Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[pengbuzz]

Just now, Seto Kaiba said:

Every now and then they decide they really like something from those books and incorporate it into the official setting.

The Macross Chronicle sheets for the QF-3000 Ghost, SF-3A Lancer II, and some details for the ARMD-class are taken almost whole cloth from the original Macross tech manual book Sky Angels.

 

 

Well, if it saves them work and solves an issue, more power to them.

[deathzealot]

Honestly, I am just glad there is something to call the Stealth Cruiser in my stories now without my own madeup class name ruining things. Still wish we had some more information on the Windermere ships outside of what we little we got from the man himself Berger Stone during his little introduction to Xaos after he arrived. The only thing I got from that is the Windermere ship that is based on the Deneb Class actually has two main variants. One with turrets along the frontal hull and the second looking almost exactly like the regular Deneb Class just its hull looking like its partner variant.

[Seto Kaiba]

22 minutes ago, deathzealot said:

Honestly, I am just glad there is something to call the Stealth Cruiser in my stories now without my own madeup class name ruining things.

All in all, that kind of naming can be done relatively easily and made to look consistent...

Apart from the Macross, the pre-war UN Forces seemed to favor naming their space carriers after famous naval warships or classes of naval warship (e.g. Invincible, Enterprise) or after heads of state of the Unification Government (Harlan J. Niven, Robert A. Rhysling).  The space destroyers seem to be named after significant figures in the development of spaceflight technology (Oberth, Goddard, Tsiolkovsky).

After the First Space War, the New UN Forces seem to be quite fond of naming their ships after various prewar municipalities... often either historically significant in their own right or ones where classes of historically significant ship were named for them.  The Uraga-class is named for Uraga, a historical port town now a part of Yokosuka in Kanegawa.  Some of its sister ships are named for similar municipalities like Aberdeen or Keflavik.  The Guantanamo-class is named for the port town of the same name home to the infamous military base in Cuba, and several of its sister ships are also named for harbors like Maizuru, Mamoi, etc.  You get a couple odd birds in the mix that are seemingly named for famous people or places where famous battles occurred (or the ships named after them) like Vella Gulf, Vandegrift, or Belleau Wood.  The Northampton-class is presumably named for the US Navy's cruiser by the same name, and seems to have kind of an anything goes lack of a naming convention, with references to Bologna (the city), Glendale, Amagi, etc.

IMO, the logical port of call for naming something like the stealth cruiser would be other infamous classes of escort.  Since the stealth cruiser is a modified Northampton-class frame, it'd make sense to name it after the real world cruiser class that was also a modified Northampton-class... the Portland-class.

Spoiler

The Portland-class may have unfortunate implications for a Japanese audience, though... as the second and final Portland-class ship, USS Indianapolis, delivered components of the Little Boy atomic bomb to the USAF base on Tinian prior to the bomb being dropped on Japan.

Or the New Orleans-class, the successor to the Portland-class which brought the second-most-decorated warship in the US Navy in World War II (USS San Francisco).

Even Master File mostly sticks to that convention, with the occasional head of state popping up on the Uraga-class (e.g. CV-339 Bruno J. Global) and most being named for places like Altamira (VF-1 Vol.2), Grand Forks (VF-19), etc.

 

22 minutes ago, deathzealot said:

Still wish we had some more information on the Windermere ships outside of what we little we got from the man himself Berger Stone during his little introduction to Xaos after he arrived. The only thing I got from that is the Windermere ship that is based on the Deneb Class actually has two main variants. One with turrets along the frontal hull and the second looking almost exactly like the regular Deneb Class just its hull looking like its partner variant.

Yeah, it's kind of a big gap... though Macross Delta in general is pretty detail-sparse.

[deathzealot]

26 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Apart from the Macross, the pre-war UN Forces seemed to favor naming their space carriers after famous naval warships or classes of naval warship (e.g. Invincible, Enterprise) or after heads of state of the Unification Government (Harlan J. Niven, Robert A. Rhysling). 

I actually thought that made all sort of sense for UN Spacy Carriers to be named after older naval warships. I just wish they gave the ARMD-Class Enterprise a bit more combat history before destroying it. To allow it to prove itself to be known as the Enterprise. I didn't care they destroyed it I just wanted it to go out with a bit more finesse enough to earn it accolades alongside its namesakes. But that is just me. 

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The space destroyers seem to be named after significant figures in the development of spaceflight technology (Oberth, Goddard, Tsiolkovsky).

I actually really liked this idea and wished they kept it up. Though they would have perhaps had run out of names eventually, but still it was an interesting idea that paved the way for the UN Spacy to have its own naming conventions over that of the earlier blue water navies.

35 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Uraga-class is named for Uraga, a historical port town now a part of Yokosuka in Kanegawa.  Some of its sister ships are named for similar municipalities like Aberdeen or Keflavik.

That is interesting. I did not know what the Uraga Class had been named after till now.

36 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Guantanamo-class is named for the port town of the same name home to the infamous military base in Cuba, and several of its sister ships are also named for harbors like Maizuru, Mamoi, etc.  You get a couple odd birds in the mix that are seemingly named for famous people or places where famous battles occurred (or the ships named after them) like Vella Gulf, Vandegrift, or Belleau Wood. 

Though I did know this, funny I didn't connect that with the later Uraga Class. Also, I think the Guantanamo Class is going to have the same problem the Northampton Class and its variants have and that is too many ships to actually have a valid naming scheme for the entire class. I would think that the individual fleets or colonies would have their own schemes for their ships of those classes.

49 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Northampton-class is presumably named for the US Navy's cruiser by the same name, and seems to have kind of an anything goes lack of a naming convention, with references to Bologna (the city), Glendale, Amagi, etc.

Yeah. With over nine thousand ships produced the Northampton Class really can't have a normal naming scheme hence why I think it would have different fleets or colonies with their own naming schemes. Or they really are named with anything that makes sense.

52 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IMO, the logical port of call for naming something like the stealth cruiser would be other infamous classes of escort.  Since the stealth cruiser is a modified Northampton-class frame, it'd make sense to name it after the real world cruiser class that was also a modified Northampton-class... the Portland-class.

My own head canon name for the Stealth Cruiser was actually the Ontario Class before I learned that a fan-created book called them the Osaka and started to use that in my head canon now. I never really connected the name of the Northampton with the naval ship of the same name instead seeing it as a link to the town of Northampton so I decided to start naming the Stealth Cruiser after regional areas of countries, hence the Ontario Class.  So instead I started to use the Ontario Class for a variant of the Stealth Cruiser.

Honestly, I would prefer a non-American or non-Japanese name for the Stealth Cruiser since the vast majority of the named ships we do have are of those two different former nations. Shrug. Just a think I had.

59 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, it's kind of a big gap... though Macross Delta in general is pretty detail-sparse.

Yeah. Kind of pity for there is plenty of stuff in Delta I would love to explore a bit more. For example, I would also like more on the Enterprise Class as well. Like how many fighters can it carry and does it naturally carry a Macross Cannon or was that only a custom job?

[Bolt]

It will be interesting to see how Max's YF-29 compares to previous versions. Especially since Xaos isn't the wealthiest pmc..And i wonder which publication will have that info. Surely there will be a VF-31AX Master file..

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Bolt said:

It will be interesting to see how Max's YF-29 compares to previous versions. Especially since Xaos isn't the wealthiest pmc..And i wonder which publication will have that info. Surely there will be a VF-31AX Master file..

I'm still waiting for a VF-171 Nightmare Plus Master File... they've covered every major model from Shinsei/Stonewell/Bellcom (VF-0, VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-19, VF-25, VF-31) but only one major General Galaxy design (VF-22).

[slide]

On 10/29/2021 at 5:55 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm still waiting for a VF-171 Nightmare Plus Master File... they've covered every major model from Shinsei/Stonewell/Bellcom (VF-0, VF-1, VF-4, VF-11, VF-19, VF-25, VF-31) but only one major General Galaxy design (VF-22).

I expect they'll do the 17 and 171 in the same book... if they ever do, and I'll buy for sure.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, slide said:

I expect they'll do the 17 and 171 in the same book... if they ever do, and I'll buy for sure.

Probably, yeah... I just hope we don't have to wait through another few half-arsed books before we get it. 

The VF-4, VF-22, and VF-31 books were a conga line of disappointment and half-arsery. 

[NightmarePlus]

I'm surprised that they even made a VF-4 VFMF before a book on the 17/171 considering the latter of them actually appeared in the mainline shows.

[Seto Kaiba]

15 minutes ago, NightmarePlus said:

I'm surprised that they even made a VF-4 VFMF before a book on the 17/171 considering the latter of them actually appeared in the mainline shows.

I'm not.  As limited as the VF-4's appearances in official setting Macross works are, the VF-4 is a fan favorite design hailed even in-universe for its beauty.  

(That was a backhanded way of throwing a Macross II reference into the main timeline, acknowledging that the so well-regarded for its beauty that it's nicknamed the "Siren"... its name in the Macross II timeline.)

The VF-4 Master File was, IIRC, also the first one to be teased in another volume of Master File... several years before it actually came out.

[Gerli]

Anyone knows where the hangar/hangars of the Northampton are located? 

 

http://macross2.net/m3/macross7/northampton-stealthfrigate/northampton-stealthfrigate.gif

 

http://macross2.net/m3/macross7/northampton-stealthfrigate/northampton-stealthfrigate-lineart.gif

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by Gerli

[deathzealot]

1 minute ago, Gerli said:

Anyone knows where the hangar/hangars of the Northampton are located? 

 

http://macross2.net/m3/macross7/northampton-stealthfrigate/northampton-stealthfrigate.gif

 

http://macross2.net/m3/macross7/northampton-stealthfrigate/northampton-stealthfrigate-lineart.gif

 

 

 

It depends on the variant. For this M7 Version of the ship I think the fighters deploy via those blue painted hatches along the sides of the ship. Though for anything else you have to wait for @Seto Kaiba to come in.

[Gerli]

The one in Macross 30 has small runways in each side... but that Northampton is based on the Frontier ones, a modernized version of the frigate. I'm (trying) modeling the one from M7

 

[deathzealot]

6 minutes ago, Gerli said:

The one in Macross 30 has small runways in each side... but that Northampton is based on the Frontier ones, a modernized version of the frigate. I'm (trying) modeling the one from M7

 

Yes. That is the Gefion and is only a single ship so far upgraded in that way. The Macross Frontier/Macross Delta Northampton doesn't have the runways and such of the Gefion. That said from from what I remember about watching the Macross 7 episode with the Stargazer the fighters launch from those blue hatches as I mentioned. No idea on the interior of the ship for its hangars. I am sure one of the books will have some lineart of the hangars on a Northampton.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, the only times we're shown a regular Northampton-class launching fighters are in Macross 7 PLUS's episode "Spiritia Dreaming" as seen below...

 

... and during Operation Stargazer when the Stargazer launched VFs in reentry pods from its missile launchers like so:

 

 

 

Of course, the problem with the first one is that it's really hard to tell where the hell that hatch is, exactly.  It's clearly on the underside of the ship, rom the angle, and the panel line running down the middle of the match suggests that this hatch is along the ship's centerline.  That, combined with the fact that we can see the nacelles where the frigate's primary weapons are housed, suggests it's on the underside along the centerline of the ship between the sensor dome and the lip of the engine nozzle.

[Knight26]

Based on those screens, I would say that the main hangar is under the rear fantail, much like on Space BattleShip Yamato.

[Gerli]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's clearly on the underside of the ship, rom the angle, and the panel line running down the middle of the match suggests that this hatch is along the ship's centerline.  That, combined with the fact that we can see the nacelles where the frigate's primary weapons are housed, suggests it's on the underside along the centerline of the ship between the sensor dome and the lip of the engine nozzle.

Thanks! I will explore in which way I can model that.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... I've been doing a little reading and it looks like Hobby Japan are the first to offer some insights into the designs of Absolute Live!!!!!!.

Probably the most relevant statement it makes is that the YF-29 is still very much the top dog of VFs, referred to therein as "The Strongest Valkyrie".  Not unexpected, but worth at least mentioning given that someone was in here a while back with the unlikely hypothesis that the Kairos Plus was going to supplant it as the most powerful VF.

On that note, the VF-31AX Kairos Plus isn't exactly described in glowing terms.  It's referred to as a refurbished machine that applies spare parts from Xaos's VF-31 Custom Siegfried to the stock (trial production) VF-31A Kairos.  The only improvements mentioned are the obvious ones mentioned previously: that the railgun pods have been exchanged for a larger one with more power, that the beam gunpod has been exchanged for a larger and more powerful one, and that the fold quartz used in its fold wave system and fold amps is larger than in the Siegfried (presumably meaning better output there).  I'm guessing it probably has the same FF-3001/FC2 engines the Siegfrieds use, otherwise it'd be a downgrade rather than an upgrade.  (Apparently the remodeling of the aircraft made it incompatible with the older model FAST Pack as well.)

[Bolt]

Thanks for the info !

[RedWolf]

I find it an interesting coincidence the Sv-303 is designated 303 which could be a reference to the 303rd Polish RAF in WW2. Why is this significant? The surviving SV-51 and SV-52 were on Polish, Russian and Ukranian bunkers. Meaning whatever Anti-UN engineers and manufacturers that survived Space War 1 were likely Eastern European. Anti-UN affliates that would collaborate again to develop the Sv-262. Magdalena Zielonaska from Macross the Ride wears a 303rd badge as her ancestors fought in both WW2 and at the Anti-UN side during the First Unification War. Interestingly the Az-130A Panzerzorene and FBz-99G Saubergeran listed among among its manufacturers is Mikoyan. Mikoyan aerospace is the manufacturer of MiG Fighters particularly the MiG-29 which was also used by Anti-UN forces.

From the Japanese Wikipedia entry on the Sv-262 it is said a dozen years before 2067 these Anti-UN designers who were scattered to different manufacturers reunited to restart the development of the successor to the SV series. The SV series development was frozen right after the Unification War. My guess tons of material from the Bird Human Incident was already declassified including the SV-51.

It would make sense the Sv-154 Svärd is heavily based on the SV-51 as a direct successor. And as if the Cold War never ended these former Anti-UN engineers who probably has Russian pride in them try to one up the the VF series with each next Slayer Valkyrie. Thus the Sv-262 and Sv-303. 

I do wonder exactly when Epsilon Foundation bought Sv Works from General Galaxy.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

I find it an interesting coincidence the Sv-303 is designated 303 which could be a reference to the 303rd Polish RAF in WW2.

For a number of reasons, I doubt that's the intended connection...

There's no real connection between the SV Works and the Anti-Unification Alliance ideologically.  Also, thus far Kawamori has used German references for most of the enemy VFs in the franchise so far.  

The name of the Sv-303 is another Hindu mythological reference... though there is some confusion as to which mythological character the name is actually referencing.  It's either a reference to a premodern Hindi rigvedic deity by that name, to Surya once the many different solar deities all got conflated into a single being in modern Hinduism, or to Vivasvata, a descendant of either of them who in Hindu cosmology is the progenitor of humankind in the current iteration of the world.  It could also potentially just be the adjective for "brilliant" or "shining brightly".

(At least it's not as bad as the ones in Macross the Ride, where two obscure references were misspelled.)

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Why is this significant? The surviving SV-51 and SV-52 were on Polish, Russian and Ukranian bunkers. Meaning whatever Anti-UN engineers and manufacturers that survived Space War 1 were likely Eastern European.

Whether the SV-52 ever actually existed is an unresolved topic... depending on which publication you ask, it was either a planned successor to the SV-51 that never materialized due to the Anti-Unification Alliance falling apart in the wake of its self-destructively moronic bombing of St. Petersburg and the Mayan incident or that the airframes were at least partly built but never completed as intended due to the engine being unavailable.

It's worth remembering that, much like the VF-0 and VF-1, the SV-51's development was an international effort involving companies from many different regions including Russia, Germany, and Israel.  It's also worth remembering that the Alliance was not a governmental organization but a loose confederation of various anti-government groups, militias, and other violent partisans receiving the clandestine support of various regional governments even while the national governments of those regions supported unification.

The one known surviving developer - Alexi Kurakin - was Eastern European.  He was also apparently not particularly invested in the Alliance's political goals and defected to the UN Government shortly after the Mayan incident.  By the time the First Space War started, he was working for Stonewell and Bellcom on the VF-X-4.  He cofounded the General Galaxy corporation in the wake of the war.  (He, like most of the Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier team who worked on the SV-51, was busy being dead at the time the Sv-154 and Sv-262 were drafted.)

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Anti-UN affliates that would collaborate again to develop the Sv-262.

Not "Anti-UN affiliates"... just "people who once worked for companies that sold arms to the Anti-Unification Alliance under the table".  

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Magdalena Zielonaska from Macross the Ride wears a 303rd badge as her ancestors fought in both WW2 and at the Anti-UN side during the First Unification War.

Magdalena makes a few dubious claims... like that the heavily modified SV-51 she calls a SV-52 (but, under the hood, is mostly a VF-17) was her grandfather's aircraft that he flew during the First Space War, which doesn't quite tally with it being recovered from an underground bunker.

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

Interestingly the Az-130A Panzerzorene and FBz-99G Saubergeran listed among among its manufacturers is Mikoyan. Mikoyan aerospace is the manufacturer of MiG Fighters particularly the MiG-29 which was also used by Anti-UN forces.

Assuming, of course, that the pre-war and post-war Mikoyan are the same corporate entity...

Mikoyan collabored with General Galaxy on the design of the VAB-2 and VA-14, the UN Forces aircraft that were captured and reworked into the FBz-99 and Az-130 when the Varauta colony defense forces fell under the control of the Protodeviln.

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

From the Japanese Wikipedia entry on the Sv-262 it is said a dozen years before 2067 these Anti-UN designers who were scattered to different manufacturers reunited to restart the development of the successor to the SV series. The SV series development was frozen right after the Unification War. My guess tons of material from the Bird Human Incident was already declassified including the SV-51.

For the Sv-262 project specifically... the General Galaxy SV Works were established by Alexi Kurakin after the formation of General Galaxy and were supposedly active the whole time between then and now (2067).  The Sv-154 Svard is one of theirs, and was Windermere's main fighter in the 2050s apparently including Grammier's tenure as a pilot during the 2050-2051 Second Unification War, meaning it was developed in the 2040s.  Exactly how many models they've developed over the fifty or so years since their inception.

The Mayan incident itself was heavily classified, the VF-0 and SV-51 were simply obscure because most of their data and most of the aircraft produced were lost.

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

It would make sense the Sv-154 Svärd is heavily based on the SV-51 as a direct successor. And as if the Cold War never ended these former Anti-UN engineers who probably has Russian pride in them try to one up the the VF series with each next Slayer Valkyrie. Thus the Sv-262 and Sv-303. 

The SV Works Valkyrie designs are not direct successors to the Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier SV-51 in a direct sense.  They're more like successors to its design philosophy of "a variable fighter to fight variable fighters".  General Galaxy and SV Works founder Alexi Kurakin felt that there would eventually be a new era of VFs fighting VFs and created the SV Works inside the newly established General Galaxy to prepare for that eventuality.

Also, remember that many (2/3) of the developers of the SV-51 were not Russian and were from countries ideologically aligned AGAINST Russia during the Cold War: Germany and Israel.

(There's also not really an ideological link between the Anti-Unification Alliance forces of the early 2000s and the anti-government forces of the 2050s and beyond.  The groups who are causing trouble in the late 2050s and 2060s we've seen so far are mainly the remnants of the Earth Supremacist fascists who were ousted from power in 2051.)

 

3 hours ago, RedWolf said:

I do wonder exactly when Epsilon Foundation bought Sv Works from General Galaxy.

The Epsilon Foundation subsidiary Dian Cecht has been buying the rights to build and sell designs developed by General Galaxy's SV Works.

[pengbuzz]

Thinking about the "SV" series... I didn't realize that other variable fighters had become that much of an issue to the UNS/ NUNS? Or is this more of General Galaxy's behind the curtain dealings that resulted in abominations like the Macross Galaxy fleet's enslavement of their population?

Either way...really starting to not like GG.

[deathzealot]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Either way...really starting to not like GG.

Snort. The modern GG perhaps.

[pengbuzz]

9 minutes ago, deathzealot said:

Snort. The modern GG perhaps.

Let me put it this way: I think they took some heavy cues from Guld Goa Bowman's Brain Direct Imaging and Control systems for the YF-21. No one permits the development of that kind of tech without considering "other ways" it could be utilized, and not always in a "family friendly way" if you catch my meaning. If corporations are anything in that timeline like they are now, ascribing any sense of responsibility to them outside of the bare minimum they need to stay out of trouble is unwise. Doubly so when they feel they can skirt whatever oversight a government may have on them.

So no: I don't "snort" when it's only been about 27 years (not long for a company that experiences in artificial bodies, mind-altering cybernetic implants and "augmented reality"). The players in the game may come and go or change during the game, but GG's long game is not a recent thing (especially given that "Lady M" is purported to have had something to do with the SDF-2 Megaroad and the circumstances surrounding its' disappearance.

[deathzealot]

Sorry. But I always thought General Galaxy was started on a light note it was only later that it started to become what we see them being in say Frontier. Though now that you mention it yeah the whole BDI thing was a bit sketchy.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Thinking about the "SV" series... I didn't realize that other variable fighters had become that much of an issue to the UNS/ NUNS? Or is this more of General Galaxy's behind the curtain dealings that resulted in abominations like the Macross Galaxy fleet's enslavement of their population?

Either way...really starting to not like GG.

General Galaxy co-founder Alexi Kurakin was a bit of a pessimist... or maybe you'd call him a pragmatist.  

He had originally worked on the development of the Anti-Unification Alliance's SV-51 series variable fighter for the joint Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier design team and, after defecting to the UN Gov't, he foresaw the eventual return of VF-on-VF combat as humanity expanded into space and internal schisms formed.  So he set up the SV Works in General Galaxy to consider the then-unasked question of "how do you design a Variable Fighter to fight Variable Fighters?".  Kurakin was ultimately vindicated in his belief that internal schisms in the New UN Gov't would see VFs shooting at other VFs, both in the occasional acts of anti-government terrorism in the 2010s and 2020s and the gradual rise in internal tensions thanks to the New UN Gov't trying to micromanage its emigrant governments from Earth that resulted in a series of little brushfire conflicts that eventually blew up into the so-called Second Unification War in c.2050-2051.  The SV Works wasn't intended to produce weapons for anti-government forces, but because the company can't really exercise control over what a government that buys its products actually does with them they ended up being used for that purpose anyway thanks to black market deals and unscrupulous arms dealers.

The Slayer Valkyrie series were essentially a non-governmental competing brand for the finances of emigrant governments looking to upgrade their defenses.  Windermere IV used their hardware with no complaints from the New UN Forces or New UN Government prior to their War of Independence in 2060, because they found the Sv-154's performance more suited to their particular style or price point than other offerings.

It hasn't been discussed in detail yet, but it seems like General Galaxy has the Anaheim Electronics problem in that, as a megacorp, it's gotten so big and so spread out that it's no longer aware of absolutely everything going on under its roof.  Like how Anaheim Electronics was firmly in the Earth Federation's camp officially but the staff at Anaheim's facility over in the lunar city of Granada made up for former Zeonic and Zimmad personnel covertly provided support to various Neo Zeon movements and then cooked the books to avoid getting implicated.  Macross Galaxy may simply be General Galaxy's Granada... that place where the staff behave badly and cover up their misdeeds with doctored reporting.

General Galaxy sponsored the Macross Galaxy fleet's mission, but it's questionable whether the head office on Earth was actually aware of what the Galaxy executives wanted to accomplish with the products they were developing.  (Of course, you also have to remember that corporations are fundamentally amoral organizations... that being the reason the government regulations are often said to be written in blood.)  They may have realized that the situation on Galaxy was... unpleasant... but not the full scope of the ambitions of its leadership.  With everyone living in AR to make life more pleasant, it's possible they simply never got an honest report of how bad conditions were because everyone's perceptions were being edited to make them less so.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

General Galaxy co-founder Alexi Kurakin was a bit of a pessimist... or maybe you'd call him a pragmatist.  

He had originally worked on the development of the Anti-Unification Alliance's SV-51 series variable fighter for the joint Sukhoi-IAI-Dornier design team and, after defecting to the UN Gov't, he foresaw the eventual return of VF-on-VF combat as humanity expanded into space and internal schisms formed.  So he set up the SV Works in General Galaxy to consider the then-unasked question of "how do you design a Variable Fighter to fight Variable Fighters?".  Kurakin was ultimately vindicated in his belief that internal schisms in the New UN Gov't would see VFs shooting at other VFs, both in the occasional acts of anti-government terrorism in the 2010s and 2020s and the gradual rise in internal tensions thanks to the New UN Gov't trying to micromanage its emigrant governments from Earth that resulted in a series of little brushfire conflicts that eventually blew up into the so-called Second Unification War in c.2050-2051.  The SV Works wasn't intended to produce weapons for anti-government forces, but because the company can't really exercise control over what a government that buys its products actually does with them they ended up being used for that purpose anyway thanks to black market deals and unscrupulous arms dealers.

The Slayer Valkyrie series were essentially a non-governmental competing brand for the finances of emigrant governments looking to upgrade their defenses.  Windermere IV used their hardware with no complaints from the New UN Forces or New UN Government prior to their War of Independence in 2060, because they found the Sv-154's performance more suited to their particular style or price point than other offerings.

It hasn't been discussed in detail yet, but it seems like General Galaxy has the Anaheim Electronics problem in that, as a megacorp, it's gotten so big and so spread out that it's no longer aware of absolutely everything going on under its roof.  Like how Anaheim Electronics was firmly in the Earth Federation's camp officially but the staff at Anaheim's facility over in the lunar city of Granada made up for former Zeonic and Zimmad personnel covertly provided support to various Neo Zeon movements and then cooked the books to avoid getting implicated.  Macross Galaxy may simply be General Galaxy's Granada... that place where the staff behave badly and cover up their misdeeds with doctored reporting.

General Galaxy sponsored the Macross Galaxy fleet's mission, but it's questionable whether the head office on Earth was actually aware of what the Galaxy executives wanted to accomplish with the products they were developing.  (Of course, you also have to remember that corporations are fundamentally amoral organizations... that being the reason the government regulations are often said to be written in blood.)  They may have realized that the situation on Galaxy was... unpleasant... but not the full scope of the ambitions of its leadership.  With everyone living in AR to make life more pleasant, it's possible they simply never got an honest report of how bad conditions were because everyone's perceptions were being edited to make them less so.

Really appreciate your take on this. Meantime, would it be out of line to infer that the YF-21 project's brain-direct systems at least contributed to the Galaxy's activities in their fleet involving their peopel?

[Seto Kaiba]

11 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Really appreciate your take on this. Meantime, would it be out of line to infer that the YF-21 project's brain-direct systems at least contributed to the Galaxy's activities in their fleet involving their peopel?

Oh, very likely... esp. since Galaxy used a modified VF-22 as a testbed for their improved version of the Brain Direct Interface that eventually went into the VF-27.

(Until one got stolen by Fasces, anyway...)

[pengbuzz]

1 minute ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, very likely... esp. since Galaxy used a modified VF-22 as a testbed for their improved version of the Brain Direct Interface that eventually went into the VF-27.

(Until one got stolen by Fasces, anyway...)

Okay... so working on that then: basically, the BDI was intended for military use, but someone got the bright idea to see what other "applications" it could be used for, and introduced this into a fleet that was distant from any supervision other than those involved in implementing it? And they fed a line of guff to the home office to keep them happy, while turning the population of the fleet into their version of the Matrix?

[Seto Kaiba]

35 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Okay... so working on that then: basically, the BDI was intended for military use, but someone got the bright idea to see what other "applications" it could be used for, and introduced this into a fleet that was distant from any supervision other than those involved in implementing it? And they fed a line of guff to the home office to keep them happy, while turning the population of the fleet into their version of the Matrix?

According to Macross Chronicle, cybernetics research was one of the fields that benefitted immensely from the introduction of overtechnology.  The New UN Government heavily regulated that research and it applications to restrict its applications to medical care out of concern that it could be weaponized.  The YF-21's BDI system was supposedly a New UN Gov't-sanctioned non-invasive application of some of that research.

It sounds, at least in Chronicle, like the BDI was an outgrowth of research into cybernetic man-machine interfaces intended for benign purposes like linking cybernetic implants to biological nervous systems and giving people Ghost in the Shell-style networked brains.  What Macross Galaxy did thereafter seems to have been pursuing the main branch of that research to its full potential with a society-wide application of networked brains and cybernetic performance enhancement... and then exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities in that technology for their own ends without telling anyone they were making the kind of cybernetically-enhanced soldiers who were illegal under interstellar law.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

According to Macross Chronicle, cybernetics research was one of the fields that benefitted immensely from the introduction of overtechnology.  The New UN Government heavily regulated that research and it applications to restrict its applications to medical care out of concern that it could be weaponized.  The YF-21's BDI system was supposedly a New UN Gov't-sanctioned non-invasive application of some of that research.

It sounds, at least in Chronicle, like the BDI was an outgrowth of research into cybernetic man-machine interfaces intended for benign purposes like linking cybernetic implants to biological nervous systems and giving people Ghost in the Shell-style networked brains.  What Macross Galaxy did thereafter seems to have been pursuing the main branch of that research to its full potential with a society-wide application of networked brains and cybernetic performance enhancement... and then exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities in that technology for their own ends without telling anyone they were making the kind of cybernetically-enhanced soldiers who were illegal under interstellar law.

Okay...that makes sense. So they pretty much used the already-extant research, then just went that one extra step that nobody else would take and didn't tell anyone.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Okay...that makes sense. So they pretty much used the already-extant research, then just went that one extra step that nobody else would take and didn't tell anyone.

That one extra step that interstellar law said Thou Shalt Not Take... and then a couple more past that one.

It's interesting to note that we do see a number of cyborgs who seem to have fairly advanced augmentations without Galaxy's questionable additions.  Oscar Brauhitsch has a high performance artificial arm, Nicolas Berthier's got a fiber optic peripheral nervous system for boosted response times, Aisha Blanchett and Ushio Todo have networked brains, etc.  (I don't think it's explicitly stated that Mei Leeron is a cyborg, but she'd kind of have to be given that her signature VF is a VF-27.)

[deathzealot]

Also while I do not think he is a Cyborg, but didn't Colonel Millard Johnson have a leg prosthesis or two? 

[pengbuzz]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That one extra step that interstellar law said Thou Shalt Not Take... and then a couple more past that one.

It's interesting to note that we do see a number of cyborgs who seem to have fairly advanced augmentations without Galaxy's questionable additions.  Oscar Brauhitsch has a high performance artificial arm, Nicolas Berthier's got a fiber optic peripheral nervous system for boosted response times, Aisha Blanchett and Ushio Todo have networked brains, etc.  (I don't think it's explicitly stated that Mei Leeron is a cyborg, but she'd kind of have to be given that her signature VF is a VF-27.)

*Imagines Macross Galaxy staff playing hopscotch using pages from Unity Law book*

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, deathzealot said:

Also while I do not think he is a Cyborg, but didn't Colonel Millard Johnson have a leg prosthesis or two? 

Yeah, he has a prosthetic leg... though in Macross Plus it appears to be a conventional prosthesis when we see him remove and adjust it in his office.

 

4 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

*Imagines Macross Galaxy staff playing hopscotch using pages from Unity Law book*

I'd imagine they probably used their copy of the government codes to level a wobbly table or something.