David Hingtgen

It's all about the G's. Herc's tend not to hit 9G's very often. And that's why airliners last the longest of all, they rarely hit 2. Early Hornets can use up their airframe in 4,000 hrs.

F-35 will be "overall" better than the Harrier, mainly due to range. Harrier has sh*t for range, and sh*t for payload, though payload has gone up as the plane's evolved. While the F-35 doesn't have much payload, it's more than a Harrier's. Mainly due to engine power. F-35's got twice the power of a Harrier--and it's all for fuel and weapons, the plane itself isn't *that* much larger. The thing is---the F-35 will be best at replacing what the Harrier does least well. It's like replacing the Harrier with an F-16--much more useful for most things overall, but not all that great at doing what the Harrier does best. Harrier is REALLY in it's element for CAS. Slow, accurate, AGM-65E's, gunpods. It is NOT supposed to go after tanks, troops, and most everything else. It's a purely USMC plane, pretty much purely for USMC troop support. F-35 isn't that. Everyone says "it'll be stealthy and fast and manueverable and have auto-laser-smart everything". Yeah well, that's what F/A-22's are for. Harriers are for forward STOVL bases about right behind the front lines, ready to take out whatever the Marines need taken out within 5 mins. They are, honestly, designed to maul and decimate moving enemy troops up close and personal. A-10's and Harrier's rock at it. (Which is why everybody says the A-10's should go to the Marines) Slow, with powerful guns and Mavericks. F-35's are none of the above. Harriers do of course "blow stuff up" but that's not really their element, more of a "if they're in the right place at the right time, they can do it as well as anything else". However--they want the F-35 to replace just about every plane in the world except other stealths and strategic bombers. And it can't. Sigh---the F-111 fiasco (aka McNamara's folly) comes to mind in an instant to all aviation people when talking about commonality, ESPECIALLY across services. But politicians never remember, they only hear "1 plane to do everything costs less than 2 specialized". I'd laugh my a** off if the F-35 totally sucked at everything and we had to make F-16 Block 60's instead. Beltane70---8,000 hours is HIGH for a fighter. Attack planes are exposed to less severe G's, but still I doubt they'd hit 10,000hrs. It's hours FLYING, not simply hours of existence. Most commercial airliners won't hit 80,000 hrs before scrapping, even 25 year old ones flying for UAL 24/7.

Opus---sure it's 8,000 hours, not 80,000? 80,000 is beyond insanely high for anything like a strike aircraft. Lots of military planes "get old" at 5-10 thousand. Anyways----they've pretty much accepted that the F-35 will need a gunpod to make it useful in many situations, using up one of its weapon bays. Harrier legacy, but at least the current Harrier has a good gun, though it's no Avenger. Sigh---Marines are #1 for CAS, yet they're always last to be consulted/least imput into the planes used for it! Yeesh. At this point, most of the Harrier's smart weapons are USMC-exclusive variations of USN and USAF weapons, specially designed for CAS from a STOVL jet. Yet approximately ZERO will work with the F-35. See a problem? JDAM's about the only weapon that'll work, and JDAM is NOT what you want for Marine CAS. Not accurate enough, not able to be quickly updated/targeted. You need the AGM-65E, the lesser-known but awesome variant of your standard Maverick. Which won't fit in an F-35, AFAIK. (Seeing as how its big and bulky) As for A-10 self defense---they rely mainly on MASSIVE amounts of chaff and flares. Plus being just plain hard to kill. They have little IR signature, but their radar return I bet is huge. A-10's are much more likely to "dogfight" with a helicopter than a fighter. THAT is the environment they would use their Sidewinders in. Or a light attack plane, A-4 category. A-10's have awesome rates and radii of turn, but that's for avoiding ground fire quickly, not a prolonged dogfight. They have zilch in the energy category.

The general effect of wing clipping is to increase the roll rate, but decrease the sustained turn rate. Instantaneous rate of turn is also affected, but I honestly don't know enough to comment on that. Energy loss through a turn is increased, but there is less drag. I'll bring up the Spitfire again. You could either have full wings, or clipped wings. Either good rate of turn, or good rate of roll. Pick one, not both. Fighting BF-109's? You want turn. Fighting FW-190's? You want roll. (And of course, there were also extended wings, for high-altitude optimization)

Sure you can get plutonium from a watch? I'm 90% sure it's called INDIglo because of INDIum. Radioactive, but not plutonium. Plutonium (asides from radioactivity) is one of the nastiest most toxic substances known. One of those "breathe in one molelcule and you're dead in a minute". It's like arsenic and mercury combined into one more concentrated deadlier element.

Yeah, but nearly all the -19 and -21/22 action we've ever seen took place in the atmosphere. Druna Skass---all the Varuta ones have 55K kg engines. -19/22 still well above that.

Absolute engine power is pointless, it's the power/weight ratio as I said. A 747-400 has more sheer power than just about any other plane on Earth, but it rates about a 2 on the agility scale... (747's are actually fairly agile for an airplane that big, which is why it's not a 1) VF-19's have more power, AND less inherent weight. But a -22 has much larger wings. (relative wing size is a huge, huge factor in agility, especially relating to energy management in turns, though it's countered by an increased requirement in thrust) My vote: -19 can climb faster, and probably roll faster, but a -22 is sleeker (accelerate faster), and maintain a faster turn with more energy. All in all, pretty darn close to Spitfire vs Bf-109, or most any other "one plane vs its close rival". Some things never change, no plane can be the best at everything. Getting close to a -19 vs -22 argument here.

I went by the stats in the compendium, and of all the -19/21/22 variants, the -19S had the most powerful engines. A better measure (the one that really means something) is thrust/weight ratio. And at combat weight. Don't know if the compendium has those listed (I'll check, or maybe I can calculate it out myself, though I would need weight of the missiles). PS--actually I don't think I've used this particular avatar before. If I have, it wasn't for long. My standard one is this:

That sounds like the infamous Watanabe style. But you CAN'T do it with spray cans. It needs to be airbrushed. And airbrushed well. It's way up there in difficulty, AFAIK. Looks great, if you can do it.

Aircraft power generally refers simply to engines, so that'd be the VF-19S.

Well, he had the whole howling thing going on, so that says canine. But his overall appearance was rather lion-esque, thus feline. (I'm going through FF7 again). So he's whatever.

Interesting, painting them all the same. For ships, the rule is to always paint them differently, not the same. The idea being that if lighting conditions are right so that a particular camo scheme becomes rather visible, the other ships in different schemes won't be visible. If they're all the same---if you can see one, you can see them all. (Almost all camo designs work incredibly well under a particular lighting condition--none work well in all, most schemes go for "decently well under most conditions" but are always inferior to a scheme designed for a specific set of conditions---but when they're out of their element, they'll be VERY visible, better than no camo at all) Best example: the best anti-sub camo is the very worst for general anti-surface.

Yup, for resin, scrub the h*** out of it. There's many people who literally soak the parts in acetone, rubbing alcohol, even brake fluid. It depends on the kit. Some are as easy to work with as styrene, some are h***. IMHO, the more the part looks like plastic, the better it is. White/grey resin=good. Tan, not as good. Yellow=bad. Just a general rule, plenty of exceptions. And there's always big chunks which have never fully cured, and won't for another 30 years... Nothing glues resin well, I usually go for a heavy bit of superglue, for I am one of those people who use it as a filler/putty as well, and it saves a step. (Since the superglue will ooze out of the seam already, I just sand it then--and I have a glued, seamless joint after that).

Well of course Xenogears is the greatest game ever, though it's far from perfect. But anyways, for Square's other series: In order, I like: FF6, FF7, FF10, FF9, FF4, FF8, FF1, FF5, Then 3 and 2. (Never beat two, I hate the system worse than junctioning, and I got to a spot where it would be utterly impossible to get past without about 2400 button presses (I needed 4 people to learn Esuna 6, NOW) My main beef with 8 (in addition to the overall magic system) was the insanely high HP of many regular enemies. Even if you didn't summon, you'd be subjected to 10-minute battles every other fight, simply due to having 25,000HP enemies all over the place.

Soul Calibur 1, no question. Then Soul Edge(arranged). SC 2 is last. Yes, SC2 has the best sound quality, but the music is just not up to snuff compared to the earlier ones. It's good as VG fighter music goes, but the earlier ones had such incredible soundtracks it doesn't quite compare.

Lockheed would have a fit if you tried to make an F-2 without their permission. If they wanted to, it'd probably be called the F-16G. (Assuming the kept E and F for the XL's) And the Japanese F-15's are 100% MDC F-15's. Some were built in Japan by Mitsubishi, but that doesn't make a difference. Same as how some Hondas are built in Japan, and some in the US. The US-built ones are still Hondas, even if for so reason they wanted to change the name here. Russian licensing---honestly don't know. I've never seen anything licensed/trademarked by them though. "Licensing to make a toy" is really a US company thing, and recent. Way back in like 1990, you could make all the model planes you wanted, from any manufacturer, and any airline.

I listed the YF-23 as one I figured would be easy to get, since the rights would currently be with Northrop/Grumman. (MDC has little claim to the YF-23, they pretty much only did the internals/systems, the exterior is Northrop's---though I do suspect the all-important-unique tail of the YF-23 may be McDonnell's influence) Totally forgot about the A-10, heh heh. Fairchild-Dornier nowadays, and they're almost bankrupt. Harrier may be feasible, so long as it's a British one, try to get it via BAe's non-Airbus faction. Anyways, my main point to this thread is that the G1 seekers are much smaller than 1/72. Almost all my model fighters are 1/72, and I know the seekers aren't that! ::goes and measures Thundercracker:: Well, he's not exactly to any scale. He's too short. But I'd say it's about 1/96 scale. And, volume-wise, 1/72 would be 2.3 times as much as 1/96. So, if you went with 1/72 new F-15's, they'd still be twice the size of the original G1's. That's plenty, IMHO.

My hope/guess: There is another line, like Alternators. But NOT *Alternators*. See, they keep saying all *Alternators* will be cars, and 1/24. Well, that rules out Decep jets. But, they could make another line (hey, MP Prime's his own line) of nothing but 1/72 jets and tanks. (1/48 would make nicer tanks, but HUGE planes--look at the cost of a 1/48 transforming VF-1---Hasbro couldn't cut the price by 80%, but 1/72 is a lot more feasible). So I'm hoping for "Transformers: Obliterators" or something. edit:: Heh, I see skippy438 already had a similar idea. And as I've posted in other forums, Northrop/Grumman is easy to work with on licensing, AFAIK. That gives us the F-5, F-14, F-20, YF-17, YF-23, A-6, and B-2. Plenty of neat stuff to work with. Lockheed seems easy enough to work with, but they do want EVERYTHING licensed. Boeing can be a total b*tch regarding licensing models, they will look at the shade of grey paint used to represent windows. And since they now own McDonnell, Douglas, Rockwell, Vought, and North American's designs, that's pretty much every US plane ever built, asides from the ones I mentioned above. You will see "Boeing P-51 Mustang" nowadays. Blech.

Hibana (main character) has flat-out, the best walk ever. Period. Just FYI. Overseas, it's been out since December. Just came out a few days ago here. Late night edit: There's a playable demo in the current issue of OPM.

Hey, Lineage II looks to have lots of "graphical options" for characters. I don't know if it's merely large quantities of *different-looking* armor, or flat-out selectable for the character, but it's definitely caught my eye. I don't necessarily need "customizing" just "lots of options".

Real 'vette yellow is pretty vibrant as cars go. Decidedly lighter than the "rich" Mustang yellow, but not quite the nearly-neon yellow you also sometimes see. It's right in the middle. "Millenium Yellow" I believe is the current version. PS---no jets? THAT IS THE SUCK! Guess we'll just have to rely on Yamato for transforming planes.

Yes, dragging this thread back up from 5 months ago--but now the game's actually out! Anyone else played it? Comments? I'm loving it. Everyone seems to ignore Hisui, even though she's even more fun to play as:

Did some checking----even the tiniest of the "little black holes" on the shuttle are fully functional verniers. Thus all of the shuttle's verniers are liquid-fueled rockets. 24 pounds of thrust from the little ones, 870 on the larger ones. Little ones good for 330,000 firings.

It used to be that bigger TF's usually meant more complex transformations. Now they're "dumbed down" so that they can be huge and simple, for 26 different lights and sounds. It's sad that many of the $6.99 "basic" TF's have the most complex (and best) transformations of the line.

Nope, gotta be male in Fable.