AVF Upgrade Candidates

[sketchley]

Do we know WHY the Chronicle is changing stuff? Ignoring the errors, is it a lack of editorial oversight, or an active intent to change things?

Short answer: no.

---

Long answer:

On the one hand: do we know that the original stuff was accurate in the first place?

On the other hand: it may have been an attempt to provide a better unified, cohesive tome of all the Macross lore. In addition, the creator's could've forgotten that they said "X" to publisher 'A' way back in the day, and now say "Y" to publisher 'B'.

[Valkyrie Driver]

What does the YF-29 gun shoot?

[Seto Kaiba]

What does the YF-29 gun shoot?

Which one?

[Valkyrie Driver]

Which one?

God point. The Gun Pod specifically. The twin back cannons are beam weapons, the cannons on the arms are also beam, and the hip guns are either beam machine guns, or high speed cannons, right?

[Seto Kaiba]

God point. The Gun Pod specifically. The twin back cannons are beam weapons, the cannons on the arms are also beam, and the hip guns are either beam machine guns, or high speed cannons, right?

The YF-29's a bit of an odd bird when it comes to guns...

The coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret (head) are identified in official spec as ES-25A 25mm high-speed machine guns firing anti-Vajra MDE shells (the same weapon the VF-25's hip guns were upgraded to).

No weapon is mentioned as being installed in the hip gun ports, though the port itself still clearly exists in the CG model.

The back-mounted TW2-MDE/M25 micro-dimension eater beam cannon fires a stream of microsingularities made up of the superheavy quanta that can only be produced using fold quartz, which draw matter from the target into super dimension space on impact.

The gun pod is a heavy quantum beam rifle that operates sort of like a half-arsed Macross Cannon. Instead of drawing heavy quanta into realspace and letting the gravity it produces cause it to fuse and focus the output of that reaction into a fusion plasma beam, the heavy quantum beam rifle stops halfway through the process and just fires a beam of that ultra-high-mass extradimensional matter at the enemy instead.

Edit: Cannons on the arms? There aren't any. I know the bit you're talking about, but it's never been identified as a gun. Totally looks like it ought to be one though.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Seto Kaiba

[Sildani]

The VF-27's gunpod uses similar processes, correct? Just more powerful?

Edited May 5, 2016 by Sildani

[Seto Kaiba]

The VF-27's gunpod uses similar processes, correct? Just more powerful?

The VF-27's gun pod is a bit of a head-scratcher too. The official writeup consistently mentions that it was initially a regular beam cannon and was upgraded to heavy quantum beam spec for anti-Vajra use. When, exactly, this upgrade occurred is not clear, as when Brera mentions the Vajra's ability to adapt in the Macross Frontier TV series (before the Frontier fleet started to upgrade its weapons for anti-Vajra use) he describes it as a heavy quantum weapon.

Once the gun pod was upgraded, yeah... it would work on the same principles. Whether it's a more powerful weapon than the heavy quantum beam rifles used by the YF-29, YF-30, and presumably VF-31 is not clear. Size alone is not a guarantee of an energy weapon's power. I would assume that it's comparably powerful to the YF-29's, though the YF-30 (and presumably the VF-31) are said to use a new-and-improved model.

[mickyg]

I seem to recall that the forearm "tubes" are borrowed from the Armored pack for the VF-25 and as I recall, serve the same purpose: Chaff or flare dispensers.

Where that came from, I can't recall and it may very well be totally incorrect.

[Mr March]

Do we know WHY the Chronicle is changing stuff? Ignoring the errors, is it a lack of editorial oversight, or an active intent to change things?

I think the amount of trivia contradictions that have come about from the Macross Chronicle has so far been very small. Like it was said before, the Macross trivia has been amazingly consistent over the decades this IP has been running. Macross trivia has been better managed than most. So I do think we have much to be thankful for, especially considering those large periods of inactivity between productions. It can't be easy coming back to write this stuff after years spent away from it all. We probably have Masahiro Chiba to thank for that.

That said, I've personally found three major causes (excluding outright errors) when the Macross Chronicle contradicts some trivia that has long been established Macross fact:

• Some Chronicle changes are simply due to ommission. At times it appears the writers forget, or are unaware of, or cannot source certain Macross trivia which we've had sourced for years. It's an understandable problem that is just going to happen and really, it happens only rarely. The Zentradi Enemy Battlesuit statistics are an example.
• Some Chronicle changes are due to compromise. In some rare instances, the Chronicle writers have found themselves stumped by multiple sources of trivia, unable to declare or decide which should take precedence. In the face of this, the Chronicle writers will simply compromise, choosing a middle-of-the-road option that might even merge two pieces of trivia into one. The date for the Macross II setting is an example
• Some Chronicle changes are due to a loss of author intent over time. It's obviously more dangerous to invent/alter trivia the further one gets from inception of the original production because the original creators intent can be lost or simply not understood. Clearly the oldest productions (like SDF Macross) would be the most susceptible to this problem. This is the most subjective cause because it's often impossible to know whether or not it actually applies; one can only suspect or intuit such is the case for any individual problem. More than any of the three causes, this is why I have ensured a written record of these differences. It seems all too easy for the new Chronicle writers to misconstrue older Macross trivia in ways that might seem obvious to their modern sensibilities but doesn't jive at all with the original creators intent, especially when that intent has been explicity spelled out as official Macross fact repeatedly published over many years.

Regardless, I think any issues the Macross Chronicle might create are mitigated by the fact that we still have the Macross Compendium (and my own website) to maintain documentation of it all anyway.

[Valkyrie Driver]

The back-mounted TW2-MDE/M25 micro-dimension eater beam cannon fires a stream of microsingularities made up of the superheavy quanta that can only be produced using fold quartz, which draw matter from the target into super dimension space on impact.

Black hole cannons?

[Seto Kaiba]

That said, I've personally found three major causes (excluding outright errors) when the Macross Chronicle contradicts some trivia that has long been established Macross fact:

Of course, that doesn't include the occasional case where failures of research or simple typographical errors led to moon logic-level explanations for what would otherwise have been fairly straightforward trivia. A disproportionate number of those errors belong to VF-19 sheets for reasons unknown, like that transposition error in the VF-19F/S engine numbers that went uncaught to the point that a paragraph of physics-defying nonsense attempted to explain it away or how all the performance-related claims on the VF-19EF/A Excalibur ADVANCE's mechanic sheet fall apart when you realize the numbers literally don't add up.*

Black hole cannons?

Not really a black hole, per se... more like a focused fold effect rendered into beam form.

* In the VF-19EF/A Excalibur ADVANCE's case there's no clear explanation for how they managed to get grade school-level arithmetic so badly wrong. Its engine thrust is cited as having increased 10%, but the number cited is only 5.68% greater (110% of 660 is 726 not 697.5). Likewise, its net thrust of 1,395kN is NOT more thrust han the VF-25's 3,240kN, even though the article claims it is.

[sketchley]

* In the VF-19EF/A Excalibur ADVANCE's case there's no clear explanation for how they managed to get grade school-level arithmetic so badly wrong. Its engine thrust is cited as having increased 10%, but the number cited is only 5.68% greater (110% of 660 is 726 not 697.5). Likewise, its net thrust of 1,395kN is NOT more thrust han the VF-25's 3,240kN, even though the article claims it is.

I think that's unnecessarily harsh criticism on the writers.

Is the number that they're starting at the 100% figure for that type of engine? There are interviews with Kawamori and Chiba that state that pretty much no fighter jet engine is tuned perfectly (thus their logic behind the tuning of the VF-0's engines to get more output out of them).

Perhaps the writers of MtR went with a different starting figure. Or perhaps the number that you're using for fact checking isn't the right number? Isn't this one of the cases of there being different numbers on different publications and model boxes? As the VF-19E/F comes from a modelling magazine, wouldn't a figure on a modelling box by the best place to check first?

Many factors to take into consideration...

[Seto Kaiba]

Is the number that they're starting at the 100% figure for that type of engine?

The only other known unit to mount that type of engine was the YF-19 No.2 prototype, for which the nominal tuning was approximately 660kN (661.949kN if we're being meticulous). Tuning it up to 697.5kN would be an improvement of a hair over 5%.

(Curious choice on Isamu's part, downgrading from the proven FF-2550E to the less stable FF-2500.)

Perhaps the writers of MtR went with a different starting figure. Or perhaps the number that you're using for fact checking isn't the right number? Isn't this one of the cases of there being different numbers on different publications and model boxes? As the VF-19E/F comes from a modelling magazine, wouldn't a figure on a modelling box by the best place to check first?

... 's not actually a Macross the Ride thing. Or, at least, not directly.

Remember, "VF-19EF/A" was the new designation that Macross Chronicle assigned to the custom VF-19 that was used for Isamu's cameo in Macross Frontier's second movie. IIRC, it was originally known in the official art book as "VF-19 (SMS Ver.)" and in the novel as VF-19ADVANCE. I guess Chronicle's writers opted to make it a monkey model since Isamu couldn't exactly walk off with a New UN Forces main fleet grade VF-19.

[d3v]

Black hole cannons?

I prefer the term "go the hell away guns" and "go the hell away weaponry", which also seems to be a popular term in the space battles forum.

[Seto Kaiba]

I prefer the term "go the hell away guns" and "go the hell away weaponry", which also seems to be a popular term in the space battles forum.

The players in my Macross RPG got into the habit of referring to using overkill weaponry like the Valkyrie II's big anti-ship railgun, Strike Valkyrie's beam cannon, and the YF-29's MDE beam turret as "pressing the 'F*** YOU' button" because it was their preferred method for making problematic NPCs go away (often permanently).

[sketchley]

Remember, "VF-19EF/A" was the new designation that Macross Chronicle assigned to the custom VF-19 that was used for Isamu's cameo in Macross Frontier's second movie. IIRC, it was originally known in the official art book as "VF-19 (SMS Ver.)" and in the novel as VF-19ADVANCE. I guess Chronicle's writers opted to make it a monkey model since Isamu couldn't exactly walk off with a New UN Forces main fleet grade VF-19.

Ah... it's a movie thing.

Well, aside from the issue of what original source number the writers are using, I was mulling this over at work, and it dawned on me that this may be another case of 'too many fingers in the pie'. One person might have said "'about' 10%" (sounds like something Kawamori would say), and another person came up with the figure itself, using some kind of arcane logic based on the real progression of such things (most likely Mr. Chiba, as he's the go to guy when it comes to technical explanations).

This kind of overlaps with a recent tangent in another topic in MW (about the YF-29 and the VF-25/27 development), in that later writers added and changed things. That could be what's going on here with the 5% vs. 10% increase.

[Valkyrie Driver]

With the VF-19EF it's engines seem to be rated around where the original VF-19A's were, which are outclassed by the VF-25's engines by almost 100k kg of thrust. If an ISC were fitted to the VF-19, what benefit would that really have if the pilot can sustain the g-forces from the VF-19? So with the ISC, you'd likely over g the airframe before the pilot started having issues, right?

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, aside from the issue of what original source number the writers are using, I was mulling this over at work, and it dawned on me that this may be another case of 'too many fingers in the pie'. One person might have said "'about' 10%" (sounds like something Kawamori would say), and another person came up with the figure itself, using some kind of arcane logic based on the real progression of such things (most likely Mr. Chiba, as he's the go to guy when it comes to technical explanations).

Looking back at it, I'm wondering if someone simply fudged the math in converting from kilograms-force to kilonewtons. Between Macross 7 and Macross the Ride, Macross as a whole went from citing thrust in kilograms-force to kilonewtons, and it would be far from the first Macross publication to screw up that unit conversion by rounding in the wrong place.

With the VF-19EF it's engines seem to be rated around where the original VF-19A's were, which are outclassed by the VF-25's engines by almost 100k kg of thrust. If an ISC were fitted to the VF-19, what benefit would that really have if the pilot can sustain the g-forces from the VF-19? So with the ISC, you'd likely over g the airframe before the pilot started having issues, right?

IIRC, the VF-19A was actually equipped with the earlier model FF-2200 engines rated at 56,500kgf rather than the FF-2500E's rated at 67,500kgf. That puts the difference at a hair over 108,000kgf per engine. (The difference in thrust-to-weight ratio is about 2.5x, VF-19EF vs. VF-25.)

As far as the benefits of installing an Inertia Store Converter on the VF-19, I'd think the most significant benefit would be the dramatic increase in the number of pilots able to handle the aircraft. Its Achilles heel always was that its maneuverability performance was so high that only the most experienced aces could keep the aircraft under control at anything close to its full potential because of the high g-forces. Insulating the cockpit from those high g-forces means removing, at a stroke, the chief limiting factor in the VF-19's operation.

The VF-19's structural g-limit is 31G on the 1st production type and 35.5G on the 2nd... so the pilot would still feel some G's even if pushing the airframe all the way to its structural limit. Assuming the ISC's performance was the same as the type used on the VF-25, you would have to basically fly the airframe to pieces (which the super AI avionics wouldn't let you do unless you specifically disabled the limiters) in order to get close to a debilitating level of g-forces.

[Valkyrie Driver]

So a properly tuned ISC, installed in a VF-19EF, with a GU-17A gun pod and appropriate reinforcements, as well as VF-25 level active stealth systems could go a long way towards updating the VF-19? Especially if you outfitted the VF-19EF with the VF-19E Kai engines which are putting out 82,500 kg of thrust? If all that were done, how would it stack up to the VF-25? It would probably lose out, in a head to head fight, but would it be able to put up a decent fight?

[Sildani]

Yes, most likely. However, since the plans for the VF-25 were freely distributed throughout the galaxy, how efficient would it be to extensively modify 19s as opposed to building new 25s?

[Seto Kaiba]

So a properly tuned ISC, installed in a VF-19EF, with a GU-17A gun pod and appropriate reinforcements, as well as VF-25 level active stealth systems could go a long way towards updating the VF-19? Especially if you outfitted the VF-19EF with the VF-19E Kai engines which are putting out 82,500 kg of thrust? If all that were done, how would it stack up to the VF-25? It would probably lose out, in a head to head fight, but would it be able to put up a decent fight?

Oh, undeniably. It wouldn't do anything to help the VF-19's bank-breaking price tag, but the ISC alone would go a long way toward making the VF-19 something a military that isn't staffed entirely by combat cyborgs could operate in numbers. There probably wouldn't be a ton of interest, what with the YF-24 derivatives which were coming out in various fleets and being sold by those fleets to the NUNS garrisons of other fleets and planets, but it'd be viable in theory if not necessarily in practice.

If it was going to adopt the VF-19 Custom's overtuned engines, I'd assume it'd also adopt the airframe reinforcements that pushed the g-limits to close to 40G.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Yes, most likely. However, since the plans for the VF-25 were freely distributed throughout the galaxy, how efficient would it be to extensively modify 19s as opposed to building new 25s?

Well, If the fleet had been given the plans for the VF-19 before the arms restriction, and was already producing them it might be more cost effective to simply produce a local variant that boosted the VF-19's performance to higher levels, rather than completely retool for a new fighter. Perhaps said fleet might simply not need the VF-25, since it's in a relatively peaceful area of the galaxy. Or perhaps they needed an interim solution for higher performance as they transitioned to the VF-25. Brand new, I can definitely see it getting skipped, but as a service life extension, it makes more sense.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Valkyrie Driver

[Valkyrie Driver]

It wouldn't do anything to help the VF-19's bank-breaking price tag

Is it ever stated why the VF-19 was so expensive? if so, why?

Also, are there any descriptions of how the ISC works? Does it use some form of ramping? The more g's it's subjected to, the more it bleeds off? Is there a point at which it begins working, like say under 6g's it's at "idle" sot to speak?

[Seto Kaiba]

Is it ever stated why the VF-19 was so expensive? if so, why?

If there's one comprehensive explanation for the VF-19 and VF-22 supposedly being extremely expensive to build and operate, I haven't seen it.

Various reasons are given in bits and pieces as part of the coverage of the various models of Valkyrie that supplanted them in the roles of main variable fighter, with most ultimately boiling down to it being a consequence of the fighter's excessively high performance... either in terms of the robustness of the materials or systems necessary to stand up to the high g-forces, the maintenance requirements involved in keeping those expensive systems from breaking down under all that high-g abuse, or the training costs involved in finding and acclimatizing pilots to operating under those high g-force loads. There are also one or two vague mentions of the requirement for high all-purposefulness that were either unreasonable or at least incompatible with the requirements for high performance.

At the end of the day, it wasn't a fiscal beheading... it was a monetary death of a thousand cuts that made the VF-19 and VF-22 too pricey to operate in significant numbers. The joint Shinsei-General Galaxy YF-24 program and Shinsei's YF-24 Evolution program were basically a twenty year effort to find workarounds for the problems that had hamstrung 4th Generation Variable Fighter programs. The linear actuator system removed a lot of the most fragile, high-maintenance moving parts from the cost equation, the ISC solved the g-force problem at the pilot level, and EX-Gear improved control stability and reduced training times.

Also, are there any descriptions of how the ISC works? Does it use some form of ramping? The more g's it's subjected to, the more it bleeds off? Is there a point at which it begins working, like say under 6g's it's at "idle" sot to speak?

The description of its operation in official sources is unhelpfully brief... but the gist of it seems to be that it smooths out the peaks and valleys in the curve of the pilot's experienced g-forces, buffering and then slowly releasing that energy back to the airframe in a controlled fashion. It sort of spreads out those g's so that the pilot doesn't experience a level of g-forces that could inhibit their control of the aircraft, cause injury, or damage the aircraft itself. I'm not certain if there's a level where the ISC is on hot standby instead of operating.

There is a very detailed explanation of the ISC in Master File, but I have not translated that section yet.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Ok, so it was a combination of factors that made the VF-19 and VF-22 expensive.

As for the Linear Actuators, are there any examples shown in any of the master file books how it supposedly "fixes" the previous generation tech?

[Seto Kaiba]

As for the Linear Actuators, are there any examples shown in any of the master file books how it supposedly "fixes" the previous generation tech?

Not really, no... like the power generation system, it's mostly mentioned in the marginal notes. (Like on page 36.)

We know that it eliminated many of the moving parts in the transformation system outright, which were often the most difficult to repair, the most delicate, or the most prone to wear and damage. That alone is said to have greatly simplified maintenance, and improved durability and reliability.

[Sildani]

It's based on electromagnets, if I recall correctly.

[slide]

The YF-29's a bit of an odd bird when it comes to guns...

The coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret (head) are identified in official spec as ES-25A 25mm high-speed machine guns firing anti-Vajra MDE shells (the same weapon the VF-25's hip guns were upgraded to).

No weapon is mentioned as being installed in the hip gun ports, though the port itself still clearly exists in the CG model.

The back-mounted TW2-MDE/M25 micro-dimension eater beam cannon fires a stream of microsingularities made up of the superheavy quanta that can only be produced using fold quartz, which draw matter from the target into super dimension space on impact.

The gun pod is a heavy quantum beam rifle that operates sort of like a half-arsed Macross Cannon. Instead of drawing heavy quanta into realspace and letting the gravity it produces cause it to fuse and focus the output of that reaction into a fusion plasma beam, the heavy quantum beam rifle stops halfway through the process and just fires a beam of that ultra-high-mass extradimensional matter at the enemy instead.

Edit: Cannons on the arms? There aren't any. I know the bit you're talking about, but it's never been identified as a gun. Totally looks like it ought to be one though.

OUR Technobable is so much cooler than the Trekkies...

[Valkyrie Driver]

OUR Technobable is so much cooler than the Trekkies...

QFT

[Seto Kaiba]

It's based on electromagnets, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, the moving parts are held in place and rearranged with electromagnetic fields, rather than being in direct contact with each other.

OUR Technobable is so much cooler than the Trekkies...

Our technobabble is arguably nicked from Star Trek and Gundam when it isn't based on real world theoretical technologies...

[JB0]

OUR Technobable is so much cooler than the Trekkies...

That's because our scripts don't literally just write down "technobabble" and tell the actors to ad-lib some sciencey-sounding gibberish.

[Valkyrie Driver]

Good point JB0, I have not yet heard one reference to "tachyon field inversions in the subspace matrix" or some nonsense in a Macross show. Though that is pretty good technobabble if I do say so myself. Macross seems far less concerned with the Hard Sci-Fi stuff in the shows, and gives it more in the reference books and other media. I think that Technobabble would turn off a lot of viewers, as it would start to sound less like Macross and more like Star Trek.

Anyhow, enough off topic-ness.

Yeah, the moving parts are held in place and rearranged with electromagnetic fields, rather than being in direct contact with each other.

Could such actuators be retrofitted into an existing design? For instance could the VF-19 be redesigned to use them (Say as a new model)? Or do the 5th gen fighters owe their transformation scheme to that technology?

[Seto Kaiba]

That's because our scripts don't literally just write down "technobabble" and tell the actors to ad-lib some sciencey-sounding gibberish.

I remain endlessly amused by the fact that Star Trek has had multiple PhD'd science consultants on payroll, and maybe half of their technobabble is just thinly disguised "I'm going to try turning it off and on again". Reconfigure the primary power coupling indeed...

(Someone needs to write Paramount and tell them we want an I.T. Crowd cameo in the new TV series...)

Could such actuators be retrofitted into an existing design? For instance could the VF-19 be redesigned to use them (Say as a new model)? Or do the 5th gen fighters owe their transformation scheme to that technology?

Can that technology be retrofitted into an existing design?

Explicitly yes. In fact, it was integrated into the joints of the ADR-04-Mk.XV Super Defender to improve the speed, responsiveness, and accuracy of its target-tracking capability.

Now... whether it can be integrated into the transformation of an existing variable fighter is a great big unknown. I would assume that it can, but it would probably be a fairly major rework of the transformation system to accommodate the fact that some of the moving parts would no longer be in physical contact, which would no doubt require a good deal of recalibrating system timings and tolerances to make sure you don't have moving parts miss each other like ships in the night or run two identically-polarized components so close to each other that they jam the system up.

The 5th Generation VFs owe the speed and stability of their transformations to the linear actuator, though the actual transformation configuration itself is down entirely to the practical matters of the airframe's design.

Edited May 12, 2016 by Seto Kaiba

[Mommar]

(Someone needs to write Paramount and tell them we want an I.T. Crowd cameo in the new TV series...)

This is fricking brilliant.

[anime52k8]

The coaxial guns mounted on the monitor turret (head) are identified in official spec as ES-25A 25mm high-speed machine guns firing anti-Vajra MDE shells (the same weapon the VF-25's hip guns were upgraded to).

wait... what? where the heck is there room for ammo in the head of a YF-29?