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SebastianP

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  1. SebastianP
    I already had those, and they're basically too small for what I need or not from the right angle. /m/ provided though, everything except a shot from below and behind. Is that a star drive on the bottom of the ship, right in front of the hand, or is it a hangar aperture? The gunship doesn't appear to have something similar. Thanks, but that's basically the image I'm trying to verify the accuracy of. And all the pics found so far suggests it's bogus, because the forward hangar bay isn't even *that* big, and the aft one doesn't exist.
  2. SebastianP
    I meant "Native" as in "sufficiently large amounts of research expertise available locally". They may be branch offices of bigger corporations, but they still answer to the local government, if nothing else than because their employees are all citizens and should have at least some patriotism. As for the string pulling, I was thinking of Leon Mishima here - in the TV series he was in cahoots with Galaxy and had the president assassinated, though what his end game plan was once is a bit of a mystery to me; in the movies he convinces President Glass to co-opt Galaxy's plan to control the Vajra once they suss it out and have the upper hand, rather than using their tech to kill the Vajra off clean or getting out of their territory. That sounds a lot like nefarious and megalomaniacal string pulling to me. Oh, and the rivals with opposing core ethics thing is also easy to explain - Frontier is built as a sustainable eco-system and prohibits transhumanism like cybernetic implants; Galaxy is apparently one giant industrial cityscape with homeless undocumented children living in the slums and no green spaces, and implants are basically mandatory unless Grace Godunowa has a use for you that requires you don't have them. There's your opposing core ethics. And look how quick the Frontier government was to use the "it's probably a trap set by Galaxy, so we're ignoring it!" card in the movies - if that's not evidence of rivalry, what is? And Frontier was IIRC actually looking to settle somewhere, or at least they ended up having to. Galaxy might have been content to stay in space though, but they were attempting to gain control of the Vajra so they couldn't have Frontier in their patch. Or at least that's how I interpreted things. As for me calling the Prophecy a minimally changed Evolution - what line art we have of the Evolution really suggests that the main outward difference between the two were the Prophecy's swing wings. The internals may be different, but the VF-25 has the same nose section, the same intakes, the same exhaust nozzles, the same dorsal panel lines for the parts that move around while transforming... compare that to the VF-27, which is radically different in overall styling, doesn't have the same feet, panel lines or intakes, and it really does look like the VF-25 is a result of someone going "This plane is almost good enough as is, let's just fix the bits that are obviously wrong and see what we get?" at the YF-24, just like how they did basically the same thing to turn the YF-21 into the VF-22. The VF-27 on the other hand adds the virtual cockpit, the beam gun, has different engines and exhausts, has none of the same panel lines... the only thing that's visibly the same on the two is the basic transformation. And that's before you go into the added engines on the wings and the like. The YF-29 is also a lot more different from the YF-24 than the VF-25 is - again it has different wings and two more engines, but it also has all the extra armament (the dorsal beam guns, the built-in micro-missiles, etc.) and the Fold wave system. It's still more obviously a further developed YF-24 than the VF-27 is though.
  3. SebastianP
    That, and developing and deploying a modern fighter all on your own dime is *expensive*. Frontier and Galaxy could do it because they have native tech companies able to handle the job; and the reasons they actually did it (aside from keeping those tech companies happy) were because they were 1) moving into Vajra space and were worried; 1) rivals with opposing core ethics both looking for a planet to settle on in the same general neighborhood; and 3) both were having their strings pulled by (or were under the outright control of) megalomaniacs who thought they could use the Vajra to assert control over the rest of humanity, and they needed superior force of arms to make sure it was them who got there first. During Macross The Ride, both Frontier and Galaxy were trying to bluff the other with the state of their advanced VF programs (Frontier entered the YF-25 Prophecy which was basically a minimal-change YF-24 Evolution, while they were already working on the YF-29 that they were going to use if it came to a *real* fight; Galaxy entered the YF-27-5 Shaher Femail while they were already working on modifying the production VF-27 spec based off of stolen YF-29 specs... and of course both sides were quitely working on their own QF-4000 variants). Also, Aisha Blanchett must have been hard at work on the YF-30 for some time as well, though apparently the YF-30 ended up being something akin to the YF-24 Evolution: A "public" prototype which anyone was free to develop further, given that the VF-31 is not credited to either Shinsei or LAI, but Surya Aerospace. Unless of course Aisha left SMS and started Surya after the events of Macross 30... (MFW Mikumo is another Protoculture survivor found in stasis on Ouroboros and Lady M turns out to be Mina Forte...)
  4. SebastianP
    I wouldn't read too much into the "rail gun" name myself, given that they don't *look* like rail guns. It might be that the gun is called that because it's on rails. Also, gunpod ammunition capacities are another of those "this has to be tardis-tech" items from the official specifications, given how absolutely huge the guns themselves and the rounds for them are. The real world SUU-23/A gun pod held an M61A1 gun and 1,200 rounds. The GPU-5/A held a stripped-down 4-barrel 30 mm gatling and 353 rounds, and was still noticeably bigger. (I need to get my hands on the Hasegawa 1/72 gunpod set, so I can compare them to the VF gunpods...) And a magazine for 1,200 rounds of 30 mm ammunition is famously the size of a VW beetle...
  5. SebastianP
    It's nothing special...for a variable fighter, which is in itself a special category of its own. Kind of like how an F-40 is nothing special... for a supercar. You can teach someone to drive in the family's old beater, because it's docile and won't kill you instantly if you make a noob mistake. Teaching someone to drive an open-wheel race car is a somewhat different matter, and requires specialized training aids- such as purpose-built training car or an older, not as fast open-wheel race car that will kill you slightly less instantly for a noob mistake. (The "lesser formulas" for open wheeled racing are all basically a progression of increasingly advanced trainers for the real deal, which is Formula One.) Similarly, you teach the basics of flight in a docile plane because it won't kill you when you make a mistake. You teach flying a fighter in something a bit more temperamental, like an older fighter or a purpose-built trainer. But just like how "trainer race cars" are still race cars enough that there are actual leagues for them, fighter trainers are still fighters enough that most of them are still expected to sortie at least as ground attack aircraft in case of a war. No one will ever mistake a fighter trainer for a people-mover or trash hauler. The VF-1 is an aircraft that people still dream of flying in the Macross universe, despite it being nearly sixty years old; for the same reasons why people still dream of flying the F4U Corsair, or the Spitfire, or the P-51 Mustang, despite them being more than 70 years old in our world. They were the best, they won a war, and they'll still fly rings around anything you're likely to be able to afford new.
  6. SebastianP
    I thought that was explicitly stated somewhere? At least I've been assuming as much for a couple of years at this point, as it was mentioned in the very first description I ever read of the YF-27-5. Though it's been so long I don't even remember where I saw the description... Anyway, given that both the YF-29 and VF-25 Tornado pack also have large-scale beam guns and extra engines, I've been assuming it was pretty much the same deal there, it's just that the power generation of the YF-29 was more efficient so they could make do with two extra engines rather than the four of the Tornado pack. It wasn't until the FF-3001's on the YF-30 (and now the VF-31) that the main engines had enough power generation to feed a beam gun pod on their own.
  7. SebastianP
    No, given that the VF-1 even de-tuned is still supersonic and then some, it's not a "beater car". It's plenty fast enough to get you into all sorts of trouble, it's just not so fast that you can't get *out* of trouble before it ends up being terminal. You're not going to run into problems like going supersonic on the ground or burning up your aircraft due to air resistance, but you still have to tackle the dangers of transsonic flight etc. "Mom's old beater" would be a subsonic jet trainer of the sort we use today, or even a propeller plane. The kind of things you use to teach pilots the very basics, like "this is how you take off from a runway", and "this is how you *land* on a runway". I don't think they'd use even de-tuned VF-1s for that, because they're not designed to go slow enough for an absolute noob to get the hang of things. No, the VF-1 is a vintage GT race spec car from the 1960s or so. Like a Ferrari 250 GTO - the hottest thing on wheels back in the day, still pretty damned fast compared to anything that isn't explicitly a sports car, but completely outclassed by its modern equivalents, but popular enough that people are still building replicas.
  8. SebastianP
    It's not just cost. Compare VFs to cars. The VF-1 is like a rally car. It's rugged, it's durable, it's reasonably fast, and if you flip it over you'll probably survive. A high-end VF is like a Ferrari or McLaren - four times the engine power, and half a ton of electronics just to keep the car going where you want it, and even *that*s not enough if you drive stupidly. And if you manage to crash it despite the safety measures, chances are not only is your car totalled, but so are you. If you stick a noob driver in a McLaren F1, he'll most likely break the speed limit before he figures out which way he's going, and then break his gearbox because he forgot to shift up from first, or he'll smash into something at high speed because he didn't brake in time. The equivalent noob mistakes in a YF-19 would be going supersonic on the runway and collapsing the landing gear; or getting off the runway, accelerating too fast, and reaching orbital velocity in the lower atmosphere, at which point the aircraft burns up from the friction. A VF-25 or VF-31 would be more like a McLaren P1 - you wouldn't break the gearbox, because it's a semi-automatic; you might still smash into something because the car doesn't steer for you. Likewise, you probably wouldn't go supersonic on the runway because intelligent throttle governors, and rather than going too fast in the lower atmosphere, you risk going to space unintentionally. Or into the ground, the plane can't keep you from being suicidal.
  9. SebastianP
    The visible crystal bits from the top are also missing, they're shaded so they almost look like missile ports on the VF-31A. They're certainly not sparkly crystals at any rate. As for the missing hardpoints, I'm thinking that someone forgot to draw them in the line art, then the 3D model was made without them, then the model kits were made using the 3D model as a reference, and so none of them have any extra hardpoints. Stupid, but that sort of thing happens.
  10. SebastianP
    Mine is paid for, as is shipping. Using the slow option this time, usually I wait until I have enough kits that EMS is cheaper than SAL, but my budget won't allow that many kits for a while.
  11. SebastianP
    So are mine, but the kits themselves don't take that much skill. It's not like you need to fully paint the whole thing to make it look decent, unlike a Hasegawa kit. You can make it look better with some paint, true - you can also make it look a lot worse, and you don't strictly need it anyway. The only really bad part is usually the decals or stickers, which is like a choice between plague or cholera, due Bandai being cheap bastards. And I can get all of Delta Squad (or at least the current membership ) for the price of one DX toy...
  12. SebastianP
    Curiously, my research into the matter suggests the opposite. The hardpoints have been marked out in basically every source as three small rectangular recesses in a line with a panel line around them, looking kind of like the slots where the hardpoints on the DX toys connect. On the Siegfried, these are visible in the actual show, on the 1/72 Bandai kit, on the 1/144 Tomytec kit, and the non-scale MechaColle kit. All of them show one hardpoint on the arm shield, and one on the outer wing... on the Siegfried. (Curiously, the DX Chogokin toy prototypes does not even have panel lines in those locations...) For the Kairos, we have line art of the underside, which shows a smooth outer wing. And the Tomytec kit, which shows another smooth outer wing. I haven't started going through the footage of the VF-31 from the show, but I don't think I'll find any evidence for any outer wing hardpoints there either... Edit: Here's one from the actual show too, the only time I think we actually see the underside of the outer wing of the plane in the whole show to date:
  13. SebastianP
    Pretty sure that "overboost" has been factored in with previous VF specifications, given what Seto Kaiba wrote above about the listed thrust plus 15% being in line with the listed thrust of the YF-30, which uses the same engines. It just wasn't written out like this before. The advancement of the VF-31 is probably focused in areas other than raw thrust-to-weight or G loading, like the Modular Container subsystem, sensor tech, and finally getting landing gear that aren't more than half way between the center of gravity and the tail end of the plane (something that's pretty much always bugged me about the VFs.) And at a guess, the reason a lot of things aren't mentioned as being "advanced" versions when their predecessors were, is that by now the old versions - 8+ years old at this point - are no longer "advanced", they're standard. What used to be "advanced energy conversion armor" eight years ago is now just "regular energy conversion armor", with "advanced" being reserved for something that's really on the bleeding edge right now. Oh, by the way I'm looking at the model kit instructions, and it looks like the Siegfried has two hardpoints under each wing - on is on the arm shield units, and the other is on the outer wing section. They're pretty clearly visible in the paint guide for the plane, and have their own warning stencils. They're not functional on the model, then again we've never seen the actual plane carry anything under its wings so far in the anime, so it's not like they need to be functional for anime accuracy or anything.
  14. SebastianP
    It's written スーリヤ・エアロスペース, Shinsei is written with the kanji for "Nova", at least according to Wikipedia. If you go to the Japanese Wikipedia and look up the VF-19 or VF-25, and let it auto-translate for you, it'll tell you both aircraft were built by "Nova Industries".
  15. SebastianP
    If you look at both the toy and the official 3D renders of the Chronos, you can see a crystal insert in the edge of the auxiliary intake on the "chest" section. They're smaller and they're completely streamlined as opposed to free standing like on the Durandal, but they're there.
  16. SebastianP
    Those dark hexagons to either side of the head are where the fold quartz inserts go on the Siegfried version, and as you can see they don't really look like crystal on this Kairos. Here's Mirage's machine, you can see the difference in that area pretty clearly. Edit: Huh, I never noticed you can actually read the Aether's name on the fin of the VF-31A. Not too surprising I suppose.
  17. SebastianP
    I got bored with machine translating that PDF and posting my findings in the Tech thread, so I went over the instruction booklet instead. The runners are weird, there are VF-31J -specific bits on runners A, B, D, E and F, and aside from the A bits, they don't look like they were designed with dummying them out in mind. I'm predicting that they might have to give us an extra multi-color runner for each of the other versions, and leave most of the J bits in. Also, the multi-drones are molded as part of the ABS frame for the leg, so unless they decide that the A models have drones as well (and they shouldn't, given the blurb I was just translating) they'll need to supply some replacement ABS parts on top of the outer wing panels and whatever parts are needed for the A-version head if they intend to give us one of those. Which they probably won't, because when has Bandai ever supplied Macross Cannon Fodder kits? Leave the pilot out? Put the female figure in the front? Put head of the female figure on the male figure? Sculpt a new head? Use a head from a different figure? The possibilities are still endless.
  18. SebastianP
    I'm thinking that the C/E/F/J/S models are *all* Chaos Valkyrie Works redesigns, based on the blurb at the top of the page about the VF-31 Siegfried. It mentions that the Siegfried was developed for Delta Squad from the VF-31A Kairos for supporting Walkure, and has several features to that end such as the forward swept wing for improved mobility, the "rare fold quartz" insert, the drone launchers, and specialized Multipurpose container units like the sound projection unit and an energy supply unit for the drones. Or at least that's what I can make out from the machine translation. The blurb under "Battroid" of course mentions the history behind the mode (needing it to fight 10 meter tall giants), and how the battroid mode can be used to penetrate into enemy ships like infantry. Also, the capabilities for battroids have improved with time, to the point where they can now use fold boosters to jump right into the enemy command centers. (This will be a thing to see - battroids defolding in the enemy base. Forget cloaking devices like the Frontier special forces EX-gears had, we foldin' now!) Another blurb says the forward swept wing was adopted in order to enhance the mobility at low speed in the atmosphere during Var suppression. Yet another says the fold quarts (FQ) is equipped only on Delta squad machines, and is used to amplify the fold waves of Walkure's songs to make them reach further, which is probably why they fly air shows over the concerts. (though standing around on the ground would probably work as well, but it wouldn't be as fun to watch. ) Edit: The rest of the text blocks appear to mostly be either general historical information about other fighters or the setting; or "look how great this model is" bits.
  19. SebastianP
    Thanks for the correction regarding the books, the site didn't really machine translate very well at all so it was hard to tell what was going on. I know one the things they apparently do *is* a Five Star Stories RPG, because one of the other "look what we make" pages literally says "Five Star Stories RPG". I've posted a request in a few places for pictures of the underside of the ARMD-L section of the DX Chogokin toy, because while I was looking for existing pictures I saw something that makes it look like that rear hangar the doujin is talking about is an open void with no back and no bottom on the actual ship, as that's where the Quarter's arm goes... Things would be so much easier for everyone if the ships were double their given size.
  20. SebastianP
    Model kit promos and manuals and whatnot for the Bandai 1/72 VF-31J kit is out. Here's their PDF promo brochure: http://bandai-hobby.net/site/character_macrossd/72_vf31j_spec01.pdf Since the PDF has selectable text, it's machine translatable, so I plugged in some of it into Google Translate. To wit: ? VF-31J [sPEC] Basic design: Surya Aerospace Renovated: Chaos Valkyrie Works Overall length: 19.31m overall width: 14.14m Height: 3.85m (Battroid time: 15.33m ? not included laser machine gun) Empty weight: 8,525kg (not including multi-purpose container equipment) Airframe design maximum load: 29.5G (At the time of ISC operation is protected from both high-G aircraft, crew and equipment) Engine: Shinsei Industry / P & W / RR Co., Ltd. FF-3001 / FC2 stage IIC heat nuclear turbine engine × 2 Space maximum thrust: 1,875KN + × 2 Fold Wave system during operation is up to about 15% Over boost is possible. High Mobility thrusters: P & W HMM-10A Maximum speed: M5.5 + (advanced 10,000m / However heat limit) Thrust Ribasa, three-dimensional deflection nozzle equipment The big gun pod is labeled "Howard Co., Ltd. LU-18A beam gun pod", and the explanation given is that previous VFs had physical gun pods, but engine output is now great enough to support a beam gun pod and so the VF-31 is now officially equipped with one. The knives are labeled "AK / VF-M11 Assault knife", with the explanation telling where it's stored (back edge of elbow shield), that it's made of super-alloy, and how the edge can be enhanced with the use of the pin-point barrier for extra force. The "Elbow Shield" caption states that they're made from Energy Conversion Armor, and can be improved with the pin point barrier, then something about functioning as "Uchitsubasa" which I don't know what it means. The "Arm rail gun (mini gun pod)" caption mentions how it's stored facing forwards in fighter mode and rotates around a fulcrum to face forward in Gerwalk or battroid, near as I can tell. The model kit instructions have bigger captions for some of the items, but the scans are small so I can't see the characters well enough to transcribe them.
  21. SebastianP
    Hobby Search has scans of the kit instructions up now. http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10382560
  22. SebastianP
    Do any of you lucky(?) owners of the DX Chogokin Macross Quarter toy have it where you can get to it easily? I'm doing some research (and trying to prove a point or two) and I kind of need pictures of the underside of the ARMD-L (the carrier section) from various angles. I'm trying to work out how much space there is for a hangar inside the thing, and so far it's not looking promising...
  23. SebastianP
    Heat doesn't transmit that quickly through water, and steam that's free to expand cools quickly - sure, whatever was near the surface directly under the ship would get cooked, but even just a hundred meters away would probably be fine, if badly shaken. It's a far different thing from setting off a reaction warhead right up next to something that they don't know what it does and which has the potential to go off like Castle Bravo...
  24. SebastianP
    You do know that the physical dimensions of the Nimitz-class hangar bay are known, right? And that it's trivially easy to literally puzzle out how many aircraft of various types you can fit inside using aircraft silhouettes? The actual hangar capacity of a Nimitz-class carrier is less than 40 fighters - during the Tomcat era, less than *thirty*, according to the official US Navy briefing on fire safety I just downloaded. The rest of the air wing - two thirds of it! - had to be parked on deck or kept in the air, because there simply is no room for more aircraft below the flight deck. Someone doing a fan-made RPG book (I think it's an RPG book at least, the doujin circle in question publishes a lot of stuff for a game called Five Star Stories) about Macross ships took the known size of the ARMD-L, made some generous guesses as to the extent of the hangar, and worked out how many fighters would physically fit inside those spaces, just like people have been doing for real world carriers. The conclusion they came up with was that the forward hangar where most of the VFs are stored has a total capacity of *thirteen* VF-25s. The aft hangar, which is the double-height bit, has what looks like enough space for the König Monster, the three Queadlunn's, and seven standing VF-25 Battroids, if I'm reading the diagram they made correctly. Note that the hangar spaces can't be larger than depicted, because the ship isn't big enough. They also probably can't be made half-height to fit in more fighters, because the VF-25 is too tall in fighter mode; it's definitely too tall if it's got Super, Armored or Tornado parts on. Now you can say this is doujin material and not official, but the diagrams were made using the official dimensions, and they're really really generous given that there's no room for a power plant unless it's in the forward section in between the Destroid hatches, nor any propulsion system (I really need some pictures of the underside of the DX toy's ARMD-L to see if there are any engines on it...), and no matter how you slice it you cannot physically fit in more VF-25s than this inside the hull dimensions and hull shape that we've been given. And I'm fairly certain that the SMS isn't using the US Navy method of expanding your air wing and storing the planes on the deck, because we never actually see them do this - and the deck isn't much larger than a Nimitz-class hangar deck anyway, being somewhat shorter and only a little wider, and only for part of the way at that, so you couldn't park any awesome numbers of fighters there anyway. The same picture, by the by, also shows the kind of modifications that would be necessary to fit thirty-seven fighters inside a Northampton-class, and while it can physically be done, it basically wouldn't have any interior to speak of left. I'm not sure whether the authors did this for any other ships, such as the ARMDs or the Prometheus, since I don't have the book itself, just six pages of official thumbnail previews. If you still think the ARMD-L can carry 80 fighters, then show me how...
  25. SebastianP
    A very Macross solution. Step 1: Try singing to it. Step 2: Try singing harder. Step 3: If it obviously doesn't intend to listen, punch it in the face with an aircraft carrier. Step 3B: If getting close enough to punch it in the face with an aircraft carrier is proving difficult, shoot it with a Macross cannon first and charge through the hole you just made. *Then*, punch it in the face with an aircraft carrier. While singing. And if what I suspect and hope about the Elysion is true, we might end up getting to see something get punched in the face with an aircraft carrier that turns out to hide a Macross cannon inside of it, which would combine the two attacks really nicely.
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