cheemingwan1234

So, what does the UN Army use post Macross Plus with the retirement of most Destroids? Do they have their own Variable Fighters or something different like Marclones with powered suits like the Gers and Raus and battle pods?

8 hours ago, JB0 said:

"Okay, yeah. The pilot's brain is part of the computer system and if they were mentally unstable the plane would be wildly unpredictable. Good thing I'm not crazy!" *pops some pills*

Guld: *Sneakily hides more pills.

Meanwhile at Shinsei.

Yang: "Thia is the sixth crash that happened to the YF-19 prototype! And fatal too!"

Technician: "Maybe Shinsei should start a funeral home subsidy."

Yang: (grumbling) "I've heard that there is a new test pilot by the name of Isamu transfering here within this week. Hope he can control this thing..."

5 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Closer to "It's expensive and a hard to make, but it's going to let our new plane with ultrafast reaction times treat Newton's laws like polite suggestions... so why wouldn't we?"

 

Guld probably had a REALLY good feeling about it.  He was the lead system designer on the Brainwave Control System and the Inertia Vector Control System allowed the YF-21 to get even more maneuverability and more precise maneuverability1 control out of its existing systems.

Hmm 

Guld: "Well, if we can treat the laws of motion like suggestions, we can have a  near certainty of the YF-21 winning. After all, it's not like I'm going to square off against a suped up Ghost."

7 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Partly because the YF-21 program spun off from General Galaxy's efforts to reproduce and improve upon the Queadluun-Rau battle suit for the New UN Forces.

But mainly, it's because the Inertia Vector Control System is a stupidly useful thing to have if you can reproduce it.

It's the system that gives the Queadluun-Rau its incredible maneuverability.  It's a very precise application of Gravity and Inertia Control technology that can increase or decrease the magnitude (but not the directionality) of acceleration forces on the airframe.  The Queadluun-Rau uses it to improve propellant efficiency and the output power of its engines and its verniers, allowing it to accelerate far faster than it would be able to unassisted, to turn more sharply, to make sudden starts and stops that would otherwise be impossible, etc.  As a byproduct of its operation, it also protects the cockpit and airframe from the additional g-forces those impossible maneuvers would ordinarily incur.  It's incredibly complex and hard to manufacture, but it's such a boon to performance that there's no way General Galaxy was going to pass on it while the factory satellite to manufacture it was under their control.

So something like this in a nutshell..

"Well, it's a pain in the butt to manufacture and is expensive. But it's gonna protect our pilot from becoming mush and we have the factory satellite that makes the things, so we're gonna put it in that baby."

*slaps the YF-21.

Guld: "I have a bad feeling about this....."

Do Zentraedi use marching cadences when training or do they train in silence? Sure, they may be genetically engineered big boi/gurl warriors, but a song could be useful for raising morale and keeping their mind off their conditions and focused on their training ahead.

Would be also be logical for why they're stumped by Minmei since her introduction's to Earth songs are different from their marching songs/cadences.

Okay, so why the designers incorporated a inertia vector control system in the YF-21? Was there a reason?

So, about the SDF-1 Macross, do the Megaroad class ships after it have different internsls compared to the SDF-1 because they're built from scratch rathrr than from an alien ship.

19 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, nothing... that's kind of the problem.

Destroids ended up sidelined after the First Space War because the assumptions underpinning their development and deployment turned out to be wildly incorrect.

The Earth Unification Government and its newly-established Earth UN Forces believed that a future war with aliens would take the form of a classic "alien invasion" scenario.  They were expecting the hypothetical future enemy to focus on penetrating Earth's orbital defenses in order to land ground forces on the planet's surface and seize territory.  Earth's new space-based defenses were set up as static "space airbases" and guided missile destroyers intent on sinking enemy ships trying to land on the planet, while ground-based defense focused on regional defense forces and large seagoing mobile reaction forces that could redirect to respond to anywhere an invasion might land.  The Destroids were developed for that ground-centric defense plan as a next-generation overtechnology-based replacement for main battle tanks.

But the Earth UN Government couldn't have been more wrong.  The Zentradi had no interest in capturing and occupying territory or securing resources.  Their one and only mission was "Destroy the enemy" and did so on a scale that meant planetary destruction could be done relatively casually.  As land warfare weapons in a space war, the Destroids weren't exactly useful for much except as ad hoc air defense guns on the SDF-1 Macross.

After the war, the New UN Government and New UN Forces had a better idea of how space warfare actually worked, and with land warfare not really in the cards there wasn't any reason to keep developing Destroids.  Most New UN Forces warships weren't big enough to support them and the same air defense role could be done much more effectively by a static beam CIWS or anti-aircraft missile system.  Development of destroids basically stopped at that point because the concept itself was flawed.  The only Destroids that we're shown after the First Space War are original models from the early 2000s either being used as-is or with marginal upgrades for niche roles.  At the end of the day, they couldn't make them more viable... just slightly better in their already niche role.

 

 

TBH, this was one of the "niche roles" features mentioned above.

In Macross II, the rollers were intended to make it easier for the Destroids to reposition on the outside of the Spacy's warships... but those ships are MUCH bigger than the ships the main Macross timeline has.

In Macross Frontier, they were intended mainly to stop the Cheyenne II from ripping up the pavement inside of the emigrant ships.  That was their main functional advantage... not pissing off the road commission.

 

Not sure what that'd achieve, really... most of the Destroids in the original series already had a common/shared drivetrain (Series 04).  The only real exceptions were the Spartan (a Series 07 design) and the Monster (a Series 00 design).  The original Series 04 design, which became the Tomahawk, did have an ability to swap out certain weapons but it wasn't really that useful.  The ability was seemingly abandoned after the MBR-04-Mk.IV's option to exchange the particle beam cannons for a pair of rotary cannons.

 

EX-Gear doesn't help with aiming.  That's the Fire Control System's job.

It's designed to help with piloting, and specifically piloting a Variable Fighter, by making the interface more intuitive... which is occasionally described as creating the feeling that the pilot is wearing the Variable Fighter itself.

 

Energy conversion armor and pinpoint barriers are two of the three most energy-intensive systems a Valkyrie has.  (The third is active stealth.)

Energy conversion armor was a concession made for Valkyries to keep their weight down, beefing up the strength of relatively thin armor plating instead of layering on thick slabs of composite armor.  Destroids didn't need to fly, so they were able to keep costs down by using a much lower-output reactor that met the needs of the superconducting motors in the walking drivetrain and the few onboard beam weapons thanks to being able to achieve their defensive ability through making the armor itself thicker.  This meant that a Destroid could be manufactured for as little as 1/20th what a Valkyrie cost in the First Space War.

A Destroid would need more, and vastly more powerful, reactors to incorporate energy conversion armor and pinpoint barrier systems.  To the point that it wouldn't be a Destroid so much as a non-transformable, flightless Battroid... and at that point, why not just go the rest of the way to making a Valkyrie esp. since you'd already have two Valkyrie-grade reactors.

Darn! So that's why we don't see them running around that much by the time Frontier takes place.

Okay, Destroids have been relegated to the sidelines in Macross for Variable Fighters, so what type of upgrades can be done to Destroids to make them more relevant in a changing battlefield.

(And no, the Koing Monster does  not count as a Destroid. It's a Variable Bomber)

Ideas:

Rollers on feet a la Cheyenne II and Macross II Destroids. (and a must)

Modular chassis with interchangeable and easy to swap out weapons.

EX-Gear for better weapon aiming

Pin point barriers and Energy Conversion Armor incorporated into Destroids (I bet they can tank more than VFs since they don' t have to contend with a thing called flying)

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

It does simplify manufacture though.....

So, I was trying to design a ejection mechanism for the SV-51, VF-4, and other VFs with similar fransformations and well, I think some explosive bolts can be used to blow off the upper torso to expose the cockpit.

29 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

You seem obsessed with detachable limbs on the VF"s for some reason....

Because I think that could open up new design paths for VFs...If you can make the limbs easy to swap out, you can introduce a lot of variants and simplify repair.

I was thinking of something. Hey, remember the ordnance pods of the YF-30 and VF-31? Wonder if that can be combined with the YF-21's detachable limbs to create a truly modular variable fighter?

Then again, it would play havoc with aerodynamics.

33 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

I dearly hope and pray there's no such thing as Macross Country Music Television. 😱

Star Singer genes+hick music=hilarity.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

Darn! 

Really wish that Macross can try different idol groups have different music genres since it could be useful in showing music and how it changes and how it's used in different cultures.

Do you think that the idea of Macross series featuring different idol groups that have distinct music genres in the same show could work? It could give each idol group a distinct flavor. You can have classic J-Pop idols, and other music genres such as a Zentraedi military choir (under an all Zentraedi unit in the NUNS to boost their fighting spirit)*.

Plus, just imagine the final song for a movie of that theoretical series where one group sings a segment with their own instruments before switching over to another group who sings their own segment with the finale being the different idol groups singing together, showing the different aspects of music and how it brings everyone together.

*I can picture the Zentraedi military choir sounding similar to this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy6AOGRsR80

And speaking of asteroid mining, okay, are asteroid fortresses built from an asteroid a thing in Macross? I know that the Fulbtzs-Berrentzs Class Mothership exists, but that just looks like an a very large asteroid.

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

Though of course.....do they blow up just as good as terrestrial fuel depots?

Me wants big boom!

If I remember correctly, Macross did try experimenting with music genres in Plus (electronic), 7 (a rock band) and Zero (tribal), but does anyone wish they could try experimenting with different music genres more often?

Here's my personal bucket list of music genres that Macross could experiment with.

Classical orchestra.

Japanese enka (traditional music)

Scottish inspired music (bagpipes and all)

Sabaton inspired heavy metal...(for the antagonists)

Choir

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Here's a novel concept: make sure the pilot is skilled enough and trained enough to not "get limbs blown off" the Valkyrie.

You do realize that in the middle of a dogfight, by the time you're done trying to just blow off the legs, the opposing pilot's already trashed your main body on your valk? It's not like they're just going to do like "The Fish Slap Dance" and stand there while you open fire:

Limbs and other parts are considerably small, in light of targeting the main body as a whole. The damage incurred on the limbs of the YF-21 was due to the large numbers of missiles and the incoming fire from the AI controlled Ghost X-9.  If you're facing that kind of craft, you've got problems no matter what you do.

Right? You blow one limb off, the pilot and mech are still in the fight; you blow up the main body and it isn't going to matter how many limbs are left.

Not to mention the other pilot's probably going to guess after the first second or two what you're trying to do and do something about it (like target YOUR main body and light you p like a Christmas Tree).

Unless you're one of those Windermereans with an overgrown sense of chivarly.

Fingers crossed that they're putting the VF-19Kai and YF-21 for next year.

37 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

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.

Well, that's one way to ensure that limbs don't get blown  off.

9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

An explicit explanation isn't given in any of the technical materials that I've seen.

Of course, we can make some reasonable assumptions based on what we know about why the YF-21/VF-22 ended up designed the way it was and what concessions had to be made in its design to compensate for those unconventional decisions.

Variable Fighter Master File and Macross Chronicle both lean into the idea that the YF-21's unconventional transformation was a product of two things: the design's basis in the Queadluun-Rau battle suit and the design team's goal of maximizing passive stealth performance.  Macross Chronicle's coverage of the YF-21's GERWALK mode makes a brief note about how most VFs mount their engines in the (lower) legs because it makes for a more efficient transformation.  (This probably helps stability a fair bit too, putting the heaviest single part of the Battroid closest to the ground.) 

The YF-21's unconventional design required some additional considerations to preserve GERWALK mode operation.  Most VFs use the main engines to produce thrust for lift and vector that thrust to maneuver while supplementing that vectoring with a sub-engine for forward thrust.  The YF-21's unconventional design meant that General Galaxy had to get weird with it.  The legs are basically deadweight in GERWALK mode, containing only verniers.  The main engines have to produce both forward thrust AND lift thrust, so how they went about it was to essentially install a set of large slats in the underside of the engine compartment so that bypass airflow from the engines could be redirected downward to produce lift while the main engines produced thrust for forward motion.  This is probably rather hard on the engines (which Master File alleges already suffer from a significantly reduced operating lifespan due to being overtuned to compensate for the YF-21's greater mass and energy requirements) and the extent to which that thrust can be vectored to maximize maneuverability is far more limited.

Master File also notes that putting the engines in the main body instead of the legs makes them more difficult to service... which is more of a problem for the YF-21/VF-22 than many other VFs since as noted above its overtuned engines need more TLC from the mechanics than those of other VFs.

The loss of maneuverability from being less able to vector main engine thrust was presumably compensated for by the Inertia Vector Control System.  That's probably a double-edged sword on its own, since that system is extremely expensive and difficult to produce.

 

The ability to purge the limbs and keep flying is a very niche and not particularly useful feature.

Mind you, it doesn't make the VF itself more resistant to damage... it just means that hits to the limbs are less disabling than hits to center mass, while the opposite would be true for other VFs.  Even then, if other VFs had the same energy generation improvements applied to their engines and were willing to make the same design compromises to get that greater output, they'd still be better off since they'd have far more energy to throw at energy conversion armor and pinpoint barrier systems at the expensive of engine lifespan.

What you might gain in terms of stealtiness and tolerance for a lost limb you lose in terms of ease of maintenance, a larger airframe, and greater burden on the active stealth system.

So, yeah, the YF-21/VF-22 is gonna to have some balance abnormalities when walking compared to a more 'traditional' VF.

Point noted, still wonder if the tech could be pursued further since this would be good for combat. Bust the limbs of a VF and this could screw with how it transforms. 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

You mean that doesn't work? O.o

 And that's before the nebulas start screwing with your sensors.

Back onto the topic, will the belly plates have hardpoint to mount plyons on? 

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

There is no indication of such a capability in official materials.

Master File mentions a system called the Slush and Liquid Air Cycle System (SLACS) in 4th Gen and later VFs that does something similar, albeit only within a planet's atmosphere.

SLACS is a system built into a sub-intake like the dorsal intakes in the VF-19's shoulders that is a practical application of Liquid Air Cycle Engine theory.  In short, the VF is using its internal stores of cryogenic hydrogen fuel to rapidly cool air passing through the sub-intake into a liquid state.  That liquid air is then further chilled into a slush for storage and put into a separate tank for use as a propellant in space.  It's worth noting that said slush is not injected into the reactor as fuel but is instead introduced into the plasma stream in the thrust increase section of the turbine in an afterburner-like manner to increase the thrust output of the engine.

That said, it's also noted that SLACS doesn't work in space and that units intended primarily or entirely for space operation tend to remove the system and replace it with supplemental tanks instead.

Well, that explains why the VF-19F and S have different shoulders from the VF-19A.