slide

11 minutes ago, ErikElvis said:

Yeah I’ve never saw this plane I don’t think. I could see how it could be useful still under certain conditions.  I mean makes sense as a few hundred mph missleboat I guess flying under the radar. That’s if it’s that fast. I dunno. 

If Wikipedia and Soviet reports can be believed, it was:

Specifications

Crew: 15 (6 officers, 9 enlisted)
Capacity: 137 t (302,000 lb)
Length: 73.8 m (242 ft 2 in)
Wingspan: 44 m (144 ft 4 in)
Height: 19.2 m (63 ft 0 in)
Wing area: 550 m2 (5,900 sq ft)
Empty weight: 286,000 kg (630,522 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 380,000 kg (837,757 lb)
Powerplant: 8 × Kuznetsov NK-87 turbofans, 127.4 kN (28,600 lbf) thrust each

Performance

Maximum speed: 550 km/h (340 mph, 300 kn)
Cruise speed: 450 km/h (280 mph, 240 kn) at 2.5 m (8 ft)
Range: 2,000 km (1,200 mi, 1,100 nmi)
Service ceiling: 5 m (16 ft) in ground effect
Armament
Guns: two 23mm Pl-23 cannon in a twin tail turret and two 23mm Pl-23 cannon in a twin turret under forward missile tubes
Missiles: six launchers for P-270 Moskit Sunburn antiship missiles

2 hours ago, sketchley said:

Looking at that... and some of the support vehicles in Gundam don't seem so outrageous anymore.

It's crazy how real vehicles from the '60's and '70's look more "futuristic" than what we have now!

much like a typhoon, once you see the inside it's not so advanced-seeming...

I wonder if any other forms of collectables will suffer the crash that sports cards did in the 90's...

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Now if only the manufacturers would pick up on how important bigger storage has become, and start giving you enough space to install more than three or four big titles at once.

Or, alternatively, game developers re-discovering the lost art of optimization.

how big are the new CoD's on the consoles? the install is MONSTEROUS on PC...

The only way for the scalpers to be shuttered is by eliminating the whole idea of limited product runs, thereby rendering any attempt at selling one over MSRP ridiculous.

That's likely too big an ask, sadly.

7 hours ago, mcfly50 said:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/11/baby-yoda-eggs/amp

Guess some folks want to cancel baby yoda now. 

OMFG

47 minutes ago, danth said:

I have to wonder how the financials work on a set like this. I mean, it's out of nowhere. It's over $500. It's huge (largest set ever?). It's not Star Wars or part of some beloved brand.

Isn't this massively risky? People who buy architecture sets might not have room for this thing. Or want to spend the dough.

Maybe they just aren't going to make many of these? Maybe the reuse of the same pieces in the same colors makes it cheap enough to be super profitable regardless? Maybe it's a loss-leader marketing set and they don't really expect to sell a ton of them?

Basically...how do I forgive this seemingly haphazard release when they haven't put out a non-licensed Space them in 6 years.

Don't Lego architecture sets generally sell quite well?

57 minutes ago, Shadow said:

The F-14A arrives on the 18th. Looking forward to the VF-1 and VF-84 skins.

 

I'm going log into some MP servers on the 18th just to listen to the song of the TF30's people: "Compressor-stall Compressor-stall, oh and Compressor-stall"

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(A more ominous theory might be that they intended to starve the Protodeviln and then come back and reclaim the still-living bodies of the Evil series for use in rebuilding their civilization.)

THAT sounds like precisely the kind of idiot idea they would have.

I wonder if it was one side coming up with these megaweapons, and the other side having to clean up the inevitable mess...

2 hours ago, M'Kyuun said:

I think the idea of robot siblings is something that sounds cool to you as a kid, but after a few years and a bit of worldly wisdom, indeed sounds absurd.  It's even more so when you had characters in the original show mentioning the day they rolled off the assembly line. In that context, as a manufactured being, the idea of siblings becomes even further removed from practicality. I always just accepted it without too much questioning; it's sci-fi, and honestly, I don't care; it's been a part of the lore since the beginning and I never spent much time trying to reason it out in a show chock full of far greater impracticalities.

'Sister-ships' are a thing, so why not sibling-autonomous-machine-beings?

16 hours ago, borgified said:

Yup.. That is correct @slide plus that doesn't include the CBSA fees if you so get nabbed (which is a very high possibility). 

ok yea, $1K Canadian about right for the PF version, and it's just not worth it... that's why I bought one of the kit versions and am going to make a PF myself.

11 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I like it!

We need more purple valks!!

4 hours ago, borgified said:

So you guys are fine with shelling out another roughly $1K USD when Arcadia does a "TV SDF-1" (for those that can afford it). 

$1K in Canadian you mean?

And no, not unless it's in @Nyankodevice's league... and scale.

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Remember, they did leave a bio-technological weapon of mass destruction on Earth for the very specific goal of exterminating us should we repeat their mistakes and make it into space before settling our internal disputes.

They'd be pretty shocked to learn that not only did humanity NOT develop the way they'd hoped, but that we'd failed so hard we managed to cripple the weapon that was supposed to destroy us before it could do much of anything.

Said BioTech-WMD apparently included some sort of "redeeming quality" failsafe programming: Sarah's love for Shin stopped the thing in it's tracks [redirected the weapons away from him]... then she made it absorb the nukes with it's shield instead of just deflect them in a self-sacrificial attempt at saving the home and people she loved...

If it's fold system worked after that, there's a fair bet the bird-human still could have obliterated us [or at least the Carrier-group that fired on it] if it really wanted to by overloading said system. It was able to regenerate after being decapitated and fossilizing for thousands of years... it likely could have just done it again, and kept right-on genociding us.

Shin and Sarah proved we're not possessed by Battle, at least not like the Zentran [after all: "it is in battle one finds life"], though conflict is an inescapable part of life itself. Hell, even plant species have self-defense mechanisms.

For all we know, that damned probe may have even figured out that we Humans generally fight out of fear-reactions, not because we actually enjoy battle.

I don't think they fully expected us to "stop fighting" [even though those were the exact words the probe used], but they did hope we wouldn't like it.

Had Sarah not stopped from obliterating Shin [ala Nora and D.D.] that certainly would've been all the proof needed to wipe us out because of our irredeemable nature...

aside question:

Did any of the other Protoculture-descendants we met in Delta have a Bird-human [or similar "nip that mistake in the bud" WMDs] on their planets? Or did the Protoculture only leave one on Earth? If only Earth, why?

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Depending on the experiment, most of their stuff arguably went horribly right.  

Like, they created the Zentradi to be an unstoppable military force and were then subsequently disappointed to learn they could do nothing to stop them when they'd lost control of them during the war with the Supervision Army.

Or the Evil-series they designed to be civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction with infinite endurance ending up operating as civilization-ruining autonomous weapons of mass destruction of infinite endurance under someone else's control.

That's partly what I mean: In their own desperate and escalating attempts to settle their societal conflict by force, they quite successfully undertook a series of weapons programs that eventually threatened the entire universe, with seemingly little thought about what that really meant.

I'm assuming the following conversation probably took place:

Protoculture#1 "Hey, I created an unstoppable sentient-machine-of-death to use on our enemies!"

Pc#2 "What happens when it's done with our enemies, or some jerk gains control of it, or it just turns on us of it's own volition?"

Pc#1 "... Well, we'll have t--"

Pc#2 "You already released the  Kraken  Protodeviln, didn't you?"

Pc#1 ""

They made us in their image, and as you said, it worked out horribly right... we're not great at this whole 'peace' thing, but at least we aren't destroying a galaxy [or even the universe] because of our cultural differences. 

I'm forced to wonder if the Protoculture Schism may have been a complete over-reaction to the first major case of fundamental cultural discord within their society, and they simply didn't know how to handle it without progenerating entire species of slave-soldiers to do their bidding? [which was literally the least dangerous thing they did]

19 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

I dunno, I mean yeah they also left behind weapons of ultimate destruction anyone could accidentally trigger but the Forerunners were at least trying to give future life in the galaxy a chance, they just weren't around to decommission their stuff. The Ancients just littered doomsday devices everywhere and yeeted off to the next plane of existence to act like cosmic jerks.

 True.

4 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

some things are better left buried... Or detonated into a singularity just to be sure.

On that point: are Dimension-Eater weapons what Breetai was actually worried about at the beginning of Macross?

Or do we have a weapon in our hands that's beyond the arsenals of the Protoculture?

Are we actually capable of destroying the monstrosities they had to bury because even they couldn't destroy them?

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Sort of... if companies like that hadn't had any indigenous peoples to enslave and abuse.

Well... Macross Galaxy [or at least Grace O'Connor and the voices in her head] did try to mind-enslave all sentient life in the galaxy. 

We've already discussed Galaxy's treatment of those low on the societal/corporate ladder. 

Galaxy and Frontier were harvesting Vajra corpses for FoldQuartz...

"EIC in space" sounds about right.

On 11/11/2020 at 11:10 AM, pengbuzz said:

And Basara would have screamed at her "LISTEN TO MAH SONG!!!!!!"

14 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

True, but that's Basara's default reaction to anything with a pulse... and several noteworthy inanimate objects, like that mountain.

'bout the only thing he DIDN'T tell to listen to his song was that leaf he randomly ate that one time.

25 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

It was listening to the song of his stomach.

This made my morning!

4 hours ago, anubis20 said:

MG Full Amor Gundam Ver Ka is complete! This was a really tough build for me that got me out of my comfort zone. Since I took up painting I think the hardest kit i build was the Barbatos. This thing had a ton of parts and not only that but a bunch of tiny little pieces that I found tough to mount and paint. The joint covers I didn't mind as much as other people have mentioned. They did some time to put on as I was trying to make sure the seam on the plastic cover sleeve ended up on the sides rather then on the front. The colors might seem a little dark because I was aiming for the colors on the artwork from the manual.

That's some Great work!

The 'dark' colouring is great, it looks very intimidating in it's full-armour get-up.

I really like how the orange of the shields pops so intensely!

On 11/9/2020 at 3:38 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Macross the Ride does kind of paint a picture of Macross Galaxy as a place of rather surprising inequality and poverty.  Its government is a corporation, effectively making the fleet a subsidiary of General Galaxy and in a lot of ways a flying extralegal research and development facility.  The wealthy and powerful like the Galaxy executives have access to the fleet's best technology and lead very comfortable lives both in the virtual domain and in the flesh.  The fleet's lower level employees live in fairly uncomfortable or even harsh conditions that are made less unpleasant for them by implant-induced augmented reality.  Their perceptions are filtered and modified by the their implants in some full on Ghost in the Shell-levels of mind screw to do things like make an unused urban space appear to be a beautiful park or make the unpleasant synthetic foodstuffs taste delicious.  Unlike the peasants in France during the French Revolution, these folks don't really properly appreciate that they're living in poor conditions because of their implants.  Folks without implants, including a very high (compared to other fleets) number of people who've been left unemployed by the fleet's obsession with labor-saving automation, live in harsh conditions and fully appreciate the fact but don't really have a chance at overthrowing the government due to the superhuman abilities of the cyborg soldiers there and the mind control the fleet's executives wield against the populace.

 

General Galaxy sponsored the Macross Galaxy fleet, and the corporation that serves as the fleet's government is effectively a subsidiary of General Galaxy.

 

It's questionable how much direct control General Galaxy had over the Macross Galaxy fleet, but all in all I don't think so.

Macross Frontier's story had some fairly blunt points to make about corporate corruption and capitalism's influence on politics, with the two main emigrant fleets in the story both being manipulated, overtly or covertly, by corporate sponsors in a bid to locate and monopolize a precious new resource (fold quartz).

Weyland-Yutani used its massive influence to effectively become the government in reality if not in name, where General Galaxy seems uninterested in anything except the business of building things like ships, fighters, gravity control systems, and the like.  It was a group of other individuals who kind of hijacked the Macross Galaxy fleet and turned it into a fleet bent on galactic domination via mind control.

So the "East India Companies" are a better, if imperfect, corporate comparison [and not just for GG or SMS]... Fascinating, and believable as we've made horrifying mistakes like that before.

On 11/9/2020 at 4:07 AM, pengbuzz said:

It would certainly give a whole new meaning to the term "fold", now wouldn't it?

Indeed.

On that point, I was just thinking that the G-forces under discussion here will lead to a new term: G-LOC is "G-induced loss of consciousness", but considering the ability to snap into a 25G+ maneuver, the new term will be G-LOL for "G-induced loss of life"

On 11/9/2020 at 5:08 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Given that humanity is still a fractious, occasionally violent species that hasn't resolved its internal differences despite expanding across a fair portion of the galaxy in a terrifyingly short time and managed to do ridiculous things like defeat a Birdhuman with crude reaction weaponry, score a pyrrhic victory over a Zentradi main fleet, accidentally release and then defeat and befriend the Protodeviln, release the Fold Evil, or accidentally activate the Delta Wave System... I'd expect them to be a little horrified at our ignorance and a LOT horrified at our tendency to behave violently.  There'd probably be some very panicky Protoculture explaining as quickly as possible all the things humanity needs to stop doing right the hell now before they repeat the Protoculture's mistakes.

I would expect the Protoculture to be very wary of a young version of themselves: they know the mistakes they made, and have at least one report [if not a specimen couple in Sarah/Shin] proving that we're very similar to them.

I had to laugh at "Horrified at our ignorance"... Imagine their surprise in discovering that beings created in their own image are imperfect... must be a real slap-in-the-face to their ego.

Actually, I'd be very concerned if the Protoculture were surprised that yet another of their attempts at playing God failed to pan-out as they intended, they should be used to that by now

13 hours ago, jenius said:

Get ready for Hi Metal 3!

The line continues elsewhere, hopefully it's just an intermission while they go ham on Votoms and Dougram.

Would that be Hi-Metal R R ? 

18 minutes ago, Bolt said:

Lol. That's it

TBH I had completely forgotten about the "OMG Galaxy is under attack!" ship until you mentioned it, but I can totally see them being related

On 11/7/2020 at 6:47 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

As long as they're designed around those stresses it should be fine... if a pain in the butt to maintain because of the complexity.

You run into problems with greater than average frequency when you start exceeding the design tolerances of the airframe on a regular basis.

My fondest memory of an airshow is watching an F-14 do a max-G turn and the Lt.(JG) on the mic saying: "Now watch as the Tomcat performs a max-power sustained turn at 7 G's _{or 6.5 if the Skipper or Crew-chief are asking!!}"

Over-G'ing your airframe typically results in bends/curves in parts that shouldn't have them, which is a huge problem for a terrestrial fighter, let alone a transforming one!

Quote

Maybe Macross Galaxy's cyber-nobles are having another go at galactic domination, or selling arms to someone who fancies a go themselves.

So Galaxy has become Space-France? Interesting...

speaking of that, what's the link (if anything beyond the use of the word "Galaxy") between General Galaxy and Macross Galaxy?

Are GG the ones who own the fleet?

If so... are they making a play at becoming Macross' Weyland-Yutani?

kinda looks simliar, but I see a lot of differences... could be the same model, but a different mark, like the one from frontier is an A and that's a G or something...

11 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Not 30 seconds after I applied the spray primer to the model I knew I was screwed.  It started cracking like shattered glass. Looked kinda cool honestly, wished I taken a picture. I believe what happened is this.  When I airbrushed the Tamiya Primer with the lacquer thinner, it made the resin very cold. It does make the airbrush cold. Something in the thinner, feels cold on your skin as well, I'm not a chemist so I can't tell you why.

Was the black primer enamel?

Putting enamel over lacquer [a mistake I made in my youth] results in almost exactly what you've described... especially if the lacquer wasn't cured...

That sucks... hope you can fix it!

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Have heard that off and on, and really hoping it is a sequel and not a remake. In fact, I would love to see the original movie redone with CG that looks like 80's-era practical special effects!

THIS!!

50 minutes ago, TMBounty_Hunter said:

Hasegawa repops for January:

1/48 VF-1A/J TV http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc02/

1/48 weapons http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc04/

SDF-1 Movie http://www.hasegawa-model.co.jp/product/mc05/

Yay!

11 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Welcome to Macross World! Your work is absolutely stunning!!!

Agreed!

Scrolling through your catalogue is like walking through an art gallery made for me!