Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As attached as Macross is to the pineapple gag, they probably evolved from pineapples.

Which means they're practically immortal...unlike poor Messer.

What a dip.

[cheemingwan1234]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As attached as Macross is to the pineapple gag, they probably evolved from pineapples.

Imagine the PTSD flashbacks if Roy met them.....Good thing by then that Roy is probably in the fossil record

 

Also, just something I noticed...do VFs need to half gerwalk to VTOL?  The SV-51 had a set of lift jets to enable it to VTOL in fighter mode but the others?

Edited November 26, 2023 by cheemingwan1234

[azrael]

6 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Also, just something I noticed...do VFs need to half gerwalk to VTOL?  The SV-51 had a set of lift jets to enable it to VTOL in fighter mode but the others?

In most cases, yes. The SV-51 was unique with its LiftSystem™ fan jets. But it lacks auxiliary thrusters that other VFs had. And if the legs provide VTOL capabilities and the fan jet is useless in space (the SV-51 was designed from the get-go to be use in atmosphere), then the fan jet is unnecessary.

[Bolt]

In DYRL? Hikaru VTOL's and then extends into gerwalk mode. Just before Roy dies and they escape the Zentran ship. Apparently the VF-1 has thrusters on the underside of the fuselage..?

Maybe they're only useful in low to zero gravity?

Edited November 26, 2023 by Bolt

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Also, just something I noticed...do VFs need to half gerwalk to VTOL?  The SV-51 had a set of lift jets to enable it to VTOL in fighter mode but the others?

The SV-51 seems to have been unique in that regard.

As others have noted, the only time we've seen a VF make the attempt is in Macross: Do You Remember Love? wherein Hikaru's VT-1 Ostrich uses its verniers to "hop" far enough to deploy the legs.  A VF's high-thrust verniers do have quite a bit of power, so it's a plausible way to go about it in a pinch.  It's just probably a pretty wasteful maneuver propellant-wise and was only really necessary because Hikaru's VT-1 was captured in Fighter mode and couldn't land properly.

[cheemingwan1234]

Yeah, VFs save for the SV-51 would stink for dispersed basing with highways or short dirt strips as runways since the maneuver mentioned above to gerwalk the VF would be awkward to use.

[Seto Kaiba]

52 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Yeah, VFs save for the SV-51 would stink for dispersed basing with highways or short dirt strips as runways since the maneuver mentioned above to gerwalk the VF would be awkward to use.

VFs have several ways to compensate for short runways, like using boundary layer control systems to cheat up their lift coefficients during takeoff.

That said, the SV-51's unique fighter mode VTOL system was probably not as useful as the Alliance would've hoped given that the SV-51's rollout occurred after they'd already lost the war for all practical intents and purposes.  Between the accounts in Macross the First and Variable Fighter Master File, there's a definite feeling (and in the latter case, at least one outright statement) that the fractured remnants of the Anti-Unification Alliance were basically throwing their lives away in increasingly futile attacks on the UN Forces simply because they couldn't admit defeat or let go of their animosity.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

VFs have several ways to compensate for short runways, like using boundary layer control systems to cheat up their lift coefficients during takeoff.

That said, the SV-51's unique fighter mode VTOL system was probably not as useful as the Alliance would've hoped given that the SV-51's rollout occurred after they'd already lost the war for all practical intents and purposes.  Between the accounts in Macross the First and Variable Fighter Master File, there's a definite feeling (and in the latter case, at least one outright statement) that the fractured remnants of the Anti-Unification Alliance were basically throwing their lives away in increasingly futile attacks on the UN Forces simply because they couldn't admit defeat or let go of their animosity.

Basically: suicide ego runs?

[cheemingwan1234]

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Basically: suicide ego runs?

Close to it. Like Imperial Guardsmen but with smaller numbers....

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Basically: suicide ego runs?

Something along those lines, yeah.

The Anti-Unification Alliance forces that didn't throw in the towel when the separatists in Russia withdrew their support after the Alliance destroyed St. Petersburg with a reaction warhead seem to have been big fans of the trope Bolivian Army Ending.  Macross Zero seems to depict the one halfway sane effort, a real Hail Mary effort to revive their cause by stealing the alien relic the UN Government had discovered and weaponize it against them.  Macross the First's depiction of a Christmas 2008 attack on South Ataria island was a borderline suicide attack where Alliance forces served as a distraction for an attempt to destroy the island with a reaction bomb delivered by an unmanned SV-51.  In Master File, there are not one but THREE suicidal attacks described... including attacks on Alaska Base and Victoria Base, two of the most heavily fortified positions on Earth.  Master File's description of the SV-51's final engagement was a single badly-maintained SV-51 making a suicide run on an Alaska Base VF squadron and getting shot down with ease by a former SV-51 pilot who'd defected.

[pengbuzz]

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Something along those lines, yeah.

The Anti-Unification Alliance forces that didn't throw in the towel when the separatists in Russia withdrew their support after the Alliance destroyed St. Petersburg with a reaction warhead seem to have been big fans of the trope Bolivian Army Ending.  Macross Zero seems to depict the one halfway sane effort, a real Hail Mary effort to revive their cause by stealing the alien relic the UN Government had discovered and weaponize it against them.  Macross the First's depiction of a Christmas 2008 attack on South Ataria island was a borderline suicide attack where Alliance forces served as a distraction for an attempt to destroy the island with a reaction bomb delivered by an unmanned SV-51.  In Master File, there are not one but THREE suicidal attacks described... including attacks on Alaska Base and Victoria Base, two of the most heavily fortified positions on Earth.  Master File's description of the SV-51's final engagement was a single badly-maintained SV-51 making a suicide run on an Alaska Base VF squadron and getting shot down with ease by a former SV-51 pilot who'd defected.

Just went to TVTropes (per your link) to look up the Bolivian Army Ending.

BTW: Is it normal to lose track of time and end up reading on on other stuff related to what you were looking up on TVTropes?

[Seto Kaiba]

9 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Just went to TVTropes (per your link) to look up the Bolivian Army Ending.

BTW: Is it normal to lose track of time and end up reading on on other stuff related to what you were looking up on TVTropes?

Yes... it's a common enough phenomenon (esp. with Wikis) that it has a name.  "Link surfing". 🤣

[pengbuzz]

15 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes... it's a common enough phenomenon (esp. with Wikis) that it has a name.  "Link surfing". 🤣

Hang 10, dude.

[cheemingwan1234]

So, yeah, wonder about something, are there EX-Gear regular infantry in the NUN Army?  EX-Gear could be useful as heavy weapom haulers.

 

Imagine someone in a EX-Gear going Predator with a handheld minigun.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

So, yeah, wonder about something, are there EX-Gear regular infantry in the NUN Army?  EX-Gear could be useful as heavy weapom haulers.

No idea, on account of there being no confirmed appearances by the regular army in Macross Frontier or Macross Delta.

That said, given that the regular infantry we do see (affiliation unclear) do not use EX-Gear I'd assume "probably not".  

The only time we've seen a dedicated EX-Gear infantry unit was a New UN Spacy Special Forces unit outfitted to suppress the cyber-grunts from Macross Galaxy in the Macross Frontier movies.  Those suits are presumably not practical for widespread adoption, given that they're said to be approximately twice the cost of the regular model issued to the Valkyrie pilots.

 

4 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Imagine someone in a EX-Gear going Predator with a handheld minigun.

I'm not sure that would even be an improvement over the EX-Gear's regular armament.  

Macross Chronicle has suggested that the EX-Gear rifle seen in Macross Frontier is a rapid-fire railgun.

[Seto Kaiba]

Since I'm kinda bored waiting for my study to air out after the radon mitigation crew finished, I decided to revisit the subject of the SV-51's swansong from Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix.

In hindsight, it's actually kind of weird that the book chose to randomly include Russian text in the titles of the two sections that talk about the SV-51 given that the SV-51 was only codeveloped by the Sukhoi Design Bureau and most of them (incl. the ones featured in this segment) weren't even built in Russia.  They were manufactured in Romania, in Poland, and in eastern Germany.

Master File's story of the SV-51's last stand starts where the Unification Wars officially ended... the de facto collapse of the Anti-Unification Alliance in 2007.  Interestingly, it does not mention that the reason the Alliance collapsed in 2007 was because support for the Alliance evaporated in the wake of them destroying St. Petersburg with a thermonuclear reaction weapon.  It just mentions that, by the end of 2007, the Anti-Unification Alliance had been reduced to a fragmented and increasingly unpopular resistance movement.  It does mention that the Earth UN Government more or less declared an end to the Unification Wars on their own, and that guerilla conflicts continued in various places even after that declaration.

The story is framed as an account from a former Romanian Air Force pilot-turned-mercenary who fought for the Anti-Unification Alliance in their final major offensive and later served in the Earth UN Forces during the First Space War named Kilis Dakurd.  The account, referred to the Arad Papers, was recovered from the ruins of Alaska Base after the conclusion of the First Space War and details of the Arad Papers and the military operation they document (Operation Scoria) were later declassified and became reference in publication of the in-story Master File.  

Cpt. Dakurd belonged to a mercenary unit called Ansel, which possessed twelve Romanian-manufactured SV-51α's.  They were specialists in infiltration attacks, reconnaissance-in-force, and air superiority operations that were mainly used to bully conventional fighter units of the UN Forces and mainly survived by shooting down surprised enemies before any heavyweight response could arrive.

Operation Scoria was, well, not exactly the work of a tactical genius.  Its objective was simple... launch a series of diversionary attacks around the world to draw the attention of the UN Forces and decapitate their chain of command by invading and capturing Alaska Base and the UN Forces Headquarters located there.  The book's historical perspective makes this goal out to be... excessively optimistic.  Not only was the Alliance probably underestimating Alaska Base's defenses, they were dramatically overestimating their own offensive power as well.  The plan called for the Alliance to commit three of its six SV-51 units to the offensive, for a total of around 40 aircraft.  However, according to Cpt. Dakurd's record, many of the aircraft slated to participate in the operation were nonfunctional, including four of his Ansel unit's twelve aircraft.  The actual offensive only included about 20 SV-51s, supported by various Cold War-era garbage, and while they got the attention of the UN Forces their goal was figured out fairly quickly and a counteroffensive was launched to nip their plan in the bud.

Lt. General Takashi Hayase approved a strategic plan for the counteroffensive composed by Col. Ichiro Yabuki, which involved deploying its own VF force to strike industrial areas supplying the Alliance and identified Alliance bases like Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy airport in Kamchatka.  The force was composed of the new VF-0+ Phoenix Plus, a version of the VF-0 outfitted with the new FF-2001 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine designed for the VF-1.  On 12 October 2008, the UN Forces "Operation Yabuki" taskforce crossed into the Bering Sea and began the counterattack. 

At 0531 local time, the Alliance base in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy reported a massed formation of indistinct radar returns in nearby airspace, indicative of active stealth-equipped aircraft and went immediately to alert status.  Ansel's machines were to sortie and intercept the UN Forces advance.  Cpt. Dakurd notes that he felt it odd that the VF-0, which like his own SV-51, was noted to have a very short operating range due to its limited internal fuel storage, was seemingly at the forefront of the operation.  Visibility was poor, Dakurd's unit were stunned to hear that the vanguard unit of MiG-29s preceding them into the combat space while they were refueling were being shot down almost immediately after they engaged the VF-0 unit.  The MiGs reported a follow-on force composed of 20 escorting fighters and 22 B-52 bombers.  Dakurd's Ansel unit went into the engagement confident in their abilities and their belief that the SV-51 was at least slightly superior to the VF-0 in combat performance and expecting the engagement to be short as both sides would very quickly run out of fuel.  Ansel's strategy was to exhaust the VF-0s and then pounce on them once their fuel supplies were low.  This normally-sound judgement call would have a rather disastrous consequence.

The VF-0s greeted the SV-51s of Ansel with medium-range missile strikes, though they were noted to be more of a deterrant than something expected to down any aircraft and were intercepted.  Cpt. Dakurd noticed the VF-0s, which should already have been low on fuel, were also displaying abnormally powerful active stealth performance which was enough to compel Ansel to engage at short-range with infrared-guided micro-missiles.  On the first pass, they noted that the VF-0s weren't equipped with Ghost boosters as an extended range option.  Dakurd finally began to notice something was horribly wrong when he realized the VF-0s also lacked any kind of drop tanks and despite the long flight towards the Alliance base were still operating at near-ideal levels.  Ansel's attempt to pincer the VF-0s from above and below fell apart as the VF-0 unit continued to climb at a speed thought impossible for a VF-0 without a Ghost booster, outpacing the SV-51s and evading incoming fire from the pursuing Alliance forces.  The tally of impossible feats racked up by the VF-0 unit continued to rise as they evaded missiles with bursts of acceleration and tight turns or, more concerningly, intercepting missiles en masse using the coaxial laser cannons.  As the dogfight continued, Dakurd's forces grew increasingly concerned that the VF-0 had improved considerably as they noticed its infrared profile was quite different and it seemingly had no issues operating even at the SV-51's atmospheric service limit.  It was then that Dakurd's wingman was shot down, and he himself was forced to flee, jettisoning his boosters to reduce his aircraft's weight and improve acceleration.  He had concluded, at that point, that the VF-0 had become an unknown monster aircraft... and he was now being chased by three of them.

After returning to low altitude in a bid to rendzevous with friendly forces, Dakurd noticed large numbers of downed aircraft (that he would later learn were the remains of Ansel).  With almost no fuel remaining, he engaged and shot down a VF-0 with his 12.7mm cannon and gunpod before he himself sustained several hits from a VF-0's gunpod.  Rather than crash land ignobly, he decided to take at least one more enemy aircraft with him and promptly rammed the nearest VF-0.  He lost his right wing in the collision and crashed in a nearby potato field.  Relatively uninjured, Dakurd was pulled from the wreckage of his SV-51 by the very VF-0 pilot whose aircraft he had rammed... Major Albert Staker, one of the most veteran VF-0 pilots.  Staker praised the stunned Dakurd's maneuver, though Dakurd couldn't bring himself to share Staker's cameraderie over their dogfight.  He fled the area as a UN Forces rescue helicopter approached.  With civilian assistance, Dakurd escaped south to Vladivostok by boat, where he met up with his surviving unit members.  It was then, after comparing notes with the other survivors, that they realized the UN Forces had achieved a practical thermonuclear reaction engine and implemented it on the VF-0.  It was a demoralizing realization, and without orders the SV-51 unit effectively disbanded

The author speculates that Dakurd was so stunned by Staker's lack of animosity that it ultimately motivated his decision to travel to America and join the UN Forces some months later.

In an oddly serendipitous twist, after joining the UN Forces and ironically being assigned to a VF-1 unit attached to Alaska Base, Cpt. Kilis Dakurd scored the last known UN Forces kill of an SV-51 in June 2009.  While suppressing guerillas, Dakurd's unit discovered a dilapidated SV-51 operating as a radar control aircraft in the combat space.  The aircraft was clearly in no shape for combat, as repair parts were no longer available.  It ignored Dakurd's warnings and approached the VF-1 unit, at which point Dakurd shot it down with one of the UN Forces new AMM-1 Arrow missiles, making him one of the few pilots to have scored kills on both VF-0s and SV-51s.  He described the engagement in somewhat mournful tones, indicating the SV-51 was "moving as though it were looking for a place to die".  

(A parenthetical note earlier in the article mentions that Kilis Dakurd would later be assigned to ARMD-04 Clemenceau... and would ultimately perish in the final battle against the Boddole Zer main fleet in 2010.  His onetime foe Albert Staker survived the war, and passed away in 2019 at age 48.)

[TG Remix]

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Since I'm kinda bored waiting for my study to air out after the radon mitigation crew finished, I decided to revisit the subject of the SV-51's swansong from Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix....(cont.)

I always liked it when the VF Master Files added these types of stories in; Macross always had a focus on the worlds they take place in so it's nice for all its mechanical faults, the fans have an understanding regarding the franchise. Wonder if there's any interesting narratives from the VF-11 book. Dakurd was a nice, surprisingly optimistic story despite the ending and being from the Anti-UN which didn't go well for Nora and Ivanov. It is kinda melancholic in hindsight that many things from the Zero era probably didn't live long past SDF, like the old guard is passing for the new generation to bloom. Think the few descendants of characters there we do know of are Sheryl from Sara Nome of course, and Makina being the great-grandaughter of Raizou, the chief engineer on the CVN-99 Asuka II.

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I always liked it when the VF Master Files added these types of stories in; Macross always had a focus on the worlds they take place in so it's nice for all its mechanical faults, the fans have an understanding regarding the franchise.

It's always interesting to see what they come up with... though each in-universe historical account is blatantly tailored to give the subject matter Valkyrie a "hero moment" where it saves the day all on its own.

The VF-0 Master File's account stands out mainly because it's told from the perspective of the guys who are jobbing to make the book's subject look awesome.  Reading it, it's a secondhand description of a Romanian mercenary and SV-51 pilot experiencing an escalating series of "Oh cr*p" moments after the UN Forces seemingly illogical choice to use the normally short-ranged VF-0s in a long-distance raid turned out to be the first warning sign that the balance of power had irrevocably shifted in the UN Forces favor.

 

 

4 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Wonder if there's any interesting narratives from the VF-11 book. Dakurd was a nice, surprisingly optimistic story despite the ending and being from the Anti-UN which didn't go well for Nora and Ivanov. It is kinda melancholic in hindsight that many things from the Zero era probably didn't live long past SDF, like the old guard is passing for the new generation to bloom. Think the few descendants of characters there we do know of are Sheryl from Sara Nome of course, and Makina being the great-grandaughter of Raizou, the chief engineer on the CVN-99 Asuka II.

Dakurd's story is definitely atypical... the Macross stories that depict the Anti-Unification Alliance remnants after the de facto end of the Unification Wars generally depict what's left of the Alliance forces as broken, bitter, and occasionally downright vengeful people.  In a way, they're kind of the closest Macross has come to card carrying villains since they don't really have explored motives beyond "revenge" most of the time.  In Macross Zero and in Master File, they're seemingly gambling on increasingly long odds in the hopes that ekeing out a win over the UN Forces will breathe fresh life into their cause no matter how costly or transitory it might prove to be.  By the end of 2008 in Macross the First, the Alliance had lost the plot so thoroughly that the objective of their (suicide) attack on South Ataria island on Christmas was simply the mass death and destruction they could cause by blowing up South Ataria island with a thermonuclear reaction bomb.

Compared to that, Dakurd is basically a punch-clock villain who's not really all that invested in the cause.  He's a mercenary fighting because the Alliance are the only ones left who are hiring mercenaries, and he's stunned out of his complacency not by defeat but by a friendly enemy moment with the man whose fighter he'd just downed.

It's actually surprising just how much survived the First Space War when you think about it.  The Alliance's top VF engineer ended up working for Stonewell and Bellcom after giving up on the rebellion and he and parts of his design team would not only develop the VF-4, but go on to found General Galaxy.  It's even implied that the remnants of the Alliance have something of a hand in the various revolts against the New UN Government that led to the Second Unification War.

[pengbuzz]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's always interesting to see what they come up with... though each in-universe historical account is blatantly tailored to give the subject matter Valkyrie a "hero moment" where it saves the day all on its own.

The VF-0 Master File's account stands out mainly because it's told from the perspective of the guys who are jobbing to make the book's subject look awesome.  Reading it, it's a secondhand description of a Romanian mercenary and SV-51 pilot experiencing an escalating series of "Oh cr*p" moments after the UN Forces seemingly illogical choice to use the normally short-ranged VF-0s in a long-distance raid turned out to be the first warning sign that the balance of power had irrevocably shifted in the UN Forces favor.

 

 

Dakurd's story is definitely atypical... the Macross stories that depict the Anti-Unification Alliance remnants after the de facto end of the Unification Wars generally depict what's left of the Alliance forces as broken, bitter, and occasionally downright vengeful people.  In a way, they're kind of the closest Macross has come to card carrying villains since they don't really have explored motives beyond "revenge" most of the time.  In Macross Zero and in Master File, they're seemingly gambling on increasingly long odds in the hopes that ekeing out a win over the UN Forces will breathe fresh life into their cause no matter how costly or transitory it might prove to be.  By the end of 2008 in Macross the First, the Alliance had lost the plot so thoroughly that the objective of their (suicide) attack on South Ataria island on Christmas was simply the mass death and destruction they could cause by blowing up South Ataria island with a thermonuclear reaction bomb.

Compared to that, Dakurd is basically a punch-clock villain who's not really all that invested in the cause.  He's a mercenary fighting because the Alliance are the only ones left who are hiring mercenaries, and he's stunned out of his complacency not by defeat but by a friendly enemy moment with the man whose fighter he'd just downed.

It's actually surprising just how much survived the First Space War when you think about it.  The Alliance's top VF engineer ended up working for Stonewell and Bellcom after giving up on the rebellion and he and parts of his design team would not only develop the VF-4, but go on to found General Galaxy.  It's even implied that the remnants of the Alliance have something of a hand in the various revolts against the New UN Government that led to the Second Unification War.

So it wasn't exactly Dick Dastardly up thee, right?

[cheemingwan1234]

So. any ideas for why someone came up with the idea of a bayonet for the VF-11B gunpod? And whose idiotic idea was it to remove the wing store options for the VF-11 as well? 

 

 

[azrael]

27 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

So. any ideas for why someone came up with the idea of a bayonet for the VF-11B gunpod?

Because why not? Pilots were getting into hand-to-hand combat situations. Why not have a knife? Seeing that later VFs incorporated a combat knife, a bayonet wasn't a bad idea.

37 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

And whose idiotic idea was it to remove the wing store options for the VF-11 as well? 

VF-11s did have wing hardpoints. They just didn't show it on-screen that much.

[cheemingwan1234]

1 minute ago, azrael said:

Because why not? Pilots were getting into hand-to-hand combat situations. Why not have a knife? Seeing that later VFs incorporated a combat knife, a bayonet wasn't a bad idea.

VF-11s did have wing hardpoints. They just didn't show it on-screen that much.

Okay, then why did they not try that way back during the time of the VF-0?

[sketchley]

24 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Okay, then why did they not try that way back during the time of the VF-0?

The technology to do that didn't exist at that time.

While it is easy to strap any old sharpened piece of metal to a gun pod, it wouldn't be very effective against armoured targets using Energy Conversion Armour (like the Battle Pods).  Therefore, an effective anti-mecha blade weapon isn't seen until something like the 2040's—after a good 20 or 30 years of humanity both micronizing and working the kinks out of OTEC to enable a viable Valkyrie-scale bladed weapon.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

So. any ideas for why someone came up with the idea of a bayonet for the VF-11B gunpod?

If I had to guess, I would say it was probably someone who was very tired of having to fix or replace mangled manipulators after Pilot A decided to punch a battle suit or battle pod in the heat of the moment. Energy conversion armor is extremely tough stuff.

It wasn't until the advent of miniaturized pinpoint barrier technology that VFs were able to engage in fisticuffs without fear of damaging the sensitive mechanisms in the hand.

 

6 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

And whose idiotic idea was it to remove the wing store options for the VF-11 as well? 

They didn't. You can see the VF-11 using its underwing stations in Macross R.

Most of the time we see the VF-11 in space, so presumably it is relying on the internally stored weapons in its super pack in order to preserve its stealth profile as much as possible.

 

5 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Okay, then why did they not try that way back during the time of the VF-0?

Because the VF-0 was a test article that was hastily pushed into actual combat service in the Unification Wars. It wasn't expected to ever actually be shot at for real. It was there to evaluate the variable fighter concept and collect data to further the development of the VF-1. It was forced into live combat situations by the existence of the SV-51.

The VF-4 didn't use a gunpod it normal operation, so it was the VF-11 that was the first to be outfitted with a bayonet when it was believed that one would be advantageous. It may be fair to say that the first practical VF mounted blade was probably the combat knife on the 5th generation VFs like the VF-25 or the VF-31 since that was made of much newer and stronger materials and frequently beefed up with the strength of a pinpoint barrier.

[pengbuzz]

35 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If I had to guess, I would say it was probably someone who was very tired of having to fix or replace mangled manipulators after Pilot A decided to punch a battle suit or battle pod in the heat of the moment. Energy conversion armor is extremely tough stuff.

It wasn't until the advent of miniaturized pinpoint barrier technology that VFs were able to engage in fisticuffs without fear of damaging the sensitive mechanisms in the hand.

 

They didn't. You can see the VF-11 using its underwing stations in Macross R.

Most of the time we see the VF-11 in space, so presumably it is relying on the internally stored weapons in its super pack in order to preserve its stealth profile as much as possible.

 

Because the VF-0 was a test article that was hastily pushed into actual combat service in the Unification Wars. It wasn't expected to ever actually be shot at for real. It was there to evaluate the variable fighter concept and collect data to further the development of the VF-1. It was forced into live combat situations by the existence of the SV-51.

The VF-4 didn't use a gunpod it normal operation, so it was the VF-11 that was the first to be outfitted with a bayonet when it was believed that one would be advantageous. It may be fair to say that the first practical VF mounted blade was probably the combat knife on the 5th generation VFs like the VF-25 or the VF-31 since that was made of much newer and stronger materials and frequently beefed up with the strength of a pinpoint barrier.

Not to mention: in the case of the VF-1, its' operating time in space was limited due to the size of its' fuel stores (and maneuvering propellant as well), getting into position to use a bayonet or knife would have wasted operational time in space when missiles/ gunpod fire could do the same job. Later fighters such as the VF-4 could maneuver longer, but I cannot imagine it getting into melee (hand to hand) combat configured as it was in Battroid mode.

[Areoborg]

On 12/3/2023 at 9:38 AM, pengbuzz said:

Not to mention: in the case of the VF-1, its' operating time in space was limited due to the size of its' fuel stores (and maneuvering propellant as well), getting into position to use a bayonet or knife would have wasted operational time in space when missiles/ gunpod fire could do the same job. Later fighters such as the VF-4 could maneuver longer, but I cannot imagine it getting into melee (hand to hand) combat configured as it was in Battroid mode.

My theory is that H2H combat was one of those overlooked combat methods in the early designs.   Why do you need to carry a stabby bit of metal, when you can shoot them with your head lasers or your hip guns?  Much like how the real life military decided that having an onboard gun was a waste of space and weight, when missiles are a thing... right up until they kept running into situations where having a gun was a good idea.  Buy the time the Powers that Be decided to start including stabby things as part of their onboard weaponry, they would either have to use a hardpoint to carry it, remove some of the internal fuel/ammo stores to have it built in, or do what we have been doing for hundreds of years and stick a knife on the end of your gun.

The YF-19/21 didn't include a knife as part of their built in weapons, because they now had the ability to put a PPB over their mecha fist, making a dedicated knife seemingly unnecessary.  Though by the 5th gen, tucking a knife under the shield has become a standard feature, so relying on PPB Fists for your H2H weapons has fallen out of favor with the latest designs.   Though the Sv-262 decided to go full bore sword for its H2H gear.  Though I'll bet good money that it was something that the Aerial Knights demanded for their rides.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 minutes ago, Areoborg said:

My theory is that H2H combat was one of those overlooked combat methods in the early designs.   Why do you need to carry a stabby bit of metal, when you can shoot them with your head lasers or your hip guns?

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Back when the UN Forces first kicked off development of anti-giant robotic weapons, both the Battroid and Destroid design concepts anticipated use in close quarters combat.  In their earliest forms both concepts were essentially equivalent to a Mobile Suit.  The Battroid program evolved into the Variable Fighter, while the main model Destroid remained a Mobile Suit-like design with hands for delivery of knuckle sandwiches until at least the MBR-04-Mk.I Destroid: the progenitor of the Tomahawk series.  The idea endured past that point as well, finding its fullest expression in the MBR-07 Spartan series, which beefed up the hands into instruments of true day-ruining force.

Hand-to-hand with a Zentradi on foot is just a somewhat different prospect to what they ended up with... hand-to-hand with Zentradi in a powered battle suit or pod.

It's interesting that almost no source seems to want to comment on the VF-11's bayonet and why a similar feature wasn't available earlier or later... the closest we get is Macross Chronicle suggesting that multifunction gunpods are too expensive for widespread use.

 

[Areoborg]

On 12/4/2023 at 5:41 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Back when the UN Forces first kicked off development of anti-giant robotic weapons, both the Battroid and Destroid design concepts anticipated use in close quarters combat.  In their earliest forms both concepts were essentially equivalent to a Mobile Suit.  The Battroid program evolved into the Variable Fighter, while the main model Destroid remained a Mobile Suit-like design with hands for delivery of knuckle sandwiches until at least the MBR-04-Mk.I Destroid: the progenitor of the Tomahawk series.  The idea endured past that point as well, finding its fullest expression in the MBR-07 Spartan series, which beefed up the hands into instruments of true day-ruining force.

Hand-to-hand with a Zentradi on foot is just a somewhat different prospect to what they ended up with... hand-to-hand with Zentradi in a powered battle suit or pod.

It's interesting that almost no source seems to want to comment on the VF-11's bayonet and why a similar feature wasn't available earlier or later... the closest we get is Macross Chronicle suggesting that multifunction gunpods are too expensive for widespread use.

 

It still seems odd that they planned on fighting hand-to-hand, but just went with fisticuffs.   Were the following M. Bison's purity of unarmed combat doctrine?  I mean, I can see grappling in order to hold them in place long enough to shoot them with the built-in weaponry, but not boxing machines.  At least with the Valkyries.    Yes, they're armored, but they're also transformers, and physical blows make it more likely to get stuck in a particular mode, where non-transforming robots would be given a bit more freedom.   And be able to be more solidly constructed too, since they don't have to worry about transforming back into a plane.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Areoborg said:

It still seems odd that they planned on fighting hand-to-hand, but just went with fisticuffs.   Were the following M. Bison's purity of unarmed combat doctrine?  I mean, I can see grappling in order to hold them in place long enough to shoot them with the built-in weaponry, but not boxing machines.  At least with the Valkyries.    Yes, they're armored, but they're also transformers, and physical blows make it more likely to get stuck in a particular mode, where non-transforming robots would be given a bit more freedom.   And be able to be more solidly constructed too, since they don't have to worry about transforming back into a plane.

In all likelihood, it probably has a lot to do with the Earth UN Forces very inaccurate expectations of what a future war against aliens would look like.

The Earth UN Forces assumed that a war with an alien power would take the form of a classic alien invasion scenario.  Their incorrect prediction was that hostile aliens would be coming to Earth with conquest in mind, and that they would necessarily be obliged to deploy ground forces and wage a land war for control of the planet's surface.  The Earth UN Forces developed their plans for planetary defenses around that assumption including the development of their anti-giant weapons.  They thought they'd be squaring off against, and potentially peacefully interacting with, alien infantry for the most part so they constrained the designs of their anti-giant weapons to the approximately 10m height they were expecting the alien giants to be.

Considering they were expecting such hand-to-hand engagements to occur between a heavily-armored war robot and a comparatively squishy alien infantryman in body armor, it isn't hard to see why they might have thought hands alone would do it.  Considering the defensive strength of a Destroid or Battroid's armor and structural material is several times that of a main battle tank and that losing limbs or the head won't stop them, they probably figured (not unreasonably) that a hand-to-hand engagement between a flesh-and-blood alien soldier and a Human-piloted war robot would be nearly as unbalanced as any time someone tries to go hand-to-hand with a Terminator.  We've seen in the original series and DYRL? that the average Zentradi can beat on a Valkyrie with their bare hands and do little to no damage, while the larger and stronger command class Zentradi still need a runup and a LOT of strength to inflict significant damage, so that expectation doesn't seem to have been that wide of the mark. 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Seto Kaiba

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They thought they'd be squaring off against, and potentially peacefully interacting with, alien infantry for the most part so they constrained the designs of their anti-giant weapons to the approximately 10m height they were expecting the alien giants to be.

That assumption wound up being convenient for policing post-war Earth, though. They already had the needed equipment ready to go.

[azrael]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

They thought they'd be squaring off against, and potentially peacefully interacting with, alien infantry for the most part so they constrained the designs of their anti-giant weapons to the approximately 10m height they were expecting the alien giants to be.

To also be fair, they did battle against mostly fighter jets and walking fighter jets for most of the conflict so their assessment was still mostly true. Encounters with powered armor were rare until the latter half of the conflict. 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, azrael said:

To also be fair, they did battle against mostly fighter jets and walking fighter jets for most of the conflict so their assessment was still mostly true. Encounters with powered armor were rare until the latter half of the conflict. 

Granted, that's what the Zentradi would consider equivalent to "regular infantry".

The UN Forces were aware of battle pods, and even benchmarked their weapons against them, but they seem to have designed around the expectation of Zentradi soldiers on foot as being the norm given how they chose to scale the Destroids and Valkyrie Battroid.

[Shawn]

This pic got me thinking

When ASS-1 crashed we figured out we were going to potentially fighting giants, hence the VF-1 design for Battroid mode (which is still a really neat reason to have transforming jets after all these years)

But did anyone at the time think 'So....we've matched the giants size for size with our VF-1, but what if THEY use mecha themselves?
Seeing the size difference of the battroid vs the regult or quead or glaug is crazy enough, but what if they (Zentradi) used machinery proportionally sized to them?

 

i.e. imagine if this F-14 was Zentradi sized and what they piloted, we'd be in an awful lot of trouble with our puny little VF-1s 😛
I wonder if Kawamori/Miyatake dialed back the Zentradi mech sizes because the UN forces would be extremely overwhelmed...plus I guess they'd be hard to animate in the same cel frame.

 

The Zentradi mecha seem to be quite compact and space efficient

[Bolt]

50 minutes ago, Shawn said:

But did anyone at the time think 'So....we've matched the giants size for size with our VF-1, but what if THEY use mecha themselves?

It's a great point. I'm assuming Earth man was thinking alien infantry.?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

But did anyone at the time think 'So....we've matched the giants size for size with our VF-1, but what if THEY use mecha themselves?
Seeing the size difference of the battroid vs the regult or quead or glaug is crazy enough, but what if they (Zentradi) used machinery proportionally sized to them?

By all accounts, they didn't have to hypothesize the existence of alien mecha... they had samples.

Macross Chronicle mentions, at a few points, that the research teams studying the crashed Supervision Army gunship on South Ataria island recovered battle pods from the ship's interior and studied them.  Analysis of those recovered battle pods was what allowed Humanity to develop energy conversion armor.  It's also said that the data from studying the battle pods was used to decide how powerful the weapons of Earth's anti-giant robotic weapons needed to be in order to defeat that armor.

(It's also highly probable that other essential technologies used in the Destroid and Battroid programs were obtained from those battle pods, like compact thermonuclear reactors, superconducting motors, megawatt-scale laser and particle beam weapons, more powerful high explosives for warheads, etc.)

Why Earth didn't assume those were the standard... well... they were generalizing from self and probably assumed that the battle pods were something akin to a light tank.  After all, no army on Earth puts every soldier into their own armored fighting vehicle.  (Either that or the UN Forces dropped Heinlein's Starship Troopers from the curriculum.)

 

 

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

i.e. imagine if this F-14 was Zentradi sized and what they piloted, we'd be in an awful lot of trouble with our puny little VF-1s 😛
I wonder if Kawamori/Miyatake dialed back the Zentradi mech sizes because the UN forces would be extremely overwhelmed...plus I guess they'd be hard to animate in the same cel frame.

To be fair, we see pretty much exactly that in the encounters with Zentradi small craft like the Quel Quallie scout in the TV series and the assault gunship in the movie and Earth's mecha seem to do fine.

 

 

2 hours ago, Shawn said:

The Zentradi mecha seem to be quite compact and space efficient

When you're building something by the millions, every little bit of unnecessary cost balloons out into a fiscal atrocity in pretty short order.

It's mentioned surprisingly often that the Protoculture spared every possible expense when it came to the design of the military hardware they were producing for the Zentradi.  If you don't care about operator comfort or safety - and the Protoculture didn't - you can save an awful lot by doing without little mod-cons and luxury extras like ergonomic design, redundant control circuits to protect against equipment failure, more than the bare minimum necessary system automation, escape/survival equipment, more than the minimum necessary armor and radiation shielding, and so on.

It's why the Regult is said to be draining to operate... it's cramped, uncomfortable, and very little of it is automated.

(Also why the battle suits like the Nousjadeul-Ger are coveted... they're a LOT easier on the pilot and have substantially better survivability.)

Edited December 10, 2023 by Seto Kaiba