JB0

The resequencing makes sense, but it's not likely given that the mass cloning program was discontinued in December 2030 as a cause of hereditary disease rise. http://macross.anime.net/story/chronology/2013/index.html I doubt the zentradi had resequencing technology. Since they didn't reproduce sexually, there was no concern about inbreeding. Besides, they probably had the "bad" genes removed from their samples anyways. Warriors don't need a hemophilia gene, even if it IS inactive.

It's also possible they made more modern destroids, but we've never seen them. The VF series is more interesting, so it gets all the screen time. Destroids have several advantages in that they have less parts, less joints, and they're easier to drive. They can also be built heavier(more ammo and armor), since they don't need to fly. So it doesn't make sense to abandon the non-variable paradigm totally, as it's a cheaper and more durable platform. Tangentally related, the X9 Ghost in MacPlus is also non-transformable, making it the fighter equivalent of a destroid. So the non-variable paradigm isn't TOTALLY abandoned. The existence of GBP packages implies destroids have fallen out of favor, as the GBP's sole purpose is to turn a battroid into a Spartan(with a bit of armor hollowed out for more missiles). But that could be an efficiency issue more than anything else. An exploratory or colony mission is going to see only space battles for a long time, so there's no reason to waste the fleet's limited amount of space carrying land equipment. But once they find a planet, ground defenses will be needed before they can tool up for destroid production. Even an uninhabited planet with no hostile forces for light years runs the risk of dinosaur analouges coming in for some Human McNuggets, or just to chew on the farms. GBPs are a good way to turn a squadron of VFs into durable and heavy-hitting ground weaponry to fill that roll until the first destroids roll into service. After that, you can put your VFs back in the air while destroids take over the ground work. And since GBPs take up so little space relative to a full mech, they're a much smaller impediment to the fleet while in space. They're also easier to tool up for in a hurry. The VB-6 is, in my eyes, a unique situation. A Monster shouldn't be on the front lines, as it is long-range artillery. Making it variable makes it easier to transport, and durability losses aren't a major concern since it won't be in the thick of things anyways. The Defender might also benefit from being made variable, though as an anti-aircraft weapon it would have to land outside of the deployment area and walk in, or risk being shot down. The Phalanx was a jury-rigged hackjob that existed to fix a unique problem of the original SDF-1 Macross after the fold accident(it had no escort vessels and minimal anti-space defenses, as they were all mounted on the ARMDs). Consequently it would be the most likely abandoned design. Spartans and Tomahawks are the destroid profiles that would most benefit from remaining non-transformable, as they exist to fill the rolls of existing tanks. They're front-line weaponry, so they'll be seeing the most combat of any ground offensive. Heavy armor with as few chinks as possible increases survivability.

That's what I'd assume, too. And they'd probably limit the influx of clones to preserve resources. Just because they had the facilities to pop out x poeple a month doesn't mean that the minimal society they had post-war was capable of supporting that rate of growth. The adopt-a-clone program is the most feasable from my point of view. With the actual workings of the program designed to encourage adoption by infertile couples. A fertile couple adopting a clone is reducing the number of natural children they can have, so it would logically be discouraged. Now that we've discussed that... How do they decide who gets cloned and who doesn't? The most logical solution would be to require everyone to submit a DNA sample, to maximize genetic diversity. Less opressively, you could tie them to certain "perks" such as driver's licenses. It could be a vonluntary donation, with heavy advertizing to persuade people to donate, possibly even a reward of some sort. "Join the Terrestrial Repopulation Program! Recieve 500 dollars every time you're born! Act now and you'll also get FREE exclusive backstage passes to the next Lynn Minmay concert!" ... But once the genes are in the bank, you could also make an argument for "weighting" certain samples. If you have inheritable diseases, your sample gets pulled less often than a healthier one would, or thrown out entirely, while a superior sample could get pulled more often. End result would be a gene pool weighted towards faster, stronger, people that are better suited to survive the harsh conditions of post-war Earth and the rigors of colonization on a marginal planet, as well as better able to repulse attacks from alien races such as the zentradi. And then there's the political angle. Do heroes get special treatment, and in which direction? Are there hundreds of thousands of Hikarus running around because he was deemed a superior specimen? Or(assuming mandatory registration) was he exempted from the program due to his distinguished service, thereby preserving his uniqueness unless he chose to submit a sample voluntarily?

Like I said, it's funnier with TREAD, since it's an english-word acronym.

Mine does that occasionally. CD audio cable keeps falling into the CPU fan. If you haven't checked, make sure the cables are out of the way.

I can. My video card makes a disruptive amount of noise, and it gets even worse when I start a game. Should replace the heatsink with an aftermarket one, but it seems a shame to spend cash on a card that's 2 generations out of date when I could put it towards something else. Edit: severe typo

Ah yeah... you can always tell which stores have competent management and which ones don't. The few times I've had pricing discrepancies, I've gotten a no-fuss discount. Admittedly, I've never had any huge discrepancies, but they've always been willing to toss me the diffrence, and certainly never acted like I was the problem.

And more immediatly... as soon as it starts charging, the enemy can see it. If you can't finish the job with one shot, they can unload everything they have left right down the barrel. 4 + lunar, actually. Presumably they wanted to stud the planet with a dozen or so eventually. The Alaska one was the only completed Grand Cannon at the time of the battle. Good question... Depends on how strong the beam confinement is, how adjustable the focal point is(assuming it has one instead of being a cylinder), and how fast it loses energy to the outside world(the fact that it glows means it's losing a lot of energy, which is supported by near-miss destructions). The firing plot on the Macross' bridge indicated it fans out rapidly, which greatly limits range. A range reaching lunar orbit could be a dangerous prospect if you accidentally blast your lunar colonies while attacking an enemy, especially given the rate of beam expansion. It likely has a sub-lunar range, though the computer could over-ride a firing command that would result in lunar bombardment. As your enemy gets more distant, the utility of a unguided weapon becomes much lower. In space combat, you can easily get combat ranges where unguided weaponry is essentially useless. Practically speaking, weapon range becomes irrelevant past 1 or 2 light minutes, as your enemy will be changing positions often to avoid incoming vollys from a distant enemy. The Grand Cannon should have a longer operational distance due to the raw beam width and spreading due both to poor focus and planetary rotation. Instead of a straight line(or cone), it arcs and hits a much wider area, similar to rapidly waving a flashlight. This reduces the damage a single shot can do to a given target, but there's so much power that it doesn't really seem to matter matter if the whole beam hits one point(or if it even hits, given the backwash destructions). Unfortunately, you can't aim much. Most of the ships folded out with the destruction of the flagship. http://macross.anime.net/mecha/zentradi/index.html The Grand Cannon wasted roughly 800 thousand. A lot of that debris was probably launched out of orbit. The grand cannon imparted a LOT of energy when it hit, so I would assume that most of the debris from GC'ed ships was sent flying outward. Adding to that, the ships were broken down into very small parts, so solar wind probably helped sweep the debris out. Another million were destroyed through subsequent combat and the flagship's destruction. This is a bit of a question mark, as we don't know what form of attack brought them down. Could be anything from a simple mechanical failure(hell of a time for the reactor's fuel injector to fail...) to reaction missiles to a Macross Cannon-type weapon(there was at least 1 such gun active in the Human-Zentradi alliance, as Britai's vessel was equipped with a similar cannon to the Macross, but the Macross' own cannon was likely disabled due to the pinpoint barrier system). The remaining 3 million folded out to join other fleets. We know from the show that some ships crashed mostly intact. These are almost certainly all non-cannon casualties. They would have an effect similar to a moderately-sized meteor. Really rather trivial relative to the damage the bombardment had already done(which had put mroe than it's fair share of dust in the air already). Debris from exploded vessels would have burned up in the atmosphere(smaller chunks = more exposed surface area = faster burn), filling it with nasty metallic particles and industrial chemicals and so on. These are the bigger problem, partially because they're toxic instead of just "nuclear winter"-inducing and partially because they're likely the majority of the debris. Undoubtedly, a major part of the "Start of nature reclaimation project. Earth ecosystem rehabilitation begins" entry in the chronology is the construction of massive air filters to reduce particles in the air and toxic chemicals.

I can't speak for the others in this thread JBO, but honoring an advertised/displayed price is not some law as I'm aware (discussing this within the context of disclaimers and honest vendor error). My point was simply the need for the decorum of good business when faced with a customer in a physical location as opposed to the advantages of impersonal correspondance enjoyed by online retailers. 363042[/snapback] Ah. I agree with that. The "have to" is usually presented as a "because the law says so" argument, so I assumed people were going on a similar assumption here. I think Amazon probably would have let it slide had it not become such a big deal(of course, being Eva, and the internet, everyone linked it and it rapidly became a big deal). Had a brick&mortar store been hit with the same kind of attention... well, for one they'd be out of stock very rapidly. But as soon as they found out, they'd run to tape an error notification to the window. And given the response to things, they'd probably already have 2 dozen or so customers running around inside waving 6$ Eva boxes around, and they'd be trying to find a compromise fast. If only one or 2 people made it before they noticed the error, though... let 'em have it, then put the correction up before person 3 gets in the door. The distance and anonymity DID help Amazon. They didn't have someone standing there with a box and a credit card in hand ready to yell and throw a fit, so there wasn't a sense of immediacy. They cancelled the order under the argument that the purchase hadn't actually taken place yet, and informed people it was a screw-up on their part. From their point of view, they did the equivalent of taping a printout in the store window saying "that ad flyer is wrong." From our point of view, it's closer to catching someone on the way out the door and telling them the reciept is wrong and they need to pay more or put the box back and take their 6 bucks. It WOULD be in their best interests to offer the people that had placed orders a discount, or credit towards a future purchase. But I don't think they could've feasably honored the price for all the people that caught it before the correction. It would've been eating a MASSIVE loss.

They mentioned in the show that the Grand Cannon actually cleared most of the path to the main ship. Saved them a lot of work, since their original plan had them smacking lesser flagships to thin the heard. The grand cannon was a first strike weapon. You could batter fleets in orbit before they landed, and thin the enemy ranks. Of course, no one on Earth considered a fleet large enough to just crush all Earth's defenses with orbital bombardment. Yes. http://macross.anime.net/story/atlas/index.html lists five, including a lunar one. ... Which poses an interesting question... if the grand cannon is gravitationally powered, would a Lunar one be a tenth as powerful as a terrestrial one, or just take 10 times longer to charge?

Stupid society, crushing imaginations as people grow up...

Actually, they likely wouldn't have to honor the price. Fliers are covered with legal disclaimers that say they aren't responsible for typos, which are further highlighted at the front door when they get caught. And you'll never convince them that they have any obligation to honor a blatantly mistagged product(say, an XBox 360 someone set in the 5$ clearance bin because they changed their mind). I've never actually seen any evidence of any actual legislation that forces retailers to honor any given form of mistakes , just vague references to "the law". And the fact that people from diffrent states and even countries claim the law as relevant to any and every situation tends to dampen my belief that it exists. Such laws in the US would be implemented at the state level, not the national level. Thus they would vary from location to location. And international law should be obvious. The law in one nation is completely irrelevant to another. Seeing someone from one nation explaining to a consumer in another how their legal rights have been violated is comical at best. No offense to anyone doing so here, I've just seen it too often in any chosen direction. Unless you can cite title, chapter, and section of the law you're invoking, I wouldn't place any great weight in it's relevance to the situation, whether the store's online or not. Even IF we grant the existence of a universal "lowest price" law, online retailers are in a rather odd position. Are they refusing to honor a typo'ed ad with legal disclaimer? A computer error with no disclaimer(similar to a register scanning an item wrong)? A mis-printed "price tag"? All those situations would vary in treatment under any given law, but they're essentially the same thing in an online store, and you could make the argument for any one you choose. Where was the purchase made, anyways? At the consumer's PC, the store's server, or both? The location of the transaction changes what laws are relevant. And the last time I saw this happen it was a pre-order and not an actual purchase, which raises even more questions, though the same "law" was clearly just as relevant even when a purchase had not yet happened. As far as I know, it would be up to the manager's discretion to honor typos in a brick&mortar store. They usually let it slide to avoid annoying customers. In the cases of the Amazon.com screwups, the diffrence is so massive that they'd have to either flat-out refuse to honor it or, more likely, attempt to find a compromise position that was acceptable to both parties(likely an intermediary price that was at or slightly above cost, with a freebie gift certificate for future purchases).

This forum allows sigs. Just not image sigs(rather wisely).

What about the zentradi defectors? Without their knowledge of fleet construction, the zentradi psyche, and zent military strategy, the final battle would've been unwinnable.

If I'm nost mistaken, the low-profile screwups ahve a better chance of making it through. When they get swaped with strangely large amounts of orders, it likely sends up a red flag for someone to double-check this.

Ditto. I've got a GaoFighGar one I made. For my non-existent PSP. These demonstrate knowledge of the PSP interface in a way that mine doesn't.

Three of the greatest games ever made... 362625[/snapback] I've got trouble getting into Metroid 1 now. The fact that the first thing I have to do is farm life pellets to run my energy up drives me mad. There's also a very high damage rate, but if I resurrected with full life, or there was even a fast way to refill it(everyone knows the path to the fairy north of the first screen in Zelda 1), I wouldn't mind. As it is... I'll take Super Metroid any day. 362691[/snapback] plus all the rooms in metroid looks alike so I end up going around in circles. 362767[/snapback] Heh. I used to have that issue too. Developed a better gaming sense of direction since then, and I can get around Zebes 8-bit style now, when I care to.

They have an accurate list price(if somewhat dated, it goes for about 30 now, I think)). I'd say that one's a legitimate sale. Probably to clear the shelves for the updated MGS3: Subsistence.

They did that with Nintendogs preorders a while back. There's screwups all over the place, I'm betting.

Three of the greatest games ever made... 362625[/snapback] I've got trouble getting into Metroid 1 now. The fact that the first thing I have to do is farm life pellets to run my energy up drives me mad. There's also a very high damage rate, but if I resurrected with full life, or there was even a fast way to refill it(everyone knows the path to the fairy north of the first screen in Zelda 1), I wouldn't mind. As it is... I'll take Super Metroid any day.

Shatner's stones have an unholy power. They can build houses, heal the sick, raise the dead... even protect threads.

*sighs* Shatner. Alkchemy. Charity. Now.

That's one thing that really impressed me on both thr NES and 2600... the degree to which they could push the system. It's MAME time! Taito Memories Pocket has it, and Taito Legends 2 is slated for it. Taito Legends 1 has Super Qix, which is inferior. My 5200 version occupies a near-permanent station in my cart slot. I have that problem a lot of the time. Too many games. Salamander was the one with no power-up bar, for the record. Blasted close button! Had something typed up, but... Keeping it to scrolling flight affairs(No Moon Patrol or Gyruss sneaking in this one)... My absolute favorite is probably Mars Matrix. Sure it can cause slowdown on a Dreamcast with raw bullet-count(though I've never seen it happen for more than a second), and there's usually more firepower than empty space on the screen, but it somehow does it without ever seeming "unfair." Following that... RType's a mixed bag. I love the first few levels of RType 3 and Delta, but that turns to loathe as they crank the difficulty up and it falls into pattern memorization. Actually holds true across the entire series. I've had a lot of fun with Final, which is widely regarded as mediocre(and IS seriously flawed in some places). Has a lot of the same faults too. I continue-whored a few stages REALLY badly, just out of spite. I think most of the time I've dumped into it was because I got hooked on the pokemon aspect. How on EARTH did I decide that unlocking all 101 ships was a good idea? (I usually hate collection games, so this is by no means normal) irem does that a lot. Lures me in with silky smooth gameplay and promises of alien carnage as far as the eye can see(which is about... 12 inches?), then beats me down with some utterly EVIL level designs once I get addicted. I hate them for it and love them for it all at the same time(you should see the time I've put into Metal Storm...). I like MUSHA on the Genesis a lot. Looking at things, it's a close relative of Space Megaforce(both are Aleste games in Japan). I've got a new reet warez rawm to download. Edit: Oh yes! Old-school Zanac-style Aleste! Compile can do no wrong. Honorable mention to ESP Ra De, Salamander 2, and Darius Gaiden. Oh, and ChoRenSha. The much-loved Ikaruga feels too pattern-based to me, BTW. ... That and I keep getting my colors mixed up and kamikazeing into a bullet. I've never played Radiant Silvergun. Don't have a Saturn or arcade cab(yet) and can't emulate the ST-V at a playable level(I've checked). I tend to enjoy vertical shooters mroe than horizontal ones. They seem to focus more on raw skill, while horizontal ones seem to tend towards pattern memorization. Anyways... Mars Matrix wins. </2-cents>

When a zentran or the birdman was redesign by a protoculture scientist to urinate microns by accident. Ouch.No wonder the zentradi are so against male and female fraternization...

A. Since when to children go through urethras? B. Do you even know what anecdotal means?