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Seto Kaiba

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  1. Seto Kaiba
    Probably quite a few more than the Queadluun-Rau, given that the Nousjadeul-Ger battle suit was the battle suit of choice for the far more numerous male Zentradi who made up the bulk of the postwar defectors. Its survivability was better than the Regult's, but it's no surprise that it was ultimately outshone by both the Regult and the Queadluun-Rau in New UN Forces service. The Regult had the advantage of numbers, esp. after the Spacy captured one of the factory satellites producing them, and it also had a variety of mission-specific variants. The Queadluun boasted mobility that exceeded even a Variable Fighter's well into the 2030s so it's no wonder it was the darling of the air forces. The Nousjadeul's just kinda stuck there in the middle... more survivable and higher performance than the Regult, but far worse in a dogfight than the Queadluun and with nowhere near the flexibility of the Regult's design to boot. I'm kind of surprised we didn't see them reworked into a workroid like the Cheyenne... their legacy in the main Macross timeline is mostly in the Variable Glaug and Neo Glaug's Battroid mode. They get a bit more love in the Macross II timeline. Therein, the UN Forces capture a factory satellite producing Zentradi battle suits in the late 2030s and the technology reverse engineered from that becomes the basis for the Valkyrie II series... the Zentradi Valkyrie, the VF-2, VF-2SS, and VF-2JA. Ah, game designs... gotta love it.
  2. Seto Kaiba
    That's a rather unfair and insulting statement. There's nothing wrong with the TV version of the Nousjadeul-Ger, and it definitely does not look like it was made from wreckage. The Queadluun-Rhea is not a "male version" of the Queadluun-Rau. The Queadluun-Rhea is an improved reproduction of the Queadluun-Rau that General Galaxy developed for the New UN Forces starting in the late 2030s. Accommodating male pilots wasn't a consideration. The design team's goal was to produce a replacement for the military's aging fleet of secondhand Queadluun-Rau battle suits that was in line with the military's requirements regarding operational capabilities and particularly survivability. As noted previously, the reason the Queadluun-series battle suits were used exclusively by female Zentradi was pretty much purely a matter of piloting ability and limited supply. Male Zentradi are engineered for size, for brute strength, and for durability. They didn't have the reflexes or the g-force endurance to bring out the full potential of the Queadluun-series battle suit, so the Protoculture went and built a better pilot: the female Zentradi. If there were a male version - and the unnamed battle suit from Plus is basically that - its performance would be much lower than the Queadluun-series because the male Zentradi have slower reflexes and aren't as able to endure high g-forces. The Queadluun-series battle suits are all about extreme maneuverability. Well, in the Macross Frontier novelization and in Macross the Ride we have something close... the Neo Glaug bis. It's a manned version of the Neo Glaug, the unmanned variable battle pod that was a competitor to the Ghost X-9 in 2040. ... that joke is awful. I'm not sure if you should be ashamed or proud of that one. Possibly both.
  3. Seto Kaiba
    It's difficult to say with confidence. Macross 7 did establish that Song Energy is a manifestation of higher dimensional energy in three-dimensional space. Once its existence was established, the new technologies that were developed to leverage it were applications of existing fold technologies. The Sound Energy Converter driving the Sound Boosters is a converted fold system. Macross Chronicle did essentially confirm that Song Energy and its more efficient boosted form Sound Energy are fold waves in its Technology Sheet. The topic could be said to have been definitively settled by Macross Delta Gaiden: Macross E, which indicated that biological fold wave research grew out of the research of Dr. Gadget M. Chiba and Dr. Lawrence we saw in Macross 7 and Macross Dynamite 7, and was championed by Lawrence's student Elma Hoyly. Whether the fold waves produced by someone with anima spiritia abilities would be intelligible to the Vajra the way that someone infected with the V-type bacterium would be, that's unknown at present. Sheryl and Ranka's songs reach the Vajra because they're broadcasting the same type of zero-time fold waves from the fold quartz in the V-type bacteria they carry in their bodies. The biological fold waves of someone without those bacteria might register as noise or nonsense to the Vajra since it's possibly the wrong type of fold wave... then again it may not be, given that the Siren Delta System was seemingly able to break through fold faults using focused biological fold waves alone... a property previously known only to be associated with zero-time fold effects produced by fold quartz. Basara's Sound Energy was also able to resonate with the Fold Dimensional Resonance system in the YF-30 in Macross 30... so that argues that it might be the same kind of fold wave. The TL;DR here is that it's a very definite "Maybe"... more information is needed.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Well, the Xaos PMC the protagonists belong to would probably have been absorbed into the New UN Forces the way SMS was late in Macross Frontier. Xaos are mercenaries, so the rules of war prohibit them from participating in a declared war between nations and they can't claim prisoner-of-war protections because they're unlawful combatants. That's something that comes up briefly when Hayate, Mirage, and Freyja are captured and put on trial in the TV series. Xaos being drafted would have likely changed the course of that entire conflict dramatically since they would've collaborated with the Brisingr Alliance NUNS instead of ignoring them and getting underfoot. The stuff surrounding Lady M's crimes might not change too much... except perhaps making Heimdall the good guys in the Absolute Live!!!!!! movie for wanting to bring Lady M to justice instead of arbitrarily trusting that she's the Big Good. Yeah, Messer's death was poorly handled in both versions. Roy's death in the original/DYRL? and Ozma's fakeout in Frontier are both impactful became the character was loved by the audience. Messer's death in the Macross Delta TV series and first movie fell incredibly flat because he was an antisocial jerk who was rude to basically everybody and his death was badly telegraphed by him being an undeveloped character until right before his death. Trying to play him off as a beloved colleague after the fact fell hilariously flat, and the reveal he carried a torch for Kaname is kind of creepy in hindsight because his "distant guardian angel" routine just means he's a benevolent stalker. It was only one-upped for terrible presentation by Absolute Live!!!!!!'s painfully telegraphed character death, with... ... seemingly feeling compelled to not only cover the Death Flag Greatest Hits but also raise a new death flag every other line of dialog. I'm sure the statute of limitations has run out after more than half a million years.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    He lost the arms blocking a number of incoming missiles. He purged his remaining Super Pack parts before making reentry. WRT reentry... we're all used to the idea of needing a ventral heat shield to make reentry because the structural materials of modern spacecraft would otherwise burn or melt under the heat of reentry. Variable Fighters generally don't need to worry about that because the super-composites they're made from have incredible strength and heat resistance all on their own. The same super-composites that are used in space warships that allow them to survive uncontrolled ballistic reentry both before and after the First Space War. Given that most, if not all, probably came from the Laplamiz direct defense fleet after it allied with the UN Spacy... probably several hundred to maybe a few thousand. Yeah, the VF-14 was deliberately designed with an oversized airframe to allow it to be easily upgraded or customized to meet the end user's needs... and also to carry the HUGE quantities of fuel it'd need for prolonged space operations with no Super Pack and regular thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. You may want to consider that escape from the aircraft may not necessarily always be strictly vertical.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Purge-able limbs like the YF-21/VF-22's don't have any space for mission-specific equipment though. They have to be made rather slim in order to fold and fit into the body of the aircraft, which makes them more fragile and prevents equipment from being mounted inside. You might remember that Isamu was able to shatter one of the YF-21's arms through brute force without damaging his YF-19 in Macross Plus. The more traditional VF body plan that puts the engines in the legs makes the limbs larger and more structurally robust. This opens up opportunities for weapons bays inside the limbs like the leg bays found in many 3rd Generation and later VFs. That said, mission-specific hardware isn't typically mounted in the limbs except in very rare instances.* Most mission-specific hardware is usually either mounted in the monitor turret (head)**, the cockpit***, or in bolt-on Option Packs**** when it's not simply being slung on a pylon. One could say that there is a reason the YF-21/VF-22's purge-able limbs didn't catch on... not only did it complicate the design of a VF in unhelpful ways, the utility of purging the limbs is so heavily situational that it's almost never going to be useful. * Like how Xaos's aftermarket customizations of the VF-31 Kairos fitted a multidrone storage rack into what was previously a modular weapons bay in the back of the VF-31's leg, or how the RVF-25 has a large but detachable phased array radar system mounted to one arm. ** Like the additional sensors in the RVF-25's unique head, or the high-precision optics in the VF-171AS and VF-25G's heads. *** Like the fire control system booster in the aforementioned VF-171AS and VF-25G. **** Like the radars and sensors in the Aegis Pack, or the various specialized weapons in things like the Armored Pack, Tornado Pack, Strike Pack, etc.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Variable Fighters are, by definition, already "truly" modular so I'm not really sure what you mean there. Modularized armament has been a feature since at least the 2nd Generation's VF-4, though few models have enough internally-carried armament to benefit from it. The YF-21/VF-22's ability to purge its limbs if the event of damage does nothing for operational versatility, so I'm not sure how that intersects with the YF-30 and VF-31's ordnance container system that is designed to allow a VF to hot-swap mission specific equipment. I'd guess that a YF-21/VF-22-style VF with an ordnance container would be extremely unwieldy since it wouldn't be able to use the engines to counterbalance that load properly in GERWALK or Battroid mode.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    Now... when all's said and done, I doubt a species of clone soldiers engineered and indoctrinated for nothing but military service and warfare have a concept of gendered colors. Hell, the idea that pink and blue are associated with girls and boys respectively is a relatively recent contrivance dating back only as far as the 1950s. That said, it is theoretically possible that a male Zentradi could operate the Queadluun-Rau and we do see male operators of the New UN Forces derivative model Queadluun-Rhea. Macross Chronicle suggests that the reason there aren't male Queadluun-Rau pilots in the Zentradi forces is that the (male) Zentradi lacked the reflexes and g-force resistance to draw out the full potential of the Queadluun-series because they were designed for strength and durability. The Protoculture's response to the male Zentradi being unable to use the Queadluun-Rau effectively was not to tone its performance down, but to use their mastery of genetic science to build a better pilot in the form of the female Zentradi. Its complexity and difficulty of manufacture meant that the few Queadluun-Rau battle suits produced went to elite female units where the very best pilots would get them.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    Yup. Macross Delta is a metaseries that brings a lot of Unfortunate Implications to the table that the story acknowledges but never properly examines or resolves because they make the heroes (Xaos) look incredibly bad. Yeah, I guess they were trying for the same kind of bait-and-switch that Macross Frontier did when they hinted that Ozma was going to die. Passionate Walkure makes it look like Messer's going to survive when he dodges the shot that killed him in the Macross Delta TV series... only to die anyway a few minutes later from the damage Var syndrome did to his body. Yeah, Humanity was engineered the same way the Protoculture created the other humanoids in the galaxy. The topic comes up for the first time in one of the post-timeskip episodes of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, "Satan's Dolls", where the implications of the earlier discover that the Zentradi are virtually identical to Humans genetically are discussed... including the conclusion that Humanity is another creation of the Protoculture. The official timeline and other materials explicitly confirmed that conclusion as fact, and even in-story it's essentially treated as the only reasonable/sane explanation for why every sentient species other than the Vajra is humanoid and apparently genetically compatible enough to produce viable hybrid offspring. Macross Zero confirmed it in-story, when Humanity found the failsafe the ancient Protoculture left behind on Earth in case Humanity were to develop into a spacefaring species before resolving its own internal disputes.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    The early models of fold booster (c. Macross Plus) were single-use devices rated for one fold jump of not more than 20 light years. Later models of fold booster (c. Macross Frontier) were able to be used for multiple fold jumps and distances of greater than 20 light years due to improvements in the technology. Master File offers an explanation for this difference that points to the quality and quantity of the fold carbon used in the booster. The early fold booster designs were somewhat on the crude side and used a large quantity of poor quality fold carbon in order to keep costs down for what was intended to be a disposable system. This resulted in the fold carbon breaking down very quickly in operation and effectively ensuring that the booster could not be reused even if it were not disposed of. Refinements in manufacturing and in fold carbon synthesis would later yield a fold system that could operate multiple times using better quality but not prohibitively expensive fold carbon by the late 2050s.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    Assuming you mean the rogue Zentradi who have not encountered Earth's culture... it doesn't. When the ancient Protoculture created the Zentradi as a clone army for proxy warfare, they took a number of precautions against their new clone army rebelling. One of those precautionary measures was to limit the technical knowledge available to the Zentradi to the operation of the technology the Protoculture created for them. They're supremely skilled end users, but they have zero understanding of how the technology they use on a daily basis actually works. Their equipment is mass produced for them by an enormous network of autonomous factory satellites that manufacture everything from food, uniforms, and ammunition up the scale to mobile weapons, ships, mobile fortresses, and even other factory satellites. The indoctrination Zentradi soldiers receive also denies them any knowledge of culture or creative pursuits and seeks to limit their thinking to a military role. In short, there really is no such thing as technological development in the Zentradi mindset... they don't even know it's possible, never mind having the skills to do it. The equipment the remaining Zentradi forces in the galaxy use is essentially the same equipment they were using over 500,000 years ago when the Protoculture's Stellar Republic collapsed at its peak. Factory satellites have autonomously made minor improvements over the millennia but there's nothing in their arsenal that wasn't designed for them by the Protoculture half a million years ago. Not every Zentradi main fleet is equipped exactly the same, though. Ever since the Macross II prequel games, it's been indicated that some Zentradi fleets have weapons that've either fallen out of use in other Zentradi fleets due to the loss of factory satellites (e.g. the Glaug) or simply because those weapons were developed for the local Zentradi forces out in some remote corner of the Protoculture's empire and never achieved widespread adoption. Macross Chronicle suggests the Macross Plus Battle Suit is an example of the latter case. Only Zentradi who've lived among, and been educated by, the Humans of the New UN Government have the necessary knowledge and skills to do things like repair technology or design improvements to it. New/original mobile weapons found in the hands of Zentradi rebels like the Variable Glaug or Feios Valkyrie are strongly implied, if not directly stated, to have been developed and built with the assistance of defense industry corporations with anti-government leanings left over from the Unification Wars or who are exploiting the rebels to either test new tech in the field or just selling to both sides to drive demand up. To date, I believe the only original Zentradi-designed and Zentradi-built mecha in Macross comes from the Macross II prequel games... Quamzin's Migg Pitt, the giant robot that he uses for the final boss battle in Macross 2036. It was developed by Zentradi rebels who'd lived on Earth after the First Space War but fled into deep space and linked up with the Neld main fleet.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    Much like how Macross's in-universe technological and cultural development mirrors the real world's concerns... the music in any given Macross series is going to reflect what trends were current in popular music at the time of its creation. Whether Big West is picking from a lineup of new artists provided by JVC/FlyingDog or scouting new talent themselves, they're still working to a budget. Having multiple idol groups performing new/original compositions would almost certainly be prohibitively expensive. If it's particularly important to the story that a minor character be a singer, then they have stretched the budget to hire an actual singer for one song or so, but that's about as far as they've gone with it.* When Macross 7's story called for multiple groups of performers to appear, they either never got the chance to perform or their performances used pre-existing tracks from the Macross II: Lovers Again OSTs to save money. I suppose it depends on whether it's actual country music or the light rock/pop about stereotypical redneck sh*t that passes for "country" now. Still... given post-war humanity's profound desire to recover and preserve for posterity as much of pre-war Earth's culture as possible, it seems likely that country music has survived in some form. FFS, the Macross Frontier fleet was so committed to its authentic recreation of various pre-war modern cities inside Island-1 that they went beyond recreating all the appropriate landmarks and even mandated that cars be period-appropriate in appearance even if the technology under the hood is decidedly NOT. Somebody went to an awful lot of trouble to recreate the appearance of the early 2000s Toyota Prius with an all-electric powerplant and Milky Road compatibility, never mind weird niche vehicles like Ozma's replica Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione. * e.g. Yukiyo Sato as 2092 military top idol Wendy Ryder in Macross II, Mari Yoko as Alice Holiday in Macross 7, or Shunsuke Osakamoto as Zentradi enka singer Keiichiro Tokugawa in Macross Frontier.
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Probably not. The music licensing is fraught enough as it is. That's why when, in Macross 7, they just reused 5he soundtrack from Macross II for many of the other performers who live in the fleet. Having multiple groups of performers in multiple genres would lead to a very scattered and expensive musical undertaking they probably wouldn't do as well as just having one group that the show focuses on. I don't recall any. There are several bases in our solar system's asteroid belt, but those are mostly just stationary large ships rather than a hollowed out asteroid.
  14. Seto Kaiba
    How acceptable they were may deserve a bit of an asterisk given that a major contributing factor in the toy line's failure was that it was designed for the demographic that HG had aimed Robotech at... not the somewhat older one that actually watched it. (At least, according to Harmony Gold's hindsight.)
  15. Seto Kaiba
    We'll see if they can keep it up. I've seen a bunch of news postings about how the showrunners for this want to get something like eight seasons out of it to cover the entire One Piece manga. That's going to be an extremely ambitious undertaking. Not just because of the sheer scale of such an undertaking and the better than even chances of getting flayed alive if they screw it up, but because of the increasing frequency of problematic content going forward. Even if lovable transvestite shapeshifting goofball Bon Clay somehow gets a pass, I suspect there'll be quite a bit of sociopolitically-loaded grumbling about characters from the Impel Down arc like Emporio Ivankov (imagine Dr. Frank N. Furter from Rocky Horror but with the anatomical proportions of a Funko Pop), multiple characters casual approach to sexual harassment, and what Sanji gets up to during the post-Marineford timeskip. I imagine there's going to be quite a bit of cutting to sanitize the story for western audiences.
  16. Seto Kaiba
    It was 1986, the manufacturing process wasn't as advanced as it is today. It also wasn't exactly Matchbox's best effort. Maybe so... but if it's down to the consumer to bring the product up to an acceptable level of quality post-purchase, something is badly wrong with the product.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    Perhaps the most frustrating example is Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!, where both new Valkyries have had coverage in only one book: Variable Fighter Master File: VF-31AX Kairos Plus. As sketchley already noted, the New UN Government has seized and repurposed quite a few factory satellites over the years. They've been used to build quite a lot of stuff... from churning out processed materials for Earth's post-war reconstruction to building more Zentradi mecha for the New UN Forces to building emigrant ships and their escorts. How autonomous that manufacturing process is remains unclear, but there seems to be at least some manual involvement still. The reconstruction of Battle 7, which was done without a factory satellite, was done in place via manual labor as seen in Macross Dynamite 7. It seems likely that there's a parallel to real world shipbuilding with ships being built in modules and then integrated onsite with manual labor.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    No worries. It's a sensible question... esp. given that one of the west's most prominent sci-fi properties (Star Trek) does EXACTLY THAT to supplement onboard fuel stores. Star Trek's "Bussard Collectors" are an overpowered application of Bussard ramscoop technology that are used to scoop up hydrogen from the interstellar medium for use in the ship's fusion reactors and matter-antimatter reactor. Given how often emigrant fleets in Macross just chill out in interstellar space, something like that would seem pretty sensible if those fleets weren't also casually mining nearby asteroids and comets for resources as they pass... and they can cheat and take the asteroids or comets with them.
  19. Seto Kaiba
    Classical music doesn't typically lend itself to vocal performances... outside of choir or opera. Macross's schtick is songs more than just music. There was an enka singer in Frontier, and one of the character cover albums had his signature song covered by members of the main cast. That said, traditional art forms are less popular... and Macross is generally aiming for popular music. The Mardook in Macross II kind of have this one covered already... albeit it's more operatic wailing than a hymnal.
  20. Seto Kaiba
    To a point, yeah... though there is one notable exception. Missiles using infrared guidance - the most common primary guidance system on micromissiles - are going to overwhelmingly target a Valkyrie's engines no matter where they're situated in the airframe because that's the part of a Valkyrie that emits the most heat. For most Valkyries, this means they'll home in on the legs.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    Information for Macross Delta is relatively thin on the ground in general. About all we know, via the Macross Delta TV series, is that those specific classes of space warship are among the products produced and sold by the many subdidiary companies operating as part of the Epsilon Foundation. Windermere IV's government was buying basically all of its technology through the Epsilon Foundation even before relations with the New UN Government soured, so we can't pin down when they were purchased. They spent big on upgrading their forces between the War of Independence and their attack on the Brisingr Alliance, so it's possible those ships may be new ships purchased in the 2060s. Or they may just be reusing old carriers because their trump card Sigur Berrentzs can fold fighters to and from targets without needing to jump itself. General Galaxy are the preeminent shipbuilders in the New UN Government's sphere of influence. Given that, and the Epsilon Foundation's seeming focus on doing business with emigrant governments that may not have the resources to be fully self-sufficient, it's not surprising in the least that one or more of the conglomerate's subsidiaries in the defense industry would be a shipbuilding firm manufacturing General Galaxy's designs under license for sale to emigrant governments like Windermere IV. Macross Galaxy's versions of those designs are said to be state-of-the-art as of 2059. We just can't say whether the very similar designs used by Windermere IV's armed forces were an older version of those designs, an economized version of the Macross Galaxy fleet's proprietary escorts meant for export sale, or have simply been customized to meet some specific need the Windermereans have.
  22. Seto Kaiba
    Probably not. A liquid air cycle engine is able to separate gases in its intake, but only through the difference in their boilings points when chilling the intake air for liquifaction. They're intended to run just cold enough to liquify oxygen but not cold enough to liquify nitrogen on the engine's ascent through the atmosphere as a way to cheat down the weight of a rocket through collecting oxidiser for its fuel on the flight up instead of having to carry all of its fuel from the word "go". (The idea is not workable at the present time in the real world, but what's being done with the Macross version "SLACS" is a lot more restrained and feasible.) Kinda... we call those "aircraft carriers", "space stations", and "surface airbases". Given that the fuel of choice for thermonuclear reactors is the most plentiful element in the universe, emigrant fleets and planets have no shortage of ways to obtain it. Harvesting it from the interstellar medium with something like a bussard ramscoop is Hard Mode and terribly inefficient. The approach with the best yield would probably be using robot ships to collect hydrogen gas from the upper atmospheres of gas giants. The safest approaches with the least effort would be either using refrigeration and pressurization to separate air into its component gases or using electrolysis on water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. Given that water and water ice can be found on many planets, moons, asteroids, and comets... well... they can probably harvest it while they're collecting other resources.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    Further development based on the YF-21/VF-22 seems to have been based entirely upon improving the brainwave control system. The one late model that we see that was being used as an experimental test bed (VF-22HG Schwalbe Zwei) was being used to develop improvements to the BCS that eventually evolved into the cybernetic version of the system seen on the YF-27 and VF-27. Development of VF defensive measures seems to have focused far more on making sure that the limbs stay on rather than trying to work around losing a limb. The focus being on improvements to structural materials, energy conversion armor, and pinpoint barrier systems to make the limbs more resistant to damage.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    That's a small part of it... but the main reason is that Shinsei Industry went back and dramatically reworked the VF-19 in order to address feedback from the New UN Forces about its performance. They simplified its structure somewhat to improve maintainability and adjust its aerodynamic performance, they optimized the design for space operations, and reworked the airframe control AI to improve controlability. SLACS was no longer necessary for the VF-19's late type since it was designed principally for use in space but the redesign of its exterior was for other reasons.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    Yuuuuuup. It's really hard to believe someone so naive, gullible, and incapable of detecting malice was ever a top bounty hunter. It would've been way better for him as a character to go out at the top of his game than to live to deteriorate into that. On the other hand, it does make it a lot easier to understand why the Empire moved away from clone soldiers. If that's the quality they were getting from clones left to their own devices in the field, no wonder they decided clones weren't cutting it.
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