Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Shawn]

Wow-great information as always!
I did not know in the backstory they had discovered battle pods on the ship

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.)

Yeah; they didn't think that the Battlepods were the foot infantry (as so to speak). And they assumed it would be a ground war, not a space-based assault.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

Ah... so that's where the Ford Pinto came from!!! O.o

[Seto Kaiba]

54 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah; they didn't think that the Battlepods were the foot infantry (as so to speak). And they assumed it would be a ground war, not a space-based assault.

When you think about it, it's actually kind of surprising that nobody seems to have guessed the Zentradi were a wholly mechanized force...

After all, Heinlein's Starship Troopers was/is required reading for officer candidates in several different national militaries (incl. the US's) and it does depict a wholly mechanized armed force not entirely dissimilar to the Zentradi.

(A thought made somewhat more entertaining by the knowledge that Kazutaka Miyatake did the art for the 1970's Hayakawa Bunko SF printing of the Japanese translation and both he and Studio Nue as a whole did a partial adaptation of the novel in 1988.)

 

54 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Ah... so that's where the Ford Pinto came from!!! O.o

Nah, that's some authentically human terrible engineering.

The Regult, and the Zentradi forces as a whole, are evidence of a genuine disdain for life that even the Soviet space program might've felt was over the top.

 

1 hour ago, Shawn said:

Wow-great information as always!
I did not know in the backstory they had discovered battle pods on the ship

Happy to help.

It's a relatively new addition to the lore, having come in AFAIK with Macross Chronicle.

[sketchley]

6 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?

Seto gave a great response.

But there was one thing that appears to have been neglected: the Battroids and Destroids were scaled the size they were to facilitate communication (I like to think this means in such things as peace talks).  It may also be one of the reasons why the VF-1's Battroid doesn't have guns and missile launchers poking out of every crevice like we see on the Destroids.

[JB0]

The VF-1 is for diplomacy.

The Monster is for gunboat diplomacy.

[Shawn]

31 minutes ago, sketchley said:

  It may also be one of the reasons why the VF-1's Battroid doesn't have guns and missile launchers poking out of every crevice like we see on the Destroids.

I like that interpretation!

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, sketchley said:

It may also be one of the reasons why the VF-1's Battroid doesn't have guns and missile launchers poking out of every crevice like we see on the Destroids.

Potentially... though the main reason is a lack of places to put them, rather an a lack of inclination.

Lack of space was the main driver behind the VF-1's decision to adopt laser weapons.  The head-mounted gun was originally supposed to be a machine gun firing armor-piercing rounds but there wasn't enough space... so that plan was scrapped and a more compact laser system was used.

[TG Remix]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

There's also Macross 2036 where there's a proportionately sized battlesuit for Zentradi to pilot like a mecha that was a boss fight there iirc.

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.)

Which is ironic because in DYRL it seemed the Nousjadeul-Ger was more common then the battlepods there, who only had a minute or two of combined screentime.

[TG Remix]

14 hours ago, sketchley said:

But there was one thing that appears to have been neglected: the Battroids and Destroids were scaled the size they were to facilitate communication (I like to think this means in such things as peace talks).  It may also be one of the reasons why the VF-1's Battroid doesn't have guns and missile launchers poking out of every crevice like we see on the Destroids

Clearly by the VF-4's development with its arm laser cannons and internal missiles that mentality was nonexistent. 😆 Actually I think every 4th generation Valkyrie had internal weapons on their person one way or another.

(Sorry for the double posting, the site refused to load the progress between pages!)

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

There's also Macross 2036 where there's a proportionately sized battlesuit for Zentradi to pilot like a mecha that was a boss fight there iirc.

That's a special case, as that was allegedly a weapon that Quamzin's Zentradi renegades developed on their own after fleeing Earth and linking up with another main fleet.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Which is ironic because in DYRL it seemed the Nousjadeul-Ger was more common then the battlepods there, who only had a minute or two of combined screentime.

We do still see that the main force is battle pods, but yeah... since they made the Queadluun-Rau belong to another faction the Nousjadeul-Ger gets more time to shine.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Clearly by the VF-4's development with its arm laser cannons and internal missiles that mentality was nonexistent. 😆 Actually I think every 4th generation Valkyrie had internal weapons on their person one way or another.

(Sorry for the double posting, the site refused to load the progress between pages!)

By the time the VF-4 was completed, sure... but it was in active development well before the war started.  Its unusual design concept seems to have been intended to work around the limits the Battroid's then-current size imposed on space performance.  Going for beam weapons instead of a gunpod is pretty logical in space, since the main limitation on the performance of energy weapons is how much power you can throw at them and how much atmospheric gas is in the way... and in space, that second one is a non-issue.

[pengbuzz]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's a special case, as that was allegedly a weapon that Quamzin's Zentradi renegades developed on their own after fleeing Earth and linking up with another main fleet.

 

We do still see that the main force is battle pods, but yeah... since they made the Queadluun-Rau belong to another faction the Nousjadeul-Ger gets more time to shine.

 

By the time the VF-4 was completed, sure... but it was in active development well before the war started.  Its unusual design concept seems to have been intended to work around the limits the Battroid's then-current size imposed on space performance.  Going for beam weapons instead of a gunpod is pretty logical in space, since the main limitation on the performance of energy weapons is how much power you can throw at them and how much atmospheric gas is in the way... and in space, that second one is a non-issue.

Not to mention that a beam weapon's pulse would travel far faster in space than a solid projectile (given that it would travel fairly close if not at c ), making it much more difficult to dodge in a dogfight.

[cheemingwan1234]

So, there was mention of the Battroid initially being a non-transformable mech a la Gundam's MSes, what caused it to be merged into the VF-1 project?

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

So, there was mention of the Battroid initially being a non-transformable mech a la Gundam's MSes, what caused it to be merged into the VF-1 project?

Excessively broad requirements from the VF-X program.

Going as far back as the first VF-1 technical writeup by Masahiro Chiba, the newly-founded Earth UN Forces had two separate camps when it came to development of anti-giant alien robotic weapons.  The UN Army championed the Destroid as a fairly straightforward walking weapon for land warfare.  The UN Air Force, UN Navy, and UN Marine Corps were looking for something more versatile, and the intersection of their interests produced the Battroid program and then the VF-X program.  The Battroid program was absorbed into the VF-X as it'd already been doing some useful work in terms of a robot system meant for use in extreme environments like underwater, in air, or in space.

[Devil 505]

On 11/26/2023 at 10:39 PM, 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.

I was under the impression that the Sv-262 would be ideal for highway runways, considering that its design inspiration, the J 35 Draken, was designed for that very purpose.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Devil 505 said:

I was under the impression that the Sv-262 would be ideal for highway runways, considering that its design inspiration, the J 35 Draken, was designed for that very purpose.

An interesting thought... though not a topic I recall being mentioned in any of the writeups for the Dian Cecht Sv-262 Draken III.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me, though.  It seems like something almost every VF developed after the First Space War would be designed for, considering the realities of postwar reconstruction and initial settlement of emigrant planets would mean VFs would have to be equipped to operate in the absence of properly constructed dedicated runways.  Their VTOL and STOVL capabilities aside, it'd be an immensely useful thing to have and existing material does indirectly suggest roadways are reinforced to support the weight of stuff like workroids and giant Zentradi.

Whether Windermere IV includes such infrastructure is unclear.  We only ever see the Aerial Knights operate from aircraft carriers or an airbase outside of their planetary capital of Darwent.  They jumped right from a pre-industrial or early industrial agrarian society to an interstellar one and their economy's still near-exclusively agrarian, so it's not clear if they had the time or resources to redo their road system to support battroids and workroids in addition to light trucks and draft animal-pulled carriages.

[pengbuzz]

On 12/29/2023 at 4:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

An interesting thought... though not a topic I recall being mentioned in any of the writeups for the Dian Cecht Sv-262 Draken III.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me, though.  It seems like something almost every VF developed after the First Space War would be designed for, considering the realities of postwar reconstruction and initial settlement of emigrant planets would mean VFs would have to be equipped to operate in the absence of properly constructed dedicated runways.  Their VTOL and STOVL capabilities aside, it'd be an immensely useful thing to have and existing material does indirectly suggest roadways are reinforced to support the weight of stuff like workroids and giant Zentradi.

Whether Windermere IV includes such infrastructure is unclear.  We only ever see the Aerial Knights operate from aircraft carriers or an airbase outside of their planetary capital of Darwent.  They jumped right from a pre-industrial or early industrial agrarian society to an interstellar one and their economy's still near-exclusively agrarian, so it's not clear if they had the time or resources to redo their road system to support battroids and workroids in addition to light trucks and draft animal-pulled carriages.

Sounds like they went from Louis XVIII to Admiral Kirk in a generation or less...

[Devil 505]

On 12/29/2023 at 4:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

An interesting thought... though not a topic I recall being mentioned in any of the writeups for the Dian Cecht Sv-262 Draken III.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me, though.  It seems like something almost every VF developed after the First Space War would be designed for, considering the realities of postwar reconstruction and initial settlement of emigrant planets would mean VFs would have to be equipped to operate in the absence of properly constructed dedicated runways.  Their VTOL and STOVL capabilities aside, it'd be an immensely useful thing to have and existing material does indirectly suggest roadways are reinforced to support the weight of stuff like workroids and giant Zentradi.

Whether Windermere IV includes such infrastructure is unclear.  We only ever see the Aerial Knights operate from aircraft carriers or an airbase outside of their planetary capital of Darwent.  They jumped right from a pre-industrial or early industrial agrarian society to an interstellar one and their economy's still near-exclusively agrarian, so it's not clear if they had the time or resources to redo their road system to support battroids and workroids in addition to light trucks and draft animal-pulled carriages.

 

36 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Sounds like they went from Louis XVIII to Admiral Kirk in a generation or less...

There's definitely some "Schizo Tech" (to use the TV Tropes terminology) going on.

Going back to the subject of the Draken(s), another requirement for the J 35 was that it had to be able to be refueled and rearmed by conscripts with minimal training within ten minutes.  While even the most basic VF is far more complex in design than a third-generation fighter jet, it's possible that the Draken III was designed for (relative) simplicity in mind in terms of logistics and/or maintenance.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Devil 505

[Seto Kaiba]

10 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Sounds like they went from Louis XVIII to Admiral Kirk in a generation or less...

Yeah, that must have been wild.

They made first contact with aliens and had an alien colony established on their planet at a point where their own societal development was about on the level of Earth's European Middle Ages. King Grammier from Macross Delta was born just 5 years after first contact, so he would have lived through almost that entire period of upheaval as his people had to adjust their worldview from an age of feudal lords squabbling over fiefdoms to an era of diplomacy with beings from the other side of the galaxy.

That they seem to have made the transition relatively peacefully is actually pretty impressive. Either they really didn't care, or they are an extremely resilient people. Having a flying city drop out of the sky would probably have been traumatic enough. Seeing that it's full of technology so advanced it might as well be magic and that the people who live there are just entering the prime of their life at a point where you would be ready to die of old age surely came as a nasty shock to the locals.

 

22 minutes ago, Devil 505 said:

Going back to the subject of the Draken(s), another requirement for the J 35 was that it had to be able to be refueled and rearmed by conscripts with minimal training within ten minutes.  While even the most basic VF is far more complex in design than a third-generation fighter jet, it's possible that the Draken III was designed for (relative) simplicity in mind in terms of logistics and/or maintenance.

It does use linear actuator technology, so in a certain sense it is simplified in terms of its maintenance demands but that's only relative to the previous generations of VF. We don't get much in terms of statements about the maintenance of the Sv-262, but given that it has a very complicated transformation it's maintenance demands are probably not that minimal. 

Refueling and rearming is probably not a big issue since the Sv-262 uses railguns and beam weapons, and itss missiles are stored in modular packs. Actual maintenance is probably a lot more involved, especially since it's noted that the fold reheat system the Draken III uses can actually cause damage to the aircraft.

 

[cheemingwan1234]

Speaking of which, I wonder how does a non-monkey model VF-19A compare to a 5th Gen VF?

And what could we see in 6th Gen VFs?

[twich]

2 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Speaking of which, I wonder how does a non-monkey model VF-19A compare to a 5th Gen VF?

And what could we see in 6th Gen VFs?

Engine thrust is about 1000kN more in the basic VF-25A then in the basic VF-19A, which is in the 600kN range per engine. 5th Gen has ISC, which the VF-19 and other 4th Gen VF’s don’t have.

Twich

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Speaking of which, I wonder how does a non-monkey model VF-19A compare to a 5th Gen VF?

All in all, the Special Forces VF-19A's acceleration/mobility performance is about 1/2 of what your garden variety mass production 5th Generation VF can achieve thanks to the huge power disparity between the VF-19's thermonuclear reaction burst turbines and the VF-25/VF-31's vastly more powerful Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and inertia store converter.  Controlability is also superior on the 5th Gen units thanks to EX-Gear and the next-gen ARIEL II control system.

Overall survivability is a fair bit higher in 5th Gen thanks to the better engines allowing the 5th Gen VFs to run energy conversion armor on critical areas even in Fighter mode, better composite materials in the armor improving overall defensive capability, the next-generation advanced energy conversion armor used in the anti-projectile shield, fewer mechanical parts in the transformation system that can break down thanks to the linear actuator, etc.

Offensive ability is also a fair bit higher, given that it's noted the VF-19 cannot wield the VF-25's GU-17 without structural reinforcement to the arms and the ability of several 5th Gen models to control multiple unmanned wingmen derived from the X-9 Ghost.

 

2 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

And what could we see in 6th Gen VFs?

Based on what little has been said on the subject of 6th Gen in Macross Delta materials - not all of which are strictly reliable as the main source is Master File - something akin to the YF-29, YF-30, or VF-31AX.

The one semi-reliable point that's consistent between official setting and Master File materials is the idea that the 6th Generation will have Fold Wave Systems or some similar tech boosting performance.  The addition of a Fold Wave System is seemingly enough to push the VF-31 custom from a 5th Generation to a 5.5th Generation according to extra features found in the Macross Delta TV Blu-rays.

Master File is the source that talks the most about it, and being that it's the ONLY source to really talk about the VF-31AX Kairos Plus and Sv-303 Vivasvat.  That book changes the context of the YF-29, retroactively reclassifying it as 6th Generation and also recontextualizes the VF-31AX Kairos Plus from the Absolute Live!!!!!! movie not as an improvised field repair/redesign of the VF-31 Siegfried but as a repair-by-upgrade of the damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds using parts intended to upgrade/convert the 5.5th Gen VF-31 Siegfried into a 6th Gen experimental aircraft codenamed "VF-31X".  Only a partial upgrade was performed due to time constraints, omitting total replacement of certain structural materials and the addition of engines 3 and 4, resulting in a patchwork aircraft that was more like just a better Siegfried than the planned "VF-31X", to the extent that the developer supposedly asked that it not be referred to as "VF-31X" to avoid tarring their program with the failure of the rush job.

If we assume Master File is somewhat reliable, 6th Generation's key feature is the Fold Wave System but other improvements have also been included.  One of the other key ones besides yet another avionics upgrade with ARIEL III seems to be the adoption of energy conversion armor material into the aircraft's structural frame.  The book describes using energy conversion armor in alternating layers that are designed to resist deformation in different directions to improve overall frame rigidity and reduce torque on the frame.  The VF-31X design also suggests four-engine configurations might become the norm.

[pengbuzz]

On 1/16/2024 at 11:40 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

All in all, the Special Forces VF-19A's acceleration/mobility performance is about 1/2 of what your garden variety mass production 5th Generation VF can achieve thanks to the huge power disparity between the VF-19's thermonuclear reaction burst turbines and the VF-25/VF-31's vastly more powerful Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines and inertia store converter.  Controlability is also superior on the 5th Gen units thanks to EX-Gear and the next-gen ARIEL II control system.

Overall survivability is a fair bit higher in 5th Gen thanks to the better engines allowing the 5th Gen VFs to run energy conversion armor on critical areas even in Fighter mode, better composite materials in the armor improving overall defensive capability, the next-generation advanced energy conversion armor used in the anti-projectile shield, fewer mechanical parts in the transformation system that can break down thanks to the linear actuator, etc.

Offensive ability is also a fair bit higher, given that it's noted the VF-19 cannot wield the VF-25's GU-17 without structural reinforcement to the arms and the ability of several 5th Gen models to control multiple unmanned wingmen derived from the X-9 Ghost.

 

Based on what little has been said on the subject of 6th Gen in Macross Delta materials - not all of which are strictly reliable as the main source is Master File - something akin to the YF-29, YF-30, or VF-31AX.

The one semi-reliable point that's consistent between official setting and Master File materials is the idea that the 6th Generation will have Fold Wave Systems or some similar tech boosting performance.  The addition of a Fold Wave System is seemingly enough to push the VF-31 custom from a 5th Generation to a 5.5th Generation according to extra features found in the Macross Delta TV Blu-rays.

Master File is the source that talks the most about it, and being that it's the ONLY source to really talk about the VF-31AX Kairos Plus and Sv-303 Vivasvat.  That book changes the context of the YF-29, retroactively reclassifying it as 6th Generation and also recontextualizes the VF-31AX Kairos Plus from the Absolute Live!!!!!! movie not as an improvised field repair/redesign of the VF-31 Siegfried but as a repair-by-upgrade of the damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds using parts intended to upgrade/convert the 5.5th Gen VF-31 Siegfried into a 6th Gen experimental aircraft codenamed "VF-31X".  Only a partial upgrade was performed due to time constraints, omitting total replacement of certain structural materials and the addition of engines 3 and 4, resulting in a patchwork aircraft that was more like just a better Siegfried than the planned "VF-31X", to the extent that the developer supposedly asked that it not be referred to as "VF-31X" to avoid tarring their program with the failure of the rush job.

If we assume Master File is somewhat reliable, 6th Generation's key feature is the Fold Wave System but other improvements have also been included.  One of the other key ones besides yet another avionics upgrade with ARIEL III seems to be the adoption of energy conversion armor material into the aircraft's structural frame.  The book describes using energy conversion armor in alternating layers that are designed to resist deformation in different directions to improve overall frame rigidity and reduce torque on the frame.  The VF-31X design also suggests four-engine configurations might become the norm.

So this was basically a last-ditch "botch job" done out of desperation? No wonder it went bad...

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

So this was basically a last-ditch "botch job" done out of desperation? No wonder it went bad...

You mean the VF-31AX?  Yeah... it's actually pretty weird how low Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus's opinion of its titular aircraft and its operators is.

Normally you can count on any given Master File to talk about the VF it's covering in a highly positive light as it talks about ways the design was influential and the successes it had on the battlefield.  The VF-31AX Master File presents its subject aircraft as a failure, labels its one canonical use in combat not as a win for Xaos but Heimdall tripping at the finish line due to other circumstances, and uses that as a springboard to talk about tech being developed for the 6th Generation and roadblocks faced by development and production.

As I've noted previously, there are three separate explanations for the VF-31AX Kairos Plus:

• Battle damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds that were repaired with VF-31A Kairos parts and tweaked.
• VF-31A Kairos units upgraded with VF-31 Siegfried parts to replace battle damaged Siegfrieds.
• Battle damaged VF-31 Siegfrieds that were repaired using parts intended to convert them into a 6th Generation experimental aircraft "VF-31X".

... with the last one being Master File's new take, and the others being some kind of confusion on the part of the coverage of the movie.

[twich]

So, I don’t think this has been answered before, but what is the total thrust that the VF-4A or VF-4G can produce? We know what the Thermo Nuclear Reaction Engines produce, but what about the rockets? What about the Ramjets? The VF is rather unique with all of its engines and sources of thrust. Only the VB-6 comes close with its engines. Does the Variable Fighter Master File even touch on this?

Twich

 

[Seto Kaiba]

56 minutes ago, twich said:

So, I don’t think this has been answered before, but what is the total thrust that the VF-4A or VF-4G can produce?

We don't actually know... for pretty much the reason you're asking.

 

56 minutes ago, twich said:

We know what the Thermo Nuclear Reaction Engines produce, but what about the rockets? What about the Ramjets? The VF is rather unique with all of its engines and sources of thrust. Only the VB-6 comes close with its engines. Does the Variable Fighter Master File even touch on this?

Unfortunately, we have no official numbers for anything except the output of the FF-2011 thermonuclear reaction turbine engines.

If we go outside the bounds of official setting material, Master File offers no guidance on the in-wing thermonuclear ramjet systems but puts the compact hybrid rocket boosters at a comparatively humble 18,560kgf (182kN) apiece.

In theory, there's no normal circumstance under which all three pairs of engines would be operating concurrently and in atmosphere it's supposed to be kind of an either-or where the turbines and ramjets are concerned.  If we accept Master File's not-strictly-official number then the maximum possible thrust the VF-4A can produce in space flight is a hearty 65,120kgf (638.6kN).  About 79.6kN more than the combined main engine thrust of the VF-11 Thunderbolt's two FF-2025 turbines or around the output of one YF-19/VF-19A main turbine.

[Seto Kaiba]

An interesting, but tangential, note is that the VF-4 is indicated to have kept essentially the same hybrid rocket motor design used in the VF-1's Super Pack but scaled down to fit in the VF-4's engine nacelle... including the polymer putty fuel and electric fuel heating/ignition system with liquid oxidizer.

[sketchley]

3 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In theory, there's no normal circumstance under which all three pairs of engines would be operating concurrently and in atmosphere it's supposed to be kind of an either-or where the turbines and ramjets are concerned. 

Expanding on that point: the ramjets would not work at all unless the VF-4 was travelling at high speed in an atmosphere.  At the speeds required (apparently they're most efficient at Mach 3 and work up to Mach 6), the turbines wouldn't be used at all*.

* At high mach speeds with the VF-1, they closed the air intakes and turn the turbines into what amounts to a rocket motor.  While it is unclear if the VF-4 has the same capabilities, it defeats the purpose of the ram jets: to use the atmosphere as much as possible to conserve fuel.  That "rocket mode" of the turbine engines uses propellant in lieu of atmosphere, consuming fuel at as high a rate—or higher—than in space.

 

So, without any published specifics, I'd hazard a guess that the ramjets produce an equivalent (or somewhat greater) amount of thrust as the turbines, but they do it much more efficiently at high speeds.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

Expanding on that point: the ramjets would not work at all unless the VF-4 was travelling at high speed in an atmosphere.  At the speeds required (apparently they're most efficient at Mach 3 and work up to Mach 6), the turbines wouldn't be used at all*.

Yeah, Master File cites Mach 3 as the handoff point where the intakes for the ramjet switch from being used for engine cooling to being used as an actual ramjet engine.

Ideally, no more than two engines would be active at any one time.  Conceivably, no more than four at the absolute maximum.

 

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

* At high mach speeds with the VF-1, they closed the air intakes and turn the turbines into what amounts to a rocket motor.  While it is unclear if the VF-4 has the same capabilities, it defeats the purpose of the ram jets: to use the atmosphere as much as possible to conserve fuel.  That "rocket mode" of the turbine engines uses propellant in lieu of atmosphere, consuming fuel at as high a rate—or higher—than in space.

Sort of?  AFAIK the official setting materials don't comment on how the VF-1's engines operate near its maximum airspeed.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 presents an operating scenario where the VF-1's engine switches from a kinda-sorta low bypass turbofan jet engine to a ramjet or scramjet configuration by closing the primary intake and opening a secondary intake at the knee joint and bypass inlet to allow air to flow directly into the turbine body instead of passing through the precompressor or primary compressor stages.  It's said that it operates as a ramjet from Mach 2.5 to Mach 7.2, and as a scramjet above that.  It switches to thermonuclear rocket propulsion at/above the atmospheric service limit where the air is too thin to support turbine/ramjet/scramjet operation.

 

1 hour ago, sketchley said:

So, without any published specifics, I'd hazard a guess that the ramjets produce an equivalent (or somewhat greater) amount of thrust as the turbines, but they do it much more efficiently at high speeds.

Probably, yeah.  

[twich]

53 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, Master File cites Mach 3 as the handoff point where the intakes for the ramjet switch from being used for engine cooling to being used as an actual ramjet engine.

Ideally, no more than two engines would be active at any one time.  Conceivably, no more than four at the absolute maximum.

 

Sort of?  AFAIK the official setting materials don't comment on how the VF-1's engines operate near its maximum airspeed.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie Vol.1 presents an operating scenario where the VF-1's engine switches from a kinda-sorta low bypass turbofan jet engine to a ramjet or scramjet configuration by closing the primary intake and opening a secondary intake at the knee joint and bypass inlet to allow air to flow directly into the turbine body instead of passing through the precompressor or primary compressor stages.  It's said that it operates as a ramjet from Mach 2.5 to Mach 7.2, and as a scramjet above that.  It switches to thermonuclear rocket propulsion at/above the atmospheric service limit where the air is too thin to support turbine/ramjet/scramjet operation.

 

Probably, yeah.  

I’m sorry, I had always assumed that the max speed of the VF-1 was below Mach 4, even in space. Am I mistaken? I knew a little about the ramjet being operable in speeds of above Mach 3. I know the boosters on the super packs for the VF-1 have quite a bit of thrust, but limited in fuel capacity. 
I find it disappointing that so little information is available on the VF-4.

Twich

[Seto Kaiba]

40 minutes ago, twich said:

I’m sorry, I had always assumed that the max speed of the VF-1 was below Mach 4, even in space. Am I mistaken?

There's no such thing as a true "top speed in space" other than speed of light.

In space, the only limiting factormon your velocity is how much propellant you have and therefore how long you can sustain acceleration.

The official top speed of the VF-1 is approximately Mach 3.87 at 30km.  Master File adds the aforementioned ramjet and scramjet capability which is not reflected in the official spec, and also indirectly acknowledges the reality that the speed of sound decreases as your altitude increases due to the diminishing density of the atmosphere.

 

40 minutes ago, twich said:

I knew a little about the ramjet being operable in speeds of above Mach 3. I know the boosters on the super packs for the VF-1 have quite a bit of thrust, but limited in fuel capacity. 

Yeah, the boosters in the VF-4 seem to be made for less power and more endurance. The system itself is largely the same, just smaller.

 

40 minutes ago, twich said:

I find it disappointing that so little information is available on the VF-4.

Twich

You and me both.

[sketchley]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The official top speed of the VF-1 is approximately Mach 3.87 at 30km.  Master File adds the aforementioned ramjet and scramjet capability which is not reflected in the official spec, and also indirectly acknowledges the reality that the speed of sound decreases as your altitude increases due to the diminishing density of the atmosphere.

 

 

Expanding on that a bit: at a certain point the top speed (in an atmosphere) is limited not by engine output, but aerodynamic shape and the melting point of the materials used in the airframe.  The most vivid example is in Macross Plus when Guld disengages the limiter, and his VF is literally melting around him because he's flying so fast.

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

 

Expanding on that a bit: at a certain point the top speed (in an atmosphere) is limited not by engine output, but aerodynamic shape and the melting point of the materials used in the airframe.  The most vivid example is in Macross Plus when Guld disengages the limiter, and his VF is literally melting around him because he's flying so fast.

Not to mention he's being turned into guacamole by the excessive g-forces (not a limit so much on the craft as it is the pilot).

[PsYcHoDyNaMiX]

Saw this on fb:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/MacrossFanCentral/posts/2068754156818667/

[Seto Kaiba]

That's from the extra features on the Absolute Live!!!!!! Blu-ray?

[Devil 505]

On 1/19/2024 at 2:44 AM, sketchley said:

 

Expanding on that a bit: at a certain point the top speed (in an atmosphere) is limited not by engine output, but aerodynamic shape and the melting point of the materials used in the airframe.  The most vivid example is in Macross Plus when Guld disengages the limiter, and his VF is literally melting around him because he's flying so fast.

Even then, the YF-21 and VF-22 is built for higher speeds, as seen with the variable-droop wings that presumably utilize compression lift, as seen with the XB-70 Valkyrie.

Edited January 23 by Devil 505