Knight26

Interesting so the Varja are a Gestalt entity, many acting as one, this is quite different from a hive mind/brain, in which a single entity controls the rest of the group. In a gestalt each individual adds to the hole, so while a single entity might have the intelligence a dog that got its head run over, the more you add to the group the smarter the group becomes until achieves a sort of sentience. It is a very cool idea and not one I have seen used very often, at least not well. Infact only three instances come to mind, the book "More than Human," brilliant book by Theodore Sturgeon, the old Dynamo Joe comic, wherein the bad guys, the Mellenares, were a gestalt entity, and the original incarnation of the Borg from Star Trek (not the Borg as they appeared later with multiple queens, and more bent on assimilating beings then technology.)

That Tread is thing of beauty and very nicely engineered. Part swapping really is probably the best way to go with that design when it comes to joining the two craft together, let's face it, there is a huge amount of anime magic in that part of the design. As for how it would compare to a mass produced toy, from the little i have seen, the thickness of the plastic looks comperable to toy plastic, except in certain areas like the hands, so really upscaling it to the size of the MPC would make it quite durable.

H___ F____ D____ Yes YES YES, and did I mentionYESSSS!!!!

I didn't notice anyone mention it before, but is the VF-171 that they fly in episode 22 a new model? I ask because the whole cockpit and nose area looks to be brand new, and much more similar to that on the VF-25.

It could also be an aerodynamic limitation, the plane no matter the stiffness or hardness would only be able to go so fast in atmosphere before drag and friction start to tear it apart, so limiting the engine output is the easist way to control that.

Macross Ejector seat, huh?

Need fansub NOW!!!!!!!!!

On a mildly related topic has anyone noticed how the suits went skintight in the Frontier. I think I know why. They have switched to using mechanical counter pressure suits, or bio-suits, which hug the wearer pretty closely as oppossed to gas counter-pressure suits like has been used in the past. It's a nice little bit of art imitating life, as scientists are working on a mechanocal counter-pressure bio-suit now to replace the current michelin man suits we use.

I think I know how they will do the canopy cover. The lineart shows that it is in two parts, if they keep that it could simply be a system wherein you push in the canopy and it pushes out the two cover pieces. There would then be a switch maybe in the landing gear well that releases the cover and pushes the cockpit back up. Just a thought.

Looking good A1, glad that the business is up and running well. And dude did you shave it off or did it fall out?

Holy dropping from the hory froating head, he's back, welcome back A1. Now just behave yourself this time, lol.

A little rough around the edges but that's not a bad theory especially with all the Mac-0 tie ins we've seen so far.

In the OVA is it shown earlier on that SHaron can manipulate the cables, more then likely it is a form of muscle fiber embedded in the cable sheath that allowed the computer a limited form of autonamy from the beginning.

Please tell me that someone else has subbed episode 17, I still have too much trouble watching the GG subs, the video lags behind the audio when I watch it for some reason.

I'm thinking of a tech level framework along the lines of what is seen in shows like Babylon 5, Macross, even Star Wars and Star Trek. Yes those shows/movies do show groups with the ability to destroy a planet, but that ability is either limited to certain groups or not widespread. In those types of tech levels what justification could you come up with for the proliferation of star fighters. Example: B5, is what is known as a low thrust universe, where FTL does not require attaining great speed, but in just getting to and from a jump point that takes you faster then light. In this capital ships are for the most part slow and lumbering behemoths that while having great firepower and capability cannot really accelerate past 1G, for the most part, without causing heavy crew inefficiencies. Fighters on the other hand can accelerate far faster due to the pilot's positioning and smaller crew size. The drawback is of course their limited range and the fact that if they accelerate the entire time to target they will quickly run out of fuel and be unable to participate in fighter combat. The overall doctrine for fighters in that universe seemed to be as escorts, providing fire support against small enemy craft and weapon systems, (torpedo interdiction for example), so that the big ships could close and use their heavy weapons. Fighters really had no hope against much larger craft. THey also seemed to be used quite a bit for recon, expending their smaller fuel reserves to investigate instead of the larger fuel and crew expenidture for a capital ship. B5 was obviously also a universe where offensive system development outpaced defensive systems. SHips with any kind of shielding were rare, relying mostly on armor and manueverability to escape harm. The most advanced defenses shown on the human side were interceptor cannons, which seemed quite akin to a phalanx system, shooting out a ton of projectiles to detonate warheads early and disperse/absorb incoming energy blasts before they could impact ship or station. Gotta go, boss coming, will write more later.

Complete destruction of a planet is actually pretty stupid when you think about it anyway, all that raw material is suddenly wasted, as is any and all mineral wealth. IF you want to "destroy" a planet, the best idea is to simply go to the local asteroid belt or Ort cloud, which most solar systems appear to have, and simply hurl a few asteroids at the planet. Hit it with enough and in the right places and you will basically shatter the crust of the planet making it unlivable, and for very little expenditure compared to other methods. Now if you want to spilt the planet or break it up, continue that same process, just make sure you use a sufficiently dense or large rock and accelerate it to near light speed before crashing into the planet, that should do some severe damage. But back on topic, assuming a small scale, lower tech level society, where destroying a planet or rendering it lifeless would be taboo, or at least ill advized, justify the use of starfighters.

Actually I think that the destruction of a life giving world would be considered taboo. Think about it, of all the planets we know about or have been discovered, in and out of our solar system, only one is capable of supporting life as we know it, and only a few more might be able to with some work done to terraform them, i.e. mars and possibly some Jovian moons. Imagine if only 1 in a thousand worlds are able to support higher forms of life withour having to terraform them. If that is the case you would not want to destroy those world, they hold too many valuable reasources. Of course if you have a world that might contain life, but is of the poisonous variety that threatens all other life in the universe/galaxy then the destruction of that might be warranted, but still it would not be done easily and would be regarded as a last ditch effort.

quick RAM question, been a long time since I bought any, how do you determine what type of RAM to get a computer, without counting the pins, yes it has been that long.

I see no resemblence at all besides that fact they are both somewhat based on old school Nimitz designs, back when they still had the fingers at the end of the catapult runs.

That carrier looks stupid

Ok, here is an interesting one for you. I was sitting there thinking about it, and wondered just how could one justify the use of star fighters in a real world or sci-fi context. SO what are your opinions/thoughts/ideas, beyond they look cool. And this can be for any sci-fi property, star wars, trek, B5, Macross, etc...

Ok how about this for a monkey wrench, I just checked wiki, (yeah I know, it's the wiki and can contain trash but hear me out), apparently the next level up Quadro, the 3700 uses the same chip as the GeForce8800GT. It further states that if the cards are "identical", and therefore I assume that Quadro3700 and the GeForce8800GT are basically twins, that the consumer card can be sofmodded to emulare the Quadro card. So, how could that be done, and if so, could it switched back and forth?

I wonder why that is though, it will render autocad-3d stuff in real time very nicely from what I have seen, why won't it run the games, is the shaders, or some other peice of software mysticism I don't understand?

The only reason I am really looking at the Quadro is that it is designed for use with AUTOCAD. I had a thought, though, I need to see if it is an SLI card, but if I went with a whole new system and did a dual card system with the 256MB FX570 and say a 8800GT, would that cause problems, or do you need to have two identical cards for SLI to work?

Ok, oddball question for you all. As many of you know I am an AUTOCAD modeler but still want to do some gaming on my machine. The AUTOCAD is the major thing I want to do though, so bearing that in mind I am thinking of getting the NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 1700 video card, or a whole new machine with that card on board. What I want to know though, is how well would that card play games, and if it would run games like pants, what would be a good replacement card?