SebastianP

As small as the Macross Elysion is, I would assume that it's probably not equipped with retractable guns... unless they're AA guns. (There do seem to be a pair of large slits with AA guns on the sides of the legs.)

... so you're citing a toy instead. At best that's a lateral move in terms of reliability.

*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.

So... a couple points here.

• I think you may be counting several of these turrets two or three times apiece. I've given it an eyes-on review and only found twenty-four turrets in total spread across the entire ship: fourteen on the main body, and a further ten split evenly between BASTER-L and BASTER-R. I'm not counting CIWS guns here.

• Just for the record, the "Quarter Cannon" is just another name for a super dimension energy cannon... there are a good dozen different variations on that theme these days, depending partly on who's using it, how the beam is aimed, how it's focused, etc.

• Given that a standard stealth cruiser has eleven beam cannon turrets and the Macross Quarter-class can have anywhere from ten to twenty-four, having fourteen beam gun turrets doesn't give the larger Macross Elysion much of an advantage... especially given that the ship's unusual shape of the ship builds some fairly significant blind spots in the coverage of those turrets.

• Also, as a side note, it's worth remembering that the Battle-class official specs give them not just the large turrets mounted on the upper hull... but also a large, indeterminate number of retractable beam cannon turrets scattered around the rest of the hull. The ones you mention are simply the heaviest guns it has, not the only ones. (These guns have been seen firing in official art, but not in animation that I can recall offhand.)

That would be supposition, not a fact. It's probable, but it's not confirmed.

Also, the Elysion's macross cannon doesn't seem to be particularly powerful... certainly much closer to the Macross Quarter's than the one on a Macross-class or Battle-class.

We've gone over your claims about size and the unreliability of that dojinshi you cite several times, so we don't need to rehash that again.

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...

Very much so, yes... the Macross Elysion seems like exactly the wrong kind of ship for a private military contractor headquartered out in the space boonies to be operating.

Their whole operation doesn't make a ton of sense, but the Elysion seems like the worst possible combination of design features for what their day-to-day operations would be. The actual Macross Elysion itself is not particularly well-armed for a Macross, or even simply for a ship of its size. Her only actual armaments are a handful of converging energy cannon turrets mounted on the hull, and she doesn't seem to have an aircraft hangar or destroid complement of her own. Without the Aether and the Hemera she's essentially little more than an overcomplicated alternative to the New UN Spacy's stealth cruiser¹, and the Aether and the Hemera don't seem to be particularly effective or capable carriers for their size either. Individually they seem to be somewhat smaller than a Guantanamo-class space stealth carrier, but combined the two are apparently carrying about half the capacity of a single Guantanamo-class or a Macross Quarter-class ship.

On the whole, the Macross Elysion seems to be a much less effective warship than anything we've seen before... she's basically a less-capable Macross Quarter-class alternative at twice the size.

"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...

These Delta models look nice.

One thing I didn;t like about the Frontier valks, although they were great transforming models, is that the armor parts were integrated and you could not display the valk alone.

The Deltas look like the Super parts are separate, and perhaps the armor parts will be too.

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...)

All told, I think it's pretty evident that the city ship in question is a reuse of the Island-1 CG model from Macross Frontier and we just weren't supposed to notice.

Elysion's only something like 400-500m long in cruiser mode, and the presentation of it in proximity to the dome suggests that the dome must be a good 3-4km long but only about 400-500m tall. Slightly smaller, but a lot flatter, than the typical city ship.

EDIT: Confirmed, it's the Island-1 model... they didn't even remove the observation platform over the SMS Macross Quarter's dock from the top-down views.

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.

Personally, I don't see how there couldn't be... city-ships like that only came with two classes that we know of: the New Macross-class and Island Cluster-class.

Unless they retcon the established information, that kind of targeted colonization isn't done with long-range missions because it can take years to get from Point A to Point B by space fold even if the metaphorical pedal is to the metal.

Logically, assuming Megaroad-04 was the first one to discover the Brisingr cluster held multiple inhabitable worlds, they would signal other large-scale long-distance emigrant fleets to converge on that area and explore it further. The Brisingr cluster is an area over 800 light years in diameter, a distance considered to be a long-range fold by even a modern 5th Generation emigrant ship. For the more primitive and less-efficient fold systems of a 1st Generation emigrant ship and its escorts (some of which may not have even had fold systems) spreading out to span an area that size would almost certainly be unsustainable and would put the newly established colony out of touch with its defense fleet for months if not years. The (New) UN Government has launched over 59 long-distance emigrant fleets... it'd be insane for a cluster that had more than twenty inhabitable planets to be controlled by a single emigrant fleet of less than 100,000 and progressively settled by small ships when you have millions of people ready and waiting to settle on planets like that. (The Brisingr cluster has a population of over eight billion... you can bet a good chunk of that is humans.)

The most logical explanation, given the evidence, is that the city ship that was formerly part of Barette City is one of the smaller shell-less dome ships seen in the establishing shot of Macross-1's launch back in Macross 7.

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.

The RIS (not sure it should be called Barrette City, since I believe that would count the whole municipality AND the colony ship) is definitely a new CG model now, though previously it had been hand-drawn. The re-use of the Island One model in episodes 1 and 5 of Delta can't be conclusively implied to be the same ship IMO.

And the Macross 7 fleet had only one dome-style ship. The other colony ships in the fleet were more specialized and smaller, and only two had a dome-esque appearance, unless you also count the cemetery ship from Macross 7 Trash:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/riviera-resortship.htm

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/sunnyflower.htm

The Macross 5 fleet had at least three identical-looking dome ship blocks, and New Macross class carriers to go with them. The Macross 1 fleet had one big, lidless dome ship and several smaller dome ships of similar design (attached to NMBCs as well, or so it seems); and if the RIS was part of that fleet or Macross 2, then they had smaller-still designs along for the ride.

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/newmacross/newmacross1.jpg

Mark

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.

I'm confused...

Why did Hayate and Mirage have to strip down before fixing the power cable?

Also, just how many sexual references did anyone notice in this episode?

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.)

I just find it odd that Freya was in close proximity to both explosions when they occurred. I think it's possible she's some sort of Manchrian Candidate brainwashed by the Windermereans to commit acts of sabotage and then forget them.

CG model reuse is pretty blatant in this series, but that can generally be overlooked. It's highly probable that this is meant to be the same class as seen in Macross 7, but simply looks different due to CG model reuse.

If she hasn't flown in over thirty years, then it's pretty much a slam dunk that it's intended to be one of the earliest of the 3rd Generation emigrant ships... the City-type New Macross-class. Unless they're rewriting emigrant fleet history (again), this would have to be a New Macross-class ship because that was the first class to have the dome structure and it had only been around for a few years at the latest point which this ship could/should have launched. As the Ragna island ship has no shell, and we know Macross-5 had one and the whereabouts of Macross-3 and Macross-4, that leaves Macross-1 or Macross-2. It's possible it was one of the smaller domeships seen in the Macross-1 fleet, and the primary ship settled elsewhere.

As evidenced by Macross-5, it's not unheard-of for an emigrant fleet with multiple city ships to apparently possess multiple Battle-class carriers. There should be several Battle-class ships spread out through the Brisingr cluster as a result of being colonized by one or more of the twenty-one inhabited planets in the cluster. Oddly, they're conspicuous by their absence... which is very odd, because they were meant to be a command ship for the colony's defense fleet. They had ships of every other class present, and yet they make no effort or mention of any other ship attempting (or being able to) dock with the city ship.

I would expect that the ship was probably only meant to house (and probably still housed) the human population of Ragna... and that it wasn't really intended to evacuate the locals as well.

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.

Is it just me or do the subs come a little later when there's less Valk action?

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.

hehe a bit of DX paranoia? if only the 1/72 pieces were a lil bigger say 1/60...

nice idea to fit any upcoming hase 31 kits tho am not sure of the fit...plus hase would "probably?" also release fighter with supers down the road..

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.

ah i wish i had the experimenting skills...i bet this kit would look real nice with lighting!

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*.

nice! i wouldnt know what to do with 3 tho...

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).

Elysion available for pre-order at HLJ for 425 yen each:

http://hlj.com/product/BANN09070/Sci

I've ordered three, for now...

The Super Packs will also be released on their own.

http://www.taghobby.com/1-0/1-2/bandai-2016%e5%b9%b49%e6%9c%88%e7%99%bc%e5%94%ae%ef%bc%9a%e6%a8%a1%e5%9e%8b-172-%e3%80%8amacross-delta%e3%80%8bvf-31j-siegfriedhayate-immelman%e6%a9%9f%e7%94%a8super-part-2200yen/

All that blue scares me, is it all going to be stickers like on the separate VF-25 super parts? Or are the parts going to be molded in blue so you have to paint them to get any of the other units?

Edit: Oh wow, confirmation that those really *are* missile launchers on top of the fuselage, missed that at first. Also, no speaker pod system.

In both SDFM and DYRL, what model(s)/paint scheme(s) of VF-1 does Max pilot?

TV:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/variant-vf-1a-max.htm

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/variant-vf-1d-virginroad.htm

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/variant-vf-1j-max.htm

http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/vf-1j-super-max.htm

DYRL:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossdyrl/variant-vf-1a-fastpack-max.htm

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macrossdyrl/variant-vf-1s-dyrl-max.htm

Mac7:

http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/variant-vf-22s-max.htm

If you google "Hasegawa (name of model) Max" you should be able to find pictures of the model kits of each one, as IIRC all of Max's VF-1s and the VF-22 have been released over the years.

OK, so I've been sitting here all day hand-transcribing the text of the Battleships of the Galaxy vol 2 book into Google Translate (since trying to OCR it went absolutely nowhere), then trying to interpret what it spits out. I think I've gotten the gist of the first page, and have a readable translation of it, but I could do with a translation check if anyone feels up to the task...

Here's the source text, as transcribed (still in Japanese):

Still no subs yet?

Already Monday night here.

Damn, I'll have to slum it and watch episode 1 of season 2 of Killjoys instead.

Fansubbers are probably still on their way home from Anime Expo, like the speakerpodcast people. I don't expect the subs to show up until tomorrow, my time.

Question for the people in the know: When are the next round of magazines where articles about Macross show up due out?

You know what I want right now? Pictures of the VF-31 sitting next to some other 1/72 VFs, so we can appreciate the size of the thing.... That's the one thing I haven't seen yet, comparisons with other VFs or real-world fighters.

Glad you like tough questions, Seto Kaiba!

I have another for you:

In the "Battleships of the Galaxy Vol 2" book, on page 25, there's a picture of what the author calls the "Kaga-class stealth space carrier", which appears to be a larger version of the Guantanamo-class with an Uraga-class control tower on top. I was assuming that this was a fan design, but then someone on /m/ claimed that it's from one of the same set of games as the Daedalus II, which would basically make it a precursor to both the Guantanamo and Uraga-class.

You mentioned earlier that you have the book in question, so I figure you'll know which ship I'm talking about. Is this true though, or wishful thinking? And if it's true, is there any actual art of the thing that doesn't come from this book?

Ohh you're right.

Maybe this one?

The black Umineko is Scarcat girlfriend, right?

Glad she is safe.

..

...

..

...

...wait a minute

Oh sh--- another triangle here guys!!!

Wouldn't it have made sense for Mirage to turn the wheel in the first place? She's stronger than Hayate owing to her remaining Zentraedi DNA, no?

So the Elysion and the island, you know yada yada yada.