SebastianP

This build looks really nice, and I kind of wish there was an 1/72 kit of the VF-2SS to go with all the other VF kits.

All VF landing gears are bad, period. Except maybe the YF-21/VF-22, and that's only because I don't remember where they go on that plane.

The problem with the previous ones is that ideally, you want the landing gear right behind the center of gravity in order to make the take-off rotation easier, with nearly half the mass of the aircraft acting as a counter-weight. All the VFs with the landing gear in the leg have them way too far back for this to work properly, thus they need a bunch of extra lift (and thus speed) in order to get the nose up during take-off.

And the problem with the VF-31's gear isn't the landing gear door orientation - look up what the nose gear on the F-15 looks like - but that it appears to retract into the intake trunking for the main engine. Which means that air would have to magically get from the intake to the engine without passing through the leg, somehow.

Not that the airflow needing magic is anything new in VF legs, all those joints in the legs would make airflow pretty much impossible IRL anyway.

Bigger pictures:

I'm thinking I'm going to get three or four of these...

The one inaccuracy with the thing that I see is that the carrier decks are flat, rather than folded down like on the anime version. Then again, this is still a 3D-print preview, not the finished model - you can tell from how rough the sides of the central section are.

Also, I'd love a 1/4000 of this and the Battle Frontier from Hasegawa. And the Quarter too.

You'll notice that they very pointedly haven't shown us whether the modular pod on the super VF-31 is the same as the normal one, or the speaker pack... and that they haven't shown us whether those pods on the back open. Pretty sure they do, given how similar they are to the VF-25 super parts. but they probably have smaller payload.

When did the head turrets of the valkyries change from lasers to beam guns? What would be the differences and which is more powerful?

Also why do some fighters don't use their other weaponry?

Take the case of the VF-25 - 2 x Mauler RÖV-25 25mm beam machine guns (mounted left/right of intakes in Fighter/GERWALK mode, on rotating hip mounts in Battroid mode)

- Has this ever been used?

I still can't take the designations for those Mauler guns seriously... because in my native language, "röv" means "arse". As in, the very vulgar version of the word which your momma will threaten to wash your mouth out with soap for using.

This is like arguing politics, you lot are so completely convinced Johnson is an idiot that you can't accept any arguments that he isn't.

Chaos didn't win? Chaos aren't a true military force, they're basically security guards for the galaxy's rowdiest concerts. They're tiny, they're spread thin, and their entire training is to shoot to disable, rather than kill, because the people they usually fight are innocents that can be brought back to normal with sufficient song.

They end up being charged with protecting the entire cluster from a nation-state actor with the ability to suborn local forces in minutes, and whose base they can't get to despite knowing where it is, and who has all the advantages. And their best asset at combating the Var can only be in one place at a time, while Heinz doesn't have to leave Windermere and can project his song anywhere in the cluster.

Despite these disadvantages, they still manage to figure out what the cause of the mind control is, and what the enemy plans to do. They even have a plan to do something about it - which would have worked Heinz hadn't miraculously gained the ability to sing twice a day instead of once.

"Why didn't they lie in wait for the Sigur Valens and blast it as it came out of Fold?" I don't know, why did no one else try doing that? Oh wait they did at Al Shahal, and the fold barrier came up immediately, no-sold the whole armada's massed strike, and then the fold song turned all the defenders in 15 minutes.

"But with Walkure singing it would be different!" Walkure were stunned out of their own song when Heinz started singing, it was that strong. Walkure *themselves* needed a morale booster or two before they managed to start up again.

Face it, the moment the bomb went off and the ruins were unhurt, it was plainly obvious that the planet was lost. They'd traded the city away and gotten nothing, and would never have gotten anything even if the Sigur Valens *hadn't* been sitting on top of the ruins when they blew.

The booster packs make sense from the perspective that they're adding a significant amount of extra weapons systems, and all that extra mass is going to need more fuel to get it moving, and possibly more thrust to keep it functional.

Unfortunately, these just look ugly. I don't mind the armor pieces on the rest of the valk, they blend in decently, though the under-wing panels look a little out of place, and I'm curious what they're for.

It's the boosters that blow the whole thing to pot. They're huge, not even remotely securely attached, and make the entire plane look horribly unbalanced. Yes, they look a lot like the VF-11's boosters, but those were mounted on the main body, not mid-wing, and they weren't that big.

I think the only thing that would fix these is either mounting them on the main fuselage (not likely because of the wing folds in the back) or splitting the booster down the center, rotating it outward, and sliding it over the front of the wings like the VF-25, placing one nozzle above and below the wing. Mounting that entire monstrosity on just the stub of the folded tail looks unstable to the point that I have no idea how they'll stay on the toys at all.

The under-wing panels are shield extenders - you can see them when Chuck goes "Gerwalk Fighter" and deploys his arms in episode 6.

The boosters IMO are no worse than the boosters on the VF-11 or the AeroSpace super parts for the VF-19 or (IIRC) VF-22 - those don't look all that secure either.

Anyway, this was just posted to /m/:

Legendary screw-up status, maybe... it's gotta suck to go down in history as the guy who lost an entire star cluster to the galaxy's rowdy children.

(Not as bad as Gramia, who at this point is probably going down in history as Space Napo-Hitler...)

Legendary screw-up *how*, *again*?

He had frakk all resources to work with that would stand up to the song of the wind. Let's say they went with the NUNS plan.

They evac Barette city and (try to) blow up the ruins as soon as the civvies are clear. It fails, and then Gramia shows up in orbit with a full power Sigur Valens with the song booster and fold barrier in working order. At that point, he's invincible, because not even the Macross cannons on Elysion would do anything to the fold barrier.

In the show, the fold barrier goes down due to Freyja's singing, when Heinz is swept up in the resonance event. The macross cannon shot only has to contend with the "normal" barrier around the ship, not the totally impenetrable one that was used to tank the reaction warhead.

Elysion going to Al-Shahal, and getting off that parting shot at the Sigur Valens that busted its song booster for a bit is the only reason they managed to get *any* of the defending forces that stuck around until the end away with their minds intact.

The rune is a fold sensor, duh. We're told this outright in the show.

Also, the trigger for a reaction bomb uses some kind of fold shenanigans, probably to keep the matter and anti-matter or whatever they're using apart. This is what the windermereans (Gramia, Roid, Heinz and Keith are all shown with their runes lighting between the scene where the bomb goes off under water, and the fireball erupting) react to.

Why Gramia knew to order maximum power to the ventral shields? Because he's served as a knight prior to the independence war, during the period where the NUNS were using the knights as cannon fodder to fight Zentraedi and whatnot (from the manga summaries), and has more than likely been in the presence of a reaction bomb going off before, so he recognized what he was feeling immediately. And Keith more than likely put two and two together from stories.

As for the major from a-hole, the camera is focused on a cruiser of a different color to all the others while his voice is talking, then switches to him, which, you know, suggests he's on that cruiser. Said cruiser is hovering above the city ship, in full view of the battle in orbit, and he's not lifting a finger, and he's outright telling Arad he doesn't care about the evacuation, all he cares about is blowing up the ruins.

The next shot we have of the city, there's explosions all around the city, but the NUNS ships are no longer there, instead a-hole-man is staring down at them from above, with a diagram showing where the bomb is relative to the city ship (which is pretty damned close), and smirking, since the Sigur Valens is almost on top of the ruins. As soon as it's directly above, he orders the bomb detonated - and off it goes. We have a shot from underwater of the bomb going off, then it cuts to the scene aboard the Sigur Valens where Gramia's rune flashes and then he orders the shields up, and then everyone else's rune flash, and then boom, massive fireball.

Incidentally, there are two frames in that sequence that are completely white - they're a few frames apart, but I think they're supposed to mimic the so-called double-flash of a hydrogen bomb.

Also, contrary to the NUNS guy saying they'd be using a small directed reaction warhead, this thing tosses up a fireball that is several times as big across as the Sigur Valens is long.

Then, as soon as the smoke clears and the ruins (re)appear, the major goes "Huh, so this is what the scientists were talking about," then orders "we got the data, retreat immediately". And then they leave, and are not seen again this episode.

The order for the colony ship doesn't come until a couple of minutes later in the show, when after Heinz starts singing and the Sigur Valens transforms, *Arad* orders the evacuation in light of Var syndrome starting to break out on the colony ship, where casualties would be immense if people started going out of control. Only after that does the ship start to take off.

Also note that there are no cruisers of the same coloring as the major's during the evacuation scene - I count five frigates, but they're all that light color that all the others are, one or two cruisers, an Uraga and a Guantanamo in one shot, and then two Uragas and two Guantanamos in the next shot as they fold out.

At this point, King Gramia and Keith's instances of prescient tactics seems to confirm one of my early theories about the series. Windermereans are a mildly psychic race in the WH40K sense of the term, connected to a higher dimensional realm of emotion and energy (fold space) and able to sense disruptions in that realm caused by things like starships traveling by space fold, strong emotion, and other individuals with similar talents. Gramia sensed the disruption which was caused by the Macross Elysion's fold jump and knew to move out as a result, and on Ragna they both sensed either Valan's ill will toward them or the fold resonance of the thermonuclear reaction warhead's trigger mechanism and were able to take appropriate actions to counter it as a result.

I think what we're looking at is an enemy that didn't start out being an apocalyptic threat but is quickly approaching that territory. They've subverted the New UN Forces assets for a dozen or so worlds, giving them a relatively big fleet of technically-disposable mind controlled slave soldiers that have access to nasty weapons like thermonuclear reaction warheads and dimension eaters. The Windermereans could conceivably do a LOT of damage if they were so inclined, an amount out of all proportion to their numbers thanks to the weapons they have.

Plus, of course, they have an ancient Protoculture weapons system. That's never been good, historically. Every time some jerkass activates some weapon that the ancient Protoculture left behind, it's literally the end of the world. When the Birdman was woken up, it would've destroyed humanity if its operator hadn't had enough willpower to subvert its program and protect Mayan island. When colonist expeditionaries in the Varauta system found the lab where the Protodeviln were sealed, the end result nearly destroyed all sentient life in the galaxy. Then, naturally, when Col. Todo found the fold evil on Uroboros he nearly wiped out everybody currently alive in the universe by altering history. Whatever Gramia and Roid and co. are waking up, it will turn out to be some galaxy-ending and potentially genocidal stuff.

(Never mind Keith's repeatedly stated desire to commit genocide... he wants to kill every last one of the millions of humans in the Brisingr cluster.)

Remember what I said about reading things that aren't there into the scene? You're doing it again.

Valan never once establishes that his goal was to awaken the ruins, just that he'd been told that there was a possibility that something might happen when the ruins were destroyed.

He ordered the retreat once he saw the plan had gone to smash because, hey, he'd already made it damn clear the previous episode that Ragna's NUNS and Kaos had ZERO chance of winning against Windermere if they were able to leverage the Song of the Wind.

Valan did tell Arad that it wasn't his business when they detonate the bomb, but hey... it's Lady M's fault that the evacuation wasn't completed and the ruins destroyed before Windermere could get there. He followed through with the plan that Lady M and Kaos had rammed down his throat, waiting until Windermere attacked to destroy the ruins. All those deaths are on Lady M's head, for her interference with the operation that forced them to detonate the weapon with the evacuation incomplete and ANYONE in the blast radius.

Ernest is not competent. In fact, it's been officially established in previous episodes that he's actually pretty crappy as a fleet commander, and he totally got schooled by his own student who he'd said was even worse than him. He got MASSIVELY lucky with that shot at the Sigur Valens, but he still took Ragna's best warship out of position and left it unavailable to defend Ragna for almost the entire battle. He got back just in time to take one potshot at Gramia and run the hell away.

You keep trying to misrepresent my position as Valan being a good guy. All I keep saying is he's the only competent soldier in this show. The only one who shows ANY tactical acumen whatsoever. He brought a plan to prevent Gramia from taking over the entire cluster that even Kaos couldn't find serious fault with, acted to minimize collateral damage and civilian casualties, and obeyed the compromise with Lady M in good faith. He also wiped out a good chunk of Windermere's fleet and would have destroyed the Sigur Valens if not for Gramia's prescience and ended the war at a stroke. He still managed to minimize the casualties of the battle, organize a fighting retreat to get the civilians and what remained of the NUNS fleet to safety, AND collected actionable intel about Windermere's new weapon. He may be a smug snake, and even if he turns out to be a bad guy later he's still demonstrated much more competence in command than anyone among the so-called heroes.

Dropping the spoiler protection since the subs have been out for nearly two days.

First of all, Lady M did *not* delay the evacuation. People are still seen evacuating as quickly as possible after we're told Lady M got the go ahead to try their plan first, and the Ragnyanyan kids are still packing up as the Elysion takes off, because everyone knows this is a last-ditch attempt and not a guaranteed success by any means, so blaming her does not work.

Blaming Ernest for setting off the attack early doesn't work either, because how in the blue hells was anyone supposed to know that the Sigur Valens was ready immediately? Every piece of intelligence they had said they'd be forced to stay put for a while to recharge.

No, Valan sits there with his fleet of ships parked over the colony while the battle rages in orbit, and isn't lifting a finger to help, and outright tells Arad that he doesn't care if the evacuation is complete, it's not his problem, nor is the bomb Arad's business. Then he moves his own ships away from the dome as the Sigur Valens approaches, because they're not in the shot where the battle rages above the dome itself. And then he stands there with a very satisfied smirk as he detonates the device, causing massive casualties to his own side, and then he's still smirking when the ruins are *not* destroyed, and goes, "oh, it's exactly like predicted! Save that scan data, and let's get out of here.)

Finally, there's the whole matter of precedent. Previous protoculture ruins seen on the show include the Altira in DYRL, which was mostly inactive; the ruins on Rax in Macross 7; the ruins on Varauta that contained the Protodeviln; the Bird Man in Macross Zero, and the Ouroboros ruins in Macross 30. Three of the five were actively dangerous when awakened and two didn't care one whit about reaction weapons, possibly the third as well if you count the big blast missiles in the game as canon or as just game mechanics. You do not nuke something you don't know the function of, because awakening Space Cthulhu or Space Gojira is a an actual, known-to-be-possible result.

There is no evidence other than his own word that his motivations were anything like what he says they were, and plenty of indication otherwise. He certainly didn't care one at all about the safety of the citizens of the cluster, or he'd have at least ordered his ships to help out in the defense with flak guns or something. Instead, as I said they never fire a shot, and actively move out of the battle zone when it gets closer.

Also, what, in your mind, was Kaos supposed to do at any given point during the show that they didn't do? Tell me that, and I can almost guarantee you I can come up with a completely logical explanation for why Ernest didn't do that. He's a damned good commander, but his force is tiny, it's spread really thin, and only once during the entire show so far has he had a target at which to aim his big guns at.

Get it through your head - Ernest's plans would have worked if it wasn't for the Windermereans having five bullshit tier advantages:

1. Enhanced physical skills and reflexes

2. A home planet that's almost inaccessible to fold travel, and probably requires a local guide

3. The ability to use Var syndrome to mind control people

4. A mobile Protoculture space fortress

5. Goddamned precognition.

And three of these five weren't known of before the show started, which was mere weeks ago IIRC.

Are the 1/72 models a viable alternative?

What you need to know about the 1/72 models:

1. Building them is work, and you need to know how Bandai's kits work before tackling one.

2. Decalling them is more work, and where I ended up giving up on mine, because the stickers suck, and the water transfers suck worse, because they're fragile as hell. Aftermarket decals *would* be recommended, if there were any available.

3. They are absolutely not toys, and will not suffer any kind of abuse. The kits' joints won't handle more than a limited number of transformations before they start breaking from the stresses. Build it, decal it, pose it, and then *leave it alone*. I've broken one shoulder from transforming a kit too much, and I noticed that the shoulder on my Armored won't stand up to another transformation. Combined with how the decals scrape off? Yeah, not a toy.

4. Despite the above, the one aspect in which they'll always beat the DX toy hands down is how easy they are to get, and the small size of the hole they'll make in your budget. You can get all four of the plain Bandai VF-25 kits for the price of one DX toy, and that's at retail. Also, other than super parts for Luca's and Michel's units, all the configurations are available as a single box for each. (Super parts for Michel and Luca are sadly out of production, and unlikely to come back.)

5. If you're planning on displaying either a plain or a Super VF-25 in fighter mode, do yourself a great favor and get the Hasegawa kit instead of the Bandai kits. Not only are they cheaper, but the lack of a transformation gimmick means that they won't deform from a harsh look, and they're among the easiest to build glue-and-paint kits I've ever tried. I just wish I didn't suck at painting.

It's a nice build, shame the kit itself looks so badly proportioned. (from what I can tell, it's way too wide in the forward section, in the anime the nose of the ship always looked taller than it was wide, and here it looks the other way around.)

new to these Bandai kits - does "aftermarket" ever come to the rescue with better decals for these?

Samueldecal of Hong Kong made decals for the VF-25F and S kits way back when, and may have done so for the others too - I can't tell because their main site is down, and only their old site (last updated in 2011) and their facebook page are up currently. I haven't seen these decals with my own eyes, but a lot of people use their other products.

They mainly do decals for Gundam kits, typically stuff like replicating the Metal Build, Master Grade or Fix Figuration looks in other scales, like High Grade (which seldom gets decals in the box). I think they also do water decals that replicate the massive RG sticker sheets for people who're fed up with those.

At any rate, it looks like I need to find myself a pair of needle-nose tweezers, because I'm going to need them...

I was really, REALLY hoping for Mirage to be more impressive than she's been so far... it's been so long since we've had a woman in the cockpit who put the boys to shame, like Milia, Komilia (M2 timeline ver.), Sylvie, or Therese.

My remaining hope is that hanging around with Hayate will let some of his more fluid, intuitive piloting rub off on her and let her achieve true greatness.

Ep.13 discussion is up!

http://www.macrossworld.com/speakerpodcast-ep-55-macrossΔ-ep-13-spoilercast/

Listening to the podcast now, some immediate comments...

Doing my screencap pass right now, checking over the whole episode more or less frame by frame for interesting bits of mechanical detail.

Got to the scene around 12:59 where one of the Siegfrieds fire missiles at Keith, and decided, why not count how many frames between shots, because there were more than six missiles fired.

Results are kind of weird, the first launcher to pop out a second missile does so six frames after the first, the last one to do so does it after twelve. Note that it has nothing to do with the relative positions of the launchers, as the L3 launcher fired again after six frames, and the R3 fired again after twelve. (those are the inboard launchers, so they're basically mirrored.

Averaging it out says that the missile ports can fire 3 rounds per second, so a one second salvo with the missile launchers would be 18 missiles. Maybe not the most useful information unless you're doing RPG stats though.

Unpainted, undecalled review:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/hobisima-rittai/VF-31J_2016-06-26

I have a question. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention, but has the word

"Macross“ been uttered once in this entire series? Maybe it has and I've failed to catch it, but according to me they keep on referring to the "Elysion" and nothing else. I wonder if it's just coincidence

You definitely haven't been paying attention, because the Macross Elysion has been consistently referred to as such since we first laid eyes on it way back in episode 2. Hayate uses the name when he explains what it is to Frejya, and later Ernest Johnson introduces himself as the captain of Macross Elysion. And that was just in episode 2.

So we finally got to see the Elysion's Macross Cannon. I like how it's now integrated into the carrier instead of being as separate ship/module.

That said, does this mean that the Aether has one as well (considering that they fire from the Hemera), and that the Elysion can do Macross Cannon's akimbo?

Are we out of the spoiler protected period yet?

Anyway - with the Aether and Hemera being externally identical, I'm guessing both ships have the same internals as well, so yes the Aether should contain another Macross Cannon. Also, based on the Aether not even trying to shoot at the Sigur Valens, I'm guessing that either the charge time is prohibitive without the Elysion's main reactors to power it, or the ship basically can't fire the gun on its own.

Guns akimbo? Maybe in space. On the surface, Elysion used the other hand to steady the Hemera, and I don't think it was just for the sake of a cool pose. More likely, we might see the Elysion fire both guns simultaneously in ship mode - possibly after ramming the Sigur Valens? It's gotta do a Macross Attack at some point, it won't be Macross without it.

I forgot that Spacy uses airforce rankings for the English translations, so a Captain (rank) would never be a captain (commander) of something like Elysium. Darn Spacy (and fleets in general in macross) having ships commanded by colonels.

Do they actually? I don't remember seeing any Japanese material that actually gave an English rank, and in Japanese the ranks are all the same. The translations tend to confuse the issue (the official subs for Macross mixes army and navy style ranks, we have lieutenant commanders and admirals on one hand, and majors and generals on the other), and people keep getting referred to by their job titles rather than their ranks (like Max being "kansho" on in Macross 7, or Roy and Hikaru being "taicho" in the original.)

Neutral vote and my cursor hovered over Negative for a while. Animation ok, sometimes (mecha) even good, but I had a hard time suspending disbelief.

Also a question: what was the structure, apparently come kind of carrier ship, that the Walkure were on? I thought they were on top of the Island Ship, but when Freyja jumped off, the shib aoove her was not round. Also if they were not on the Island Ship, why did they see the shot from SV aimed right at them? And when Gramia said something about not allowing a threat to persist, I would have expected the SV to fire at the Walkure, not a bunch of random civilians?

Marzan, both of your points hit upon what bugged me about the episode. Also the action with the Valks

was more of the same Fighter Mode Dancing followed by Bogue doing his usual while, again, the other Aerial Knights looking on while Hayate used the same move on Keith he used to take Bogue out. Keith even emulated Bogue's countermove too.

This incessant complaining about the combat being fighter vs fighter all the time is getting annoying. The reason we're not getting anything else is because unless you need to take or hold ground, Battroid and Gerwalk are pretty much useless in the atmosphere. The Aerial knights stay airborne because they don't have any ground objectives that they can't hit-and-run; and Chaos fights them in the air because they can't make them come down to fight them on the ground, and they can't just leave them up there because then they can pulverize whatever they want from up high.

In space, or in an enclosed area (like inside a colony), it's a different story. Mode changes in an atmosphere will kill your mobility, mode changes in space will give you options. In a domed city, you can't take advantage of fighter mode's extra speed or altitude performance anyway, and fighting street to street makes sense because you *can't* take off and nuke them from above.

Now, if the Aerial knights ever had something they seriously needed to take and hold on the ground, as opposed to just needing destroy something or to distract the defenders, we'd probably see them use Gerwalk for more than just landing or a hand-break, and battroid for more than proclamations. And that would cause Delta and company to have to follow suit. Or, if Delta did an op where they were assaulting, as opposed to destroying, a ground objective, we might see the knights use battroid and gerwalk.

But for the types of ops we see, fighter mode is pretty much the most useful thing to use, so that's what gets used.

(Also note that in the one space battle we do see properly, everyone uses Gerwalk mostly. On both sides.)

Quick-viewing.

It was okay. Nice way to end the mid-season, but story-wise...

-Had a feeling the cannons were the carriers. They probably need both carriers for a proper cannon shot.

-King is dead. Long live the king. Meh. The king was past his expiration date so him dying serves little. OTHERWISE, no one else died except for red-shirts. BORING.

-Windermere still won. Secured Ragna ruins? Check. Besides a little damage to the bridge of Sigur Valens, it's still functional. NUNS' plan to blow-up the ruins only reveals a dock for Sigur Valens. Well, that didn't work. Ragnans now have to run until Ragna can be liberated.

Now Haya-Haya has lost 1 entire fighter and damaged the backup. "Your piloting is writing checks your ass can't cash." At least we'll get to see the VF-31F use a different mode other than fighter now.

That was frickin amazing!

and agree x 2

GIFS of some of the awesomenes

Thank you kindly,

The non-spoiler review:

That.

Was.

CRAZY Awesome.

And whoever the troll was that voted negative on this needs to hand in his Macross Fanclub card.