ChronoReverse

New engines are both more powerful and more efficient. The VF-1 has enough power to achieve orbit, but it would expend its fuel before reaching that (this is even using jet power for as long as possible). As for the VF-17, it was also an elite unit as well as seen in the beginning of M7. It was later superseded by the VF-19 and VF-22 though.

You don't get it do you? There will be times when someone will get on your tail. A deterrent is nice. No one is saying you get people on your tail to kill things as that would be a ridiculous idea. So don't bring it up when nobody is suggesting it. You're right about concentrating on shooting but that's never happened in the anime and it's always been something to help get someone off your tail.

Well, Macross Plus shows that it only took a small thumb movement to activate the trigger for the rear turret. So that's the way it worked. (As a sidenote, this was easily dodged by Guld but allowed Isamu to shake him thus nicely demonstrating my assertion about the gun). As for IFF, the trigger is still held by the pilot and the targeting is by whatever the pilot focuses on (in the way the zooming worked). By this, even IFF jamming wouldn't matter.

Ever since the wrap-around imaging debut, it immediately implied a sort of high tech head-tracking system one level above the previous eye-tracking system must have been implemented. Otherwise there would be huge parallax issues with the screens. Because of this and also because of the way the zooming and sensors worked in the second episode, I believe that as long as your attention is on the fighter on your tail, the computer will pick up on this and thus target the rear turret for you (the pilot just has to pull the trigger). This neatly explains why the rear turret never hits anyone elite (see Guld and Brera) and also how it aims in one fell swoop. Friendly fire would then be reduced to the same level as usual.

Eh? Alto has used the beams on the head quite a few times Here's the two that stick out in my mind the most Episode 25 @ 5:51 - Alto fires them in battroid (they actually look like lasers) Episode 13 @ 18:55 - Alto fires them in fighter (they look like the pulses that the head laser has been shown to fire in fighter mode) Incidentally, the idea that you don't focus on the fighter behind you is ridiculous. How else would you shake him if you're not focusing on him? Also, you're not trying so much to line up a shot but to spray (hence the pulse mode that's usually used in fighter mode) and throw the other guy off his track and thus help you escape. For that kind of thing, the aiming can easily be done by a computer and it's more a matter of pushing the trigger to do the firing. As for the controls, I'm not going to speculate too much on how it could work except that it would seem that there's almost certainly a great deal of computer assistance. This is probably why the YF-19 prototypes were so difficult to fly; because the dynamics of the fighter weren't understood well enough yet (especially considering the really advanced inherently unstable designs one would presume these futuristic fighters would have), the computer probably over- or under-compensated in various situations. It would take a tremendous pilot to be able to stop short of or to recover from such situations.

Good grief. Line breaks are your friends. Press Enter more often.

The shield is made of (probably really expensive and heavier than usual) a special material that's even harder than ECA. Despite ECA, gunpod bullets usually rip right through. Same as what happens with the warhog (A-10), you fly slower and use more thrust. Plus you can just jettison the thing. Valkyries have far more thrust than required to simply fly, so there's no problem as long as the engines still work. Just don't dogfight.

Just keep in mind that a hallmark of one sort of good writing is that people will "discover" references to their contemporary events. There are many things that are timeless such as a war over resources and most of the time, if you see something in a work, it's really just you fitting it in.

Haha, I have the same problem with the X-36. The side view in fighter-mode doesn't _look_ very impressive unfortunately. The design theory makes sense though and I've been turning it over in my head all afternoon now. Hmm, LERXes or canards? Fluidic TVC or mechanical TVC? It's completely distracting me but quite fun. That's an idea. I've been replacing the single TVC engine with the traditional double-leg twin engine design, but a YF-21 style design could mitigate the need for that. The cockpit would have to rotate though to keep the intake attached to the fuselage which could fold 90 degrees to form the shoulders and back. This would allow the wings to remain attached to the fuselage and even be deployable in battroid. The canards, if kept, would then be on the torso. What I'm trying to do though is to put the laser turret head at the very rear of the fighter like with the SV-51, but have it more useful there and able to cover a larger arc. Again complementing the rear-fire capable micro-missile pack idea. This would require a more traditional transformation system with the two engines in order to put the turret in between.

Hmm, I didn't think about the comparison to the X-9 Ghost (although I honestly don't feel it's in the same vein), but that does give me some ideas. The design of the X-36 allows greater maneuverability, greater speed and lower mass because there's no need for a tail or even vertical stabilizers. This alone would make it a lighter-weight design suitable for front-line usage and mass production. But let's have a modified version that's larger (at least VF-17 in length but not bulk). The extra space could be used to pack in the micro-missile bay from the X-9 giving this fighter a practical method to deal with enemies on its six! Or maybe make it an attachment of some sort that it can transform with (like the VF-25). Thinking about valkyrie designs really makes me appreciate the YF-19 and VF-25 all the more though. Those are really beautiful designs.

In that line, a transforming fighter based on the X-36 would be interesting and potentially pretty cool. It doesn't have to look like it too much but a valkyrie without any tail would be neat especially if combined with the deformable wings from the YF-21. In-universe it would make sense too; a tail is dead weight in space after all. If you can design a valkyrie that didn't need a tail AND had better maneuverability (as represented by the X-36), that would be a design win.

Ah I see. Well, even for the Folding Fuselage, Cockpit Forward designs there's a great deal of variation up to the point where it starts to resemble the SV-51 design. For instance, the VF-17 also places a section of the fuselage on top remarkably similar to the SV-51 except that the head is where the fuselage bends instead of the back. We still have the cockpit tucked under all that (but the nose doesn't fold). The VF-5000 uses a similar trick. Honestly, all the transformations beyond the VF-1 "clones" are quite different. Even the VF-11 has an interesting tidbit where the fuselage folds and splits in half. But I think I get what you mean now.

So is all you're saying they have a different transformation from the VF-1? O_o Is the SV-51 transformation really that radical? Sure it has the crazy jointed wings but the torso transformation isn't that crazy. We still have the same fuselage folding in half thing (more like bending a bit) just with the new fuselage separating from the cockpit thing. The arrangement is different for sure but it's not like there are parts that have to rotate (vertically) like crazy to make it work. In any case, I see it like this: VF-1, VF-11: Fuselage folds, cockpit rotates forward VF-19, VF-25: Fuselage flips on top, cockpit rotates backwards SV-51: Fuselage flips on top, cockpit rotates slightly forward Interestingly enough, the VF-22 and VF-17 are closer to the VF-1 in that they also rotate the cockpit forward and fold the fuselage onto the back.

Looking at the SV-51 transformation closely for myself, I have to agree. The SV-51 on first glance in Zero had lots of parts going all over but it really is just a rotation and then fold overall whereas the YF-19 has this funky split then rejoin thing going on. The 19 and 25 both have the cockpits rotating backwards after the split while the SV-51 remains pretty much the same orientation coming out of gerwalk.

Hmm, yeah, they're definitely removed in the legless configuration diagrams and the head laser is said to point rear in fighter and gerwalk. That legless configuration is pretty useless then, you don't even have a useful weapon in that mode outside of missiles. And one would probably try to expend the missiles before resorting to that mode.

It still has the laser guns doesn't it? In the movie version Guld was blasting away with the lasers at the X-9

Completely out of context reply to the point of absurdity. The information is in the threads. Just because SOMEBODY (including me) doesn't have the information has no bearing as to whether the information is there or not. Laugh as you like. You're the joker who brought it up out of nowhere and then tore it down and then acted all smug about it Tell me then where it shows that the engines are the heaviest. The legs in general hold the engines yet we see valkyries swing their legs down without using thrusters to counter the rotation that would occur if the legs were massive. Now, there's a some reason to think the engines would be a massive component, but not absolutely so nor is there proof that they're the majority of the weight. Even if the engines are the most massive component, it's still tucked closer to the legs than the front (torque). Furthermore, the "chicken walker" style legs in gerwalk is that it allows the center of gravity to be shifted from where the attach points are. Taking the thus modified fulcrum, we see that about a third of the engines are actually forward of that point. Add the front sections extending further than the rear engines do and it's not really any stretch. Here's a picture I found with Google of the Yamato 1/60 model http://www.flickr.com/photos/gogdog/255266...57605442676161/ That's fine. I don't like the thin legs and bulky battroid that much myself. As a sidenote, while I was examining the diagrams of the various valkyries to determine whether what you said had merit, I've noticed that my favorite valkyrie, the YF-19, has a truly unbalanced gerwalk mode. It's most evident with the figures where the nose has to be pointed quite low down to get it to balance. I believe this is can be an advantage however for the YF-19. Although a more balanced gerwalk would allow better agility, the forward heavy design of the YF-19 would allow for quicker dashes when on the ground only. The YF-21 would need to use its engines to simulate such an effect.

Macross 7 FotSW also shows you can just carry it to use (Basara doing a short ranged jump in battroid mode carry a fold booster under one arm).

I was saying that IF it could attach, THEN the thrust available from even such an old booster would propel the VF-25 up to VF-27 territory. It also turns out that the mass of the booster is low enough that the combined masses is still in the ballpark of the VF-27. My implied conclusion from that is that the VF-25 with modern FAST packs should easily keep pace with the VF-27 if not exceed it.

Any reason why a ghost can't just piggyback a drop-booster like a valkyrie?

Was it conclusively proven that it has an internal fold engine? The time it folded away from the SMS it was actually inside the fold bubble of a capital ship.

Hey, read that quote again! I said the VF-25 with the VF-1's FAST packs! Although you're right about it being heavier... But the FAST pack isn't _that_ heavy. The VF-27 itself is quite a bit heavier than the VF-25. Yup, that's why I clearly noted the extremely limited conditions my assertions were for as well as the assumptions that limit the accuracy =)

Eh? But it doesn't. Not only does the Super exert less force, it's also over three times as massive. Since the startup time for the engines to full boost is negligible, there's not much left to guesswork. Indeed the only thing we actually can calculate and say for certain is a straight line drag race =/

Haha, the heavy engines part was directed at me. While the engines are the heaviest in a modern fighter, we only know that they're relatively smaller in a valkyrie (compare the VF-0 to the VF-1).

You assertions don't really apply. In space there's no frame of reference so the ONLY thing that matters at non-relativistic velocities is the impulse. Therefore, you can have a more massive propellant at lower velocity which would be the equivalent of a high velocity but lower mass propellant. But that's beside the point For the VF-1S "Super", the only thing that matters is that it can sustain a force of 2842kN for 150s. This is a given fact so we have to take it face value. The exhaust velocity does not play a part in this. Neither does the mass. This is because we already know the sustained force and how long it can be exerted. Using the inaccurate (but on the low side) assumption the mass of the valkyrie is not changing, the calculation is elementary since we're talking about space.