kalvasflam

One other interesting thing, was it just me, or did the PPB knife from the VF-27 look quite a bit larger than the puny knife on the VF-25

Probably talked about before, but isn't it interesting that the VF-27 main gun seem to operate in two modes, either it fires a concentrated beam or uses what look like bullets. This was very noticeable both in ep 13 and ep 9 I thought. I wonder if the gun itself actually have two magazines or if the scatter beam are actually just smaller pulses of energy. Besides that the armament of the VF-27 is also quite unique, looks like at least two sets of additional guns mounted on the outboard engines, micro-missiles stored internally. I wonder how many units there are actually, so far we've seen about three of those planes, where are the others I wonder?

May be Grace isn't quite the mastermind... I wouldn't be surprised if Luca turned out to be the evil genius, or at least part of the axis of evil. After all, if we go back to ep 7, he went through a lot of trouble to access the Vajra battle ship, and I think Brera was sent in to protect him. Note, Brera only went in after Luca was captured. As far as Alto/Sheryl and company confirming what happened to the planet, I doubt if that matters after the Vajra went all out to kill Frontier. The war has started already, and the little niceties about how it started doesn't matter much any more. Sure, certain parties might get into trouble later, but it still doesn't make any difference since Vajra has been attacking since ep 1. So, let the war begin. But hopefully this won't end in another armistice with Vajra becoming the next Gubaba.

Well, as long as they make a mention of Admiral Rick Hunter and call that ship the wrecked SDF-2, I'm sure that'll solve all the continuity problems. Oh, they also should tie in Zor, and the Robotech masters, hell, the Vajra can be the evolved Invids.... and doesn't Stick... I mean Scott Bernard look a lot like Leon? Besides, it makes sense right, this is why Admiral Rick Hunter never made it back to Earth, he crashed on Galia IV.... All hands killed and all that.

Man, I haven't seen the episode yet, but it sounds really interesting, given the spoilers though, I wonder My vote personally is for Sheryl right now, to me she is a bit more like Misa, strong personality, and know what she wants, but there is a chance that she might not make it out of this. After all, Ranka is also not a wishy washy type, partly thanks to Sheryl's encouragement. One thought that's may be worth another spoiler,

Well, that's true, it'll be interesting to see Frontier fleet composition. I don't actually recall seeing non-escorts around frontier, but that doesn't mean much so far.

Slightly off tech topic, but what exactly is the rough composition of a Macross immigration fleet? I seem to recall that the fleet itself looks a little bit like a BSG fleet, with more warships, but also ships for entertainment, manufacturing, farming, etc. But don't remember if Mac 7 really put out the composition.

Has there been confirmation of how many episodes there will be for Mac Frontier? I wouldn't mind seeing something on the order of 40+ episodes if they can maintain the decent animation and a good storyline. One thing they should not do is rush the story. Right now, there is a nice pacing to the story, part of the reason is that there are numerous interesting characters centering around the three main characters and enough room for good character development. There are enough interesting threads that hopefully they can push up the episode counts, and give a nice and satisfying end. I always hoped that the original SDF Macross was a bit longer.

There is an easy answer for these three.... THREESOME.

If anything the US refusal to sell Japan F-22 is just a sign of weakness. So, what, it's the most advanced fighter today, but if there isn't someone somewhere putting the next ATF on the board, I would be just shocked. With allies like Japan, selling them the F-22 make sense. Why? Because like every other country, you don't want them to develop their own homegrown tech that might be 10x better than what you have. You'd rather have them be dependent on you. That's why it was a good idea to put the JSF out for sale. Just like it is a good idea in the long run to put the F-22 out to the Japanese. I would be less inclined to put it out to Israel knowing that those guys would just turn right around and put the tech out on the open market, and evolve out their own stuff from it. After all, you beat the other guy by being one generation ahead, not by keeping the current generation away from them.

Barney... duh, it's purple right? With it's built in FAST pack, it's also fat. So, Barney it is.

This goes back to the question of whether or not skull squadron is just 4 planes or not. Sniper/specialized sharpshooter make perfect sense in combat situations, but the ratio shouldn't be 1 sniper to 1 or 2 combat valks. Mr. March, I agree that in battle fields, there are specialized roles. I just wonder how useful a sharpshooting role truly is in fighter combat, I can see AWACS role. May be an analogy would be that Mikhail would be running an F-14 loaded with Phoenix missiles, and the others would be running F-15/F-16 superiority/dogfighters. But if you mix squadrons like that, you would have better ratios right? If I think about a squad of soldiers, you wouldn't have one sniper to one direct combat guy in that ratio, probably more like one or two snipers to about eight or so close combat. Or may be think about it in terms of MLRS units vs tanks in terms of ratio.

I'm a bit mixed on the subject of a sniper based Valk. On the one hand, there is some coolness factor, but really how necessary is it to have a Valk specialized in sniping. I can think of useful situations especially if the Valks end up engaging in land combat, but for aerial combat, I'm not so sure I agree with the overall concept. The main issue is that snipers would typically need camo or environment to blend into. (on a deck of a ship would be good, but then the alternative is to find some convenient asteroid I suppose) I also have to wonder how effective is this Valk in real direct combat, I mean the sniper rifle is not used like a standard gun pod, and one would think if an enemy ever gets too close the sniper Valk gets in trouble, since this would require the Valk to engage in direct combat. There is also the question about how many sniper types there are, it must be highly specialized unit. It makes you wonder how many Valks the SMS skull squadron actually have, I would imagine at least 12 if we believe in the normal sized squadron. Then the mix would make sense, one command, one ELINT type, one sniper, and then essentially nine grunt type planes. The specialization would be more sensible, but if it's just four planes, the specialization doesn't make any sense.

From the descriptions so far and what's seen, fold dislocations might be like pockets of space that you can't fold through with human tech. Remember Luca's surprise as the Vajra battleship folded through the dislocation... this tells me that for humans, basically a dislocation is a null space that they have to traverse conventionally without fold. May be the dislocations are somethings that can be overcome given enough energy, or may be it necessitates a different technology altogether. I wonder if dislocations are some things that can be mapped, or may be they appear and disappear or even move around over time. But not enough information on it for now.

I am wondering how hard it would be to code the three robot laws into the AI. I mean the worst that can happen is that the AIed Ghosts sacrifice themselves. May be a built in kill switch or something. Overall, I'd rather like the idea of Ghosts running on AI, I wonder though if the Ghosts we saw on Ep 1 were really on AI or were they actually UCAVs. Seem like the latter, since their signals were interfered with.

After watching Luca and his pet Ghosts in action again, I got to thinking, from the look of things, Luca was really a guy running the sensors, I mean it didn't seem like he was doing much of the fighting, may be more of a recon/AWACS role providing data and imagery to the rest of the fleet and Mac quarter. This then makes me think that he wasn't actually in control of the Ghosts for the most part, well, except may be when he was shouting for "Peter" to dodge. But it seems to me that it is very likely that the Ghosts weren't UCAV in the conventional manner where there were humans running them, but rather run on sophisticated AI designed exclusively to either protect Luca in his role as AWACS or to be a probe for him when the situation is too dangerous. If that's the case, then it's a bit surprising that the other VF-25s didn't have attendent Ghosts as well. Because after all, if it's just a matter of AI and programming, then it's pretty simple to program some basic parameters into the Ghosts, like stay with 1000 m of primary VF, fire on any unfriendly signatures, fire on any target attack VF, and so forth. One way to look at this is while the remotes weren't directly controlled, they could be programmed to enhance the combat effectiveness of the individual fighters. After all, wouldn't it be nice if each VF had been assigned several Ghosts where the exclusive mission of the Ghosts is to shoot down incoming missiles. This would certainly free up the pilot to concentrate on other matters like attacking other targets instead of worrying about dodging incoming fire. Another thought is that if the Ghosts can be controlled by a pilot, then it would make a lot of sense to have a backseater whose exclusive mission is to control the remotes. I think there is a thought among the USAF where two seaters would have the guy in the back quarterbacking a small group of UCAVs.

I hope we end up seeing more of Macross Galaxy as a ship going forward. The design is definitely interesting and not at all like the standard Macross. I would also hope that more of the technology in Galaxy is explained too, especially since they seem to have a head start on a lotof cybernetics, one almost has to wonder whether we might see next generation Ghost type UCAVs and valks with tele-presence capability coming out of Galaxy fleet. ( I know, it's not even established that Brera was actually in the cockpit of the VF-27 in ep 7) Hopefully we get to see more of the other ships in the Frontier/Galaxy fleets as well as we go along. I did like the variety they had on Mac 7, although some of it seemed pointless.

Just saw the movie, have to say, it was just not as good as I had hoped. I don't know what could've made it more entertaining, but this movie just didn't do it for me. Probably because Harrison Ford was a bit too old to be believable, and the Russkies are not as entertaining as the Nazis. The chief Russian bad guy was... well, was just another tall blonde guy that got his clock cleaned. Overall, I would've been better off spending the money on another money I thought. Oh well, Spielberg hasn't had a hit in ages, and Lucas never really had a hit. But I suppose they'll made enough money off of this, and the clone war money to congratulate themselves on doing really well and probably do yet another sequel...

This sounds like an interesting episode, can't wait to see it. A couple of quick points, one thing I notice more and more about Kawamori's designs on VFs, the nose of all the VF are highly reminiscent of the SU-27 nose design, I wonder if Kawamori is a fan. It's the case for the -17, the -25, and the -27. As for this episode, I wonder if may be this is how Sheryl gets knocked off eventually (assuming that it does happen)... she flies a VF, and as she is humming along, someone shoots her plane and blows her up. That would be a very fitting end and a way for Kawamori to atone for the awful Firebombers and M7... sorry, singing on stage is one thing, but singing while piloting and dodging missiles is just a bit too much. Sounds like a nice filler episode, would like to see the relationship between our favorite Loli and Mikhail explained more... ha ha, may be she's his "older sister"

Finally saw the epsiode, great animation this time around. Although we don't know much more about the Varja than before. Now, we're throwing in another mysterious element, and we don't really even know why the VF-27 was there in the Varja ship yet. But what I saw of the VF-27 seem to be very impressive, especially the control systems. I wonder if we'll find out more next week.

I am curious to see more about Macross Quarter's capabilities. And anything more about the Vajra would be interesting too. I hope they don't drag out the mysterious enemy routine for too long. But I am guessing the fight scene is only the first 15 half. But even then, it should be really good animation.

Good point, I did like the concept of panoramic view. Essentially like in the Gundam series. Actually, in terms of capabilities, I am a bit surprised that the technology didn't exist for the VF-22, since they had that incredibly small bubble cockpit that just didn't make much sense to me.

So far so good, as long as the writers aren't influenced by Bandai for toy sales, I think this could be great. My one thought is, they should stick with the VF-25 throughout the series. I mean, if they manage to develop additional FAST pack stuff, fine, but my thought was that the original SDF:M had the VF-1 throughout the series, it had armor pack and FAST pack, that was it. The story is what made the show, if they focus on that, it'll be fine. Key things I hope they don't do: 1. Don't turn it into the abortion like M7, because if Sheryl or Ranka ever start piloting VFs and singing, it would be return to the bad old days. 2. None of the mysticism ala M0, which was a gigantic turn off.

I saw it, that's why the question, who wants to bet that all the bad news hasn't surfaced yet. There is going to be a financial impact to all of this delay down the road. You saw it with Airbus, and I would be surprised if it doesn't happen with Boeing.

Anyone wanna take bets that the 787 will be delayed until 2010? I think Boeing is trying to dribble out the bad news. But this is going to really hurt their market share. The delays also give airlines opportunities to cancel and reevaluate. Being first to market is great, being first to market and not deliver is a killer.