JB0

That's a good answer, butI don't think it's "official", is it? Besides, it begs the question, why doesn't Battle 7 have a configuration which doesn't need to be transformed to swivel the cannon? Thanks. It does make sense, but like ewilen pointed out, they could very well make a turreting cannon instead of transformation. Transformation takes alot of precious time which leaves the ship vulnerable for those precious few minutes. Well, a conventional turret only gets you 360 in one plane. You still have to move the ship if the enemy isn't oriented in the same plane as you(I assume a gun that big would be restricted to one axis of motion). And it'd likely be oriented to hit the least threatening vehicles, the ones coming in along the front and sides. The top and bottom, your largest surfaces, are undefended. In humanoid form, your gun defends one of your most vulnerable sides. Then there's the psychological factor. The ship likely "OH MY GOD IT'S HUGE I'M GONNA DIE!" effect on people on the wrong end of the gun. ... And most importantly, it looks cool.

eh.. good point. as for the fast packs though. the valk runs on nuclear power right? so what do you mean about needing fastpacks because of fuel? Nuclear subs cannot fly in space. vinnie you saying the valks burn fuel in space? i'm still confused, as far as i understood the valks didn't need fuel at all. please be blunt and obvious, i'm totally missing the point. He's saying you can't just say "it's nuclear, it can go anywhere" and leave it. The Valkyrie may be powered by fusion, but it still has to carry mass to throw out for propulsion in space. If you know of another way for it to maneuver, I recommend patenting it immediatly. You could live off the royalties for a lifetime. And you'd get a Nobel prize, too.

DYRL-style. That means CF-purple.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ... Err, I mean... None yet exist. Sorry.

The pilot has no direct control over the gunpod as far as I can tell. Pilot handedness has no bearing on mech handedness.

*looks at his left hand* I wish I hadn't gnawed that finger off last week. Makes typing a pain.

GAH! MY WEAKNESS! Must... resist... Will... weakening... *opens wallet* ... *digs for change in the couch cushions* I'm gonna need a LOT of pennies to get me that Millia.

"Behold the VF-1 Cannon Fodder Postflight edition!"

Indeed. The big diffrence is that those other examples are still all just unique uses of your current appendages. This is diffrent, because the brain's adding controls for new "body parts" instead of finding new users for old appendages, or even just their control centers. That's what really makes this fascinating. Whereas with a normal fighter, you're relying on what the HUDs and CRTs(LCDs, holo-emitters, whatever) say about your sensors, using your appendages to manipulate the controls, and speaking into a mike to talk. You may be good at it. You might be the best person in the universe at tracking multiple CRTs while keeping an eye on the actual sky in front of you and manipulating a joystick, foot pedals, switches, and sliders, but you're still using your natural human appednages, which places ristrictions on you(2 hands, 2 feet, and 2 eyes only go so far) With the YF-21, Guld is seeing directly through the sensors, controlling the controls as new appendages, and "thought-bubble" talking through the radio. Hypothetically, he could have a Nintendo hooked up to the cockpit display panels and use his eyes, ears, and hands to play a game of Super Mario while he flew the plane into combat with his new senses and appendages. And even yell about the game cheating while simultaneously "talking" to his wingmates on the radio. ... Not that that's possible in practice, since A. the cockpit screens don't have TV tuners or composite video ports, B. the BCS requires a signifigant degree of concentration to operate, and C. you really don't need to be worrying about goombas and koopa troopas while people are trying to kill you But HYPOTHETICALLY he could.

Oh yeah! Some kid at the Close Encounters Arcade was playing a Lupin type game and it was from Castle Of Cagliostro? Cool! ~G25 Yep and if you were lucky (and old enough at the time - i miss the old arcades) right next to "Dragon's Den" they had "Cliff Hanger" - also a videodisc-based arcade game - except using snippets of LUPIN anime to drive the plot no kidding lol. i played that game out - but stopped when they installed the cheat function (subtitles would flash to tell you how to move, how cheap) -so the vid game in that macross episode was an actual game in the arcade at the time! i love the 80's! Oh I found a pic of the Arcade dashboard - http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter...r=&game_id=7352 How about that? Gameplay shots And it appears they didn't install a cheat mod, it was already built-in and they just flipped a switch to enable it.

Doesn't really matter in most cases. The computer system's doing a LOT of interpolation between what you input and what it does regardless of the control system. Even in the YF-21, likely. ... Though the need for interpolation in the YF-21 may be somewhat overstated. Latest issue of Popular Science did an article on experiments in Duke University with a robot arm, a monkey, and a handful of electrodes shoved in it's brain. Among the interesting tidbits in it: A monkey with a robot arm attached through electrodes in the brain starts setting up regions devoted exclusively to operating this new arm very rapidly once they start using it. The exact speed quoted is "in a matter of minutes." Obviously, we aren't monkeys, but there's profound implications there. If it happens in monkeys, a similar process likely happens in humans. There's also mention of the current prospects for non-invasive systems of adequate resolution to do the same thing as implanted electrodes. Given Guld had been flying the YF-21 for many months, plus who knows how much simulator time on the ground, the plane likely really WAS as much an extension of his body as the brief intro sequence with him flexing his hands and the wings adjusting and so on showed. He likely had whole regions of the brain devoted to controlling flaps, throttles, and thrust vectoring; interpreting air speed, radar, GPS feeds; transforming, firing lasers, tuning the radio to his favorite station ... everything in the vehicle.

It hasn't? Dang, we've been slacking. Ummm... *proper noun* SUCKS!11111

The Protoclture ventured out into space, and found themselves to be the only sentien beings like themselves, so set about evolving & colonizing other worlds (could have sworn star trek ripped that off didn't they?) Yeah, that WAS a NextGen idea, which places it pretty firmly after Macross. I keep trying to attribute it to the original series.

That doesn't mean it can't have an armor-piercing warhead at the tip. Say, a shaped-charge explosive(though the size needed to pierce battleship armor may prove... inconvenient).

I've just started watching that series. I remember now why I love super robots.

I say super. The assymetry just doesn't do it for me.

I thought Kawamori pretty m,uch stepped back and let other people do the Escaflowne movie.

Depends on the detonation point. If the nuke detonates close to the skin, which is the logical behavior for a space-borne explosive device, conventional or not, that armor WILL be severely damaged. It's just too close to the center of the flash, which is going to have an energy level on the order of a star's surface. I don't think the Zentradi vessels are built for stellar landings. Don't forget, there's a lot of EM radiation, most of it VERY high energy. You're familiar with laser weaponry, so think of this as a less focused but far more intense laser. Sure we lose a fair bit of energy because it's on the wrong side of the blast(best-case scenario is half the energy is delivered), but that's still a lot. If it lands in a "chink", such as a gun port, we've got some very big messes to clean up, as the blast will blow through the weaker part of the armor, probably damaging some internal systems. Of course, the most effective would be a "Daedalus missile". Make a 2-stage warhead, so that the missile pierces the armor with conventional armor-piercing techniques, throws the nuke through the hole, THEN initiates the fusion process. A little Valkyrie-carried Daedalus Attack that gets around all the shortcomings of nukes in space. We're inside the armor, and therefore inside the radiation shielding, which is intended to protect from outside sources of radiation. EMP is fun, and we have ALL of the EMP inside the system. And not near weakpoints where theyre's likely to be circuit breakers to dampen things. This alone will wreak havoc with a vessel. But we ALSO have the ship's atmopshere to carry the shockwave and heat wave. AND a spaceship hull and corridors to contain it, taking the blast straight down the ship to the vital areas. ... Unless the zentradi are smart and have regular breaks in the corridors where they hook out at right angles to prevent this kind of thing. Which they don't seem to, based on the Daedalus attack animation. Those missiles seem to get some good travel. That indicates long, straight corridors right down the length of the vessel. Which are just what we want. Essentially, we have an atmospheric nuke with the vessel acting as a lens to focus the effects.

XB-70 Valkyrie. And the Orguss Valkyrie appears many places. It was in a stock cell that got moved around a lot, sometimes flipped so it looked diffrent.

Japan is very like America electronically. Same AC, with the same plug. Same TV standard(though the channels are at diffrent frequencies). A japanese system will work with no alterations in America, with the sole exception of systems using a japanese RF modulator(translation: original-style FamiCom).

Heh. I just called them jetplanes, or robot jets, or some other similar generic term. ... Not that I didn't accuse the Transformers of "ripping off Robotech" when I saw Jetfire, but...

Ditto. Man, the fun I had with that thing... Flying it through the air, spinning in circles, taking the armor off, putting the amror on, landing it on the table... Darn it! Now I miss it.

Nah, just M$ stole the logo from there Or else Macross is prophesizing a world owned by Microsoft, where car windshields blue-screen and billboards flash "powered by Microsoft". Because it couldn't POSSIBLY be that the logo design is so simplistic that it was developed independently by both parties.

Suuuure you were... ... I vaguely remember that show. Got PART of the first episode on an old VHS tape. It's in really bad shape. Why it hasn't been written over is anyone's guess. I think it's for the kick-ass Toys R Us ad. Ummm, yeah, that's it. It's the Toys R Us ad I saved it for.

Well... The odds of one ever having an official stateside release are slightly less than 0. But the GBA has no region lockouts, so those are easily imported.