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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    Fortunately for those not attached to Arad in any way, I'm sure that armor will probably work on any of the 31 releases, except maybe the Kairos because of the small differences around the head. I'll say it definitely looks ridiculously over-powered, like someone ran with a "MOAR DAKKA" meme as far as they could. Do I like it? Not sure yet, but it's definitely going to be a beast on the shelf, and I'll grab a set just for completion's sake.
  2. Chronocidal
    This is the best image I've seen on the internet this week. Bravo! Now to get them mass produced and certified for riding with..
  3. Chronocidal
    I've definitely worried about this myself. It's not that there's any shortage of good ideas for new stories.. it's just that with so many ideas already done, it's difficult to come up with something that looks original now. I should re-read those Han prequel novels at some point. I don't remember them being the best EU books, but they had some great moments. I particularly liked the second book, I think, and I loved that the author actually went into some detail about Sabacc. The scene at the end of the last book could even almost fit right into Rogue One, now that I think about it.
  4. Chronocidal
    That's just it though.. without the cargo port in the front, what does that offset cockpit help with? It doesn't really have any sort of opening cargo bay. Though, if you consider loading cargo through the airlock-looking things on either side of the hull, the cockpit being on the side would at least give a good view of the right-hand docking port. Then.. now I'm just imagining a chain of YT-1300s all linked port to port in a chain. Anyway, when the scale of vehicles in the universe has such a huge range, I always figured the Falcon was something like a souped-up UPS truck, or panel van. Still only holds a relatively small load of cargo, but it's bulky enough contraband that you still need something bigger than a hot rod to carry it around.
  5. Chronocidal
    Ah, good point, that might have been the reverse meaning of what I was thinking. Really though, I don't think that design is bad. Reminds me a bit of the Ghost from Rebels, and still better than a good deal of the newer designs in the recent movies. The "rule of cool" thing is definitely more the case for the Outrider though, since it just uses the offset cockpit, with no real visible reason for it. My comment is more about the practice in general though, changing designs to make them look new, without considering the reason they were originally designed the way they were. Removing the mandibles on the Falcon just leaves a bunch of blank space that looks pointless to the design, and removes the visible reason for the offset cockpit. It just makes the ship look unfinished, as if there should be something more there.
  6. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    After the 30 failure pile-up that resulted from not making the v.1 DX VF-25 compatible with super parts, I would have thought they'd have figured out how to avoid screw-ups like that. Makes me wonder if they hadn't even designed the reaction missile mounts by the time the molds were finalized. Still, it took long enough to release the super parts that they should have had plenty of time to re-engineer the arm shields to mount the missiles naturally, and rotate on their mounts. Eh. Fortunately, the arm shields are also simple enough that it might be pretty easy to mount pylons directly on them, instead of the spinny bracet. Would take manually remounting them, but would look a whole lot better than the chunk of black plastic hanging off the arms.
  7. Chronocidal
    So, all that is? They mashed up the original Falcon concept (which became Leia's ship, the Tantive IV) with the existing Falcon design. I'm going to start referring to things like that as the "rule of stool," because all it looks like is someone taking a well known design, and crapping all over it to make it unique, or different, and make their own mark on the franchise, without actually giving any thought to either the implications of what they're changing, or the reasoning behind the original design. The only reason for the Falcon's unique offset cockpit design is so the front end is open for the mandibles. Without that, the ship looks stupid, and unfinished, as if there should be something in the middle that just isn't there. It's just blank space with no purpose, and you're left thinking whoever designed this is an idiot for sticking the pilot so far off the centerline. Maybe they want to imply the cockpit is a self-contained pod that can detach in an emergency? It's never looked that way before, and there's still no reason it couldn't have been put in the center of the ship like the Otana from X-Wing Alliance. Speaking of Alliance though, I'm pretty sure you actually do use the mandibles to pick up a floating cargo container at some point in the game. Or, if not physically picking it up, I think it might have been a tractor beam location? It's vaguely shown in the opening cinematic, but I think the cargo is just loosely attached to the underside of the front of the ship. Anyhow.. Eh. I've just reached the conclusion that the concept artists for the new movies are hopeless. Disappointing, but I figure in the end it's money saved on loads of merchandise I couldn't care less about.
  8. Chronocidal
    This is part of the weirdness they've introduced by nixing the known EU canon really.. I want to say it's entirely possible, since the ships were supposed to be from a common production line that had a lot of customizable options, and were very popular with light traders and smugglers.. but I have no idea what the history of the design is supposed to be anymore. The part that throws me is that for years, the front mandibles of the ship were always labeled with some cargo loading/unloading/grasping function. Removing those changes the the ship both aesthetically and from a practical perspective.. since.. I mean, if you're not using the centerline for a cargo-related function.. why is the cockpit offset?
  9. Chronocidal
    I do remember those, I guess I didn't catch the context or timeframe of the scene, since I remember thinking it had to be a dream sequence, or some other ship, not the newly-crashed SDF-1. Edit: Images are gone from where they were linked, but I found them again in a review of issue #4. I see what you mean. The bad part is, despite the terrible art, and general disdain for the franchise, I'm actually really curious to see what wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey shenanigans they have in mind for the original storyline. If this is morphing into some sort of alternate continuity like happened with the Star Trek movies, I have to wonder if they might actually try writing an original plot.
  10. Chronocidal
    So, if they actually did do that.. See, I admit that I enjoy temporal shenanigans a bit too much in general, but I'm actually curious if they would use something like that to gradually twist the plot into something completely different over repeated loops. If the SDF-1 jumped directly from the end of the fight with Dolza back to 1999 and crashed, that could short circuit the entire plot when they discover the ship is full of human remains, along with scattered debris from the city on Macross Island... which hadn't been built yet. Or even better, if any of the crew, or even just recorded data from the ship survives, they'd probably be able to entirely prevent the destruction across the planet. On the other hand, not sending the ship back into the ancient past also means the original SDF-1 will still crash in 1999, and now you'll have two SDFs running around. Or maybe that was the goal all along, to explain where the second one came from?
  11. Chronocidal
    Nice to hear about the topcoat, I hadn't read up too much on the premium version when it was announced. I am really glad that I held off on buying the old Yamato releases though. It's never been a design I really needed to have to display, but the option for a premium one actually pushed me over the edge, just to have it as a sort of centerpiece.
  12. Chronocidal
    That's an awesome deal! And glad to see you got the "fixed" version. I actually have two of those, because the first one I bought was a very different paint job, and left out a ton of details, including the entire underside of the ship, a bunch of the escape pods, and the blue panels on the engines weren't even transparent or lit. I still intend to repaint that one actually, because it's still a huge improvement over the old AMT kits. It just needs a lot of love and care.
  13. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    K, thanks, maybe the one I got is a molding flaw. I'm wary about trying to force it down, so I'll just wait for my second one to get here from HLJ and compare. If they both have the same issue, I'll start looking at chopping off that block of plastic keeping it from folding lower.
  14. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    So, this might be a silly question.. but has anyone been able to get their VE-1 into packless fighter mode? Just got mine today in the mail, and I always do regular fighter first to check things out for fit, but I cannot get the tail section to fold down far enough to fit between the lower legs. There's a block of plastic on the underside of the hinge that's clearly stopping it from folding down farther, but either it's in the wrong place, or Bandai assembled the hinge upside down. Or maybe they just never considered that anyone would ever want to display it without the packs, which wouldn't surprise me.
  15. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    What's your source for more copies of the TV arm parts? Are you ordering entire kits for the parts, or have you been working with another source for just the required pieces? I'd been considering working on a Shapeways version.
  16. Chronocidal
    Had a look at the local wally-world, and mine didn't have the Tracker or Arrowhead on sale, but they did have the U-Wing and the TFA Poe X-Wing marked $15 off. I'd been eyeing both of those sets as parts sources for my UCS Shuttle mod (the long white 12x3 angles and black 9x4 wing plates, among others), so that was extremely good timing.
  17. Chronocidal
    See, I can absolutely appreciate the talent and how amazing they look in photos, but I think that paintjob would just drive my eyes nuts in person, and make me question reality a bit too much.
  18. Chronocidal
    Technically you're not wrong. Though, I also plan to mix and match assorted parts across all the variants, in different modes. I've also got enough spare canopies to never use the tinted blue ones that came with the Hikaru 1Js. On the other hand, now I'm realizing I wish I had three each of the M&Ms so I could do plain and fast-packed fighter displays, along with a battroid pose.
  19. Chronocidal
    This is why I bought a three each of Hikaru's 1J, the CF, and a pair of Messers. Between all of them, I've got plenty of spare TV missiles to go around. The boxy missiles just look goofy in fighter mode without super packs.
  20. Chronocidal
    Been putzing around the Eurobricks forums after seeing a few fun MOC images linked elsewhere, and found this by accident. Gave me a great laugh during lunch yesterday. https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/66343-ucs-flick-fire-missile/
  21. Chronocidal
    Did the original HM line come with the TV-style missile clusters, or just the boxes and reaction warheads?
  22. Chronocidal
    Oh, I meant for episode IX actually, since they lost the squared-off dish in TLJ. The new one.. meh. Interesting design lineage, but you could have made it look "new" without rebuilding half of the framework. Supposedly that line of freighters is very modular, so it might make sense, but I'm not holding my breath.
  23. Chronocidal
    So, one thing that does make a little sense to me with the "ugly" suit.. it may have been designed before the artwork used in DYRL. It's just a snippet to go on, but the Flashback 2012 wiki article mentions that it was put together out of scenes from both SDFM and DYRL, along with scenes that had been planned for both the TV series and the movie, but weren't animated. Apparently the Megaroad launch sequence was intended to be part of the TV series finale. No reason they couldn't have used updated designs for Flashback, but I wonder if they already had some of the keyframes for the Megaroad launch completed before the sequence was scrapped. If you ignore DYRL's style, that bulky padded suit from 2012 is easy to see as a natural progression from the bare-bones jumpsuits in SDFM, toward a more recognizably space-worthy style, looking more like actual NASA gear.
  24. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    Not counting Roy's release? Though, that one can mostly be counted in either the TV or DYRL group, as long as you fix the head markings. Looking back, I never intended to grab all of the HMRs, but I've still grabbed multiples of most of the releases. No Hikaru 1S though. At this point I'm mostly just wanting sets of TV fast packs to outfit my CFs.
  25. Chronocidal
    Has anyone started a pool on what new style of sensor dish the Falcon will be sporting in the next movie? Considering all the other changes in everything, I'm expecting to see some sort of goofy enclosure dome, or some kind of MAESA array.
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