Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I would imagine that they could develop something were the the need to do so.

Perhaps... though I see two potential problems with it:

1. Scaling a warhead like that down will result in a considerable loss of power.  The GU-11A's 55mm bullet is a bit less than 1/8th the size of the Javelin's tandem shaped charge warhead.
2. The armor technology that the Javelin's tandem warhead was designed to defeat - explosive reactive armor - isn't used by the Zentradi and hasn't been used on a VF or other advanced weapon since the Unification Wars.  (The only known OTM weapon to use it was the VF-0's Armored Pack.)

 

Just now, TG Remix said:

Now I'm wondering what was the references for the SVMF-42 Blue Phoenix VF-4s, until Frontier's 33rd Marine Battalion there wasn't really any indicator of the Marine branch of the NUNS. I thought the same thing about the VF-2 Sonic Birds squadron for the VF-1, but that was understandably connected to the CVN-101 Prometheus before the plot literally connected it to the Macross.

Macross Frontier may have been the first onscreen mention of the Spacy's Marine Corps, but mentions of them in official publications go back to the 90's in publications released for Macross Plus and mentions of VFs being intended for all branches of service with aviation arms go back even farther to '84.  

The VF-1 is said to have been developed to meet the needs of the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Forces.  

I'm not sure what the Sonicbirds or Blue Phoenixes are in reference to.  I'd have to do some research (I'll get there eventually).  A lot of the early VF squadrons mentioned in older publications are named for (or in some cases implied to be direct continuations of) real world fighter squadrons.  They get progressively less so the farther down the timeline you go.

 

Just now, TG Remix said:

Around 776 meters long and can accommodate up to 4500 people, I'd imagine so. It seemed more like a cruise ship then just a something of an airliner like Plus more or less painted it as.

Yeah, its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet even describes it as a luxury cruise ship (豪華客船 Gouka kyakusen) in the sheet's title:

"A luxury space cruise ship for tourists that connects resort planets with Earth."

The inclusion of airline-like seating arrangements seems odd when you consider the ship is said to be able to sail continuously for 30-60 days, that the trip supposedly takes 3-4 days, and that the ship includes restaurants and a shopping mall.  The area from the bow to the mast and antenna section is said to be made up of passenger rooms and living spaces.  

4,500 people is a comically small number for such a big ship in airline-like seating.  The Stellar Whale's passenger section is something like 500m long and is 148m wide at the widest point.  A Boeing 787-10 has a cabin about 50m x 6m and holds about 300 people in mixed seating.  If you put 16 787-10 cabins side-by-side across the waist of the ship (50m x 96m) you'd have over 25m to spare on either side at the ship's widest point, and a seating capacity of 4,800, and be using about 1/10th the total length of the ship on a single deck.  

The only way I can think of that the Stellar Whale makes sense is if its interior is set up with mixed accommodations like a long-distance train.  Regular commuter seating for the folks taking only a short leg of the trip, and sleeper cabins for people on longer trips.  Then the size of the ship makes sense.  

(The largest conventional cruise ship currently in service is the Icon-class, which is about 1/2 the length and 1/3 the width of the Stellar Whale and has 2,805 passenger cabins, over 80% of which can accommodate 3+ people.)

 

Just now, TG Remix said:

On more unknowns of the UN sphere, I know I asked about how Apollo Base and the lunar colony would be like in Macross, and from what I remember there's more colonized moons like Ganymede. Though what got my attention was the other settlements in the rest of the solar system. Miho Miho was said to have been born on a satellite city named "White Flora" that was in Jupiter's orbit, and it seems that Neptune and Venus has their own as well. I'm assuming we don't know much of them as well, but I was imagining something like the City-class ships as a frame of reference, unless they were something more typically designed like O'Neil Cylinders and the like.

We've never seen a "Satellite City", so it's hard to say.  Artificial gravity is a thing, so they could be building Star Trek-style space stations in orbit of these planets.  My personal mental image, apropos of nothing in particular, is something akin to a Sunny Flower-class environment ship or a group of same in orbit of a planet. 

https://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/sunnyflower.htm

We know O'Neill cylinders are also a thing in Macross, with some of the First Space War survivors and manufacturing facilities servicing the rebuilding of Earth being located in space colonies at the Lagrange points (even called Bunches, in Gundam tradition).  

 

Just now, TG Remix said:

Wondering for the VFs who have internalized beam guns like the VF-17 could have paint or training rounds stored inside them, since of course the ammunition wouldn't be physical.

Based on Macross Delta's second movie, the answer appears to be "Yes"... as we inexplicably see Max's YF-29 firing paint rounds from its beam gunpod.

[sketchley]

10 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Around 776 meters long and can accommodate up to 4500 people, I'd imagine so. It seemed more like a cruise ship then just a something of an airliner like Plus more or less painted it as.

 

That was my initial impression of the vessel as well.  However, after moving to Japan, and seeing a certain volume of domestic travel shows (and etc.), it now looks closer to the larger ferries that they use here (on what amounts to overnight ferry trips) than to a cruise ship.  On those ferries you get 3 types of seating:

1. airline-style chairs (what is depicted in M+)
2. futon-sized areas to lie down on, sit cross-legged, etc. (relatively soft floors - akin to carpeted ones with underlay)
3. individual cabins (akin to the private rooms on overnight trains)

This is consistent with both the depiction in Macross Plus and the Macross Chronicle description.

 

In that context, it is plausible that on the shorter runs, the lower decks of the vessel are for 'vehicle' storage—up to 1/4 to 1/3 of the internal volume.  That's a not insignificant number of 'cargo' trucks, in other words!

 

 

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet even describes it as a luxury cruise ship (豪華客船 Gouka kyakusen) in the sheet's title:

"A luxury space cruise ship for tourists that connects resort planets with Earth."

Would just like to point out that 豪華客船 can be translated 2 ways:

• luxury cruise ship
• luxury liner/passenger boat

 

Digging a bit deeper on Japanese websites, it seems to be an equal 50/50 split, with some people referring to (E.g. Princess Cruise's) cruise ships as both クルーズ客船 and 豪華客船, and other types of ships, such as ocean liners (E.g. the Titanic), as 豪華客船.  The meaning also includes "state ships" (E.g HMY Britannia)! 😵

In general, the meaning appears to be mostly "a luxury vessel people use for transportation", and has much less of the "a luxury vessel people vacation on" nuance.

 

Edited Monday at 04:54 AM by sketchley

[pengbuzz]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Perhaps... though I see two potential problems with it:

1. Scaling a warhead like that down will result in a considerable loss of power.  The GU-11A's 55mm bullet is a bit less than 1/8th the size of the Javelin's tandem shaped charge warhead.
2. The armor technology that the Javelin's tandem warhead was designed to defeat - explosive reactive armor - isn't used by the Zentradi and hasn't been used on a VF or other advanced weapon since the Unification Wars.  (The only known OTM weapon to use it was the VF-0's Armored Pack.)

Yeah; I was thinking more along the lines of missile ordnance than gunpod ammo myself. But that being the case, it would probably just make more sense to just target the craft for general destruction than to "nip off parts", right?

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, sketchley said:

In that context, it is plausible that on the shorter runs, the lower decks of the vessel are for 'vehicle' storage—up to 1/4 to 1/3 of the internal volume.  That's a not insignificant number of 'cargo' trucks, in other words!

The more I look at it, the more clear it becomes just how unreasonably huge the Stellar Whale really is.

If that thing is JUST a luxury ferry, it's operating WAY under capacity carrying just 4,500 people.  You could comfortably park TWO Icon-class cruise ships in the area we're told is reserved for passengers, and each of those has a nominal capacity of 7,800 plus amenities like pools, a water park, a theater, a dance hall, multiple restaurants, etc. 

If just the parts of the hull below the dome are for cargo, a single Stellar Whale can laugh the world's largest container ships out of town without trying.  

 

9 hours ago, sketchley said:

In general, the meaning appears to be mostly "a luxury vessel people use for transportation", and has much less of the "a luxury vessel people vacation on" nuance.

In general, sure... though considering the sheet describes the trip as taking multiple days and the sheer size of the ship, it feels like there might be a bit of room for overlap there.

 

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah; I was thinking more along the lines of missile ordnance than gunpod ammo myself. But that being the case, it would probably just make more sense to just target the craft for general destruction than to "nip off parts", right?

When it comes to missile warheads, I'd expect they'd just go for one really big warhead since ERA isn't a thing... though "general destruction" is more "I'll keep poking holes until I find something that goes 'boom'".

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

When it comes to missile warheads, I'd expect they'd just go for one really big warhead since ERA isn't a thing... though "general destruction" is more "I'll keep poking holes until I find something that goes 'boom'".

In that case, they should have made a missile that specifically targeted Isamu Dyson; with his ego, that explosion could have taken out Boldoza's entire fleet!

 

[PixelatedShinobi]

On 2/5/2025 at 4:31 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

 

Yeah, the Macross Frontier novelizations (TV and Movie) make this connection quite explicit.

  Reveal hidden contents

First contact with the Vajra occurred in 2040 even in the animation's backstory materials, but the novels reveal that the Critical Path Corporation and its CEO Manfred Brando (who serves as a level boss later in VF-X2) were instrumental in researching fold quartz and experimenting with possible applications of it.  Critical Path sponsored Dr. Mao Nome's expedition into Vajra space with the 117th research fleet, and Manfred himself was a part of the military's board of inquiry that was convened to investigate the loss of the 117th research fleet in 2048.  

In the TV novelization, Ozma got kicked out of the New UN Forces for losing his cool and punching Manfred during the investigation because of how he was treating Ranka. 

The seminal research paper on fold quartz is called the "Manfred Thesis", and an uploaded copy of Manfred's consciousness is one of the Galaxy Fleet executives who is either a minion of Grace's or one of the ones pulling Grace's strings depending on whether it's the TV or Movie version.  

Aegis Focker also puts in a small appearance, noted to be one of Col. Wilder's proteges and at one point one of Ozma's seniors in the NUNS who assists SMS with their investigation into Leon Mishima.

 

Oh crap, I didn't realize the VF-X2 connections went *that* deep. Guess I should get back to reading those. I'd love to get a proper translation of them at some point down the line as well.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 3/10/2025 at 1:32 PM, PixelatedShinobi said:

Oh crap, I didn't realize the VF-X2 connections went *that* deep. Guess I should get back to reading those. I'd love to get a proper translation of them at some point down the line as well.

Yeah, FWIW Macross VF-X2's events - called the Second Unification Wars in later works - turned out to be a pretty important time for the setting and a lot of connections are drawn back to it.  It's particularly blatant in the Macross Frontier novelizations but as I understand it it spills over into the Macross Delta ones too with some of the older characters in the story having had their lives and careers shaped by the conflict incl. King Grammier and Ernest Johnson.

 

Since I am home sick today, I've decided to spend a bit of that time poking at Variable Fighter Master File: VF-11 Thunderbolt.

It's kind of disappointing that the book covers so little.  The foreword from MBS Publishing's Rodolgo Ivoke (dated Feb 2066) attempts to excuse it as there being simply too much to cover in the space of the book's page count, but that's a pretty weak in-universe excuse. 

The book starts off with a comparison between the VF-11A and VF-11B/C type seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7.  There's very little official info about the VF-11A.  What little is out there mostly talks about how few were built because the military wasn't satisfied and asked to change the design, and how the main visual distinction is that it had a two-pane cover on the monitor turret's sensors.  It's said to have less engine thrust than the B-type, and Master File at least lines up neatly with that in most respects.  The reason that I said "most" is because Master File asserts over 2,000 VF-11As were built... not exactly the "small number" official sources mention.  The only real differences are it's heavier by 280kg, that it has a less powerful FF-2025B engine (25,500kgf), and that as a result it's slower at altitude by 0.2 Mach.  

Where it starts to get interesting is that it posits more than basic performance differences between the B-type and C-type.  

Macross Chronicle deviates a bit from previous material and presents the VF-11B and VF-11C as having essentially identical performance.  It mentions both versions as having the same dimensions, performance, mass, etc. and the same thrust of 28,500kgf from their FF-2025G engines.  Master File, I think, is going back to some older material like the This is Animation Special book for Macross Plus and the Bandai 1/144 VF-11C kit.  TIAS and various toys and plamodels of the VF-11B mention the VF-11B as using a FF-2025G engine at 28,000kgf, while IIRC the Bandai 1/144 VF-11C mentions that same FF-2025G engine as producing 29,500kgf.  So what Master File did there is they reclassified the VF-11B engine as FF-2025C, -D, or -E and used the thrust value from TIAS and kept the VF-11C's engine as FF-2025G.

 

 

There are some fun easter eggs hiding in the text of the DEVELOPMENT OF VF-11 THUNDERBOLT section.  Particularly noteworthy is a mention that the Space Forces grouped all of the various VF development plans under a single collective header: Advanced Valkyrie.  That was the name of the non-Macross project that gave us a lot of the designs from the 2020s and 2030s like the VF-9, VF-3000, and VF-X-10/11.  Apparently the Advanced Valkyrie Planning Office made the final decision on each project during that period, based on advice from a newly formed advisory body called the VF Technology Research and Evaluation Agency (VTREA).  The VTREA was headed up by a First Space War veteran Lt. Col. Alexander Binkerkin (sp?), and operated out of a small borrowed office in the Joint Forces HQ in Macross City.  It was Lt. Col. Binkerkin's office that analyzed reports of VF losses due to field issues, maintenance issues, and combat and formulated proposals to improve VF designs.  His office, and its handful of staff, are apparently the ones who proposed the project that would become the VF-11 under a proposal with the uninspiring name/number "N-ADV-01A Draft Specifications for Next Main VF".

[Seto Kaiba]

So delving a bit deeper... the N-ADV-01A Report is described in the next section as summarizing the performance needs for a next-generation Valkyrie in four points:

1. The next-generation (3rd Gen) main VF should be a simple design that inherits/prioritizes the highly versatile concept of the original VF-1.
2. Infrastructure improvements necessary to support the adoption of a next-generation thermonuclear reaction engine.
3. Atmospheric flight performance of new main VF designs should not be neglected.
4. Infrastructure and logistical needs to support mass production and mass adoption of a next-generation fighter.

The second and fourth points are particularly interesting.  The second point, about infrastructure improvements, talks briefly about the need to improve runways and various other facilities to withstand the greater heat produced by more powerful thermonuclear reaction engines.  This seems to be tying into what prior books have said about the engines that, incremental improvements aside, the first three generations of VF were essentially using the same basic engine design scaled up or down to meet the needs of each program.  To get more power, you needed to make the engine bigger and run the engine hotter, and that had implications for runways and carrier decks and other spaces and things that might be exposed to the exhaust in normal operation.

The fourth point is even more interesting, talking as it does about the need for the New UN Forces one generation removed from the First Space War to start changing its mindset from the immediate postwar manpower shortage mindset that prioritized quality over everything to a more growth-oriented philosophy that acknowledged that quantity mattered just as much if not more in the face of a foe like the Zentradi.  

 

The next section that talks about the actual start of VF-11 development paints an interesting picture of the 2010s.  There's a bit of talk about how the generation who were kids during the war began entering the military workforce and the emergence of civil servants as the government began to grow leading to organizational changes in the military.  It notes that there was a lot of internal (inter-generational) conflict in the armed forces at that time due to differences in ideals about how things should be run.  So much so that, when the 2020s rolled around, the bean counters started calling a halt to what'd been a sort of VF development free-for-all up to that point.

Advanced Valkyrie's VF-X-11 design is presented in that section as a technology demonstrator Stonewell and Bellcom produced in the 2010s, which was subsequently reused to evaluate the FF-2025 engine design.  (The book goes out of its way to note that the VF-X-11 and VF-11 are technically not related at all, design-wise, with the VF-X-11 being a proper X-plane not a military prototype.) 

[PixelatedShinobi]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, FWIW Macross VF-X2's events - called the Second Unification Wars in later works - turned out to be a pretty important time for the setting and a lot of connections are drawn back to it.  It's particularly blatant in the Macross Frontier novelizations but as I understand it it spills over into the Macross Delta ones too with some of the older characters in the story having had their lives and careers shaped by the conflict incl. King Grammier and Ernest Johnson.

Ukyo Kodachi evidently loves the game, as shown by the Macross 30 novelization, and I did generally know about its mentions in the Frontier novels. A really interesting one that made me do a spittake is, I believe in either the final Delta TV Mini-Theater or the Passionate Walkure mini-theater, Ernest is talking about the conflicts he's served (and lost) in, and mentions Black Rainbow as one of them. That one nearly made me choke on my drink, it was so out of left field.