The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, azrael said:

Not to mention Zentradi star charts are either woefully outdated, inaccurate, or hell, uncharted. Zentradi are using maps created in Protoculture times. Suns may have gone nova, planets may no longer exist, habitable planets may not be habitable anymore or vice versa, black holes may have formed, stellar drift, hell... gravity, etc.  They're not wandering aimlessly, they're wandering with the aim of finding stuff along the path they pick.

On another note, I can just imagine this scenario:

*Bridge of command vessel, Zentraedi Main Fleet; junior officer comes running onto bridge with message*

Commander: "What is it, Zerthai?"

Zerthai: "Commander, we have intercepted a message coming from the direction of a solar system with a yellow star and at least one habitable planet!"

*hands Commander the message*

Commander, reading aloud: "'Hello, we'd like to speak with you about your 2004 Toyota Camry's extended warranty.'"

*crumples up message angrily*

Commander: "BRING US ABOUT AND SET COURSE FOR THAT STAR SYSTEM!!! IT IS OBVIOUSLY A SUPERVISION ARMY TRICK!!!"

*Earth and its' solar system are vaporized*

 

[RaisingCane]

Doesn't the NUN have something like twenty factory satellites?  Wouldn't it be easier to have them churn out the Zentradi ships and mecha that they're already tooled for?

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Doesn't the NUN have something like twenty factory satellites?  Wouldn't it be easier to have them churn out the Zentradi ships and mecha that they're already tooled for?

More than that, they have twenty or so just at Earth.

Factory satellites don't each make everything the Zentradi use, though.  They produce one produce one particular thing all the way from mining raw material with robotic ships to the finished product.  The factory satellites known to be in humanity's hands are mainly made for producing mecha, though humanity has modified them for other purposes including to serve as shipyards for building human-designed ships and to churn out material for use in Earth's postwar rebuilding and ecological recovery programs.

They do make use of some of those factories to produce their own updated versions of the Zentradi mecha in limited quantities like the Queadluun-Rhea, the Super Glaug, and the Type 104 and 106 Regults.  The logistics of supporting giant Zentradi troops are a hassle so there aren't tons of units of giant troops anymore when Valkyries are demonstrably a good deal more effective anyway.

 

[RedWolf]

Not to mention being giant is much more expensive.

Frontier had Zentran sized civilians on board as it is super rich. Being a Miclone is much more economical. Just look how a Zentran sized high heels cost!

 

Earth banned giant Zentradi on its surface after the Second Defensive Battle of Macross City. Zentran sized persons are either NUNS soldiers, rebels, people in niche jobs such as actors, rock stars, or farmers. Though as mentioned Zentradi on Macross Frontier are bloody rich like Richard Bilrer thus can afford the giant lifestyle.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RedWolf said:

Not to mention being giant is much more expensive.

Frontier had Zentran sized civilians on board as it is super rich. Being a Miclone is much more economical. Just look how a Zentran sized high heels cost!

To frame that excellent point in a usable perspective...

The pair of heels on display behind Alto there are labeled as on sale.

If the nonspecific future currency they use in the Macross Frontier fleet is functionally equivalent to the Japanese Yen, the sale price on those shoes with the exchange rate at the time this episode aired would've been approximately $35,318 (USD).  You can get a brand new, current model year four door sedan from most any major automaker for well under that price point.  The MSRP of the Toyota Prius that Island-1 is infested with modern imitations of (thanks CG stock models) was less than $22,000 in 2008.  Marked down, those heels cost 160% of a new car.

 

Hopefully that store is what it appears to be (a designer outlet) and all Zentradi clothes aren't THAT ruinously expensive.

(You have to admit, a Zentradi mall brings a whole new, and entertainingly literal, meaning to "upscale" shopping...)

Edited January 1, 2022 by Seto Kaiba
GRAMMAR!

[pengbuzz]

11 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

To frame that excellent point in a usable perspective...

The pair of heels on display behind Alto there are labeled as on sale.

If the nonspecific future currency they use in the Macross Frontier fleet is functionally equivalent to the Japanese Yen, the sale price on those shoes with the exchange rate at the time this episode aired would've been approximately $35,318 (USD).  You can get a brand new, current model year four door sedan from most any major automaker for well under that price point.  The MSRP of the Toyota Prius that Island-1 is infested with modern imitations of (thanks CG stock models) had a MSRP of less than $22,000 in 2008.  Marked down, those heels cost 160% of a new car.

 

Hopefully that store is what it appears to be (a designer outlet) and all Zentradi clothes aren't THAT ruinously expensive.

(You have to admit, a Zentradi mall brings a whole new, and entertainingly literal, meaning to "upscale" shopping...)

Talk about inflation!

[RedWolf]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(You have to admit, a Zentradi mall brings a whole new, and entertainingly literal, meaning to "upscale" shopping...)

You have to wonder though if Exsedol gets royalties as it is called Folmo Mall.

[sketchley]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The factory satellites known to be in humanity's hands are mainly made for producing mecha ...

Adding to this: the mecha producing ones are the smaller ones (tens of kilometres in size), the ones for ships are larger (hundreds of kilometres).  It's a heck of a lot easier to a) capture, b) move, and c) conceal the smaller ones than the larger ones (never mind the production line's resource costs).

[sketchley]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Talk about inflation!

They could be the Macross Frontier equivalent of brand goods.  There are plenty of real world examples of shoes and handbags that cost as much as a car. ;)

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

They could be the Macross Frontier equivalent of brand goods.  There are plenty of real world examples of shoes and handbags that cost as much as a car.

True that, though I'd imagine there's got to be a pretty significant amount of cost going into both making them structurally sound enough to be walked in by a 6+ tonne lady and into making them comfortable enough for said 6+ tonne lady to wear for long periods.

The heel especially would have to be made of some pretty tough stuff.

[RedWolf]

We have to note Frontier is richer than other fleets as it does not have slums. Macross 7 had Akusho and some small factory ships that were slums. It is worse with Macoss Galaxy. 

You have to give it to Howard Glass. Up until the Vajra crisis he kept the economy chugging along. Unlike his clone brother over at Macross 29 who is worrying over his election as his fleet is experiencing a recession.

 

 

[pengbuzz]

9 hours ago, sketchley said:

They could be the Macross Frontier equivalent of brand goods.  There are plenty of real world examples of shoes and handbags that cost as much as a car.

I meant literally, as in "inflated to Zentraedi size"! lol

  

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

True that, though I'd imagine there's got to be a pretty significant amount of cost going into both making them structurally sound enough to be walked in by a 6+ tonne lady and into making them comfortable enough for said 6+ tonne lady to wear for long periods.

The heel especially would have to be made of some pretty tough stuff.

Space metal (or maybe old gun pods)

Edited January 2, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, RedWolf said:

We have to note Frontier is richer than other fleets as it does not have slums. Macross 7 had Akusho and some small factory ships that were slums. It is worse with Macoss Galaxy. 

While it is true that the Frontier fleet is described as one of the wealthier emigrant governments, and likely got moreso once they settled on the Vajra planet with its rich reserves of fold quartz, slum districts have never been indicated to be commonplace among even struggling emigrant fleets.

The Macross 7 fleet's Akusho district is a rare exception.  Its official status as an unregistered emigrant ship occupying one of City-7's docking ports without permission is a pretty unconvincing cover story for its role in the military's top secret Project M.  All pretense to the contrary seems to have been abandoned around the time Sound Force was officially established as it became their base of operations.  Many of the buildings on its uppermost level were clearly in disrepair, but all of the utilities were still connected and working in that district and other than that the ship was obviously maintained in good working order.  That "slum" district had power, oxygen and waste recycling, hot and cold running water, the same environmental simulation used in the main dome, cable TV and internet access, and free access to the rest of the fleet.  It was less an actual slum and more a carefully managed simulation of one that was kept up so nobody would poke around a black project test site.

Macross Galaxy is a different story.  Despite its vast wealth, the fleet has massive income inequality and unemployment problems because the fleet's corporate government put efficiency above all else and converted much of its manufacturing to automated processes and eliminated manpower-intensive quality-of-life operations like the production and preparation of natural foods in the fleet's Sunnyflower-class and Riviera-class environment ships in favor of factory-produced synthetic food.  Eliminating whole industries which previously employed a fair percentage of the fleet's population created widespread unemployment and led some districts within the fleet to deteriorate into slums as a result.  It essentially only has slums by choice... 

Macross 29 was on its way to being a slum fleet, but that was another extreme scenario.  The way the fleet is described makes it sound like the original goal was to be a Space Switzerland and provide a safe space for people sick of war by remaining neutral in all internal conflicts.  It's not clear how well that worked out initially, but once they took that neutrality policy to the extreme of unarmed total pacifism reality ensued pretty quick.  Other governments strongarmed them into badly unbalanced trade agreements that just about destroyed the fleet's economy and led to widespread unemployment and eventually to rioting in the streets.  At the very least, the problem was being taken seriously and political activists had two different proposals for fixing the problem (maintaining pacifism and switching to cultural exports, or adopting Switzerland-style armed neutrality).

 

10 hours ago, RedWolf said:

You have to give it to Howard Glass. Up until the Vajra crisis he kept the economy chugging along. Unlike his clone brother over at Macross 29 who is worrying over his election as his fleet is experiencing a recession.

He did, but then... he wasn't exactly so hard pressed by the Vajra situation that his fleet couldn't continue to operate normally.

Even in the movie version, we see the fleet is still going about its daily business and even engaging in asteroid mining.

[RaisingCane]

Did the UN ever resume construction on the Grand Cannons or were they deemed ineffective for some reason?

[RedWolf]

13 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Did the UN ever resume construction on the Grand Cannons or were they deemed ineffective for some reason?

Resources went to Cloning, Nature Restoration, the Colonization and Emigration Fleets, and the Defense Grid over Earth.

The Moon Grand Cannon should still be intact.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RaisingCane said:

Did the UN ever resume construction on the Grand Cannons or were they deemed ineffective for some reason?

As far as we know, the New UN Government established after the First Space War never bothered to revisit the Grand Cannon concept.

The Earth UN Government and its UN Forces designed a lot of their defenses - including the Destroids and Grand Cannons - around the belief that an alien attack on Earth would take the form of an invasion.  They were expecting a fleet to roll up and try to land ground forces with a goal of conquering the planet intact.  Destroids were built to fight an alien invasion force on the ground, and Grand Cannons were built to sweep orbital space clean of the alien ships supporting the ground-based invasion force after the Spacy's defense had either been overcome or forced to retreat.

They were caught completely flat-footed by the actual tactics of space warfare as employed by the Zentradi, who couldn't have cared less about capturing the planet intact and simply rolled up en masse to convert it into a parking lot with orbital bombardments.

After the war, the New UN Government and New UN Forces were wiser for the experience and suitably chastend by the total defeat their predecessored suffered... and structured their defense plans around those newly-learned realities of space warfare, with the overwhelming emphasis on space-based defenses to prevent enemy fleets from approaching.  The Grand Cannons were undeniably incredibly powerful, but had simply been built for entirely the wrong kind of war.

[RaisingCane]

Is there any information about the defense satellites shown in Macross Plus?  I don't see them listed on M3.

[RedWolf]

The Defense Satellites are lasers or beam weapons. The defense grid is controlled from the SDF-1 Macross. However after the Sharon Apple Incident centralized control had a back up on Macross 13.

Planet Vulcan has a laser satellite defense grid as well.

Most planets like Al Shahal rely on their orbiting defense fleet.

 

Earth has both Guantanamo class and Uruga class among the planet's orbiting defense. The Guantanamos might also be refitted Gunships like we saw in Macross Frontier Wings of Goodbye.

You can't  which is the carrier type or the Gunship type.

 

[sketchley]

46 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

(...) The Guantanamos might also be refitted Gunships like we saw in Macross Frontier Wings of Goodbye.

You can't  which is the carrier type or the Gunship type.

Couldn't they be both?  (Or where is it mentioned that only refit types have big guns?)

For example, the ARMD (DYRL version) are part of the main gun system in Macross II.

[NightmarePlus]

That reminds me. Why didn't the Macross 7 government not go through the effort of fixing up Akusho district? How did it become like that in the first place too?

EditL: Disregard this. I went back and read what Seto posted about Akusho.

Edited January 3, 2022 by NightmarePlus

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As far as we know, the New UN Government established after the First Space War never bothered to revisit the Grand Cannon concept.

The Earth UN Government and its UN Forces designed a lot of their defenses - including the Destroids and Grand Cannons - around the belief that an alien attack on Earth would take the form of an invasion.  They were expecting a fleet to roll up and try to land ground forces with a goal of conquering the planet intact.  Destroids were built to fight an alien invasion force on the ground, and Grand Cannons were built to sweep orbital space clean of the alien ships supporting the ground-based invasion force after the Spacy's defense had either been overcome or forced to retreat.

They were caught completely flat-footed by the actual tactics of space warfare as employed by the Zentradi, who couldn't have cared less about capturing the planet intact and simply rolled up en masse to convert it into a parking lot with orbital bombardments.

After the war, the New UN Government and New UN Forces were wiser for the experience and suitably chastend by the total defeat their predecessored suffered... and structured their defense plans around those newly-learned realities of space warfare, with the overwhelming emphasis on space-based defenses to prevent enemy fleets from approaching.  The Grand Cannons were undeniably incredibly powerful, but had simply been built for entirely the wrong kind of war.

I suppose they could be put back into service if needed... but as you pointed out: they were built for the wrong type of war.

Mankind is incredibly fortunate to even survive Space War 1: by all rights, the human race should have been a smear.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Is there any information about the defense satellites shown in Macross Plus?  I don't see them listed on M3.

Nope.

I've only ever seen them referred to as "Defense Satellite".  Can't recall having ever seen any proper line art for them... which'd be why you don't see them on M3.

 

5 hours ago, sketchley said:

Couldn't they be both?  (Or where is it mentioned that only refit types have big guns?)

For example, the ARMD (DYRL version) are part of the main gun system in Macross II.

Considering the Guantanamo-class is basically a hollow rectangular prism, it doesn't even necessarily need to be a variant... they could've just stuck a temporary-use beam cannon down the main gate of the hangar.

Either that or one of the defensive turrets is firing a massively overpowered blast.

[RedWolf]

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

Couldn't they be both?  (Or where is it mentioned that only refit types have big guns?)

For example, the ARMD (DYRL version) are part of the main gun system in Macross II.

 Much of its hull is hanger space as it can have anywhere from 50 to 70 VF. From the way I see it they'd have to remove hanger space to put in the Heavy Quantum Reaction Beam Gun and more reactors. We only see the Guantanamo do this in Wings of Goodbye. Part of NUNS-SMS reinforcements sent to save Frontier. In the novel adaptation reinforcements came from Battle 7, Battle 11 and Battle 13. Battle 13 is not part of any emigration fleet. Macross 13 is basically Earth's Quick Reaction Force if I understand it right. So I am presuming this is something of an Earth refit. We don't see Guantanamo from either Frontier Fleet or in the Brisingr Alliance armed like this.

 

As to why refit the Guantanamo which were carriers I can see it as a reaction to the threat of the Vajra. As Macross Galaxy also had big guns in its escorts to wipe a Vajra hive.

 

[Bolt]

11 hours ago, RaisingCane said:

Is there any information about the defense satellites shown in Macross Plus?  I don't see them listed on M3.

From Sketchley's translations and RPG stats..might be helpful..

http://sdfyodogawa.mywebcommunity.org/Stats/Statistics/Satellites/defencesatellite.php

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, RedWolf said:

 Much of its hull is hanger space as it can have anywhere from 50 to 70 VF. From the way I see it they'd have to remove hanger space to put in the Heavy Quantum Reaction Beam Gun and more reactors.

It doesn't have to be a heavy quantum reaction beam cannon... and it almost certainly isn't one.

New UN Forces escort warships generally can't meet the energy and cooling system requirements of a Macross cannon.  The vast majority of ship-based beam weaponry are the more conventional charged particle beam weapons that scale so easily from mecha to large warship turrets.  It wouldn't be at all difficult to just mount a large fixed electron beam cannon down the throat of a Guantanamo's front dock for temporary bombardment use without needing to extensively modify the rest of the ship.

 

 

[RaisingCane]

Did the Macross ever use its railguns in battle or were they too "conventional" for use against the Zentradi?

[pengbuzz]

23 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Did the Macross ever use its railguns in battle or were they too "conventional" for use against the Zentradi?

Considering the odds they faced in each battle, I'm pretty sure they used everything they had (Including Claudia hucking the kitchen sink at them!).

[Seto Kaiba]

25 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Did the Macross ever use its railguns in battle or were they too "conventional" for use against the Zentradi?

I don't believe they were ever shown being used in the original series.

They might have been if the series had been produced at its originally intended 49 episode length, plans for which included a number of other gimmick weapons for the SDF-1 Macross that were cut from its specs when the sponsor pared the run down to 27 episodes before re-extending it to 36 based on strong ratings performance.

[RedWolf]

I do wonder what happens if fleet or colonization fails?

Did the Varauta colony and Macross 5 ever recover? Chelsea Scarlet was from Megaroad-13 moved to Macross 9 and later to Macross Frontier. 

Frontier which were low in water due to Vajra attacks the government was considering asking Earth for help. If I remember right they are worried that they will lose their autonomy doing so. 

Do failed fleets disband and it's population shuffled to other fleets and colonies?

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, RedWolf said:

I do wonder what happens if fleet or colonization fails?

On the rare occasion that a planet turns out to be unsuitable, the emigrant fleet that settles it just picks up and leaves.  

Elysium was abandoned by its settlers in 2041.

The implication, at least in Macross Frontier, seems to be that if an emigrant fleet is destroyed or so badly damaged that it must be abandoned the populace are treated as refugees and taken in by other emigrant governments as appropriate.  There are probably a fair number of interstellar treaties and laws governing it.  Macross 29 was an emigrant fleet that was something of a magnet for people fleeing internal and external conflicts like that.

 

9 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Did the Varauta colony and Macross 5 ever recover?

AFAIK, there's no mention of the Varauta 3198XE system being abandoned after the war.

One would imagine that a fair number of people - like Chelsea Scarlett - wouldn't want to live there anymore after what happened, but there would also naturally be a fair amount to be gained from excavating and studying the Protoculture ruins on the system's 4th planet.  Especially for advanced technologies like the entropy control field that keeps the 4th planet an ice world despite its orbit.

The Macross 5 fleet's ships were destroyed by the Protodeviln and their brainwashed Varauta forces, so as a fleet they've ceased to exist.  The surviving population of the Macross 5 fleet is noted to have been rescued from Gepernich's Spiritia Farm and the Varauta forces by the Macross 7 fleet.  What became of them thereafter is unknown.  Some of them may have joined the Macross 7 fleet, and others may have opted to stay on Varauta or join other emigrant fleets.

 

9 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Chelsea Scarlet was from Megaroad-13 moved to Macross 9 and later to Macross Frontier. 

Chelsea's circumstances were... unique and difficult.

I'm not sure if she actually lived on Macross 9 or just visited there while touring as an idol singer.  Macross 9 was the site of the incident where her rare Sophia Spiritia went out of control and caused a hundred people in the audience to black out during a performance.

 

9 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Frontier which were low in water due to Vajra attacks the government was considering asking Earth for help. If I remember right they are worried that they will lose their autonomy doing so. 

In the TV version, the concerns were somewhat more general in nature.

Namely, that the damage to Island-1 and the loss of half a dozen or so Island-class environment ships had compromised the ship's bioplant functions badly enough that it couldn't restore the environmental balance on its own anymore.  That led to, among other things, a decline in air quality and oxygen levels that led to them issuing oxygen masks to civilians.

 

9 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Do failed fleets disband and it's population shuffled to other fleets and colonies?

An emigrant fleet that decides its target planet is unsuitable could just pick up and go back to sailing the stars in search of a new one.

If the fleet is destroyed, then the surviving population are refugees.

If Frontier hadn't been able to force a landing on the Vajra planet they would probably have eventually been forced to abandon their battered emigrant ship and become refugees aboard the ships of the fleet's military contingent.

[aurance]

So… Macross Galaxy. I can’t make heads or tails out of its design. What are those green pods? Where does Battle Galaxy attach?

[Bolt]

I believe the green pods may be where the civilians live.  Not sure about where the Battle docks..

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, aurance said:

So… Macross Galaxy. I can’t make heads or tails out of its design. What are those green pods? Where does Battle Galaxy attach?

If you figure it out, let us know... we don't know either.

I'd assume the Battle Galaxy docks to that concave bit on the front.

[RaisingCane]

Does anyone know what the yellow and grey bulbs on Zentradi ships are supposed to be?

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Does anyone know what the yellow and grey bulbs on Zentradi ships are supposed to be?

Nope, AFAIK the only surface features on Zentradi ships that've been identified besides gun ports, engines, and launch bays are the communication beam emitters on the bow of the Nupetiet Vergnitzs-type.

It has been theorized, though not based on anything firm, that the yellow blisters are sensor clusters and the grey are fuel tanks.