The SDF-3

[Seto Kaiba]

Those are AFDMs. Notice the resemblance?

Yep.

Then attach it to the Macross, where it becomes an ARM. Now that we have our joke, we make up what it means so we can pretend it's really an acronym.

Er... remember, they never got to actually be the ship's arms until a few years later, in a separate Macross title.

I don't think ARMDs fell out of use at all. They just lost the ARMD designation because the "arms" joke doesn't really carry over anymore since New Macross ships can flip you the finger and sucker punch bad guys on its own.

No, I meant the "ARMD" hull code fell out of use... we know that they made a great many of the ARMD-class (and ARMD II-class) space carriers. The "ARMD" hull code is used on two (three) classes of ship... the TV series ARMD, the movie ARMD (known as the ARMD II-class in VFMF), and one other...

The Guantanamo-class (officially AKA the Advanced ARMD-class) still carried the hull code "ARMD" through at least Macross 7's era. Production line art for Macross 7 has the exemplar Guantanamo-class ship (the Maizuru) identified as ARMD-362.

Now that I think about it, my problem with the SDF term on Megaroad ships is not the lack of weapons, but that it looks fragile. So much glass...it looks like it would shatter if I dropped it! Maybe I'm wrong for assuming that it is fragile...

I guess if you slap on a good barrier system it would be okay to call it a Fortress, or SDF. It's not my preference but I'm warming up a little bit.

Understandable, and the official material does mention that the Megaroad-class ships are less-than-ideal in terms of their overall structural strength (IIRC the exact way they phrase it is something to do with the hull's rigidity), which, in connection with minimal armament, makes them unsuited to combat.

Of course, overtechnology materials like hypercarbon/spacemetal and herculite are terrifyingly tough. The old Sky Angels book (which first asserted the SDF-3 to be Britai's ship) tried to put a rough RHA equivalency on it... something to the tune of a 100:1 advantage in durability compared to armor-grade steel. 1.2 inches (30mm) of OTMat armor was equivalent to 9.8 feet (300cm) of the conventional alternative on the VF-1, and even if starship armor isn't sterner stuff than that, the thicknesses involved are definitely going to work to the ship's advantage. Macross Chronicle suggests that the state of human shipbuilding advanced by leaps and bounds in the aftermath of the first space war, and the Megaroad-class benefited from that.

Slap a barrier system on it (it almost certainly had one) and what you've got might not be a battleship, but it's probably worthy of being called a fortress. (... and, on consulting a dictionary, "fortress" makes a lot of sense when defined as "a fortified town".)

[HannouHeiki]

I know it can be difficult to divorce the perception of a transparent material as anything other than glass becuase that's what we know in our everyday life. But I think it goes without saying the material used for the transparent sections of Macross space ships cannot be glass simply due to the structural demands of such a craft.

That said, they do mention in the Macross fiction that immigration ships use special transparent alloys, naturally they are unexplained in nature and have silly names. The Stellar Whale Passenger Ship indicates the transparent pellucida of immigration ships is composed of a special alloy called "Herculite", by name alone the term is obviously meant to imply a fictional super-strong transparent material. Which would make sense given the ridiculous structural strength requirements of the ships in the Macross universe.

Well, I figured it was fictitious material glass...I just have an unfounded assumption that fictitious metal is tougher than fictitious glass.

QUOTE SETO KAIBA

Then attach it to the Macross, where it becomes an ARM. Now that we have our joke, we make up what it means so we can pretend it's really an acronym.

Er... remember, they never got to actually be the ship's arms until a few years later, in a separate Macross title.

True...but they were still going to be "arms," evidenced by the docking maneuver planned from Episode 1, and Misa's line (paraphrased) of "docking with Daedalus and Prometheus instead of ARMD-1 and ARMD-2" in Episode 4. The AFDM hull code, AFDM design resemblance, and "robot arms" are just too much of a coincidence for me to not interpret it as the production inspiration for the ARMD term.

I didn't know the ARMD term carried over into Macross 7. Since specifics are never really in the animation itself, when did they drop it? In Macross Chronicle, or in Frontier production materials?

Edited January 6, 2015 by HannouHeiki

[Mr March]

I think Macross 7 was the last Macross to mention ARMD. At least, I personally haven't seen the title appear in any art books after that unless they refer to the original SDFM/DYRL/FB2012 or M+/M7 era ships. I revised the colored and uncolored line art for the Guantanamo Class for the next website update, I'll attach the uncolored art to this post for reference.

[Seto Kaiba]

I didn't know the ARMD term carried over into Macross 7. Since specifics are never really in the animation itself, when did they drop it? In Macross Chronicle, or in Frontier production materials?

Yep... as far as I'm aware, Macross 7 was the last time the designation "ARMD" was used. Guantanamo-class ships with visible designations (via holographic displays) in Macross Frontier are shown with CV or CVR hull codes instead.

Mind you, it wasn't just the ARMD designation that carried over into later titles. The brief view of the Macross-1 fleet we're shown early in Macross 7 contains what is clearly an ARMD II-class carrier, and Macross 7 Trash briefly showed a modified ARMD-class carrier in the Macross-7 fleet.

[JB0]

Herculite sounds like a trade name to me. Like Plexiglass, Lucite, or Lexan. Certainly, it implies a substance unknown to modern science, but in the lens of trade names it's less silly than in if it's a proper material designation.

Edit: Wow, I literally missed an entire page of posts. Sorry.

Edited January 7, 2015 by JB0

[Mr March]

It could be. Macross has a history of co-opting real brand names to create fictional companies and products. Not sure if it's any less silly in my mind, but the overall effect is to communicate something sci-fi-ish to the viewer/reader that indicates a material that is beyond conventional science.

[Gubaba]

The Macross Quarter's "arms" are called the ARMD-R and ARMD-L, though, aren't they?

[Mr March]

Ah, great catch! You're right, the ARMD is used in the Macross Quarter trivia. And according to the written fiction, they are supposed to be separate ships too. So I guess the tradition lives on.