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SebastianP

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  1. SebastianP

    Bandai DX VF-31

    SebastianP replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    The pattern is basically the other way around - if the model kit doesn't come out first, it doesn't come out period. As far as I can tell, not a single one of the DX toys has been released before the model kit of the same subject. Also, unlike the DX toy line, where releases are always on the one to two per year schedule, the model kit lineup tends to release with much shorter intervals so long as Bandai remain interested. As soon as they stop announcing new kits, the line is pretty much dead until there's new animated material to make kits from.
  2. SebastianP
    Are you sure your numbers are correct here? I don't have the book myself, but the picture from the pages you're appearing to refer to is labeled "SYF-31-4~7, 2067", implying that the breakdown is: SYF-31-4 = SYF-31S = VF-31S (Arad) SYF-31-5 = SYF-31F = VF-31F (Messer) SYF-31-6 = SYF-31E = VF-31E (Chuck) SYF-31-7 = SYF-31C = VF-31C (Mirage) With the next page going on with: SYF-31-8 = SYF-31J = VF-31J (Hayate) SYF-31-9 = SYF-31J = VF-31J #2 (Hayate) There's also a color plate showing SYF-31-7 in a low visibility scheme with Delta 04 markings, and SYF-31-3 is shown wearing NUNS colors and is stated in the color plate to be based at New Edwards on Eden. Weirdly, the SYF-31-4 drawing has different outer wings than the VF-31S drawing, and both have single-laser heads. I get the idea that according to the book, VF-31S refers to *all* production forward-swept, FF-3001/FC2-engined versions, and VF-31A to all the delta-winged, FF-3001A versions. Edit: Weird crap is going on here, because I just now noticed that it appears the description for the SYF-31-4 says it was converted into the SYF-31E... I'd pretty much call that a correction of an obvious oversight personally, as the lack of outer wing hardpoints on the VF-31A made little sense to me in the first place. Basically every other VF except the VF-22 and VF-27 (which were exceptional in all sorts of other ways as well) have had multiple hardpoints under each wing, and not having them made the VF-31A the worst strike platform in ages.
  3. SebastianP
    Very nice execution! I kind of wish the VE-11 had a ventral sensor fin like the VE-1, RVF-25 and RVF-171 though, it just looks a little top heavy without one, but that's not a fault of yours.
  4. SebastianP
    I've built three of the VF-25 kits, and one VF-31. First of all, general issues with all the kits: 1. The stickers suck. If you don't get them on exactly where you want them and you have to peel them off and try again, they're not going to stay put. 2. The water slide decals suck *worse*. They're thick, hard and fragile, and they're dithered rather than solid color. Invest in a bottle of Mr Mark Softner, you will need it. 3. The landing gear sucks. The legs are too thick, the wheels are too small, they're molded very simplistically and they're molded in *dark gray*, rather than the white they're supposed to be in. They're just generally ugly. 4. No matter whether you're using the stickers or the decals, you need to apply a fair amount of them during assembly, so choose first, before starting construction. For the VF-25 kits in particular: 1. The shoulder construction is really really fragile, and will most likely be the first thing to break unfixably, as the worst pieces are ABS and can't be glued back together once they break. Transforming the kit too many times *will* cause some of the ABS parts to wear out, as it involves rotating a styrene peg in a thin ABS cuff for 180 degrees every time you transform the kit. Stick to a mode, and if it's on where the arms are out, stick to a pose. 2. The fully collapsed leg is strong enough to hold up on its own in fighter mode. But only the plain VF-25 uses the fully collapsed thigh, the others bend the leg down and then back up again which causes the joint to not support the leg's weight. Not a big deal on the Tornado or Armored, as they have tabs for the legs, but the Super VF-25 lacks the tabs. The only way of displaying the Super VF-25 in fighter mode is on its landing gear. 3. Both the Armored and Tornado packs are really solid in any mode, but *heavy*. Especially the Armored. Don't expect them to do well in Gerwalk, where none of the joints in the entire kit are completely locked, and thus not subject to gravity-induced movement. For the VF-31: 1. None of the parts so far look anywhere near as fragile as the VF-25 bits, and the parts lock together really really well in fighter mode, however... 2. I have as yet been unable to fully transform my VF-31, and I'm unwilling to push it further due to getting stress marks on one of the big ABS pieces in the core of the fighter. Also, bits pop off really easily during transformation - not just wings and fins, but the chest plate is also often not there due to going on vacation to visit the Carpet Monster.
  5. SebastianP
  6. SebastianP
    It was mentioned in an interview that Kawamori made the canards on the Kairos one size bigger to correct for the center of lift being further back on the non-FSW version. It's somewhere on Sketchley's site IIRC.
  7. SebastianP

    Bandai DX VF-31

    SebastianP replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    I can't find my intuos pen, what's it saying about the VF-31A?
  8. SebastianP
    They never made a -25A, and they basically would only have needed to mold a VF-25G in tan instead of blue and ship it with a gatling gunpod to deliver one of those. Oh, and a new decal sheet. As I think I've said before in the thread, a superficial conversion of the VF-31J to a VF-31A involves seven pieces of polystyrene (upper and lower outer wing halves and canards x 2, plus a helmeted pilot figure) unless there's something going on with the head in which case you'd need a few more parts. A completely accurate VF-31A with missiles instead of multidrones? That would require replacing the core ABS parts of the lower leg. Also, based on parts breakdown, every VF-31 kit will have the parts to make an FSW version, as the upper and lower wing panels aren't molded in a section of runner that can be dummied out easily.
  9. SebastianP
    Most of the VFs have this problem actually, due to the lack of horizontal tails. I think only the delta- and forward swept winged VFs - and not even all of them - have enough control surface area to pitch up from a runway take-off, especially not with the landing gear placement on most of them being so far back.
  10. SebastianP
    Just show me where there's standing room for battroids or Queadlunns on that ship?
  11. SebastianP
    *sigh* You say that as if the official specs were any more reliable than the toys or the doujins, for anything except the VFs. The more I look at the actual footage, the more evidence I'm seeing that whoever writes the ship specs are talking out of their asses because the footage doesn't support the official stats. The ARMD-L can't be a mere 200 meters long, therefore the Quarter can't be 450 or whatever. The Aether can't be less than about 600 meters, therefore the Elysion can't be 828 meters. They may have intended them to be that size, but the final product dwarfs the intended size. (even Frontier is rife with animation errors. The first shot of Alto's Super Messiah rising on the elevator in episode 7, which I'm watching right now? There is no elevator with that shape on the overall 3D model of the Quarter...) Edit: Supporting image found: The flight deck is physically not thick enough to hold a hangar, and the actual hull is something along the lines of a hundred meters long and less than twenty wide - IF the ARMD-L is >200 meters. Edit2: Since I just noticed that I added a supporting image for an argument I'd deleted, let's just put the argument back in. I was using the toy as a reference because it was the only one I had at the time for what the underside of the ARMD-L looked like, since all the reviews I've seen say it's really close to the line art except for the ARMD-R being too short in Cruiser mode (IIRC). The toy showed that there was no possibility of a battroid-height rear hangar, because that's where the arm of the Quarter goes. The image above proves the toy accurate in this respect. Also, I figure I should mention that you can't see the elevators on the underside, meaning they have to retract solely into the deck. Which means the deck has to be thick enough to be a hangar, which means it has to be bigger than the 200 meters we're told it is, because the proportions of the deck thickness to ship length can be calculated... It would be so much easier on everyone if the ship designers actually measured the finished design instead of using their initial design targets when writing the specs.
  12. SebastianP
    First off, you missed one turret then, as there's one at the back of the crotch that's only been visible very briefly. Second, I'm not counting anything double, I'm just counting the Aether and Hemera, as well as the BASTER L/R, as part of the Elysion and using the combined turret count. But if you insist: Elysion: 3 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, 12 Twin Super Dimension Energy Cannon turrets Each BASTER-type: 5 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, four large apparent missile tubes, four large axial guns Each carrier: 4 Twin Converging Beam Cannon turrets, 1 Macross Cannon. As a complete fighting unit, the ship has more guns than the Battle Frontier and Macross Quarter Movie version combined, and if I'm not completely mistaken in my math, it can actually fire at least as many guns of each type in any given direction as either of the other ships. And the Macross cannon may not have been fired at full power - either because it didn't have enough time to charge up to full capacity, or because the ship was firing it in an atmosphere. There's also the whole deal with how the Macross cannons of previous ships have been much more impressive at range than up close - I think the shot in episode 13 is one of the closest range Macross cannon shots we've gotten to date, excepting when SDF-1 fires its last shot during the rebuild arc. As for retractable guns - we don't have any official specs saying either one way or the other for the Elysion yet, so it might well have them too. There's certainly plenty of hatches that could be for Destroids, AA guns or missile launchers to pop out of. Not to mention all those tracers that fire out of nowhere in particular on every ship during battle. Also, I don't need to cite the doujin anymore, given that pictures of the DX toy proved that even the doujin was way too optimistic about the internal spaces of the ARMD-L. There's absolutely no way you could fit Rabbit 1 inside the actual ARMD-L - it's too narrow and too shallow in the hull for most of its length, and the place where the hangar would go is where the arm *does* go. I suspect Rabbit 1 and the Queadlunns are actually hangared within the arm, not the ARMD...
  13. SebastianP
    "Handful of turrets" I counted 13 of the twin "Converging Beam" turrets on the Elysion itself (3 on the torso, 5 on each spire); plus another four on each carrier. That's 21 turrets, or 42 barrels - more than on the Battle Frontier, the previous reigning champion of beam spam (12 twins and 4 triples, for a total of 36 barrels). *On top* of that, the Elysion carries twelve twin "Quarter Cannon" turrets, which are much beefier. The Quarter herself only carried ten of these. (and I'm still not convinced the Elysion's turrets aren't bigger versions.) Then there's the *two* Macross Cannons. Basically, the Elysion has more visible weapons than the Battle Frontier and the Quarter (movie version) *combined*. It is *stupendously* heavily armed. (As for lighter weapons, Frontier is supposed to have some guns on each leg but they're only really visible in the overall shots on M3 as small smudges, and not at all in the show due to angles not covering that part; Elysion on the other hand sports six twin turrets on each leg for apparent anti-mecha purposes.) As for the size of the Aether and Hemera, I'm still fairly certain they're bigger than a Guantanamo, and that the stated air wing of the Guantanamo requires TARDIS tech to actually fit inside the ship. The one for the Quarter *certainly* does, as the ship is physically not big enough to fit everything that the specs say it has. The Elysion's arms are the only carriers shown in the show to date that look like they can actually fit the airwing we see them operate...
  14. SebastianP
    Sure you can display the VF alone - *all* of the VF-25 kits come with a full set of parts for the plain version, and all the decals and stickers. (except for the VF-25F Tornado, which only has decals). It's just that you can't just pop the armor off and display it, you have to put the plain parts back on first. I'm pretty sure the VF-31 will work the same way. What I'm not sure about is how they're going to handle the separately sold Super parts, because the VF-25 super parts had the unit-specific bits molded in color for the Ozma and Alto releases, and white for the separate release, and you had to use stickers to color them. But the VF-25 super parts only had four unit-specific color parts to begin with, so it wasn't *totally* awful. The VF-31 has at least 11 parts that are unit-specific in color, and they're all huge, and some of them are really complicated. Covering some of these, like the back end of the boosters, up with stickers is going to be *really* difficult. So what are they going to do? Release individual super parts for each VF appropriately colored runners? Release a single pack with five dfferently colored runners so you can make the one you want? Make only a "Hayate" version? Or will they do what they really should have done with the VF-25s, and release both a super and a plain version of every VF individually? (Because what's the point of an RVF-25 without the super parts, it's literally only seen without them when Alto rescues Luca...)
  15. SebastianP
    If the Elysion was 400-500 meters long, it would be no bigger than the Quarter in ship mode, which does not compute. Plus, the Aether and Hemera would be smaller than Guantanamo-class carriers, which does not compute either. If we accept the 820-something meter height for the Elysion's attacker mode, then the ship mode basically has to be 600 to 700 meters long. And I never got the slightest hint that the colony ship was more than three times as long as the Elysion either way. Meh, we can argue this forever, we'll get official stats from a magazine one of these days.
  16. SebastianP
    I still think the Barette City dome is too small to have been one of those. Even at a minimum, the domes in the Macross 1 shot would have to be something along the lines of 3 km long, and that's without an Uraga at the front. The more I look at the Barette City dome, I get the feeling it's less than two kilometers from one end to the other, based on the known size of the Elysion. If the Elysion had been the size of an NMBC or bigger the way people thought from initial scaling (when someone scaled out the Aether and got 700-900 meters for it alone) - then I'd have bought the idea that the Ragna dome is the same size as the Macross 1 domes. But as it is, it's just way too tiny. I'm not saying the Ragna dome categorically can't have been part of a Macross colony fleet, just that it's not a ship type we've seen before unless it's been totally re-imagined.
  17. SebastianP
    I'm not sure the ship in episode 1 is an Island One-type vessel, whatever that is docked to the front doesn't really look like an NMBC. Hard to tell from the angle though. The ship in Episode 5's pre-opening sequence is definitely the same one we're always seeing on Ragna though (and now in space too) - it has the buildings sticking out of the dome.
  18. SebastianP
    It's been way more than 24 hours since the subs came out, we can drop the spoilers. They were using their clothes as reaction mass, throwing them one way so they'd end up going the other way. The thing is though, either they were some *heavy* clothes, or they had to throw them *really* hard to get any kind of speed. If you weigh sixty kilograms, and you're throwing a piece of clothing weighing 1 kg, you'll need to impart about 60 m/s velocity on the clothing to gain 1 m/s yourself. (though the clothes can lose a lot of velocity instantly to air resistance just fine, so it doesn't have to look like they're going 60 m/s.)
  19. SebastianP
  20. SebastianP
    I don't think there needs to be any full scale New Macross fleets in the Brisingr cluster. Basically, what I think happened was that after Megaroad-04 discovered and landed on Windermere, they sent their escorts out to look around, found the other planets, and reported back to Earth who sent out targeted colony ships to the planets of the Brisingr Cluster. These wouldn't have needed anything like the endurance or population of a New Macross-type fleet (which set out without a firm destination in mind and can take a decade or two to find a place to settle), hence the smaller dome we see on Ragna (which is not much larger than a Megaroad, and way smaller than even the smaller domes in the Macross 1 fleet). As for what ship the Ragna island ship is designed to dock with, based on the shape of the docking apparatus and the size of the dome I'm guessing either a Northampton or a Guantanamo. Certainly not a New Macross Battle class, because that would be almost as big as the whole dome. It is mentioned in the show that the docking apparatus is broken though.
  21. SebastianP
    Most likely coincidence, as it's been announced ahead of time that the subs would be late two of the three times we've had to wait for them.
  22. SebastianP
    They've made super parts for all of the VF kits they've made to date that were supposed to have them except the YF-19, so I wouldn't worry. Also, I'm pretty sure the leg bends on the VF-31 the same as it does on the VF-1 or VF-25. The Hasegawa Super VF-25 kits shipped with a complete pair of extra legs with the bend built in, on top of all the regular parts - the VF-31 will probably require something similar. We won't know until they get around to releasing it.
  23. SebastianP
    I don't have any of *those* kinds of experimenting skills myself either, I was mainly thinking of doing alternate paint schemes or trying to make my own turrets etc. Imagine using this as a baseline and then pulling a "Quarter 17" from Sayonara no Tsubasa - the one which had 24 turrets instead of the regular Quarter's 10. Turrets *everywhere*.
  24. SebastianP
    One is for building straight up. One is for experimenting. The third one goes in the stash, waiting for someone to come out with a detail set for it (better turrets and masts etc).
  25. SebastianP
    Elysion available for pre-order at HLJ for 425 yen each: http://hlj.com/product/BANN09070/Sci I've ordered three, for now...
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