JB0

Yeah, that IS worded pretty badly. Sorry. The barrier systems used electrical power from the Macross' "heat-pile" generator to manipulate the energy left over from where the fold generators used to be to create the barrier. The fold generator presumably ran on electricity, which was used to A. alter spacetime around the vessel, or B. punch through to another dimension(AKA hyperspace). The fold effects would seem to imply the latter. There's nothing to imply any sort of exotic energy is needed to operate the fold generators. In-continuity, I'm not sure why it was dubbed the Super Dimension Fortress. Maybe because it COULD fold, or maybe just because it was really huge(large dimensions). Of course, out of continuity, it was intended to be Super Space Fortress, and was engrish'ed. That would imply that projectiles went through the shield unimpeded. Not at all. It absorbed directed energy weapons and clearly deflected kinetic or projectile weaponry. I don't recall any deflected projectile weapons. What makes a chemical explosion diffrent than a nuclear explosion or a directed energy attack, aside from scale? It should absorb the same portion of any given energy impact. Or did you mean it would absorb the same portion of energy from a chemical blast, but since the yield is so much smaller it wouldn't be as signifigant? That would make a lot of sense, actually. The PPB punch was in the Macross Plus OVA, though. That is what the SD organs were for as well as what powers the fold system. Powered everything. The fold system was one of many things under "energy requirements." Like I said, they were interesting mainly as a massive boost in power over the existing "heat-pile" generators, as far as the protoculture were concerned. From a human point of view, they're interesting as a feat of bioengineering that looks more like magic than science. Yup. Was a strong implication there, IMO. The parallels were just too striking.

I guess I have to rewatch things again.

Wait, so Sony's system is fundamentally crippled and outperformed by a competing system that's out now? Where have I seen this before?

Yeah. MSIE has been pretty much static since they took over, and MS fell behind feature-wise. Losing a huge share is VERY relative. If you're curious, tabbed browsing originated in 1994, on some browser no one cares about. It was thrust out of complete obscurity by Opera, then added to Mozilla through the Multizilla extension, then the basic tabbed browsing features were integrated into Mozilla, and then Firefox carried it when they forked off. The dedicated search bar was a Firefox idea. No one else did it because it's a stupid waste of space. Everyone else integrated searches into the URL bar before Firefox ever came into existence. Mozilla added it to the sidebar, along with the dropdown search engine selector, again before Firefox existed. MS doesn't really care if it's a retarded feature, or duplication of an existing feature. They're just filling out a bullet list so any time someone points to a Firefox feature they can say "Yeah, we've got that." I don't really care. MSIE is still the dominant browser, and that's not likely to change. If they fix their security holes and start adopting standards so they can compete for the tenth of the market Firefox has, it actually benefits everyone, because the majority of the world will be using a secure browser that properly supports modern standards. They may not be as dominant as they once were, but they ARE dominant, and that won't change. People use what's in front of them. Firefox's advertising machine, which includes print ads, internet ads, viral marketing campaigns, and a massive public relations force, has made it the undisputed king of non-MSIE browsers, but it still holds only a tenth of the market. MSIE has roughly 85% of the market, and is holding steady there. It has NO print ads, NO internet ads, NO viral marketing, NO PR force. ALL it has to do is exist and over 4/5s of the market will use it, just because it came with their computer.

Actually, we NEVER see the SDF-1's main gun being used while the PPB is active. We DO see continued use of the otherwise strategically unsound Daedalus attack, though.

Diff'rent strokes (hah, see what I did there?). OS X doesn't have much in the way of keyboard shortcuts, so I just don't use my keyboard much for that stuff. I've been told it actually DOES, they're just SEKRIT. 'Sides, browser shortcuts are implemented at the browser, not the OS. I'm very much a fixed-purpose kinda guy. DS = game machine.

I was under the impression that the energy discharges WEREN'T coming from the dangling wires that used to hook to the fold generators, but were a byproduct of the fold generator's failure. Something like a tear in space. The animation, of course, didn't show the energy sparking from anything, just swirling around in midair. The barrier systems used the ship-generated to manipulate THAT energy. The Macross didn't HAVE an SD reactor, so presumably not. It had a "heat-pile system cluster", which can be extrapolated to be some variant of fusion technology since the Mars Base fusion plant was based on the Macross' power plant. As for why the barrier interfered with the main cannon... that's a good question. The fact that the crew of the Macross didn't anticipate the cannon's failure indicates it WASN'T just a matter of power. Especially since the barrier was in operation for some time before they popped up to fire, so they knew very well how much power it was drawing from the ship's systems, and what systems it was drawing from. Something about the barrier technology interfered with the operation of the main cannon, and it wasn't an obvious thing. Beyond that, it's a big question mark. That would imply that projectiles went through the shield unimpeded. If the shield stops projectiles, it has to deal with their kinetic energy. If it stops projectiles, it stops missiles. And if a missile detonates against it, it has to deal with the explosion's energies. To deal with energy, it has to absorb it or deflect it. The shield does BOTH to "energy" weapons. I believe they may've mentioned what percentage was being absorbed at one point in the episode, but I don't recall. Presumably it affects missiles as well, since A. it was viewed as a full defensive system and the zentradi used missiles, and B. it's described as an expansion of the PPB instead of a new technology, and missiles impact against the PPB and detonate. A missile detonation should count as an energy weapon, albeit a poorly-focused one. The zentradi didn't use bullets as far as I can tell, but missiles detonating against the shield implies that other projectiles can't pass through either. So it bounces off and retains it's full momenteum, or part of the energy is absorbed by the shield. Pin-point barrier punch. The disks were movable, they were just USUALLY positioned on the shields for simplicity. Easier for the pilot to track big metal shields on his mech's arms than a bunch of green disks that could be anywhere at any time. Particularly since even the YF-21* seems to lack a 360-degree field of view for many of it's sensors. *Chosen as a sample point because it's the only VF where a pilot could reasonably be expected to keep track of all the available sensor information, as well as the only one where rapid and precise PPB disk relocation would be possible in combat. Not because I have an unhealthy love of the vehicle. The EVIL series pulled energy from a parallel universe to supply their energy requirements. That was how the protodeviln got there in the first place. I don't really see the connection. The evil aliens from another dimension came THROUGH the energy organs, because those organs drew energy from their dimension. And remember, the SD organs were signifigant because they were a massive boost over prior energy generation technologies. The zentradi ships appear well-worn, but built. There's an awful lot of rivets and metal plates for an organic construction process.

Forrest couldn't help that he was retarded. Hikaru could.

It's easier to type than "giant alien space battleship," "pre-reconstruction Macross," or "Supervision Army gunboat" though. And everyone knows what you mean when you say ASS, even if they dislike the term.

That's all non-canon speculation. And if nothing else, the "reflex furnace" part flags it as Robotech-ism. Robotech stuff strays pretty far from Macross' "reality" at times.

I didn't recal Kamjin's splitting anywhere.I remember BRITAI'S splitting in the factory satellite episode, though. 405395[/snapback] I think he's referring to the final episode - Kamjin attacks the SDF-1 with an underpowered and heavily damaged Gun Destroyer. Thanks. I tend to forget the details on that one. Kamjin really should've put up a better fight. Those classes of ship are the only ones we know have the big guns. Given it's not listed on Britai's ship, but it IS animated, we have to assume the possibility that other classes have similar weaponry.

Quantity vs quality. They had enough guns that it didn't matter WHAT they were pelting Earth with. They could've been Nerf cannons and still done massive damage. I didn't recal Kamjin's splitting anywhere.I remember BRITAI'S splitting in the factory satellite episode, though. That would be the zentradi equivalent of the ASS-1. Didn't they take Britai's ship to the factory satellite instead of a gun destroyer, though?

Mmm, cheese...

I've never really seen mouse gestures as useful. I'm too keyboard-centric. Alt-left=back, alt-right=forward, etc. </irrelevance>

I think it just means that the zentradi ships all have crap for specs.

You mother-sniffing pottymouth, you!

Oddly, I've always had the opposite impression. For simple internet surfing, they're equally convenient. Smack an icon, type in a URL, and go. For almost anything beyond that, I've always found Mozilla/Seamonkey to be better. There's historical reasons for that. The Mozilla project was started back in 1998 by Netscape. Basically as a way to tap the open-source community to develop Netscape 6 rapidly(what with 4 being painfully dated and 5 never getting off the ground because no one could figure out the Nestcape 4 code well enough to improve it). Hence Mozilla and it's Seamonkey descendant bear a strong resemblance to Netscape, especially with the default "classic" theme. Firefox was split off from the Mozilla suite back in 2002. The guys responsible for the fork felt that Mozilla was excessively bloated. And if they'd just broken the browser off so it was seperated from the mail client, web page designer, and IRC client, it wouldn't be that big a deal. But they decided that several features of Mozilla's browser component were excess bloat too, and either removed them or hid them away so you can't access them without about:config. Hence, the plugin system was thrust into the spotlight as a signifigant feature, because people suddenly needed plugins to restore functionality that had been stripped out as "bloat." I've always found Firefox's hyping of the plugin system humorous for this reason. There's some genuine improvements in there, of course. But a lot of their improvements... aren't. And that's basically the reason Seamonkey exists. A lot of the people that were using Mozilla hated Firefox with a passion. And when the Mozilla Foundation decided to kill Mozilla, the community raised hell, organized, and in a rare example of the open-source concept working as advertised, Mozilla continued on after the original developers abandoned it(albeit under a new name).

Fortunately, the ODB actually has severe limitations. For one, it tends to blow up when abused, doing severe damage to both the area around the fold generator and everything near the barrier. A small fighter-based ODB would likely reach saturation level much faster than a ship-sized one, and in a Macross-style dogfight has the potential to do serious damage to your teammates as well as your own vessel. The PPB system appears far more stable, and overloads far less catastrophically. And it's not really clear if the barrier is one-way(as typically seen in the likes of Star Trek), or if it blocks OUTGOING fire and objects as well as incoming. If it's the latter, it's useless for fighters, and can't be deployed on a large ship until all fighters are clear. That's likely why ODBs aren't seen in later serieses. The Macross 7 is supposed to have both PPB and ODB systems, but the ODB is never used even though it would seem to be beneficial at many points. It's a good technical excuse for what boils down to making more exciting animation. Huh. I'd never noticed that restriction before. Compendium only lists the GERWALK/battroid restriction on the YF21/VF22. And I'm pretty sure Basara used PPB disks in fighter mode at least once on his VF-19. Stupid Basara. It's all his fault. The most engine power being consistently used for thrust SHOULD wind up on a GERWALK in a planetary situation. Hovering isn't very efficient, and it can't count on aerodynamic effects to keep it up(I have my doubts that any GERWALK is seeing signifigant lift from the wings even while moving forward). But either way, the least thrust winds up in battroid, for obvious reasons. Which is why that was the only mode a VF-0 could use SWAG in. And I'd bet that's only useable while it's grounded. In space, the engine should be not-thrusting most of the time in all 3 modes, so there has to be a diffrent reason.

Underage school girls = porn? You perv. 405164[/snapback] Heh you don't need to watch hentai to know whats going to happen here. Wonder if the next shot has gannon or bowser showing up with tenticals popping out 405167[/snapback] I'd like to see them try it. My money's on Yuki.

New Smash Brothers characters reveealed! ... Or not.

Didn't Data crap his brain into his twin's in an attempt to force the new guy to become smart? And I seem to recall the new android was already adopting Data's mannerisms at the end of it.

HAHAHA!

Ah, I did not know that. It has been a really long time since I saw the movie. You have an awsome knowledge of the Black Hole weaponry usage. I wonder if Mego had that gun from another line and simply reused it? Or perhaps the designer was stumped by how to get the the figure's hand to grip the double barrelled/movie accurate type (The gun slides in from the top, I believe). 404928[/snapback] I'd bet that's exactly why the guns are wrong, actually.

404891[/snapback] To scratch my back, of course.

Guitar-guns? He's still in the preproduction stages. That's probably why he doesn't have a jet yet.