The Newbie and Short Questions thread

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So would assigned ships/ small fleets be protecting these then?

That's how the Zentradi did it in the original series, yeah.

[pengbuzz]

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's how the Zentradi did it in the original series, yeah.

That leads me to wonder just how many Factory Satellites the Zentraedi/ Protoculture had?

One way to defeat the main fleets is simply cut off their access to the Satellites and let them crumble. But I'm just speaking hypothetically; I'm sure that would be way too large an undertaking, and those satellites are probably well guarded.

[Seto Kaiba]

16 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

That leads me to wonder just how many Factory Satellites the Zentraedi/ Protoculture had?

Millions, according to Macross Chronicle... a product of fully-autonomous production of everything, including factory satellite.

 

16 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

One way to defeat the main fleets is simply cut off their access to the Satellites and let them crumble. But I'm just speaking hypothetically; I'm sure that would be way too large an undertaking, and those satellites are probably well guarded.

Yeah that could take a while, especially with the factory satellite that makes factory satellites still out there.

[pengbuzz]

27 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Millions, according to Macross Chronicle... a product of fully-autonomous production of everything, including factory satellite.

 

Yeah that could take a while, especially with the factory satellite that makes factory satellites still out there.

As I kinda suspected. That Factory Factory Satellite would be a prime target to capture then.

On that note...reminds me of this scene from Austin Powers:

Look from 2:04 onwards...

Edited January 7, 2022 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

8 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

As I kinda suspected. That Factory Factory Satellite would be a prime target to capture then.

Assuming it's in something resembling good working order and small enough to be moved, sure.

After all, it's been running autonomously for half a million years give or take a week all on its lonesome.  If it's big enough to manufacture factory satellites - installations that are on the order of hundreds or thousands of kilometers in diameter - it's probably so massive that it couldn't be transported back to human-controlled space by space fold without a huge investment of time and energy or without attracting a LOT of attention with repeated very large space folds.

For now, even one of the smaller factory satellites that's just a few hundred kilometers in diameter is a massive force of automated industry that almost certainly exceeds any need that any one human settlement could come up with.  Possessing dozens, even at low or reduced capacity, gave humanity more than enough engineering muscle to launch massive emigrant fleets of hundreds of ships on a yearly basis and make even things like Valkyries cheap enough that a civilian can afford one.

[RaisingCane]

With all the colonies and factories to defend in such a profoundly hostile galaxy, shouldn't the NUNS be churning out automated weapons systems like those defense satellites and Ghost fighters?  Guld certainly had his hands full with just one Ghost.

Edited January 8, 2022 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

49 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

With all the colonies and factories to defend in such a profoundly hostile galaxy, shouldn't the NUNS be churning out automated weapons systems like those defense satellites and Ghost fighters?  Guld certainly had his hands full with just one Ghost.

They do.

The Sharon Apple Incident in 2040 soured the New UN Government's view of fully autonomous unmanned fighters, but unmanned fighters have been a fixture of the New UN Forces since the Unification Wars.  Their limited autonomy meant that they were often limited to scouting and picket/patrol duty where the first indicator of an enemy attack was often an aircraft being shot down.  The QF-2200 was a fixture of the New UN Forces in the Unification Wars, and the more powerful thermonuclear-driven QF-3000 was used for those same sorts of roles in the First Space War and beyond.

The Ghost X-9 was simply seen as the next logical step in unmanned fighter use... as a fully autonomous replacement for manned fighters, rather than a supplement to them.  The idea was well received by the New UN Forces and New UN Government until the Sharon-type AI demonstrator "Sharon Apple" went berserk and used its designed ability to integrate with New UN Forces defense systems to hijack the fully autonomous unmanned fighter prototypes and go on a rampage.

After the incident, the New UN Government imposed harsh restrictions on fully autonomous unmanned fighters precisely because of their exceptionally high performance and the risks inherent in losing control of such a weapon.  While this decision essentially "saved" manned fighters, the use of high-performance semi-autonomous unmanned fighters that were derived from the Ghost X-9 prototype became widespread as well.  Some emigrant governments adopted all-Ghost air forces, and most emigrant governments adopted that next-generation semi-autonomous Ghost in the same capacity as previous models for scouting, picket/patrol, and first response duty to sound out the enemy before committing manned fighters to the fray.  (We see this in the first episode of Macross Frontier.)  Some companies - like LAI - were researching ways to reproduce the unpredictable human-like behavior of the X-9 without the risk of loss-of-control incidents using personality emulations based on real people (in the Macross Frontier audio dramas).  Others simply flaunted New UN Government law and deployed fully autonomous unmanned fighters anyway (e.g. Macross Galaxy at the end of Macross Frontier).

Essentially, the main thing holding Ghosts back from becoming the main fighter is that their limited, semi-autonomous AI makes them somewhat predictable on the battlefield... despite being 1/3 the cost of a contemporary Valkyrie like the VF-171.

Unmanned Variable Fighters unfortunately suffer from the same drawbacks, and the first prototype for a fully autonomous unmanned Valkyrie was reworked into a manned VF following the Sharon Apple incident (becoming the Neo Glaug bis).

 

EDIT: It should be noted the reason Guld had his hands full with the one Ghost was that the X-9 was a fully autonomous type with a Super Pack fitted... rivaling or exceeding the performance of even the prototype 4th Generation VF and achieving unpredictable combat behaviors.  If it'd been something like the later AIF-7, Guld probably would've won with much less of a fuss.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[darkranger12]

Are Earth and Eden  the only planets where they have Factory Satillites?

[Seto Kaiba]

4 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

Are Earth and Eden  the only planets where they have Factory Satillites?

There are others... it's noted on the Factory Satellite Mechanic Sheet in Macross Chronicle that emigrant fleets that find factory satellites on their voyage capture them and take them along to supplement their manufacturing capabilities.

The SMS branch on Uroboros is noted to have access to a small one, which is what permits them to produce new Valkyries on the fly.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[darkranger12]

As it stands now are Eden, Cristrania, Neo York, Susia, Bellphan,Dahan, Avemaria, The Varja Homeworld, Uroboros, Sephira, Zola and in the Brísingr cluster theres Ragna, Voldor, Pipre, Al Salahal the only known colony worlds or are there more?

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, darkranger12 said:

As it stands now are Eden, Cristrania, Neo York, Susia, Bellphan,Dahan, Avemaria, The Varja Homeworld, Uroboros, Sephira, Zola and in the Brísingr cluster theres Ragna, Voldor, Pipre, Al Salahal the only known colony worlds or are there more?

There are more... those are just some of the ones that've been mentioned onscreen or visisted during various stories.

The Brisingr cluster alone supposedly has around twenty inhabited planets at various levels of development, some with native life and some without.  Only a handful - Al Shahal, Ragna, Voldor, Alfheim, Windermere IV, etc. - are visited during the course of the Macross Delta TV series.

[RedWolf]

Here is my updated list:

Airberl (Protoculture ruins- Ruins of Stig Stania, Invaded by Windermere)

Alfhiem

Al Shahal

Anthem III (Invaded by Windermere)

Avalon

Avemaria

Banipal(?, there are coal mines there, so presumably some settlement exists)

Bellfan

Beneb

Cashew (Civil War between local NUNS and old UN Spacy)

Cristrania

Dahan

Divide (Kaname Bucaneer home colony)

Eden

Eden 3 (not the same star system)

Elysium (abandoned)

Endebald

Gaul 4 (Grace O'Connor blew it up with Dimension Eater along with 33rd NUNS Marines)

Ganymede (also a moon)

Gregor

Hue (Basara visited this planet on a Tousugeki Love Heart video)

Hydra

Ionideth

Iota

Jupiter (multiple satellite cities)

Listania (Invaded by Windermere)

Luna (technically a moon, but hey)

Mars

Neo York

Neptune (satellite city)

Never (Has Orbital Elevators)

New Asia (Declared bio hazard)

Pripure (Setting Macross  E)

Ragna( Homeworld of Ragnans)

Randall

Rax (Supposed to be colonized by Macross 5 but blew up.)

Salvation

Saturn (satellite city)

Sephira (Leon Sasaki's home colony)

Susia

Ouroboros

Vajra Homeworld (Colonized by Macross Frontier)

Varauta colony

4th "Ice" Planet in Varauta system. Formerly Arsenal Planet and origin world of Protodevlin and Supervision Army turned prison world.

Venus ("satellite city" orbital colony)

Voldor (Homeworld of Voldorians, Protoculture Paraganal ruins, Invaded by Windermere)

Vulcan (Has a laser satellite defense grid)

Windermere (Homeworld of Windermereans)

Zola (Homeworld of Zolans)

Various unnamed Remote Planets used for mining or agriculture like the one in Macross 7 The Galaxy is Calling Me.

 

Edit: Others from VF Master Files.

Gaia (YF-19 Galaxy demonstration tour-2042)

Megara (YF-19 Galaxy demonstration tour-2042)

El Dorado (YF-19 Galaxy demonstration tour-2042)

Triton (YF-19 Galaxy demonstration tour-2042)

Valhalla (YF-19 Galaxy demonstration tour-2042)

Supika 3 (Incident with casualties in 2037-Glassed like Earth by a Zentradi Fleet)
Sagres (Home of the SVF-1429 that use the VF-25C/Sg by 2062, also visit of Ranka Lee)

Edited January 10, 2022 by RedWolf

[RaisingCane]

What's the story behind the glassing of Supika 3??

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

What's the story behind the glassing of Supika 3??

Oh, the planet's name is actually Spica III... it's the third planet orbiting the star Spica, also known as Alpha Virginis, approximately 260 light years from Sol.

It's mentioned in an anecdote related in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur, which is not part of the official Macross setting.  (So nothing of what I'm about to say is in any way canon.)

Essentially, Spica III was - according to Master File's unofficial history - the ungentle reminder to the New UN Government that the Zentradi were still out there and still a significant threat to humanity.  The planet had been settled by an early generation emigrant fleet and had a population of around 60,000 and an average defensive strength for the period with about 600 3rd Generation VF-14A Vampires, 48 destroyers, 16 cruisers, and 9 space carriers.  In September 2037, the planet was discovered by ships of the Zentradi 1,534th Main fleet and after a brief but furious holding action involving heavy use of thermonuclear reaction weaponry in which the New UN Forces were able to evacuate approximately a third of the planet's population before being overwhelmed.  The 1,534th Main Fleet bombarded the planet from satellite orbit and its surface was reduced to a barren wasteland as had happened to Earth in the First Space War.

Reinforcements were unable to reach the planet in time to save it, so the New UN Forces mustered a retaliatory strike force of every ship that could be spared from within a 300ly area and 120 squadrons of Valkyries to destroy the 1,534th Main Fleet before it could threaten any other planets.  The battle is noted to have been incredibly fierce, and through a sustained bombardment with the Battle 7's Macross Cannon and the expenditure of 90% of the New UN Forces total reaction weapon stockpile the fleet was repelled.  The whole incident was subsequently covered up by the New UN Government to avoid a panic, but the effect it had on the New UN Forces and New UN Government officials (which became known as the "Spica Shock") led to a major rethink of the military's approach to defense and the initiation of Project Super Nova to develop a 4th Generation Variable Fighter with much greater offensive and defensive power than the 3rd Generation VF-11 Thunderbolt and VF-14 Vampire.

(Of course, none of that is part of the official setting... but as you know from Macross Plus, the outcome of Project Super Nova was the events of the OVA followed by the brief attempt to adopt the 4th Generation VF-19A as the next main fighter before issues forced them to abandon it in favor of the less extreme VF-171 Nightmare Plus.)

[RaisingCane]

Has anyone else ever suspected that Seto Kaiba may in fact be Shoji Kawamori?

[JB0]

48 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The battle is noted to have been incredibly fierce, and through a sustained bombardment with the Battle 7's Macross Cannon and the expenditure of 90% of the New UN Forces total reaction weapon stockpile the fleet was repelled. 

How different that might've gone if Sound Force had been active...

Actually, ignoring that the entire thing is non-canon, could that have also been an impetus for the military's funding of Sound Force? The desire for a weapon more effective against the zentradi than reaction warheads, and that can't readily be turned against other humans.

[Seto Kaiba]

24 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Has anyone else ever suspected that Seto Kaiba may in fact be Shoji Kawamori?

... nope, tho there was a brief period when people abbreviated my handle to "SK" and caused some confusion as a result.

(That's what I get for being stuck with a screen name I picked back in my freshman year of HS and used across multiple sites, lol...)

But no, I'm too tall, too white, and too from Detroit to be him... and too many people have met me at Super Dimension Con to think otherwise. 🤣  

 

11 minutes ago, JB0 said:

How different that might've gone if Sound Force had been active...

Actually, ignoring that the entire thing is non-canon, could that have also been an impetus for the military's funding of Sound Force? The desire for a weapon more effective against the zentradi than reaction warheads, and that can't readily be turned against other humans.

An interesting thought.

Master File focuses mostly on the regular New UN Forces version(s) of the VF-19, but it would make a certain amount of sense for Project M to have been inspired by an event like that where a Zentradi fleet of considerable size proved extremely difficult to repel even with massive amounts of reaction weaponry and the latest Battle-class flagship.  It would've been a very Max thing to do, since he lived through the First Space War and saw the original Minmay Attack firsthand.

(It's also interesting to note that this non-canonical anecdote has the Battle 7 participating in combat the year before it left as part of the 37th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet... one has to wonder if Max was in command then, or someone else?)

Edited January 9, 2022 by Seto Kaiba

[Master Dex]

15 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But no, I'm too tall, too white, and too from Detroit to be him... and too many people have met me at Super Dimension Con to think otherwise. 🤣  

As one of those who have met him, can confirm. He's just a really good translator and professional nerd like the best of us, lol.

27 minutes ago, JB0 said:

How different that might've gone if Sound Force had been active...

Actually, ignoring that the entire thing is non-canon, could that have also been an impetus for the military's funding of Sound Force? The desire for a weapon more effective against the zentradi than reaction warheads, and that can't readily be turned against other humans.

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear Variable Fighters!

[RedWolf]

Most known and Canon Zentradi encounters were either by rebel factions or Stray Zentradi remnants like Chlore's fleet and that Queadol-Magdomilla survivor of the Koper Main Fleet that was destroyed by the Vajra.

(Hagure) Stray/Lost/Wandering/Rogue Zentradi could either mean a rebel Zentradi or a uncontaminated by culture Zentradi. Hence the nature of Stray Zentradi attacks in 2059 on Sephira and 2060 that the Aerial Knjghts were deployed to reinforce NUNS is unclear. Sephira had Black Rainbow a Zentradi terrorist group in 2050 to 2051 but was dismantled by Lacfence that remnants.joined Vindirance. The Brisingr Globular Cluster has a known population of 8 billion. Hence I can see an All Hands on Deck situation to repel Zentradi fleets. These are homeworlds of three native races. 

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... nope, tho there was a brief period when people abbreviated my handle to "SK" and caused some confusion as a result.

(That's what I get for being stuck with a screen name I picked back in my freshman year of HS and used across multiple sites, lol...)

But no, I'm too tall, too white, and too from Detroit to be him... and too many people have met me at Super Dimension Con to think otherwise. 🤣 

Detroit? For some odd reason, I was thinking Australia! lol

[azrael]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But no, I'm too tall, too white, and too from Detroit to be him... and too many people have met me at Super Dimension Con to think otherwise. 🤣 

Also has way too much time on his hands to be spending it on a little site like this.

[Keith]

1 hour ago, azrael said:

Also has way too much time on his hands to be spending it on a little site like this.

Yup, plus he would have gotten bored of our hijinks years ago.

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, Master Dex said:

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear Variable Fighters!

That's what the Ghost X-9 was supposed to be... but it turns out Terminator, 2001: a Space Odyssey, and a few other films were just plain lost in the First Space War and everyone up and forgot that fully autonomous AIs are memetically associated with going snooker loopy and trying to kill you.

(Or maybe Stealth exists in-universe, and the brain bleach needed to forget it made everyone wrong genre savvy for a bit.)

 

15 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Detroit? For some odd reason, I was thinking Australia! lol

Yeah, Detroit.

[RaisingCane]

Wouldn't Earth history past ~1982 have diverged from our own since that's when SDFM was made?  Certainly the 90s and beyond were vastly different.

[RedWolf]

Macross Delta Zettai Live on the other hand had revived the concept of AI controlled VF drones. Macross Plus OVA had the VF-11 target drones and Macross Plus game had the Neo Glaug.

 

11 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Wouldn't Earth history past ~1982 have diverged from our own since that's when SDFM was made?  Certainly the 90s and beyond were vastly different.

Oh yes as nuclear fusion was cracked prior to ASS-1 crashing. Overtechnology made that a dead end as Nuclear Fusion can be achieved with artifical gravity aka Reaction Engines.

 

1998

From Macross Compendium

January

• Experimental nuclear fusion reactor surpasses critical [temperature] point.

 

[azrael]

6 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Wouldn't Earth history past ~1982 have diverged from our own since that's when SDFM was made?  Certainly the 90s and beyond were vastly different.

You should know the answer to that.

Unless there’s a “Misa Hayase” born to a “Takashi & Sakiko Hayase” or a “Linn Minmei” born in Yokohama in the birth records. Or someone sustaining a nuclear fusion reaction in 1995 (Tore Supra did it for 2 minutes in 1996).

[pengbuzz]

42 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's what the Ghost X-9 was supposed to be... but it turns out Terminator, 2001: a Space Odyssey, and a few other films were just plain lost in the First Space War and everyone up and forgot that fully autonomous AIs are memetically associated with going snooker loopy and trying to kill you.

(Or maybe Stealth exists in-universe, and the brain bleach needed to forget it made everyone wrong genre savvy for a bit.)

 

Yeah, Detroit.

Dead or alive, we're coming with Seto! lol

[Seto Kaiba]

26 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

Wouldn't Earth history past ~1982 have diverged from our own since that's when SDFM was made?  Certainly the 90s and beyond were vastly different.

Yeah, and every now and again they go back and make some corrections for major historical events.

For instance, the oldest versions of the Macross timeline published after the original SDF Macross series and DYRL? make mention of the Soviet Union and West Germany among the major powers that founded the Earth Unification Government and OTEC.  Those references were later updated in newer iterations of the timeline published after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and now read "Russia" and "Germany".

The Macross the First manga that modernized the original story also modernized its setting, giving the characters things like cell phones.

 

13 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

Oh yes as nuclear fusion was cracked prior to ASS-1 crashing. Overtechnology made that a dead end as Nuclear Fusion can be achieved with artifical gravity aka Reaction Engines.

... it was in the real world too.

The remark you're citing doesn't mention practical fusion power, just that an experimental fusion reactor surpasses the critical temperature point.

"Achieving fusion" and "making fusion a sustainable source of energy" are two very different things.  That timeline entry is the former.

Technically, the first fusion experiment to reach the critical temperature for fusion occurred in 1958.  The first controlled release of fusion power was the Joint European Torus reactor in '91.  (There's a real world experiment that lines up almost perfectly with that arbitrary timeline entry... the 1997 JET experiment that achieved 16.1MW of fusion power generation.)  It's all about how you want to define that delightfully vague statement.

[RaisingCane]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

You should know the answer to that.

Unless there’s a “Misa Hayase” born to a “Takashi & Sakiko Hayase” or a “Linn Minmei” born in Yokohama in the birth records. Or someone sustaining a nuclear fusion reaction in 1995 (Tore Supra did it for 2 minutes in 1996).

I was referring to major world events.  Was everything supposed to be roughly the same as our world until the ASS-1 crashed?

Edited January 9, 2022 by RaisingCane

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, RaisingCane said:

I was referring to major world events.  Was everything supposed to be roughly the same as our world until the ASS-1 crashed?

Pretty much, yeah... the official Macross timeline is quite light on detail prior to July 1999, when the ASS-1 defolded in the Sol system and promptly crashed on Earth.

The few times the official Macross timeline has been updated for that specific period, it's been to account for significant real world events like the interrelated dissolution of the Soviet Union, the establishment of the Russian Federation, and the reunification of Germany.  Otherwise, it's been to make a few things slightly less specific like removing the mention of the fictive "People's Republic of Garalia" in favor of just saying that the disputes and internal conflicts that are collectively known as the Unification Wars started in the Middle East.

[RedWolf]

About Black Rainbow in Macross VF-X2 it is classified as a Zentradi terrorist group but functionally is more of a mercenary company with scruples. Timothie Dadalton their leader opposes Earth UN Spacy oppressing Remote Planets.  Not your typical Zentradi rebels that fight for the sake of fighting.  Timmy opposes Earth supremacists in Lactence. Some Black Rainbow members like Ernest Johnson joins Lactence after.the group was dissolved. 

So my question is how did Timothie Dadalton got his hands on the Sound Jamming System? Did Critical Path just gave it to him to test in combat? Manfred Brando double dipping in the conflict supplying both sides?

 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, RedWolf said:

So my question is how did Timothie Dadalton got his hands on the Sound Jamming System? Did Critical Path just gave it to him to test in combat? Manfred Brando double dipping in the conflict supplying both sides?

Not sure, but it would not surprise me if he were doing exactly that.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, RedWolf said:

About Black Rainbow in Macross VF-X2 it is classified as a Zentradi terrorist group but functionally is more of a mercenary company with scruples.

Black Rainbow is not a PMC.  Like Vindirance, it's a paramilitary organization established by New UN Forces personnel to oppose Latence's efforts to suppress emigrant governments by force.  Latence's manipulation of information branded it a terrorist organization and led to the VF-X Special Forces being deployed against it.  After suffering a few defeats in their fights with the 727th Independent Squadron they more closely aligned themselves with Vindirance and were ultimately the ones who first clued the 727th in to Latence's existence in the VF-X Special Forces chain of command.

 

13 hours ago, RedWolf said:

So my question is how did Timothie Dadalton got his hands on the Sound Jamming System? Did Critical Path just gave it to him to test in combat? Manfred Brando double dipping in the conflict supplying both sides?

Probably.

[RedWolf]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Black Rainbow is not a PMC. 

At least the faction of Timothie Dadalton are mercs.

From Macross Glossary 21A translated by Sketchley.

Black Rainbow [Other]
ブラックレインボー
A Unified Forces-designated terrorist group that has great power in the remote planetary systems. There are several factions within the organization. The faction that looks up to Timothy Daldanton as its leader operates like a mercenary unit. [Source: Macross VF-X2]

And I think Macross Delta Mini-Theatre mentions Ernest Johnson worked for Black Rainbow. Later switching to Lactence. So he's been a mercenary since the 2050's at least. Then having a brief stint as instructor and advisor to Gramia before going to Xaos.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Probably

That guy stuck his fingers on a lot of pies. 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, RedWolf said:

At least the faction of Timothie Dadalton are mercs.

"Operates like a mercenary unit" doesn't mean "is a mercenary unit".