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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Very fair, I was generalizing too broadly. Your last point there is pretty much what I was aiming for.. they don't want to invest enough in making new material. They can come up with kitbashes and derivatives of all of their own stuff until the end of time, but unless they actually pony up the money to draw in some talent with the abilities to do better, that's pretty much all they're going to have. I honestly don't know how they would even begin to recruit new talent at this point.
  2. Chronocidal
    That scene is probably my favorite bit of him in the entirety of Trek. ¡Olé!
  3. Chronocidal
    So, I actually recall some random note on that array, and it being referred to as a greenhouse/arboretum area. I don't know where that was, or whether it was just blowing smoke. I'm not sure if those are supposed to be windows, or an actual glowing sensor/projector of some sort. Given the location, it would make sense for it to be a tractor beam array, since the lower array on the bottom of the ship wouldn't be any good for pulling things into the shuttle bays. Far as the 1/350 Reliant goes, has Polar Lights mentioned a larger scale kit of that ship yet? I have their 1/1000 kits, and they're not bad, but the fit/assembly on the Reliant isn't very good.
  4. Chronocidal
    Sadly, seems they never got around to that particular design. So, I agree it's not easy to design a good transforming fighter, but I don't honestly think the difficulty is what keeps HG from doing so. Lots of folks across the Macross fanbase as a whole (and some on this board over the years) have come up with some pretty good, or at the very least promising, designs of their own over the years. However, as we've seen demonstrated time and time again, HG has no interest in investing in making new material. If you'll forgive a bit of broad generalization, the types of folks who set out to make those sorts of designs, and do it well, tend to fall under both the mechanically and artistically inclined heading. Unless HG goes out recruiting artists out of high school, they're probably the types of folks most likely to wind up with engineering degrees of some sort. Do you really think HG is going to pony up the cash to hire someone working at a professional engineering rate, just to develop transforming airplane designs? And do you honestly think anyone in possession of those types of talents or degrees is going to be running toward HG in the first place, given their track record? I think the only "real" hope HG has is to find a herd of magical unicorn mechanical/aeronautical design graduates who are all independently wealthy, and whose sole goal in life is to revitalize the Robotech franchise. The other slight problem is that, yeah, you can design stuff that looks like Macross material.. but get too close to the source, and you're inviting comparisons that won't be helpful. Designing copycat stuff is easy.. coming up with something in an entirely original aesthetic is getting more difficult all the time. I think it really just boils down to HG not being willing to take the risk to put up the money to develop something of their own. We saw how well the Academy kickstarter went. It's also really hard to develop something new, when the only thing you really have going for you among your own fans is nostalgia for a pile of design work that you don't actually own.
  5. Chronocidal
    That reminds me.. I'm not sure I ever watched 3.1. Time to catch up!
  6. Chronocidal
    I think anything 3D printed would be too thick to fit over the tails and still look good, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. Really, in terms of the VF-11 design, I've wanted to re-design the nose module for some time, and give it something bigger to latch into place with than that tiny tab on the original design. I didn't hear about a lot of people breaking it, but I think there must be some more robust way to keep the nose locked in fighter mode.
  7. Chronocidal

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    Chronocidal replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    Yeah, unfortunately they just made a ton of work for people who don't like the markings. I'm kinda tempted to remove the letters on just the left wing, since they're over black. The whole thing would have been a lot more tolerable if they'd just picked a consistent font, location, and angle for all the markings.. but no.. they had to slap two entirely different sizes of lettering on, and pick entirely different angles for both sets, one of which doesn't even match any existing marking or panel line on the wing.
  8. Chronocidal

    BANDAI DX YF-19!!

    Chronocidal replied to seti88's topic in Toys

    The good part about the YF-21 there is that there shouldn't be any other markings. The only issue with the YF-19 is really that the lettering is over the black wing striping, so you have to repaint the black. The YF-21's should be on plain blue plastic, so you can just scrape the unwanted billboard logos off, without harming the rest of the markings.
  9. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Judging from the box cover, I wonder if it's not even supposed to lock together into a solid disc? I'd have to check the series to see if that's how it always was.
  10. Chronocidal
    This right here is basically pure, 200 proof distilled essence of Robotech. The sad part is, no one is considering it "playing around" by this point. They just outright claim credit for all the things they copy.
  11. Chronocidal
    I don't think the F-14D was produced in any significant amount that would make it much easier to acquire those components, and by that point in the program, I think the plane was close to bankrupting Grumman due to bad contract arrangements and fixed-cost issues. Even if the electronic components were readily available though, the airframe was unique enough, and underwent enough wear and tear, that keeping even a tiny group in flyable condition would require a fair library of replacement mechanical components that were long out of production. As I understand it (and please, anyone with better knowledge correct me here), it's not as though manufacturers keep producing components for a plane after the initial buy. What you get is a full package, which includes a number of full aircraft off the production line, as well as a stock of replacement components intended to keep the planes flying for their service life. After that, the production lines shut down, and reconfigure to make other aircraft, so if you run out of spares faster than anticipated, it's going to be very expensive to bring back up the production line to make more. I would imagine that's why Boeing re-opening the production lines for the Super Hornet is such a relatively big deal. It's not just that the Navy is getting more planes, it's that the production lines are available to restock the supply chain with fresh spares, and depots can stop cannibalizing older airframes to keep newer aircraft flying.
  12. Chronocidal
    For what it's worth, Beyond felt to me about like a middling quality TOS episode. While the plot, writing, villain, etc weren't really very good, the characters themselves sold it pretty well, and were fun to watch, which was basically the only thing the Kelvinverse ever seemed to have going for it. Granted, I think Nemesis is just about one of the lowest points of cinema as a whole, rather than just of Trek, so it's not hard to top it, but I think if Beyond had happened before Into Darkness, it would have done better at the box office.
  13. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    So, I actually went about trying to figure out why the gap behind the cockpit is so prevalent on the 31s. My set has a fairly varying amount of gap there, and it all seems linked to how far the sliding mechanism in the chest collapses. I have one 31A that has a gap that will not close up, because one side of the chest does not slide as well as the other, and it does not collapse as far inward. I suspect there is something within the track of that sliding mechanism that's blocking it from closing up properly. I also noticed that unlatching the crotch plate from the underside of the nose helps relieve the gap somewhat at times. Since that plate locks into the nose and pulls toward the rear on the underside, it tends to bend the nose downward, and worsen those gaps. Sanding off a bit on the back edge of the tabs that lock under the nose might relieve some of that tension, and let the nose rise to close that gap a little, but I have not gone so far as modding those tabs myself.
  14. Chronocidal
    While the F-14 was an insanely maintenance heavy aircraft, the costs of maintenance aren't what keep F-14s out of the hands of civilians, sadly. The government heavily regulates what's left of those aircraft. In fact, I remember reading when it was discovered that people were pilfering components from boneyards, and selling them on ebay (and probably the black market), they ordered any remaining F-14 major components shredded. I don't know how many are left beyond the ones scattered around as gate guardians. The Mustang is a different story entirely, since you can actually buy new ones of those now. I forget who does it, but there is a modern assembly line that produces them for air racing, with all the bells and whistles of a modern aircraft in terms of navigation/communication. There are quite a few jets that can be fairly easily operated by civilians though. Certain Vietnam-era MiGs are popular on airshow circuits, and I've heard that the A-4 Skyhawk is actually gaining a fairly large civilian presence, due to its good handling qualities, and easy maintenance.
  15. Chronocidal
    So, B4 got blown up too? How many spare bodies did Soong make for him anyway?
  16. Chronocidal
    Ok, while that looks like it could be semi-interesting, and better than the section 31 mess that was proposed, I have to view that through a massive filter of "wtf did I just see?" Are they seriously giving us Star Trek: Firefly? I'll probably check it out if it's free, but no way I'm shelling out money to watch whatever further damage they're doing to the existing TV canon. Also there is no way there should be anything left of the original Data, unless he has some magical ability to regenerate at the subatomic level. He fired a phaser point blank into a reactor. Also.. if that's the best they can do with his face, they should have gone pure CGI, because he looks like he needs a good few doses of Benadryl.
  17. Chronocidal
    So, I seriously doubt this'll happen. While they may not let him fly a Hornet, I believe the P-51 you see a clip of in the trailer is his personal aircraft. Whether he flew it in the movie, I don't know, but he was commuting to the filming site in it.
  18. Chronocidal
    Tangentially related note.. I'd been waiting til the ST:VI version of the Diamond Select refit reached a tolerable price point before grabbing one.. not sure I exactly regret buying it, but it's going to need work. Probably a significant amount of repainting and touch-ups. These have only gotten more and more sloppy as time went on, and while I'm glad I got the ones I did, they really just don't have any kind of quality control. At best you're getting a pre-assembled model that will need clean-up and disassembly to fix the mess they make of it. Sadly sounds a lot like the spotty results the Eaglemoss releases have, honestly. Guess that's just the state of the market for Trek merchandise now.
  19. Chronocidal
    Yeah, the old "Model Team" line from back then was like a merging of typical system sets, over Technics-level functionality. They were great sets, and always wish I'd had the money for them at the time.
  20. Chronocidal
    Don't know if I care enough to grab one of these, because it's going to be a heavy mismatch for any of the other non-weathered versions. Honestly wish they'd just issue a normal PF in the right color, instead of a weathered one.
  21. Chronocidal
    I'd be interested to see how those trays fit an HMR valk. And maybe some high-res scans of the boxes for some editing.
  22. Chronocidal
    Make sure to read the whole context and comments attached. The patch changed entirely, and makes sense, if you look at the dates/locations. Like so much of the internet, the original post is un-researched, inaccurate, and incomplete, but completely overwhelms the corrections following it.
  23. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Welp, should have gone with my original hope that it would be available on release. Lesson learned for the future, I guess, but I've long ago lost my reservations about overpaying for peace of mind. Rather disappointing to see HLJ put it back up after cancelling a bunch of pre-orders though. Would have been nice to offer them to those they had to cancel on.
  24. Chronocidal
    Given the horrendous "I'm passing a cluster kidney stone!" facial expressions on most of the characters half the time, I thought they've just been there the whole time. Appropriate really, considering how the entire franchise seems to lodged in some demon's urinary tract.
  25. Chronocidal
    Interesting thing, they actually did have a Blue Angel out here performing some assorted maneuvers and flyovers, as well as some oddball situations with other aircraft that we don't usually see out here. Scuttlebutt was that they were actually using the aircraft as physical footage to overlay CGI on top of, or composite shots of other aircraft over.
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