The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[aurance]

Is there anything written on the circumstantial advantages of using the gun pod in-hand vs. on the turret and vice versa, for the VF-31 series? Why have both options and not just one or the other like most other valks?

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, aurance said:

Is there anything written on the circumstantial advantages of using the gun pod in-hand vs. on the turret and vice versa, for the VF-31 series? Why have both options and not just one or the other like most other valks?

Nothing that I've seen... though I'd expect the answer probably has a good deal to do with the 25mm (27mm on the military model) railguns on the VF-31's forearms.  By leaving the beam gunpod stowed in the ordnance container they can fire the railguns AND the beam gunpod at the same time, as they did on a few occasions in the series.  Instead of foregoing a gruntier gunpod the way the VF-4 did or making it an either-or case like the VF-22, they found a way to have their cake and eat it too.

[aurance]

Thanks Seto.

Another one: do you know if the VF-4's shoulders can rotate in-universe, or are its arm movements actually severely limited compared to other fighters, like its toy representation?

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, aurance said:

Another one: do you know if the VF-4's shoulders can rotate in-universe, or are its arm movements actually severely limited compared to other fighters, like its toy representation?

From what I've seen, I don't believe they can... but the VF-4 is so little-covered despite its relatively important role that it's hard to say for certain. 

[Focslain]

Few short questions:

Are there any colonization fleets heading to the galactic north and if so which ones?

Also are any of those still in transit post 2065?

Bonus: What type are those? (ie the older city ship via Mac7 or the large colony ships via Frontier)

Thanks in advance.

[Seto Kaiba]

55 minutes ago, Focslain said:

Are there any colonization fleets heading to the galactic north and if so which ones?

Clarification request... when you say "galactic north" are you referring to actual galactic north under the galactic coordinate system (above the galactic plane) or in sense often used in science fiction where 2D space is in full effect and "north" is just "up" relative to wherever Sol is on the map's given orientation?

(I ask because that's going to make an enormous difference in the answer.)

[Focslain]

13 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Clarification request... when you say "galactic north" are you referring to actual galactic north under the galactic coordinate system (above the galactic plane) or in sense often used in science fiction where 2D space is in full effect and "north" is just "up" relative to wherever Sol is on the map's given orientation?

(I ask because that's going to make an enormous difference in the answer.)

sci-fi north, so galactic flat map.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Focslain said:

sci-fi north, so galactic flat map.

*wince* 

 

1 hour ago, Focslain said:

Are there any colonization fleets heading to the galactic north and if so which ones?

Well... assuming Macross is using the most common "2D Space" galactic map orientation that puts Sol due south of the galactic center on the map's centerline, the answer would have to be "practically all of them".  

The galactic map in Macross Frontier's first episode, which is pretty inaccurate, shows some fleets loop off to the galactic south but then curve back towards the north.

(The only popular SF title I know offhand that bucks that common 2D galactic map projection is Warhammer 40,000, which routinely puts Sol west of the galactic core rather than south.)

 

1 hour ago, Focslain said:

Also are any of those still in transit post 2065?

Oh, I'm sure more than a few are if they're still launching at least one a year.

 

1 hour ago, Focslain said:

Bonus: What type are those? (ie the older city ship via Mac7 or the large colony ships via Frontier)

By 2065 they should mostly be City-class or Island Cluster-class.

[Focslain]

18 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

*wince*

Sorry.

18 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well... assuming Macross is using the most common "2D Space" galactic map orientation that puts Sol due south of the galactic center on the map's centerline, the answer would have to be "practically all of them".  

The galactic map in Macross Frontier's first episode, which is pretty inaccurate, shows some fleets loop off to the galactic south but then curve back towards the north.

(The only popular SF title I know offhand that bucks that common 2D galactic map projection is Warhammer 40,000, which routinely puts Sol west of the galactic core rather than south.)

 

Anyway, I wasn't clear I was looking at the northern quarter off galactic center, not north of Sol.

 

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, I'm sure more than a few are if they're still launching at least one a year.

 

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

By 2065 they should mostly be City-class or Island Cluster-class.

Thanks, figured but wanted to verify. 

[JB0]

ARE there any going "true north", up and out of the galactic plane?

[Master Dex]

11 hours ago, JB0 said:

ARE there any going "true north", up and out of the galactic plane?

Unless they are aiming for one of our satellite cluster galaxies (like Sculptor or the Megallanic clouds) that would be a very long and lonely trip even with modern fold tech. 

Edited October 27, 2018 by Master Dex

[Marzan]

Was SDFM Ichiro Itano's first job as an animator?

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, Marzan said:

Was SDFM Ichiro Itano's first job as an animator?

His third, IIRC.

Previously he had worked on Mobile Suit Gundam and Densetsu Kyojin Ideon.  

(There's a depiction of him in Gundam Sousei as a sort of Spike Spiegel-looking auteur from when he worked on Mobile Suit Gundam.  Much fuss is made therein about his stylistic choices regarding animating funnels.)

Edited November 5, 2018 by Seto Kaiba

[Sildani]

Um... what? That last sentence needs context I’m afraid. 

[Seto Kaiba]

32 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Um... what? That last sentence needs context I’m afraid. 

Almost an entire chapter of Gundam Sousei is given over to ooh-ing and aah-ing over Ichiro Itano's mad skillz as an artist, with particular emphasis on the stylistic choices he made in animating funnels (the little remote weapons for newtypes) to make them appear to move VERY fast.

[Sildani]

Got it. It was complimentary then. 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Got it. It was complimentary then. 

Effusively so.  Then again, being drawn as basically Spike Spiegel is pretty effective shorthand for "He's a badass".

[Karaoke Ninja]

This craft appears at the end of episode 05 of Frontier and I can't find any info on it anywhere. Anyone know what it is? Looks almost like the VF-2SS or VF-4.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Karaoke Ninja

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, Karaoke Ninja said:

This craft appears at the end of episode 05 of Frontier and I can't find any info on it anywhere. Anyone know what it is? Looks almost like the VF-2SS or VF-4.

It's that time again!

This is a question that gets asked fairly often... and, unfortunately, we don't have an answer.  No information has ever been given for that craft, it corresponds to no known design, and it has no evident capabilities beyond being able to operate a fold booster and maybe having a BDI-equipped cockpit given its lack of a canopy.

[Master Dex]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's that time again!

This is a question that gets asked fairly often... and, unfortunately, we don't have an answer.  No information has ever been given for that craft, it corresponds to no known design, and it has no evident capabilities beyond being able to operate a fold booster and maybe having a BDI-equipped cockpit given its lack of a canopy.

I take honor in being the last person to ask that, lol.

Still it's so rare to not have any answer for something like that.

[Karaoke Ninja]

So there's nothing for this mystery craft? Well, it does only appear for like 5 seconds so I guess Satelight didn't think much of it. Thanks for the explanation anyway lol.

[kajnrig]

Well, I'm sure someone(s) must have already brought up the ship's remarkable similarity to Macross II VFs, right?

Some more pics of the craft in question:

The prominent shape of the nose and the wide, forward-protruding main engines immediately reminded me of the VF-2 et al, and poring through the MMM, I wonder if perhaps this ship is simply a rework of one/many of those designs that was quickly modeled and textured for the animation.

The never animated VF-XS:

[Sanity is Optional]

Probably not a valkyrie at all?

[Bolt]

MII Easter egg

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Probably not a valkyrie at all?

Doesn't look to be, yeah... 

[kajnrig]

15 hours ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Probably not a valkyrie at all?

 

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Doesn't look to be, yeah... 

I don't think it is, either. But the similarities to those VF designs are too numerous to just be coincidence. 

I didn't mean to imply that it IS a VF, just that its design must have come from one/many. I don't know of other Macross designs, used or discarded or otherwise, that share these same features.

I mean... it could very well be a ship from M2. And everything about it and its world just happens to be so similar to the Frontier verse that they get fooled into doing the right thing. A big old cosmic coincidence.

[Sanity is Optional]

Nothing wrong with taking design inspiration from related series. Heck, the person who did the design may have worked on MII or FB2012.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

I don't think it is, either. But the similarities to those VF designs are too numerous to just be coincidence. 

Personally, I think it bears more of a resemblance to the YF-27-5 Shahar... 

 

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

I mean... it could very well be a ship from M2. And everything about it and its world just happens to be so similar to the Frontier verse that they get fooled into doing the right thing. A big old cosmic coincidence.

... there's a main timeline New UN Forces insignia on its left wing, it has a fold booster, and its pilot identified as an officer from the Macross Galaxy NUNS defense force, so that seems rather unlikely.

 

39 minutes ago, Sanity is Optional said:

Nothing wrong with taking design inspiration from related series. Heck, the person who did the design may have worked on MII or FB2012.

Of the three mechanical designers who worked on Macross Frontier, none of them were associated with Macross II: Lovers Again and the only one who worked on Flash Back 2012 was Kawamori himself.

Junya Ishigaki collaborated with Shoji Kawamori on VF designs, specifically doing the designs for the cockpits and EX-Gear (he had previously also done the designs for the Cheyenne and Octos destroids in Macross Zero) as well as the Vajra.  Western fans would probably remember his work best from Outlaw Star, where he designed many of the grappler ships, but he was also involved in many Gundam titles including Wing, Unicorn, Victory, and all three Build series.  Takeshi Takakura did some supplemental mechanical design for the series, but I'm not aware of anything specifically flagged as his.  His past portfolio includes a personal favorite of mine (Terrestrial Defense Enterprise Dai-Guard), Engage Planet Kiss Dum, Rebuild of Evangelion, Aquarion's three shows, Martian Successor Nadesico, and Samurai Gun... but Macross Frontier is his only Macross design credit.

[AN/ALQ128]

Speaking of which, just how common are non variable aircraft in the Macross universe?

It seems like the only aircraft that don't transform are the drones, and a few civilian vehicles.

[Seto Kaiba]

50 minutes ago, AN/ALQ128 said:

Speaking of which, just how common are non variable aircraft in the Macross universe?

Are we talking about in the military's TO&E or in civilian hands?

Mind you, we should probably be calling them "aerospace craft" nowadays since overtechnology marches ever onwards and there seem to be relatively few things in the air that aren't also spaceworthy.

Commercial aviation is still very much a thing in Macross, both in terms of passenger craft and cargo transportation, so there are probably far more non-variable aerospace craft out in the galaxy than variable ones.  SMS's parent company, Bilra Transport, was an interstellar cargo service so profitable that Richard Bilra could finance an entire emigrant fleet... so likely he alone owns more cargo planes than most nations have VFs.

Helicopters have been shown to be quite popular as a way to get around in cities, and particularly cities inside emigrant ships.  We saw the UN Forces troops using the Sea Sergeant and Comanchero model helicopters in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series, Sharon Apple's production staff used a helicopter to get around Macross City in Macross Plus, helicopters appeared in Macross Zero, and replicas of those same helis appeared in Macross Frontier.  

Fixed-wing aircraft have appeared more infrequently, but are still very much present after Super Dimension Fortress Macross.  Macross Plus had that "eight engine all wing anti-giants bomber" flying wing model that we saw deploying the orange target drones from the YF-21's first big scene.  Macross 7 had a number of ducted fan type aircraft including one broadly analogous in role and structure to the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane with four ducted fans that was used to haul Exsedol down to see the ruins on Lux, a twin-fan helicopter analogue used by the City 7 news crews, a large fixed-wing cargo plane, a smaller (roughly VF sized) recovery craft, and a twin ducted fan lifter that was designed to haul battroids around.  Frontier gave us a more jet airliner-esque Galaxy Starliner than the cruise ship type we saw in Macross Plus, and the EX-Gear's flight configuration is arguably the last word when it comes to ultralights (though Guld's wasn't anything to sneeze at in Macross Plus).  We obviously saw quite a few in Macross Zero given that it took place before the First Space War, including Shin's F-14A+, various MiG-29s, and a KS-3A Viking carrier-launched refueling craft, 

EDIT: I forgot one!  In Macross 7 Trash, 1st Lt. Heuer owns a QF-3000E that'd been converted with a side-by-side cockpit for use as a leisure craft.

Offhand, I can recall at least one instance of lighter-than-air aircraft being used in Macross... City-7's MBS had an honest-to-goodness blimp in at least one episode.  I don't recall offhand if we ever saw anything similar in Island-1 in Macross Frontier.

 

Civilian ownership of VFs isn't unheard-of, but outside of professional sport (Vanquish League racing) and at least one planet we've seen where the local topography is so actively unfriendly to ground transportation that VFs and gravity-control flying cargo ships are the only ways of getting around it doesn't appear to have been that common.

 

 

Quote

It seems like the only aircraft that don't transform are the drones, and a few civilian vehicles.

Our view is likely skewed somewhat by the way stories in the Macross metaseries inevitably revolve around the affairs of soldiers in military or paramilitary organizations.

Edited November 8, 2018 by Seto Kaiba

[kajnrig]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... there's a main timeline New UN Forces insignia on its left wing, it has a fold booster, and its pilot identified as an officer from the Macross Galaxy NUNS defense force, so that seems rather unlikely.

Cosmic coincidence.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Junya Ishigaki collaborated with Shoji Kawamori on VF designs, specifically doing the designs for the cockpits and EX-Gear (he had previously also done the designs for the Cheyenne and Octos destroids in Macross Zero) as well as the Vajra.  Western fans would probably remember his work best from Outlaw Star, where he designed many of the grappler ships, but he was also involved in many Gundam titles including Wing, Unicorn, Victory, and all three Build series.

In case anyone's interested, there's an art book with a whole bunch of Ishigaki's designs/sketches up through ~2009, titled "Robo no Ishi." (It might have Frontier stuff, might not.)

If people remember the original Maganac mobile suit designs from Wing, that was him. His Gundam stuff is usually relegated to side MS/enemy grunt designs. He also worked on Gundam 0083 in some fashion or other. I personally know him best for designing the entire range of mecha from Xenogears.

[Seto Kaiba]

20 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

In case anyone's interested, there's an art book with a whole bunch of Ishigaki's designs/sketches up through ~2009, titled "Robo no Ishi." (It might have Frontier stuff, might not.)

I have three copies, and it does... for his work in Macross Zero (VF-0 and SV-51 cockpit design, Octos, Cheyenne) and Macross Frontier (EX-Gear, Vajra, VF cockpits, some ships).

 

20 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

If people remember the original Maganac mobile suit designs from Wing, that was him. His Gundam stuff is usually relegated to side MS/enemy grunt designs. He also worked on Gundam 0083 in some fashion or other. I personally know him best for designing the entire range of mecha from Xenogears.

Don't forget the interiors for the titular ship in Outlaw Star (amd most of the weapons).

[Bolt]

Just rewatching Flashback 2012. 

Its intersting to note Megaroad -01 was “classified “as  missing 2016. It’s last reported located was near the center of the Milky Way. (as we all know)

But my noob question is , it only took 4 years to get that far? And haven’t any other migrant or colonization fleets made it that far? Also, I would have thought the disappearance of the most important and first (long distance colonization fleets) vessel of all time would have been thoroughly investigated.

Now, I do realize that the floating head does not want to EVER go there (!) And this , of course, is a subject (Megaroad-01) that forever circles a black hole..

BUT, hasn’t there  been any mention of these points before? Officially or canon, I mean .

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

37 minutes ago, Bolt said:

But my noob question is , it only took 4 years to get that far?

Yup.  

One of the advantages of travelling interstellar distances by space fold is that you can cover enormous distances very quickly... but because it's pseudo-teleportation through folded higher-dimensional spacetime, it comes with the built-in downside of the folding ship being unable to see the space it's circumventing.

It might be helpful to visualize emigrant fleet operations like stones skipping across a pond, where water is realspace and air is foldspace.  A stone that makes a lot of little skips is going to cross the pond slower because it's contacting more water, but it has more chance of hitting something.  A stone that makes only a few skips and get a lot of air between them will cross the pond fast but has little chance of striking anything in the water.  Ships like Megaroad-01 and Megaroad-04 swiftly covered a lot of distance, but didn't examine much along the way.  Others, like Macross 7 and Macross Frontier, didn't cover the distance as quickly but examined a much wider area on the way.

Megaroad-04, the ship that discovered Windermere IV, crossed the entire Milky Way galaxy in approximately ten years.

 

37 minutes ago, Bolt said:

And haven’t any other migrant or colonization fleets made it that far?

Many have, but space is BIG.  Really, unreasonably big.

Macross Frontier and Macross Galaxy were on the fringes of the galactic core c.2059, and various other fleets have gone through or are in that area as well.

 

37 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Also, I would have thought the disappearance of the most important and first (long distance colonization fleets) vessel of all time would have been thoroughly investigated.

The problem is that aforementioned disadvantage from my second sentence.

Folding ships are blind to anything and everything in the volume of space it's circumventing in the course of their fold jump, while the most powerful conventional shipboard sensor systems are only good out to distances of a couple light seconds and fold wave radar's only good out a couple hundred AU.  You'd need an impossibly vast fleet to crawl across an impossibly vast volume of space for an impossibly long time to have any realistic chance of stumbling across the Megaroad-01 through something other than sheer dumb luck.

(This became a plot point in Macross 7, vis a vis the theft of the City 7... the only practical way to track its course was to examine the debris teleported to its former location when its fold system swapped its location and destination points to see if there was anything uniquely identifiable that might tell them where the ship had been taken.)

This difficulty is normally something that works in humanity's favor.  There are thousands of Zentradi main fleets still out and about in the galaxy, but because the galaxy is colossal and has somewhere on the order of 100-400 billion stars and uncountably vast tracts of interstellar space the odds of them accidentally stumbling upon a human emigrant fleet or planet by accident are vanishingly small.  It's like trying to hit a bullet in flight with another bullet while blindfolded.  It can happen, but it requires stupid amounts of luck to do so.  Things like detectable fold wave emissions make fleets and planets easier to locate, but not by that much.  Even Vrlitwhai's branch fleet only found Earth by getting phenomenally lucky, having been in precisely the right place at precisely the right time to detect the residual gravity waves of a defold ten years ago and ten light years away.  The Vajra were able to track the Macross Frontier thanks to its fold wave emissions, and particularly Ranka's since she was sending on their proprietary frequency and protocol thanks to her asymptomatic V-type infection.

[Bolt]

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It might be helpful to visualize emigrant fleet operations like stones skipping across a pond, where water is realspace and air is foldspace. 

Great analogy!

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Megaroad-04, the ship that discovered Windermere IV, crossed the entire Milky Way galaxy in approximately ten years.

 

Whoa..!

16 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The problem is that aforementioned disadvantage from my second sentence.

A dedicated fleet (several!) combing the galaxy  for any and all lost Megaroads please . (But what if it’s not even in our galaxy any more..?)

 

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(This became a plot point in Macross 7, vis a vis the theft of the City 7... the only practical way to track its course was to examine the debris teleported to its former location when its fold system swapped its location and destination points to see if there was anything uniquely identifiable that might tell them where the ship had been taken.)

I totally forgot about that, my next re watch..it’s going to be a long wait for anything resembling a new series., I think. And M7 will probably get me thru it..

Very informative. Thanks amigo!