JB0

I don't get why, but commanders seem to be built tougher. When Britai's guys ask if he's okay, he says something to the effect of "I'm not built like you." We also know Britai and Bodolzaa were very large for zentradi. Or we can go to Britai's bio on the Compendium. "As a commander type Zentradi, he possesses greater strength and endurance than the other two types, as well as the ability to survive short periods in space." Best argument I can think of is that a commander's accumulated tactical knowledge makes them more valuable, so they're built tougher to improve survivability if their ship comes under attack. No one CARES if the cannon fodder grunt dies, they can just pop out a new clone. But a commander with years of experience is a valuable asset. Like everything else about humanity, the zentradi were likely completely baffled at our command structure. We had a seasoned veteran as the captain of the ship, and the rest of his bridge crew were rookies fresh out of training(Claudia excepted). Almost no one on the bridge had any prior experience, and this was our primary ship.

Lurker: Allow me to draw a video game analogy. Your version of military strategy = "ZERG RUSH KEKEKE!!!!" War doesn't actually work that way. There's a reason that modern military forces haven't replaced all their tanks with faster, smaller, and nimbler Jeeps, or phased their entire ground force out for a larger air force. It's because what a tank does is useful. Yes a Spartan COULD be made into something faster and lighter. But it would be like replacing a tank with a Jeep. You could even make it a 3-mode variable mess(I think they did, and called it a Valkyrie). Then you'd be replacing a tank with a helicopter. Helicopters sure are neat, and serve many useful purposes, but I'd hate to live in a nation that used them as their sole means of defense. So your main force will engage the defenses, enabling your faster guys to sneak in before the main force engages the defenses? And why do you think destroid pilots are stupid enough to ignore someone running straight at them? Get in your car. Turn it on. Don't touch the controls. What happens? Machines aren't like people. They don't just move for no reason. They can be incredibly precise at incredibly long ranges. As for the movie... You're saying that because DYRL didn't show a destroid with a zoom function that all weapons are restricted by the limitations of human sight? Dedicated gunner ring a bell? Also, battle machines are not held to the same restrictions as first-person shooters. They can have seperate targeting screens. Video game = Silent Scope arcade machine. Ummmm... what exactly is the REST of the platoon doing while this one guy is being gang-raped by a half-dozen enemies? You're right, that's a silly claim. If it was Max in a locked battroid VS Kakizaki in a Spartan, the smart money would be on Max. But it DOES mean that the Spartan is BETTER at the job. Max in a locked battroid VS Max in a Spartan will result in the Spartan winning. The VF has to make compromises because it fills multiple roles. The Spartan doesn't. Every feature of the Spartan is a feature that is optimum for it's designed task. If a trade-off has to be made on a VF(and boy, do they have to be...), fighter mode gets the benefits. I never said ANYTHING about a multi-purpose device having no advantages. In fact, I EXPLICTLY acknowledge the advantage of rapid deployment present in the variable Monster and the general versatility of the VF series. I just think that, given it's poor armor and weaponry, the VF makes a lousy replacement for a Spartan, which is the only destroid it even comes close to matching the capabilities of. It can't even PRETEND to replace a Tomahawk, Defender, or Monster, even with add-on modules. And you ignore my continuation of the analogy, that the clockradio never replaced dedicated radios because it sucks as a radio. The clockradio is a clock first and a radio second. The VF is a jet first and a robot second. Can you see where I'm going with this? Hint: If radio = robot and clock = jet, clockradio = good clock and bad radio, and clockradio = valkyrie, then Valkyrie = good jet and bad _____. You assume that's a weakness, because you assume that if a feature is on the VF-1 it is inherently useful, and that if a VF-1 lacks a feature it is because it is not needed. Not everything needs to fly. Especially when it comes at the cost of primary design goals. The POINT of anti-air weaponry is to kill an aircraft BEFORE it starts unloading weaponry. If an anti-air weapon is firing at close range, it's ALREADY failed. ... Or it's attempting to shoot down a missile, like the (real-world, non-destroid) Phalanx. Note that the real-world Phalanx is intended to be the FINAL line of defense, not the ONLY line of defense. Actually, the variable Monster is every bit as slow, clumsy, and specialized as the regular one. You also greatly overestimate the need for mobility in an artillery piece. The Monster, variable or not, has a few major design goals. To run through the list... Major goal 1 is that it needs to fire big bullets. Toward that end, it was equipped with quad 40cm cannons. Major goal 2 is that it be stable enough to shoot accurately. While firing 40cm shells. That's a lot of recoil it has to steady. Major goal 3 is that it needs to withstand the recoil of said cannons. It has to be bulked-up enough that the guns don't rip loose from their mounts. Newton's third law says every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every time it fires a shell, it tries to fire the back end of the mech in the other direction. A 40cm shell for the Iowa-class masses around a thousand kilograms. If we assume projectiles for the Monster are of similar mass, that means that the Monster tries to blast a thousand kg of metal off the back end at the same speed as the shell leaving the barrel. For comparison, the modern-day Abrams tank has a 120 MILLIMETER(12centimeter) cannon. The tank weighs almost 70 tons. It has a very low center of gravity. And it JUMPS BACKWARDS with every shot of the cannon. The Monster has cannons along the lines of an Iowa-class BATTLESHIP in terms of projectile size(the Monster's cannons are twice as long, and range is over 3x greater, indicating a larger projectile velocity, and thus greater recoil). And speaking of recoil... the Konig Monster uses it's railguns(an upgrade from the original Monster's conventional cannons) to expel plasma in shuttle mode as a form of propulsion. So apparently even at 102 thousand kilograms, an overglorified fart can send it flying through the air if not properly controlled. Major goal 4 is that it needs to be able to survive the blast from the nuclear warheads it's dropping on people. Not all shells are dropped 160 km away, and some will be dangerously close. This necessitated massive armor, further increasing mass. Major goal 5 is that it needs to be mobile, in the sense that it can walk from point A to point B. Points 1-4 made this a very difficult goal to attain, and the final product has very limited mobility, with even walking on irregular surfaces being "not recommended." Of course, the fact that the Monster made it into production with that fault shows that this was NOT considered a primary goal. Artillery doesn't need to be fast or nimble. It just needs to shoot stuff with big guns. Agility, speed, and defense never really even entered the equation. Nobody cared. They are useless attributes in an artillery piece. Heavy artillery costs a lot of mass, and mass is not good for speed and agility. No Monster will EVER be fast or nimble, just because it has such big guns. The Mk2 had missile launchers, and the variable Monster added a small anti-aircraft gun, but both are still essentially incapable of self-defense and REQUIRE escorts. And while the Konig is indeed lighter than the original Monster, it is still far more massive than any other human mecha, weighing in at 3x the next-highest destroid(the Phalanx, which likely owes much of it's mass to the large missile payload). I WAS mistaken about speed, though. The Konig can break mach 1. Again, you assume. And this time, you ignore evidence to the contrary to do so, not just logic. The Valk has been SHOWN to be a lousy close-combat vehicle. It can't even effectively fight a mech-less zentradi. No matter how skilled he was, or how superior his genetics, Britai was still flesh and blood. For him to best a Valk with nothing but a RUSTY PIPE and RIP IT APART WITH HIS BARE HANDS, and come out of it COMPLETELY UNINJURED showcases how painfully inadequate the Valkyrie is for melee combat. I'm out of this. I wasn't even going to bother, except you explicitly called me out, and basically accused me of stuffing my ears full of soggy Mac&Cheese while shouting "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALA!" I heard you quite clearly. Your logic is just painfully flawed.

I'd pay money to see them forced to watch each others' movies. 411095[/snapback] Problem's that they might actually be immune to that. Perhaps they should be forced to watch this movie instead. 411100[/snapback] *laughs*That always crops up just as I've forgotten it existed again.

I'd pay money to see them forced to watch each others' movies.

Soundwave is indeed a clean transformation. No loose parts aside from the missiles(his gun becomes batteries, how clever is that?!), no goofy lumps, no nothing. His chest is a bit oddly-shaped, but that's the only gripe I have aside from articulation, and that hits almost every pre-BeastWars toy. I never got him, but he was high on my list of wants. I was also always a Shockwave fan. He was just so... he was Shockwave, for QBert's sake! How can anyone NOT like him? Seriously, between the fact that he made an awesome raygun and that he had some articulation(for the era, he was pretty much the pinnacle of good proportions and posabability), I think I was doomed from the moment I opened the box. If I recall, his scale is radically diffrent than Prime's precisely SO he can stand close to the same height as Prime. Jets are a lot bigger than semis, so if he was the same scale, he'd be able to stomp Prime .

I quit reading CAD. Guy's just not consistently funny. That strip being a case in point.

I'm obviously complaining about the kibble on the hips, the knees bent backwards (while he is standing), and the awkward feet. The feet were goofy in the first version, so that isn't my major complaint. 411001[/snapback] The knees are just a matter of bad posing, for what it's worth.

But he doesn't care. Bender said so. I loved that episode.

Yeah, that was Boll. On the upside, it comes with a free copy of the PC version of Bloodrayne 2, or at least the retail package does. So you might get some use out of it anyways. Sound of Thunder at least had potential. The original story is a classic. It just got messed up badly in the translation to film.

Depending on the equipment used, flourescent lighting isn't that great, gives a pale cast over everything, so a flash would give a better flesh tone. Since they're using a flash, then having a reflector would even out the background too. That makes sense. But will it really be effective with the sort of flash Haruhi's point/click digital camera has? She isn't using any external equipment that I see.

Meh, screw it...

It COULD, if it was a viable strategy. But there's usually anti-mecha defenses, and lacking the sensor-jamming magic of minovsky particles, rushing the bridge is pretty much suicide for the zentradi. The Phalanxes and Defenders aren't marched out onto the hull for fun. They exist solely to pick off anyone that gets too close. In fact, the anti-aircraft Defenders were the vast majority of the Macross' mecha compliment, outnumbering the Valks 2:1 and every other destroid by much larger margin. The Macross had no shortage of anti-mecha defenses, and rest assured they were concentrated around the ship's vital areas. The thing had roughly a square kilometer of surface area, and there were five hundred anti-aircraft turrets running around on it. While the shape of attack mode makes defense far more complicated(the bridge is no longer on a major face of the vessel), they DO make a point of showing destroids stationed around the bridge. So we know the defense of other areas of the ship was sacrificed for the bridge, as in attack mode bridge defenses aren't useful for other areas. http://macross.anime.net/mecha/united_nati...ross/index.html Indeed. But we didn't seem to be a serious issue at first. Do YOU regularly employ high-explosives against house flies? The main fleet wasn't considered a necessity until the defection of Britai's fleet. At which point we ceased to be an amusing prey and became a genuine threat. The VF-1 has a teleporter and drones now? Jets don't replace tanks. They fill completely diffrent roles. I would feel very insecure in a nation with you as head of defense. The QRau is quite likely better than any battroid or GERWALK. Fighter mode... the QRau seems to make up for it's fundamentally broken aerodynamics with raw engine power. It's weapons loadout is more omnidirectional. The missiles don't all point in one direction, nor do the forearm guns. A VF in GERWALK or battroid has similar versatility of the gunpod, but there's only one vs the QRau's 2 forearm guns, and it's very limited on ammo. And if you can point and laugh when they hit you, you can pummel them with impunity. That's the design principle behind both a tank and a front-line destroid. The fact is, in any crowded combat zone, you WILL get hit. People tend to forget this because the US military grossly outclasses every other military on Earth. More and better equipment means that we can pretty much strike with impunity until the time comes to send in the infantry. Effective in what way? It's very light on ammo and very light on armor. But it IS fast. You mean the ones firing at you from long range, with a far greater ammo capacity, while you pelt them with rounds designed to take out lightly-armored aircraft? Good luck with that. Again, the QRau has to deal with anti-aircraft fire as well as, well, aircraft. It does NOT have a straight run into the middle of the destroid formation. Your ENTIRE strategy assumes that the enemy has no defenses.

Why not shoot at short range too? There IS something besides "sniper" and "boxer." Which is why the Army has retired tanks for HUMVEEs? And the destroids that NEED to move CAN move. A spartan is relatively nimble. Not as much as a battroid or GERWALK, but again, it's built for a diffrent role(tank VS HUMVEE). Because they have guys to the side too? You're still thinking 1-on-1, which is NOT realistic. And you can see what you're shooting at from quite a distance thanks to amazing overtechnology inventions like telescopes. We already fight at extreme ranges now, and technology is INCREASING, not decreasing, the effective range of everything other than melee weapons. NEITHER SIDE would take ANYONE on one-by-one. A platoon of Tomahawks would be taking potshots at a platoon of Regults from the moment they were visible. I don't think I've said a single word about ANYBODY lining up to do a single-file charge. So the zentradi will rush the Tomahawks, losing signifigant men and machines in the process. They will penetrate the Tomahawk lines, to be greeted by... the Spartans built and equipped to deal with a close-combat situation. Or could if there weren't more destroids behind the line they just penetrated. Don't forget when Millia chased Max into Macross City. Neither situation involves destroids in their natural habitat. In fact, both situations involved all ship's defenses being baited away from the area in advance. And of course, there was the reversed Daedalus Attack, in which most of the ship's destroid compliment was decimated by a surprise attack by an overwhelming force, and the few remaining for the defense of Macross City were hopelessly outnumbered. Macross has had very little ground combat. Most if it was during reconstruction, where a shattered infrastructure left surprisingly little in the way of military bases, and the high speed of a Valkyrie was a necessity for rapid response to uprisings. But when they attacked protected facilities, like the airport, they were met with... destroids.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the funniest thing I've seen in ages.

A. There's no attacking aliens or evolution. Well, there's ONE attacking alien, but it only lasts half an episode. And while there's talk of the aliens WANTING to evolve, no one's actually DOING it. B. Yuki > Rei.

Isn't Starscream supposed to be sticking a dagger in Meggie's back?

Yes. And it rules. 408089[/snapback] Well then it's HELLA different from the manga! Which is on the boring side while feeling like a rip-off of NGE and just makes me wanna shot the b@tch(Asuka-clone). So... it's like FLCL then. 410589[/snapback] There's a manga too? And it's like NGE? Weird, neither the anime nor the novel(s) it's based on are anything like Eva. I'm curious to see the manga now, just to see how different it is from the novel. 410657[/snapback] There's actually TWO mangas. The first one was cancelled a month in because the author didn't like how radically it was deviating. The second one is running alongside the TV series, but it's pretty meh.

Starscream's iconic look is defined by the animation, every comic book from G1, G2, Dreamwave, the newest ones, and all the Super Robot Life TV Magazines and Manga. Every PVC incarnation, over a dozen in addition to the Robot Masters Starscream and the Cartoon Version Reissue of the G1 toy are all aspiring to the cartoon design. I could care less about the original G1 toy. The iconic image of Starcream was derived from the toy and intended to be different from the toy in the first place. Then why are you bent out of shape about the tail fins, when that iconic look is FINLESS? I think I stated as much in the first place, and you threw ANIMATION ERRORS back at me to explain why it needed tail fins on the feet. While hanging them off the hips is still not animation accurate, it at least looks less retarded than having them stick off the feet. An upper body. All that made Starscream was above the waist. Ya know, I considered pointing out exactly what I meant, but thought it would be understood. I guess not. Every rendition of the VF-1, animation errors excepted, is largely the same, save detail level. Yes a Yamato 1/48 kicks all kinds of crap out of a 1/55 Bandai, but when you get down to it, they're the SAME THING. Sure the Bandai is a bit chunkier, but the overall styling is the same. Aside from animation errors, there aren't any stray parts materializing, dematerializing, or moving with the whims of the current artists, except for the gunpod, which is either missing in fighter mode or hanging under the fighter along the centerline. By comparison, every Gen1 Transformer that made it to animation had no fewer than 3 designs: toy, box art, and cartoon. The diffrences were often drastic enough between the toy and animation that the Skyfire/Jetfire substitution doesn't look excessively absurd. If, as you say, only the official animation design counts... Starscream had no foot-fins.

I strongly recommend picking up the original SDF Macross TV series. No better way to cleanse yourself of the dark side than with the purity of the original series.

Because most of the original toys were pretty crappy. Your argument means that no articulation is also a good thing. The vast majority of interpretations of the original Starscream design depict him without tailfins on the legs. And he benefits greatly from it. Same can be said for attaching it to the legs. I agree there's too much attached to the hips, but it's better than having it on the legs. But the official animation design was finless. Are you really so desperate to make a point that you're going to use animation errors to support it? As does Masterpiece Starscream. The stuff on the hips is the only thing that greatly defies the original design, and it's an improvement over the original toy without resorting to the set-aside parts that would likely be necessary for a design consistent with other interpretations. Diffrence is that this is just one more in a long series of re-envisionings of Transformers. There were multiple incarnations of Starscream even during his original release(box art, cartoon, and toy were all diffrent designs). There is no singular "right" look for Starscream, and I prefer the clean-legged versions anyways. The VF-1, by contrast, DOES have a singular "right" look, head excepted.

The point is THE STUFF ON THE WAIST IS ABSOLUTELY UNNECCESSARY - even if the vehicle mode is better. 410396[/snapback] Is it just me, or does it look like Prime is grabbing the wheels like he's about to throw them? Anyways... Prime's statememt rings true in this case. Tailfins dangling off the feet = broke. Moving them makes for a much cleaner robot. And I do admit I had none of the jets as a kid, so my nostalgia isn't getting in the way(which could be an issue, since the Masterpiece toys are all about nostalgia). But I DO remember looking at the pictures in the foldout catalog and thinking the tailfins on the feet were dorky(only one I really wanted was Thrust, for unknown reasons). And Masterpiece Prime was intended to be faithful to the animation, not the toy. Animation Starscream had no leg fins. ... Of course, he had no hip fins either. For a TV-accurate Starscream, you'd have to take the fins off and set them aside.

New Starscream has scrawnie girlie legs. While they better match the high-heels, they just look wrong on him. That's my only real objection.

She stops doing the hair thing right after Kyon brings it up to her. 410323[/snapback] In fact, she cuts it off short so she CAN'T do the hair thing anymore. She COULD color-code the hair ribbon, but apparently it's too much work once someone's noticed she does it.

If you live in America, you're good to go. If you live in Europe, you have problems because your electrical voltage isn't 110-120, and your TV isn't 60Hz or NTSC. If you live somewhere else... You may or may not have problems depending on your areas AC and TV standards

But you got it backwards. The destroid is the device that does one task and does it well. The VF is the device that CAN do another device's task, but at greatly-reduced effectiveness. The clock is a fighter plane, the radio is a battroid. Neither requires powered armor as we know it, though. You could make a VF with similar controls. In fact, we KNOW Glaugs have quite flexible control schemes, as they're capable of using their arm cannons as melee weapons, which was almost certainly NOT part of the designer's intent. Like I said, the big advantage is that the QRau and NosGer are less massive vehicles. In space combat, the issue will be more the incredible lead times than power dropoff. There's no atmosphere to scatter beams or slow down projectiles, so a long-range shot should still be as powerful as a close-range one(except for imperfect beam focus, which appears to be minimal for overtech weapons). But since you have such incredible visibility and range, you can start shooting at each other while still light-seconds, or even light-minutes, apart. For a projectile weapon, this means you WILL miss, because the enemy can see it coming ages before it gets there and change directions. This is likely why the zentradi use energy weapons and missiles exclusively. One arrives much closer to when the initial firing is visible(at the same time if they're using lasers), the other can adjust for evasive maneuvers. Saving ammo is likely a foreign concept to the zentradi, as they use energy weapons, and overtech thermonuclear generators fit massive fuel stores into very small spaces. It's like not using your car's turn signals to save gas. Sure it affects things, but not enough to worry about. The humans are the ones that have to worry about saving ammo, because they use predominantly projectile weapons and the VF's gunpods and missile racks have very small ammo capacities, with the exception of hardpoint micromissile pods and the FAST pack "backpack". The GBP-1 can be ignored as it isn't really intended for space combat, and is a very poor design for such. That's Milia-style combat. She wasn't engaging in safe and rational combat , she was treating it as a game. Most zentradi just shoot stuff. A melee attack is likely a joke compared to the other weaponry available. It's very massive, sure, but it's also very slow, and inflicts damage on BOTH vehicles. Only half of the energy in a puch goes into the point of impact on the target. The other goes right back into the fist and down the arm. QRau arms are also rather poorly designed for melee combat. There's signifigant risk of damage to the laser guns from either a missed punch or debris released during the attack. Any pilot engaging in such activities would have to take special care to ensure the lasers were kept out of harm's way. The ONLY destroid intended to deal with aerial combat is the Defender. And it was designed to do it at long range. If there's QRaus in the area, there's Valkyries scrambled to deal with them. Because that's what they were designed for. You would NEVER see a one-on-one Spartan VS QRau in an actual combat zone. The Spartans and Tomahawks would be blasting at grounded mecha while the VFs handled airborne ones. And generally in groups, because these are combat mecha, not Texas Rangers. The entire anti-destroid argument assumes that armor and firepower are worthless, and that the intended role of all vehicles is that of fighter plane. There's a reason that most real-world nations still own and operate tanks. The fighter plane is NOT the perfect tool for every job. I'd probably have to, given that the Monster would have a signifigant defensive force between me and it on both land and air. Remember, the Monster isn't a macho guy that runs into fights unprotected. There will be Spartans, Tomahawks, and Defenders* on the ground around it, and Valkyries in the skies above it. So if I come at this Monster from the ground, I've got to wade through Tomahawks and Spartans shooting at me while other Spartans are trying to beat me to death. If I come at it from the air, I've got Defenders and Valks trying to shoot me down. And the Monster is STILL lobbing artillery shells at my base while this is going on. * I was mistaken in calling the Defender a jury-rigged hack. It was developed on Earth. Only the Phalanx was developed on the Macross. End part 2 of 2