travels 299,792.458 km/s. Light is 18, 737 times faster than the fastest object ever made by man. Or to put it another way, it takes the Voyager over five hours to travel 1 light-second. A laser will travel that distance in one second. The fastest bullets now in existence travel MUCH slower. I'm seeing a pokey 1.5 km/s as the general top speed for bullets. This class includes the depleted uranium penetrators fired from the Abrams battle tank. It'd take one such shot 2 days to travel one light-second if it were fired in space. The GAU-8, for comparison, fires at 990 m/s. Not even a kilometer per second. Three and a half days per light second. If you are one light second away from a target, it will take DAYS to hit the target. A laser will do it in one second. Your enemy will also see your muzzle flash one second after you send your bullet on it's half-week journey. Evasive action is inevitable. You will miss. Conclusion: Guns are PATHETIC in space. Missiles don't fare much better. The fastest in existence is a recently-developed russian ICBM that can travel 3.35 km/s. That's about ten times the speed of sound. Of course, this is full-throttle until it runs out of gas, against gravity. One hand.... thrusting the whole way is NOT how you operate in space, as you burn all your reaction mass. On the other.... no gravity to fight in space. It's still an ICBM, and crazy large. You can get near that with fighter-launched missiles.... sort of. The un-produced AIM-47 Falcon missile, also known as the GAR-9, would have had a top speed of mach 4. BUT it was going to be mounted on the also un-produced F-12 interceptor. A pre-production sample fired from a YF-12 would get mach 4 ON TOP OF the YF-12's mach 3 cruise speed, resulting in a fighter-fired missile travelling at mach 7. The productoin AIM-54 Phoenix, which is based on the Falcon, can go mach 5. But there's no Blackbirds in service to drop them out of, much less ones with missile hardpoints(there's only even one YF-12 surviving). But this is all tangental, and mainly fueled by my Blackbid lust. Either way.... slow. And missiles can be shot down on the way in, especially when you have so much time to find and target them. Also tangental: if I were designing a space fighter, my missiles would be 2-stage weapons. There'd be a booster stage to get it moving towards the target(or launch it from a large gun). Once that first shot was used, the missile would float towards the target area quietly. The second-stage main engine would activate when the missile was much closer to the target, guiding it in for the kill. Really, at long range, missiles are more like homing mines than missiles. Now if you can mount a fold generator to your gun's muzzle, or piggybacked on your missiles, you've rendered the laser pointless. Otherwise... no. Hmmm.... I'd have to rewatch Macross Plus. Don't have Mac7 anymore. The fact that Kawamori makes a distinction between lasers and beam gun implies that lasers are intended to be, well, lasers. No. We've seen ECM units confuse missiles enough for the pilot to shake them. And almost invariably shoot them down before they reacquire him. More often, we've seen them just plain shoot down incoming missiles before they get close enough to detonate. Lacking soft squishy crushable innards, the huge mass associated with a life-support system, or the potential for blacking out, a missile can out-accelerate any manned vehicle fighter you can field. To actually just plain out-accelerate a missile would result in something similar to Macross Plus: Movie Edition's Ghost fight. You may win, but you're still dead.

A. It's laser. Actually LASER, which is an acronym meaning Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, but... that's too long. Lazer is only a valid spelling when it's followed by Tag. B. They ARE lasers. http://macross.anime.net/mecha/united_nati...yf21/index.html They may also be "beam guns" or "converging energy cannons" in some planes. But they are NEVER plasma cannons. C. Lasers DO have a physical form. Maybe you've heard of the photon before? There are REAL-WORLD cutting lasers in use NOW. The military has a FUNCTIONAL laser weapon prototype. I'd like to know how a beam with no physical form can interact so substantially with matter. D. Plasma is a HOT GAS. How do you make a beam of it? Fair enough. There's still far less room for evolution than in other weapon technologies. Lasers are in their infancy, and we have yet to create a viable energy weapon. And I remain convinced that a gun is a poor choice of prikary weapon for space combat once alternatives are available. But then, the VF-1 was a poor space fighter. Otherwise the FAST packs wouldn't have been made. Perhaps the VF-4 reached too far too fast, but the VF-17 is a viable example. Same size as the VF-1, lighter than the VF-1. Not the 1-shot super-beam Gamlin used as a finishing move, but the integrated chest lasers and arm cannons(and ye olde head turret, but everything has THAT). It's possible zentraedi armor is more resistant to energy weapons than traditional kinetic weapons. That's the only logical argument I can think of that justifies the continued use of projectile weapons as primary armament. On the VF-1 side of things, more head lasers would boost the effectiveness greatly. And we know that 4 such lasers can be mounted at apparently no performance loss. Though it's quite possible each laser's support hardware is large enough to severely restrict plausible mounting locations, given the head unit volume increases dramatically with laser count. Lacking the opportunity to place them on the arms would make them far less useful in GERWALK or battroid mode. ... I think I'm just rambling now. A. We don't really know the energy consumption of the lasers used in Macross, so making claims about the resources needed to fire one is a bit iffy. We DO know that a VF has an obscene power generation capacity, though. The VF-1 is claimed to have a near-infinite operational time. While I believe Focker to have been GREATLY exaggerating, the point is that it has power to spare. There IS a clear resource limit on the gunpod. 200 rounds on the GU-11, which has no provisions for reloading in battle. Presumably higher capacities on later gunpods, as well as the animated perk of field-changeable magazines. B. Beam weapons rapidly dissipate in atmosphere, but not space. C. Trajectory adjustment isn't possible for bullets either. And lasers have the advantage of reaching the target MUCH faster. In fact, the laser will always be the first weapon to hit a target thanks to the 1c speed limit imposed by relativity. If you NEED to correct trajectory with a laser, you're entirely too far away. It is NOT possible, as both the YF-19 and YF-21, as well as their production variants, mounted pin-point barriers without sacrificing conventional lasers, "converging energy cannons," and "beam guns"(depending on which specific plane you look at) There WAS an unknown interference between the first-gen barrier systems and the Macross' "super-dimension-energy cannon with beam polarizing converging system"(which I suspect to be the same technology as both beam guns and converging energy cannons, but which is rather obviously not a laser). That issue has apparently been ironed out in later years. Even if it hasn't been fixed, I highly doubt the barrier could interfere with laser operation, as it'd have to seriously screw up basic physics, which would be detrimental to the people being protected by it. "Activate the barrier!" "I've gone blind, captain!" "No you haven't the barrier just interferes with photon transmission. You'll be all right as soon as we cut it back off." "This is stupid, sir!" "I agree. Deactivate the barrier." So the zentreadi found beam weaponry more useful than shields? I find it more likely that the zentreadi mecha were simply designed before barrier systems were invented. Or at least before they figured out a way to get enough power in a reasonable size.

Hot Mom

Which I found utterly absurd given that people have been doing this for DECADES with VCRs. And before that there was the mute control, which at least reduced the commercials. I've found that what people believe copyright law to actually say is downright scary at times. I think the worst I've seen was that inserting a game console disk into a PC is a violation of the law because the copyright holder never SAID you could stick it in something other than a game console. Most of what I have to say already has been said somewhere. For the product to remain viable State-side, it needs to reach the US in a far more rapid fashion than it does. The whole entitlement thing has gotten WAY out of hand(I want it, so I can have it free! I'm a whiny spoiled brat! WAH!). There need to be more outlets for viewing a show without committing to a purchase. A few companies ahve made efforts at this, but not many, and not well-publicised. The whole entitlement thing has gotten WAY out of hand(You're gonna buy it even if it isn't any good! I'm a whiny spoiled brat! WAH!). And of course, one thing everyone's missed... merchandising. Bandai is one of the few companies to truly push merchandising hard, following on the heels of Gundam Wing's US popularity on Cartoon Network. The models and toys sold fairly well. And then they shot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly. They tried to follow Wing with the original Gundam. The 70s animation failed to appeal to the Wing fanbase. The show was pulled partway through it's first run. The toys littered shelves. They replaced Gundam with G Gundam. Which apparently did fairly well, fan griping aside. The merchandise lineup was screwed for 2 major reasons. 1. The action figure line had all the mechs in equal quantities. The popular 'bots sold out, and retailers were left with big piles of unmovable toys because no one wanted what was left. 2. In a VERY botched attempt to capitalize on the inexplicable demand of "battle damage" variants, they had an entire SECOND line of action figures called Gundam Battle Scarred. Which stores apparently ordered in similar quantities to the regular line. 3. Guindam Battle Scarred had the same character distribution issues as the regular line. So stores stated with both lines. As the "good" characters in the regular line sold out, they packed more bad characters and battle-damage on shelves to try and get some of the debris out of the way. As people realized there wasn't any more of what they wanted coming, they settled for battle-damaged versions of the good characters. And if they couldn't move the bad characters in pristine condition, you can imagine how much trouble they had with battle-damaged versions. Finally, they went with SD Gundam. From what I hear, it was NOT a well-liked show. And the SD Gundam toys littered shelves. And on top of this, they were bringing models over not just from the current running-in-the-US series, but from other serieses too. I saw frickin' SEED models selling alongside the SD Gundam toys. The Gundam name can't move mass-market merchandise by itself, and there was no SEED anime to promote it in the US(barring fansubs, which hit mainly the free-stuff entitlement crowd and the hardcore fan that was getting the original J package models from the comic store anyways). In the end, what COULD have been a cash cow for Bandai turned into a series of marketing fiascos, and Wing was a highly-profitable fluke. But the games did consistently all right, so I guess that's better than nothing.

Actually, that's EXACTLY what they did for the movie edition. Complete with hard subs.

IMO, the gunpod argument is stretching it a bit. A slug thrower is a slug thrower is a slug thrower. It's still a basic kinetic energy weapon. Power is a function of slug mass and velocity, and no advanced hyperalloys or exotic propellants will change that. More power = more recoil = less accuracy, and in extreme cases a new form of maneuvering thruster. The A-10's cannon, while devastating to tanks, ALSO generates enough recoil to totally negate half of the plane's total thrust. AND has to be mounted so that the firing barrel is aligned with the plane's centerline so as not to throw the aim off when it fires. Even with friction and aerodynamic control surfaces recoil is a HUGE issue. Throw everything in space and tack it onto an impossibly light vehicle, and the situation gets far worse. But working in space isn't overtech. There's a lot of airtight conventional cartridges that would work in space. Speaking of Overtech.... the A-10's GAU-8 has a much higher rate of fire than the VF-1's GU-11. Of course, if the GU-11 is loaded with explosive shells, they could have more yield(the GAU-8 is loaded with a "cocktail" of DU-tipped incendiary rounds and explosives). But 200 rounds isn't a lot any way you slice it(which lends weight to the argument that the head laser was intended to be a primary weapon). That's what bothers me most about the sequels, though. Energy weapons are long since perfected(Hell, the VF-4 was supposed to have integrated beam cannons as it's primary weapon), and there's simply no good reason that I can see for them to be carrying a slug thrower as the standard-issue primary weapon on the VF-19.

SWAG has the benefit of explaining durability variances between battroid and fighter, in that it's only active in battroid mode, allegedly because it uses surplus energy(though it falls apart when you consider the flying battroids in Zero use MORE energy than flying fighters). It also explains why a Valk can run around on it's exhaust ducts without damaging them excessively. Not necessarily. SWAG could be akin to Trek's "structural integrity field." Rather than preventing a hit entirely, as Macross barrier technologies do, it strengthens the material being acted upon, making it more durable. And given in ten years they managed to engineer transforming jetplanes, and then invent the pinpoint and omnidirectional barrier systems(not reverse-engineer, as barrier technology was completely unfamiliar to the zentradi)... But honestly, I thought I remembered the SWAG concept being in the pre-Zero material too.

That got a Dreamcast port back in 01, with upgraded graphics and a metric buttload of extra features. I strongly recommend it. It's supposed to be VERY similar to the Giga Wing series. Which I've failed to play as of yet. For some reason everyone talks about the Giga Wings, but no one ever mentions Mars Matrix.

"I know now why you cry... but it is something I can never do."

Guy doesn't get a second chance either? Lame.

1/8 scale! THAT'S THE ONE I WANTED AS A KID! Now I know why I remembered seeing an impossibly big one of those on the shelves. It'd be almost a foot tall, and I was probably only about 3 feet myself at the time. ... Which makes it all the more scary that I VIVIDLY remember seeing it and asking for "the big blue Robotech fighter" as a Christmas gift. Needless to say, no one could find it with THAT as a description. I even remember the blue Alpha I wound up with instead... and the accursed metallic pile of hinges holding the arm on that kept me from transforming it myself without popping the arms off. Drove me mad having to ask mom to change it for me every time.