MACROSS 30: Hints & Tips

[Chronocidal]

Oh, yeah.. for those not acquainted yet.. Japanese games seem to love using circle for "enter" rather than X... it's the same on PSO2, and I have to admit, I literally got stuck in a loop watching the intro for about half a dozen times before I realized I had to press CIRCLE to start the game.

The ps3 still uses X to confirm saving, and circle to cancel, once you get to the save menu. But all the selections in-game use circle to confirm.

[Tochiro]

glad i bought the game and thankful for the little circle triangle symbols cuz dont understand a lick of japanese except . thought i was pressing save button but guess not. lost all my progress. wah

Wow, I havent heard this story in years - I thought everyone knew how Japanese games worked by now (first came across this happening in the PS1 era). But hey, i guess it means that Macross motivated you to import in which case, good for you Sir!

For the uninitiated, X in Japan ALWAYS means BACK or NO. X doesnt mark the spot, it marks a mistake (ie, when marking tests, etc). The functions of X/O buttons were often reversed in Western releases of Japanese games (had almost become the norm in the PS2 era), but the way the PS3 works has kinda messed things up again. You see, depending on the menu, some commands are mapped according to the language or region your system is set to so they can change based on your system settings, while others are not changeable because they are hard coded in-game. This makes can lead to things just becoming more confusing for people....

[MegaRod-01]

thank u

[VF-15 Banshee]

Also, in addition to the DLC Valks disappearing, I can't seem to figure out how to make Mina do her song skill?

[Tochiro]

Cant remember off the top of my head but Aisha tells you how to do it during Minas training flight.

Its also listed, along with other super attacks, at the bottom right corner of the controls screen in the options.

Have yet to redeem my DLC (I feel that using a 29 when Im not supposed to would break my immersion so will probably use it for my 2nd playthru) but maybe the Mina mission wants restricts you to non DLC valks? Check your hanger when you get back maybe? Also, double check you are signed into your Japanese PSN account when playing - this can sometimes effect accessibility of DLC (no idea if this is the case or not with M30 tho).

[VF-15 Banshee]

Yeah, I got the song thing to work and I'll check into the signed in thing.

EDIT: OK this is really weird. It seems that the game just randomly deleted my DLC Valks so I have to start all over again. Thankfully I only made a few modifications, but I hope this isn't going to happen again. It would REALLY suck to have these birds fully upgraded and then have them randomly deleted.

Edited March 6, 2013 by VF-15 Banshee

[Chronocidal]

So, after unsuccessfully translating ン as ソ for several days, I FINALLY realized that the drops I need for nearly every hunter guild quest I'm running is something from bandits. I can't read the kanji, but the katakana is バンデット.

I need MANY of these drops, on the order of 15 or so per quest. Going to try jumping into the bandit hideouts to see if they drop, because sadly I got overzealous and killed all the bandit ships.

Also, still no 171EX... But now I have a quest to get the RVF-171, and just bought the RVF-25. I can't imagine what special abilities this game will give electronic warfare craft, but it should be interesting.

As far as upgrading valks to rank 2 or rank 3 though, yeah, I don't know what triggers the bluprints becoming available, but you have to buy them and build them separately.

Edited March 6, 2013 by Chronocidal

[TisSweet]

here another game play video with out the person talking through out the game .... once again you need a nico account... is free to see it http://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/36091197

[Renato]

I need MANY of these drops, on the order of 15 or so per quest. Going to try jumping into the bandit hideouts to see if they drop, because sadly I got overzealous and killed all the bandit ships.

I'm not sure which subquest you are on, but it could just mean "shoot down 15 bandits." I think have done three subquests so far IIRC, two have been collecting stuff and another was "shoot down XX number of Regult pods".

[Chronocidal]

That would be great, except I'm at the point in the story where no bandits spawn anywhere.

I'll probably get a ton of unlocks as soon as I finish the story, so I guess I'll just try that tomorrow.

[VF-15 Banshee]

FURTHER EDIT: So I reinstalled the DLC and....... my Vallks are exactly as they were.... that's.... weird. But gift horse and all that.

[kdamon]

So I finally upgraded to rank 3. In the glacier area you can buy VF plans with I, II, and III after the name of the fighter. I bought VF29(japanese text) II and III then went back to the ship. In the upgrade menu I selected the VF-29 and hit the triangle button. Aisha does a special attack of some kind then all of a sudden the VF is ready to upgrade. you get your upgrade limit upgraded each time you do this. With the III upgrade the limit goes to 9999999 (not sure of the number of nines). maybe people knew this but I thought I'd write it just in case.

[LOW_ALT]

Menu Translation Guide courtesy of Mwulf:

http://red-shoulders.blogspot.com/2013/03/macross-30-voices-across-galaxy-ps3.html

Custom Music Guide courtesy of Leifang2000

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/687898-macross-30-ginga-o-tsunagu-utagoe/65625602

[Chronocidal]

So I finally upgraded to rank 3. In the glacier area you can buy VF plans with I, II, and III after the name of the fighter. I bought VF29(japanese text) II and III then went back to the ship. In the upgrade menu I selected the VF-29 and hit the triangle button. Aisha does a special attack of some kind then all of a sudden the VF is ready to upgrade. you get your upgrade limit upgraded each time you do this. With the III upgrade the limit goes to 9999999 (not sure of the number of nines). maybe people knew this but I thought I'd write it just in case.

Looking at this last night, there are definitely hidden requirements to unlock being able to buy these.

The few I've seen appeared randomly, and take a ton of high value items to build. Building new planes was never a problem during the main story, but now I'm going to have to kill a ton of stuff for drops to build the upgrades (once they appear).

Different subject though, wondering something about controls.. is there a way to switch over gerwalk controls to strafe mode without having the targeting system lock onto whatever is nearest? Steering in gerwalk is a royal pain the butt, because for some reason you can't actually spin in place to turn (unless holding the lock button), you have to make a big circle. Makes steering toward item drops extremely annoying.

[Hikaru1234567890]

I got the VF-0S, VF-0A, VF-1A, Ghost Booster, and the SV-51a. didn't take that long just got the game yesterday.

[kdamon]

Looking at this last night, there are definitely hidden requirements to unlock being able to buy these.

The few I've seen appeared randomly, and take a ton of high value items to build. Building new planes was never a problem during the main story, but now I'm going to have to kill a ton of stuff for drops to build the upgrades (once they appear).

Different subject though, wondering something about controls.. is there a way to switch over gerwalk controls to strafe mode without having the targeting system lock onto whatever is nearest? Steering in gerwalk is a royal pain the butt, because for some reason you can't actually spin in place to turn (unless holding the lock button), you have to make a big circle. Makes steering toward item drops extremely annoying.

Yeah I spent almost all the materials I'd been saving on a couple of upgrades. Wasted on on VF-25A when I should have just bought the VF-25S (non-Ozma) from the guild. Found the super pack and tornado pack, the race to win them is kind of a pain though.

[locidm]

How do I select who to lock on to using control scheme C? It seems to lock on to the nearest enemy unit, and the lock appears to drift after a couple seconds.

[Hikaru1234567890]

Yeah the races are a pain in the butt. I just got the VF-1J, VF-1S and the Super Pack. Plus I'm already at level 12.

[Zor Primus]

Oh, yeah.. for those not acquainted yet.. Japanese games seem to love using circle for "enter" rather than X... it's the same on PSO2, and I have to admit, I literally got stuck in a loop watching the intro for about half a dozen times before I realized I had to press CIRCLE to start the game.

The ps3 still uses X to confirm saving, and circle to cancel, once you get to the save menu. But all the selections in-game use circle to confirm.

LOL good thing I wasn't the only one that happened to...

So I think I am almost done with the tutorial. Seems a group of bandit ships are attacking and I have to kill Valks and Regults. Not sure if that's what I have to do

[TyrValein]

For some reason I can't seem to get whatever it is they want me to get for the rank 2 VF-0 and SV-51 schematics. Anyone remember what they required?

[Chronocidal]

I'm actually betting it'd be those same items I've been looking for, which are "bandit (something in kanji)."

Literally, every single quest I have right now is to collect varying amounts of the same item, or kill varying amounts of the same thing... but I have yet to get a single one. EVERY quest that rewards a blueprint requires those.

I'm just resolving to finish the story mode, and then see if stuff unlocks after that. Then I'll do another playthrough from the start and keep better track of the quests, and what appears when to help piece together a guide to unlocking blueprints.

I still think it's funny that I cannot find the VF-171EX ANYWHERE.

[Loop]

I stopped trying to progress the main quest on 1-7. I am kinda confused about the guild quests also and how to get more valks. I so far have the VF-0D, VF-0A, VF-0S, Fast Packs, Ghost booster, Fockers VF-0S and 2 SV-51's. Seems like I should have a VF-1 at least by now. I might have also messed up by killing all the bandit ships early in this stage of the game, not really sure. They were annoying, so I upgraded my gunpod and sniper to max to get them off the map lol. What exactly are the orbs that the enemy valks drop? I collect them when I can, but I don't know if I should focus on them more.

Also forgot to mention, I have a ton of items that I don't what they are for

Edited March 7, 2013 by Loop

[ff95gj]

Yeah I spent almost all the materials I'd been saving on a couple of upgrades. Wasted on on VF-25A when I should have just bought the VF-25S (non-Ozma) from the guild. Found the super pack and tornado pack, the race to win them is kind of a pain though.

That's what I have been worrying about, having to win those god damn races to acquire these parts.

I want to quit already.

[Chronocidal]

Key to the races is use an upgraded valk, and don't use real aircraft controls. I've gotten a couple golds, but the longer ones will take practice. Basically, you just need to memorize the routes to complete them in time.

Ok, so update on this thing.. I went ahead and finished the story. Not going to spoil anything (I literally can't actually, because I have no idea what happened anyway. Yeah, it was one of those endings.), but you get a TON of unlocks for completing it. After finishing the story mode (even on easy) I pretty much received every major character's valk, along with their pilots. The entire Skull squad of VF-25s appeared, two custom VF-27s (Brera's and one other), M&M(and Gamlin) VF-22s, the YF-21, Isamu's, Alto's, and another YF-29, plus the YF-30.. and I'm probably leaving out a few. The valk tree basically exploded when I looked at it.

Now.. the down side to the New Game Plus mode.. Yes, you keep all your stats, characters, developed valks and items, but the story and quests all reset to chapter 1. That includes making any uncompleted guild quests and races completely inaccessible until you progress to the point in the story where you got them.

Also, it seems to be playing shenanigans with some of the quest items. After restarting the story, I've been attempting to finish EVERY guild quest I possibly can... and become incredibly frustrated, because while certain quests will give you that big green bubble region to hunt in, I'm getting a ton of them that tell me to collect a single item... but I have absolutely no idea where to find it. Knowing Japanese might help I admit, but I'm not sure if the game is quite working right here...

See, the REALLY screwy part of this... I picked up one quest, and it told me to get 5 items from one region that it highlighted. I could only find 3 total. I do know that sometimes those quest items just come from those little gold sparkly bits on the ground, but these came from 3 of those big crate objects. I looked high and low, and could never find the other two....

Until I looked in my storage. I had picked up the other two on my first playthrough. The quest relevant items don't reset, so if you still have any from the first playthrough, you might be in for a serious headache. Honestly.. the whole "storage" mechanic is not really useful. You can't view your quest log while in the hangar, and you can't view your storage while looking at the quests. It'd solve a whole heap of problems if you could just turn in quests using items in storage, but nope. I might actually try dropping every such item, and see if they respawn on the map.

So yeah... be prepared to get incredibly frustrated with the quests. I went scouring through my storage looking for potential quest items, and have been carrying them around in the hopes that I actually can complete some random quests easily, but I'm carrying drops from all three game regions, and only a few are relevant to the starting area.

It seems a lot of those one item search quests don't ever reset, because I have three or four of them, and can't even begin to find where to get the items.

Anyway, yeah. So, in order to really get the most out of the new game plus mechanic, you need to play through the game to the ending twice, so you can actually travel freely to all the areas. Once you start over, you've got to progress through the story again to unlock things.

Finally, one weird bit of VF-1 unlocking.. I will say that starting new game plus will flood your shops with various blueprints of all three ranks. I found a ton of amusing ones, but one that made me do a double take was some kind of special Skull Leader VF-1S. It's not Hikaru's, because you get that earlier in the game, and it's loaded out with 4 micro-missile pods. This one's loaded with two pods, and 4 reaction missiles, and is a rarity for a custom, because it comes with three sets of markings on one valk. You can probably guess which ones.

Now I'm just speeding through things as fast as possible to unlock all the areas, and get back to where I can travel freely to hunt for quests. Still no strike pack for the VF-1, or VF-25 armor set, and I think I lost the quest to unlock the armor set when I restarted. Oh well.

Edited March 7, 2013 by Chronocidal

[Smiley424]

Oh, yeah.. for those not acquainted yet.. Japanese games seem to love using circle for "enter" rather than X... it's the same on PSO2, and I have to admit, I literally got stuck in a loop watching the intro for about half a dozen times before I realized I had to press CIRCLE to start the game.

The ps3 still uses X to confirm saving, and circle to cancel, once you get to the save menu. But all the selections in-game use circle to confirm.

Yeah, I went through the intro animation and intro screen a couple times before I remembered that little tip from a friend of mine.

[Hikaru1234567890]

I stopped trying to progress the main quest on 1-7. I am kinda confused about the guild quests also and how to get more valks. I so far have the VF-0D, VF-0A, VF-0S, Fast Packs, Ghost booster, Fockers VF-0S and 2 SV-51's. Seems like I should have a VF-1 at least by now. I might have also messed up by killing all the bandit ships early in this stage of the game, not really sure. They were annoying, so I upgraded my gunpod and sniper to max to get them off the map lol. What exactly are the orbs that the enemy valks drop? I collect them when I can, but I don't know if I should focus on them more.

Also forgot to mention, I have a ton of items that I don't what they are for

How did you get Roy Fockers VF-0S?

[LOW_ALT]

How did you get Roy Fockers VF-0S?

IIRC it's a hunter guild quest that has you destroy a certain number/type of Regult. It was really easy and I was disappointed I didn't do it sooner as the SS VF-0S is a big improvement over the other zeros.

[Hikaru1234567890]

What one is it 1, 2, or 3?

[Chronocidal]

So, I realized I've been posting a lot of really long and bulky posts here.. this might become another one, but I figured someone might be able to make use of what I've learned from the "crafting" system in the game.. maybe better referred to as an "aircrafting" system.

Early on, I didn't know what was going on at all, and misinterpreted the way the build menu works. That "0/50" number in particular. I thought that that was a theoretical goal to approach, and getting closer to 50 would generate higher rank planes. Nope.

That number 50 is your limit to how many parts you are limited to in building the plane. This isn't a big deal at first, since early planes don't need many parts, or points.

So, to maximize the use of the parts you have, don't use high point value parts if you don't need to. I learned this the hard way, and this really ties in to preparing for starting a second game with your first run's data.

Rank 1 valks are easy to make. Early in the game, I would just go down the list of parts, starting at the lowest value, and put in as many as I could of each. I didn't actually hit the limit of 50 parts until somewhere in chapter 8, almost to the end of the game. It was then that I started paying more attention to how the system worked.

Now, how this ties in to starting a new game.. Here's the problem with new game plus. Yes, it suddenly opens up the ability to buy pretty much any valk blueprints you want, at any rank. The problem though? You're now stuck back in chapter 1. Rank 3 valks tend to need 120+ points from parts in each of the three categories. If you don't have an inventory absolutely bursting at the seams with parts worth at least 6-8 points, you're not going to have enough high leveled parts to actually make any of those planes until you reach the end of the game again, and can farm targets for those part drops.

So, bottom line.. when you get to the point at the end of chapter 8 where it warns you to save, and gives you a new menu option in orange to go to the last level? If you want to be able to build those rank 3 valks quickly, you'd better go farming for parts and money before you finish the game. You'll need a ton of parts, and a ton of money, because the rank 3 blueprints range in the 40-50k range in the first area, and I imagine the later ones will be even more. I can easily see a blueprint for something like a rank 3 YF-29 would be in the 100k+ range.

Now, it's not like you can't eventually get back to the end of the game again, and you'll have to in order to get the rank 3 blueprints to the later aircraft anyway. Just don't expect to be buying all those blueprints and building everything after one playthrough.

Personally, I'm picking and choosing which ones I buy, and I've only had enough parts to build about two rank 3 planes. Speeding through has let me get back to about chapter 4 in one evening though, so I might actually just use this run as a farming run, stock up on parts and cash in the last area, then dump all my quest items and start another game to focus on learning how to do the guild quests.

[pavesk8]

Keep these posts coming Chroncidal, they've been extremely helpful!

[LOW_ALT]

Keep these posts coming Chroncidal, they've been extremely helpful!

I'll second this, you're our reporter in the field! Very helpful indeed.

[locidm]

few questions:

1. how to toggle between targets when locking on using control scheme C??

2. I keep hearing about races but haven't accidentally run into any. Where do you access races? I just finished Chapter 1, it could be that I haven't gotten far enough yet??

3. Anyone try to use grenades yet? Is it just like using repair kit or is their another button to push to activate them once selected?

Edited March 7, 2013 by locidm

[Chronocidal]

Glad to know the posts are helpful, though I apologize that I get pretty wordy.

1. I think repeatedly pressing L1 will cycle through targets, but if I want to target something specific, I generally will move the camera around until it's centered, and then press L1 to lock on to them.

2. I don't think you can get to the races until at least a chapter or two in, and you have to destroy a few bandit ships hovering over the guild bases before you can get to them.

Most guild bases have three menu options (shop, quests, and exit), but one base on each region map has an extra option. You'll know it when you get a male npc picture. His menu is for the races.

His menu's got three options to it. The first option opens a menu that let's you pick a race to run (you'll know this menu because it'll pop up a listing of rewards for various times, and you'll get medal icons next to ones you finish), the second seems like a description of the races, and third is the menu exit.

3. Grenades, I didn't even know existed until I read the translation thread. Jumping into the start menu to use healing items is awkward as it is, but I can't imagine using a combat item that way.

One thing I really do wish was possible was selecting which weapons your various ammo boxes carry. Not so much because I want to carry reaction warheads on everything (though it would be nice ), but because the different valks aren't consistent.

Box 1 and Box 2 alternate a lot between rapid fire and multi-target missile launches, but it varies by aircraft, and you always switch to box 1 on launch. Box 3 is generally used for head lasers, or special weapons like the YF-29's beam cannons... except the VF-1S.. for some reason, that one gets multi-target, rapid fire, AND reaction warheads, but no head lasers.

Generally speaking, head lasers aren't much use on most aircraft, but they do come in VERY handy in a few specific instances, namely the long canyon runs that you do in maybe 3 cases. If you have rear facing head lasers, you can use those in fighter mode to hit targets behind and above you. Once you get the YF-29, it's turret is absolutely perfect for those situations.

On the other hand, I was surprised to discover you can just switch to gerwalk in those levels, and it's pretty effective at getting your enemies to pass you up so you can unload on them. Just know that depending on how tight the space you're flying through is, and depending on how your particular valk fires its missiles, you may be better off sticking to guns, because your missiles might hit the walls before actually tracking the target. There's nothing stopping you from firing missiles backwards either, but they're more likely to impact the canyon walls that way due to the required turning radius.

[VF-15 Banshee]

I've been r\trying to do the group special attack but it doesn't seem to work,maybe you do it later on?

[Hikaru1234567890]

Im on chapter 5 but I'm getting all these scraps and I'm tying to get the VF-11C. And I'm also trying to get enough G to get the VF-19F does anyone know who to get G quickly.