Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[pengbuzz]

On 10/14/2024 at 12:19 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Yes, in Ep21 "Azure Ether" and Ep22 "Northern Cross".

When Brera helps Ranka run away from the Macross Frontier fleet in search of the Vajra homeworld, his VF-27 Lucifer is shown to be equipped with one of LAI's prototype Super Fold Boosters.

 

That's not the standard fold booster, which looks like this (the one Alto uses to get to Gallia IV) in Ep11:

 

The one in your screen captures is LAI's newly-developed "Super Fold Booster" prototype that was first used in Ep12 "Fastest Delivery".

What makes it so "Super" is that it uses fold quartz harvested from the Vajra instead of synthetic fold carbon.  This lets it produce a much more powerful fold effect that can cross fold faults unhindered and fully shields the ship from the different flow of time in higher dimensions.  So in practice, it's "faster" and immune to all the usual navigational issues a regular fold booster has to contend with.

And will make your coffee for you in just 3 minutes.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

And will make your coffee for you in just 3 minutes.

And it'd actually be three minutes for everyone!

One of the bigger logistical problems with fold navigation is the disparity between the passage of time aboard a folding ship vs. the passage of time in realspace and the way fold faults exacerbate it.  

The trip to Gallia IV in Macross Frontier episodes 11 and 12 is a great example.  According to Leon, the Frontier fleet was close enough to Gallia IV to make the trip there by space fold almost instantaneous.  The multiple mild fold faults between the fleet and the planet meant that Alto and Sheryl only perceived a short time traveling to the planet but it really took over a week to get there because the fold faults increased the disparity between experienced time and actual time to over 172 hours.  Thanks to the Super Fold Booster LAI'd developed, Michael Blanc was able to make the same trip that took Alto and Sheryl over a week in a matter of minutes because fold faults were no longer an obstacle.

(It's entirely possible there are career space pilots in the galaxy who are physically and mentally months or years younger than their date of birth would suggest due to the disparity between time in fold vs. in realspace and the way fold faults exaggerate it.)

It's still way less problematic than other FTL methods with time dialation-like effects.  WH40K's warp drives come with the possibility of arriving centuries or millennia late, arriving before you ever left, or if something goes really wrong, having that coffee you were brewing drink you instead. 🤣

[David Hingtgen]

So, trying to find every moment we see a fold booster in Frontier thanks to the above posts, I'm trying to nail down the color----when we see the one being mounted on Michael's -25G, it looks quite red---not PURE red like Hikaru/Alto red stripes, but pretty red.  But pretty much every other appearance of that model (mainly on Brera's), it looks more "coral" in coloring.  I don't think it's an intentional change, just "inconsistency".   "By numbers" it appears coral way more often than it appears red---but "by quality"---we see it clear, well-lit, and well-animated up close when it's red---we never get a *really* good look while it's on Brera's.  Always in the background, or obscured by the -27's afterburners, at night, etc. 

Thoughts on the 'real' color of that model of fold booster?   (all I know for sure is that it's not mauve, like the Bandai DX rendition of it)    

[Seto Kaiba]

28 minutes ago, David Hingtgen said:

So, trying to find every moment we see a fold booster in Frontier thanks to the above posts, I'm trying to nail down the color----when we see the one being mounted on Michael's -25G, it looks quite red---not PURE red like Hikaru/Alto red stripes, but pretty red.  But pretty much every other appearance of that model (mainly on Brera's), it looks more "coral" in coloring.  I don't think it's an intentional change, just "inconsistency".   "By numbers" it appears coral way more often than it appears red---but "by quality"---we see it clear, well-lit, and well-animated up close when it's red---we never get a *really* good look while it's on Brera's.  Always in the background, or obscured by the -27's afterburners, at night, etc. 

Thoughts on the 'real' color of that model of fold booster?   (all I know for sure is that it's not mauve, like the Bandai DX rendition of it)    

Macross Chronicle and Variable Fighter Designer's Note both print the same shots of the CG model of the VF-27 + Super Fold Booster.

The one on pg212 of Designer's Note is MUCH larger and clearer, though, and in that one it's almost salmon pink IMO.

[Seto Kaiba]

This is the page in question.

[TG Remix]

On 10/10/2024 at 7:50 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Nope.  They seem to exist wherever it's narratively convenient for them to do so... regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

One trend I've noticed in their appearances in various official media and Master File is that SMS seems to be almost anywhere that's reasonably well-established.  Their presences are all on major emigrant fleets like Frontier and Olympia and on emigrant planets that've established themselves pretty well already like Uroboros, Sephira, Eden, etc.  Xaos seems to operate in the more remote regions of the galaxy.  They have a major contract with the Brisingr Alliance, the mutual defense and economic pact in the remote and isolated stars of the Brisingr globular cluster, and their few other appearances are on remote and underdeveloped or sparsely populated worlds.

 

From what I seemed to read both SMS and Xaos has branches on Sephira, and considering that's the planet where Hyde City was located in Macross VF-X2 seems to imply that it's far enough to be considered a frontier planet, but also close enough to Earth to be considered a target for Black Rainbow, since iirc the game was mostly focused on fighting on central UN territories.

 

You know, considering how SMS kinda went against the Frontier's fleet back to deal with the Galaxy fleet themselves in a large conspiracy (in the TV series), essentially did a prison break scheme for a known criminal about to be executed (in Sayonara no Tsubasa), and Xaos' unlawful participation in the 2nd Windemerean War amongst other illegal actions, I'm wondering when will it be the time where a PMC group goes to the ways of Blackwater and becomes the antagonist for the series, maybe even SMS and/or Xaos themselves. If they can vilify the NUNS at every opportunity surely with them is also possible.

 

On 10/15/2024 at 12:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

(It's entirely possible there are career space pilots in the galaxy who are physically and mentally months or years younger than their date of birth would suggest due to the disparity between time in fold vs. in realspace and the way fold faults exaggerate it.)

Would be a interesting thing to tackle, something like that was played for all of its drama in Gunbuster with it's FTL travel. Maybe that's why some characters in the franchise seem to disagree with the concept of aging lol.

Edited 9 hours ago by TG Remix

[aurance]

Are these fold boosters single-use? Even if not they seem to get ejected before combat. How are these fighters supposed to return from the decapitation strike missions that some of them (YF-19 etc) are designed for?

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, aurance said:

Are these fold boosters single-use? Even if not they seem to get ejected before combat. How are these fighters supposed to return from the decapitation strike missions that some of them (YF-19 etc) are designed for?

Early model fold boosters like the FBF-1000A fold booster seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7 were single-use fold systems rated for a single fold jump of up to 20 light years.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur and VF-22 Sturmvogel II explain these limitations as a product of the somewhat basic/stripped-down nature of the miniaturized fold system and its use of large amounts of low quality fold carbon in order to keep the cost of the unit down.  Master File also suggests that this cheap and disposable fold system's design was the genesis of the first improvised fold bombs that led to the eventual development of the Dimension Eater by 2059.

Later models like the FAB-1000 fold booster that was used by SMS and the New UN Forces in Macross Frontier were more advanced and capable designs using higher quality fold carbon that could be used for longer distances and multiple fold jumps.  They could be recovered and reattached automatically, as seen in Macross Frontier.

[pengbuzz]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Early model fold boosters like the FBF-1000A fold booster seen in Macross Plus and Macross 7 were single-use fold systems rated for a single fold jump of up to 20 light years.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur and VF-22 Sturmvogel II explain these limitations as a product of the somewhat basic/stripped-down nature of the miniaturized fold system and its use of large amounts of low quality fold carbon in order to keep the cost of the unit down.  Master File also suggests that this cheap and disposable fold system's design was the genesis of the first improvised fold bombs that led to the eventual development of the Dimension Eater by 2059.

Later models like the FAB-1000 fold booster that was used by SMS and the New UN Forces in Macross Frontier were more advanced and capable designs using higher quality fold carbon that could be used for longer distances and multiple fold jumps.  They could be recovered and reattached automatically, as seen in Macross Frontier.

Hmm... interesting way to get rid of an enemy: attach a fold booster to them during a fight and set the jump coordinates for the heart of a star or black hole.

(might work better on capital ships)

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, TG Remix said:

From what I seemed to read both SMS and Xaos has branches on Sephira, and considering that's the planet where Hyde City was located in Macross VF-X2 seems to imply that it's far enough to be considered a frontier planet, but also close enough to Earth to be considered a target for Black Rainbow, since iirc the game was mostly focused on fighting on central UN territories.

We're almost never given more than the vaguest approximation of where planets exist in relation to each other... the Brisingr globular cluster and Eden are the only real exceptions, since we know approximately how far they are from Earth and each other.

 

3 hours ago, TG Remix said:

You know, considering how SMS kinda went against the Frontier's fleet back to deal with the Galaxy fleet themselves in a large conspiracy (in the TV series), essentially did a prison break scheme for a known criminal about to be executed (in Sayonara no Tsubasa), and Xaos' unlawful participation in the 2nd Windemerean War amongst other illegal actions, I'm wondering when will it be the time where a PMC group goes to the ways of Blackwater and becomes the antagonist for the series, maybe even SMS and/or Xaos themselves. If they can vilify the NUNS at every opportunity surely with them is also possible.

Yeah, I look forward to the day that Macross's writers decide to research what PMCs are actually like in the real world and rapidly course-correct towards depicting them as what they typically are: ammosexual civilians playing dress-up because they're convinced they're starring in their own personal action movie and ex-privates who lacked the discipline needed for a military career.

In hindsight, I suppose Macross Delta did try to meet me halfway there.  SMS was a hypercompetent PMC contracted to field-test the military's latest and greatest tech in live combat and staffed with the brightest and best soldiers that could be lured away from the NUNS with massive salaries.  Xaos, by contrast, is a barely competent private outfit under the regional command of a guy who was kicked out of the military for sedition and is staffed mainly by folks who washed out of the underfunded local NUNS for various reasons.  Their most promising recruit is a former forklift driver with a passion for dancing, and the all-important idol group they support and weaponize is made up of (in rough order of severity) a failed solo idol, a cyber-criminal working under duress, an illegal immigrant who also emigrated illegally, an illegal clone, and most heinous of all... Makina. 😝

(The above is a joke, folks.)

If you think about it, we can acknowledge Macross Delta for what it really is... a truly spectacular ad for forklift certification.  Hayate Immelmann got forklift certified, and it almost directly led to him saving the galaxy.  Truly, the forklift certified are the real heroes among us.

We did kind of get a scenario like that in Master File's Volunteer Knights of Arkarelia... with General Galaxy's own in-house private military company, the General Galaxy Corporate Forces, serving as antagonists and assisting one emigrant planet's invasion of a neighboring peaceful planet.

 

3 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Would be a interesting thing to tackle, something like that was played for all of its drama in Gunbuster with it's FTL travel. Maybe that's why some characters in the franchise seem to disagree with the concept of aging lol.

I used that exact reasoning to explain why certain characters looked far younger than their chronological ages in more than one Macross RPG.

(One of whom was a Jenius, yes.)

 

55 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Hmm... interesting way to get rid of an enemy: attach a fold booster to them during a fight and set the jump coordinates for the heart of a star or black hole.

(might work better on capital ships)

Considering what we've seen malfunctioning fold systems do to ships, like warping space-time into an impassable wall or carving it up like a roast by teleporting chunks of it into higher dimensions, setting it to maximum range, throwing it at someone, and telling it to be anywhere but here is already pretty darn nasty.