imode

You know, you're doing exactly what you get mad at us about. Actually no. What I said was that i would want higher quality versions of the 1/100 M0 toys , in other words bigger than the 1/100 M0 toys ,BUT I never have (or will) said I wanted those high quality to be 1/48. I still think that idea simply sucks for the majority of consumers. At this point I´m just hoping for 1/72 version , hopefully Yamato will surprise us and do them in 1/60 scale. I didn't say anything about 1/48's did I? I remember you got mad at a lot us when we looked at the 1/60 armored and said we'd pass on it and hope for a bigger better version. Now here you are looking at the 1/100, saying you're going to pass on it and hope for a bigger better version.

Dunno. The Jenius girls didn't seem to suffer from this, except for those random temper tantrums.

You know, you're doing exactly what you get mad at us about.

Gah, I come back only to find that Mikes and Ewilin have hit all my main points already! One thing I do want to stress however, is that a lot of you complain about the JSF replacing the F-14, which was not the original intent. The replacement for the F-14 was the super hornet. The F-35 was made to compliment the hornet and replace the A-6 which, I think we can all agree, is far past its prime. I also want to stress that the ability to launch from a carrier will probably start to play a major role. Looking at gulf war II, we saw exactly how many of our "allies" let us launch attacks from our airfields based in their countries. A few of them wouldn't even let our planes fly over their airspace. If the offending country has a coastline, we can park 4.5 acres of sovereign American territory right on their doorstep and strike them quickly and repeatedly. I also don't see why an F-16 will completely totally out-maneuver the F-35 as some of you seem to claim. Even if it can, as some of you have mentioned, the F-35's primary air-to-air capabilities lie in BVR attacks, and thus don't require the maneuverability that a close-in fighter like the F-16 has. I can see here you're already letting your nostalgia factor get in the way of better judgment. Your claim that they should "just build more F-117s!" probably illustrates this much better. While the F-117 is a great plane, it's got a couple things going against it. First of all, it's expensive. VERY expensive in fact. Not only is the plane expensive, taking care of a stealth aircraft with its fancy radar absorbing coat of paint also eats a lot of money as well. Now, if F-15's were so damn good, then maybe we should just buy two F-15's instead. Probably save us a few million too. But no, I don't see you saying "CAN THE F-117. IT IS THE SUCK". You realize that the two planes are built for two different purposes, and that regardless of cost, the F-117 is a good airplane that is perfect for what it does. You know you like the F-117, admit it. Oh, and by the way, last I checked, an F-117 didn't have any guns either. Lessons have been learned, but not quite exactly the ones you are thinking of. We learned it in World War II when Germany began deploying jet-powered aircraft and primitive cruise-missiles out of nowhere. Just think, had the war started 5 years later, we may have seen Me-262's against Spitfires and Hurricanes. Years later, the same thing happens again. We think we're safe at 80,000 feet and then a missile launched from the ground shoots down a U-2. It's easy to say, "what we got now is good enough", but what happens when one day some nutjob invents a shoulder fired missile that can shoot down a B-52 50,000 feet up? The United States didn't become the world's only superpower by constantly relying on 30 year old designs and concepts. In order to stay ahead of the pack we'd had to make changes; to advance and take risks. I like the F-35 and I'm really excited about it's potential (remember guys, 4 more years till deployment, lots of things can change). I'm not saying the F-35 is a panacea aircraft, but we should all wait and see its performance in actual combat before so quickly condemning it back to the drawing board.

Gah, I had a nice reply, but I pressed backspace and lost it all. Too lazy to retype the whole damn thing now. Maybe later.

NOooo~ Overtechnology is made out of people!&~~

In all the pics it says the price hasn't been decided yet. Most speculate that the msrp will be around 3880 yen. Not quite $40, but I'm just rounding numbers in all the wrong places.

LOL! Yeah, that was amusing to see. Now we'll have to compete to see who gets mentioned by name over there. Anyway, thanks for the translations. It looks like some of those fans are as obnoxious, outspoken and opinionated as we are. Well, ya gotta remember that there are at least a few English-speaking Japanese fans (such as Q-san) who visit the boards every once in a while, and certainly there's some word of mouth. IINM, quite a few Japanese fan-sites even link to MW. And isn't the whole object of being a fan to be obnoxious, outspoken and opinionated? If we weren't wouldn't we fall to the level of -- gasp -- mere viewer? Plus, even though Japan's networking infrastructure is booming and they have some of the fastest cheapest services in the world, many of their webpages haven't evolved past text-based forums and most people still believe the internet exists solely on their cellphones. By comparison, MW is a treasure trove of pictures. I have not seen a Japanese Macross webpage anywhere near as comprehensive as this one.

Probably around $40

The F-35 is so far away from it productions date that it would not be hard to envision a hole host of external stores being added to it arsenal, whether it be AIM-9's or AGM-65's. I read that in a "Low Threat Enviroment" the F-35 would be able to carry external stores in order to carry more ordanance. I think they pretty much want the F-35 to perform a role similar to an F-117, which is to give us the ability to strike silent and independently. They can also be deployed by carrier, so pilots don't have to fly half-way across the world from air bases in North America. Best of all, they're cheap. Less than half the cost of the F-117. Some people have questioned how effective it's stealth capabilities are, but who's to say really? I don't think anyone has that information. Once air superiority has been achieved (nowadays air superiority doesn't even mean shooting the other guy's airplanes down, it's more like bombing his radar and SAM sites), it will perform a role more like an F-16, carrying more payload. I don't see how this plane can be "worse" than an F-16 as some have claimed. I also don't see this plane ever replacing an A-10 or performing any type of CLOSE air support, but as a multi-role Strike Fighter (JSF) you could probably do a lot worse. Yeah. Having a slow-moving support craft with a nasty cannon spitting hot depleted-uranium death is always a plus. However, that A-10 won't always be up there and when you look in the sky, all you'll see is a F-16 or F-18 or god forbid, a B-52 30,000 feet up with a 1,000 lb. JDAM. If you're running from something-- well then my friend, you are crap out of luck. But if you're being pinned down like what happened to US forces at Mazar E-sharif in Afghanistan, I wouldn't mind a bomb dropping so much. Course the bomb dropped on top of them, but hey! Accidents happen! For all the low/slow flying that A-10's do, they still managed misidentify and proceed to plaster two British tank crews. Of course, F-117's cost over twice as much, but we American tax payers don't care, do we?

Isn't the internet great? Okay, I don't know how accuracte this is, but I'll post the link. http://www.rjlee.org/aakill.html These are all the air-to-air kills from Gulf War 1 which was 10 years ago. Note, the only two kills were from an internal cannon, both credited to A-10's. Everything else was missile missile missile.

I think I saw on the history channel that the Mig-15 was superior to the F-86 in almost every way, from speed to max altitude to range and armament. There was also a Korean defector who used his Mig-15 to escape and the tests done on the plane afterwards confirmed it. Of course, the US countered these inefficiences with better tactics, kind of like a Wildcat/Zero situation from World War II with great success. That doesn't mean the F-86 was a better plane. Likewise, Israel is and always has been a master of strategy. Read up on the 6-day war and you'll see that they defeated almost every nation around them with a smaller and inferior forces in both the air and on the ground. I have no figures to back them up, but I've read that stat for stat the more recent Mig and Sukhoi fighters have either equalled or surpassed American superiority fighters like the F-14 and the F-15. You can see for yourself the crazy maneuvers that the Russian planes can do at airshows (ignore the fiery crashes! ) I personally love the F-14, and it kinda makes me wince at the thought that a Russian plane can outfly an American built one. However, the war in Iraq and the Balkans showed that it's not the plane, but the pilot and the strategies.

Well, the MPC Alpha already has two big problems. 1. It's small 2. It's $80 At that size for that price, it's just not worth it.

Sure. I'll give you that. But what's easier to do? Pretend you are (for arguement's sake, let's say) North Korea. If the big bad Americans were coming to bomb the crap out of you, would you rather send your expensive Migs and Su's up only to watch them get shot down, or would you fire thousands of missiles? If you fire 235 missiles at an airplane, I'm sure one is bound to hit. Good-bye $40,000,000 worth of missiles. But hey, if you hit the airplane, the enemy loses a $40,000,000 plane, another $1 mil of payload and a pilot. I'm not saying that the JSF should replace anything (least of all a dedicated FIGHTER) because god-forbid we end up having to fight an enemy with a Rafale or a Eurofighter. But as a front-line stealth attacker, which is obviously the direction that they want to take it, a cannon is useless. The whole point of this thread was the F-35's role as CAS, not air superiority.

No. The cockpit in plane mode reminds me off the 1/72 YF-21's proportions where it was "snubbed" giving it a shorter cockpit in planemode but looking decent in battroid. Landing gear really is hideous though. If they make something perfect transformable, then I can overlook the proportion mistakes and such. If you're going to have swappable parts, the thing should look good in all modes.

Funny that's what people "in the know" said after Korea, then we got our asses handed to us by a bunch of low-tech peasents over Vietnam. Angel: The A-6 was "replaced" by the F/A-18 They might have been low-tech, but we were equally low. I still believe the Mig-15 was superior to the F-86. Hell, MiG's are still superior, but who can afford them? Not even Russia can. A few countries still have MiG-29's but can't afford to maintain them or the or buy the fuel to keep them in the air.

The world is a very different place now. Back then US and the USSR were neck and neck. Communists were dogging us at every turn. Now, there are very few countries who can muster any sort of air based defense against an aerial assault from US forces and more often than not, they are our allies. Nowadays, pilots are mainly afraid of SAM's as they are much cheaper than maintaining an air force. Dog-fighting has gone the way of the do-do, and thus an internal cannon (to a high-altitude fighter) is pretty much the thing of the past. The hoo-haa over stealth is IMO very smart. I'm not sure of the cost of a SAM vs. the cost of an airplane but I'm sure you can buy a whole lot of missiles for the price of one MiG-29. Okay, based on this webpage a single sparrow costs $170,000. An F-35 which is moderately cheap, costs $40,000,000. Now say I bought $40,000,000 worth of sparrows inside of a single F-35. With the price of one airplane, I could potentially shoot down 235. Hell, throw in another $40 million and I could take out the entire United States air force. Stealth works. Why do you think an F-117 is so good at what it does? If you still think aerial encounters at close range still take place, you've been watching too much Macross.

Hmm, but if you look at the MW section on toys, and all the other pictures everywhere, the prototype is almost 99% the finished toy. Don't expect the finished product to look that much different. Now that I look at it, if they're going with part swap, they should make a bigger head too. *editedit: Too Yamato's credit, that's a much nicer shade of blue than they have shown previously for Max's 1J.

Battroid on the VF0 is sweet. Plane is mad fugly. Something about the nose area looks squashed. Maybe they forgot to swap the correct nose back into place. The SV-51 however, is looking as beautiful as usual. Bonus points for Hasegawa, minus points for Yamato.

tsuzuite: 704: Most likely, the 1/48 was a bigger hit than they had imagined, so they decided to postpone the release of the 19. 705: They're going to look at the 1/48 armored after the sales of the 1/60. I forgot to ask about the 19FP. They talk about it so much at MW, I'm sure it's still planned. 706: I was at WF, and I asked one of the Yamato guys, "You're going to release a Max Q-rau now, right?" I got some crazy reply like, "With Yamato you never know. Yamato loves their money." I had hoped to see the 1/60 armored, but they didn't have it there. I totally forgot to ask about the 19FP and the Monster, too. 708 Yamato loves their money = If Millia sells, there will be different color versions. They did the same with the 1/48. To tell you the truth, I always thought it was bizarre that Yamato would be releasing Q-rau's, but I'd still rather have M&M Q-rau's than M&M 1J's. 714: That's wrong. Yamato had planned from the start to release different variants of the 1/48, regardless of how they sold. 709: Clip from the newsletter: Q: When will the 1/60 Armored Valkyrie go on sale? A: Around May. 713: May!? What happened to February!? For once, why can't they announce a release date that they can actually hold to!? 718: >Q: When will the 1/60 Armored Valkyrie go on sale? >A: Around May. That kind of answer pisses me off. Yamato is trying to make us look like idiots.

694: I went to Wonderfestival and asked one of the Yamato staffers there. Q: Do you have any plans to sell a Green Q-Rau? A: No Q: When are you selling the Armored VF-1 1/48 A: We have no such plans Q: Will you be selling the M&M set without armor? A: No, they will be sold with armor. I've always asked them when I've gone to previous events and it seemed they always intended to release an armored 1/48, but I'm not so sure now. Would be a waste for them not to release different color versions of the Q-rau as well. This time though, I talked to someone different. I received a real business-like reponse because everytime I asked him about things that haven't been announced, the only answer I received was, "We have no such plans." crap, I forgot to tell them to update their damn webpage. 695: Screw Yamato 696: ASK THEM ABOUT THE YF-19! 697: I've talked to some people inside Yamato. Apparently they have plans to create a larger VF-0, but they're trying to add a scaled Tomahawk to their lineup, so they decided to go with the smaller part-swapping version. I also aired my personal grievances about them releasing decals for the 1/48 and they told me that it's something they will consider, but not anytime soon. If it wasn't possible, the least they could do was let us know on their website. 698: They're probably not going to release the YF-19FP. If they wanted to, they'd have done so by now.

I'd prefer to just blow him up while he transforms. Um... that's considered in the universal code of space warfare as time-outties. No fair blowing up while transforming or combining. ADDED: combining Well, if he's going to give me the bird, I get to throw my little jabs in there too.

I think the GI's would have more fun with a bunch of Xbox's and Halo.

I'd prefer to just blow him up while he transforms.

Now the question is, does any of this really make any difference in space?