Knight26

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Probably purchased after the Destroids were decommissioned and sold off as potential industrial equipment as a museum piece.

 

Eh... yes and no, but more no than yes.

Many of the VF-1's seen in Macross 7 are supposedly units disarmed and sold off to civilians by the New UN Forces after the VF-1 was retired from service.  Many more, according to Master File, met their end as target aircraft in training exercises with live weaponry.  Past that point, most of the VF-1's we see in civilian hands are purpose-built civilian models which use more modern hardware and software.

Not too unlike people who purchase warbirds and old tanks today.  They are all completely demiled (except those used by private contractors at Red Flag and similar training events), and typically have a number of other systems detuned/downgraded for longevity and to meet FAA spec.  But, as you said, most likely ended up as targeting/gunnery drones.  Even the "purpose built" civilian models have something of a precedent, but usually in things like transports, light aircraft, and helos.

On 1/15/2022 at 8:06 PM, Shawn said:

Of COURSE Cel shaded figures would be a natural 'next'...incredible!

 

Here is a super neat Glaug I stumbled across from this feed below.

 

https://twitter.com/hashtag/これを見た人は自分がかっこいいと思う画像を1枚貼れ?src=hashtag_click

I like it, make me think it is modified for human pilots (opened top hatch).  The underslung cannon is definitely firing arc limited, but would be better protected and still useful.

On 1/17/2022 at 3:59 AM, Keith said:

It was better than "The Inhumans," but They clearly didn't learn their lesson about tossing in a "we were here the whole time" group without giving proper weight to them. A D+ show with a different era per episode would have worked better.

Plus, how did Ego completely miss the presence or another Celestial when he was on Earth?

That would have worked much better, they go to sleep, wake up when the monters show, go back to sleep.

21 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Interesting.

I must do some reading It seems.

It get somewhat brain twisting, but the ways in which Negative and Positive matter interact fits how we see Star Wars tech react, especially the lightsaber.
Unlike magnets, neg and pos matter repel each other.  If a lightsaber uses a core negative matter constrained by an outer cold plasma stream, it would be "safe" to handle and would act as seen in the movies.  Light glance: burn and bounce away.  Hard swing, slice through with burn and cauterization.  The neg matter core "cuts" by pushing pos matter out of the way, the cold plasma then does the actual "burning."  Moreover, how it reacts with other Neg-matter makes sense.  Two sabers collide, bounce off due to the plasma sheath, but hit hard enough to penetrate the sheath and saberlock.  Watch how saber locks are disengaged, not by pulling, but by pushing.  Pulling at neg matter makes it more attractive to other neg matter, pushing forces it away.  (I said it can get brain twisting).
Extrapolating from there it all ties together:
Repulsors use small, spun up, negative matter cores that create a repulsive force against the closest object, the ground, etc... while lowering its effective mass.
DS Lasers, basically just big lightsabers that collect a massive amount of negative matter at the coalescence point and then release it towards the target, the negative matter is doing the actual destruction.
Hyperdrives, dense negative matter fuel systems spin up to mimic a lower to no mass craft allowing a ship to jump to light speed, and then break the hyperspace barrier.  The bigger the ship, the bigger the hyperdrive needed.  How it works in Hyperspace is a slightly different matter, but it still works.
How ships maneuver: given that all ships seen have at least repulsors, the lowered effective mass and particulars of how negative matter reacts would make proper Newtonian maneuvers difficult or even hazardous, hence more aircraft like movement.

I could go on, but would like to find my old write up on it first.

I'll be curious to see what improvements/changes, if any are made to the toys before buying.

8 hours ago, jenius said:

They are 3D printed though so that means you'd have to sand and paint them right?

Yes and no, 3D printed items do still need to be sanded and filled based on print quality/issues.  Painting is up to the builder.

11 hours ago, Podtastic said:

Well Star Wars is a mix of both, but its never been hard sci-fi. We have slo-mo-jo lasers and sounds in space after all.

Now I appreciate the odd technical manual that tells me how blasters, TIE fighters and Deathstar Superlasers work as much as the next person, but there is such a thing as going too far.

I refer here to the Midi-Chlorians, which seemed to me an attempt to retro-rationalise the quasi-mystical nature of the Force away by people who "cannot allow the supernatural a foot in the door."

I'm with you on the Midi-Chlorians, and really felt that they were mishandled.  They could have been better explained as a parasite that exists in all things but prefer the force sensitive, and therefore are found in greater numbers in their blood.

The sound in space and slow lasers yes, that is pure nonsense, but in the OT could be written off as part of the times.  However, everything else could explained with a simple, theoretical, concept, Negative Matter.  Not Dark Matter, but Negative Matter that has negative mass and is actually postulated as part of General Relativity, but is minimally studied for a variety of reasons.  I went down the rabbit hole on researching it in college but ran into tons of dead ends so dropped it, until I played Mass Effect.  Element Zero is basically a means to harness negative matter, though in universe they say dark matter.  Thanks to the new Disney movies (R1 and Solo) we see almost definitively that the majority of SW tech is based around crystals (kyber, coaxium, etc...) and if they are somehow able to harness and utilize negative matter it explains pretty much everything, from why their ships maneuver the way they do to why light sabers don't immediately set everything on fire and their behaviors.  Even the DS Super Lasers, and smaller combining lasers, using kyber crystals fits the system.  Does it fix everything?  No.  But it does bring it more in line with proper, still softer, sci-fi.

49 minutes ago, Shawn said:

We are starting to see complete 1-100 volumes up for sale now on the 2nd market. I can't imagine how much shipping would be all at once.
Does anyone have a scale pic of all the items at once?

 

This pic is about 1/3 if I counted correctly

Probably close to the cost of the kit itself, lol.

27 minutes ago, Podtastic said:

I did watch it...and instantly forgot it.

Nothing in it was worth my time, other than the scene featuring the Imperial Naval Troopers. And then only because I hoped it meant Hot Toys was FINALLY going to make the Death Star Trooper.🙄

Except that the introduction of Coaxium (dumb name) as a fuel source is the bit of plotonium/unobtanium that could make star wars tech somewhat plausible and turn Star Wars back into Sci-Fi instead of Space Fantasy, especially when you take the treatment/usage of Kyber Crystals in Rogue and TFA into account.

Finally saw it on D+, and well, I'm glad I didn't see it in theatres.  It was probably the weakest entry in the MCU, and thus far seems like it has no impact on any of the others.  The GotG movies on their own seemed to take place in their own world (which they kind of did), but this one had a freaking celestial start to birth out of the Earth followed by another showing up in orbit and the next two MCU movies  make 0 mention of that, unless I blinked and missed it.  Really, the biggest thing it seemed to do was setup Black Knight to become a regular in the rest of the MCU.

Couldn't happen to a nicer person, lol.

Standard box-wing configuration.

The closest examples I can think of to "Custom Fighters" would be the time to altitude record holders:  F-4, F-15, and Su-27.  Those birds had specially tuned engines and were stripped of everything that wasn't needed to accomplish the time to altitude records (guns, radars, weapon systems, paint, etc...)  They then, in some cases, were further reinforced to handle the extra loads to be placed upon them.

@Seto Kaiba I agree, he would have been less conspicuous, but at the same time, even more infuriating to Gamlin.  "Why is a civilian here flying into battle?"  And  "How the heck is he keeping up with us in that antiquated hunk of junk?"  Do that would also have established him as an even more amazing pilot because he was making such an old craft perform so well, as opposed to be in the top of the line fighter.  Even SK's design works kind of backs that up with early Fire Valk concept being based more on the VF-11.

Even with maintaining adequate spares for all ships and fighters you still wouldn't want to run your craft at max capacity while underway without a strong logistic train behind you.  The 3-Stars might be able to churn out dozens of fighters a day when fully stocked with adequate supplies coming in, but given the relatively slow speed and infrequent jumps the colony fleets seemed to make I would assume that means they are almost always running on a conservation/minimum consumption stance as much as possible.  Once they reach their selected colony world and establish trade with other colonies to get the logistics train back up and running the fighters would then be retuned back to full spec.

As for your special forces/custom jobs.  That goes beyond just tuning.  The SF craft are likely tuned to full spec, with the maintainers maybe pushing those bounds where they can.  The customs, well there almost anything could be going on, but it would take a seriously talented engineering team to make sure that the modifications didn't actually hurt the craft.  Basara's Fire Valkyrie likely had many of the military systems stripped (internal guns and associated hardware at a minimum) lowering its mass on top of having uprated/uptuned engines.

I've always contended that it would have been better/made more sense, that Basara should have started out in a lower spec custom valkyrie, (VF-4 up to a VF-11) and only once he demonstrated what he was capable of was granted the VF-19, in the same episode where it gets refitted.  After Zero, I thought it would have been cool if he turned out to be child of Sara and Shin and started out in a rebuilt and re-engined VF-0.  Given how the later Macross productions all seem to tie back to Zero, it would have made for an interesting connection.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's interesting to note that the New UN Government seems to have mandated various forms of detuning on certain export variants... particularly where the VF-19 is concerned.

The New UN Forces in the Frontier era also seem to be fans of detuning in general, apparently just to reduce operating costs.  The FF-2550F engines adopted by the VF-171EX and VF-171-III are detuned almost 20% compared to the ones used on the VF-19.  The VF-171's FF-2110A engines seem to be detuned versions of the FF-2100X, also by about 20%.

I guess even the New UN Forces of the wealthiest emigrant fleets are still fundamentally cost-conscious.

 

EDIT: Apparently this post pushed me to "Super Dimension Member"?

It actually makes some sense.  While in transit resources would be limited so you would want to detune the engines during normal operations to lengthen their lifespan.  Once you reach a new colony world and set up mining and other resource gathering  tune those engines back up to full since you will have plenty of resources to exploit.

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I guess it's a matter of perspective there.

Tuning isn't so much enhancing performance as it is adjusting calibratable tolerances to reduce the safety margins put in place to protect the hardware.  You can't tune past what the hardware is physically capable of, but you can make it run closer to the red line at the expense of increased maintenance requirements, reduced part lifespan, etc.  Usually it goes the other way, detuning engines and so on to make those expensive parts last longer at the expense of reduced performance, reduce waste byproducts, etc.

 

There's nothing quite so stimulating in a game as an underdog victory.  

In short, yes.

Tuned engines and systems are pushed to their absolute engineering limit.  This limits lifespan and increases maintenance demands significantly.  This is one of the reasons why military aircraft have such long maintenance times per flight hours, especially after any kind of combat manuevers, less so after say, a cross country flight.

Detuning was common for export aircraft and vehicles as foreign customers typically didn't have the supply train that backup to get parts again quickly.  Whether the hardware stayed detuned however...

One of the things that people wonder about with the Iranian F-14s for instance, is whether they stayed detuned, or did the Iranians bring them back up to Navy spec.  Few of them are even able to fly at this point, despite having zero trap hours, but then the Grumman trained maintainers mostly fled with the Shaw.

THere is a long history of NAMING ships after older ships, but the registry always changes.  The US Navy for instance reuses quite a few ship names, but they hull numbers change. 

The best example being the Enterprise:
5x before we started to properly hull number them  (1775, 1776, 1799, 1831, 1874)
SP-790 (A motor patrol boat)
CV-6 (aircraft carrier WWII)
CVN-65 (First nuclear-powered Aircraft Carrier)
CVN-80 (New Ford class carrier, under construction)

But, as Seto stated, renaming a hull is considered bad luck, as is reusing a hull number on a new ship.

Seems like a good place to pimp my own books.
Spiral War: Liberators

Nice, what is the scale?
Will there be an interior?
Any chance of him making a proper transforming hovertank to go with it?

I want to see that fighter mode

2 hours ago, danth said:

Anyway, this happened in the old Genesis: Legend of Zor comics:

I don't have the actual comics so I don't know how much more actual fighting is depicted.

I had that graphic novel back in the day, might actually still have it tucked away somewhere, I see it at used bookstores and comic shops often enough.  

46 minutes ago, Invid99 said:

I think instead of changing the existing Invid mecha size, I would rather add the Overlord and Ranger class mecha to be as big as the Regult to fight the Zentraedi. 

 

This is a better way to merge the two IPs, have the Invid use specific mecha for specific enemies.  Even in Sentinels they had those autonomous robo-dogs and such for beating down the folks on Tirol.  No need to break out the big, expensive mechs, when the smaller models will do.  That would even jive with what is seen in Mospeada.  Subjugating humans, just need the little red guys and a few purple.  Humans start sending in mechs, deploy more heavily armed purple guys before going to the even bigger mechs.  Despite controlling the whole world, the Invid are not shot shown to be resource rich, so building/growing/evolving new mechs only when needed makes the most sense.

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That backstory was created for the Robotech novelization, which was never canon and these days is officially considered by HG to be "Robotech in name only".

I wasn't aware that it was never considered Canon.  Before I saw the light I read them all and assumed it was.  Given the time loop in the recent comics, it felt like they were harkening back to that, especially given that they kept all the Sentinel's Characters, and TR Edwards, in some form or another.

3 hours ago, Keith said:

Yeah, Exosquad was a good show, I wish someone would pick up both seasons on blu-ray...

Preach Brother!!!  All I have is some really bad rips from back in the day.

IIRC the Robotech storyline was that Zor, as a rep of the Masters, stole the flower of life from the Invid.  This caused the Invid to invade, and using the FOL Zor and the Masters created all their great tech and the Zentraedi.  Given that, the Masters likely created the original Zentraedi as massive as a means to fight the smaller Invid, but the Invid Mecha proved overpowering, requiring the Zentraedi to be equiped with their armored pods and mecha to fight back against the swarm tactics.

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

OMG... ☹️ 🤢🤮

 

https://www.ign.com/articles/the-matrix-resurrections-review

 

Sounds about like what I expected.

B-2 in flight captured by google earth, pretty cool.