The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Sailor Arashi]

9 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

.....yes? Is this board not full of knowledgeable nerds who have extra-screen knowledge?

That doesn't mean the extra-screen knowledge doesn't contradict what is actually on the screen, and it's worth pointing out when it does so.  Such is precisely the case with the massive retcons that followed Macross Plus.

[Focslain]

6 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

That doesn't mean the extra-screen knowledge doesn't contradict what is actually on the screen, and it's worth pointing out when it does so.  Such is precisely the case with the massive retcons that followed Macross Plus.

Macross is full of retcons, given a franchise that takes all series, movies, games and other media as canon. It's not much a retcon as a differentiating point of view. Remember that any animation is propaganda, a version of the true events, neither version being 100% true.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Focslain

[Sailor Arashi]

21 minutes ago, Focslain said:

Macross is full of retcons, given a franchise that takes all series, movies, games and other media as canon. It's not much a retcon as a differentiating point of view. Remember that any animation is propaganda, a version of the true events, neither version being 100% true.

Macross is full of retcons, and it's also not a retcon?

I was just pointing out the discrepancy between the actual events of Macross Plus and the way publications written after it was released have described those same events.   I even suggested ways to view them that resolves that discrepancy.  Whatever sacred cows that may have been slaughtered along the way were of your own creation.

Edited October 16, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[Seto Kaiba]

41 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Her locking out the entire defense grid happens before Isamu even destroys the satellites, hence the scene in the Macross bridge where they're freaking out about being locked out and the system going to DEFCON 1 5 before we cut back to the YF-19 to see them reacting to the defense systems coming online.

She elevates the orbital defense network's readiness level, but it isn't until well after Isamu's reentry starts that she obtained control of the people... who could have reacted to the YF-19's approach via all manner of unpleasantness like gun turrets, missile launchers, fighters...

 

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The buildings they're blowing up in the course of their heartfelt reunion are equipped with zero (0) 3rd Generation active stealth systems   Likewise the fact that there's a giant dogfight with explosions and flares and lasers and gunpods going off and nobody comes to see whats up even before they take it into the city really can't be explained by the active stealth system.

Weapons fire is often surprisingly difficult to see at a distance... so that's arguably a spot of Truth in Television.  Unless someone were looking in precisely the right direction at the time, it's unlikely the fight would've been spotted (or heard, as long as it remained at high altitudes).

Also, remember that all of this went down during the 30th Anniversary celebration for the armistice that ended the First Space War.  A fair chunk of Earth's sparse population was likely in Macross City for the event, and it would have taken some time for word of the fight to reach the military via law enforcement.  (Assuming anyone was still in possession of their faculties enough to actually place a call...)

 

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All of this was written after Macross Plus as explanation for why we don't see VF-19s everywhere, though.  That's exactly my point.

That the VF-19's excessive maneuverability puts an enormous strain on even experienced pilots does come up in Macross 7, which ran concurrently with Macross Plus.  It ended up the focus of an episode devoted to Gamlin's one-sided rivalry with Basara.

 

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Again, the entire reason for the "Earth restricts the best tech" plot existing is that Kawamori didn't think we'd buy the Macross Plus designs serving a cannon fodder role.  None of this is actually presented on-screen.

No, it isn't... 

The line about the New UN Government withholding the best tech from the emigrant forces was a factoid that was originally applied only to the YF-24, as a justification for individual emigrant fleets developing their own related fighters based on its redacted specs.  That arms export restriction bit wasn't retroactively applied to the VF-19 until over two years after Macross Frontier's TV series was over.  (Via Macross R's first chapter in January 2011.)

The contemporary explanation for the VF-171 having beaten out the VF-19 for next main fighter in the 4th Generation was that it was an inexpensive fighter with excellent cost performance that was easy for even average pilots to get the most out of... where the VF-19 was a money pit with cruelly unforgiving handling that put it beyond the reach of the average pilot.

[Sailor Arashi]

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

She elevates the orbital defense network's readiness level, but it isn't until well after Isamu's reentry starts that she obtained control of the people... who could have reacted to the YF-19's approach via all manner of unpleasantness like gun turrets, missile launchers, fighters...

She locks those people out of the network as her first move, though.  They can't react to the YF-19's approach because she's locked the defense network out, again, as the staff on the Macross bridge state.

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Weapons fire is often surprisingly difficult to see at a distance...

They don't have to see it, they're detonating ordinance in the wide-open air.  Basic radar could point that out.   I mean, it isn't even a question at that point that Sharon has complete control over Earth's defenses, so I'm not sure why this is a point of contention.  However remarkable the active stealth of the 3rd Generation fighter is, it doesn't apply to a missile detonating on a flare.

40 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That the VF-19's excessive maneuverability puts an enormous strain on even experienced pilots does come up in Macross 7, which ran concurrently with Macross Plus

And Basara flies one around with no problem...while singing...and using a freaking guitar to control it in all modes.  Macross 7 isn't exactly a bastion of reliable technical information, at least so far as the animation goes 

 

Edited October 16, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[Bolt]

Isamu and Guild did shred some of the city while they were dueling..

I assumed everyone was @ the concert. And (hopefully ) they didn’t kill any civilians. It was a holiday. And Earth defense thought they were impenetrable.

And at the end of the day, the events of M+ certainly changed the direction of the next gen fighter and advanced weapons protocols..

Basara is supposedly a bad a$$ pilot , so the custom vf-19 is his forte , I guess. 

[JB0]

46 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

And Basara flies one around with no problem...while singing...and using a freaking guitar to control it in all modes.  Macross 7 isn't exactly a bastion of reliable technical information, at least so far as the animation goes 

Basara is also a very gifted pilot, if Captain Max's evaluation of his skill is any indication.

 

34 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Isamu and Guild did shred some of the city while they were dueling..

I assumed everyone was @ the concert. And (hopefully ) they didn’t kill any civilians. It was a holiday. And Earth defense thought they were impenetrable.

Canonically, I think they're blowing up an abandoned city, not Macross City.

[Bolt]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

Canonically, I think they're blowing up an abandoned city, not Macross City.

What?!? 

You gotta be kidding me. That city looks so intact. It’s been how long since space war I, and it’s that close to the Macross, yet abandoned? And ,seemingly, completely intact..

Wow..

[JB0]

42 minutes ago, Bolt said:

And ,seemingly, completely intact..

Well, not once our heroes were done...

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Bolt said:

What?!? 

You gotta be kidding me. That city looks so intact. It’s been how long since space war I, and it’s that close to the Macross, yet abandoned? And ,seemingly, completely intact..

Wow..

I think it's actually quite a distance away in fact. Remember everything is on the way when you have a space fighter.

I do recall always thinking it was a ghost city though some distance away. A rarity of buildings that wasn't vaporized decades back, but radiation likely made it a tough place to stay.. or it was built later but then people didn't stick around for some reason. It's never fully explained, but the area looked a bit sparse for Macross City, which is often seen in post-SDFM material to be quite dense.

3 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

And Basara flies one around with no problem...while singing...and using a freaking guitar to control it in all modes.  Macross 7 isn't exactly a bastion of reliable technical information, at least so far as the animation goes 

As others have already stated, Basara is an unusually good pilot. It's likely Ray taught him the basics, but Basara seems to have a natural affinity for it (and seriously, being praised by Max himself is nothing to scoff at). This goes so far that in Dynamite 7 he flies an old VT-1 by manipulating the classical controls by pushing them with his acoustic guitar. Basara can handle the VF-19's gimmicky nature (also who knows how the guitar control system altered the flight avionics and control systems anyway).

[Bolt]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

Well, not once our heroes were done...

Ain’t that the truth..!

1 hour ago, Master Dex said:

Remember everything is on the way when you have a space fighter.

Oh ya, right..

 

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

21 hours ago, JB0 said:

As far as ranking pilots goes, Max did say Basara was almost as good as he was. But then, Max also underestimated his own skill level during the war. Maybe getting hitched to the zentradi ace bombshell after repeatedly equaling or besting her made him re-evaluate his own talents, because he did realize that 7 fleet was better served with him in a fighter jet than on the bridge in moments of dire crisis. ("Hi guys, I'm just gonna blast past all of you with my throttle open to full and nuke Gepelnitch in his eyeball. You can stand back and eat my reactor exhaust. Captain's orders.")

Max in his VF-22, made M7 worth sitting through all the times planet dance played.

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Alas, no... all we know of the VF-24 is that the YF-24 Evolution was approved for adoption as the 5th Generation VF of Earth and the federal New UN Forces in 2057.  It must be pretty incredible, given it was deemed too awesome to share with the colonies, who got heavily redacted versions of its specs to build their own VFs from and the YF-29 is said to have been an effort to exceed its performance.

With that said, do we know of any emigrant only/made VF's that are out there that may exceed what the UN Government has, like possibly the VF-27 Lucifer, or the YF-29? 

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Blame the Birdhuman... in hindsight, that was pretty obviously a zero-time fold effect, and humanity didn't have that technology until at least 2059, so it'd have to have been the Birdhuman.

Jesus Seto, your knowledge makes me feel infantile sometimes....

Whats the difference between a regular fold and a zero-time fold?

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

A fair chunk of Earth's sparse population was likely in Macross City for the event

Just how sparse is Earth's population at that time? And now in current time? I thought the UN Government started a mass cloning program and encouraged couples to (uhhhhhh; well to be blunt) "baby make", to rebuild Earth's population? Or was I just imagining I read that somewhere on an old thread here?

9 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

And Basara flies one around with no problem...while singing...and using a freaking guitar to control it in all modes. 

Hey, it is Basara.  He tried to move a mountain with his song. He befriended and improved the proto-devlin's way of life. He almost made out/got to 1st base with a 50ft tall hot Meltran (mmmmmmm... Emilia). He freaking rocked out with space whales!!! There ain't nothing this man can't do...Except stay still.

Speaking of Basara and nerfed VF's. What was Basara's customized VF-19 compared to other monkey models, like Docker's?

Edited October 17, 2018 by SkullLeaderVF-X

[JB0]

25 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Just how sparse is Earth's population at that time? And now in current time? I thought the UN Government started a mass cloning program and encouraged couples to (uhhhhhh; well to be blunt) "baby make", to rebuild Earth's population? Or was I just imagining I read that somewhere on an old thread here?

Cloning was discontinued due to birth defects on the rise, I believe. 

I think I may've typed up a long spiel a while back about how the government would want to encourage procreation and how they could go about it, with tax breaks and government-sponsored childcare and so on. But I don't think there's anything official saying so. 

 

But population growth is going to be slow as long as they keep launching colony ships as fast as they can make them. 

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

5 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Cloning was discontinued due to birth defects on the rise, I believe. 

I think I may've typed up a long spiel a while back about how the government would want to encourage procreation and how they could go about it, with tax breaks and government-sponsored childcare and so on. But I don't think there's anything official saying so. 

 

But population growth is going to be slow as long as they keep launching colony ships as fast as they can make them. 

I think it was you. Every thing you just mentioned comes to mind. That and someone saying all the bridge bunnies except one got married. And Shammy had like 9 kids or something. 

 

[JB0]

Sounds like the thread I was thinking of. I tend to get interested on some little corner of something and just chew on it for a bit. Like a dog with a book.

 

Max and Millia had seven kids, too. Our sample size of two suggests that postwar Earth saw the return of large families.

Edited October 17, 2018 by JB0

[SMS007]

Y'know, I would love to see a realistic take on the psychological effects of parents who are given a depopulated Earth and have children en masse. Realistically, that would almost certainly lead to generational clashes if not allow for rampant abuse.

But, Japan would never show that. Like how anime never acknowledges the unfairness of shouldering the responsibility for reversing the declining birth rate on the generation who was given a terrible economy and told to suck it up.

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

She locks those people out of the network as her first move, though.  They can't react to the YF-19's approach because she's locked the defense network out, again, as the staff on the Macross bridge state.

They never indicate that she's rendered all of the ships in orbit inoperable, we only see responses from the orbital weapons platforms.

 

17 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

They don't have to see it, they're detonating ordinance in the wide-open air.  Basic radar could point that out.

But she started hypnotizing everyone during Isamu's reentry... there likely wasn't anyone in a position to notice by the time they finally started shooting at each other.

 

17 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

And Basara flies one around with no problem...while singing...and using a freaking guitar to control it in all modes.  Macross 7 isn't exactly a bastion of reliable technical information, at least so far as the animation goes 

Basara is a Godmode Sue... but the fact that Basara was under a gargantuan amount of strain doing what he did in the VF-19 Custom is discussed, and shown that it was beyond what even one of the fleet's best active duty pilots could handle.  

 

 

13 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I think it's actually quite a distance away in fact. Remember everything is on the way when you have a space fighter.

A space fighter capable of hypersonic flight in double-digit mach regimes.

 

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

With that said, do we know of any emigrant only/made VF's that are out there that may exceed what the UN Government has, like possibly the VF-27 Lucifer, or the YF-29? 

The YF-29 is indicated to have been developed as a dedicated anti-Vajra variable fighter intended to exceed the capabilities of the YF-24.  Whether it was actually successful in that regard is unclear, and the Frontier fleet probably didn't have a real way to make the comparison given that the YF-24 spec they were given was a redacted version.  It was unsuitable for mass production anyway, thanks to its insane cost in terms of material requirements.

It may technically not count anymore anyway, since we've seen that the New UN Spacy Special Forces appropriated the design and made a better version for themselves (in Macross 30) designated the YF-29B Perceval.

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Jesus Seto, your knowledge makes me feel infantile sometimes....

Actually, that one's one anyone could've picked up on just by watching the show, no books needed. 

They used the same visual effect for the super fold booster in Macross Frontier that Macross Zero had used for the Birdhuman's fold jump.

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Whats the difference between a regular fold and a zero-time fold?

In short, a zero-time fold is "faster" because there is no disparity between the passage of time in the folding ship and realspace during the fold jump and it can traverse fold faults unimpeded.

The downside is you need fold quartz to build a fold system capable of it, and since that stuff can't presently be synthesized it's not a technology that's going to be widely disseminated.

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Just how sparse is Earth's population at that time? And now in current time? I thought the UN Government started a mass cloning program and encouraged couples to (uhhhhhh; well to be blunt) "baby make", to rebuild Earth's population? Or was I just imagining I read that somewhere on an old thread here?

Earth's total population in the wake of the First Space War was only about 9 million... 8 million of which were Zentradi.  They've done a fair bit of growing since then, but it's worth noting that the Sol system has a lot of its population living in space colonies and on Mars.  Earth may be the seat of the New UN Government parliament, but it's still a mostly-barren dump that's going to take somewhere on the order of 10,000 years to return to its pre-war state via the environmental reclamation tech the New UN Government is using.

The New UN Government did have a cloning program going both to shore up the population and duplicate individuals with vital skills to crew emigrant ships, but shut it down in December 2030 due to a spike in the number of recessive genetic illnesses cropping up.

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Speaking of Basara and nerfed VF's. What was Basara's customized VF-19 compared to other monkey models, like Docker's?

The "donor" airframe that became Basara's VF-19 Custom was a locally-built VF-19F Excalibur, and the only real noted performance improvement was swapping the engines out for a more powerful model that had slightly more thrust than the VF-19S's.

 

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

I think it was you. Every thing you just mentioned comes to mind. That and someone saying all the bridge bunnies except one got married. And Shammy had like 9 kids or something. 

That's Macross 7 Docking Festival, IIRC.  Kim was the only one of the bridge bunnies to stay in the military and not get married.  Shammy's got 11 kids and lives on the moon.  Vanessa and her husband have a club in Macross City.  

Interestingly, Zentradi spy Roli Dosel seems to have had a family too... his granddaughter appears in Macross the Musiculture, as a citizen of the Macross-29 fleet.

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It may technically not count anymore anyway, since we've seen that the New UN Spacy Special Forces appropriated the design and made a better version for themselves (in Macross 30) designated the YF-29B Perceval.

So it's a case where a emigrant fleets own design/derivative showed promise, and made the UN Government take notice. 

Did Macross 30 give any info on the Perceval's stats/changes when compared to the Frontiers Durandal? I would assume a lot of the anti-vajra weaponry was taken out or improved/changed to deal with other more common threats, and engine upgrades.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Actually, that one's one anyone could've picked up on just by watching the show, no books needed. 

They used the same visual effect for the super fold booster in Macross Frontier that Macross Zero had used for the Birdhuman's fold jump.

Yeah. I obviously don't have an eye for detail.

I missed all that. Still thank you though for dropping knowledge on me.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In short, a zero-time fold is "faster" because there is no disparity between the passage of time in the folding ship and realspace during the fold jump and it can traverse fold faults unimpeded.

Was it ever explained/retconned as to way fold faults were never mentioned in Macross Plus or Macross 7? I know fold faults were introduced in Frontier as a plot device for the series, but it seems contradictory from what we see in Plus and especially M7 and Dynamite. They were folding everywhere in the series and I was wondering if they came up with a logical explanation to integrate fold faults?

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's Macross 7 Docking Festival, IIRC.  Kim was the only one of the bridge bunnies to stay in the military and not get married.  Shammy's got 11 kids and lives on the moon.  Vanessa and her husband have a club in Macross City.  

Interestingly, Zentradi spy Roli Dosel seems to have had a family too... his granddaughter appears in Macross the Musiculture, as a citizen of the Macross-29 fleet.

Jesus 11 kids! Did she and Vanessa marry their Zentran spys (sorry I can't remember who they paired off with in SDF)?

 

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

So it's a case where a emigrant fleets own design/derivative showed promise, and made the UN Government take notice. 

Admittedly it's not clear if the YF-29B Perceval was something that the federal New UN Forces had taken notice of, or just the particular (rogue) NUNS VF-X special forces squadron in question.¹

(As the planet Uroboros had a factory satellite, Havamal wouldn't have had to twist too many arms before they got permission to use some of the planet's abundant fold quartz build a few YF-29B's.)

 

22 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Did Macross 30 give any info on the Perceval's stats/changes when compared to the Frontiers Durandal? I would assume a lot of the anti-vajra weaponry was taken out or improved/changed to deal with other more common threats, and engine upgrades.

Regrettably, we got the square root of bugger all.  

Literally all we're told about the YF-29B Perceval is that it's an improved version of the YF-29 used by Havamal's top aces.  The only externally-visible improvement is that the fighter's heavy quantum beam gunpod has a bayonet now.

 

22 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Was it ever explained/retconned as to way fold faults were never mentioned in Macross Plus or Macross 7? I know fold faults were introduced in Frontier as a plot device for the series, but it seems contradictory from what we see in Plus and especially M7 and Dynamite. They were folding everywhere in the series and I was wondering if they came up with a logical explanation to integrate fold faults?

Sort of.  The Zentradi have known about them all along, but never really gave them much thought as it didn't really fit into their "Is it an enemy? Y/N" mindset.  Humanity's fold technology wasn't all that great at the beginning, and their understanding of higher-dimensional spacetime was kind of rough, so there were supposedly a number of accidents and losses caused by miscalculated jumps and fold faults that weren't properly identified at the time.

As time went on and humanity improved its understanding and its fold technology, such incidents became less common and fold travel became "faster" and more precise as humanity grew used to computing jumps that avoided or accounted for navigational hazards that could disrupt a jump or increase the disparity between experienced and objective time like fold faults and intense gravity fields.  

IMO, that fold jumps shown in earlier Macross shows are almost all short-ranged jumps of only a dozen to a couple dozen light years probably helped avoid areas of major fault activity.  It wasn't until Macross Frontier that we actually saw ships folding close to a thousand light years at a time onscreen.  Eden's only 11.7 light years from Earth, after all... and anything up to 20ly seems to be considered "short range", since that was the rated one-way capacity of an initial-type fold booster unit.

 

22 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Jesus 11 kids! Did she and Vanessa marry their Zentran spys (sorry I can't remember who they paired off with in SDF)?

I can only assume that the moon is somewhat light on entertainment and/or has incredible daycare facilities.

IIRC, Macross 7 Docking Festival indicated that the Zentradi spies tended to crash at Vanessa's place, suggesting none of them married their Zentradi opposite numbers.

 

1. The New UN Spacy 815th Independent Squadron VF-X "Havamal".

[Kelsain]

On October 5, 2018 at 10:44 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Sort of... it helps to look at WWII organization for the US forces too, since the UN Spacy's squadron organization is a weird melange of US and Imperial Japanese practices drawn from their respective armies, navies, and air forces.

They seem to be pulling unit sizes from the Air Force side, IMO.  The standard squadron size is the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service's 15 planes, while the maximum in the US Army Air Force in the same period was 24.

 

It's a slightly awkward situation, translation-wise, thanks to the UN Spacy's organization being such an odd mixture of different branches of service and that the IJN organization doesn't line up neatly with the USAF/USN ones.  Partly, this is because there is no organizational level between NATO II (Battalion/Squadron) and NATO ••• (Platoon/Flight) in the aviation context.

So instead of being Squadron > ??? > Flight, it comes out as Squadron > Flight > Element. 

Though, in possibly deference to the Battroid's status as a land warfare weapon, they seem to have opted to make Platoon the official translation for that lowest level since that same number (3-4) is what you get in a tank platoon.

It's a messy bit of translation, that's for sure.

Thanks for the info, Seto & Sketchly. Very informative.

So, that being said, do these seem like a viable way to strike a balance between the organization of the SDFM & DYRL versions of Skull Squadron?

I've finally excavated my Hasegawa VF-1A that I'd planned the livery for the "Stellar Jays." I may have gotten a little carried away planning out the rest of the squadron.

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Literally all we're told about the YF-29B Perceval is that it's an improved version of the YF-29 used by Havamal's top aces.  The only externally-visible improvement is that the fighter's heavy quantum beam gunpod has a bayonet now.

Well, I shouldn't be surprised about that. Guess we'll have to wait amd see if they make a masterworks book on it. 

How about VF-31 Siegfried/31B Kairos. How are they different? I know the B is supposed to be a beta fighter, but does that mean its a test type? It throws me off, since I would think it would have a "YF" designation. And how does the newest Valkyrie on the block compare to others as well as the Windermere Drakens. It still gets me, that even how awesome the YF/VF-19 and the YF/VF-21/22 are old when we come into Frontier with the Messiah and Durandal. Now we have the Siegfried and Drakens. I guess am just an old die hard YF-21, VF-22 fan. I loved going to the macross mecha  manual and reading up on the info there, but it only goes up to Frontier.

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Sort of.  The Zentradi have known about them all along, but never really gave them much thought as it didn't really fit into their "Is it an enemy? Y/N" mindset.  Humanity's fold technology wasn't all that great at the beginning, and their understanding of higher-dimensional spacetime was kind of rough, so there were supposedly a number of accidents and losses caused by miscalculated jumps and fold faults that weren't properly identified at the time.

As time went on and humanity improved its understanding and its fold technology, such incidents became less common and fold travel became "faster" and more precise as humanity grew used to computing jumps that avoided or accounted for navigational hazards that could disrupt a jump or increase the disparity between experienced and objective time like fold faults and intense gravity fields.  

IMO, that fold jumps shown in earlier Macross shows are almost all short-ranged jumps of only a dozen to a couple dozen light years probably helped avoid areas of major fault activity.  It wasn't until Macross Frontier that we actually saw ships folding close to a thousand light years at a time onscreen.  Eden's only 11.7 light years from Earth, after all... and anything up to 20ly seems to be considered "short range", since that was the rated one-way capacity of an initial-type fold booster unit.

Okay. That makes logical sense now. My head can accept that. Do we have any more info on the accidents, or was it just a blurb on the technology evolving?

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I can only assume that the moon is somewhat light on entertainment and/or has incredible daycare facilities.

Or maybe both?

Sounds like Miss Milliome, is doing her part to help humanity recover. 

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IIRC, Macross 7 Docking Festival indicated that the Zentradi spies tended to crash at Vanessa's place, suggesting none of them married their Zentradi opposite numbers.

Vanessa must have a heart of gold, and a very understanding husband (Especially when one used to date your wife), to let them crash at their place. 

[Seto Kaiba]

39 minutes ago, Kelsain said:

Thanks for the info, Seto & Sketchly. Very informative.

So, that being said, do these seem like a viable way to strike a balance between the organization of the SDFM & DYRL versions of Skull Squadron?

Ordinarily, I'd expect all of the platoons to be the same size... the TV series org chart showed fifteen fighters in three-plane platoons, so I'd expect the DYRL? version to be more like 20 planes in five 4 plane platoons.

 

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Well, I shouldn't be surprised about that. Guess we'll have to wait amd see if they make a masterworks book on it. 

Given how little we see of the YF-29, I wouldn't hold my breath for a Master File book.  I was a little surprised it got a passing mention in the VF-25 book, even if it was half for the sake of an obscure reference to the design the YF-29 was developed from: the SW-XA II Schneegans.

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

How about VF-31 Siegfried/31B Kairos. How are they different?

Can't say... we've never actually seen a VF-31B. 

Apart from the five customized VF-31 "Siegfried" units operated by Xaos's Ragna branch 3rd Fighter Wing Δ flight, all of the VF-31s seen in Macross Delta are the VF-31A Kairos initial mass production type flown by Xaos.

The Siegfried customs are all VF-31As that've been upgraded by replacing their FF-3001A Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines with a derated version of the YF-30's FF-3001/FC2 Stage II engines, installing a fold wave system and fold amps, exchanging the delta winglets for a forward-swept winglet, installing a customized integrated airframe management AI, and giving them lower-powered firearms for safer operation around civilians.

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

I know the B is supposed to be a beta fighter, but does that mean its a test type? It throws me off, since I would think it would have a "YF" designation.

No, the B is just a letter B... not a β.  (Even then, for standard usage, β would still have been the 2nd mass production variant behind α, as on the SV-51.)

The VF-31A and VF-31B are the first mass production variants of the VF-31 Kairos.  The way they're described, the VF-31A and B seem to have the same relationship that the VF-11A and B or VF-19A and B did.  The -A variant was the initial trial production variant used for its operational evaluation testing, and the -B variant based on the feedback from those tests is the first version to actually be widely adopted by the New UN Forces.

The VF-31 Kairos is the next (5th) generation main fighter developed locally by the New UN Gov't member worlds of the Brisingr globular cluster (AKA the "Brisingr Alliance") to replace their aging fleet of VF-171 Nightmare Pluses.  

The VF-31 Siegfried is an Ace Custom unit that Xaos makes in-house by modifying stock VF-31As specifically for use by Δ flight.  The variant letters that Xaos assigns to them are probably only for their internal use, rather than being official.  It should probably properly be VF-31改.

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

And how does the newest Valkyrie on the block compare to others as well as the Windermere Drakens.

Neither the VF-31 nor the Sv-262 is all that impressive by 5th Generation VF standards, really.

The VF-31A/B shares a lot of parts in common with the VF-25A, like its engines, EX-Gear, avionics, integrated airframe management AI, laser cannon, and missile launchers.  Its performance is a bit lower than the VF-25's because it's a fair bit heavier thanks to the ordnance container system.  Its only real improvements are the aforementioned ordnance container that makes configuring for a special mission easy as hot-swapping a FAST pack, the beam gunpod, and having those forearm-mounted railguns instead of machine guns or beam machine guns.  You could say that it's almost certainly the lowest-performance 5th Generation fighter we've seen so far.

The Siegfried custom version is a bit more impressive, but its performance still between the VF-25 and VF-27, and its guns are a bit less powerful than the military spec version's and it sacrifices the ordnance bays in the legs for multidrone racks.

The Sv-262 Draken III's also hovering in that space between the VF-25 and VF-27, but it's a design that suffers from crippling overspecialization.  It's dependent on conformal packs to carry missiles, and the only fixed armament it has is a pair of railguns (and a pair of lasers on the command type).  Its design actually cripples it in space, since its complex VF-9-like transformation leaves less space internally for fuel tanks.  It's very much an atmospheric dogfighter made for close-range combat, and since the honor-before-reason Aerial Knights insisted on having a sword the close combat blade's so fragile it can't be used unpowered the way the VF-25 or VF-31's knife can.

(It came as something of a relief, since people were upset about the possibility of a new generation of fighters so soon after Frontier... instead, we just got some more regional 5th Generation VFs that really aren't all that impressive.)

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

 It still gets me, that even how awesome the YF/VF-19 and the YF/VF-21/22 are old when we come into Frontier with the Messiah and Durandal. Now we have the Siegfried and Drakens

By the time the VF-31A/B Kairos finally makes it into New UN Spacy service in the Brisingr Alliance, the VF-19 and VF-22 will be 30 years old.

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

. I guess am just an old die hard YF-21, VF-22 fan. I loved going to the macross mecha  manual and reading up on the info there, but it only goes up to Frontier.

Mr March is working on updates, but y'know... day jobs.

I've been so preoccupied with my day job that I haven't spoken to him in a good while.  I'm keeping the site's server ticking and all, but that's about it right now.  I'm still plodding along on a project of my own that I'm trying to get launched in time for New Year's.

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Okay. That makes logical sense now. My head can accept that. Do we have any more info on the accidents, or was it just a blurb on the technology evolving?

Well, the most noteworthy accident we've heard about is the one that wasn't actually one... the 117th Research Fleet that was actually destroyed by the Vajra.

One that we found out about via Delta was the Megaroad-04.  It accidentally discovered the planet Windermere IV in 2027 when it hit a fold fault that knocked it back into realspace.

(Incidents caused by fold faults vary... depending on how they're encountered they can either vastly increase the time disparity between objective and experienced time so that a fold jump takes DAYS longer than it would have, knock a ship out of higher dimensional space entirely, or even trap a ship in higher dimensional space and dooming it to be destroyed when its power runs out.)

 

5 minutes ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Vanessa must have a heart of gold, and a very understanding husband (Especially when one used to date your wife), to let them crash at their place. 

Either that or they're incredibly cynical... IIRC one or more of the Zentradi spies is an alcoholic, Vanessa and her husband run a bar.

[SMS007]

Do supplementary materials specify if Xaos Ragna in 2067 has any regular 31C, E, F, J, and S type Kairos units beyond the custom Siegfried units?

Edited October 19, 2018 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

44 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Do supplementary materials specify if Xaos Ragna in 2067 has any regular 31C, E, F, J, and S type Kairos units beyond the custom Siegfried units?

The only VF-31s mentioned in connection with the Xaos branch HQ on Ragna are the Xaos 3rd Fighter Wing... composed of four flights, with Alpha, Beta, and Gamma using VF-31As and Delta using the ace custom Siegfried versions.  All the information we've been given thus far has pointed to the Siegfrieds being modified VF-31A airframes specially tailored for the individual tastes and styles of the members of 3rd Fighter Wing Delta Flight.  They've also implied that the reason there are five different variants of Siegfried, each with distinct differences in appearance and coloration, was (in-universe) to facilitate the celebrity status of Delta Flight by making its members easier to identify at a distance.

As far as I've found, the only source that refers to the Siegfried custom VF-31s as though they were something intended for eventual production is Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried.  Master File books aren't official setting material so... y'know.  The book's contents are wildly inaccurate and focus primarily on Xaos's use of the VF-31, but it does treat the VF-31S as something that ended up in the New UN Spacy's inventory.  That's probably the least bizarre divergence from canon in the book.

 

 

 

6 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

And how does the newest Valkyrie on the block compare to others as well as the Windermere Drakens.

Here's a somewhat more detailed analysis I did back in '17.

 

[Master Dex]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Mr March is working on updates, but y'know... day jobs.

I've been so preoccupied with my day job that I haven't spoken to him in a good while.  I'm keeping the site's server ticking and all, but that's about it right now.  I'm still plodding along on a project of my own that I'm trying to get launched in time for New Year's.

I still feel the desire to help you with that project after we spoke at SDC... but I really don't know what I could offer you. I think I just want to be involved in things, lol.

[Seto Kaiba]

Further to my last on the subject of Master File asserting the existence of NUNS VF-31S's, I did a little skim over the book's squadrons section and found that they aren't quite the same as Xaos's VF-31S... they seem to be just a VF-31A with the S-type monitor turret and forward-swept winglet.

[SkullLeaderVF-X]

On 10/18/2018 at 6:51 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The only VF-31s mentioned in connection with the Xaos branch HQ on Ragna are the Xaos 3rd Fighter Wing... composed of four flights, with Alpha, Beta, and Gamma using VF-31As and Delta using the ace custom Siegfried versions.  All the information we've been given thus far has pointed to the Siegfrieds being modified VF-31A airframes specially tailored for the individual tastes and styles of the members of 3rd Fighter Wing Delta Flight.  They've also implied that the reason there are five different variants of Siegfried, each with distinct differences in appearance and coloration, was (in-universe) to facilitate the celebrity status of Delta Flight by making its members easier to identify at a distance.

As far as I've found, the only source that refers to the Siegfried custom VF-31s as though they were something intended for eventual production is Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried.  Master File books aren't official setting material so... y'know.  The book's contents are wildly inaccurate and focus primarily on Xaos's use of the VF-31, but it does treat the VF-31S as something that ended up in the New UN Spacy's inventory.  That's probably the least bizarre divergence from canon in the book.

 

 

 

Here's a somewhat more detailed analysis I did back in '17.

 

Thank you for the info Seto! I'll be taking a read then!

[SMS007]

On 10/19/2018 at 1:58 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Further to my last on the subject of Master File asserting the existence of NUNS VF-31S's, I did a little skim over the book's squadrons section and found that they aren't quite the same as Xaos's VF-31S... they seem to be just a VF-31A with the S-type monitor turret and forward-swept winglet.

Ewwww. I am not partial to the tiny forward-swept design. Physics and purpose aside, I only like it if it's done to the length of the YF-19 and YF-29.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, SkullLeaderVF-X said:

Thank you for the info Seto! I'll be taking a read then!

You'll want to bring a snack... I got a bit wordy, as I am wont to do when a subject is worth analyzing in detail.

The 5th Generation of Variable Fighters is shaping up to be a very interesting one, since for the first time we have multiple main fighters coming into service that AREN'T the result of deficient performance in a particular regime the way we had with the 2nd Generation's VF-4 and a parade of atmosphere-optimized designs like the VF-5, VF-5000, and VF-9.

 

3 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Ewwww. I am not partial to the tiny forward-swept design. Physics and purpose aside, I only like it if it's done to the length of the YF-19 and YF-29.

Yeah, I've found that to be a fairly common opinion among Western Macross fans.  

When it comes to forward-swept wings, there seems to be a strong preference for an all-or-nothing approach and a general feeling that the forward-swept winglet with delta wing combo on the space-use VF-19s and VF-31 Siegfried customs look stunted or somehow wrong.

[aurance]

19 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, I've found that to be a fairly common opinion among Western Macross fans.  

When it comes to forward-swept wings, there seems to be a strong preference for an all-or-nothing approach and a general feeling that the forward-swept winglet with delta wing combo on the space-use VF-19s and VF-31 Siegfried customs look stunted or somehow wrong.

I'm the opposite actually, the 19F wing type is one of my favs, more than the 29 or the 19A.

Edited October 21, 2018 by aurance

[SMS007]

Also, I would love to know what the Delta crew was smoking when they titled their whole franchise iteration Δ / Delta and yet the titular combat unit doesn't fly the delta-shaped variant sub-model.

They should have titled the whole shebang Macross Walküre to be more on-point.

Edited October 21, 2018 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, aurance said:

I'm the opposite actually, the 19F wing type is one of my favs, more than the 29 or the 19A.

Different strokes for different folks, y'know?

I'd be interested to know which version of the VF-19 is the most popular in Japan... my sample population for that is way, way too small to draw any conclusions but I have a feeling it's the Fire Valkyrie.

 

 

1 hour ago, SMS007 said:

Also, I would love to know what the Delta crew was smoking when they titled their whole franchise iteration Δ / Delta and yet the titular combat unit doesn't fly the delta-shaped variant sub-model.

It's possible that the staff was referencing either Delta Flight itself or the Protoculture's Delta Wave system that was crux of the plot even if it didn't show up until a few episodes before the end... or perhaps they were referencing the mathematical operator for Change.  Sigma tends to be the favorite when they're pulling the mathematical gimmick though.

Or... if you're in the mood for a spectacularly pedantic but otherwise entirely sound argument... the Siegfried Custom VF-31 does technically have a delta wing configuration.  It uses the same wing configuration as the VF-19F/S type, which IS officially described as a hybrid of forward-swept and delta wing configurations.  IMO it's more like a clipped delta with a forward-swept winglet stuck on, but I don't write the books.  Curious that the VF-19F/S materials explicitly mention its delta wing characteristics but the Macross Delta materials that have been published for the VF-31C/E/F/J/S do not.

 

 

1 hour ago, SMS007 said:

They should have titled the whole shebang Macross Walküre to be more on-point.

Or Walkure Delta, considering how often the Macross aspects of the story take a backseat to promoting Walkure.

[sketchley]

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's possible that the staff was referencing either Delta Flight itself or the Protoculture's Delta Wave system that was crux of the plot even if it didn't show up until a few episodes before the end... or perhaps they were referencing the mathematical operator for Change.  Sigma tends to be the favorite when they're pulling the mathematical gimmick though.

Or... if you're in the mood for a spectacularly pedantic but otherwise entirely sound argument... the Siegfried Custom VF-31 does technically have a delta wing configuration.  (...)

All very good guesses.  I was going to go with the triangle (as in love-triangles are one of the 3 pillars of Macross).  However, after looking up the Greek letter Delta on Wikipedia, I'm going to go with 4 (4th letter of the Greek alphabet, number 4 in the system of Greek numbers—Macross Delta being the 4th Macross TV series ).  So, one literal translation of the title into English is "Macross 4".

What probably clinched the deal was the references to the delta wing, math operator, and so on.  Though, I think the Delta name dictated the creative decision to use a lot of Greek terminology throughout the series.

Edited October 22, 2018 by sketchley

[HardlyNever]

Is there any info about how artificial gravity works in Macross, specifically on the SDF-1?  I see mention of "OverTechnology Macross gravity control system" in the Macross Mecha Manual.  Is there anything beyond that?  Anytime I see "overtechnology" I basically assume it means "super advanced stuff that we basically made up, don't ask."  But maybe they give a little more detail on the gravity/anti-gravity systems somewhere.

I know Macross wouldn't be the first or last sci-fi franchise to brush over artificial gravity as a "given," but it would be interested to see what their specific take on it is/was.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, sketchley said:

So, one literal translation of the title into English is "Macross 4".

That, I must admit, adds a rather amusing dimension to Macross Delta having ripped off Macross II's gimmicks almost whole cloth but with far worse writing... particularly when you factor in that 4 is an unlucky number in Japan.

 

12 minutes ago, HardlyNever said:

Is there any info about how artificial gravity works in Macross, specifically on the SDF-1?  I see mention of "OverTechnology Macross gravity control system" in the Macross Mecha Manual.  Is there anything beyond that?

There may be something in one of the books I haven't gotten to yet, but if it's anything like the other technologies that involve gravity manipulation it probably involves the exotic matter referred to as "heavy quantum".  

(Heavy quantum exists simultaneously in fold space and normal space, but its mass is incredibly high and exists mostly in fold space unless it's subjected to certain types of resonance fold effects.  It's the substance used to produce intense gravity to compress fuel in thermonuclear reactors and is used in similar capacities in thermonuclear reaction and dimensional weapons.)