Lynx7725

The F-14D otoh was tremendous leap forward in all areas including safety. The reason the pulled the plug is becuase of the Hornet mafia and that *genius* Dick Cheney.

My guess is that the F2 probably suffered the same fate to some extent.

If they are worried of being accused of being militaristic why have all this military hardware in the first place...they are going to be called militaristic anyway buying all fighters, tanks, Aegis cruisers and stuff whether under the reason of self-defence or not.

Because you can't have a country taken seriously without some forms of defense -- a totally pacificistic nation will get quickly swallowed up by its neighbours, if for nothing else than for the land.

The military purchases definitely will generate noise especially from its neighbours, and that's pretty much why the purchases tend to be low key and touted as a defensive nature. People will make noise when you purchase a F2 coastal defense fighter, but it would be a heck of a lot less noise than if you purchase, say, a Bombcat.

If the Japanese were happy with their F-2 why would they pull the plug in the first place ?

That's akin to asking if the Americans were happy with their F-14 why would they pull the plug in the first place....

Many many factors. I didn't know the F2s were air-refuelable? I would guess they would be but have parts missing (to avoid being accused of being militaristic..).

Nothing seriously against the F-35.. Dodo is too harsh a name for that bird, particularly since it hadn't had a chance to show what it can do. I'll reserve Dodo for the A/F-18 Super Bug..

The inability to air-to-air refuel *is* a serious strike against it in terms of range and effectiveness. From what I can gather, they could reach mainland Asia, but they wouldn't get far after that without putting down for more "beverage".

Don't forget as of today, Japan's constitution does not allow the country to engage in offensive operations.

A fighter-bomber with air-to-air refuelling capabilities are by nature offensive in nature.. for defense purposes you don't really need the extended range. It's only when you need to strike some target deep in enemy territory that you may need the air-to-air refuelling.

Yes, political; but you have to understand that Japan is sitting off the shores of two neighbours who have no reason to like Japan very much: China and North Korean. North Korean in particular has a habit of responding to militaristic gestures with similar if not even more militaristic gestures.

Maybe the US pressured the weak japanese goverment to base the design on the F-16 as i recalled they could have made a strecthed Tornado ADV derivative. Politics suck.

Them Japanese should have based their fancy new wings on the F-14...... with 2D thrust vectoring.....operational service about 2009......mmmmmm

Yeah, and then work to reduce the size of their F-14 derivative by about 40 percent, replace the gas-guzzlers with micro-fusion engines, up the weapons load and shift them to wing-mounted hardpoint, strip out the 25mm and replace with a 55mm gunpod, reduce everything so that it can be piloted by one person...

Hmm..

Blatantly stolen from another forum:

What will the F-35's name be? Chicken, Turkey, and other birds too fat to really fly are the most-suggested.

Naval version? F-35 Penguin.

How about F-35 Dodo?

Same here. I think the rear center portion can do with a bit of bulking out, just to raise the vertical cross section there a wee bit. I think the rear end is fine, it's just the front end, well, sticks out.

Don't quite like the spiky bits in from of the ram prow (Daedaleus, definitely), but I can live with it I guess.. I'm not sure of the scale of things, but the fly-through port on the center front looks a bit small to me, and the square shape of the prow looks odd to me too.

But to be honest it's not my design, and it should not be.. I think overall it's more exotic-looking than the plain jane version earlier. You might want to keep the original, but reclass it as something else, like an assault ship or strike craft.

I dunno. Still a bit off. It's perfectly servicable as a capital ship, but still doesn't quite grab me.

Is it an intentional design decision to have the rear end all on the same plane? I can understand this if the ship is designed to be ground-to-orbit capable (ala shuttle launches) but if the ship is supposed to be space-only I think we can afford to have a long(er) tail to break up the outline, aesthetically speaking of course.

I can understand the prime design decision to have fly-through decks will affect engine placement, but I can't quite shake the unease about the moment generated about the vertical from an inevitable loss of power from one engine. Me, I'm happier with a midline engine, but it's easy for a pilot to fly into an exhaust that way.

Overall the design speaks to me more of an assault ship rather than a carrier.

Agent ONE: Your ego is getting into the way of good sense. You might want to work on that a bit.

I dunno. It seems to lack.. something. The vertical seems to be a bit bland.. it's mostly a 2-axis design, seems to be. Opus' suggestion should help, but I think a straight-on/ side-on/ above view would help more.

I think it's functional, but as the centerpiece of your work, it seems to lack a bit of oomph, if you get what I mean.

Hope they fix the problems in the next batch of alphas.  In the meantime I will have to enjoy fixing this one.

See, that 's a positive way to see this. Me too, I think will like fixing and tweaking this thing to death. I actualy like to disassemble and reassemble my toys so I'm not too terrified at the idea of receiving a "mildly" defective Aplha.

You do have to bear in mind the circumstances of some of our members.

When we pay 80 USD.. double that in the local currency, almost... there is an unspoken expectation for the quality/ durability of the toy to be of somewhat reasonable standards -- this is irregardless of who manufactures the toy, okay?

Given the severity of some of the complaints here as well as the number, I have to think of the QC as shoddy. I am not going to pay 80 USD for an Alpha lottery. The odds don't stack right there.

However, if I can get it cheap.. say, 30~40 USD or lower, my expectations will be similarly lower. At that price range, I won't mind hacking into a toy either.

FYI, I do conversion in 28mm scale, and have some modelling experience (but not so much on painting). I hack into stuff on a semi-regular basis, so I roughly know what I'm doing... or can clobber something together when I screw up.

Next... (please excuse the mess of a VF-1A and VE-1 Bastard Child... in the background)

Man, a Gatling from the CG PAS.. I wish I had a 1/48 too, so that I can put the 1/6 MG39 with it.

Come to think of it, WHEN the 1/48 GBP comes out, this PAS gun + the GBP should be quite kick ass.

But DH, why do you even want to LOOK at, much less BUILD Hornets?

EDIT: after reading the review quickly, I came to the conclusion that in about 5 years time, we should be dealing with flyable models at the rate things are going. Imagine doing RL dogfights with RC planes.. not that it's impossible now, just prohibitively expensive.

I'm thinking Cyberformula.

from what I understand alot of parts are glued togeather

After many many years of working with miniatures and models.. that's not likely to be a problem.

A knife, a small hammer, and a quick whack in the right place and most glue will crack.

It actually looks fairly good.. then again, this is SDFCommander, who even made the MPC VF looks good.

Seems like build material and QC issues are the main bugbears of the Alpha. Sort of like Yamato in the early early days. I guess I would have to take apart and rebuild some parts of the Alpha if and when I get one (no big deal, I take apart things on a regular basis anyway..)

The head sculpt for the Blue Alpha looks good. Tempting, really.. but I really only want a good Red Alpha.

Put it this way.. I got enough to go for the Prometheus class, so I upgraded. After the first scrap with a Dominion cap ship, I downgraded to a Steamrunner.

AFAIK, only the Enterprise has the MVAM.. The Prometheus simply didn't have the rate of fire, speed or staying power of any of its predecessor (something like 750 shield with 500 hull? along those areas.)

You get unlimited prestige and an automatic upgrade to a Enterprise once you liberate all the systems, plus you get one system with unlimited enemies to kill.

I think the game has a bug when you stay in any one system for too long; you won't be able to target some enemies once this happens. MVAM seems to trigger this rather frequently.

EDIT: spelling and added bug report.

Well, I managed to liberate all the systems.. got a nice Enterprise and unlimited prestige for it to go kill many many Dominions.

The Steam-whatever is actually pretty good to assault systems with, but the best of the lot (that you are likely to reach) is the Akira class.. good speed, good torp reload time, good shields. Anything above that is fairly pointless.

You might want to tone down on the "well-used" look.. if overdone, it makes the mecha looks like one step from the scrapyard.

A little here and there will do.. your GP01 looks like it was standing in the backwash of a warship.

Your pics look a lot better if I recall correctly..

Well, you can consider either a Zaku or a Zeta I guess, either should look good with your lineup.

Yeah...if anything, the area around the jet should be wet, not where it is. Doesn't quite make sense.

I could just cry.

See explanation by Knight26

Solscud007: well, I just wish it WAS Wonderwoman piloting it in costume!

I've never understood how people could mistaken that as a "shadow". It looks like wet ground almost shaped completely like a fighter. Still a funny pic. Always wondered if the guy in the pic accidently fell over after the shot was taken.

*puzzled*

But it is a "shadow" -- dry ground beneath a fighter parked in a steady drizzle.

A shadow is defined as:

An area that is not or is only partially irradiated or illuminated because of the interception of radiation by an opaque object between the area and the source of radiation.

If you take rain as the source of radiation, it's not too far-fetched to think of that patch of ground as a shadow.

Nah, not likely the pilot fell over.. come to think of it, if it WAS a cloaked fighter, would the pilot be visible? Can you imagine seeing a seated pilot flying through the air?

Hehe. I was taking it as a stab towards vapourware though.

One thing is.. how do the mechanics know where to service? can't see anything worth squat. And what about those red tags that you have to remove during pre-flight? Can you imagine a pic with all those little streamers hanging in mid-air? :)

Can we have a post or site where we can keep track of all the problems raised in the MPC Alpha? Also, the number of satisfied vs. unsatisfied customers.

One problem we'll always have no matter what the topic is the vocal minority problem. Having seen the effects of that in action, I sort of prefer to rely on hard numbers/ facts.

Truth to be told I sort of expect some problems with the first Alpha. I want to get the Red Alpha, but two things are putting me off -- the apparently crappiness and fragilty (exaggerated or otherwise) of the Alpha, and the horrendous looking head sculpt in photos (bearing in mind photos are almost always horrendous looking).

Yes, but Graham gets upset when we do that

he does? why?

You're kidding me, you don't know?

it's quite common that questions are raised in the forums that had answers in the "Other" side of Macrossworld. It makes it feel like the effort to build up the "Other" side is not appreciated.

There are very few 1/100 HG kits -- I can't think of any offhand actually.

The Wing and X 1/100's were explicitly marked as HG's.

The 1/144 Astray looks much better than the 1/100 counterpart. Give me that anyday. Screw non-MG 1/100's.

Hmm, that will explain things. I'm not a big Wing or X fan.

My Astrays are both still in box, so I can't say which looks better.

Nah, just spoiled by the newer 1/100 kits...

Though when I first got it, my 1/144 HG Titans Gundam MkII sure as hell impressed the hell out of me. And I just picked up a 1/144 Calamity which, save for a botched paint job, I'm quite pleased with.

Yeah, those old 1/144 HG are REALLY good. I had a Mk II too, it was really good for its time. So good, I now have a MISB of it still.

Comparatively, I think the new HGUC are not as good, but certainly more affordable and have a greater range.

Gee you guys are hard to please. HG 1/144 as only pretty decent? I take it you guys never worked on the early 80s 1/144 kits? Compared to those, HG kits are excellent in terms of colour, ease of assembly and quality.

Also, in generally, HG kits are only in 1/144. There are very few 1/100 HG kits -- I can't think of any offhand actually.

If you want to sell me yours for $16.99 I'll buy it from you

Graham

D@mn! Beaten to it by the Sithlord himself!