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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Actually, the 30th YF-29 seems like it's even worse.. the entire upper half of the nose cone looks like it's white plastic painted black. Either that, or someone got white paint on the edge of mine.
  2. Chronocidal
    Well, on second thought, that would actually be more trouble than I was thinking. I'd need to repaint a lot more of the shoulder, since it's not all black. Aside from that though, a Fire Valk repainted with white stripes would look pretty awesome. I still will probably tweak some photos later though. I'll post them in the 19 thread though, this is getting away from the 17
  3. Chronocidal
    No, there's really no way to avoid it, because they were freaking idiots. Yeah... that should have been a no-brainer.. Pointy piece that sticks into the center of the neck when transforming, and scrapes all over it? Yes, let's mold it in white, then paint it black so people have to touch it up every time they transform it! Brilliant! That's not even a die-cast problem. That's just "we can't find our own behinds with both hands and a pack of bloodhounds" stupid.
  4. Chronocidal
    It is sad, but I think the reason both the 17D and 19F are still higher price is that they just came out so much later, and never got as many production runs. While I like both sets of markings on the 17, I have to admit I do prefer the D over the S, just because I'm not a huge fan of yellow markings. Honestly, I love both the 19S and 19F, but I would have bought more F models if I could have, because I think the white stripes just look beautiful on it. And I'd agree to a point that the 5-laser head just looks a bit too busy. What I really wish I could do now though.. get a couple more of the S, F and Fire Valk, and do some major valk-bashing to come up with M&M VF-19s. Give Max a VF-19F with the S head (the easy one to do), and mashup Millia a Kai with a 19S head, F shoulders, intake covers, and ankles. Crap.. now I really want to photoshop that to see what it would look like. Maybe it'd help make up for not having a Millia VF-17S though.. (and back on topic )
  5. Chronocidal
    Well, ok, true, Kawamori probably had more of a hand in most of those. Still doesn't mean Bandai is blameless though. They keep molding parts completely in the wrong color, then painting the entire part to cover it up. At least they molded Michael's wing gloves in white, but even with the renewals, they keep doing things that make me think they really have no clue what they're doing. I mean.. really.. how hard would it have been to mold the top portion of renewals' noses in color? That part that sticks into the underside of the torso, and loses paint with EVERY transformation? It just feels like an astounding lack of thought went into the molding choices.
  6. Chronocidal
    I have one 19F that I thought was a lemon as well, and just wouldn't fit together right, but it actually came down to a very tiny bit of excess plastic in one of the tab slots that's hidden. Really, that's all it takes, a tiny bit of mold flash. If you can pinpoint the exact point where the transformation gets sloppy, and fix that, the whole thing can come together surprisingly well afterward.
  7. Chronocidal
    Think they've always been that way. The "black" isn't black either, it's more like the color of a rubber tire. I think the color of the engine pods is the same as the plastic they'll be using on the super packs though. All in all, I still think the scheme is bizarre. I broke down and ordered another from NY on sale after I told myself not to, because I want to strip one down to the bare plastic, and see how much of it is actually white underneath. I know the gun turret is actually black plastic with the top painted white, and I think the upper half of the cockpit is actually black, but for some reason, there's a scratch on my upper nosecone which looks like the entire part was molded in white, then painted black, then touched up with white again on the underside of the tip. Honestly.. this is what drove me nuts about all of Bandai's VF designs... Not only did they paint them in ridiculous schemes that no real life aircraft would ever be painted in, but they made more work for themselves by making the things impossible to mold in color.
  8. Chronocidal
    I wonder how hard it would be to make a hybrid shield with a sliding peg... Actually, no.. now that I think about it, the shield is really what holds the arms together in fighter mode. Making the pegs for one arm slide might mean you couldn't have sturdy pegs on the other arm, because they might interfere with the arm. I'd have to think about that for a while. Saying any particular thing Yamato made is the "best" is tricky because they all have their ups and downs. I will say that the engineering in the VF-19s is probably the most impressive of any of their products (borked up ankles not withstanding). I'd put the VF-4 right behind it, only because that valk never was actually animated as transforming, so it never had to contend with matching up to any expectations based on anime magic. Doesn't make the VF-4 any less impressive, but getting the VF-19 to look so accurate in both battroid and fighter modes really is a feat. But meh. It's all about preference, and I love the VF-19s to death. I just hope somewhere down the road Arcadia makes a new YF-19 based on the same engineering. Either way, I might be forced to shapeways the heck out of my old 1/60 YF-19.
  9. Chronocidal
    If it's a red quest, you're probably supposed to go into one of the bases and hunt them down. Make sure to check the quest text against all the ruin/base/cave names on your map, and if any of them match, that's where the targets should be.
  10. Chronocidal
    Actually, no, I had good communication with NY. We talked back and forth about the missing piece, and I was able to look up the kanji for the part name for them to send Bandai. Sent them a picture with the missing piece highlighted too. I think somewhere along the line, Bandai said "Screw you, we don't send out spare parts" and the communication just died. Bottom line, I'm not going to pay enough shipping to buy the item again, just to get the maybe $1 worth of plastic their factory forgot. I'll just buy another one when they reissue it, and hope that one is complete. I can shapeways it if I have to, it's just annoying. Given how many people have had the same happen, I think it's worthwhile.
  11. Chronocidal
    Just a random thought I've had before about things like scanlations. I think I'd be plenty happy with a script to follow along with while reading an original print of MtF. That can get tricky when following text bubbles, but here's my screwy idea. If the real issue is that the original work is being duplicated for the sake of translating it, then remove anything from the original work. What if you did a traditional scanlation, but then blanked out the illustrations? You'd be left with a book full of speech bubbles that someone desperate could probably piece together a story out of, but wouldn't contain any of the original work except the translated text. Probably not something a lot of people would enjoy, but it might encourage people to buy the originals, since you'd need original copies to get the whole story that way. Definitely not convenient either, but you're not really doing anything legally different than asking a Japanese-speaking friend to tell you what each bubble says as you point to it. It's just slightly more intuitive than having a script saying "Upper-right bubble: 'Blah dee blah.' Lower Right Sound Effect: 'WHOOSH!!'" Doing that probably wouldn't stop anyone from taking your words, and sticking them into a full scan of the books, but people will do that either way.
  12. Chronocidal
    Actually, I'm kind of surprised NY seems to hesitant to split orders anymore. I accidentally ordered my VF-171EX and the super packs at the same time, but they were plenty willing to ship them separately. Also, they do still have the super and armor packs in stock it appears, or did last time I looked. They're pretty heavily marked up I think, but they're still there.
  13. Chronocidal
    Didn't get a P, but I picked up a VF-19S from there, and it just arrived in fine shape. You have some kind of issue with it?
  14. Chronocidal
    Pshh.. should be made of cardboard, it'd be more accurate.
  15. Chronocidal
    I'll be buying a set of these once they go live, my old YF-19 has had limp arms since I got it, and the shoulders were both shattered out of the box. I still want to make a new cockpit section and hips that work like the VF-19s as well, but that's a bit larger undertaking.
  16. Chronocidal
    I wouldn't expect these to be the same quality as those, but it would be nice. Mostly, I'd guess the flak is coming from people who normally build aircraft models, and who had bad experiences with the 1/72 VF-25 kits. They weren't terrible, but they have a multitude of stupidly fragile parts, and despite being made to transform, doing so is an exercise in "how many parts will I need to repaint after I'm done?" Bandai's great at making robot kits. Aircraft? Not so much. And even not knowing much about aircraft, they still had absolutely no excuse for how horrible the decals on those kits were.
  17. Chronocidal
    Probably, but I'd happily shell out to NY for that one. It's by far the best scheme I've ever seen on one. I'm definitely painting one of my 1/100 kits that way, and if I ever get a second YF-29, I might even repaint it. Probably not fully, but I'd at least get it white and add the red and black stripes.
  18. Chronocidal
    Easy fix.. just chop that antenna off, remove the normal lasers, and make Isamu's custom version from Macross 30. I want them to actually make that one. He even added a bayonet to the gun.
  19. Chronocidal
    Only real reason I paid any attention to LA was the slim hope that a new X-Wing/Tie Fighter game would ever get made. Maybe now the source code will get leaked, and we can finally tweak all the limitations in Alliance. It's far behind the Freespace 2 engine by this point, but it had one thing I don't think FS2 has ever had: true 3D cockpits.
  20. Chronocidal
    That's like saying shaving with a bowling pin is better than shaving with a bowling ball. Neither tends to work well at all. Personal-experience-wise, I've lost far more paint from their die-cast than anything plastic. Granted, that's partly because all the parts that would have a risk of chipping are made of metal, but that's my problem in the first place. I don't understand the concept that die-cast is better than plastic, or means a higher quality toy. I seriously doubt any piece of the VF-25 renewals needs die-cast. It can't be molded as precicely (or in color), doesn't mesh nicely with plastic parts, and adds a lot of extra weight that honestly isn't helpful when you have joints that tend to turn into limp noodles. People just assume it means something is stronger. But the few severe breaks I've seen on the renewals were all broken die-cast.
  21. Chronocidal
    Yeah... think the first thing I do if I ever get around to making shapeways stuff is actually making replacement parts for all the crap Bandai seems to either break, or completely leave out of it's boxes.
  22. Chronocidal
    Given that leg mechanism, I'd say that's being generous.
  23. Chronocidal
    Yeah, we're pretty much completely on our own with replacement parts, even moreso than with Yamato. Apparently, Bandai's policy with replacing parts is "Send us the whole thing and we'll give you a new one. At your expense." Been over 6 months since I requested a replacement crotch plate for my VF-25G, and still no response. I get the feeling Bandai just told NY to go suck a tailpipe when I requested just the part instead of shipping the whole thing back to Japan.
  24. Chronocidal
    Wish they'd just save everyone a ton of trouble and ditch the die-cast altogether. All it does is wind up causing loose joints, and chipped paint.
  25. Chronocidal
    Yeah, it's just that front panel that you swap out for the new one that comes with the super/armor parts. Was missing from the box in my VF-25G. I've considered just keeping Alto in fighter mode (or armored) forever, and repainting his to use on the G.
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