Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Nemus]

50 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Strictly speaking, they are pretty close.

Macross Chronicle's Mechanic Sheet for the VF-27γ Lucifer with Super Parts from Macross Frontier the Movie: the Wings of Farewell describes it as having demonstrated potential approaching that of the YF-29.  The movie's liner notes, and the light novel Macross the Ride, reveal that the VF-27 is based on the YF-29 in part using development data leaked to Macross Galaxy.

It is, however, true that Alto Saotome's YF-29 defeated Brera Sterne's VF-27γSP and its escorting Ghosts in a dogfight in that movie.  It was a victory won on skill and tactics, not simply raw specs.  Alto made exceptional use of the YF-29's unique features like its MDE beam turret and Super parts to take out the Ghosts.

One thing to remember in Macross, pilot skill matters at least as much as machine specs. 

 

Well, we have the VF-27 Lucifer... that's pretty high spec all things considered, and at least a limited mass production VF to boot.

 

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried mentions two: the YF-30B and YF-30B改. (YF-30B Custom)

Master File describes the YF-30B as being a second and more practical prototype that omitted the extraordinarily expensive Fold Dimensional Resonance system and FF-3001/FC2 engines because of their need for ultra-high purity fold quartz.  It's said that the YF-30B prototypes were loaned out to various private military contractors like SMS and its affiliates for evaluation.  Favorable impressions of the YF-30B led to plans to develop a mass production derivative of the YF-30B that, after much work, became the VF-31A Kairos.  It's also noted that the YF-30B apparently gave rise to the (false) impression that there was a mass production VF-30 in service.

The YF-30B改 is an improved YF-30B that was used in small numbers by General Galaxy's private military, the General Galaxy Corporate Forces (GGCF).

Were there also variations of the YF-29 made? If they were made, I don't want to imagine what monster came out

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Nemus said:

Were there also variations of the YF-29 made? If they were made, I don't want to imagine what monster came out

Yes.  Assuming you don't count various character-specific custom appearances, two specific variants of the YF-29 have appeared.

Master File divides things up somewhat differently and posits the existence of three distinct versions of the YF-29.

Official setting materials present two different YF-29s:

• YF-29[A] Durandal: the original YF-29 specification developed by the Macross Frontier fleet.
• YF-29B Perceval: a New UN Spacy VF-X Special Forces version of the YF-29 with improved equipment that appears only in Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy as an ace pilot machine for the 815th Independent Squadron "Havamal".

Macross Chronicle describes the YF-29B Perceval as a state-of-the-art aircraft that improves on the YF-29, but we're never actually told how.  Its only apparant difference is that it has a bayonet on its beam gunpod and its equipment is otherwise no different to that of the other YF-29s in Macross 30.

Macross 30's story also provides several character-specific versions of the YF-29 to certain characters.  These are all functionally identical to the base YF-29 specs-wise, but with different heads and paintjobs to reflect the identity of the pilot.  Alto Saotome gets the YF-29 he uses in the movie.  Isamu is given a YF-29 in the colors of his YF-19-2 from the Macross Plus OVA, and Ozma Lee is given a YF-29 in the colors of his VF-25S from Macross Frontier.  Max also gets one in blue for his guest spot in Absolute Live!!!!!!.

 

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus presents a different view of the YF-29 that groups all YF-29s into one of three designations based on their specs as a part of its attempt to explain 6th Generation VFs as a whole:

• YF-29A: the original YF-29 prototype flown by Alto Saotome in 2059.  A one-of-a-kind aircraft that cannot be replicated due to the ultra-high purity of the fold quartz obtained from Vajra queen forms that bestows unsurpassed performance even among YF-29s.
• YF-29B: all of the subsequently produced YF-29s that were built using fold quartz from Protoculture ruins or Vajra carcasses that is not as large or as pure as that used in the original YF-29.  Their performance is lower than that of the YF-29A as a result, but fold quartz of the required purity exists in sufficient quantity for small numbers of YF-29B's to be produced and put into actual military service.
• YF-29C: Earth's experimental effort to develop a mass production-ready YF-29.  Instead of fold quartz, which is a rare material that cannot be synthesized (yet), the YF-29C's design substitutes fold carbon of the highest possible purity as a synthetic alternative.  Despite the cutting edge fold carbon synthesis techniques used and the services of expert jewelers to handpick the finest pieces for use in the YF-29C, the YF-29C's Fold Wave System is only 1% as effective as the YF-29A's.  Several squadrons worth of the YF-29C have been produced and sent to test facilities on Earth's moon for evaluation.

This breakdown was partly used to explain Max's YF-29 in the Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! movie and partly to explain why 6th Generation VFs aren't really a thing yet... why we haven't see a VF-29 or a VF-30, and why fighters like the VF-31 Custom Siegfried from Macross Delta or the VF-31AX Kairos Plus from Absolute Live!!!!!! cannot be mass produced.  The Fold Wave Systems that give them their incredible performance cannot be produced without very large pieces of very high purity fold quartz.  Humanity can't synthesize fold quartz with its present technology and understanding, so they're limited by what they can dig up in Protoculture ruins or old Vajra nests.  Hunting the Vajra is illegal and suicidally stupid, so supplies of fold quartz in general are very limited and subject to strict export controls.  The size and purity of fold quartz needed to create a 6th Generation VF is almost unthinkably rare, so for the time being only a tiny number of VFs with Fold Wave Systems can be produced and most of them don't have the same power as the original YF-29 due to using smaller or lower quality pieces like on the Siegfried or Kairos Plus.

[TG Remix]

On 7/11/2024 at 5:04 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The YF-30B改 is an improved YF-30B that was used in small numbers by General Galaxy's private military, the General Galaxy Corporate Forces (GGCF).

I thought the YF-30 was planned and built sometime after the events of Frontier, unless its development also went as long as the VF-25 and YF-29. Although the GGCF makes me curious, would this be the Galaxy's fleet general local force, or is it seperate from the main military?

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

I thought the YF-30 was planned and built sometime after the events of Frontier, unless its development also went as long as the VF-25 and YF-29.

Official material for the YF-30 is somewhat sparse.  We don't know when precisely development kicked off, but Macross 30 itself does identify the YF-30 as another original VF that was independently developed based on the YF-24 Evolution specification.  So its development was at least partly in parallel to that of the VF-25, VF-27, and YF-29.  We also have, in its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet, a statement that its design was reworked pretty significantly in mid-development as operational priorities changed and we know in Macross Delta backstory materials discussed in Great Mechanics etc. and the game's dialog that the YF-30 also drew on technology developed for the YF/VF-25 and YF-29.

So we can reasonably assume development kicked off somewhere in the mid-to-late 2050s and was probably heavily revised somewhere around 2059.

 

29 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

Although the GGCF makes me curious, would this be the Galaxy's fleet general local force, or is it seperate from the main military?

No relation to the Macross Galaxy fleet at all, as it happens.

A note in the margins of that part of the VF-31 Master File explains that the General Galaxy Corporate Forces (GGCF) are a Private Military Company that spun off from the General Galaxy (mega)corporation's security division at some point after the Second Unification War (c.2051~).

Basically, General Galaxy did the same thing that Bilra Transport and Xaos did: they converted the internal security division that protected their ships and facilities into a PMC that operated as a subsidiary corporation.  That way, they could sell their security services to themselves but also turn that into a profit center by hiring more soldiers and renting them out to emigrant governments as a supplement to their local New UN Forces defense forces.  Bilra Transport did this when they spun off their security division as Strategic Military Services (SMS), and Xaos probably did it too when they founded their PMC Division.

It's rather interesting that General Galaxy's in-house PMC would take such an interest in a nominally Shinsei-developed VF like the YF-30B... I have not translated that section in full yet, but it's clear there's a story there (in the literal and figurative senses).

[Seto Kaiba]

Definitely wanna know what the story behind that Barbie Pink YF-30B is...

[Seto Kaiba]

Since I have a free moment after dinner, I decided to start digging into the story section of the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried book that mentions the YF-30B.

The Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia

Normally, these story sections are set after the events of whatever TV series or OVA introduced the design.  This tale's events occur a year before the events of Macross Delta's TV anime and first movie, and involve the first use of the newly completed VF-31 custom Siegfried in live combat.

In 2066, the Xaos branch on Ragna was still in the process of equipping and training the four flights of its 3rd Fighter Wing stationed aboard Macross Elysion.  Plans were underway to equip the first three flights with the trial production VF-31A Kairos and to outfit the fourth flight (Delta) with the Siegfried custom (what Master File calls the SYF-31).  Plans for a Flight consisting entirely of Siegfried customs were being held up considerably by the sheer difficulty of obtaining fold quartz of the required size and purity to manufacture its fold wave system and FF-3001/FC2 enignes.  With the Vajra having left known space, the only source available was Protoculture ruins.

The first two Siegfried custom airframes were delivered by Shinsei's factory on Eden, and delivered to Xaos that year.  Several pilots and support staff have been rotated there for training on the new fighter, including Cpt. Arad Molders, a 1st Lt. named Christian Christiansen, and a 2nd Lt. named Ella Kuroki.  The two Siegfried test airframes were loaded on the NUNS carrier CV-458 Vikrant (named for India's first aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant) for transfer to Ragna and meant to carry out simulated combat exercises along the way.

 

There's then an extended digression into the subject of the Brisingr globular cluster's development.  It's noted that the region was discovered in the 2020s and that many planets therein are suitable for Human life and emigration to those worlds began in an era before the central government had set down detailed rules regarding how to interact with less developed alien races.  Windermere is presented as an example, where the Kingdom of the Wind's royal family is described as having become a puppet government ruling under the control of the colonists and that this developed into an independence movement later on.

Many civilizations in the cluster were apparently at medieval (or earlier) levels of development at the time they were first discovered by emigrant fleets, and having irresponsible aliens from beyond the stars drop out of the sky and start taking over did not do great things for society.  Massive social upheaval caused by skipping centuries or millennia of social development in the transition directly from the Dung Ages to interstellar society created a lot of friction both between those civilizations and Humanity and between the civilizations that hadn't even known each other existed until that point.  This apparently drove a lot of demand for the New UN Forces and PMCs to intervene in conflicts which broke out between those planets.  Ragna is said to be a key hub in those worlds, and also a popular leisure destination thanks to its pleasant climate and beaches.  

 

(Romanizations get conjectural from here on out...)

 

The story itself starts when, shortly before the final leg of the trip to the Brisingr cluster, the Vikrant receives emergency orders from the New UN Forces and Xaos to rush to the planet Arkarelia in the Lanina system in order to evacuate the planet's royal family from the capital city of Kareliad.  Arkarelia is a world at a medieval level of development that prematurely entered the interstellar age when Humanity made contact with the natives, and is currently in a state of interstellar war with their neighbors the Roakites.  

The Roakites are described in unflattering terms as a greedy people who eagerly promoted cultural and technological advancement via contact with Humanity to enhance their own power and were savvy enough to understand the situation in the globular cluster and aim to avoid being exploited by the New UN Government.  Still smarting after the huge disaster that was the Windermere war of independence, the New UN Government apparently declined to intervene as the Roakite government transitioned into a military regime  through a coup and began undermining their neighbor Arkarelia's autonomy.  Worse, the Roakite government is being supported by interstellar arms corporations from who the Roakites are purchasing weapons through legal channels.  

Since an armed intervention was not an option, the New UN Forces opted to intervene stealthily and evacuate the Alkarelian royal family to prevent the Roakites from having them assassinated in order to place the Roakite king's half-Alkarelian son on the throne.

The Roakite's half-Alkarelian prince Simka covertly cooperated with the New UN Spacy's intelligence division to arrange a brief ceasefire and allow a rescue team to be sent in to extract the royal family.  The Roakite king agreed to a four hour ceasefire and an immediate evacuation by just two transport aircraft with escorting Marine and VF forces on the condition that they use PMC troops instead of New UN Forces ones.  

 

Some 20 hours later, the Vikrant defolded in the Lanina system and the rescue force immediately began operations at midnight on July 9th, 2066 (Galactic standard time).  Local time in Kareliad was 1400 (said to be approximately equivalent to 1pm on an Earth day).  As soon as the Roakite liaison was aboard, the Vikrant dispatched two transport aircraft and an escort of four VFs including the two VF-31 Siegfrieds and two VF-31A Kairos units and several VF-171s from the Roakite forces.  On their approach to the Arkarelian royal palace, the main Roakite forces (using Regults and old VF-14s) fired warning shots at them that destroyed buildings elsewhere in the city despite the liaison officer ordering their side to stand down and observe the ceasefire.  

On arriving in the palace itself, the rescue party discovered thousands of refugees inside the palace and a royal family that couldn't run away and leave the refugees behind.  After some debate, the King agreed that he himself cannot evacuate but agrees to have the rest of his family evacuated.  While the royals were loaded onto the transport, Cpt. Molders attempted to formally persuade the King to formally request a defense contract with Xaos to protect the native Alkarelians.  

Using his VF-31's fold wave communication system to send a report to Xaos HQ, he requested and received approval from headquarters to begin defense operations on Alkarelia.  30 minutes before the end of the ceasefire, Xaos forces mobilized under Arad's plan "Operation Gram".  (Named for the holy sword Gram.)

 

1st Lt. Christian Christiansen's VF-31F was tasked with escorting the transports out of the area, while Cpt. Molders's VF-31S and the two VF-31As remained behind to slip out past the VF-14s chasing the transport and VF-171s still encircling the palace and head for the edge of the city.  Using their data links and the advanced ARIEL III control AI, the three VF-31s were able to simultaneously shoot down all nine pursuing VF-171s with air-to-air missiles.  They then proceeded to strafe the ground forces with beam gunpod and railgun fire, and lure approaching enemy VF-171 and VF-14 units in closer by deliberately reducing the effectiveness of their active stealth systems before climbing and switching back to full power with support of an ECM container carried by one of the VF-31As.  With no countermeasures for the false radar information broadcast by the VF-31s, the VF-14s and VF-171s of the Roakite forces were quickly shot down.  Nearly twenty enemy aircraft were downed in the first few minutes of the engagement, though a significantly larger force is quickly mustered in an attempt to counter Delta Flight.

With three of Delta Flight's four members running delaying tactics against Roakite ground forces, Lt. Christiansen's VF-31F returned from orbit with reinforcements in tow.  In an "exact words" situation, the Vikrant had deployed a full squadron of unmanned VF-11L's under the remote control of an drone control container attacked to Christiansen's VF-31F.  The unmanned Valkyries technically did not break the terms of the cease fire since only four pilots were involved in the operation.  

Shortly thereafter, enemy reinforcements arrived in the combat area.  YF-30B改 Chronos units from the General Galaxy Corporate Forces.

 

There's another brief digression to talk about the YF-30B改.  The YF-30B改 is described as a prototype aircraft based on the YF-30 Chronos produced to evaluate the transformation system and container system, and which was eventually developed into the VF-31.  It's said to have been tested by various forces including the New UN Forces and various PMCs including GGCF.  General Galaxy apparently modified its YF-30Bs with its own proprietary avionics and control systems and they were believed to possess capabilities rivaling or exceeding the VF-31A.  

 

I'll get the rest in a bit, this is a LONG one.  

[pengbuzz]

Seto, I hate to pull you away from your discussion about the Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia (fascinating read, thus far!), but I have a question for you:

In SDFM, The VF-1 had been built to the size of the alien soldiers' height and with limited space performance (it seemed to depend heavily upon atmosphere to draw reactants). In DYRL, unless they were in atmosphere, they were almost always equipped with FAST Packs. My question is: how do you think the VF-1 would have been designed differently had the Unity Government of the era known the Zentraedi's overall stance on fighting wars?

I know SDFM and DRYL differ a bit, and from one source I read, they actually found some battle pods aboard the ASS-1 (?)*. If that's the case, shouldn't they have built the VF-1  a bit bigger?

 

*-cannot swear to this; I have a memory nowadays like an Etch-A-Sketch!!! O.o

[Master Dex]

37 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Seto, I hate to pull you away from your discussion about the Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia (fascinating read, thus far!), but I have a question for you:

In SDFM, The VF-1 had been built to the size of the alien soldiers' height and with limited space performance (it seemed to depend heavily upon atmosphere to draw reactants). In DYRL, unless they were in atmosphere, they were almost always equipped with FAST Packs. My question is: how do you think the VF-1 would have been designed differently had the Unity Government of the era known the Zentraedi's overall stance on fighting wars?

I know SDFM and DRYL differ a bit, and from one source I read, they actually found some battle pods aboard the ASS-1 (?)*. If that's the case, shouldn't they have built the VF-1  a bit bigger?

 

*-cannot swear to this; I have a memory nowadays like an Etch-A-Sketch!!! O.o

I'm sure Seto will have references to either confirm or refute this and I look forward to that (and the rest of the Master File story, those are always fun), but I have a guess as to the answer.

My guess is... the VF-4. Well not the exact design but that's essentially what the UN Spacy made with all their lessons learned in the war. Obviously our alternate VF-1 wouldn't be as advanced, but it would be more space faring, sized appropriately for fuel storage to do that, etc. Actually, although it's not 100% official, the VF-3000 is kind of a redesigned VF-1 to bring it up to snuff after the fact.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

In SDFM, The VF-1 had been built to the size of the alien soldiers' height and with limited space performance (it seemed to depend heavily upon atmosphere to draw reactants). In DYRL, unless they were in atmosphere, they were almost always equipped with FAST Packs. My question is: how do you think the VF-1 would have been designed differently had the Unity Government of the era known the Zentraedi's overall stance on fighting wars?

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

If that's the case, shouldn't they have built the VF-1  a bit bigger?

It's not reactants they're drawing in in atmospheric flight... the compact thermonuclear reactor's running entirely on internally-carried hydrogen either way.  It's that they don't have to carry supplemental propellant with them to generate thrust.  They can just pull in air and heat it up like a normal turbofan jet engine.

As to the main question... well... they might not have even bothered.

Had the Earth UN Government and Earth UN Forces had an accurate picture of what space warfare was actually like they probably would probably have decided to focus on large-scale static and mobile anti-fleet defenses rather than anything designed for infantry combat.  Grand Cannons, weapons satellites armed with high-powered beam weapons and batteries of thermonuclear reaction missiles, guided missile destroyers, etc.  Weapons designed to absolutely saturate near-Earth space with thermonuclear fire in order to wipe enemy fleets with overwhelming firepower.  

If they bothered with Valkyries at all, I suspect we'd see something more like the VF-X3 Medusa from the FamilySoft Macross games or a VF-25 with a permanent Armored Pack... something less like an aircraft and more like a heavily armored brick of a spacecraft built to carry the absolute maximum amount of "I want it dead yesterday" firepower.  Even a transformation would probably not be bothered with in favor of maximizing the ability to saturate the combat area with firepower and manufacture as many of them as possible.

If they were absolutely, doggedly determined to make a VF like the VF-1... probably something akin to the VF-0+ or VF-3000.  Just, the VF-1 but bigger.  The size constraints on the VF-1's battroid mode were what caused its limited internal fuel capacity for space flight.  

 

 

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I know SDFM and DRYL differ a bit, and from one source I read, they actually found some battle pods aboard the ASS-1 (?)*.

The source you are probably thinking of is Macross Chronicle (2nd Edition) Technology Sheet 01E "Variable Fighter", which says things like:

"Energy conversion armor is said to be a technology obtained from the combat pods left in the ASS-1, [...]"

[JB0]

53 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If they bothered with Valkyries at all, I suspect we'd see something more like the VF-X3 Medusa from the FamilySoft Macross games or a VF-25 with a permanent Armored Pack... something less like an aircraft and more like a heavily armored brick of a spacecraft built to carry the absolute maximum amount of "I want it dead yesterday" firepower.  Even a transformation would probably not be bothered with in favor of maximizing the ability to saturate the combat area with firepower and manufacture as many of them as possible.

The Gunstar, in short?

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I'm sure Seto will have references to either confirm or refute this and I look forward to that (and the rest of the Master File story, those are always fun), but I have a guess as to the answer.

My guess is... the VF-4. Well not the exact design but that's essentially what the UN Spacy made with all their lessons learned in the war. Obviously our alternate VF-1 wouldn't be as advanced, but it would be more space faring, sized appropriately for fuel storage to do that, etc. Actually, although it's not 100% official, the VF-3000 is kind of a redesigned VF-1 to bring it up to snuff after the fact.

While the VF-4 was undeniably a better space fighter than the VF-1, because its development started before the First Space War it was still fundamentally a product of the same incorrect assumptions that drove the VF-1's development.  It also shared a fair percentage of VF-1 parts because its development was completed postwar for use on emigrant ships so resource efficiency was prioritized.

 

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

The Gunstar, in short?

Kinda!  I'd assume something a bit more autonomous, though, instead of needing gunners.

[Seto Kaiba]

Oooooookay, back to The Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia...

When I left off, the King of Arkarelia had signed a defense contract with Xaos in the midst of the evacuation effort and Xaos's four Delta Flight VF-31s entered the fight on behalf of the Arkarelians against the Roakite invasion force occupying much of their capital city.  They'd downed about twenty enemy Valkyries of different types in the first few minutes and with the 1st Lt. Christiansen's return with a full squadron's worth of unmanned and remotely operated VF-11L Thunderbolts the tide had temporarily turned in Xaos's favor until they detected the approach of another PMC fighting on behalf of the Roakites.

 

The top of the page has a brief, quasi-related blurb about Arad's shiny new VF-31S.  Its paintjob is more subdued in this version with a low-viz grey and a blue fantail out from the skull motif.  It's noted that this unit was YF-31-6 as it existed in July 2066.  It's also noted that the coloring is not a true paintjob, but a projection using the camouflage film that's applied to the exterior of the aircraft, which is able to dynamically change colors and even markings (as seen in the series).  The low viz colors depicted were apparently the ones used for training flights.

 

The section marked Siegfried's Battle is where sh*t finally starts to go off.

Delta Flight were surprised to see some of the few existing YF-30B改 units deployed in such a remote region of space.  The advantage Delta Flight had enjoyed up to that point in bullying the Roakites old 3rd Generation VF-14s and handful of 4th Generation VF-171s evaporated with the arrival of four 5th Generation YF-30B改 Chronoses.  If their tuning had achieved the same performance as the 5.5th Generation VF-31S Siegfried, then the situation would immediately turn against Xaos's handful of troops even with a full 20 remotely operated VF-11L's supporting them.

Arad ordered Delta 2, 3, and 4 to continue sorting out the numerically superior but technologically inferior Roakite force in the air while he led the mercenary unit operating the YF-30B改's away from the city.

With the GGCF YF-30B改's in hot pursuit, Arad deployed one of his fighter's Cygnus multidrone plates directly into the flight path of the nearest pursuing YF-30B改 with its pinpoint barrier enabled.  The YF-30B's pilot was unable to evade in time and the drone's barrier slammed into and sheared off his right wing.  Arad was able to capitalize on the chaos and bring the now out-of-control YF-30B改 down with a burst of fire from his beam gunpod before diving towards the approaching enemy force.  

 

There's another brief digression here that talks about the VF-31's active stealth measures.  It talks briefly about the ubiquity of active stealth technology being the reason that so many engagements take place at visual ranges, and that older aircraft are naturally at a disadvantage in such fights because newer and more advanced active stealth measures continually improve at deceiving enemy radar and optical target recognition systems.  The VF-31 comes into this discussion specifically via the optical film on its hull that's able to freely change the aircraft's markings and coloration.  It's incapable of going full Ghost in the Shell optic camo, but it can change rapidly enough to blur the aircraft's outline enough that it can briefly delay target acquisition by a few tenths of a second, which can be the difference between taking a hit and successful evasion in a fight.

 

Cpt. Molders's VF-31S went into the dogfight with the advantage of its FF-3001/FC2 engines, significantly more powerful than the FF-3001A engines used by the VF-25 and VF-31A, and able to further increase their output by tapping into the fold wave system.  Arad's plan was to essentially trick the enemy YF-30B's into attempting to match the VF-31S in terms of acceleration and turning performance, where he had a decisive advantage.  Banking sharply to match their speed and changing to GERWALK mid-roll, Arad was able to land a direct hit on the cockpit of a second YF-30B改 with his beam gunpod, killing the pilot and taking the second of four aircraft out of the fight.  Changing back to fighter and finishing the roll, he then applied maximum overboost, trusting the VF-31S's structural reinforcement to allow the otherwise perilous high-airspeed transformation.  Because the airframe is specially strengthened to withstand the Fold Wave System and FF-3001/FC2 engines, it's able to transform and attack in 360 degrees at much higher airspeeds than usual.  This type of acrobatic attack is a mainstay of VF combat against Zentradi pods, but normally at far lower speeds.

Having maxed the capacity of his ISC system with that maneuver, Arad was forced to fight conservatively and rely on getting in close to the two remaining enemy aircraft in order to bleed off the accumulated g-forces and prepare for a counterattack.  With enough ISC capacity restored, Arad then dived directly into the city, barely above the ground before changing to GERWALK mode, forcing the enemy YF-30B改's to pursue.  While flying barely above the city streets and dodging Roakite ground forces, Arad turned 180 degrees to fly backwards and unleashed a warning shot at the two pursuing YF-30B's.  Constrained by the streets, the warning shot ended up being a direct hit on one of the two remaining GGCF fighters, sneding it crashing into a building.  Built-in safety measures in the YF-30B's airframe control AI activated and dumped all energy in its capacitors into its energy conversion armor, preventing major damage to the aircraft while the ISC protected the life of the pilot from the intense g-forces of the crash.  However, the building then collapsed on top of the crashed YF-30B, immobilizing it and allowing a snap shot from Arad to further disable it.  

Having reduced the fight from 4 on 1 to 1 on 1, Arad launched vertically in Fighter mode with the remaining YF-30B in hot pursuit and threaded the needle through an enemy rear guard unit at 500m.  The YF-30B, already slow to pursue, misjudged the timing and was late to turn.  This hesitation allowed Arad to clear the enemy rearguard unit, reverse under maximum g-load, and launch a combined missile and beam gunpod attack on the remaining YF-30B... reducing it to a blazing wreck that plummeted to the ground.

The Alkarelia defense forces, watching this outrageous engagement, raised a mighty cheer as the last YF-30B went down.  Meanwhile, the Roakite air forces had been picked apart by 1st Lt. Christiansen's Siegfried, the two Kairos units, and the VF-11 drone unit.  This devastating reversal and the loss of a significant part of their air power saw the Roakite army initiate a retreat.  

 

Thanks to Operation Gram and the intervention of Xaos in the politically difficult situation the NUNS had been prevented from intervening in, Alkarelia was able to repel the Roakite invasion and regain its sovereignty.  The hostile political situation between the two worlds remained unchanged, but no party objected to Alkarelia voluntarily paying a PMC to help assist its defense forces.  One month later, Xaos was formally contracted to provide a garrison force to assist in defense of the planet.

Alkarelia's King Ragrand provided Xaos with fold quartz as part of the remuneration for their emergency aid and the price of their defense contract.  It's hypothesized that Lady M may have intervened and offered a special contract price in exchange for the fold quartz.  This new supply of fold quartz was, according to the text, probably used to complete the remaining VF-31 Siegfried units for Delta Flight.  Cpt. Arad Molders and the other three Xaos pilots who participated in the defensive battle were also knighted by the Alkarelian royal family and Arad also received a promotion to Major for his valor in combat.

An armistice would eventually be agreed between the Alkarelians and Roakites when the Roakite Prince Simka, who helped arrange the initial cease fire, deposed his father and negotiated peaceful relations between the two worlds.  The Roakite military government was dissolved and the planet made a peaceful transition to industrial development.

 

It ends with one more digression, noting that the Alkarelians were disappointed to learn that Maj. Molders was not going to be stationed on their planet.  Instead, he was to return to Ragna and continue preparing the 3rd Fighter Wing's Delta Flight for joint operations with Tactical Sound Unit Walkure.  It's said that when they visited Alkarelia again, the Delta Flight airshow drew louder cheers than Walkure's performance.

[Seto Kaiba]

I was also looking at the VF-31AX Master File's story section, The Miracle of Foegal.

It's set in March 2068, and might be the oddest one yet as it's the story of the New UN Forces and Xaos collaborating to defend an uninhabited star system that the New UN Government had designated an ecological preserve from a Zentradi main fleet whose scouting force was able to escape from a run-in with the New UN Forces.

Perhaps the most interesting part is the Foegal system itself... an artificial solar system the ancient Protoculture constructed around a white dwarf star.  Foegal is orbited by seven planets, five of which are Earthlike, and most of which are believed to have been moved there from other star systems by the Protoculture. 

Even weirder, only one of Foegal's five habitable planets is in the habitable zone.  The other four are farther away from the star, but are kept habitable by a Protoculture construct in orbit of the white dwarf that uses gravitational lensing to focus the star's energy onto the planets like a giant magnifying lens to ensure they get enough solar radiation to remain in Earthlike condition.

[aurance]

Interesting story.

I thought the multidrones primarily provided civilian defense. Were they also intended for aerial combat between fighters, or was that some sort of improvised “off-label” use by Arad?

[pengbuzz]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's not reactants they're drawing in in atmospheric flight... the compact thermonuclear reactor's running entirely on internally-carried hydrogen either way.  It's that they don't have to carry supplemental propellant with them to generate thrust.  They can just pull in air and heat it up like a normal turbofan jet engine.

As to the main question... well... they might not have even bothered.

Had the Earth UN Government and Earth UN Forces had an accurate picture of what space warfare was actually like they probably would probably have decided to focus on large-scale static and mobile anti-fleet defenses rather than anything designed for infantry combat.  Grand Cannons, weapons satellites armed with high-powered beam weapons and batteries of thermonuclear reaction missiles, guided missile destroyers, etc.  Weapons designed to absolutely saturate near-Earth space with thermonuclear fire in order to wipe enemy fleets with overwhelming firepower.  

If they bothered with Valkyries at all, I suspect we'd see something more like the VF-X3 Medusa from the FamilySoft Macross games or a VF-25 with a permanent Armored Pack... something less like an aircraft and more like a heavily armored brick of a spacecraft built to carry the absolute maximum amount of "I want it dead yesterday" firepower.  Even a transformation would probably not be bothered with in favor of maximizing the ability to saturate the combat area with firepower and manufacture as many of them as possible.

If they were absolutely, doggedly determined to make a VF like the VF-1... probably something akin to the VF-0+ or VF-3000.  Just, the VF-1 but bigger.  The size constraints on the VF-1's battroid mode were what caused its limited internal fuel capacity for space flight.  

 

 

The source you are probably thinking of is Macross Chronicle (2nd Edition) Technology Sheet 01E "Variable Fighter", which says things like:

"Energy conversion armor is said to be a technology obtained from the combat pods left in the ASS-1, [...]"

Thanks Seto (and everyone else); I knew I probably had some stuff garbled in my understanding, which is why I ask.

So basically then: had they prepared with the correct picture of what space combat would have been like, Space War 1 might have gone a bit differently? Would it have been possible for Earth to have made enough defenses to successfully repel Boldoza's fleet?

Edited July 15 by pengbuzz

[sketchley]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Would it have been possible for Earth to have made enough defenses to successfully repel Boldoza's fleet?

That's the million dollar question.

From what we know, the Unified Forces were far, far behind on producing what they believed they needed to protect the Earth (such as the Grand Cannons, Destroids, Valkyries, etc.)  Even if they knew how to properly conduct an anti-main fleet war, it's doubtful that the Earth would have had all the armaments ready by the time Boldoza's fleet showed up (in the TV series timeline).

 

Now, if the Earth was a lot more proactive, headed out into the galaxy a bunch of years before the Zentradi show up, and were somehow able to hijack a bunch of Factory Satellites... there's a chance they would have made enough.

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, aurance said:

I thought the multidrones primarily provided civilian defense. Were they also intended for aerial combat between fighters, or was that some sort of improvised “off-label” use by Arad?

Yeah, the Cygnus multidrone plates aren't meant for air-to-air use according to the material we have.

This seems to be an improvised use case inspired by the VF-31 Siegfried carrying less weaponry than the normal VF-31 because of having to carry Walkure's support gear.

(The multidrone plates are said to be slower than drones meant for air-to-air combat, so presumably they wouldn't be able to actually keep up with the fighters at combat speed.)

 

 

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

So basically then: had they prepared with the correct picture of what space combat would have been like, Space War 1 might have gone a bit differently? Would it have been possible for Earth to have made enough defenses to successfully repel Boldoza's fleet?

As sketchley noted, in the original Macross series and DYRL? the Earth UN Gov't and Earth UN Forces were well behind the point they wanted to be at in terms of defense readiness when the First Space War started.  The scope of their defense plan was immense, and the Unification Wars surely did not help matters with the Anti-Unification Alliance forcing the UN Forces to divert resources to deal with them and doing things like blowing up Grand Cannon construction sites.  Even if everything had gone perfectly, they still would not have been anywhere near ready for the Zentradi with just eight years of preptime.

I doubt anything would be sufficient for them to be ready to repel a main fleet with just eight yeras of preptime... not even having a perfect understanding of the Zentradi forces tactics.

[pengbuzz]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As sketchley noted, in the original Macross series and DYRL? the Earth UN Gov't and Earth UN Forces were well behind the point they wanted to be at in terms of defense readiness when the First Space War started.  The scope of their defense plan was immense, and the Unification Wars surely did not help matters with the Anti-Unification Alliance forcing the UN Forces to divert resources to deal with them and doing things like blowing up Grand Cannon construction sites.  Even if everything had gone perfectly, they still would not have been anywhere near ready for the Zentradi with just eight years of preptime.

I doubt anything would be sufficient for them to be ready to repel a main fleet with just eight yeras of preptime... not even having a perfect understanding of the Zentradi forces tactics.

The only thing I can think of then is if they had understood fold technology enough to devise a way to scatter the defold signature of the ASS-1 near earth, so they Zentraedi wouldn't have had a marker leading right to their front door step.

(Don't mind me; I like trying to see how things would play out differently. It's a hobby, what can I say?)

[Seto Kaiba]

30 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

The only thing I can think of then is if they had understood fold technology enough to devise a way to scatter the defold signature of the ASS-1 near earth, so they Zentraedi wouldn't have had a marker leading right to their front door step.

TBH, I'm not sure that'd even be physically possible.  What the Vrlitwhai branch fleet detected that led them to the Sol system were the gravity waves produced by the ASS-1's fold jump eminating from its defold point.  Those radiate outward in every direction at the speed of light.  Without knowing where the Zentradi fleet would appear in advance, it'd likely be nearly impossible to mask that.

[pengbuzz]

45 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

TBH, I'm not sure that'd even be physically possible.  What the Vrlitwhai branch fleet detected that led them to the Sol system were the gravity waves produced by the ASS-1's fold jump eminating from its defold point.  Those radiate outward in every direction at the speed of light.  Without knowing where the Zentradi fleet would appear in advance, it'd likely be nearly impossible to mask that.

Good point. Although if someone wanted to stop them dead in their tracks in the modern Macross era, I wonder if fold faults would work?

After that, all I can suggest is everyone on earth arming themselves with rubber bands and firing them at the sky. O.o

Edited July 15 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Good point. Although if someone wanted to stop them dead in their tracks in the modern Macross era, I wonder if fold faults would work?

Well, if they can't get to you they can't very well attack you right?

Assuming one had the means to create and maintain artificial fold faults large enough to isolate a planet and intense enough to be non-navigable with a conventional fold system, that'd be a pretty dandy way to prevent attacks.

The ancient Protoculture seem to have had the means to create artificial fold faults like that, given the unnatural fold faults surrounding planets like Uroboros and Windermere IV that were strong enough to disable or seriously damage ships attempting to traverse them and large enough to effectively isolate those planets from the greater galaxy.

It's probably still a bit outside Humanity's capabilities, though.  Their expertise with warping spacetime into an impassible mess are mostly focused on small-scale applications in realspace (barriers).

 

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

After that, all I can suggest is everyone on earth arming themselves with rubber bands and firing them at the sky. O.o

To have any hope of matching a main fleet man for man, they'd have to mobilize everyone on the planet anyway...

[TG Remix]

On 7/13/2024 at 8:43 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Since I have a free moment after dinner, I decided to start digging into the story section of the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31 Siegfried book that mentions the YF-30B.

The Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia

Pretty interesting story, especially with Arad as the main character. It's an amazing notion that the Master File pushes, more Protoculture remnants than what there were in the Brisingr Globular Cluster and the worst case scenario of interstellar travelers pushing their weight around in less developed civilizations. Judging from what happens here and in Delta I'm starting to think that Zola was the lucky one in terms of New UN contact!

 

The VF-31's early usage sort of confuses me though, I was under the impression that it was a pretty recent addition to Xaos, more akin to SMS field-testing the VF-25 for the NUNS as they only received the prototype a year prior in Macross: The Ride.

 

On 7/13/2024 at 8:43 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

The Roakites are described in unflattering terms as a greedy people who eagerly promoted cultural and technological advancement via contact with Humanity to enhance their own power and were savvy enough to understand the situation in the globular cluster and aim to avoid being exploited by the New UN Government. 

So I'm not the only one whose mind went to the Ferengi, right?

 

On 7/13/2024 at 8:43 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

the main Roakite forces (using Regults and old VF-14s)

I love the combination and it's a shame that they're in their mandated cannon fodder role lol. Though with the use of the battlepods I'm assuming that they either were natural giants or had access to miclonization technology like the Zolans?

 

On 7/14/2024 at 8:26 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

It's set in March 2068, and might be the oddest one yet as it's the story of the New UN Forces and Xaos collaborating to defend an uninhabited star system that the New UN Government had designated an ecological preserve from a Zentradi main fleet whose scouting force was able to escape from a run-in with the New UN Forces.

Kinda wondering why the Zentradi would be interested in the star system, unless it was a situation like the Resort Ship where the capture and further investigation of it would give their positions away to the Main Fleet.

 

On 7/14/2024 at 8:26 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Perhaps the most interesting part is the Foegal system itself... an artificial solar system the ancient Protoculture constructed around a white dwarf star.  Foegal is orbited by seven planets, five of which are Earthlike, and most of which are believed to have been moved there from other star systems by the Protoculture. 

Considering how the Protoculture essentially made the bodies for the physics-defying Protodevlin, I'm not too surprised that they managed to just, move entire planets around from orbit. Wonder why they'd make an artificial solar system to begin with, that's a fascinating story on its own

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

Pretty interesting story, especially with Arad as the main character. It's an amazing notion that the Master File pushes, more Protoculture remnants than what there were in the Brisingr Globular Cluster and the worst case scenario of interstellar travelers pushing their weight around in less developed civilizations. Judging from what happens here and in Delta I'm starting to think that Zola was the lucky one in terms of New UN contact!

Macross Delta did establish that the New UN Gov't and other researchers think the Brisingr cluster was probably the last enclave of Protoculture before the species slipped into extinction, with a seemingly higher density of Earthlike worlds and sub-Protoculture species than other parts of the galaxy.  

We did see another sub-Protoculture species that isn't named in Macross Frontier: the Labyrinth of Time too... though it's not clear where in the galaxy their world is.

Zola does seem to have been lucky in that regard.  It probably helped that Zola's environment is not exactly suitable for Humans despite being Earthlike.  The influence of Galactic Whales on the local ecosystem made the planet's microorganisms much more dangerous to Humans than usual.  Depending on how you want to read it, descriptions of the state of Zola itself suggest it was possibly more culturally and technologically advanced than the worlds of the Brisingr cluster when first contact was made.  Their tech level is around the first half of Earth's 20th century despite a low level of urbanization.  If they were already in their industrial age when Humanity made contact, it would probably have been a lot less of a cultural upheaval... esp. since their culture places great significance on the Galactic Whales and thus presumably had some inkling of the idea of life in space for many years before Humanity found them.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

The VF-31's early usage sort of confuses me though, I was under the impression that it was a pretty recent addition to Xaos, more akin to SMS field-testing the VF-25 for the NUNS as they only received the prototype a year prior in Macross: The Ride.

It was, and still is.

The Macross Delta TV series showed us, via flashback, that the trial production VF-31A Kairos was first used in combat by Xaos in 2065 (I think it was Ep21?).  Master File's story depicts the first use of Xaos's custom VF-31 "Siegfried" a year later in 2066, with only two of the eventual five aircraft in service.  The VF-31's only been in service with Xaos for a year and a half or so when Macross Delta's TV series starts in April 2067.  Per Kawamori (in Great Mechanics G), his concept is that the production VF-31 Kairos will be entering military service c.2069-2070.  Xaos is basically doing the same job that SMS did, testing the new fighter in combat as disposable mooks whose deaths are legally accidents not combat fatalities to iron out any remaining kinks before it goes into mass production for the New UN Forces.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

So I'm not the only one whose mind went to the Ferengi, right?

Honestly, this lot sounds more like the Cardassians to me... particularly given that their invasion of Arkarelia was all about resources to fuel their economic growth and that they have a militarized government with strong expansionist leanings.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

I love the combination and it's a shame that they're in their mandated cannon fodder role lol. Though with the use of the battlepods I'm assuming that they either were natural giants or had access to miclonization technology like the Zolans?

It's not mentioned, but it's possible... and some of them were doubtless mercenaries in the employ of the Roakites like the four YF-30B pilots were.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

Kinda wondering why the Zentradi would be interested in the star system, unless it was a situation like the Resort Ship where the capture and further investigation of it would give their positions away to the Main Fleet.

I'm sure I'll find more detail when I have time to delve into it... but the basic description suggests they were just scouting the area looking for the Supervision Army and ran into the New UN Forces instead.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

Considering how the Protoculture essentially made the bodies for the physics-defying Protodevlin, I'm not too surprised that they managed to just, move entire planets around from orbit. Wonder why they'd make an artificial solar system to begin with, that's a fascinating story on its own

Yeah, I'm hoping there's some explanation there.

[Bolt]

On 7/14/2024 at 5:26 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I was also looking at the VF-31AX Master File's story section, The Miracle of Foegal.

It's set in March 2068, and might be the oddest one yet as it's the story of the New UN Forces and Xaos collaborating to defend an uninhabited star system that the New UN Government had designated an ecological preserve from a Zentradi main fleet whose scouting force was able to escape from a run-in with the New UN Forces.

Perhaps the most interesting part is the Foegal system itself... an artificial solar system the ancient Protoculture constructed around a white dwarf star.  Foegal is orbited by seven planets, five of which are Earthlike, and most of which are believed to have been moved there from other star systems by the Protoculture. 

Even weirder, only one of Foegal's five habitable planets is in the habitable zone.  The other four are farther away from the star, but are kept habitable by a Protoculture construct in orbit of the white dwarf that uses gravitational lensing to focus the star's energy onto the planets like a giant magnifying lens to ensure they get enough solar radiation to remain in Earthlike condition.

That is truly an odd ball story. It's quite fascinating to consider the how's and why's of that one..

[pengbuzz]

On 7/15/2024 at 7:30 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, if they can't get to you they can't very well attack you right?

Assuming one had the means to create and maintain artificial fold faults large enough to isolate a planet and intense enough to be non-navigable with a conventional fold system, that'd be a pretty dandy way to prevent attacks.

The ancient Protoculture seem to have had the means to create artificial fold faults like that, given the unnatural fold faults surrounding planets like Uroboros and Windermere IV that were strong enough to disable or seriously damage ships attempting to traverse them and large enough to effectively isolate those planets from the greater galaxy.

It's probably still a bit outside Humanity's capabilities, though.  Their expertise with warping spacetime into an impassible mess are mostly focused on small-scale applications in realspace (barriers).

That makes me wonder then what finally did in the remnants of the Protoculture, if the fold faults could keep out external attackers (unless the Protodevlin had a way to defeat that)?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

That makes me wonder then what finally did in the remnants of the Protoculture, if the fold faults could keep out external attackers (unless the Protodevlin had a way to defeat that)?

We have no way of knowing when the ancient Protoculture developed the technology to create artificial fold faults on that scale.

Considering how few worlds Humanity has encountered that have that kind of protection, it seems likely to me that it was something they developed somewhere after the sealing of the Protodeviln in PC 2873 and used sparingly to protect worlds that contained critical or unfathomably dangerous tech.  (The two planets we know of that have the protection of a seemingly or explicitly artificial fold fault are Uroboros and Windermere IV, the places where the Protoculture sealed their hideously dangerous temporal weapon and the ship that was the key to the Star Shrine and Delta Wave System respectively.  How cynical you want to be about the Windermereans coincidentally enjoying the protection of that fault would be another matter... did the Protoculture truly want to protect them, or were they just self-replicating components to drive the Delta Wave System?)

 

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We have no way of knowing when the ancient Protoculture developed the technology to create artificial fold faults on that scale.

Considering how few worlds Humanity has encountered that have that kind of protection, it seems likely to me that it was something they developed somewhere after the sealing of the Protodeviln in PC 2873 and used sparingly to protect worlds that contained critical or unfathomably dangerous tech.  (The two planets we know of that have the protection of a seemingly or explicitly artificial fold fault are Uroboros and Windermere IV, the places where the Protoculture sealed their hideously dangerous temporal weapon and the ship that was the key to the Star Shrine and Delta Wave System respectively.  How cynical you want to be about the Windermereans coincidentally enjoying the protection of that fault would be another matter... did the Protoculture truly want to protect them, or were they just self-replicating components to drive the Delta Wave System?)

 

Yeah...I was just wondering aloud about what did them in.

[Seto Kaiba]

46 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah...I was just wondering aloud about what did them in.

Exactly why they went extinct isn't specified.

It definitely wasn't the Protodeviln, as they were sealed in PC 2873 and the Protoculture were still hanging on over 22,000 years later in PC 25000.

The official timeline mentions that the network linking the various Protoculture colonies collapsed shortly after the Protodeviln were sealed, and that by PC 5000 what remained of their civilization was small groups of colonized planets, space colonies, and emigrant fleets out on the edge of the galaxy.  My read of that is that a lot of the Protoculture who had survived the Protodeviln's short-lived rampage across the galaxy were subsequently caught up in the out-of-control fighting between the Zentradi and Supervision Army and wiped out.  The ones who were left spent the next 20,000 years trying to stay off either side's radar, and either were wiped out when the war eventually found them or simply decided not to bring kids into their post-apocalypse or became too spread-out and too few to maintain a viable population.

(Macross II's creators imply the Mardook are the descendants of one of the groups of DYRL? Protoculture who fled their civilization's collapse to try and start over elsewhere, and ultimately ended up living as space nomads desperate to preserve their culture.  They seem to have been a bit luckier than most, given that they're still around over 500,000 years later and heavily armed to boot.)

[Seto Kaiba]

Have you ever heard the saying "Idle hands are the devil's playground?"

Well, the devil needs a better imagination because I was idle due to a nasty migraine so I spent the afternoon poking at translations inbetween bouts of medicated torpor.  What I found was that the concept behind the VF-0 might actually go back to 1984.

Masahiro Chiba's Macross Journal Extra: VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition doujinshi that is the forefather of the Master File books describes a very odd experimental aircraft from the VF-1's development phase called the VFX-FP-1... a modified Grumman F-14 that was used to evaluate Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu's X-021 design for Humanity's first VF.  They were retrofitted with OTM materials, verniers, and the initial-type FF-1999 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine designed for the QF-3000 Ghost and used for the program's early data collection in atmosphere in late 2006 and in space in early 2007.  It's said that all four aircraft were lost in testing accidents (including the deaths of two pilots.  A "junk jet" made from spare F-14 parts was kitbashed with a transformation system in January 2007 to test the transformation.  It's said that this "junk jet" had crashed more than 300 times by March 2008, and that the test footage after the fact is difficult to watch without crying (from laughter).  The GERWALK mode was apparently an accidental discovery by this "junk jet" in this oldest version of the lore.

That F-14 retrofitted with OTM and a transformation system sounds a lot like a general description of the VF-0... and Master File basically supports that idea, with its lineage also including a transformable F-14-based mockup that it calls the F-14X Phase 1.43 that was an intermediate prototype in the construction of the VF-0.

[twich]

I hope that with the World Wide Macross thing, that some of these lore and statistic books will be translated to English(and/or other languages) for people who do not speak Japanese, but are fascinated with the minutia of these statistics and facts for the lore behind Macross and Variable Fighters!

Twich

[snakerbot]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The GERWALK mode was apparently an accidental discovery by this "junk jet" in this oldest version of the lore.

I remember reading somewhere when I was first getting into Macross back in the mid 2000s about GERWALK being an accident.

[cheemingwan1234]

16 hours ago, snakerbot said:

I remember reading somewhere when I was first getting into Macross back in the mid 2000s about GERWALK being an accident.

Must be a 'happy little accident' to quote Bob Ross.

[Seto Kaiba]

23 hours ago, twich said:

I hope that with the World Wide Macross thing, that some of these lore and statistic books will be translated to English(and/or other languages) for people who do not speak Japanese, but are fascinated with the minutia of these statistics and facts for the lore behind Macross and Variable Fighters!

It'd be nice, for sure.  It'd save me a lot of effort too.  For a pro translator, each of those Master File books would be a $26,000 full-time-for-a-calendar-quarter undertaking.  My one saving grace is that my workload is finally starting to return to pre-pandemic levels, so I can do more with them now.)

That said, I'm not holding my breath for it.  Bandai Namco's Gundam franchise is already well-established internationally and I don't believe they've released any of their equivalent technical books (e.g. Master Archive Mobile Suit) outside of Japan and maybe China.

 

[pengbuzz]

On 7/21/2024 at 12:22 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Have you ever heard the saying "Idle hands are the devil's playground?"

Well, the devil needs a better imagination because I was idle due to a nasty migraine so I spent the afternoon poking at translations inbetween bouts of medicated torpor.  What I found was that the concept behind the VF-0 might actually go back to 1984.

Masahiro Chiba's Macross Journal Extra: VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition doujinshi that is the forefather of the Master File books describes a very odd experimental aircraft from the VF-1's development phase called the VFX-FP-1... a modified Grumman F-14 that was used to evaluate Stonewell, Bellcom, and Shinnakasu's X-021 design for Humanity's first VF.  They were retrofitted with OTM materials, verniers, and the initial-type FF-1999 thermonuclear reaction turbine engine designed for the QF-3000 Ghost and used for the program's early data collection in atmosphere in late 2006 and in space in early 2007.  It's said that all four aircraft were lost in testing accidents (including the deaths of two pilots.  A "junk jet" made from spare F-14 parts was kitbashed with a transformation system in January 2007 to test the transformation.  It's said that this "junk jet" had crashed more than 300 times by March 2008, and that the test footage after the fact is difficult to watch without crying (from laughter).  The GERWALK mode was apparently an accidental discovery by this "junk jet" in this oldest version of the lore.

That F-14 retrofitted with OTM and a transformation system sounds a lot like a general description of the VF-0... and Master File basically supports that idea, with its lineage also including a transformable F-14-based mockup that it calls the F-14X Phase 1.43 that was an intermediate prototype in the construction of the VF-0.

Sounds a lot like the YVF-14 "Tigercat" from RT; HG/ Macek probably swiped it or something.

Edited July 27 by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

18 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Sounds a lot like the YVF-14 "Tigercat" from RT; HG/ Macek probably swiped it or something.

It does a bit... though I'd assume it's entirely coincidental.

I doubt anyone working on Robotech was even aware that the Sky Angels doujinshi existed, never mind actually having a copy.