SMS007

Aha, I see.

Fighter models like the 11, 19, 25, and 31 utilize Super Packs in space as a general rule. But the 17, 22, and 27 don't; as I recall at least the 17 is a space superiority fighter. Do the latter models have any inherent disadvantage to atmospheric flight then? As they don't shed weight in general for atmospheric flight. 

1 hour ago, BlackRose said:

Delta isn't really a "Macross World".  Like the song goes, "Welcome to Walkure World", all Macross stuff purely incidental.

Ahahahaha!!!!!

Wind terrorists need to suffer and die for their crimes. 

How many variable fighters besides VF-1, VF-5000, VF-17, Sv-154, and Sv-262 have direct real-world inspirations?

Anime News Network writeup.

Key visual:

Looks like Arad is getting an Armored Pack for his VF-31S!

Am I correct in presuming that fold quartz is not really silicon dioxide, with the name merely coming about because of visual resemblance?

On 11/26/2017 at 8:17 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Dunno.  It's entirely possible that other worlds had them and they just never activated because the planets they were on never dug them up or failed to maintain them properly... or it may be that the theory that the Brisingr cluster was one of the last areas settled by the Protoculture is true, and they were never installed to begin with.

There were Birdhuman icons found on other planets, like the Vajra homeworld in Frontier, so it's not unreasonable to suspect that there are probably others around.

But isn't the Bird Human icon on the Vajra homeworld likely just the original source that the Protoculture copied for their art?

Or are you suggesting that the icon Brera saw in Macross F episode 25 is in fact a millennia-old carving crafted by a Protohumanoid who ventured to the Vajra homeworld?

I'm a bit surprised the Windermereans didn't just have Epsilon build some dimensional warheads for them. Not like Space Nazis are strangers to hypocrisy. 

In any case, that fold quartz is probably going to go towards fold weaponry of some kind used by the next TV anime's antagonists. You and/or other people in the know via Japanese books say that the Anti-UN remnants/General Galaxy/Epsilon have been a looming threat on the galactic stage, as I recall. 

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nein.  Thus far, the Fold Dimensional Resonance system has only been implemented on the YF-30 Chronos prototype operated by Rion Sakaki.  We know SMS went to considerable lengths to avoid disclosing the specs for the technology, but it's not clear if it either was never disclosed, or wasn't suitable for production due to cost or stability issues.  Surya Aerospace's VF-31 Kairos left out any kind of fold wave system derivative when they used the YF-30 as a starting point, and Xaos's own custom version was built with a fold wave system.¹  

They kept most of the YF-30's other features, including the Brunhilde-type ARIEL II airframe control AI, ordnance container system, etc.

How convenient for the Windermereans then.

This has probably been asked already and I'm just not using the right search terms, but is the VF-31 capable of bypassing dimensional barriers like the YF-30? Surely Rion Sakaki breaking Yurva Arga's fold barrier with the help of Nekki Basara was considered a highlight of Aisha Blanchett's model's performance. 

On 10/19/2017 at 4:34 PM, Valkyrie Driver said:

I was looking on Macross Mecha Manual, and well...

I know it's not a Destroid or a Variable fighter, but I did just realize that Ozma's car is in fact a Lancia Delta. I mean, it was labeled that way on the site, but the everything is right, save the emblem (since it's not there). I found that pretty cool. Considering it's practically ancient...

On 10/19/2017 at 5:28 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, according to Macross Chronicle Ozma's a bit of a car nut... it shows, considering he chose to make a replica Lancia Delta HF Integrale Evoluzione 1 rally car retrofitted for Milky Road service his daily driver.  No word on what the powerplant is, but if it's anything like the other cars described in the Macross Chronicle mechanic sheets for DYRL? and Plus, it's almost certainly a hydrogen engine or a series hybrid with a hydrogen-burning generator... a subject quite near and dear to my heart, considering my vocation and employer.

It's noted in the relevant Macross Chronicle mechanic sheet that it was remodeled for space use (probably meaning Milky Road use).

On 10/19/2017 at 9:57 PM, Sildani said:

That seems pretty constant in sci-fi anime. In the original Evangelion Misato drove a Renault Alpine modified to electric, in the manga Kaji has a Lotus 1600. In the Sky Crawlers, Kusanagi has a personal Porsche 911 from the 80’s, dunno the chassis generation. And let’s not forget Batou’s classic car collection in Ghost in the Shell.  Makes you think these guys are all motorheads deep down, or perhaps not so deep. 

Haha, this comes to mind.

Thanks for the explanation although my opinion remains unchanged.

Am I to understand that the official Delta English subtitles present「マクロス・エリシオン 」/ "Makurosu Erishion" as "Macross Elysium"? In line with how several onscreen hull markings use "Aether" for the left arm carrier vessel 「 アイテール 」/ "Aitēru"?

I don't like how RVF-25 and RVF-171EX have the "R" in front. I prefer how electronic warfare VF-31E has the designating letter at the end.

Oh wow, thanks for dispensing the information, Seto Kaiba!

32 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Star Trek's Federation was developing plenty of new technologies through the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th centuries.  They did incorporate lots of innovations from contacted alien races that they acquired in trade, but they also had both a Federation-level R&D apparatus and a technology-sharing policy among the individual research organizations in the Federation not dissimilar to what the UN Gov't instituted for overtechnology in Macross (and which Nora was so pissed about in Macross Zero).  Sisko's job, before landing that posting to DS9, was in R&D at the Utopia Planitia shipyards on Mars.  Harry Kim, in an alternate timeline episode, also worked for R&D in San Francisco doing warp drives for runabouts.

I have seen those episodes; I'm just pointing out that without demonstrations from unusual sources, the humans of Star Trek and Macross would be nowhere. Now from a storytelling perspective I suppose it's all the same. But from my real-life perspective, I feel that it's a bit of cheating that humans magically acquire operable tech and mass-producing it; they didn't develop it on their own.

Also, I should probably have clarified my earlier statement. When I said "23rd century stagnation", I wasn't talking in-universe terms. I meant in real life the Star Trek franchise has basically gone nowhere past 2379 (Star Trek Nemesis) in canon works because Paramount and co. are obsessed with milking all the cash they can from Kirk and Spock and their era yet again.

54 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Outside of a system's Oort cloud, the available matter in the interstellar medium is painfully diffuse... in some environments it's projected to be less than one particle per cubic centimeter.  This is one of the reasons the Bussard ramjet isn't considered a realistically viable interstellar propulsion system.¹

It's easier by far to collect pre-accreted material from larger in-system or rogue stellar bodies such as comets, asteroids, moons, and planets.  Going in-system also offers more diverse materials and heavier elements than are normally found in the interstellar medium, the byproducts of the fusion reactions of the dead stars whose remains re-accreted to form those systems.  They have a great incentive to go in-system too, since the naturally occurring fold carbon is said to be a product of a star's death.

 

1. Also the reason Bussard ramjets aren't used in Macross, and why the Bussard collectors on starships in Star Trek are only used to supplement and VERY slowly minimally replenish a ship's cryotank-stored deuterium or tritium fuel slush while operating away from supply depots.  (Despite being profoundly inefficient, they're still better than the process they're using to make antideuterium or antitritium... the Federation's main fuel depot for antimatter is a solar-powered quantum phase inverter on Mercury.)

Heh. One wonders, assuming that the Vajra actually developed all of their science and technology on their own, how long they had to spend charting their core sectors, unlike humans having access to at least some Zentradi navigational data. 

The story of Star Trek (or at least once they finally get past their TOS 23rd century stagnation) depends on the human-dominated Federation acquiring technology from all sorts of sources rather than independently developing things on their own. Vulcans, extinct ancient civilizations, future-originating time travelers, etc.

The Vajra's sublight propulsion still makes not a lick of sense. How does it make any sense that they "swim" in a vacuum?

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, all over the place.  Multiple Macross titles have depicted Vajra swarms nesting both in space and planetside, and we've seen them nesting in all kinds of places like on planetary surfaces, on ancient Protoculture orbital megastructures, on asteroids, inside their starship-analogues (which are themselves living Vajra organisms), and inside wrecked starships of Human and Zentradi origin.

The Macross Frontier TV series gave us at least one shot of a Vajra heavy soldier digging in an asteroid for raw fold quartz, so it's logical to assume the Vajra are mining asteroids or collecting necessary resources from the environments in which they build their nests.  I'd also assume that, given the opportunity, they recycle the bodies of their dead to recover all the processed materials that were synthesized by the hive's queen (e.g. the refined fold quartz) or those that are processed using the Vajra's own biology like the fold carbon in their heavy quantum beam weapons and the materials in their energy conversion armor shells.  That might also explain their apparent propensity for nesting in wrecked starships, since a wrecked fold-capable starship is going to be a rich deposit of silicates, refined metals, and fold carbon from the ship's various fold devices¹.

The Vajra's adaptation against thermonuclear reaction warheads seems to have been just retaining extra layers of exoskeletal armor and letting them ablate away in the heat of the thermonuclear detonation, possibly by changing the molting pattern to produce a thicker exoskeleton (assuming Vajra molt like some large Earth insects).

 

1. Such as the Gravity Inertia Control systems inside its thermonuclear reactors (AKA fold reactors), the ship's main gravity control system clusters, fold system clusters, fold wave radar, fold communications systems, heavy quantum reaction beam weaponry, and in the case of the human ships potentially thermonuclear reaction warhead trigger mechanisms.

Well now. How convenient for the Vajra. 

10 minutes ago, Master Dex said:

They share information instantaneously through fold space communications. All Vajra are like synapses of a large brain with the queens as local control nodes.

That has nothing to do with my question. I mean physical resources, not data. You can have all the knowledge in the world but without supplies you can't put the data to use.

Where the hell do the Vajra get all their supplies from? The TV anime expects us to believe that after a few encounters with Macross Frontier every single Vajra in the galaxy started growing anti-reaction detonation armor. How? No one in the universe could possibly have infinite resources! 

Hey Seto Kaiba, you have previously stated that the YF-29 is the only fighter model to compare with the ultra-OP VF-24. Is it your conjecture then, that the YF-29 is superior to the VF-27 in combat capability? My perception of the climax of Sayonara no Tsubasa is that Alto only managed to avoid getting shot down by Brera because Ranka's fold singing disrupted Brera's concentration. 

The cyborg operator is the default specification for Galaxy NUNS's VF-27s in Macross Frontier, as Macross Galaxy's amoral leadership forced everyone in the fleet to adopt cybernetics at their whim. Some later civilian-owned VF-27s, as seen in Macross 30 and Macross Extra, appear to have been modified to allow for purely organic operators. (Hávamál and SMS Uroboros in the Macross 30 game also field VF-27s, but Seto Kaiba says that aspect of the game is of dubious canonicity)

As for how extensive cyberneticization is in Macross, it's ambiguous exactly how high the percentage is. I want to say Macross Galaxy's cyborgs have more of their original body than just their brains, but when Grace got shot up by Frontier NUNS in Sayonara no Tsubasa, she was leaking mechanical fluid from all over her body, no red blood in sight. 

On 11/21/2017 at 6:11 AM, JB0 said:

Hey, better to overdo it than underdo it.

 

Also, in Macross 7. Their test for "have the zentradi stopped killing everyone yet?" was "stab a random visitor to our ruins and then when she bleeds on the floor we check the DNA".

It was... perhaps not the CLEANEST test of character they could have executed.

Ha, and that doesn't account for the possibility that the Zentradi conquered and enslaved humanity either.

But of course, all Protohumanoids are dead and can't be held accountable for their incompetence. So it goes.