Killer Robot

It's important to note that the GAU-8 on the A-10 is designed to kill tanks by hitting their much weaker top and side armor rather than on their front plate, and even then relies on its enormous rate of fire to cluster shots in small areas. It appears that OT mecha use armor, energy converting or otherwise, that is more comparable to modern tank front armor or beyond, and so guns designed against them would reasonably need greater mass, greater muzzle velocity, or other special characteristics. It's like how the move to iron and steel armoring in steam era naval combat required whole new classes of weaponry to defeat. As for Hikaru against that first Regult, his shots were all over the place: if Valkyrie gunpods similarly rely on clustered fire to punch through armor, no wonder it didn't blow up halfway through the clip. A trained pilot learns to hold the gun steady.

Or to put it another way, if a VF is designed to handle several times the thrust that any real fighter its size can without burning up or shaking apart, I don't consider handling several times the firepower to be too much of a stretch. As for the weight, a lot of later VFs are considerably lighter than modern fighters of comparable size. At least they don't have styrofoam densities and commonly end up sinking like stones in water like some series I've seen though, so I guess that's okay.

She's much of who I meant by "visibly large and muscular Zentradi." As an almost comically large and strong looking woman it's not too surprising she shows it off now and then. When I see Milia or Elmo shove open a door some human twice their size couldn't budge, I'll think it means something. Until then, it sounds like Macross Chronicle hasn't mentioned any powers of the sort.

Mylene wasn't getting top billing in her own act, more or less. She had her own songs and all, but she wasn't the focus of the concert unless Basara didn't show. It's like if Ranka didn't actually get out of Sheryl's shadow.

Megaroad 13 captain: "It's not bad, but I want some HANDS on the thing! Enormous steel fists!!" Engineer: "Um, sure. You know, the balance is going to be shot if we don't scale up some of the rest." Captain: *waves hand* "Do whatever else you need. I just want to look at the thing and know it could strangle a destroid easy." Engineer: "But sir, destroids don't actually br..." Captain: "You heard me, get to work!"

I've heard that said before: what I'm asking is if that's ever clearly stated as more than fan speculation. The vacuum thing I grant, but strength, general toughness, and acceleration tolerance? I can't recall a Zentradi miclone ever being demonstrated as especially strong when it wasn't someone visibly large and muscular, nor can I think of any cases of showing greater tolerance for acceleration: Guld's tearing himself apart seemed pretty clearly to be a "grit and focus" thing in sharp contrast to making a point of his being physically superhuman. I again grant the little manga aside of Klan being unusually strong, but it seemed to be just a casual excuse for comic violence in the same way that the animated version had Michel playing windmill with her for a similar joke. (The manga also made a similar aside about the VF-1 still being competitive with the latest and greatest fighters: I didn't take that too literally either.)

They were cultured Zentradi under NUNS authority. Just that according to Klan they were of a branch of the Zentradi that had consented late and grudgingly to UN authority and human culture, and were somewhat of a haven for restive elements. The concert was thus supposed to keep them happy and friendly, and Sheryl's illness was planned pretext for it to turn into a hostage situation which in turn was supposed to go tragically wrong. As for the Dimension Eater, the apparent idea was that it would spark the deaths of a military division and a galaxy-famous celebrity, and leave a hive of angry Vajra following the fold trail to wreak havoc on Frontier. With her conspirators among the Zentradi killed as well, it would leave the appearance that it all was the fault of those mindless bugs. The big picture for her was to convince humanity that all-out war against the Vajra was inevitable, and could only be won by uniting under the fold quartz network that she would personally control. The losses of a colony fleet, a military division, and a household name were all part of getting all of humanity frightened and up in arms.

I was going to post that one too, but was afraid due to the risque content. Also amused by the multiple bandages. Poor Alto: whoever he picks, he's doing the cooking.

Has there really been any clear indication that Zentradi, at least in miclone form, are any tougher or more resilient than humans? All I can think of is the aside in the Frontier manga that little Klan had adultlike strength, and I'm not sure how serious I took that. Also Ranka's somewhat improved resistance to vacuum, but that's different than withstanding acceleration. I have heard in the past that some mecha/vehicles were more popular with Zentradi pilots, but I gathered that it was because they handle similarly to Zentradi mecha, and so were more familiar to Zentradi who had begun in the uncultured fleets or just had been full-sized pilots then later went miclone. Meaning it was that they were easier to adjust to from past training and experience, rather than being better suited to unique features of Zentradi physiology.

I think RedWolf has it right. Gubaba, thanks for the work you did and sorry that someone went against your request, but in the case of scanned/edited/posted book pages it's probably more realistic and consistent to add credits as a separate page or unobtrusive signature marking than it then ask the credits be distributed with the content is to expect no one else to want to copy and post it in turn. Especially when it's good work.

Sure, love triangle with a lesbian, why not? My main misgiving is that for all occasional claims otherwise, anime is not in general a medium that has gay/ lesbian/bisexual characters that aren't either comic stereotypes or cheap titillation for the excitable teenage demographic, and serious portrayal of them and the relationship might suffer as a result. I like the idea of showing a major character that is a full-blooded, culture-raised Zentradi of either sex though. That's something we only got a hint of with Klan, while the whole lolicon transformation thing ended up dominating her screentime. On the other hand, I'll have to vote against the idea of two girls where one is Zentradi and the other is half. If there's going to be a major female character that's a fighter pilot, I want her to be human for a change. Letting a woman in a cockpit without using alien blood to explain it is pretty rare so far and I'd like to see more of it.

I could believe that would be the case, but it's rather stretched by the fleets becoming apparently increasingly independent, less aware of what each other are doing, making their own significantly different choices for laws and military outfitting. The big tipping point though is that not only the President but the next in line of succession were on that same remote fleet: given at least three entire fleets have been lost in the past(not counting Galaxy) it seems you wouldn't want your eggs in one basket.

I go with Futurama here: "That's why scientists increased the speed of light in 2208."

I don't follow closely enough to know what's canon now, but I do recall that at least early on the EU writers were given a package of West End Games sourcebooks to use as their reference material since first party materials were sparse and Lucas wasn't interested in answering a billion little questions. With that in mind, it stands to reason that any speculation/deviations in those games would have been passed on to the novels.

That's more or less my guess: even going with the out of setting justification for the VF-171, it wasn't that SK thought the VF-19 was too capable for a main production valk, but that it looked too much like a hero mech; also the VF-25/27 are so far ahead of the 2040s designs that the VF-171 doesn't need to be another VF-11 to be the "old model" storywise. I expect the VF-19 has a distinct edge over the VF-171 for atmospheric combat and overall flexibility, and probably sees a lot wider use in colonies/fleets/installations where that flexibility is worth the price premium, but as a standard fleet escort fighter I don't imagine it is so big a difference.

Not to say Star Wars hasn't had plenty of bad plot devices and overthought details since the EU books started coming out, but most of the bad writing in those goes into weird lightsabers, Force stuff, and so on rather than the FTL details.

First I'd heard that, but makes sense. Mostly, I knew there had to be some whimsical explanation for it, since it's so "kid transforming a toy halfway" only canon.

I'm going for gerwalk. It's not because of cool looks or effective function. It's because one look at it and I just know that when Kawamori & Co. were doing the initial modeling someone transformed it halfway and said, "And if you do this, it turns into half plane, half robot!" Then the other answered, "Oh, that's cool, we should use that!" Or maybe it was "Quit fooling around, that would never work!", but either way we see how it turned out.

So what you're saying is that on the VF-171, heated seats and wood paneling are for squadron leaders only?

Irish coffee is coffee with Irish whiskey specifically, and a thick layer of cream floated on the top rather than mixed in. You can also just add Irish cream to coffee, which isn't exactly the same since it mixes things differently, but it's easier to make. As for comparisons with Turkish coffee, which is better depends partly on how many you've had.

Since I think it would go outside the scope of the Newbie thread, I'm bumping my reply to here. The hard part of the question is what "downgraded" means. If it means "absolutely everything across the board" or if it means "the T-W ratio specifically", I can agree, otherwise it gets pretty murky. Looking at what the VF-17 has, what the VF-171 is seen to have, and the intended role of the VF-171, some guesses can be made. Removed: Passive stealth features - The 171 lacks much its older sibling's strong F-117 cues, suggesting that it's not a stealth-focused design, or at most uses the post Super Nova active stealth systems. The fact that it's a mainline space fighter rather than a special operations fighter supports this. It's an obvious cost-cutting measure. Here's the trick though: since stealthing a design has strong potential costs in aerodynamics(for atmospheric use at least), effective engine performance, and extra weight/structure needed for stealthed covers for weapons systems, this means taking all this off not only saves money, but gives a chance to either improve straight-up combat performance or to cut costs further without actually impacting performance. Reduced: Armor - The VF-17 was a big, tough fighter. The VF-171 appears to be relatively lighter and more slender especially in battloid mode. With the addition of new PPB technology as introduced in the VF-19, the options were cutting armor, or else turning it into a total tank of a fighter through layered defense. For a mainline mass production fighter this was a no-brainer: trim things down, relying on the new tech to keep the 171 from being too vulnerable. Cutting armor cuts costs, but it also cuts weight. Again, this either increases your T-W if the engines are kept the same, or else allows reducing engine power without impacting net performance. Reduced: weapons load? - I'd have to go through to look carefully, but does the VF-171 have the amount of onboard standard weaponry the 17 does? As many onboard lasers, the same internal missile load? For something meant as a regular front line fighter trimming the bells and whistles would cut costs - reduce total firepower too, but the 17 seemed pretty heavily gunned so a bit less still wouldn't be bad for something operating in full squadrons rather than small special ops units. Reduced: engine capacity? - Here's one that's just too dependent on the rest for me to say anything. If the other changes reduced weight or power draw, there was a lot of headroom to reduce engine power without impacting flight performance significantly and the designers might well have taken it. But on the other hand, if the reason the 17 was so expensive and hard to mass produce was more in the other systems than the power plant, it might have been tempting to not touch that so much. In the end, what a "downgraded" VF-17 means could be a lot of things. Most certainly it means in the VF-17s role as a special operations fighter: a stealthy and heavily armed powerhouse designed for small, elite units on special missions. A 171 that trimmed those features as well as the powerplant, keeping parity in flight performance would certainly be a cheaper downgrade. One that trimmed those features while keeping the same engine output on a lighter and more aerodynamic platform would also be a "downgrade" in terms of its overall capabilities and cost, but actually be an improvement in the narrower role of mainline fighter. In either case, I agree that the VF-171 isn't going to be flying rings around the VF-19 and VF-22, especially not in their own arenas of aerospace combat and special operations, and that the latter two fighters still have a strong role as of 2059. I also agree that the truth will have to wait for numbers. I just don't see any reason that flight performance, and T-W in particular, in the VF-171 would be any less than the VF-17: the things that most surely got cut weren't what made it fly better, they're what made it the flying ninja tank of its generation.

I suddenly recall this old Eddie Izzard routine talking about cool: How it used to be cool holding a toothpick in the corner of your mouth. But then, when you have two toothpicks, one in each corner of your mouth, it's somehow not twice as cool.

Make it Sheryl. She'll crash her own valkyrie, so you don't have to risk being discovered sabotaging anything. Even better, no risk of a jealous Max when you get back.

The episode 15 recap mentioned it had been a several month tour, and in her conversations with Alto in episodes 5 and 6(and also in her official blog, if you want to count that), Sheryl said she'd been to a number of other fleets during the tour, and that she was finally going to see Galaxy again for the first time since the tour began. It seemed pretty clear she hadn't been home in a good while. It's possible however that the particular vessel she was on wasn't the one she had been on for the whole tour: even a large production like her own might often be better off chartering space in whatever vessel is going that way rather than in hiring one for the whole trip, and if that's the case this could have been a short to midrange starliner that was going to Galaxy by way of Frontier anyway. Further, it appears that long fold journeys, especially where travel is difficult, seem to manifest via time dilation: it might be a two week journey by terms of the outside world, but for the travellers it is a matter of hours. This would make long distance travel easier from a passenger perspective since you wouldn't need a ship you actually have to live on long, just there's the fact that the round trip will have days or months pass for everyone else. All in all though, it's hard to be sure what the difficulty is of long-distance travel in the mid 21st century Macross universe. I get the impression that long distance passenger travel is doable in reasonable time and expense but not a casual thing, given Basara's travels and Sheryl's tour. By contrast a colony fleet takes years to cross the galaxy, but largely because it is blazing much of its own trail, and is hauling millions of people and all the materials they need to survive indefinitely and to settle a new world.

I know it's off topic, but I have to ask.... Am I the only person who clicked on this topic title half expecting some sort of bizarre Russian reversal joke?