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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    I kinda realized the beauty of this entire movie as a marketing tool earlier.. because of the way it was made, essentially, all the development work for the merchandise for entire movie was done during production. And for maybe the first time in history, you can actually have a perfect working replica of something you saw in a movie. So, I had a major nostalgia marathon last night, and dug through my entire box of lego instructions... I found catalogs ranging from basically 1987 up til now. Really wish we could have more of those sets re-released, especially some of the really old technics ones. Would really love to see some more of the old Space Police and Ice Planet sets come back, those were fun designs. Also, I went digging through my figures a bit, and found out I've actually got two of the old style space guys, the blue, and a red one. The red one is weird though, and I think he might be cobbled together out of a few figures that I inherited from a relative. The helmet might be from my original airport set, since I think the helicopter pilot had one. The torso has the old logo, but it's printed in all white instead of the normal gold. I had to laugh though.. my "Benny" figure is in far better shape than the movie one. Most of my figures are actually, since I kept them boxed separately from the actual pieces.. somewhere along the line, OCD kicked in and I got a series of little hardware organizers full of drawers, and used them to sort my parts out. Definitely going to be getting a couple of the Benny ships, and replacing all those silly flick-missiles with some good old fashioned hoses and probe guns.
  2. Chronocidal
    I kind of understand not printing huge decals to a point, since it kind of restricts what you can use the part for in the future... given that that canopy is really only useful on spaceships though kinda blows that reasoning away. Honestly though, I hate that canopy. They could have easily made one that was the accurate shape, but they made it completely squared off. Kind of ruins the lines of the ship to me. Really, I've never liked how they keep relying on pivoted bricks to shape the nose on the X-Wing.. it makes sense to a point, but it also screws up the ability to add more layers of detail, and kinda kills the overall shape by making the entire thing a wedge shaped brick, instead of tapering from top to bottom as well as front to back. The one I built years back just used plates stacked sideways to make the nose slope, and I could actually layer them to make the fuselage taper in multiple directions.
  3. Chronocidal
    See.. I have a weird relationship with the UCS ships.. I bought the original X-Wing... and promptly used the parts from it to build a better one. Honestly.. they really failed miserably to get the wings to work on that one. Surprising, because the "correct" wing mechanism (opposite wing pairs rotating on a center axle) is much simpler, and much stronger than the nonsense they tried with all the gears. In any case, I've got a long history with using technics joints to make workable landing gear. At some point, they even included friction based hydraulic ram-looking parts that're only as big as a single axle. They'd be a huge improvement over the collapsing scissor joints I used to use.
  4. Chronocidal
    That's actually pretty fun. Honestly, one of my dream jobs would be to just design sets and things, if only to have access to unlimited bricks. I'm pretty terrible about actually collecting sets though, since I only tend to buy things that either peak my fancy, or provide a huge supply of parts I need. I tend to build a lot of things in white and gray, and I honestly never paid much attention to the colors of things when I was younger, as long as what I built was functional. That's made for a fairly eclectic selection of parts, mostly from assorted space and technics sets.
  5. Chronocidal
    On impulse, I went checking, and lucked out. Lego doesn't sell the fancy B-Wing anymore, but I found one left at an Amazon shop at roughly retail, so it'll be arriving sometime in the near future.
  6. Chronocidal
    Actually, it's pretty easy, I was thinking more this piece: This would actually let you mount the pins on either the wings or the mini-ships, using standard technic connector pins. Might want to add more than one to keep them from rotating, but on the other hand, that would actually let the pods rotate like minature turrets. I don't know how hard these are to find, but I know I have a ton, mostly in black.
  7. Chronocidal
    Not only that, but the incredible precision that lego pieces are made with isn't there, from what I've yet seen. You can get some nice prints, yes.. but the tolerance levels that you have to hit when making something that is made to work with lego bricks would be insane. Not to mention, I can't actually think of any current printing method that would have the same structural integrity as an injection-molded piece. In all likelyhood, you'll wind up with a batch of Mega-bloks. You know, it's funny, I didn't mind the lift-arms being used on the shuttle instead of standard panels, because of how rarely you see good concentrations of those tall slopes they used on the edges. That set is probably going to be massively useful when I eventually get back to re-engineering my old VF-1 design, as well as when I get around to building the VF-19 model I've got going in the computer design software. It's basically a double-sized copy of the Yamato VF-19, mechanisms and all. Aside from that though, I probably should have grabbed that UCS B-Wing long ago.. never got around to it, and I dunno if you can even get it now.
  8. Chronocidal
    Honestly, I don't mind the click hinges so much for some things, but as an attachable/detachable connection? Ugh. They're not meant to be used that way, and all it does is both wear out the parts quicker, and add an unnecessary axis of rotation that will give you one more moving piece to realign when it gets bumped out of place. One of the early space sets I got was also the first one I saw with the technic brick/connector setup, but they didn't use the black technic friction connectors, they used the standard 2x1 propeller shaft type bricks, and a smooth plate to keep them from rotating. The outer piece shown on the tip of the "wing" is what I'd use on Benny's.. 2x2 underside plate with a plug-in connection. The outer portion of this ship on both sides could be detached, and then attached together to form a larger drone/pod type thing. This thing is still one of my favorite early designs.
  9. Chronocidal
    Ugh.. you know, I'm fairly disappointed how the little wing pod ships are attached.. those little click-hinges are really not the type of connection you want to use for something like that. Yeah, this will take some rebuilding, if I wind up building it at all... it's kinda sad, I mostly buy things for the parts now, and may never get around to building the set itself.
  10. Chronocidal
    Was mentioning this in another lego thread, I think, but we seriously need some bigger cylinder parts. The three big engines look like some kind of wheel hub, and those work, but they're always indented in the center to give air cushioning for the tires. I want them to make more of the big wheel hubs used on the original "Auto Chassis" set... they were probably 6 studs in diameter, and completely smooth. Annoys the daylights out of me that they always use 4 stud across parts for the UCS X-Wing sets, and they look far too small. And yeah, I'll gladly grab two, maybe three of these even... I'd almost consider 4, just to get a nice even number of the engine pieces, and all those wonderful blue space logos. I wonder if Benny will come with an accurate (broken) helmet?
  11. Chronocidal
    I actually wound up getting the UCS Lambda Shuttle on sale a while back, mainly for the variety of parts it uses (tons of white thin bricks and some huge gearing mechanisms for supporting the wings), but the nose always looked terrible to me. I know the actual one did taper, but nothing like the way they did it. The windscreen itself is spot on, but everything forward of that should've been made by layered plates instead of the tapered bricks they used. What I REALLY wish they could come out with is UCS-sized X-Wing that didn't looks horribly mis-proportioned because of their dumb refusal to make the engines bigger than 4 studs wide. At that scale they should be somewhere closer to 5 or 6 across at the intakes, and it's like they just dont make any cylinder parts big enough to do that. They used to, back when they made more sizes of wheels for Technics sets (ones with cylinder hubs and solid tires instead of air-cushioned ones that look more like actual hubs), but I don't think there's been anything suitable for making larger cylinders for a long time. Half of my interest in the new SPACESHIP! set is from the big engines on the back. Annnnd.. I just spent an hour running back and forth over peeron.com in the process of writing this.. Seriously.. that place is like a LEGO TV Tropes. But I found them. They NEED to bring back larger cylindrical hubs like this.. http://peeron.com/inv/parts/3739?img=20800 Apparently, they only came in white in one set, the original Technics Auto Chassis set.. the one I fell in love with when I got my first Lego catalog at like age 5.. well.. that, and the old yellow prop-plane set. I sadly never got either.
  12. Chronocidal
    Funny, the Master File one decided to double fold the tails.. I don't imagine the Arcadia one will do that, but I'm curious why they thought it was necessary.
  13. Chronocidal
    I think you can remove it by unscrewing the small piece holding it on, but I'm not sure if you'll permanently damage it to do that. Personally, I'd love to be able to remove the dish support from the plane too, but it's stuck down just a bit too well with glue.
  14. Chronocidal
    I wouldn't worry, battroids work just fine when hunched over a bit. Plus, if you keep the wings spread, you'll be able to keep the missiles mounted.
  15. Chronocidal
    Funny, seeing all the Lego stuf I never was able to get actually makes me feel younger.. parents started getting them for me at age 3, but i was still only able to catch the tail end of the original Space series. First set I got was with a blue "Benny" figure, then that was the last I saw of the visor-less helmets.
  16. Chronocidal
    They... actually displayed it by setting it over the top of two empty two-liter bottles?
  17. Chronocidal
    Nah, go back and build more F-23s.
  18. Chronocidal
    I think they only show two clearly, the wingtip one, and the one the big boxy missile pack is mounted on. But if you look at the underside of the wing closely in that half-battroid pic, it looks like there's a another fixed hardpoint poking out around the edge of the intake strake. Also, going by panel lines in the views showing the top of the wing, it looks like the upper panel on the wing to cover the hardpoints extends inward to about the wingroot. There's plenty of room there for another mount, it just might not work in battroid. Edit: Yep, I dunno if the quote will work properly, but one of Tochiro's close-ups of the VF-0D CAD drawings shows a third hardpoint clearly in blue.
  19. Chronocidal
    Holy cow, the nostalgia... yeah, I remember having dozens of both of those parts.. I also remember never attaching them, and building retractable gear onto all my ships. The others I'm thinking of were the big tail-like supports that they used on the original Futuron Monorail (I think). I've got oodles of blue ones of those for some reason.
  20. Chronocidal
    Holy crap.. I need like.. four of those kits, just so I can get a decent amount f those huge engine parts. And 1980s space logo pieces as far as the eye can see. Also, funny to see them actually finally re-use the purpose-made piece they made for the collectors series X-Wing. I think this might be only the third time it was ever used in a kit.
  21. Chronocidal
    I don't know if there'd be any reason, considering I've never actually used the backpack hooks on the VF-1s to begin with. The double hinge for the VF-0 backpack always worked slightly differently as well, and always held really well. Honestly, if they tighten up the molds, and keep the plastic quality on par with recent Yamato and Arcadia releases, I don't think they'll really need to change much about the original VF-0 design. It worked fine for the most part, and the proportions and shape never seemed to be an issue. If they can improve the molding to current standards, make the feet lock better, and tighten up the chest/nose mechanism, they should be golden. Now, the question I do have though... the old Ghost booster for the VF-0A/S was only really held on by clipping the canards under the upper fairings, and resting around the tails. I don't know if the VF-0D carrying a Ghost is canon (I think you could in Macross 30?), but it'll need something else to hold it on without the tails in the same place, and you'd need a new set of color-matched chest pods as well. I wonder if they'll actually include some kind of clip to hold the existing Ghosts on, or eventually reissue them with a different mount for the VF-0D.
  22. Chronocidal
    The complaint isn't about the CAD drawings, it's about the poster being too blue, as far as I can tell. And actually, I wonder if the color in Macross 30 for the VF-0D was more blue than the series.. I might have to check that later.
  23. Chronocidal
    It's too early to tell anything really, so that might still be the case. The beta just looks like the hangar is integrated between modes, so anything used/earned/bought for multiplayer would also apply to the single player modes. That on it's own though is a whole 'nother can of crap. While I imagine there will probably be a way to unlock everything through single player, it also has the potential to turn the game into an aircraft mmo grindfest, and throw any kind of multiplayer balance out the window once people start to cashwhore their way to winning in online battles.
  24. Chronocidal
    So, Ace Combat: Infinity has a demo/beta up for download on PSN. Looks like about 4-5 missions total, but I only ran the training intro, and the single player campaign intro, which was two fairly short missions. The Good: Old fashioned AC combat is back, more like AC0 than AC6. Still some oil splatter if you fly through an explosion too close, but why would you want to do that? The opening tutorial in an F-4E uses a remixed AC5/AC4 track for the music, gave me goosebumps. The Potentially Bad: Seems they're prepared to fully go down the microtransaction rabbit hole. The development tree looks more like something out of an RPG, (actually sort of similar to Macross 30) with multiple systems and aircraft upgrades that you can upgrade to tune up a lower level aircraft. Also looks like there's plenty of spots to buy little add-ons with cash to do assorted things like add extra missions and paintschemes. All in all, I'm cautiously optimistic. I don't give a crap about the online content, but if I can get a nice single player campaign out of the game with some enjoyable missions, and don't have to actually level grind my planes in online battles to progress, I'll be satisfied. The potential for custom aircraft configurations is nice, and the game world seems like an interesting mashup of Strangereal and real life (the training tutorial is over San Diego, and the first mission is over Tokyo). I'll be interested to see how things pan out with it. I just hope they don't kill the game with microtransactions and DLC.
  25. Chronocidal
    Isamu was a special case, since it was made-to-order websclusive. The others weren't just that in demand to begin with. Really, the demand is being hijacked by the scalper market. Some of them have panned out as not being worth scalping, because the design just didn't have that much demand to begin with (the CF and VF-27 especially). Given this one's Ozma, I don't know how it'll go. His VF-25 was iconic, but the number of people who could recognize his YF-29 is much smaller.
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