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  1. Today
  2. mikeszekely
    I don't understand the marketing. Freedom from Windows? But it still has Windows on it. Do they mean because it does Xbox Cloud streaming? I can game from the cloud on the regular ROG Ally/Ally X now. Nice to see that both versions now have two USB C ports, and the X version retains the extra RAM and larger battery of the current Ally X. The X version gets the Z2 Extreme, but the regular only gets the Z2 A? The screen seems the same as the current model, and I kind of hate the chonky new grips. Unless the Z2 is a HUGE upgrade I'll stick with my Ally X.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    Based on the remarks I've found by J.J. Abrams and Colin Trevorrow, Disney LucasFilm absolutely did have a plan for the sequel trilogy. It wasn't laid out in exhaustive detail, but they did have a framework laid out for how the story was supposed to progress from episode to episode. I think the actual problem is more along the lines of Disney LucasFilm losing confidence in the plan they'd put together after The Force Awakens and overcorrecting with The Last Jedi, before throwing up their hands in despair and trying to write The Rise of Skywalker by committee in an attempt to please everyone that ended up pleasing nobody. The bat-faced space masochists? Yeah, I can't see them trying to Disney-fy that.
  4. Goodman Models
    Deck construction.
  5. Thom
    That's why I wrote a bit of of Andor'esq spice. Mix it up a little but it doesn't need to be a carbon-copy. And making TFA a soft reboot could have worked, if TLJ had been good. But a major problem in the sequel trilogy is that there was no plan. No over-arching plot to connect the three movies with following directors allowed to do their own thing, re Johnson and the Great Chase with a side-hussle to a casino. That's why so much was jammed into TRoS. From what was seen in Ep9, The Last Jedi (Ep8) should have been about the New Republic struggling to overcome the initial attack with Rey and the others chasing down a mysterious threat that could deal the death blow to the headless NR. That mysterious threat being the return of Palpatine, which would then lead into a lighter storyline, not so weighed down with too many plot threads. And it should have been named Rise of Palpatine, with the dual meaning pertaining to Palpatine himself and his granddaughter, Rey. Also, Luke should not have died but stayed as Master to Rey, and Kylo should have stayed evil right to the end and they should have ditched the idiocy of the Knights of Ren (whomever that is) and they should have stayed with the Sith, and Kylo should have been Darth Caedus. And if they are smart, the next movie with Rey should have nothing to do with the Sith or an Imperial Remnant. They should get the Vong front and center.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Can I be candid with you for a moment here? Nobody is arguing that the animation of any Macross series, whether it be hand-drawn or computer aided, is going to be free from issues. There are going to be moments of off-model animation in hand-drawn work and 3D models meant for close-ups vs. distance shots are naturally going to have some discrepancies to save on rendering resources and because the small details will get lost at a distance anyway. Scale issues are going to happen either to make a scene more dramatic (like when Klan is arguing with Michel in his Battroid) or just because properly representing the size of something enormous is actually really hard to do accurately. These are just animation errors. That's all they're ever going to be. If it helps, you can excuse them as errors in the in-universe fictional production that Kawamori has occasionally claimed each series is. It's guaranteed to be that last one. The mechanical designers decide the sizes of the ships and robots and whatnot during the design process as part of the animation model reference that's provided to the show's key animators (and/or 3D modelers). It's meant to help the animators keep the sizes consistent. In the case of the Stargazer, the production staff had a cool idea and didn't realize the ship wasn't big enough for that to actually work in scale terms. The animators made what'd been storyboarded, and the whole thing made it out without anyone realizing the Stargazer just wasn't that big. Most people can't really picture an object 250m long in their head with any accuracy. It's just too big, and most people don't see a moving object THAT large in everyday life. It just registers as "enormous". For Macross 30, I guarantee you the developers did not care about rendering anything in true scale. The goal was to make things fit on the world map comfortably and look good doing it. They had in-story reasons for choosing a Northhampton-class as the basis for the Gefion, and yes it really is supposed to be small and harmless looking.
  7. davidwhangchoi
  8. Cheese3
    The gwazine! Base coat! Now filters etc
  9. Gab
    Love how it looks, but i already have 2 GFFM RX-78 variants, can't justify another.....side glances at all the Hot Toys Stormtrooper variants behind me.
  10. SebastianP
    The problem is that *aside from the official size statement* of 250 meters, the Northampton as depicted in the anime is decidedly not "small and unthreatening*. The actual animation shows that it's *ginormous*. The primary reference for the Northampton from the anime is Macross 7, episode 44, where we're treated to the spectacle of Operation Stargazer, where we're first shown bunch of scenes showing fighters being moved around inside the ship, five abreast with generous spacing in some cases. And then there's the launch sequence, which looks like this: That's a modified torpedo being launched out the side mounted torpedo tubes on the Stargazer. Note the relative size - the torpedo is much smaller than the opening it's coming out of. And here the torpedoes launched previously open up to reveal the fighters inside. The torpedoes have to be *at least* the diameter of the ship's wingspan. But this is the size of the Stargazer relative to a fighter if it is merely 250 meters long. If I want to fit a fighter through one of those torpedo tubes, the ship has to be much, much bigger. Like enormously so. (and before you say "this is just an fan made model", I made this by taking the turrets and outboard pod supports off of the game model for the 2059 Northampton, and checked it against the official lineart from the same angles, and it's got good enough proportions that I can at least use it for sanity checks like this.) Same thing really with the stern ramp launch of the VF-22 from the OVA segment. The ramp shown in the OVA is three times the size of the VF-22 that is launching from it. Where are you sticking that on the this frigate? To support the visuals in its debut anime, where it was a huge part of the focus of an entire episode, it would have to be almost the size of the Battle 7, maybe even larger. That torpedo tube launch sequence just *wrecks* the official size. Even the Gefion's 1000 meter size in game is smaller than the Stargazer has to be for the episode that it was the star of to work. Studio Nue very obviously changed their mind between making the animation reference where the Northampton was specified as 250 meters long; and the making of episode 44 where it was the featured ship; and then forgot that they had changed their mind afterwards. Or, they just didn't care what the size was as long as the scene looked cool. But anyway, the upshot is that Stargazer is flat out impossible without the ship being *substantially* larger than the official size statement. On the other hand... This scene shows that the Guantanamo works at its stated size of 350 meters. Shame that this is not the only, or even the most commonly used, 3D model of the ship though, because the one that *is* more commonly seen is this one: Which does *not* work at 350 meters, because someone didn't check the size of the hangar ports they were making. That small hangar opening where the launch lane indicators are coming from on the starboard side is about a third of the size required for a VF to launch out of if the ship is 350 meters (I know this because the game model is based very closely on this to the point of having the same textures, that opening is only 6.6 meters long and about 4 meters wide - not even big enough for a Ghost). Edit: Another SAN check for the design is the bridge line art: With a 250 meter long Northampton model, that bridge is only 2.3 meters wide *over the glass*, and only about four and a half meters tall. Certainly not tall enough for three decks worth of operators and a big ass sensor cluster underneath. Just the top platform has to be around four meters wide based on the standing figure's height relative to the width of the deck, which means the ship is at least double the size stated...
  11. Yesterday
  12. David Hingtgen
    I compared Jetfire to an early Roy, and I see what you mean----a real one has this edge smooth and rounded, while Jetfire has it quite sharp and squared off: I do not think that is whole story though--your backplate looseness theory also seems to play a role----Jetfire's clip fits onto Roy pretty well, despite the sharp edge. I think it's the double-whammy of the sharp edge AND the backplate having issues, that combine to make attaching the booster-clip such a struggle.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    To be frank, I doubt that's it. Ukyo Kodachi seems to have wanted to make the Gefion the smallest possible ship he could while developing the scenario for Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy. Not only to justify why Leon, who had only come to Uroboros to make a delivery, needed to be pressed into service as the Gefion's only regular fighter pilot and replacement test pilot for the YF-30 Chronos but also why Havamal and the Bandits don't see SMS as a real threat. He also seems to have wanted it to be a commonplace ship class so that it wouldn't stand out as home to something unconventional the way a Mother Raven-type or Valhalla III-type special forces warship might. The Northampton-class seems to have fit the bill for the story because of its sheer ubiquity, its status as a cannon fodder ship, and it being known to carry a single platoon of VFs under normal circumstances since that's all that ever launches from it for most of the game. It IS large enough relative to many modern STOVL carriers in service today that even an entire squadron being aboard would not be implausible. (Though when the game finally does show large numbers of fighters being launched for the final offensive, SMS is not using the Gefion anymore... they're operating from the Macross Quarter.) Please do remember this is a game and there are some Acceptable Breaks from Reality in place esp. in terms of where all the VFs you unlock are (or whether they exist at all in the context of the story). The only thing wrong with the size of the Gefion is that the hangar gates need to be bigger to accommodate the full wingspan of something like a VF-25. That's not exactly a deal-breaker for gameplay though, so it's not surprising they went with something that looked nice. The whole point of having the Gefion be a modified Northampton-class is making her small and unthreatening. The larger Guantanamo-class stealth carrier is a fair bit bigger and projects more power because it's typically home to 2-3 entire squadrons rather than a single platoon or two in a pinch. It's not about the beam gun turrets, it's about the size of a ship's airwing. As I said, there's nothing eyebrow-raising about Leon waking up after being shot down in the prologue to find he's the only pilot aboard a tiny escort ship that isn't normally home to more than 2-3 pilots at most. It's immediately eyebrow-raising to be the only pilot on a dedicated carrier that's normally home to almost fifty pilots.
  14. Chronocidal
    I'd drop a few significant organ donations on the table if it would get them to produce series based on some of the X-Wing books. Not sure I'd vote for the Stackpole books and the Corran Horn Show, but Allston's Wraith Squadron books always felt like the peak of the EU for me, for some of the same reasons Andor is being praised. Believable, funny, and above all vulnerable characters, dealing with the complications of war and terrorism from both sides, and some of the best treatment I think the force has gotten in any of the EU, due to how subtle it was. The settings and details of that particular series are flexible enough that they could probably wedge them into the new canon as is. Also, I honestly just want an excuse to commit "Yub Yub, Commander" to the canon.
  15. Nimilo533
    Nimilo533 joined the community
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Maybe... but, then again, we're talking about a clash of flavors there. Andor's brand of grounded, realistic, and mature storytelling with its focus on moral ambiguity and the struggles of regular people won't mesh well with the more fantastical style and larger-than-life characters and caricatures used in more conventional Star Wars media. Consider, if you will, that LucasFilm intended The Force Awakens to be a literal and maximally accessible fresh start for Star Wars rather than a simple sequel. The film being a de facto soft reboot of Star Wars was in aid of that goal. It was meant to be appealing and accessible to a new generation of viewers who may not have seen any of Star Wars before or at least may not have found their parents and grandparents old movies all that interesting. Hiring J.J. Abrams to helm it surely sounded like good business in the abstract since he was a rising star who had recently done a soft reboot of another major sci-fi franchise... even if they apparently missed that his attempt at a soft reboot of the Star Trek franchise was widely panned by fans and underperformed at the box office. The mess that ensued after the first movie's lukewarm reception was partly down to J.J. Abrams's tendency to save all the reveals and explanations for the third act (acceptable in a single film, but a terrible idea in a trilogy) and partly because the studio saw all of the social media hot takes and generally mediocre audience response, panicked, and overcorrected in the next movie instead of sticking to what they'd planned out. Disaster ensued. Yeah, that's not happening. Disney LucasFilm's not going to broom the sequel trilogy they spent so much money and tried to rebuild the brand around. I can see two probable outcomes from Disney LucasFilm in the event that the New Jedi Order movie underperforms, depending on how badly it underperforms. If it does so-so but not great, LucasFilm will probably have Rey succumb to the usual Jedi mentor occupational hazard and whoever's the most popular secondary character with fans replaces her as the protagonist for the rest of the New Jedi Order storyline. If the film is a bomb, LucasFilm will can the rest of their plans for New Jedi Order, retire the rest of Rey's storyline to the EU, and try to move on from the sequel trilogy era. We'll see... they've got some far-past sequel in development called Dawn of the Jedi, which is allegedly set 25,000 years in the past.
  17. sh9000
  18. sh9000
    https://store.crunchyroll.com/products/macross-plus-movie-ova-blu-ray-ultimate-edition-crunchyroll-exclusive-5037899090312.html
  19. Thom
    Which is a similar problem with the sequel trilogy. Such great actors reduced to wooden performances and simplistic dialogue. "I hate sand." "Somehow Palpatine returned." I'd say though, that the 'simplicity' of the fairy tale could do well with a bit of Andor'esq spice, especially considering the general love Andor is receiving. Considering ANH as a beginning, then showing such an emotional growth and complexity in later movies/shows would be a good thing. TFA didn't do that. It rebooted the story from the 'beginning' rather than really continuing anything. If the next two had grown from it with a concise and planned storyline rather than the willy-nilly-sillyness that JJ/Kennedy went for, the discussions would be entirely different. Such as now, we're expecting them to to just reboot Luke's story post RoTJ, only with Rey now. That's why I'm a proponent of just refilming 7 thru 9 entirely, even knowing that is an impossibility. If I had my druthers, they'd recast Luke, Leia and Han and start filming the EU, even though that mess also has its faults. With neither of that happening, the next trilogy centering on Rey needs to shift entirely from what came before, and following the more dramatic and well-paced vein of Andor is by far the better option. As to newer stories, I really hope the series focusing on the High Republic era, something far too early to be connected, does really well. And that they finally learn from last few shows, the good and the bad.
  20. treatment
    https://twitter.com/ARCADIA_Co_Ltd/status/1931632015302066329 web-translated:
  21. Scyla
    Is the Gamecube already considered retro gaming? Probably the last Gamecube game I am going to buy for the collection.
  22. F-ZeroOne
    Thanks, it sounds like I may have over-reacted a tad but didn't want anyone caught unawares if possible.
  23. Sokeijon
    My new Hi-Metal R collection.
  24. Apok451
    Well, they came back and said I had to pay shipping because of tariffs. $14 for shipping from China isn’t so bad. So hopefully I’ll have my not “jetfire” soon.
  25. TangledThorns
    Hopefully its good as THE EXPANSE was one of my favorite sci-fi series in the past ten years.
  26. grogall
    True! And Hobby JAPAN just released a photo shoot of Bandai's HG Turbo Custom, with some nice weathering.
  27. Duke Togo
    He had a stroke several years ago.
  28. SebastianP
    And what I'm saying is that *Studio Nue* did not care about making anything in true scale. The whole issue goes back to the Stargazer, which *should never have been a Northampton*, because there already were two carriers that were very under-utilized in the show. The precedent of the Stargazer I think why anyone even looked at the Northampton as a basis for the Gefion in the first place. I can buy most of the rest of your arguments, except that "the larger carriers would have been too dominant" - a Guantanamo, especially the true size version that they used for the cool launch shots in the Frontier opening battle, would have been smaller by some significant margin than they ended up making the Gefion, and been visually less threatening because of the lack of big guns, and would have had room for Aisha's VF collection and any other cast members, *and* been justified in that a VF development project obviously needs a carrier of some sort if it's not going to be land-based.
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