Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Sailor Arashi]

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, he is... but Macross-11 is also quite literally Space!'Murica, so he's kind of pissing into the wind there.

Oh wow.  I knew he was the manager of Fire Bomber America, but I didn't realize the entire fleet was like that too.  It's like the writers came up with the details of that fleet specifically to make it an ironic hell for Kaifun.   I have to say I approve.  I want a Macoss-11 OAV series that's all hot-blooded fighter action and an utterly miserable Kaifun.

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It never really comes up outside of the original series and Macross the Musiculture... so we're 50/50 on whether people realize total pacifism a dumb idea in-universe.

There was also Basara with his "No fighting only singing!" mentality, though he's why I said 'usually' as well since Basara never really gets shown to be wrong.   At least they did show that even he needed military support to keep him alive long enough to keep singing from time to time.  But I was also thinking of the reason the entire setting spins out the way it does, with humanity spreading out into the galaxy specifically to avoid becoming overly militarized...but with every single one of those colony fleets having at least one fleet-obliterating superweapon on hand just in case.

Did Macross 29 ditch their Battle section somehow?  Or just the Gunship?  Or otherwise disable the Macross Cannon?

[Seto Kaiba]

27 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Oh wow.  I knew he was the manager of Fire Bomber America, but I didn't realize the entire fleet was like that too.  It's like the writers came up with the details of that fleet specifically to make it an ironic hell for Kaifun.   I have to say I approve.  I want a Macoss-11 OAV series that's all hot-blooded fighter action and an utterly miserable Kaifun.

That is, or so I have been told, the reason that Kaifun's cover band was Fire Bomber American... the Macross-11's city section was supposedly modeled on an unspecified US city.

I'd imagine Kaifun is pretty content there.  He has a band that is at least locally popular, even if it's reviled everywhere else, and he has a military he can rail at endlessly which probably doesn't know or care that he exists.

 

31 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

There was also Basara with his "No fighting only singing!" mentality, though he's why I said 'usually' as well since Basara never really gets shown to be wrong.   At least they did show that even he needed military support to keep him alive long enough to keep singing from time to time. 

Basara's attitude towards pacifism seemed to be pretty darn liberal.  It kind of reminds me of Dr. Phlox's interpretation of the Hippocratic Oath from Star Trek: Enterprise... he won't cause harm (physical injury), but he can inflict as much pain as he likes.

Basara seems to be just fine with strictly non-lethal violence.  After all, he spends much of the first part of the series shooting at enemy VFs with that speaker pod launcher, and you'd have a hard time characterizing that as a non-violent act.  Either that or he's simply blind to the possibility of hurting or killing someone by accident, like when he fired a Speaker Pod Gamma into the bridge of Gepernich's ship that caused a loss of atmospheric containment.

 

31 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

But I was also thinking of the reason the entire setting spins out the way it does, with humanity spreading out into the galaxy specifically to avoid becoming overly militarized...but with every single one of those colony fleets having at least one fleet-obliterating superweapon on hand just in case.

The Humankind Seeding Project wasn't to avoid humanity becoming overly militarized... it was because they knew full bloody well their "victory" over the Boddole Zer main fleet was them getting stupid lucky, and wanted to spread out into the galaxy to avoid presenting a single target that could result in the extinction of the human species.

They sent the emigrant fleets out into deep space with a large military escort because the galaxy is a dangerous place and the only reasonable approaches to dealing with a rogue Zentradi fleet are not getting seen in the first place (preferred), legging it (next best), or maximum overkill (if running away won't work).

 

31 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Did Macross 29 ditch their Battle section somehow?  Or just the Gunship?  Or otherwise disable the Macross Cannon?

Now that I don't know.  Macross the Musiculture was a stage play, so the fleet's total disarmament is presented as a simple fact and not really gotten into because the important bits are the character drama about the political situation.

[Sailor Arashi]

21 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

he Humankind Seeding Project wasn't to avoid humanity becoming overly militarized... it was because they knew full bloody well their "victory" over the Boddole Zer main fleet was them getting stupid lucky, and wanted to spread out into the galaxy to avoid presenting a single target that could result in the extinction of the human species.

Right, with the specific caveat that the military build-up required to actually repel a full-scale Zentradi assault would require so much effort humanity would be unable to do anything else.  Maybe they could pull it off, but in doing so they would just become the Zentradi in essence.  The only option for humanity to survive and preserve its culture was to disperse.   At least that's how I remember it being sold to Misa when she's offered the Megaroad.   Global was waxing a bit philosophical there, maybe, but that's how the Seeding Project has stuck in my mind.

Of course sixty years and two dozen factory sattelites later I think any Main Fleet that approaches Earth is probably not going to have an easy time of it regardless.

37 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Now that I don't know.  Macross the Musiculture was a stage play, so the fleet's total disarmament is presented as a simple fact and not really gotten into because the important bits are the character drama about the political situation.

They didn't have people running around dressed in clunky transforming ship costumes?!  What a travesty! 

[Seto Kaiba]

33 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Right, with the specific caveat that the military build-up required to actually repel a full-scale Zentradi assault would require so much effort humanity would be unable to do anything else. 

Eh... 's more like it'd be virtually impossible.

The New UN Government knows their victory in 2010 was more by luck than good judgement, and even then over sixty percent of the Boddole Zer main fleet is still out there.  There are 2,000+ more fleets just like it kicking around the galaxy.  Even the ancient Protoculture took one look at a threat like that and decided to get the heck out of dodge, and they had MUCH better military technology than the New UN Forces did.

Essentially, the decision to launch emigrant fleets to spread humanity across the galaxy was mainly predicated on the simple understanding that there was no realistic way to defend one planet from something like that once without colossal loss of life... and doing it repeatedly was right out.  Their chances were better spreading the species out across the galaxy so the loss of any one planet was not an extinction-level threat and they could slip through the cracks while they got back on their collective feet.

(This is in sharp contrast to the UN Forces in the "DYRLverse" timeline of Macross II: Lovers Again, which by 2092 had successfully fended off or otherwise defeated five more main fleets using the Minmay Attack stratagem that worked so well in the First Space War and were getting more than slightly overconfident about it when the Mardook showed up with a fresh-baked humble pie as a getting-to-know-you gift.)

 

33 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Of course sixty years and two dozen factory sattelites later I think any Main Fleet that approaches Earth is probably not going to have an easy time of it regardless.

It'd still be brown trousers time and Earth would absolutely be calling for reinforcements from Eden and its other neighboring systems, but Earth definitely has the biggest guns at their disposal thanks to being the New UN Government's leader in technology.

 

33 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

They didn't have people running around dressed in clunky transforming ship costumes?!  What a travesty! 

As far as I'm aware, there weren't any battles in the play at all... just a hostage situation.

[Sailor Arashi]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Eh... 's more like it'd be virtually impossible.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm trying to explain an aspect of the series that really grabbed me when I was 12 or so and has driven my love for it in the 30 years since   Yeah, it's essentially completely impossible, especially in the years immediately after the war.  Unfortunately, in true Macross fashion most of the information that tells you that is from supplementary material or the movie. 

When pitching the Humankind Seeding Project to Misa in the final episode, Global just says the Zentradi and Supervision Army are still out there fighting, and that the odds of surviving another encounter are a million to one.  This is the first time the futility of the defending Earth had been suggested, with even the narrator a few episodes back suggesting that the Factory Satellite evened up the odds a bit.   Misa certainly thinks so, and notes that capturing the Factory Satellite was supposed to fix that problem.  That's when Global lays out what I said above:

"If we had the military might to resist such an armada, the Earth would become a world that existed only for warfare, just like the once-great Protoculture who in creating their giant Zentradi soldiers destroyed themselves. I want us to spread out to the stars, so that Earth's culture will never disappear."

That's the part that always stuck with me.  Obviously he knows exactly how screwed they are, but as a 12 year old with no access to supplementary materials, it wasn't readily obvious that he was saying it was truly impossible.   I really like the idea that at least part of the drive to disperse was to protect what it means to be human, rather than just protecting the race for the sake of itself.   I've always felt like this was the reason that their colonization ships are functional cities where people can actually live and play rather than simple human cargo containers (like Galaxy is implied to be).   Even if the latter is more efficient and easier to defend than a giant open atmosphere dome, letting people have lives is more important than military efficiency.

Anyway, that's my unsolicited rant on why I love Macross!   I'm right there with you on the fiddly bits and trivia and lore.  I've spent a completely unhealthy amount of time digging through the M3 site.  But the idea that all of that has to be balanced with 'culture', as the Zentradi succinctly put it, is what really sets Macross above the rest for me.

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(This is in sharp contrast to the UN Forces in the "DYRLverse" timeline of Macross II: Lovers Again, which by 2092 had successfully fended off or otherwise defeated five more main fleets using the Minmay Attack stratagem that worked so well in the First Space War and were getting more than slightly overconfident about it when the Mardook showed up with a fresh-baked humble pie as a getting-to-know-you gift.)

One of the reasons Macross II has always felt a little off to me.  Not only does it miss the point of the original series, it active contradicts it, what with fortifying Earth instead of spreading out.  Also suggesting the Macross itself is a Legendary Ship of Legend instead of a fairly common gunship.   I liked the show well enough when it came out, though.   The VF-2 with the armor packs and drones is pretty nifty.  That abomination that looks like someone bolted four Zentradi command ships to a Macross hull is...interesting.  The only other thing I really remember is how bad the dub was.  I should try and track down a subtitled version...

 

 

 

[JB0]

10 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Of course sixty years and two dozen factory sattelites later I think any Main Fleet that approaches Earth is probably not going to have an easy time of it regardless.

Anyone on Earth is still going to have a very bad day when enough space pickles defold to blot out the sky, and lasers start flying in from literally every direction. Earth is exceptionally well-defended, but I don't think they can take out five million ships before someone starts firing. The zentradi will take an awful lot of casualties, but it'd still be a good day to be on a vacation to Eden. Or Zola. Or pretty much anywhere else. 

[Sailor Arashi]

34 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Anyone on Earth is still going to have a very bad day when enough space pickles defold to blot out the sky, and lasers start flying in from literally every direction. Earth is exceptionally well-defended, but I don't think they can take out five million ships before someone starts firing. The zentradi will take an awful lot of casualties, but it'd still be a good day to be on a vacation to Eden. Or Zola. Or pretty much anywhere else. 

Hey, I only commented on the difficulties the attacking Zentradi would face.  The humans living on Earth are pretty much fraked in that scenario, but afterwards the Zentradi fleet still has to deal with 20+ heavily-armed moon-sized factories and however many happy fun time toys they've managed to spit out since the last annual colony fleet departure in addition to whatever standing defense fleet Earth has (which is presumably pretty impressive).   Any way you look at it, it's going to be a bad day all around.  I think I'd still rather be there than Zola, though. 

Joking aside, it's not terribly clear exactly how belligerent the Zentradi are, on average.  Going by SDFM, at least, an entire Main Fleet folding in and bombarding out of the blue as their very first move seems out of character.   Britai is content to just calmly approach and check things out and see if there's any Supervision Army ships around  in the first episode, for instance.  Earth actually pre-emptively attacks the Zentradi TWICE before they retaliate, and they can only claim the first was an accident.  After that accident, rather than transmit "Oh crap! Sorry!  Our bad!" to the approaching Zentradi, Earth decides to nuke reaction-weapon them instead.   It's only after this second attack that the Zentradi start shooting back.    It's hard to say how the whole thing would have played out if the Macross hadn't been booby-trapped to attack the first Zentradi ship that got too close, but in the TV version it seems like a peaceful first-contact might have been possible.   

EDIT:  Besides, reading through this thread, I'd think a single VF-24 would be more than enough to dispatch a pathetic Zentradi Main Fleet 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[JB0]

15 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

 

 Joking aside, it's not terribly clear exactly how belligerent the Zentradi are, on average.  Going by SDFM, at least, an entire Main Fleet folding in and bombarding out of the blue as their very first move seems out of character. 

It is definitely an extreme reaction, and one that requires a bit of development. But on the other hand, they DO reduce a life-bearing planet to a cratered rock just to make a point when they have Kakizaki, Misa, and Hikaru captured.

Dropping the entire fleet in is probably a case of "We want everything turned into glass, then the glass reduced to rubble.  And then we want the rubble turned into dust, and then we want the dust turned back into glass. Just in case." Overkill in the extreme, but... sometimes you want to make sure the target is really dead

 

Given at that point in the story, the zentradi had a major subfleet led by an experienced and trusted officer defecting to the enemy, and soldiers mutinying to overthrow the entire zentradi way of life... it was starting to seem like these puny earthlings with their antiquated toys and stolen gunship WERE an unfathomably deep threat to the zentradi, and invoking the Ripley protocol on the earthlings and everyone they'd been in contact with seemed like a good idea.

 

Should the zentradi find Earth again, things will likely escalate faster, as at least some of the events leading up to the Bodol fleet's dissolution are known to other fleets. 

[Sailor Arashi]

37 minutes ago, JB0 said:

But on the other hand, they DO reduce a life-bearing planet to a cratered rock just to make a point when they have Kakizaki, Misa, and Hikaru captured.

Our heroes did note some sort of battle going on in the distance when they first folded in to the current location of the Boddole Main Fleet.  I always just assumed that the subsequent "We're glassing a planet to make a point" was equivalent to a public execution of the Supervision Army personnel on that planet who had just lost that battle.  

37 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Should the zentradi find Earth again, things will likely escalate faster, as at least some of the events leading up to the Bodol fleet's dissolution are known to other fleets.

I dunno.  Even two years after the fact the dude defending the Factory Satellite was all "Hey Britai!  Long time no see!" until Britai started subjecting him to babies and awkward PDA.  I think whatever tales of the Boddole Fleet's defeat that get spread around will just give even more weight to the "Don't mess around with micronians" warning that Exedol was advising from the start.  I mean, Boddole Zer didn't listen, and now he's dead.  Might be best to avoid those lunatics and go see if there's some Supervision Army people over in that other direction that we can shoot at without them snap-chatting us their kissy-face photos.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Besides, reading through this thread, I'd think a single VF-24 would be more than enough to dispatch a pathetic Zentradi Main Fleet 

Not a single one no... and not a main fleet. A single Federal Forces VF-24 with a short distance fold booster could cut the head off of a branch fleet's main ship with some reaction weapons dumped inside the ship as it folds in and out of there.. which supposedly was one of the selling points Shinsei had for the YF-24 initially. It would not take out an entire branch fleet without a squadron of buddies though.. and even then, it's mostly just trying to disorganize them by taking out the lead. Main Fleet though... frankly New Macross class ships in combo are best hope if there is no refurbished Grand Cannons anymore.

This is all super speculative of course, since no actual stats of the VF-24 exist.. but Master File apparently implies it is a beast of a thing.

[Sailor Arashi]

9 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

A single Federal Forces VF-24 with a short distance fold booster could cut the head off of a branch fleet's main ship with some reaction weapons dumped inside the ship as it folds in and out of there.. which supposedly was one of the selling points Shinsei had for the YF-24 initially. It would not take out an entire branch fleet without a squadron of buddies though.. and even then, it's mostly just trying to disorganize them by taking out the lead.

If you take out the flagship of a branch fleet, the entire branch fleet retreats (usually), thus it's theoretically possible to defeat an entire Main Fleet by destroying as few as 2,000 flagships, resulting in all of their escorts retreating piecemeal...or so Exedol says when they're planning how to fight the Boddole main fleet.   The Grand Cannon opening a giant gaping hole in the Boddole defensive line changes their strategy and leaves that theory untested, but presumably that's the basis for the YF-24's advertised capabilities.  It wouldn't need any buddies, it could isolate the keystone unit and nullify thousands of ships simply by destroying one.

17 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

This is all super speculative of course, since no actual stats of the VF-24 exist.. but Master File apparently implies it is a beast of a thing.

That would be the crux of my tongue-in-cheek comment that it'd only require one of them to defeat an entire Main Fleet.  Every thread on the relative capabilities of the various Valkyrie series I've read in the past few years has basically amounted to "They all completely suck compared to this one fighter which has never actually been seen in any show except for like a half-second mention once"  I've just taken to assuming that the VF-24 is made of Vibranium, has an Adamantium hull, and is piloted by the second coming of Jesus Jenius.  

Again, I'm joking.  The never-seen-yet-completely-dominating-fighter is just another of the many quirks we accept from Macross as a franchise.

[Sildani]

It’s on par with, if not slightly better than, the YF-29. So dang powerful, but not the Second Coming of the Messiah. 

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

One of the reasons Macross II has always felt a little off to me.  Not only does it miss the point of the original series, it active contradicts it, what with fortifying Earth instead of spreading out. 

This is a very popular misconception, due in part to the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's supplemental materials not making it to the west and the subject not coming up during the OVA proper.

The Unification Government in the Macross II timeline was heavily invested in launching emigrant fleets.  They never got as big as the ones in Macross's main/ongoing timeline with millions of people, but they were launching them fairly frequently using a mass-produced version of the Macross-class in addition to the Megaroad-class.  The program seems to have been put on hiatus after a particularly brutal war with a Zentradi Army main fleet in 2054 that totalled most of the UN Spacy's fleet in the Sol system... a war that began when a newly launched emigrant fleet headed by the Macross-class ship Million Star blundered directly into a Zentradi fleet only a handful of light years outside the system.

The result was, in addition to a small fortune in captured Zentradi military hardware, that the UN Forces had to batten down their proverbial hatches for a bit while their forces were rebuilt and the technological advances wrung from the spoils of war started a second Overtechnology boom that led to a sweeping modernization of their equipment.  The Zentradi invasion of 2082 was their first real test of the new warship classes, the VF-2SS Valkyrie II, and much of their other new hardware.  (IIRC, in the novelization they did start launching new emigrant ships after the Mardook conflict in 2092.)

 

16 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Also suggesting the Macross itself is a Legendary Ship of Legend instead of a fairly common gunship.   

That had nothing to do with the ship itself... just that the ship's accumulated history happened to broadly match a Mardook myth of a savior-ship from a blue planet that would bring peace.  Ingues himself demonstrated (by destroying it) that there really wasn't any special attribute in the ship itself.  (Like so many prophecies, that one turned out to be so broadly written that it could mean almost anything to the right reader.  Nostradamus was great at that kind of writing himself, which only really required one to let the reader draw their own conclusions and nod along when they start going on about your genius.)

(That Ishtar could glean as much from contact with the ship's systems makes more sense when you know that the Mardook were strongly implied to be the descendants of one of the groups of Protoculture refugees that fled the collapse of their civilization.)

 

10 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Joking aside, it's not terribly clear exactly how belligerent the Zentradi are, on average.  Going by SDFM, at least, an entire Main Fleet folding in and bombarding out of the blue as their very first move seems out of character.   Britai is content to just calmly approach and check things out and see if there's any Supervision Army ships around  in the first episode, for instance.

Super Dimension Fortress Macross is probably not a great way to judge the Zentradi's overall belligerence, since Earth was found by a branch fleet rather than any particularly large formation and said fleet's commander was cautious and inquisitive enough to think terribly hard about why the Supervision Army ship he'd found had been rebuilt into such a nonstandard specification and wonder at the fact that the unknown classes of ship defending the planet were flinging lost technology weapons at him so casually.

Basically, Earth lucked the f*ck out because the Zentradi fleet that found them was commanded by a thinking man like Vrlitwhai and not a meathead like Quamzin.  Boddole Zer's own presentation to the captured UN Spacy personnel suggests that glassing a planet is basically SOP when there's a confirmed enemy presence.

 

 

9 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

If you take out the flagship of a branch fleet, the entire branch fleet retreats (usually), thus it's theoretically possible to defeat an entire Main Fleet by destroying as few as 2,000 flagships, resulting in all of their escorts retreating piecemeal...or so Exedol says when they're planning how to fight the Boddole main fleet.

You have to know which ships those are, first... the only reason that approach was workable in the First Space War was that it was proposed by a high ranking Zentradi commander who had just defected in the face of a friendly-fire execution, so his forces knew EXACTLY who to shoot at to undermine the chain of command.

Without that inside track on the fleet's organization to know which ships to target, the only viable way to carry it off would be to go after the mobile fortress and sink that... which is a high casualty, low survival rate operation if there ever was one.

[Sailor Arashi]

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

This is a very popular misconception, due in part to the Macross II: Lovers Again OVA's supplemental materials not making it to the west and the subject not coming up during the OVA proper.

Important setting details relegated to supplementary material?  I guess Macross II is more authentically Macross than I thought!   

32 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That had nothing to do with the ship itself... just that the ship's accumulated history happened to broadly match a Mardook myth of a savior-ship from a blue planet that would bring peace.  Ingues himself demonstrated (by destroying it) that there really wasn't any special attribute in the ship itself.

The operative word was 'suggesting'.   Though the fact that they keep flying around in the bridge (!?) even after the main hull is destroyed, and Ishtar is still all "I believe in the Alus!" doesn't help dispel the lingering Legendary Ship of Legend trappings. 

36 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

the only reason that approach was workable in the First Space War

Pretty sure it wasn't really workable even then.   Exedol seems pretty certain it's a suicide mission even with that knowledge right up until the Grand Cannon opens up.   I was just mentioning the behavior of branch fleets when they lose their flagship because someone else said that the YF-24 was sold as designed to do that (among other miracles like retiring last series' toy line  making all other existing fighters obsolete).

 

[Master Dex]

I wouldn't say the YF/VF-24 was meant to make all fighters obsolete. They'll still run others for specific need. Federal special forces apparently use modified VF-1s to great effect against unsuspecting foes, lol. 

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Important setting details relegated to supplementary material?  I guess Macross II is more authentically Macross than I thought!   

That's anime in general... as a translator-for-fun, I have to say the worst offender I've yet encountered is Masaki Kajishima's Tenchi Muyo! franchise.  There's easily twenty or thirty times as much official setting material in his self-published setting books and the official art books than there is in the actual shows, and that's counting the liner notes as part of the shows!

To be fair, there WAS a partial translation of the Macross II timeline materials that came out in English fanzines when the OVA was being promoted... but it was kind of an iffy quality translation and it was spread across three or four different publications like Mangazine, Mecha Press, etc.  It was a bit odd to see them translate the term for the UN Government as "the Federation".  (Someone at Mangazine clearly had Gundam on the brain.)

 

 

6 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

The operative word was 'suggesting'.   Though the fact that they keep flying around in the bridge (!?) even after the main hull is destroyed, and Ishtar is still all "I believe in the Alus!" doesn't help dispel the lingering Legendary Ship of Legend trappings. 

Honestly, the way I always took it was as an affirmation that what mattered wasn't the ship itself, but the message it conveyed.

 

 

6 hours ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Pretty sure it wasn't really workable even then.   Exedol seems pretty certain it's a suicide mission even with that knowledge right up until the Grand Cannon opens up.   I was just mentioning the behavior of branch fleets when they lose their flagship because someone else said that the YF-24 was sold as designed to do that (among other miracles like retiring last series' toy line  making all other existing fighters obsolete).

2 hours ago, Master Dex said:

I wouldn't say the YF/VF-24 was meant to make all fighters obsolete. They'll still run others for specific need. Federal special forces apparently use modified VF-1s to great effect against unsuspecting foes, lol. 

I would!

The 5th Generation VF program was THE biggest defense program in the Macross setting since the initial military buildup after Alien Spaceship One landed on South Ataria in '99.  It took them 17 years to suss out the problems with the all-important Inertia Store Converter technology that was meant to address the problems that kneecapped the 4th Generation designs in the adoption process, and it's the basis of every single new VF from 2057 on except one.  Many of the improvements to 4th Generation VFs were technology backported from its descendants or put on them for evaluation for a future 5th Gen VF.  

 

[Master Dex]

20 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I would!

 

The 5th Generation VF program was THE biggest defense program in the Macross setting since the initial military buildup after Alien Spaceship One landed on South Ataria in '99.  It took them 17 years to suss out the problems with the all-important Inertia Store Converter technology that was meant to address the problems that kneecapped the 4th Generation designs in the adoption process, and it's the basis of every single new VF from 2057 on except one.  Many of the improvements to 4th Generation VFs were technology backported from its descendants or put on them for evaluation for a future 5th Gen VF.  

 

Well, heh. I guess I stand corrected. I guess I just didn't want to make too many assumptions about the power rating of the purported VF-24 (which sounds like it might be over 9000 after all, heheh).

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Master Dex said:

Well, heh. I guess I stand corrected. I guess I just didn't want to make too many assumptions about the power rating of the purported VF-24 (which sounds like it might be over 9000 after all, heheh).

It'd be nice to finally get some specs for the YF-24/VF-24.

Between what we've been told about how all the other 5th Generation VFs were developed from heavily redacted versions of the YF-24 Evolution spec and how the YF-29 was made in an effort to exceed the YF-24, they do make it sound like a rather over-the-top performer.

[Sailor Arashi]

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

spread across three or four different publications like Mangazine, Mecha Press

Huh.  So I actually have read it, then.  Or at least the parts that were in Mecha Press.  I suppose those brain cells got re-purposed somewhere along the way 

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Sailor Arashi said:

Huh.  So I actually have read it, then.  Or at least the parts that were in Mecha Press.  I suppose those brain cells got re-purposed somewhere along the way 

I've got copies of all the pieces... as a translation it was pretty iffy and they tried to fill in gaps with a lot of wild-ass guesses.  Eventually I'll get 'round to publishing a full translation of the original Japanese articles promoting the OVA.

Right now I'm working on the old Sky Angels VF-1 Valkyrie tech manual.  This ancient version of the lore is just WEIRD.

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It was a bit odd to see them translate the term for the UN Government as "the Federation".  (Someone at Mangazine clearly had Gundam on the brain.)

Or Star Trek on the brain.

[Podtastic]

20 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

small fortune in captured Zentradi military hardware, that the UN Forces had to batten down their proverbial hatches for a bit while their forces were rebuilt and the technological advances wrung from the spoils of war started a second Overtechnology boom that led to a sweeping modernization of their equipment. 

Interesting.  Any specificity on the superior technologies those zentradi goodies contained?

 

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Interesting.  Any specificity on the superior technologies those zentradi goodies contained?

Among the improvements identified were enhancements to thermonuclear reaction power systems and actuator technology derived from the capture of a factory satellite specializing in battle suits.

All of the Macross II VFs are basically hybrids of the Nousjadeul-Ger and VF concept.  

[Seto Kaiba]

One of the more unusual touches in Macross II: Lovers Again's continuity was that the UN Forces were quite blatant in their application of Zentran and Meltran overtechnology.  Their new warship classes have acquired Zentradi and Meltrandi aesthetics, they use the space warfare tactics they've learned from their Zentradi and Meltrandi defectors, and their mecha have obvious Zentran and Meltran-inspired design touches.

The New UN Forces in the ongoing Macross timeline supposedly do, but you'd never know it outside of being told... except maybe on the YF-21/VF-22.

[Sailor Arashi]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The New UN Forces in the ongoing Macross timeline supposedly do, but you'd never know it outside of being told... except maybe on the YF-21/VF-22.

I always felt the Northampton class looked like it drew from Zentradi design elements.  Particularly the pointier renditions of the Thuverl-Salan.  At the very least when you see Northamptons in the "Zentradi fleet variant reskin" pics it looks like it could be an actual Zentradi ship as opposed to "New Macross With A Bad Rash".

 

Edited October 1, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, Sailor Arashi said:

I always felt the Northampton class looked like it drew from Zentradi design elements.  Particularly the pointier renditions of the Thuverl-Salan.  At the very least when you see Northamptons in the "Zentradi fleet variant reskin" pics it looks like it could be an actual Zentradi ship as opposed to "New Macross With A Bad Rash".

I don't believe the Northampton-class has ever been described as being inspired by, or based on, any Zentradi designs... but I can see where you're coming from there.

Like its contemporary, the Guantanamo-class stealth carrier, the Northampton-class stealth frigate is basically an example of structural purpose shaping taken to its logical extreme as a countermeasure for radar detection.  Fortunately space warships don't have to worry about aerodynamics, so they've neatly ducked the problems the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk had in doing the same (being unflyable without a computer-aided fly-by-wire system).

Since active stealth technology is once again ascendant in the late 2050s and 2060s, I'm inclined to wonder if the switch back to less passively stealthy warship designs is a product of that.

[Sildani]

I was reading Sketchley’s translation of the VF-19 Master File, and I came upon this in the FCS section. What the heck does it do: ANGIRAS: Anti Neumann-type Generalize Integrated Renormalization Aided System..?

Edited October 3, 2018 by Sildani

[Master Dex]

I have a theory but I know the facts guy will get to it soon enough heh. 

*lights the signal*

[Sailor Arashi]

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

I was reading Sketchley’s translation of the VF-19 Master File, and I came upon this in the FCS section. What the heck does it do: ANGIRAS: Anti Neumann-type Generalize Integrated Renormalization Aided System..?

 

1 hour ago, Master Dex said:

I have a theory but I know the facts guy will get to it soon enough heh. 

*lights the signal*

But I wanna take a stab at it!

Anti Neumann-type means it's a computer that doesn't utilize a standard fetch-and-execute architecture.  The 'Generalize Integrated Renormalization Aided' is technical overspeak for aid in turning general input into commands the systems can actually act upon.  My understanding is that the ANGIRAS is an intuitive computer system that translate broad pilot input into intricate machine performance.  Like, the pilot lights up a target in their pipper and fires.  The ANGIRAS translates that into the Valkyrie moving its arm and aligning the gunpod and pulling the trigger.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Sailor Arashi

[Seto Kaiba]

Quote

*lights the signal*

I've often wondered... high-powered searchlights like the one used for the Bat Signal can easily draw ~7kW in operation.  That could get expensive pretty fast.  Does Bruce Wayne covertly reimburse the Gotham P.D. for the cost of operating it?

 

2 hours ago, Sildani said:

I was reading Sketchley’s translation of the VF-19 Master File, and I came upon this in the FCS section. What the heck does it do: ANGIRAS: Anti Neumann-type Generalize Integrated Renormalization Aided System..?

Ironic that you'd notice the term in the VF-19's Master File book... the Shinsei Industry VF-19 was the first production VF that didn't use it.

ANGIRAS was the first-generation airframe control AI technology that was used on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation Variable Fighters.  It's basically the VF's equivalent of the learning computer that the titular Mobile Suit had in the original Gundam series... an AI-based control system that functions as the intermediary between the pilot and the mecha's various systems.¹  It's the computer running all the various systems in the VF's "glass cockpit":  interpreting control inputs and feedback commands for the digital fiber optic fly-by-wire system², managing sensor integration and prioritization for the cockpit displays, and overseeing all the various essential systems that would otherwise require a lot of the operator's attention so the pilot can focus on flying.

4th Generation VFs like the VF-19, VF-22, and VF-171 used the next-generation airframe control AI system that was introduced to replace ANGIRAS: ARIEL.³

5th Generation VFs are using an upgraded version of the ARIEL AI system called ARIEL II.

 

1. In this sense, "ANGIRAS" counts as a punny name or an obscure reference.  Angiras was a Vedic sage in Hinduism who was famed in scripture as, among other things, a mediator between men and the gods.
2. The oldest versions of the technical materials mention an AMBAC system as one of the flight control systems it oversees.  "Fly" might be a misleading term too, since the same control system (and physical controls) are used for maneuvers in the air and on the ground in the other modes as well.
3. This acronym has not been explained, AFAIK.  I suspect it is a reference to the character of Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, an all-seeing spirit of the air who is based on a spirit from renaissance demonology that is described as an Archon of the Winds, Spirit of the Air, and Wielder of Fire.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

A few side notes with respect to the ANGIRAS, ARIEL, and ARIEL II airframe integration management control systems... 

• ANGIRAS was originally described in the Macross Journal Extra: Sky Angels VF-1 Valkyrie Special Edition doujinshi by Masahiro Chiba.
• The first mention of ANGIRAS in official setting material was in Macross the Ride, in the official specs for Anthony Clemens' VF-11C Thunderbolt Interceptor.  Its airframe control AI was given as the ANGIRAS-GFW204, said to be a high-end version for the VF-11.
• As with modern control systems, there are individual versions of ANGIRAS, ARIEL, etc. for given models, variants, blocks, etc. of variable craft that customize its performance for that vehicle or add/remove functionality.  Only a few have been explicitly named, like the high-end ANGIRAS-GFW204 control AI for the VF-11 mentioned above, the ANGIRAS-AD3 control AI used by the VF-1X (and VF-4?), and the ARIEL II build codenamed "Brunhilde" that was used by the YF-25, VF-19ACTIVE, VF-25, and YF-30 with various adjustments.

[SMS007]

Hayate mentions ARIEL in Delta episode 6 / the opening sequence of Gekijō no Walküre when he launches for Ionideth.

[Sailor Arashi]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

3. This acronym has not been explained, AFAIK.  I suspect it is a reference to the character of Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, an all-seeing spirit of the air who is based on a spirit from renaissance demonology that is described as an Archon of the Winds, Spirit of the Air, and Wielder of Fire.

Do we have a date for the earliest mention of the ARIEL system?  Because it wouldn't surprise me if it was also a reference to The Little Mermaid, which had it's Japanese debut in 1991, right before Macross Plus would have gone into pre-production.   That the story revolves around the titular mermaid, Ariel, giving up her beautiful singing voice for a chance at love, it seems a perfect fit to be referenced in a Macross series.  Not that this would help explain what it means in-story, of course.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Do we have a date for the earliest mention of the ARIEL system?

15 June 2010, in Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur, AFAIK.

It was included in Macross the Ride's description of the VF-19EF Caliburn the following year.

 

1 hour ago, Sailor Arashi said:

Because it wouldn't surprise me if it was also a reference to The Little Mermaid, which had it's Japanese debut in 1991, right before Macross Plus would have gone into pre-production.

I'm fairly certain that's not it.  We're shown a paint scheme for the ARIEL system demonstrator, which includes a logo for the ARIEL system itself.  The logo is a sylph, which is the class of air spirits that the character of Ariel in The Tempest arguably belonged to.

(Ariel was, admittedly, referred to with male pronouns in The Tempest, even though the character was frequently played by women and the common image of a sylph for centuries has been that they're uniformly female.  I blame von Hohenheim.)

[AN/ALQ128]

How do the micro missiles acquire/track targets? Are they guided by the VF that launched them, or is there some really really tiny radar unit inside the nose cone of each one?