The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[RedWolf]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

I've always been a little unclear on Zentradi rules of engagement.  Aren't they forbidden--or, at least, strongly discouraged--from making contact with Miclones?  If so, shouldn't they be the ones who hightail it out of there if they stumble across a human colony or fleet?

 

Back when the Protoculture were fighting each other via proxy using Zentradi soldiers the Zentradi were Forbidden in interfering with Protoculture aka Miclones. Then the Protoddvlin with their Supervision Army happened. 

 

The rules went out the window. The Protoculture gave the Zentradi permission to fire on Miclones due to the Supervision Army having them in their ranks. The Zentradi can't fight with Protoculture around while the order was in place.

 

After the Protodevlin were sealed only a few fleets received the order to not interfere with Protoculture/Miclones. Due to the fact most of the Protoculture are dead and their communications network was wrecked. Roid in Macross Delta speculated the Protoculture ruin system was created to deal with Zentradi.

[RaisingCane]

What's the prevailing theory as to what happened to Megaroad-01?

How have the Zentradi and Supervision Army not been trounced by the Vajra?

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

What's the prevailing theory as to what happened to Megaroad-01?

Prior to Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! the prevailing theory was that the SDF-2 Megaroad-01 had entered some kind of portal near the galactic core.  That was based on a mail-in promo gift that came with the PlayStation Macross: Do You Remember Love? game that purported to be Minmay's last message to Earth.

Another popular theory was that they had settled on some remote world that was isolated from the rest of the galaxy by fold faults like Uroboros or Windermere IV are, and that fold communications simply couldn't reach them because of that.

Now, the answer seems to be that...

Spoiler

... they've just been stuck in a very intense fold fault this entire time.  Which I'm sure you'll agree is a pretty damned anticlimactic answer to one of the franchise's enduring mysteries.

 

 

25 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

How have the Zentradi and Supervision Army not been trounced by the Vajra?

Because neither side cares.

The Zentradi mindset is pretty simple and straightforward.  They're interested in pursuing and destroying enemies - the Supervision Army - and the ancient Protoculture's decision to indoctrinate curiosity out of them for the most part has left them largely uninterested in anything else.  The Supervision Army is likely in the same boat with their brainwashing and being under constant threat from the Zentradi, there's no reason to attack an alien race that doesn't seem individually intelligent enough to have spiritia and isn't attacking them.  If the Vajra aren't shooting at them, the Vajra belong to the category called "Not an Enemy" and are therefore firmly in "I don't care about that" territory.

The Vajra, for their own part, are quite happy to be left to their own devices and ignore anything that isn't an overt threat to them.  They'll respond with force if attacked themselves, but they have no real interest in going on the offensive unless their own kind are in imminent danger.

That's not to say the occasional battle doesn't happen... but it's rare, since both sides tend to be thoroughly disinterested in each other.  The Vajra attacked and destroyed a Zentradi main fleet and repurposed its mobile fortress as a nest for reasons unknown c.2009 that is seen in the second Macross Frontier movie.  The novelization of the film asserts that the mobile fortress in question belongs to the Koper main fleet, a surviving reconnaissance unit of which attacks the Macross Frontier emigrant fleet in 2058 in the light novel Macross the Ride.  The reason the Vajra attacked the Macross Frontier repeatedly in 2059 was because the biological fold waves in Ranka Lee's songs convinced the Vajra she was a Vajra herself, and they were trying to rescue her from danger.  If not for that, they'd have left the Frontier and her fleet alone.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Seto Kaiba
Spelling!

[RaisingCane]

Any chance we'll ever see a run-in with remnants of the original Protoculture or the Supervision Army, or were the Windermereans and Varauta supposed to scratch that itch?  I have to admit that I'm dying to see an unmodified Supervision Army gun destroyer in action.

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Any chance we'll ever see a run-in with remnants of the original Protoculture or the Supervision Army, or were the Windermereans and Varauta supposed to scratch that itch?  I have to admit that I'm dying to see an unmodified Supervision Army gun destroyer in action.

Kawamori's pretty hard to predict... 

It's not impossible, but after so much time it feels a bit unlikely esp. since the Supervision Army's creators have already been dealt with.

Edit: Not to mention the Protoculture have supposedly been extinct for a long time themselves outside of Macross II, where the Mardook were supposed to be a surviving group of them.

Edited December 11, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Kawamori's pretty hard to predict... 

It's not impossible, but after so much time it feels a bit unlikely esp. since the Supervision Army's creators have already been dealt with.

Edit: Not to mention the Protoculture have supposedly been extinct for a long time themselves outside of Macross II, where the Mardook were supposed to be a surviving group of them.

True; that given, there's always the possibility that some survived (outside of MII as you said). And yeah: Kawamori is pretty unpredictable, but it's that unpredictability that usually gives him a creative edge I think.

[RaisingCane]

Do we know how many people actually survived Space War 1?  It seems like the crew and passengers of the Macross alone wouldn't be nearly enough to populate a single large Earth city, much less several extrasolar colonies.

Edited December 11, 2021 by RaisingCane

[pengbuzz]

22 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Do we know how many people actually survived Space War 1?  It seems like the crew and passengers of the Macross alone wouldn't be nearly enough to populate a single large Earth city, much less several extrasolar colonies.

From the TV version, there had been survivors on earth in small pockets that hadn't been hit directly by the Zentraedi orbital bombardment of Earth. Although in DYRL we didn't see any survivors, I would assume there were probably at least a few ( I think Seto Kaiba would have a better answer). I do know from what I've read online that cloning was used to quickly rebuild the population, discontinuing it when DNA errors began creeping in.

All of that said: I don't know how many survived overall. But they didn't send out colony ships all at once; they had time between launches as well.

Anyways... Seto Kaiba or one of the other folks here should have a better (and more complete) answer than this; my knowledge base is a bit limited due to my lack of access to materials.

Edited December 11, 2021 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Do we know how many people actually survived Space War 1?  It seems like the crew and passengers of the Macross alone wouldn't be nearly enough to populate a single large Earth city, much less several extrasolar colonies.

Most Macross resources to comment on the topic put the post-war human population at approximately one million people. 

With the exception of the crew of the SDF-1 Macross, the survivors were those individuals who were assigned to underground military bases like the incomplete Grand Cannon III and Grand Cannon V or were offworld at installations like Apollo Base on Luna, the L5 Manufacturing Station, the space colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, and the few UN Spacy warships assigned close protection duty at those locations like the Constellation and the Midway.

After the war, the New UN Government authorized a mass-cloning program to increase the size of the human population and duplicate individuals with essential skills in order to accelerate the postwar recovery effort and provide enough people to support the government's plans for extrasolar space colonization via long-distance emigrant fleets.  Human cloning efforts were terminated after twenty years due to a sharp rise in the incidence of recessive genetic disorders.

There were also noted to be approximately eight million Zentradi remaining after the ~4 million surviving ships of the Boddole Zer main fleet withdrew from the Sol system.

[RaisingCane]

How is the VF-1 able to transform to battroid mode while its missiles are still attached to the wings?

Was Hikaru really supposed to be the highest ranking pilot on the whole ship after Roy died?

[pengbuzz]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Most Macross resources to comment on the topic put the post-war human population at approximately one million people. 

With the exception of the crew of the SDF-1 Macross, the survivors were those individuals who were assigned to underground military bases like the incomplete Grand Cannon III and Grand Cannon V or were offworld at installations like Apollo Base on Luna, the L5 Manufacturing Station, the space colonies at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points, and the few UN Spacy warships assigned close protection duty at those locations like the Constellation and the Midway.

After the war, the New UN Government authorized a mass-cloning program to increase the size of the human population and duplicate individuals with essential skills in order to accelerate the postwar recovery effort and provide enough people to support the government's plans for extrasolar space colonization via long-distance emigrant fleets.  Human cloning efforts were terminated after twenty years due to a sharp rise in the incidence of recessive genetic disorders.

There were also noted to be approximately eight million Zentradi remaining after the ~4 million surviving ships of the Boddole Zer main fleet withdrew from the Sol system.

So there weren't any survivors in pockets that didn't get hit? I thought the planetary coverage was like 80 percent of the livable areas.

Anyways, 1 million people isn't as extreme a base to restart with, as opposed to say eight people...

[azrael]

21 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

How is the VF-1 able to transform to battroid mode while its missiles are still attached to the wings?

Was Hikaru really supposed to be the highest ranking pilot on the whole ship after Roy died?

1) It doesn't fold in the wings.

2) Maybe, maybe not. But he was next in line to take over Skull Squadron.

[RaisingCane]

Where does the F-203 fit in now that the VF-0 is a thing?  Was it retconned out of existence?

[azrael]

1 minute ago, RaisingCane said:

Where does the F-203 fit in now that the VF-0 is a thing?  Was it retconned out of existence?

Nope. Different area of combat, different fighter used. Not everyone uses the same equipment in different parts of the world.

Also the VF-0's development and production was so rushed and sooooo small, the entire production line literally could fit on a single aircraft carrier.

[Seto Kaiba]

30 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

How is the VF-1 able to transform to battroid mode while its missiles are still attached to the wings?

It depends on what's stored on the wing pylons.

For large munitions, it simply doesn't fold the wings... as seen in Super Dimension Fortress Macross ep27 with the RMS-1 thermonuclear reaction warheads.

For smaller munitions like the AMM-1 Arrow multipurpose missile, the underwing pylons can rotate and there is enough clearance for them to do so with the missiles attached without having them bump up against the cockpit block.

 

30 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Was Hikaru really supposed to be the highest ranking pilot on the whole ship after Roy died?

Nah.  Hikaru was, however, one of the more skilled pilots in the SVF-1 Skulls and was selected to assume command of that squadron after his CO (Roy) passed.

 

Just now, RaisingCane said:

Where does the F-203 fit in now that the VF-0 is a thing?  Was it retconned out of existence?

The F203 Dragon II is not related to variable fighter development.

It was a UN Forces conventional fighter jet that was developed during the Unification Wars to adopt new materials and technological improvements that would have been difficult or impossible to retrofit into older models of fighter.  It served alongside various pre-OTM conventional fighters during the Unification Wars until it was... forcibly retired... when the Zentradi vaporized them all in the orbital bombardment shortly before the First Space War ended.

(While it is not strictly canon, Variable Fighter Master File even asserts there was a naval version that was considered to be F-20N.)

Most of the battles in the Unification Wars were fought with conventional weaponry.  Even in 2008, there were maybe a hundred operational Variable Fighters on the entire planet, with only around 60 VF-0s existing and most of those assigned to just two aircraft carriers - CVN-99 Asuka II and CVN-100 Graf Zeppelin II - for evaluation and ad hoc training use.  It wasn't until very late 2008 that the first VF-1 Valkyries came off the line... most of the first few production lots went to the CVS-101 Prometheus and SDF-1 Macross, and ended up out in space.

[RaisingCane]

Was there anything special about the Macross or would humanity have been able to learn just as much if, say, a Zentradi patrol ship had crashed on Earth?

Did the Macross have any SA mecha on board when it crashed?

Edited December 12, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

12 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Was there anything special about the Macross or would humanity have been able to learn just as much if, say, a Zentradi patrol ship had crashed on Earth?

Technologically speaking, no... there was nothing at all special or unique about the ship that crashed on Earth and became the Macross.

If it'd been another class of ship that crashed, about all they might've missed out on would've been super dimension energy weaponry.  Assuming, of course, humanity wouldn't end up recreating it through application of the principles they learned in reverse-engineering the ship's systems like they did with thermonuclear reaction weaponry.

 

12 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Did the Macross have any SA mecha on board when it crashed?

It's noted in Macross Chronicle to have had some battle pods aboard, though what type isn't specified.

[RaisingCane]

Before I ask anything else about Macross, are any of these good questions or am I just making a nuisance of myself?

Edited December 12, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Master Dex]

2 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Before I ask anything else about Macross, are any of these good questions or am I just making a nuisance of myself?

This thread exists for this kind of thing. There is never anything bad about being thirsty for information and wanting to know stuff. Especially when we have the fountain of information that is Seto lol.

You're fine I think.

[Seto Kaiba]

52 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Before I ask anything else about Macross, are any of these good questions or am I just making a nuisance of myself?

Like I said earlier, if you have questions we have answers.

This thread wouldn't be 157 pages long (and counting) if people didn't have questions worth answering. 

[pengbuzz]

A thought...

Capt. Global gets tired of being told he "can't smoke on the bridge", so he gets an e-cig! 

[Keith]

5 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Was there anything special about the Macross or would humanity have been able to learn just as much if, say, a Zentradi patrol ship had crashed on Earth?

Did the Macross have any SA mecha on board when it crashed?

Hmm, humanity would likely have had more time to prepare had a Zentradi patrol ship crashed. It's highly doubtful the Zentradi would have wasted time tracking down one of their own downed ships. Earth might have even have had time to build up a small fleet before broadcasting fold comms and finally catching the Zentradi's eye. That is of course assuming they didn't completely screw up contact with the AFOS and decimate the planet.

Small differences can have big ripples.

[RaisingCane]

Good point.  Do Zentradi ships have automated booby traps like the Macross did?  How different would the events of SDFM have been if it hadn't fired its main cannon and drew first blood?

Edited December 12, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Good point.  Do Zentradi ships have automated booby traps like the Macross did? 

Not that we know.  Booby-trapping wrecked warships seems to be a Supervision Army thing.

 

5 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

How different would the events of SDFM have been if it hadn't fired its main cannon and drew first blood?

Hard to say... but the UN Government would've had the opportunity to make peaceful contact as they had originally planned instead of accidentally convincing the Zentradi that they had located a Supervision Army military installation and provoking a shooting war.  How successful that might've been is a mystery, but the fact that the Macross had been remodeled extensively from its original design would probably have bought them time to talk via the Zentradi's sheer confusion.

The only time an alternate series of events surrounding first contact was touched on in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy, it was a rogue NUNS colonel trying to use a Protoculture temporal weapon to make the first contact event un-happen altogether rather than changing the circumstances.

[JB0]

8 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Good point.  Do Zentradi ships have automated booby traps like the Macross did?  How different would the events of SDFM have been if it hadn't fired its main cannon and drew first blood?

The booby trap thing was something noted to be specifically a Supervision Army tactic. It seems doubtful the zentradi would adopt it, particularly as they're winning.

 

The show could've gone either very similar or very different, depending on how amenable the zentradi were to talking, and whether they believed Earth's people had rebuilt a ship that just randomly crashed on their planet(as opposed to being a Supervision Army outpost) .

[RaisingCane]

Why are they called the Supervision Army anyway?  Were they some sort of paramilitary faction of Protoculture that was charged with overseeing the Zentradi?

Edited December 12, 2021 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Why are they called the Supervision Army anyway?  Were they some sort of paramilitary faction of Protoculture that was charged with overseeing the Zentradi?

We don't know.  Why the Supervision Army was the Supervision Army has never been explained.

[Keith]

10 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We don't know.  Why the Supervision Army was the Supervision Army has never been explained.

It's likely a very boring reason. The "Varuta" pretty much prove that the Protodevilin didn't believe in the beauty of naming.

[RaisingCane]

Any ideas why the Mardook fleet apparently had no gun destroyers?  It seems like they had heavily modified versions of every other Zentradi warship.

[Keith]

1 minute ago, RaisingCane said:

Any ideas why the Mardook fleet apparently had no gun destroyers?  It seems like they had heavily modified versions of every other Zentradi warship.

Probably Ingus's paranoia.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Any ideas why the Mardook fleet apparently had no gun destroyers?  It seems like they had heavily modified versions of every other Zentradi warship.

Presumably that capability was covered elsewhere... like the heavily armed Grave Battleship and the heavy converging beam cannon-equipped scout.

[RedWolf]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

Good point.  Do Zentradi ships have automated booby traps like the Macross did?  How different would the events of SDFM have been if it hadn't fired its main cannon and drew first blood?

During an aftermath episode of SDFM a downed Zentradi warship was booby trapped but it was affiliated with Quamzin's rebellion.

 

Macross Chronicle artwork and in Macross II new towns are built around these downed ships. So unless it is out in the boonies and occupied by rebels it is just a wreck.

The Sega Saturn prologue of DYRL the Macross did not fire first. The Macross in DYRL was a former Meltrandi Gunship. The Macross folded out when the Zentradi started bombarding the island. In DYRL the Meltrandi were the enemy of the Zentradi.

 

[Quote]Why are they called the Supervision Army anyway?  Were they some sort of paramilitary faction of Protoculture that was charged with overseeing the Zentradi?[/quote]

 

監察軍 Kansatsu Gun

Another translation in context is the Inspection Army or Inspectors. 

 

 

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by RedWolf

[RaisingCane]

If the original SDF-1 Macross only transformed because it couldn't fire its main cannon in cruiser mode, why were subsequent ships like the Battle-class designed to transform at all?  Does it provide some other tactical advantage?

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

If the original SDF-1 Macross only transformed because it couldn't fire its main cannon in cruiser mode, why were subsequent ships like the Battle-class designed to transform at all?  Does it provide some other tactical advantage?

There are three main reasons:

• More (exposed) surface area on which to mount weaponry.
• Greater combat maneuverability via thrust-vectoring of the main and sub-engines in the legs and torso.
• More freedom to employ the main super dimension energy cannon ("Macross Cannon") in terms of field of fire (as in being able to aim the gun without having to turn the entire ship).

It's been said that the smaller Macross-type warships like the Macross Quarter-type have taken the maneuverability aspect to the point of practically being able to dogfight like a very large fighter.  Since weapons on later Macross-type warships are mainly stored internally except for the heaviest turrets to keep the ship stealthy, the transformation allows the ship to expose more weapons than its Fortress Ship mode would ordinarily be capable of presenting with its available surface area.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[azrael]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

Why are they called the Supervision Army anyway?

Part of it is lost in translation. It's written as 監察軍 or Inspection Army/Controlled Army/Supervised Army/Monitor Army; as in the controlled army of the Protodeviln. Over time it's just shortened to "Supervision Army".

 

37 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

... why were subsequent ships like the Battle-class designed to transform at all?  Does it provide some other tactical advantage?

Yes.

I actually answered this very question back in 2003 and 2004.

The actual reason is so the gunship can main-line from the primary reactor(s) of the mothership, thereby increasing the rate of fire or power output. In ship mode, power is devoted to the engines. Battle mode redistributes power away from the engines to other systems like the gunship.