Seto Kaiba

I wouldn't really call those in-jokes, since they're pretty bloody obvious and they're not really plays on words or anything like that, nice references to real-world aviation, but not really jokes per se. The ones Sketchley mentioned, and the new data on the manufacturers of the VF-22's gunpod(s) are more in line with plays on words... Oh you're not the only one... I'm an engineer by nature, so meticulous exactitude is right up my alley. Granted, that's true... I've never run across anything that suggested the Project Super Nova goals included increasing the lethality of the fighter's weapons, though they did test at least one new weapons package during the contest. All the same, there's no guarantee that the manufacturer opted for the same caliber as the VF-11's gunpod for convenience's sake either. It could be that they decided to follow on from the 40mm ammo used by the VF-17s already in service too. Honestly, I don't think we can really go so far as to call the GU-15 or GV-17L inferior to previous models of gun pod. In terms of effectiveness, we have no real frame of reference for comparison except for the action we see in Macross 7, and that doesn't really help much since the story is much more interested in flattering Basara's colossal vanity and showcasing the godawful Sound Force custom Valkyries. On one or two occasions, we get to see what the VF-11 can do with a capable pilot at the stick, and it's quite impressive, but it's not any more impressive than what those same pilots do with their VF-17s, or what we later see done with the VF-19F/S and VF-22S when those are handed over into the care of ace pilots. As we would expect, the damage they inflict varies with the needs of the plot... sometimes glancing off the armor of the enemy planes like a gentle rain, and sometimes shredding them into metallic confetti. Since you brought it up... the VF-11's gun pod is much more important to its combat effectiveness than the gun pods of the VF-19 and VF-22, because unlike those AVFs it lacks any other forward-facing guns. The VF-19 and VF-22 will both, theoretically, be able to make their gun pod ammo last much longer by using their forward-facing integrated guns in a dogfight (something Alto and the other VF-25 pilots seem to mysteriously forget they have on their VF-25s). At the very least, the VF-19S's secondary head lasers look like they're on rotating mounts (similar in appearance to those on the VF-25) and may be able to turn in battroid mode. About the only case that could be made for the superiority of the 30mm gun pod on the VF-11 would've been the anti-armor bayonet, and that got removed as a cost-saving budget cut on the C variant. Actually, the feed system in the GU-11 was helical, not a drum or a belt. It's a very space-efficient system, and it could potentially be done as a half-helix too for the removable magazines of the later generations of gun pods. Insofar as the magazine itself, the animation and line art indicates it is more or less exactly like it is on the toy, with the magazine as that removable long, slim piece of semi-circular metal that fits right over the barrel assembly. Basically, it is "just that shell", which is why I suggested a maximum of 300 rounds as a little more than half the capacity of the internal helical feed on its nearest neighbor in caliber (the 35mm GPU-9 on the VF-0). The magazines on the VF-17's MC-17A and the VF-19's GU-15 appear to use a similar, if not identical, magazine orientation. Incidentally, the VF-17's line art does show the removable magazine separate from the gun pod itself. You can see it for yourself here, image courtesy of Mr. March's Macross Mecha Manual. It's in the bottom left corner of the image.

Yeah, it is a bit disappointing that the writers of Macross Chronicle haven't taken advantage of the opportunity to sort out some of the areas where more detail would've been helpful, but it's still an incredibly useful condensation of the material that was already out there and spread across dozens of different publications. I wasn't expecting much, since going into minute and obsessive detail about the capabilities of a giant robot like Kawamori did with the VF-1 Valkyrie seems to be a rare occurrence in mecha anime. Sure, we can roll with that. Logistically speaking, since the VF-19 was, at least on paper, intended to replace the U.N. Spacy's aging fleet of VF-11's, I don't think they would've felt themselves committed to having the two fighters share the ammunition. It would make a bit of sense to use existing ammo stocks to ease the transition as much as possible, but it's far from being a logistical necessity since at least one fleet out there (37th Colony - Macross 7) already had to stock three different calibers of ammunition, maybe more, for its forces. (VF-11C's 30mm, VA-3's 60mm, VF-17's 40mm, poss. 55mm if the VF-4s we see in M7T carry the GU-11 as some sources say they can, etc.) Guld's YF-21 is, canonically, using a different TYPE of ammunition, if not a different caliber entirely. It would make a certain amount of sense for the two prototypes to have similar calibers to ease the comparison, but Guld's ammo was cartridge-less, whereas Isamu's wasn't... so it's no guarantee they're both using the same size of round either. In terms of how much ammo they hold, IMO the RPG sites out there tend to dramatically overestimate the capacity of their magazines. Perhaps the most helpful way to benchmark ammo capacity is to compare the magazine size to that of the GPU-9's internal helical feed and its 550 35mm rounds. That said, just going on magazine size and the need for some kind of machinery in the feed system itself, I'd put an arbitrary maximum of somewhere around 300 rounds for anything with a removable magazine, with 200-250 being much more likely, especially for higher-caliber examples like the VF-17's MC-17A. The internal feed on the GV-17L, I would say probably sports roughly 2x that of the average magazine, which would explain the necessity to carry two of them to match or exceed the ammo capacity of the units carrying gun pods with removable magazines. That, of course, is all arch speculation on my part. 'kay... Howard/GE and Hughes/GE? Am I reading too much into this, or is there a rather obvious aviation in-joke here?

Ah, another new milestone in the never-ending production process of Robotech Genesis... a fan project trapped forever in a bizarre status known as "coming soon".

Yeah, I figured it was a transposition error or something along those lines... *shrug* Apart from that 180-round figure appearing once in Chronicle, the only other recent source I can recall mentioning it as being 180 instead of 200 was the Master File, which is pretty weak as a source of info due to all the material borrowed whole-cloth from the old MAT book. The 200 round figure is the safer of the two by far, even if the cutaway in the VF-1 master file is damn pretty. I think one of the games might've also put 180 down as the number of rounds in the gunpod, but I forget which. My bad. At the time I wrote my post, my Chronicle sheets were spread all over hell while I reorganized them into the recommended order and started putting stuff into binder 5. Doesn't help that the two gunpods are identical in general appearance.

No such luck, I'm afraid... though Hermann2 (the guy who "likes" Lynn Kyle too much) is a swell guy and a very helpful fellow... I'm astonished he hasn't been banned for being a closet Macross II fan. Indeed, the funny part is that the Robotech version (Eli Anatole Leonard) is actually a much toned-down version of the borderline caricature that was Southern Cross's Claude Leon.

Nope. Chronicle mistakenly labeled it as the GU-15 or something along those lines in one of the VF-11 sheets, but that's clearly not right because the GU-15 is what the VF-19 carries. Nothing thus far has been provided except the number of barrels the gunpod has (6), caliber (30mm), and the fact that the bayonet was axed from later models as a cost saving move. Not retconned, I don't think... seems more like a typo, and the other source (Master File) citing it is non-canon... so it's a gray area. In terms of which is correct, I would stick with 200 as it's been the VF-1's ammo load since '82. Actually, the MC-17A gatling cannon used on the VF-17 and VF-171 has only 7 barrels, not 8. No notes on ammo capacity. EDIT: Kudos to Robelwell202 for spotting an error on my part... the VF-171's gunpod has 8 barrels, and is presumably the GU-14B. The other gunpod mentioned for the VF-171 is the MC-17C multipurpose gunpod, which likely retains the 7-barrel configuration of its predecessor. If memory serves, Chronicle does identify them differently... one is, I think, the BP-14D, which is cited as a multipurpose gunpod (the same sort of citation given to the MC-17A used by the VF-17), whereas the GV-17L used by the YF-21 and presumably Max and Milia's VF-22S's is listed as a cartridge-less gunpod. EDIT: Another goofball mistake on my part spotted, the gunpod on Gamlin's VF-22S is a BP-14D, not GU-14B. No.

To be honest, if you were expecting a group like the Disciples of Leonard to have a logical rationale for their behavior, I'd say you're probably expecting too much from them. On "paper", the Disciples of Leonard are a character fan club for the handful of mutants who thought the Masters Saga was good television. In practice, their behavior is more in line with that of the Robotech lunatic fringe, in that they actively seek to "defend" the Masters Saga from perfectly legitimate criticism and other people's opinions. Don't forget Leonard's other merits... like his rabid xenophobia, his weak grasp of tactics, and his frequent attempts to get everyone on his staff who isn't a "yes man" killed by assigning them to command suicide missions.

And that, children, is why I'm STILL Public Enemy No.1 in the eyes of the Robotech lunatic fringe. I corrupt good, wholesome, ignorant Robotech fans into godless, evil Macross fans with my insidious knowledge and diabolical use of logic and facts. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Now if anyone needs me, I'll be supervising my witless minions while they dig a moat around my doom castle to store the excess magma that we were left with after boring a hole into the Earth's core to cause the earthquakes in Haiti. Wishing no ill to the few members of the Disciples of Leonard I do have regular contact with and respect, there are a fair few members of that group who do fit your description pretty well. I'm reminded all too vividly of how one of them, who works as a hotel manager, once tried to convince me he was a freelance programmer working on antivirus solutions for Microsoft, Symantec, and McAfee all at the same time while attempting to warn everyone about a new virus he claimed he'd been warned about via insider connections that turned out to be a four-year old low-threat trojan that didn't have any of the behaviors he identified. Just from what I've seen personally, the fan-group known as the Disciples of Leonard seems to be a catch-all group for those Robotech fans who, for whatever reason (masochism), though that the Masters Saga was pretty good and that the criticisms leveled at the Army of the Southern Cross are generally unwarranted or unduly harsh. They like to deflect the blame for the ASC's failures to fan-favorite Rick Hunter by citing a scene from the Sentinels "movie" wherein Commander Leonard shouts at Dr. Lang and Rick Hunter in the middle of a press conference, claiming that the Earth's defenses were being stripped bare to supply the REF. The comics kind of take the piss out of him on this note, having him launch into hyperbole about how he couldn't defend the Earth against an army of ducks and bunnies with the forces he had left. As it stands, I don't think any of the DOL people have taken the time to comment on the way their hero is portrayed as both an obstructive military bureaucrat and an Anti-UN operative working to bring down the United Earth Government from within in Tommy Yune's From the Stars miniseries. It seems a safe bet that they probably consider it somewhere between insulting and HERESY! One of the areas wherein our favorite problem child Pizza the Hutt was pretty much spot on is that, at least while I was still active on RT.com, the Disciples of Leonard had a REALLY bad reputation among the fans. In my experience, they were easily enough to get along with, and actually numbered among the more reasonable members of the active fandom, provided you didn't criticize anything related to the Masters Saga. If someone criticized Leonard or the ASC, it was pretty much a given that the handful of active DOL members would be all over the thread like a starving kid at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Their usual MO is to mob the thread with an organized campaign to defend their favorite saga, which more often than not derailed the thread entirely, and if the OP didn't quickly recant his position to shut them up, could quickly descend into little more than premeditated harassment. It certainly doesn't help that a few of their most vocal members are the sort of BBS user that desperately wants to be a moderator and can't comprehend why nobody listens to them when they try to scold other members for perceived Terms of Use violations. Oh, you're entirely right about that. It looks like they pissed off someone enough to take a Khyron_Prime style cheap shot at them on his private website that nobody visits or gives a poo about. Dunno the guy responsible for the site, but I'd wager he's probably someone who's been banned from Robotech.com since posting it. See the above for my take on the whole Disciples of Leonard business.

Bah, you haven't been a "real" Robotech fan for ages... you dared to willingly expose yourself to DYRL and other Macross instead of bashing them without having ever seen them like so many Robotech fans are wont to do these days. For the records, thus far nobody has been able to turn up any kind of evidence that he was ever involved in the actual work on that C&C4 mod project. He's one of them, yeah...

Considering the content of some of their past products and some of their more recent creative decisions, Harmony Gold's insistence that all things Robotech be kept as kid-friendly as humanly possible just comes off as downright bizarre. It really makes you wonder if their right hand doesn't know what their left hand is doing, or if they're just in denial now that the overwhelming majority of Robotech fans old enough to buy their own liquor. It's one thing to want to keep your brand family-friendly, but it's entirely another to say that and then turn around and sell your next product on the basis of how every woman in it is proportioned like a bong with two watermelons nailed to it, wears a "uniform" that looks like it came out of an aerosol can, and has enough cleavage on display to hide a small starship in. A little on the hypocritical side, isn't is? Especially after they put a lot of time, money, and effort into remastering the "original series", reinserting all the nudity and sexual innuendo they'd originally edited out... Amusingly enough, even that's rather tame compared to the content of the old Robotech novels and comics, which occasionally flirted with things like foul language, gory death, and graphic depictions of sex. Hell, the old Robotech II: the Sentinels comics showed Max bringing a stripper to Rick's bachelor party, showing the aftermath of Rick and Lisa consummating their marriage and taking a shower together, accusing Rick of cheating on Lisa with Minmay, having Lynn Minmay dress like a whore and entertain herself by sleeping around (incl. with Jonathan Wolfe, a married man), and a female saboteur who had sex with soldiers for supplies and then murdered them... and that's just the tip of the iceberg (all but the last item are in Book 1 of 4).

I can already hear Maverick's frantic screams of "HERESY!".

Hmmmm... well, it looks like they are going to do a VF-2SS Valkyrie II B sheet to cover the Super Armed Pack after all... not bad. I wonder what's on the flipside of that page, maybe the Squire auto-attacker bit and Nexx Gilbert's custom with that heavy railgun for a gunpod. All in all, I'm at least ok with the level of coverage Macross II has gotten thus far, even if there are some minor omissions due to obscure data that apparently I have and they don't. The rest of my band of merry men (having now said that, I fully expect at least three IM windows in the next hour saying "I AM NOT A MERRY MAN!") are considerably less satisfied, since the Zentradi Valkyrie fans were hoping for statistical data on it, and the Metal Siren fans are getting a bit antsy that we don't have a Metal Siren sheet yet and the perception that they might not get one now that the home run crunch is on at Chronicle. Judging from the remarks in the news blog, it looks like we'll also get the VF-4 Lightning III and Kakizaki's VF-1A.

Yeah, I think we can probably get away with it. True, there is technology out there that makes VFs somewhat easier to operate and reduces the strain on the pilots in Macross Frontier. However, the technology in question (the Inertia Store Converter and EX-Gear) is new, and the VF-25 is the first (known) variable fighter to use them. The VF-171 has neither system, and the upgraded EX model adds only the EX-Gear. Since the overwhelming majority of VFs out there, even in 2059, don't use fancy toys like that to make the pilot's workload easier, I think we can make comparisons with relative safety. Whether we can say the same between the various models of destroid is another matter entirely, since we never really see any named character do anything with the Cheyenne models, and the Konig Monster is not really a proper destroid anymore. One would imagine the interface remained fairly simple, and probably less complicated than the VFs of the day... at least prior to the introduction of EX-Gear. Outside of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, I think the only other time we see the interior of a destroid's cockpit is in Macross II: Lovers Again, when we briefly see inside a Defender EX's cockpit as the ground defenses prepare to open fire, and we don't really get the full view there, just the viewscreen and part of the pilot's chair. If memory serves, the VF-171 was selected for its versatility and ease of operation. Pilot training was supposedly cut back due to the increasing emphasis on unmanned combat units (AIF-7S Ghost). Even so, the Frontier fleet still had a number of reasonably effective pilots even before they got a technological leg-up on the Vajra. They don't get much in the way of screen time because, of course, the story is about the mercenaries from SMS. If they were cutting training back on the VF pilots, odds are they were reducing the training for destroid operators of that era too, since the general expectation seems to have been that they could bog the enemy down indefinitely and well away from the ship with the legions of semi-expendable Ghosts. All things considered, you're probably right in that the SDF-1 likely had the cream of the VF pilot crop... but that's to be expected if it's the flagship of the U.N. Spacy's fleet. The same could probably be said for the destroid pilots aboard the Daedalus too... as far as the attrition rate being horrible... hey, someone's gotta fly the brown ones, right?

Granted... but somehow I don't think that was part of the New U.N. Spacy's rationale.

Now that's just the worst kind of hair-splitting... but yes, both Aegis Focker and Misty Klaus are relevant to the discussion of the (perceived) disparity in difficulty between destroid and variable fighter training, if only because we know how long both of them trained to be able to operate variable fighters in combat competently prior to being assigned to a combat zone. In the case of Misty Klaus, there's little in the way of doubt that she'd be every bit as capable in the main continuity as she is in the parallel world continuity, as she's supposed to be a top Meltrandi ace pilot (ala Milia). Given his years of training, one would suspect Aegis Focker would be at least reasonably capable in the parallel world continuity as well. If we want to talk strict relevance to destroids themselves, the odds that Misty would operate a destroid at some point in her U.N. Spacy career are much better, since in the parallel world continuity leading up to Macross II: Lovers Again, the U.N. Spacy never abandoned destroids like it did in the main continuity. The first ship she was assigned to even had a substantial complement of Tomahawks to execute the Daedalus attack with. And why, then, would that necessitate re-using a fifty year old design when those same features could just as easily be added to the Space War 1-era designs?

Depends on the destroid, really... there is a certain degree of flexibility in the ankle of the Tomahawk's particle beam cannons, and of course guided munitions don't need to necessarily be pointed directly at the target either. The Valkyrie may be more versatile in terms of field of fire, but its armament options are somewhat more limited, whereas any one destroid pilot is likely going to have to be proficient at operating a significantly more diverse assortment of integrated weapons (missile launchers, AA guns, beam cannons, machineguns, flamethrowers, grenade launchers, you name it). Okay... granted, that's a very interesting irrelevant conclusion you've arrived at. Not to point out the painfully obvious hole in your argument or anything, but the "uncultured" Zentradi don't have transforming mecha. The full extent of the ADR-03 Mk.III Cheyenne's combat record is a single, isolated incident before Space War 1, on the Earth's surface, and against mecha that were below even the VF-1's tech level. The original four destroids (Tomahawk, Defender, Phalanx, Spartan) accumulated a respectable record against the Zentradi, despite fighting against overwhelming odds in almost every engagement, and in a greater assortment of conditions. That being said, the extremely limited combat record of the Cheyenne I doesn't really support the assertion that its successor has a superior pedigree. Also, I don't think the claim that the Tomahawk is older is really supportable either... Chronicle seems to indicate that the 04-series destroids were developed after the 03-series, and since the timeline hasn't offered us an exact date for when the Cheyenne I's development started or ended, all we can say is that the Tomahawk entered mass production first. It doesn't seem likely that the Cheyenne is a newer design, since its technology is somewhat more primitive, using a gas turbine for power instead of a thermonuclear reactor, etc. Okay, you don't like it. Tough beans, both Aegis Focker and Misty Klaus are canon to their respective timelines, as are their exploits. They're every bit as valid as characters as Hikaru or Komilia.

Thanks for taking the time... if it weren't for you posting these I'd probably go nuts trying to decide how many issues I should wait between orders to save on shipping. Words cannot express my disgust... I was hoping they'd at least aim to establish their sizes, if not their armaments. A major letdown there... maybe we'll get a B-sheet or a second, better sheet if they expand the run to cover False Diva. Useful! Hard data on the VF-14 Vampire? Score! A shame that they didn't gave any hard data on the Variable Glaug, that's an interesting mechanical design.

Assuming that the series was completed using the episode outlines printed in Robotech Art 3, gambling the future of the franchise on Robotech II would've been one hell of a sucker bet. On its own, the story is enough to virtually guarantee the show's failure, a situation definitely not helped any by the generally poor quality of the animation and the rather ugly new character and mechanical designs. In my opinion, had Robotech II: the Sentinels been completed as a 65-episode TV series as originally planned, it would almost certainly have been canceled before it could complete its initial televised run. Matchbox's Robotech merchandise wasn't exactly a big seller before, and the premature cancellation of Robotech II probably wouldn't help the toy sales any. If the series had been completed at the abbreviated 36-episode run it was abbreviated to after the budget went to hell during the dollar-yen exchange rate crash, smart money says it would've ended up as a direct-to-VHS release, the price of which would probably have turned many fans off of the series, and the quality of which would've done in the rest of its limited appeal. Either way, it's a safe bet that if Robotech II had actually made it through production and been released, the subsequent return on investment would've been anywhere from poor to nonexistent, likely hastening the demise of the Robotech franchise. The cancellation of Sentinels probably prolonged Robotech's life if only because it could best be described as a mercy killing.

Admittedly, one of the many sins attributed to Tommy Yune is a profound love of office politics, so I guess that's really no surprise... Really, I'd still call it muddying the truth because he's almost certainly doing it intentionally to sidestep having to address the actual subject matter of the question... (On an unrelated note, I'm inventorying my old Robotech comics, and remaining quietly astounded that anyone ever thought material this badly written and drawn was marketable. I'm also kind of horrified that the Waltrips attempted to call Robotech a story "With the scope of Frank Herbert's Dune, the two-fisted action of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, and the larger-than-life characters reminiscent of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. They do give some juicy details about EXACTLY how bad the financial crash hurt the Sentinels project... with the budget reportedly losing 25% or more of its value overnight, causing the show to be curtailed from 65 to 36 episodes before being canceled outright)

No surprises there... though it's definitely looking like Tommy's deliberately opting to phrase his answers in awkwardly in hopes of muddying the distinction between having the ability to produce merchandise based on a show and full creative control over the show itself. To anyone watching with a critical ear and at least a passing familiarity with the rights involved, the attempts to hide the truth in waffling stand out pretty clearly. Given what Carl Macek had to say on the matter back when he was still the franchise's creative director, Tommy is almost certainly either lying or retroactively applying reasoning from the production of Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles to Robotech II: the Sentinels.

Close enough for an experienced pilot like Hikaru to have a relatively easy time of it so long as he didn't do anything fancy. He didn't seem to have much trouble with the hands either until he lost one (and more importantly, the contents) to enemy fire. Odds are that Hikaru probably had the shorter training duration because he was already at least familiar with flying in fighter mode. Curiously, they don't mention whether or not he was placed on an accelerated training track because of it. One would expect Kakizaki and Max to have taken somewhat longer as neither had any prior flying experience (that we know of). In terms of destroid training, Hikaru never had any formal training (again, that we know of) but he didn't have much difficulty operating a Spartan Mk.II on short notice. It is possible they lumped the basic battroid skills training together with destroid training, and odds are the controls aren't terribly dissimilar either. Dubious... I don't think we ever really see the female side operating anything other than the Queadluun-Rau in the TV series, do we? Not exactly rich fodder for cross-training if all of the other mecha are the exclusive property of the males... Apart from the unidentified wirey-bits that plug into the flightsuit, there's some kind of hand interface that is shown in the DYRL lineart... lemme get ya a pic: Image courtesy of Mr. March's Macross Mecha Manual It also sounds somewhat unlikely that the Valkyrie pilot's training would be space only, and even if we assume it was, the two mecha in question hardly handle the same... Well, yes... but my point stands... it's entirely likely that the Zentradi mecha are designed for maximum ease of use (and we know they're designed to be as maintenance-free as alien-ly? possible... it stands to reason if you expect a legion of soldiers with a primary school level of mental ability to operate it, you'd better damn well make everything obvious. One would imagine that the rather unique role the destroids filled aboard the SDF-1 would require some specialized training beyond "point this at the enemy and pull the trigger". The destroid tactics bit in Chronicle seems to suggest that they had at least a reasonable set of tactics going for them, which would probably require at least a bit of training... to say nothing of special circumstances like urban combat (which comes up a few times) where the goal is flattening the enemy and ONLY the enemy. That takes a bit more finesse than spraying and praying, and rather more to not step on things like civilians, public utilities, etc.

What I find particularly amusing about this rather sleazy attempt to by ADV Films to cash in on Macross Frontier's success is that it's legally actionable here in the US. If they really cared enough to do so, Big West could've easily taken ADV Films to court over it and expected to win handily. I've seen a few cases like that in the past (one of which I was involved in directly), where the owner of that misleading domain was ordered to surrender the domain name to the owners of the group or product he'd been attempting to undermine, and was also forced to pay monetary damages. (I saw one of these lawsuits firsthand when I was asked to testify about the content of the violating site after a particularly unscrupulous fellow registered the name of a local public school district as a .com site and pointed it to a porn site network)

Not bitter... realistic. I'm not even upset that the remaining three Macross II ships're likely being crammed onto one page, because even I know that there's so little available on two of them that it'd be pointless NOT to. Hell, even I wouldn't waste more than a four-page spread on all three ships combined. There's just not enough material to fill it, even in the really rare sources I've been collecting. I'm just not a big fan of Ranka, and particularly not of her music... Y'know what... I'm good with that... if they cover a whole slew of the previously untouched-upon designs in the middle, or devote a fair bit of space to ones that aren't getting independent sheets, that's my idea of space well spent.

It sounds good on paper, but in terms of actual implementation it sounds more like a nightmare. It just doesn't make a bit of sense for the New U.N. Spacy to have gone back to a pre-Space War 1 design that'd likely never been used against the Zentradi and giving it a top-to-bottom refit. It'd make a hell of a lot more sense for the New U.N. Spacy to have evaluated the shortcomings of the most recent batch of destroids, and followed the same sort of design evaluation process we get in real world military procurement, having a few new designs or variants competing against each other, and tweaking them until you get one that meets both the immediate and predicted needs of the military. What one would expect to come out of a process like this would've been something at least superficially similar to the Tomahawk II from Macross II... a destroid descended from the Space War 1-era designs, but incorporating new features and design chances to meet the military's changing needs. Had the ADR-03 Cheyenne stayed in service through Space War 1 and the subsequent conflicts, you wouldn't be seeing many, if any, objections, because then it could easily and logically be excused as a phased upgrade program keeping an old but undoubtedly effective platform in service, much like the modern B-52. I'd concede that point were it not for the fact that she's transitioning between two units with radically different control systems, to say nothing of their rather different flight characteristics and means of staying aloft... (the Q-Rau flying on inertia control and raw thrust, the VF-1 flying on lift). Considering how different they are, I really can't see that being an easy transition... though if it was we'd have to discount Misty on the same grounds due to her status as a top Meltrandi power armor ace. Sorry if you don't like it, but I'm not the one who started introducing them as evidence... the first one brought up as an example of pilot training's duration was Aegis Focker, and he's from a (nominally) canon video game too. If it's a canon story (and yes, Macross: Eternal Love Song is a canon part of Macross II's continuity) then I'm not seeing a problem. I could maybe understand your objections if it were something from one of the non-canon games like Scrambled Valkyrie... Given what Roy says to Hikaru early on in SDF Macross, it would seem to be a problem mitigated considerably by the similarity in control between fighter and GERWALK. Granted, but that the training could be completed at a rush and produce competent pilots from people who've probably never flown before (Kakizaki and Jenius) in a matter of weeks instead of years speaks volumes as to how easy it is to operate a Valkyrie. Just a common sense examination would point to the major disparity in difficulty coming from them also having to learn to fly, which should make cross-training for a destroid a snap. It definitely doesn't augur well for the assertion that Valkyries must be substantially more difficult to train for (and thus make all pilots highly trained officers) than destroids (asserted to be operated by enlisted men). Like I said above, were it not for the completely different control system and their rather different flight characteristics, I'd consider it probably a wash in terms of difficulty. The transition definitely isn't going to be painless if she's switching over to something that flies differently than anything she's ever used before and has a somewhat unfamiliar control system. Yes, she'd probably learn quickly enough, but the point is that even starting from scratch in terms of how the controls work, she was able to pick it up fairly easily. It'd be like dropping someone who's only ever driven cars with automatic transmissions into a car with a stick shift and expecting them to win a race the very next day. "Operate" might be a bit generous... they just shot a few people with the gun, blew a hole in the wall, fell out, and drifted away. We also should account for the obvious in that the Regult probably isn't that difficult or complicated to operate, as the Zentradi aren't exactly a tech-savvy people prior to meeting up with humanity. Making it complicated and difficult to operate would be counterproductive when your average soldier's intelligence is no better than that of a primary school child. Not a fan of the movie The Last Starfighter, are you? If only because you don't have to teach the mook in the cockpit how to fly... one would imagine the heavier weapons and variety of different setups might require a fair bit of cross-training for a pilot to be effective and able to switch on short notice to compensate for casualties. (Which, given the dire straits the Macross was in, is almost a certainty)

So, let me get this straight... instead of contributing to the discussion in any meaningful way, you're going to make snide, nonsensical remarks because you find something objectionable about my backing up my points with examples? I'm at a loss for words... The point that I'm laboriously trying to get to through these examples is that the disparity in difficulty between destroid combat training and battroid combat training can't be THAT large, since there are not only several examples in the original Macross series where training for certain Valkyrie pilots can't have lasted more than a few weeks*, and green recruits who likely have never even flown before are combat-ready in a matter of months**, but also a handful of examples where pilots with NO training are dropped into the cockpit and still get around ok.*** Yes, there are cases where new recruits who get processed through some of the various military academies have training that lasts years, but that period likely includes a substantially broader curriculum than just "here's how to pilot this giant robot". * In SDF Macross, the absolute maximum duration Hikaru's training could have been is approximately 45 days, assuming "Transformation" takes place on March 1, and that he had only been on duty for a day or so before "Daedalus Attack". That 45 day period includes not only his Valkyrie pilot training, but the basic training seen in the montage as well. This is less than half the 15 weeks normally allocated in modern militaries for training on a tank. ** Assuming Milia didn't start training for a place in the U.N. Spacy until after the wedding, her pilot training cannot have lasted more than 13 days prior to her entering combat in "Love Drifts Away". *** Your mileage may vary... Hikaru stumbling around the city, Misty Klaus defeating hordes of Zentradi solo, etc. The disparity can't possibly be THAT big, so presumably destroid training ought to be rather easy by comparison (only one mode to worry about), and clearly VF training isn't the sort of thing you need years and OCS to get to grips with as was previously suggested.