The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[JB0]

8 hours ago, Sir Galahad® said:

But then again, if they didn't there would be difficulty taking care of a whole lot of kids.

Given Max and Millia raised a family of seven while holding down major jobs... I think there was a significant effort to ensure the infrastructure for childcare assistance was there.

I mean, it makes sense if you're trying to repopulate the planet AND man a bunch of colony fleets. You have to arrange some sort of mechanism to reduce the burden of childcare so parents can afford to have a bunch of them.

 

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Presumably, yes... since it's mentioned that they duplicated important personnel with key skills right down to their memories and learned skills.

Oh man, so there could be DOZENS of Hikarus out there, all ineptly bumbling their way through romantic minefields while listening to Minmay CDs and leading fighter squadrons?

Edited November 17, 2017 by JB0

[Devil 505]

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

Given Max and Millia raised a family of seven while holding down major jobs... I think there was a significant effort to ensure the infrastructure for childcare assistance was there.

Eight, counting Moaramia.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Given Max and Millia raised a family of seven while holding down major jobs... I think there was a significant effort to ensure the infrastructure for childcare assistance was there.

Just imagine it... Warera Nantes, Roli Dosel, and Conda Bromco: Space Nannies.

(Or from Macross 2036, the implication that General Vrlitwhai Kridanik himself may have been the one babysitting Komilia when her parents were busy.  "Uncle Vrlitwhai" indeed...)

 

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

I mean, it makes sense if you're trying to repopulate the planet AND man a bunch of colony fleets. You have to arrange some sort of mechanism to reduce the burden of childcare so parents can afford to have a bunch of them.

Clearly... I can only imagine that "Day care worker" suddenly became a fairly lucrative business, considering Max and Milia's seven (plus one) kids weren't even the largest family we know about from that period.  Shammy Milliome and her husband had ELEVEN, and they were living in those relatively small colonies on the moon.  That must have been a nightmare, you can't even tell the kids "go play outside" when outside is an airless 1/6th G dustball.

 

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Oh man, so there could be DOZENS of Hikarus out there, all ineptly bumbling their way through romantic minefields while listening to Minmay CDs and leading fighter squadrons?

It's certainly possible. 

(It'd be like the Jackie Chan movie Shuāng Lóng Huì /Twin Dragons, but with even more potential for comedy.)

 

1 hour ago, Devil 505 said:

Eight, counting Moaramia.

Raising eight daughters with his clone soldier wife, I can only assume Max locked himself in a bunker for a couple days every month for his own safety...

[Valkyrie Driver]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

About 9 million, all told... ~1 million humans and ~8 million Zentradi.

Does that imply that the Human race has more zentradi genes than actual human ones from SDFM onwards? I know there was cloning, but you hit the point of diminishing returns very quickly that way, and that really trashes genetic diversity...

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Does that imply that the Human race has more zentradi genes than actual human ones from SDFM onwards?

Nah, there was a pretty concerted effort to preserve humanity via cloning and good old fashioned boot-knocking.  Zentradi-Human hybrids weren't rare, but they weren't exactly ubiquitous either... hence the big to-do about Guld's ancestry in Macross Plus.

(There do seem to have been no shortage of Zentradi couples pairing off though.)

 

4 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I know there was cloning, but you hit the point of diminishing returns very quickly that way, and that really trashes genetic diversity...

Yep, even exploiting the captured Zentradi Army cloning technology to its fullest, they ran up against that wall around 2030 and pulled the plug.  Of course, sending ships full of clones with a sufficiently diverse genetic origin off to colonize other planets in the galaxy helped defer the inevitable.

(There is also some indication that the cloning tech can mix and match genes to create individuals who aren't simply genetic duplicates, but its usefulness in that regard is apparently limited.)

[SMS007]

Why are all Zentradi names romanized in ways that make not a lick of phonetic logic?

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Why are all Zentradi names romanized in ways that make not a lick of phonetic logic?

Because it looks more alien that way... even though the Zentradi alphabet used in some merchandise and seen in DYRL? and Frontier is just a symbol substitution cypher for English.

(Same reason a lot of western sci-fi and fantasy love putting apostrophes in the middle of names.  The more alien and/or powerful, the greater the number of apostrophes and other out-of-place punctuation.)

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Same reason a lot of western sci-fi and fantasy love putting apostrophes in the middle of names.  The more alien and/or powerful, the greater the number of apostrophes and other out-of-place punctuation.)

Also weird capitalization.  Nothing says alien like two apostrophes and a capital letter in the middle of a word. Bonus points if it is a Q.

[azrael]

48 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Also weird capitalization.  Nothing says alien like two apostrophes and a capital letter in the middle of a word. Bonus points if it is a Q.

Well, they aren't human. Why should they use human languages to spell their name?

[sketchley]

2 hours ago, SMS007 said:

Why are all Zentradi names romanized in ways that make not a lick of phonetic logic?

In truth, there are actually two schools of thought on that.

There are some who believe that the English romanization should be used as-is in all translated materials - even though a healthy portion of it comes from, IMHO, dubious sources, like model kit boxes, which may or may not have been approved by the creators of Macross.  But that is a debate for a different venue. (1)

There are others (like me) who believe that as we are translating Japanese into English (and not Japanese into the fictitious Zentrādi language), we should not use the pain-and-suffering inducing allegedly correct romanization that the creators themselves don't even use in their native language! 

And let's not even get into the romanization errors that creep in from the vowel reduction in the spoken Tokyo dialect, which is not present in most other Japanese dialects! (2)

 

Due to the confusion, over the years I've attempted to create a glossary of alternate romanizations.  I hope you (and others) use it to, at the very least, sort out the confusion stemming from the sheer variety of alternative romanizations in the translations produced over the years by a variety of people from both schools of thought: http://monkeybacon.mywebcommunity.org/Glossary.php

(It's an eternal work in progress.  There's bound to be some errors - and any assistance or additional terminology would be much appreciated!)

 

========================

(1) some of them make a bit more sense if one includes the pronunciation rules of other European languages that use Latin script.  However, it's still an atrocious hodgepodge of French, German, and American English pronunciation rules!

(2) here's a link with just a glimpse of what I'm referring to (I can't find something more exhaustive): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai_dialect#Vowels

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, JB0 said:

Also weird capitalization.  Nothing says alien like two apostrophes and a capital letter in the middle of a word. Bonus points if it is a Q.

Triple word score if it ends with a capital Q in a word that is otherwise not capitalized.

 

9 hours ago, sketchley said:

There are some who believe that the English romanization should be used as-is in all translated materials - even though a healthy portion of it comes from, IMHO, dubious sources, like model kit boxes, which may or may not have been approved by the creators of Macross.  But that is a debate for a different venue. (1)

Either approach is fine and dandy with me, though I would like to note that while it was initially true that some of the more unusual spellings came from, most of them have been used in official material over the years.  The most recent newcomer is, IIRC, "Gnerl" referring to the Dogfighter pod, which for the life of me I can't recall seeing used outside of model kits until dogfighter pods made an appearance on the Siera Desert map in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy tagged with "GNERL" on the game's HUD.

(Incidentally, the main page of your site appears to be down... a 403 Forbidden error?  Is it that time of year again?)

[Valkyrie Driver]

49 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Incidentally, the main page of your site appears to be down... a 403 Forbidden error?  Is it that time of year again?)

Still works for me. Maybe your connection timed out?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Still works for me. Maybe your connection timed out?

Nah, if it'd been a connection timeout the code would've something like a 408 Request Timeout or one of the 500 level error codes.  This was a fast redirect to a hosting service 403 Forbidden error page, suggesting something was wrong with the site itself.  Good that it's straightened out though.  

Considering the Galaxy Network in Macross is basically a fold wave-based mother of all satellite internet networks, one has to wonder what the latency's like.  sketchley, have you seen anything on how long it takes to get a message across the galaxy?

[sketchley]

On 2017-11-20 at 2:27 AM, Valkyrie Driver said:

Still works for me. Maybe your connection timed out?

Thanks for the heads-up, guys.

Yes, a couple of days ago, the main page (and ONLY the main page) was spawning a 403.  Turns out that it was due to a broken link in the 'Tools' section to another site.

Sadly, the current host isn't good at providing documentation on why.  So, it took a couple dozen minutes to troubleshoot, and remove the offending link.  >.<

 

On 2017-11-20 at 5:02 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering the Galaxy Network in Macross is basically a fold wave-based mother of all satellite internet networks, one has to wonder what the latency's like.  sketchley, have you seen anything on how long it takes to get a message across the galaxy?

The only thing that comes to mind is something said in passing about the Macross Frontier setting by Mr Kawamori: "It's like the Age Of Exploration, with e-mail".

If we take that to mean the sailing ships of yore are synonymous with the Emigrant Fleets, then the communication between them and back home is nigh instantaneous.

Of course, as the context was about the general setting of Macross F, we have to take that with a grain of salt.

Edited November 21, 2017 by sketchley

[Sildani]

Kawamori seems to not WANT to nail certain things down to specifics. Is that correct? If it is, do you think that’s because he didn’t want to be bothered, or because he’s trying to give himself wiggle room for future ideas?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

Kawamori seems to not WANT to nail certain things down to specifics. Is that correct? If it is, do you think that’s because he didn’t want to be bothered, or because he’s trying to give himself wiggle room for future ideas?

Yes.

[SMS007]

Suppose that NUNS Earth loaded up a Macross class ship with the latest fold boosters and power generators. How fast could one ship with all that tech get from Earth to, let's say Ragna?

[Master Dex]

12 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Suppose that NUNS Earth loaded up a Macross class ship with the latest fold boosters and power generators. How fast could one ship with all that tech get from Earth to, let's say Ragna?

Well, the latest tech is zero lag folding via fold quartz fitted systems which give incredibly fast travel times quoted to make the galaxy effectively a tenth of its normal size. Normally a Earth to Ragna flight might be years, with super fold system... Maybe months? 

[Seto Kaiba]

20 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Suppose that NUNS Earth loaded up a Macross class ship with the latest fold boosters and power generators. How fast could one ship with all that tech get from Earth to, let's say Ragna?

Assuming, of course, that said ship was outfitted with the latest conventional fold systems and not a network of stupendously expensive zero-time fold systems based on fold quartz... a couple of years, easy.  A good chunk of that would probably be lost in multiple fold jumps as galactic standard value adjustments between time experienced by the folding ship and the objective passage of time in real space.¹

Kawamori's remarks in the Otona Anime #9 interview indicated that a ship attempting to travel from the farthest-flung emigrant fleets to Earth would need about ten years to get there.

Zero-time fold systems, based on fold quartz and the superheavy quantum it produces, experience no disparity between the passage of time aboard ship and in realspace and aren't hindered by fold faults, so they're effectively about ten times faster (if Luca's remarks can be taken at face value).

 

1. This disparity was originally estimated by Misa as 1 hr in fold = 10 days in realspace, and has subsequently been shot down by the official publications as an exaggeration based on poor data.  The difference between subjective and objective time is relatively small in a perfect world situation, but a variety of local conditions like fold faults can really screw with that.  In some cases, that can turn a trip that would be virtually instantaneous into one where the disparity between objective and subjective time is over a week, as it did in Macross Frontier's episode "Fastest Delivery", in which the time lost in adjustment was 172.25 hours, or 7 days, 4 hours, and 15 minutes.

Edited November 20, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Valkyrie Driver]

So does fold travel mitigate relativistic effects in any way? In Star Trek and, presumably, Star Wars their methods of FTL travel mitigate the theory of relativity by equalizing time in the ship and outside the ship. Star Trek's warp drive is explained in more detail, but the Alcubierre Drive explains it in a functional way (contracting space time ahead of the craft, while expanding space time behind the craft, that's overly simplistic, but I'm not a physicist). 

I know there are time adjustments made when a ship defolds. I also know that Alto and Sheryl's journey from the Frontier to Gallia 4 is stated to be a full Day of travel time from their point of view, but to actually take over a week in normal space. Is that mainly due to fold faults, and would the Zero-time engines fully negate the relativistic effects of FTL travel?

[Seto Kaiba]

42 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So does fold travel mitigate relativistic effects in any way? In Star Trek and, presumably, Star Wars their methods of FTL travel mitigate the theory of relativity by equalizing time in the ship and outside the ship.

Well, as the ship isn't actually moving, per se... time dilation never really becomes a factor in fold travel.  A folding ship is technically stationary, and is playing merry hell with the geometry of fold space to exchange the space it was occupying with the space at its destination.  In practice, it's a kind of teleportation more than it is a warp or hyperspace drive.¹

The problem is that time flows at a somewhat slower pace in fold space, so a folding ship will be experiencing less time while in fold space than passes in realspace... an effect exacerbated by a number of factors like fold faults and strong gravitational fields.

 

Quote

Star Trek's warp drive is explained in more detail, but the Alcubierre Drive explains it in a functional way (contracting space time ahead of the craft, while expanding space time behind the craft, that's overly simplistic, but I'm not a physicist). 

Star Trek's warp drive gets around the time dilation problem in exactly the manner you described... the ship is riding in a bubble of undistorted space-time around which the drive is manipulating the geometry of space to propel the bubble at FTL speeds.  Impulse drives in that setting also avoid a time dilation issue while traveling at significant fractions of C by a variation of the same trick.²

 

Quote

I also know that Alto and Sheryl's journey from the Frontier to Gallia 4 is stated to be a full Day of travel time from their point of view, but to actually take over a week in normal space. Is that mainly due to fold faults, and would the Zero-time engines fully negate the relativistic effects of FTL travel?

Per Leon's remarks in the same episode, the trip would've been very quick (he may be exaggerating a bit when he says "almost instantly") if not for the intense fold fault activity between Gallia IV and the Frontier fleet.

Zero-time fold systems create a fold effect intense enough to insulate the ship from the different flow of time in fold space, and can cross fold faults without disruption... effectively cutting the galactic standard value adjustment out of the picture entirely.

 

1. In a manner not dissimilar to the description of a tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time.  The shortest distance between two points on a piece of paper is to fold the paper until the two points overlap.

2. A few Star Trek Relaunch novels have indicated that, without using a subspace field to cancel out the relativistic effects of traveling at a not-insignificant percentage of lightspeed, using impulse drives is a BAD idea and can cause all kinds of "reality ensues" problems like time dilation, dramatic increases in radiation exposure as a result of blueshifted radiation, and so on.  The NX-02 Columbia misses almost the entire Romulan War and the first seven years after the founding of the Federation after her subspace systems are destroyed in combat and she experiences an extreme time dilation of 70:1 flying to the nearest star system on impulse without subspace driver coils.  (Of course, since the novels run on an incredibly bad philosophy of serial escalation, that was just the start of fate vomiting in their tea kettle.)

Edited November 20, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[SMS007]

Wow, and in Macross F episode 25, the Vajra fold at Grace's command from the their homeworld to NUN territories all across the galaxy in what appears to be instantaneous travel. Goddamn that's so unfair. 

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, SMS007 said:

Wow, and in Macross F episode 25, the Vajra fold at Grace's command from the their homeworld to NUN territories all across the galaxy in what appears to be instantaneous travel. Goddamn that's so unfair. 

Space is vast, and one of the issues with faster-than-light travel by space fold is that by taking the extra-dimensional shortcut around those incredible distances you don't get to examine what might be lurking in the space between Point A and Point B.

In a lot of ways, that actually works in humanity's favor.  It makes it a LOT harder to encounter a hostile force like a rogue Zentradi fleet unless you specifically go looking for them or vice versa. 

On the other hand, it also means that sometimes a threat can be hiding right on your proverbial doorstep and go undetected.  I'd assume that was the case with the Vajra attacks Grace ordered... hives built into a number of wrecked starships (like we saw earlier in the series) or on asteroids or uninhabited planets in close proximity to the planets that were attacked.

[Valkyrie Driver]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, as the ship isn't actually moving, per se... time dilation never really becomes a factor in fold travel.  A folding ship is technically stationary, and is playing merry hell with the geometry of fold space to exchange the space it was occupying with the space at its destination.  In practice, it's a kind of teleportation more than it is a warp or hyperspace drive.

Ok, so it's really just fold faults that account for the creation of the time differential? Similar to the way WH40k has Warp Currents which can alter when and how a ship returns to realspace? Only, less scary?

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The problem is that time flows at a somewhat slower pace in fold space, so a folding ship will be experiencing less time while in fold space than passes in realspace... an effect exacerbated by a number of factors like fold faults and strong gravitational fields.

So, basically the ship and passengers are not insulated from the altered passage of time? It does seem though, that while the passage of time is still a factor, it's much less drastic than the Relativistic effects of FTL speeds. Am I correct?

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Star Trek's warp drive gets around the time dilation problem in exactly the manner you described... the ship is riding in a bubble of undistorted space-time around which the drive is manipulating the geometry of space to propel the bubble at FTL speeds.  Impulse drives in that setting also avoid a time dilation issue while traveling at significant fractions of C by a variation of the same trick.

So in comparison, a fold drive manipulates the geometry of super-dimensional space, which I assume must be more malleable, in order to overlap the ship's entry into SD space with the ship's exit from SD space, and subsequent entry into realspace, without distorting realspace in any way? That clears up how starships in ST can move through a solar system so quickly, and how vast distnaces like nebulae can be crossed in a matter of weeks. So how do ships in Macross deal with those effects, because it took the SDF-1 like a month and a half or so to reach earth from mars. The whole trip from Pluto took only about a year, so there must be some insane speeds going on. Unless Macross is also generating some sort of relativity cancelling shenanigans...

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Per Leon's remarks in the same episode, the trip would've been very quick (he may be exaggerating a bit when he says "almost instantly") if not for the intense fold fault activity between Gallia IV and the Frontier fleet.

So, once more, it's the fold faults and geometry that create the time differential?

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Zero-time fold systems create a fold effect intense enough to insulate the ship from the different flow of time in fold space, and can cross fold faults without disruption... effectively cutting the galactic standard value adjustment out of the picture entirely.

Does the Zero-time fold system essentially even out the time differential? Since ships using such a system can move through faults without difficulty, that means a seemingly instant translation across distances?

So given all of that, What accounts for the given maximum ranges on space folds? Is it purely a matter of energy? I do recall it being stated that a Long Range Fold takes a ton of power, such that rationing became a thing on the Frontier. Or, is it the presence of fold faults? Or is it a combination of both?

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

Ok, so it's really just fold faults that account for the creation of the time differential?

Strong gravitational fields can as well, much as they do in realspace... but fold faults, and the time and energy necessary to either navigate around them or forcibly fold through them could be called the main culprits.

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

Similar to the way WH40k has Warp Currents which can alter when and how a ship returns to realspace? Only, less scary?

Warp currents in Warhammer 40,000 play a much more fundamental role in warp navigation... the term "warp engine" is a bit of a misnomer, since it's mainly just the mechanism that makes a warp gate into the Immaterium and to a limited extent allows ships to maneuver within the currents.  In practice, it's the currents themselves doing the heavy lifting when it comes to warp flight.  Ships in the warp are kind of like barges riding the current down a river, using their engines only to ensure they're optimally aligned in the current and avoid navigational hazards.  Time-related shenanigans have more to do with eddies and other navigational hazards in the warp and the fact that time isn't linear in the warp.

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

So, basically the ship and passengers are not insulated from the altered passage of time? It does seem though, that while the passage of time is still a factor, it's much less drastic than the Relativistic effects of FTL speeds. Am I correct?

It's not really a matter of time's passage being "altered", they're traveling through a universe where time straight-up moves at a different rate.  Fold technology wasn't able to produce a fold effect that wasn't impacted by that until the introduction of fold quartz-based zero-time fold systems, and that technology still hasn't been widely adopted.

It is noted in Macross Chronicle that as conventional fold tech and humanity's experience with it has improved, they've been able to reduce the disparity between subjective and objective time.

If you were somehow able to reach the speed of light in realspace, time would stop from your perspective... so yeah, it's definitely better than that, and most other near-lightspeed instances of time dilation.

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

So in comparison, a fold drive manipulates the geometry of super-dimensional space, which I assume must be more malleable, in order to overlap the ship's entry into SD space with the ship's exit from SD space, and subsequent entry into realspace, without distorting realspace in any way?

Well... I wouldn't say realspace isn't distorted in any way.  A space fold does involve a rather potent application of gravity control in order to exchange the space occupied by the ship with an equivalent volume of space from the destination through fold space.  That entry or exit from fold space creates gravity waves detectable from considerable distances.  That's more akin to a temporary creation of an incredibly deep gravity well than a large distortion of the fabric of space-time.

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

That clears up how starships in ST can move through a solar system so quickly, and how vast distnaces like nebulae can be crossed in a matter of weeks.

Yep, impulse drives in Star Trek are essentially cheating down the mass of the ship by changing the curvature of space around it so that the weenie little ion engine-augmented fusion rockets can actually move it at a reasonable clip.  It's noted that, by TNG, the fusion rocket component is more or less vestigial, with most impulse drives being half-arsed reactionless warp drives. 

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

So how do ships in Macross deal with those effects, because it took the SDF-1 like a month and a half or so to reach earth from mars. The whole trip from Pluto took only about a year, so there must be some insane speeds going on. Unless Macross is also generating some sort of relativity cancelling shenanigans...

Well, the ship does have a gravity control system so, to a certain extent, relativistic time dilation ought to be a controllable phenomenon, though at the speeds they were going it wouldn't have been a huge problem regardless (they would've been going about 1/1000th the speed of light at their top speed).  In some ways it would've helped, since it would've let them stretch their supplies.

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

Does the Zero-time fold system essentially even out the time differential? Since ships using such a system can move through faults without difficulty, that means a seemingly instant translation across distances?

Exactly how it does what it does isn't entirely clear... but the fold effect is apparently intense enough that the disparity between subjective and objective time vanishes.

Fold travel, even with a zero-time fold system, would only be instantaneous over short distances of maybe a few light years at most.  The zero-time fold system would be much faster, though, as that technology doesn't require navigating around fold faults and the time disparity isn't present.  (Think the kind of difference you'd get between a regular international flight complete with connections in several countries and flying international on a high-altitude supersonic jetliner's direct flight.)

 

Just now, Valkyrie Driver said:

So given all of that, What accounts for the given maximum ranges on space folds? Is it purely a matter of energy? I do recall it being stated that a Long Range Fold takes a ton of power, such that rationing became a thing on the Frontier. Or, is it the presence of fold faults? Or is it a combination of both?

Both, really.

The energy requirements for a fold jump increase both proportionately with the volume of space the fold effect will encompass and geometrically with the distance the fold jump is circumventing.  That fact alone effectively dictates the maximum range a fold-capable ship can traverse in one fold jump, since a ship can only generate and store a finite amount of energy.  That "perfect world" maximum is reduced by navigation hazards like fold faults, either by forcing the folding ship to avoid them, or by requiring significantly more energy to traverse.

Trying to navigate through fold faults is a risky business.  The increased energy requirement for a ship to traverse a fold fault can drain the fold system's stored energy, forcing the ship to make an emergency defold or potentially even trapping it in fold space to be destroyed when it runs out of power.  Intense fold faults can knock ships trying to traverse them back into realspace, and even damage or destroy them.

[Valkyrie Driver]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Strong gravitational fields can as well, much as they do in realspace... but fold faults, and the time and energy necessary to either navigate around them or forcibly fold through them could be called the main culprits.

Ok. That makes sense, similar to sailing a ship through swells or a storm.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Warp currents in Warhammer 40,000 play a much more fundamental role in warp navigation... the term "warp engine" is a bit of a misnomer, since it's mainly just the mechanism that makes a warp gate into the Immaterium and to a limited extent allows ships to maneuver within the currents.  In practice, it's the currents themselves doing the heavy lifting when it comes to warp flight.  Ships in the warp are kind of like barges riding the current down a river, using their engines only to ensure they're optimally aligned in the current and avoid navigational hazards.  Time-related shenanigans have more to do with eddies and other navigational hazards in the warp and the fact that time isn't linear in the warp.

So, basically nothing alike?

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not really a matter of time's passage being "altered", they're traveling through a universe where time straight-up moves at a different rate.  Fold technology wasn't able to produce a fold effect that wasn't impacted by that until the introduction of fold quartz-based zero-time fold systems, and that technology still hasn't been widely adopted.

It is noted in Macross Chronicle that as conventional fold tech and humanity's experience with it has improved, they've been able to reduce the disparity between subjective and objective time.

If you were somehow able to reach the speed of light in realspace, time would stop from your perspective... so yeah, it's definitely better than that, and most other near-lightspeed instances of time dilation.

I didn't mean that time during the fold was altered, just that how people perceived time, was altered. Being that they experience a shorter duration during the fold than is experience by those in realspace. I guess I should have referred to it as the time differential. 

So basically as they evolved from the metaphorical reciprocating engine to the turbojet, and eventually to the turbofan? 

Relativity is a headache...

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well... I wouldn't say realspace isn't distorted in any way.  A space fold does involve a rather potent application of gravity control in order to exchange the space occupied by the ship with an equivalent volume of space from the destination through fold space.  That entry or exit from fold space creates gravity waves detectable from considerable distances.  That's more akin to a temporary creation of an incredibly deep gravity well than a large distortion of the fabric of space-time.

But the impact in realspace is minimal, albeit distinct.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yep, impulse drives in Star Trek are essentially cheating down the mass of the ship by changing the curvature of space around it so that the weenie little ion engine-augmented fusion rockets can actually move it at a reasonable clip.  It's noted that, by TNG, the fusion rocket component is more or less vestigial, with most impulse drives being half-arsed reactionless warp drives. 

The fusion rocket though is still very much a thing in Macross though, since that's essentially what the TN Reaction turbine engines are in space correct? 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, the ship does have a gravity control system so, to a certain extent, relativistic time dilation ought to be a controllable phenomenon, though at the speeds they were going it wouldn't have been a huge problem regardless (they would've been going about 1/1000th the speed of light at their top speed).  In some ways it would've helped, since it would've let them stretch their supplies.

So using the gravity control systems, would that essentially allow them to achieve a similar effect to the impulse drives you mentioned earlier?

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Exactly how it does what it does isn't entirely clear... but the fold effect is apparently intense enough that the disparity between subjective and objective time vanishes.

Fold travel, even with a zero-time fold system, would only be instantaneous over short distances of maybe a few light years at most.  The zero-time fold system would be much faster, though, as that technology doesn't require navigating around fold faults and the time disparity isn't present.  (Think the kind of difference you'd get between a regular international flight complete with connections in several countries and flying international on a high-altitude supersonic jetliner's direct flight.)

That's a good explanation. That would make the Zero-time Fold Systems more energy intensive wouldn't it? Or does the Fold quartz negate that?

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Both, really.

The energy requirements for a fold jump increase both proportionately with the volume of space the fold effect will encompass and geometrically with the distance the fold jump is circumventing.  That fact alone effectively dictates the maximum range a fold-capable ship can traverse in one fold jump, since a ship can only generate and store a finite amount of energy.  That "perfect world" maximum is reduced by navigation hazards like fold faults, either by forcing the folding ship to avoid them, or by requiring significantly more energy to traverse.

Trying to navigate through fold faults is a risky business.  The increased energy requirement for a ship to traverse a fold fault can drain the fold system's stored energy, forcing the ship to make an emergency defold or potentially even trapping it in fold space to be destroyed when it runs out of power.  Intense fold faults can knock ships trying to traverse them back into realspace, and even damage or destroy them.

I don't know who came up with it first (not that it matters), but it sounds similar to the way BattleTech handles its Hyperspace jumps (Possible evidence of further Macross rip-offery). You need a lot of energy to move a ship across space, and longer jumps are theoretically possible, just practically impossible due to the inability to meet the power requirements. 

At least Fold travel isn't the same as warp drive, being a magic button for ST.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Ok. That makes sense, similar to sailing a ship through swells or a storm.

I'd be inclined to liken it to sailing a ship through a coral reef or a shoal zone with an especially uneven seafloor.  You may end up taking a somewhat circuitous route to get from Point A to Point B to avoid incurring damage along the way.

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So, basically nothing alike?

Ja.  Of all the FTL methods I've encountered in sci-fi, Warhammer 40,000's warp drive is one of the more out there systems I've seen.

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So basically as they evolved from the metaphorical reciprocating engine to the turbojet, and eventually to the turbofan? 

Humanity got off to something of a rocky start with its grasp of fold technology.  Their early efforts, based on reverse-engineered salvage, were pretty imprecise, inefficient, and bombastic.  They got better by degrees, when they had access to intact specimens to study and then the factories that were making them.  

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

But the impact in realspace is minimal, albeit distinct.

It's enough that anyone who was actually looking for signs of fold jumps would have very little difficulty finding it, but it's not wearing out the fabric of space-time or causing huge negative space wedgies like some FTL systems (e.g, Star Trek's warp drive, WH40K's warp drive).

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

The fusion rocket though is still very much a thing in Macross though, since that's essentially what the TN Reaction turbine engines are in space correct? 

Ja, though in Macross they're applied on a MUCH bigger scale than anything in Star Trek.  There are some engine systems in Macross you could park some of the smaller Starfleet ships inside with room to spare.

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

So using the gravity control systems, would that essentially allow them to achieve a similar effect to the impulse drives you mentioned earlier?

In theory, yeah.

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

That's a good explanation. That would make the Zero-time Fold Systems more energy intensive wouldn't it? Or does the Fold quartz negate that?

Now that, we don't know.  Signs point to the difference in energy requirements (if one exists) being low to negligible as a VF-25 has no problem operating a zero-time fold booster.

The difference seems to be in the quality of the dimensional resonator producing the heavy quantum used to create the fold effect... fold quartz creates heavy quantum with much higher mass than the synthetic fold carbon used in most fold systems.

 

9 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I don't know who came up with it first (not that it matters), but it sounds similar to the way BattleTech handles its Hyperspace jumps (Possible evidence of further Macross rip-offery). You need a lot of energy to move a ship across space, and longer jumps are theoretically possible, just practically impossible due to the inability to meet the power requirements. 

That's probably a case of both of them copying real-world theoretical physics WRT the amount of energy needed to incrementally approach the speed of light by conventional means.  Star Trek also has something similar built into warp theory, where the energy requirements for each warp factor increases in a geometric or exponential progression with warp 10 being infinite power.

[SMS007]

Were humans, as with the Zentradi, directly manufactured by the Protoculture in laboratories, or did the Protoculture merely influence Earth wildlife in the outdoors to evolve into humans? Or did actual Protohumanoids permanently settle on Earth and their descendants forgot about their extraterrestrial origins to become humans? Or is the exact detail unknown because the creators don't consider it relevant to the current story?

Edited November 21, 2017 by SMS007

[sketchley]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Kawamori's remarks in the Otona Anime #9 interview indicated that a ship attempting to travel from the farthest-flung emigrant fleets to Earth would need about ten years to get there.

 

If memory serves, that was in reference to the distance between the Frontier Fleet and Earth.

The Frontier Fleet was in the vicinity of the center of the galaxy (again, if memory serves), making it a 10 year one-way trip.  The Super Fold Booster reduces that to a tenth (thus: a 1 year one-way trip).

Isn't Ragna located on the opposite side of the galaxy?  If so, then it would be a 20 year one-way trip (normal Fold drive) or 2 year one-way trip (Super Fold Drive).

 

It should also be stressed that Super Fold drives aren't common by any means, and due to the Fold Quartz requirements, are rather expensive to produce - perhaps impossible on a scale needed for the larger Emigrant Ships.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's probably a case of both of them copying real-world theoretical physics WRT the amount of energy needed to incrementally approach the speed of light by conventional means.  Star Trek also has something similar built into warp theory, where the energy requirements for each warp factor increases in a geometric or exponential progression with warp 10 being infinite power.

Actually, in Star Trek the SPEED scales exponentially. Warp 10 requiores infinite power because it is infinitely fast. It is a terrible way to design a speedometer, and resulted in every newer vessel having more decimals on the top speed because they could all go past warp 9.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

Were humans, as with the Zentradi, directly manufactured by the Protoculture in laboratories, or did the Protoculture merely influence Earth wildlife in the outdoors to evolve into humans? Or did actual Protohumanoids permanently settle on Earth and their descendants forgot about their extraterrestrial origins to become humans? Or is the exact detail unknown because the creators don't consider it relevant to the current story?

Based on the wording used in the official chronology and the prevailing in-universe theory, the ancient Protoculture modified existing archaic humans (H. neanderthalensis and/or H. erectus) using retroviruses to edit their genome with an eye toward accelerating their evolution into a "sub-Protoculture" species that would develop in a way that would prepare the planet for future colonization by the Protoculture.  A rousing success, all told, but for the fact that the paperwork was lost almost immediately thereafter when the survey ship that'd done the deed was destroyed en route to its home port.

 

 

20 minutes ago, sketchley said:

If memory serves, that was in reference to the distance between the Frontier Fleet and Earth.

He didn't specify, actually... just said that the distance between Earth and the emigrant fleets was such that it would take ten years to get back to Earth from them.  Since we know that emigrant fleets reached Windermere IV in 2027, I'd use that as a good example because that's as far as you can go without running out of galaxy.

 

20 minutes ago, sketchley said:

Isn't Ragna located on the opposite side of the galaxy?  If so, then it would be a 20 year one-way trip (normal Fold drive) or 2 year one-way trip (Super Fold Drive).

Yeah, the Brisingr globular cluster is ~1,000ly across and situated on either the Sagittarius-Carina arm or the Scutum-Centaurus arm, a good 75,000ly+ away from Earth.

Windermere IV, on the far side of the cluster, was located by SDF-5 Megaroad-04 in 2027... assuming it was launched ~2015-2016 (a year or two after they launched Megaroad-02 and Megaroad-03) it would've taken approximately 11-12 years to get there, which is consistent with Kawamori's account of it taking ten years to get back to Earth from some emigrant fleets.

 

20 minutes ago, sketchley said:

It should also be stressed that Super Fold drives aren't common by any means, and due to the Fold Quartz requirements, are rather expensive to produce - perhaps impossible on a scale needed for the larger Emigrant Ships.

They're almost certainly nigh-impossible to produce in any numbers.

One of the details gleaned from Macross Delta's setting materials and Macross Delta: the Black-Winged White Knight is that after the Vajra conflict ended the New UN Government imposed strict controls and restrictions on the mining/harvesting and trade in fold quartz.  The goal was to prevent or at least slow the proliferation of dimensional warheads in the New UN Gov't sphere of influence, and presumably prevent anyone from doing something stupid and suicidal like trying to hunt the Vajra for the stuff.  Fold quartz is rare, and the few planets that have large deposits seem to all be planets that used to be large-scale Protoculture or Vajra settlements, so they've been generally successful in controlling it.  The New UN Government's stranglehold on Windermere IV's fold quartz mining operations c.2060 was one of the factors that motivated King Grammier Neirich Windermere to pursue renegotiation of his world's treaties with the New UN Government and eventually to secede from it.

The only other planets identified as having rich deposits of fold quartz were the Vajra planet that the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet settled in 2059, and the remote and isolated former Protoculture settlement on Uroboros.  What little fold quartz is available is probably going to production of 5th Generation VFs.

[SMS007]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Based on the wording used in the official chronology and the prevailing in-universe theory, the ancient Protoculture modified existing archaic humans (H. neanderthalensis and/or H. erectus) using retroviruses to edit their genome with an eye toward accelerating their evolution into a "sub-Protoculture" species that would develop in a way that would prepare the planet for future colonization by the Protoculture.  A rousing success, all told, but for the fact that the paperwork was lost almost immediately thereafter when the survey ship that'd done the deed was destroyed en route to its home port.

So humans would be the manual labor caste, like the Zentradi as the military caste.

Edited November 21, 2017 by SMS007

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, SMS007 said:

So humans would be the manual labor caste, like the Zentradi as the military caste.

Potentially.  For all we know, the Protoculture may have exterminated the sub-Protoculture species once they deemed that those planets were ready for colonization.  By the time they stopped to check in on the project, their goals had changed considerably... with them seemingly having accepted their inevitable extinction and wanting to ensure that any of their creations that developed interstellar capability weren't going to repeat their mistakes.  Of course, they chose to do it in a typically draconian manner by leaving a bio-technological WMD sitting around in sleep mode to murder everyone if they failed its secret test of character.

 

[JB0]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Of course, they chose to do it in a typically draconian manner by leaving a bio-technological WMD sitting around in sleep mode to murder everyone if they failed its secret test of character.

Hey, better to overdo it than underdo it.

 

Also, in Macross 7. Their test for "have the zentradi stopped killing everyone yet?" was "stab a random visitor to our ruins and then when she bleeds on the floor we check the DNA".

It was... perhaps not the CLEANEST test of character they could have executed.

Edited November 21, 2017 by JB0

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

Hey, better to overdo it than underdo it.

Maybe so, but you'd think they would've at least programmed their walking apocalypse to get a second opinion before trying to end the world.  I mean, what if a disillusioned total misanthrope managed to unearth the damned thing and became the one it interrogated?

 

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

Also, in Macross 7. Their test for "have the zentradi stopped killing everyone yet?" was "stab a random visitor to our ruins and then when she bleeds on the floor we check the DNA".

It was... perhaps not the CLEANEST test of character they could have executed.

Nonsense, it was a medical shank.  Sterile interrogative violence!