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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I don't expect Starscream to ever happen, at least not in a recognizable form. I'm kind of tempted to make one of my own though. I would have loved to have seen the Osprey, and see them fix it up, since it wouldn't even have been the first time LEGO released a set that was a dead-on look-alike for it. I think the gear breakage was a combination of design and user-error though. It had something to do with over-torqueing the system by engaging certain gear mechanisms while the motor was running too fast. Might have been pretty avoidable if you knew what you were doing, but also probably more than they wanted to have to explain in the instructions.
  2. Chronocidal
    Man I wish this was playing at a local theater, I would love to see this on a screen that size. I'm one of those weirdos who loves this movie just for the pure Trek-ness of it. I know it's not a big action blockbuster, but this is one of those stories that goes right along with what I think was always one of the most important themes of the franchise, something Q summarized absolutely succinctly at the end of TNG.
  3. Chronocidal
    I believe the A and J can swap, but the S's neck is a different shape that isn't compatible.
  4. Chronocidal
    While it is being consistent with the original, one thing that's always been completely inaccurate about Top Gun is how stylish the callsigns are. The only pilots I've ever known with callsigns that weren't some form of in-joke or veiled reference to previous dumbassery on the part of the pilot were from the Air Force. Navy callsigns are earned, not picked. Every once in a while you get oddball ones that sound very cool, like "DASH," but then you learn the history, and discover it's a reference to when the guy's utility knife came loose in the cockpit during carrier ops, and literally stands for "Dumb Ass Stabbed Himself." I've managed to get to know a fair number of flight crew over the years, and some of the ones that stick out are "ERAL" (literally a guy named Earl who the maintainers misprinted his name on his plane, and the name stuck when he complained), "Dingle" (a guy whose last name is "Berry"), and "Gnome" (someone with the literal face of a lawn gnome). "BOB" is probably the most realistic one of them, since there are a lot of things that could stand for. Maybe Rooster, since that's a rather well-known euphemism.
  5. Chronocidal
    True, Arcadia's are still a step above Bandai, but even they went the screw cover/glue route with the VF-19 series, and it's made modifying or maintaining them really difficult. I had the misfortune of getting a pretty borked shoulder in my Arcadia Ivanov, and that was just impossible to fix. Spring-pins, screw covers, and glue all the way. I think VF-1-derived designs are more friendly in general though, since I remember seeing disassembled Bandai ones as well. Maybe it's just something about the nature of their design that makes them depend more on reasonably accessible screws.
  6. Chronocidal
    Also a thought on the gear, if you aren't attached to the F-18 style. With a thick-enough wing root, you could probably pull off something roughly similar to the YF-21's gear, pulling back and slightly outboard of the engines at a slight angle, something like a more-vertical F-16 main gear. A bent F-18 style strut might work, but I think it would need to rotate in the opposite direction to get out of the way of the underside thrust vents, extending back along the sides. Obviously you don't have to make it actually retract, but designing a bay to match that sort of strut sounds like a mess.
  7. Chronocidal
    You know what I miss the most from the old Yamato valks? Being able to even do that. It's been years since we got anything from either Bandai or Arcadia that you can disassemble that completely without utterly destroying it.
  8. Chronocidal
    I believe you mean "Kyun-kyun!"
  9. Chronocidal
    Careful about using rubber gloves rather than cloth, since I've had those actually stick to things and strip paint before, depending on the type of rubber.
  10. Chronocidal
    I don't think anyone would balk at the idea of just using something like standard F-18 pylons under the wings, since those are designed specifically to avoid interference with the control surfaces. I am curious what's going on with the spine between the engines on the underside, since it seems to dip lower at the back end. Otherwise, I'd vote for making the profile as curvy as possible/practical, since the forward fuselage seems to have a very VF-4-ish curvature to it.
  11. Chronocidal
    Will look forward to building and messing with that one, definitely have been waiting for actual transforming sets for a long time. I went back to the drawing board a few dozen times on that XL-15 model, and while I want to figure out some rear landing gear, I think I like where the design went. So.. so many angled plates. That non-existent slope I mocked up would have been really handy in a few places here. Also, no clue whether this would actually work in real life, since the studio collision detection is sketchy as all get out.
  12. Chronocidal
    So I've been holding any enthusiasm for this, just out of general management of expectations... But this might be one of the best endorsements you could ever ask for. He does go into details that would count as spoilers for the overall plot, so you've been warned. Some specifics are kept vague, but it's a fairly complete plot summary. I got to see a few bits of the hubbub surrounding the filming, because a fairly large chunk was done on base at China Lake, and I hope we wind up with some sort of public viewing in town here. I fully expect that his opinion is heavily colored by nostalgia glasses, but at the same time, I feel like this isn't the type of movie to go into looking for oscar-worthy writing and performances anyhow. If it lives up to the original, that's good enough for me, which mostly means I'm in the seat to get my hair blown back by jet noise in surround sound.
  13. Chronocidal
    I saw that, and was wondering if it's different from one of the previous Harrier 3rd party transformers. I don't usually follow Superion-related stuff because I feel like no one has pulled off a Silverbolt that didn't fall on its face. I do like that they managed to get the hand self-contained though. If they can pull off the other limbs, I might jump on this one, but Silverbolt aside, these Superion sets always seem to wind up with F-15s that aren't as good as Starscream, and F-16s that wind up as blocky messes. Edit: Yeah, looked up the preview of the entire set, and the other jets aren't terrible, despite the F-16 looking like an SD-style caracature. But everyone NEEDS to ditch the Concorde as an option forever. It does not work. Give up, and use a plane with potential to not look like a robot hangliding under an aircraft. People keep suggesting the XB-70, and I cannot help but agree, because even if the underside boxy section had to be bulked up, it's still the only reasonably similar design that even has anything like a giant boxy underbelly.
  14. Chronocidal
    Basically, just pinch with finger and thumb around the tip of the spine. It's tapered, so you'll just squeeze the pod off of the mount. If they permanently mounted it on Mirage's, I'm actually going to be pissed, because it looks so much better with the original pod.
  15. Chronocidal
    Interesting faceplate piece, but I think I'm actually interested in how it looks like a natural progression of this style of piece into the 33 degree slope category. Might be a little more curved on the edge though. One thing I've been lamenting recently is that this particular piece is in an entirely isolated category of sloped elements. We have lots of elements that taper in two directions at once, but the tapers are always in the same direction in the vertical axis, missing a fundamental possibility. We have all of these.. When are we getting slopes that do this? Something that gets smaller in one axis top-to-bottom, but wider in the other? I'm not sure if anything like this is possible currently. I've tried orienting slopes in all manner of directions with convoluted SNOT assemblies, and can't really come up with anything that works for this particular combination of angles without resorting to hinged plate assemblies, jamming wedge tiles together at odd angles to build the right shape. Edit: To make it a bit more clear what I'm thinking of, you could stack these to make this sort of shape. Tried making these in the part designer, but not sure how to get the boolean operations working right to make this complete shape, since it keeps leaving odd fragments of parts.
  16. Chronocidal
    I think the original VF-31 line was about as good as you can get on quality control from Bandai, minus a few fit issues around the spine from that ever-present gap behind the cockpit. They did have the VF-31 dialed in... they just managed to blast it all into oblivion by somehow screwing up a bunch of things they had already solved, and making the new variants worse in a fair number of ways (adding in more over-complicated mechanisms, and somehow just flat out forgetting to check part tolerances). I'm fairly sure we'll never know how they managed to pull that off, but it seems pretty likely they had to contract work out to cheaper factories to get these production runs completed in the middle of all the supply chain issues. They haven't even tried to get a new VF-1 release out in months, and it looks like they're struggling to even get the few new Delta releases manufactured on time.
  17. Chronocidal
    OK WHAT? That's actually kind of amazing. I need one.
  18. Chronocidal
    Think there haven't been enough reports on Mirage to make any kind of call on that yet. We know Hayate's had a load of issues, but it'll be a bit before we can make a good comparison.
  19. Chronocidal
    Sneaky how they make it so you need multiples to make a complete pyramid.
  20. Chronocidal
    Yeah, they did the old JJ-style bloat to it again, though apparently not quite as severe this time. The "1/1000" Polar Lights kit is the same size as the ancient AMT 1/650 kit. This one is at least close enough to the original that the saucer windows aren't thirty feet high, but the bridge design still makes no freaking sense, and I still think even the stated numbers are completely made up entirely independently of anything integral to the design. Apparently they did this because they made the ships in Discovery so stupid huge and wanted it to blend in, but there's just no fixing the problems they've caused at this point.
  21. Chronocidal
    Have to hand it to this newer builder program, the rendering comes out pretty darn nice. Main body outline is pretty well done, though it's a bit chunkier than the original. It should taper more just ahead of the wings, so I might try and squeeze things down to a narrower width, but I think I'll have to move to hinged panels to get the taper any tighter Otherwise, now it's just the canopy, gear, and some minor details. I might try a canopy frame, and then attach larger clear elements to it to fill out the shape. Funny thing... I think this is still going to be roughly minifig scale. Same thoughts about the gear, but if I'm reading the details of the DX release right, Bandai couldn't get the mains to retract either, since they're listed as separate parts. I'm guessing they plug in after opening the doors. I can't really blame them, those gear are pretty chunky. Edit: Just kind of realized.. building this in gray and blue really brings out the classic space theme vibes on this one.
  22. Chronocidal
    I honestly have no idea how I'm making the canopy at this point, LEGO doesn't make a single piece that will cover this much space, and keep as low a profile as what I'm hoping to achieve. I might build it out of plates and ignore the interior. I do want to get retractable gear on it, though they might be exposed due to how they need to fit in around the wings. The only bad part of the angle they used for the wings in the official set is that it drops the wings a little lower than they should be. They compensated by having the wings shorter, but being the full length means the gear are going to have to be long to not let the tips drag. Experimenting with geometry for solid connections is something I do love, but it really needs to be done with real parts, because the software just isn't up to the task of aligning things properly. It will often deny connections I know work, while also visibly clipping other parts through each other. I think the Discovery set is probably one of the best uses I'd seen of those tolerances yet, with all of the methods used to snap on the leading edge of the wing. I might need to do something similar for the fuselage in this case.
  23. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I really like the XL-01 design seen in the early trailers, and hope we get a DK of that one eventually. As for the XL-15.. I don't know if all of these parts exist in the proper colors (particularly the engines, because they would need gray copies of the brand new booster cones), but the base design used for the wings and intake walls works pretty. The intake interior is all kinds of messy, so I hope I find something less chunky looking. Very rough setup for some of the details like the wingtips, but I like the overall layout, and I think the angled panels make a better fuselage than the tiered slopes the set uses. Edit: Tweaked the layering a little, and there's actually room for a full 6-stud diameter engine.
  24. Chronocidal
    I grabbed a pair of the XL-15 sets as well, and built one.. it's a nice set, just different enough that I'd probably call it something else. The construction of the engine banks and wings is really solid though, and I'll probably use the same base method for an upscaled version. The engine nacelles just need to be built out of sloped elements, and about twice as long to give the ship a better shape. Might have to get creative with angled plates to get the wing sweep closer though. Looking at the little XL-15 toy, the trailing edge of the wing looks dead on a 3-4-5 right triangle, which LEGO just doesn't make. I will say I'm both fascinated and confused by the parts they chose for the engines though. Confused because there are numerous more sturdy options that would also be more accurate, but fascinated because I've never seen the piece they used for the nozzle before, and it makes for a great thrust-vectoring exhaust. It looks like something designed to be a 3-way differential gearbox, maybe for a helicopter rotor? The unfortunate side effect is that without some really careful pressure on the gears holding them on, they spin completely freely.. but I have to wonder if maybe that was on purpose to replicate something seen in the film.
  25. Chronocidal
    Those are... yeah, kinda bizarre. Probably not something I'll make any effort to get. The mechs though, I'll be all over. I actually just found the Ninjago combiner mech today while picking up groceries, and couldn't resist grabbing it to experiment with the new joints.
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