Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Master Dex]

Basara is so good that Max even gives him props (not to his face though) but stops short of saying he's better than himself. 

The part that got me was when he flew a VT-1C in Dynamite 7 by nudging the flight stick with his acoustic guitar.... Like it's just that simple!

Edited May 17 by Master Dex

[Areoborg]

On the topic of super prototypes, if the super-prototype has a bad habit of crashing and injuring/killing the test pilot (who are, by their nature, highly skilled pilots in their own right), so it gets nerfed in order to make it, you know, USABLE, is that still considered a Super Prototype, or a flawed prototype that needed to be fixed?  The YF-19 went through four test pilots before they got to Isamu, and both we and him had to wait until OVA 2 because the YF-19 was in the factory being put back together when he arrived to replace what was left of the last test pilot.

[Seto Kaiba]

32 minutes ago, Areoborg said:

On the topic of super prototypes, if the super-prototype has a bad habit of crashing and injuring/killing the test pilot (who are, by their nature, highly skilled pilots in their own right), so it gets nerfed in order to make it, you know, USABLE, is that still considered a Super Prototype, or a flawed prototype that needed to be fixed? 

Hrm... that's a good question.  I'd argue that it's possible for a design to be both as long as it meets the definition of both.

I don't think there's a legitimate example in Macross, but I can think of at least a few from Gundam.

Spoiler

New Mobile Report Gundam Wing's Tallgeese and Wing Gundam Zero are pretty good examples IMO.  The Tallgeese was the prototype for OZ's Leo MS and had significantly higher performance and vastly heavier armament, but its performance was SO high that it tended to maim or kill its test pilots with acceleration g-forces so its performance was dialed way back for production.  The Wing Gundam Zero was the prototype for the five Operation Meteor Gundams and arguably the Epyon too, and it had significantly better performance than any of them, stupidly huge firepower, and its amazing cutting-edge situational awareness technology had every so slight 100% chance to drive you completely stark raving mad... which is a heck of a flaw.  (Never mind that one test pilot who just straight up disappeared with fans joking that the Zero straight-up ate him.)

Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury's Gundams pretty much all qualify.  The Lfrith/Aerial and Calibarn were both Ochs Earth prototypes with incredibly high specs that had the ever so slight drawback of frying your goddamn brain if you used them... a serious flaw the devs were actively working on before the regulators overseeing the industry decided to have them murdered for their science crimes.  The Pharact probably counts too.

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ's titular ZZ Gundam probably counts as well.  It's massively powerful and has weapons that make a capital ship's cannons look like a squeaky fart, but it's so structurally complex that it'll break down if you breathe too heavily near it and its massive cannon drains enough power to basically immobilize it.

 

 

32 minutes ago, Areoborg said:

The YF-19 went through four test pilots before they got to Isamu, and both we and him had to wait until OVA 2 because the YF-19 was in the factory being put back together when he arrived to replace what was left of the last test pilot.

True... the YF-19 was a hot mess.

The four previous test pilots didn't exactly get to resign either... two of Isamu's four predecessors died in test accidents and the other two ended up so badly injured they couldn't continue to serve as test pilots on the project.  Not to mention the No.1 prototype was damaged beyond repair and the No.2 prototype was smashed up badly enough to be sent back to the factory twice.

(And if you take Master File's word for it, it didn't end there either with the No.3 prototype apparently having several loss-of-control related accidents.)

[TG Remix]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

True... the YF-19 was a hot mess.

The four previous test pilots didn't exactly get to resign either... two of Isamu's four predecessors died in test accidents and the other two ended up so badly injured they couldn't continue to serve as test pilots on the project.  Not to mention the No.1 prototype was damaged beyond repair and the No.2 prototype was smashed up badly enough to be sent back to the factory twice.

(And if you take Master File's word for it, it didn't end there either with the No.3 prototype apparently having several loss-of-control related accidents.)

I'm wondering if after all of that they only adopted the VF-19 and tried to make them more pilot-friendly through the VF-19F and S types in a extreme sunk-cost fallacy situation by that point lmao.

[JB0]

14 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

I'm wondering if after all of that they only adopted the VF-19 and tried to make them more pilot-friendly through the VF-19F and S types in a extreme sunk-cost fallacy situation by that point lmao.

I think it was more a case of caught with their pants down. They had WANTED the -19 and -21 to both fail and the Ghost would be the new fighter. But then it got hacked by a vocaloid with a god complex and they decided "you know, maybe we DO want a human in the chain somewhere", and their options were limited to the -19(wildly unstable widowmaker) or the -21(pilot's brain is part of the computer and ho boy are some pilots crazy!)

[Seto Kaiba]

40 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

I'm wondering if after all of that they only adopted the VF-19 and tried to make them more pilot-friendly through the VF-19F and S types in a extreme sunk-cost fallacy situation by that point lmao.

The way it's written up, it does kind of have that vibe... albeit not from the New UN Forces side.

Rather, it's Shinsei Industry who seem to be absolutely dead set on finding some way to make the VF-19 marketable no matter how long it takes.

After the military's plan to transition to the VF-19A went down in flames and procurement switched to Special Forces use only, Shinsei still kept trying to find a way to fix the issues and make the VF-19 a viable 4th Generation main VF.  They radically changed the design starting from the VF-19F, they swapped out basically every part they reasonably could, and while they managed to make it accessible to more pilots it never really reached the level of being a viable main fighter.  Even as late as 2058, fully 17 years after the VF-19 bombed out of the Spacy's service, they were still selling their own management on plans to refine and improve the VF-19 like Isamu's VF-19EF/A.

How much of that was a sincere belief in the design's viability and how much was simply sour grapes over having lost the main fighter contract for the first time in the company's history is unknown.

General Galaxy definitely realized it was a sore spot for them, which led to some unsubtle trolling with the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army building a small number of VF-19C's under license for one of their elite units as a way to show they could build a better VF-19 than Shinsei could.

 

 

22 minutes ago, JB0 said:

I think it was more a case of caught with their pants down. They had WANTED the -19 and -21 to both fail and the Ghost would be the new fighter. But then it got hacked by a vocaloid with a god complex and they decided "you know, maybe we DO want a human in the chain somewhere", and their options were limited to the -19(wildly unstable widowmaker) or the -21(pilot's brain is part of the computer and ho boy are some pilots crazy!)

Not as such.

Project Super Nova wasn't set up to fail from the outset.  The New UN Forces really did want those fighters.  The program's cancellation came when the pro-unmanned fighter faction among the military brass won out and pushed for adoption of the X-9 Ghost instead... only to end up with enough egg on their face to kill an entire Zentradi main fleet through high cholesterol when Sharon Apple hijacked the prototype and went on a rampage through Macross City.

It's almost like Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy were so preoccupied with chasing the highest possible performance to outdo each other that they forgot the aircraft they were developing had to have a pilot.  They achieved stunning performance to impress the military brass and completely blew past the physical endurance limits of the human body.  So once the dust settled on the VF-19's botched phase-in plan, the military threw up their hands and said "OK, maybe we went a bit nuts with the requirements...".

[kajnrig]

You're all wrong. As it turns out:

On 5/12/2024 at 10:59 PM, kajnrig said:

I think it was one or both of you I spoke to a while ago (probably around the time the Hasegawa Armored Battroid was announced) about the anime-style hands and how they bother me, too. I had to come to peace with the laughably and literally sketchy lineart hands by headcanoning that they're "traditionally" mechanical hand skeletons covered in spongy and/or expansive materials that can squeeze into a small form factor for stowage. But just imagine the intricate mechanisms and tolerances you would have to design into that to make sure that they don't reliably catch on anything and tear while going through repeated transformations.

Or maybe they do, and that becomes an infamous design flaw of the VF-1. Mechanics complain en masse about re-stuffing filling and duct-taping holes after nearly every mission, and it becomes standard practice to replace entire manipulators instead. At the height of the problem, otherwise perfectly useful hands are being tossed every two or three sorties. Penny pinchers realize that nearly 15% of the NUNS procurement budget is dedicated to purchasing or refurbishing manipulator units. NUNS and Northrom get into a tizzy over it, it becomes a whole political scandal that sacks a prominent chicken down company and several generals, and all future VF designs are mandated to follow strict manipulator design specs. General Galaxy and the YF-21 lose Project Super Nova because, as one GG engineer puts it, "our wings could look like anything, but the brass could only see balloon hands."

Indeed, the gate of history turns on small hinges.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

You're all wrong. As it turns out:

... and now I'm headed down the VF hand design rabbit hole.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm not sure what I expected, but Master File predictably offered an explanation of the VF-1's Block 1-5 hand design and it's just a rounded metal housing around the same single axis articulations that the square-edged hand has.

[Knight26]

Well, the redesign of the YF/VF-19 and YF-21/VF-22 have real-world examples.  The YF-22, YF-23, X-32, and X-35 were technology demonstrators and were never meant to be representative of the final production aircraft.  The YF-22 is actually a good example since we did lose one during testing due to Pilot Induced Oscillation (PIO), which is a major concern in any fly-by-wire aircraft. I even worked on the Flight Test Program where the goal was to limit PIO as much as possible.  

Now, we do not know why the YF-19 prototypes crashed; it could have been for any number of reasons.  But consider this: the YF-19 had one the most complicated transformations to date at the time (In the real world, yes, the SV-51, VF-9, and other advanced Valkyrie designs had some pretty origami transformations).  So, the crashes could very well have been a result of that locking up or the pilots initiating them at too low an altitude or other PIO-like issues.  The fact two pilots were killed leads me to believe that they were both aboard the first prototype when it was destroyed; perhaps one was acting as the onboard Flight Test Engineer (FTE) in the back seat.  The other two point to an issue with the flight control computer not being properly attuned, which tracks with what we know about the Chief Engineer wanting to do anything and everything to prove his design was the absolute best.

Once selected, the -19 would have undergone an extensive redesign for the production version, eventually leading to the VF-19F/S/P/Kai.  However, like RQ-4A Globalhawk, there was an immediate need for the VF-19A to go into Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) to fill a gap in the UN Spacy Space Forces.  These would likely have been derated in comparison to the YF-19 to make it more manageable for the average pilot, likely by adjusting the engine output, limiters, transformation mechanism, cockpit, and Tactical Operational Profile.  

Maybe the Master File has a better explanation for the redesign and why the YF-19 flight test program faced so many issues, but that has always been how I looked at it.

[Seto Kaiba]

47 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

Now, we do not know why the YF-19 prototypes crashed; it could have been for any number of reasons. 

Macross Chronicle, Great Mechanics, etc. have pointed to two specific design issues that are echoed as root causes of the testing accidents in Variable Fighter Master File.

1. The exceptional maneuverability the YF-19 achieved via its inherently unstable forward swept wing design and its powerful next-gen FF-2200 thermonuclear reaction burst turbine engines was ultimately a double-edged sword.  Its sensitive handling and powerful acceleration combined to make it easy for pilots to unintentionally exceed their physical tolerance for g-forces (esp. lateral g-forces) and lose control of the aircraft.
2. Shinsei Industry built the YF-19 No.1 and No.2 prototypes with the latest previous-gen ANGIRAS-GFW204 airframe control AI.  It's said that this control AI system (which is presented as a high-end VF-11 control AI in Macross R) wasn't able to keep up with the YF-19's higher performance.

 

47 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

The fact two pilots were killed leads me to believe that they were both aboard the first prototype when it was destroyed; perhaps one was acting as the onboard Flight Test Engineer (FTE) in the back seat.  The other two point to an issue with the flight control computer not being properly attuned, which tracks with what we know about the Chief Engineer wanting to do anything and everything to prove his design was the absolute best.

AFAIK, official media gives us no guidance on what the circumstances of the fatal and injurious testing accidents the YF-19 encoutered were.

Master File offers a brief description of the YF-19's first test accident and first testing fatality.  It asserts that YF-19-1 crashed on its second test flight out of Eden's New Edwards Test Flight Center on 30 July 2039, which ultimately cost the life of Cpt. Juuso Grennan.  Cpt. Grennan lost control of the aircraft during a test sequence (impl. due to a control AI issue) and ejected late due to trying to regain control of the aircraft.  He did successfully escape the aircraft, but having ejected low and with the nose pointing down he ended up hitting a slope in a mountainous region on landing and sustained severe injuries that ultimately cost him his life.

 

47 minutes ago, Knight26 said:

Once selected, the -19 would have undergone an extensive redesign for the production version, eventually leading to the VF-19F/S/P/Kai.  However, like RQ-4A Globalhawk, there was an immediate need for the VF-19A to go into Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) to fill a gap in the UN Spacy Space Forces.  These would likely have been derated in comparison to the YF-19 to make it more manageable for the average pilot, likely by adjusting the engine output, limiters, transformation mechanism, cockpit, and Tactical Operational Profile.  

Once selected, there were a number of additional YF-19 prototypes... official sources mention, I believe, a No.3 and No.4 prototype that used the new ARIEL airframe control AI that is production standard for 4th Gen VFs.  Master File mentions prototypes as high as No.8.  

After the final design was OK'd by the military, low rate initial production started on the VF-19A so that the first squadrons from the Earth NUNS could start transitioning to the new model.  The VF-19A had essentially the same specs as the YF-19 final prototype (and not appreciably different from the No.2 and No.3 prototypes), and once it started ending up in the hands of less-veteran pilots the problems started to become apparent.  Multiple loss of control accidents occurred during model conversion training and that combined with a number of other factors like the revised arms export restrictions and the VF-19's extremely high initial and operating costs to see the plans for widespread adoption of the VF-19A cancelled. 

Shinsei Industry tried to further refine the VF-19 to address the issues the military had reported, resulting in the development of the second production type (VF-19F/S type).  Their rival, General Galaxy, understood the assignment slightly differently and went back to the drawing board to prioritize easy handling, cost performance, and operational versatility in their next 4th Gen proposal and based it on the already-proven VF-17D Nightmare.  General Galaxy's proposal ultimately won out, and the VF-171 Nightmare Plus became the new 4th Generation main fighter to replace the failed VF-19A and the VF-19F/S became a Special Forces Valkyrie.

(It's ironic in a way that chronic envelope pushers General Galaxy finally beat Shinsei Industry's more conservative/play-it-safe design team by putting forward a design that was more conservative than Shinsei's.)

[Seto Kaiba]

So, I was poking at a few books here and there, and noticed a detail I'd never really paid any attention to before.

Kazutaka Miyatake's concept and design for the QF-3000E Ghost in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV anime was based on a SF novella series that he wrote while he was in graduate school.  He only ever published two of the planned three volumes in the science fiction fanzine Space Dust in 1978 and 1980, and they featured an unmanned (USAF?) ground attack aircraft.  The first volume, SUPERBIRD, featured a manned but mostly AI-controlled plane while the second, COPPELIA, a truly unmanned attacker that was fully AI-controlled.  The description suggests it was intended to be deployed as a parasite aircraft on a hypersonic missile, and then detach to strafe ground targets.  There's a bit of commentary about how the fully unmanned attacker in COPPELIA was meant to play on the fear of a weapon that blindly follows orders without reason or question.  The designs that were drawn for those novellas became the starting point for the QF-3000E when Kawamori asked Miyatake to design a drone.

(He also suggests Kawamori was unhappy with not being able to use the Ghost very much in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and that that was a factor in the decision to use the unmanned Ghost X-9 as the "villain" in Macross Plus.)

I kinda wanna see if I can track down those issues of Space Dust for those novellas.

IMO it's also rather interesting that the fate of unmanned fighters in Macross ended up mirroring the concerns the unmanned fighter in COPPELIA was meant to invoke.  Sharon Apple's hijacking of the Ghost X-9 left the New UN Forces and New UN Gov't wondering what might happen if a fully-autonomous weapon like the AIF-X-9 Ghost were to take its literal orders to illogical extremes or to start acting under its own (faulty) judgement for some reason.

[Bolt]

23 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So, I was poking at a few books here and there, and noticed a detail I'd never really paid any attention to before.

Kazutaka Miyatake's concept and design for the QF-3000E Ghost in the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV anime was based on a SF novella series that he wrote while he was in graduate school.  He only ever published two of the planned three volumes in the science fiction fanzine Space Dust in 1978 and 1980, and they featured an unmanned (USAF?) ground attack aircraft.  The first volume, SUPERBIRD, featured a manned but mostly AI-controlled plane while the second, COPPELIA, a truly unmanned attacker that was fully AI-controlled.  The description suggests it was intended to be deployed as a parasite aircraft on a hypersonic missile, and then detach to strafe ground targets.  There's a bit of commentary about how the fully unmanned attacker in COPPELIA was meant to play on the fear of a weapon that blindly follows orders without reason or question.  The designs that were drawn for those novellas became the starting point for the QF-3000E when Kawamori asked Miyatake to design a drone.

(He also suggests Kawamori was unhappy with not being able to use the Ghost very much in Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and that that was a factor in the decision to use the unmanned Ghost X-9 as the "villain" in Macross Plus.)

I kinda wanna see if I can track down those issues of Space Dust for those novellas.

IMO it's also rather interesting that the fate of unmanned fighters in Macross ended up mirroring the concerns the unmanned fighter in COPPELIA was meant to invoke.  Sharon Apple's hijacking of the Ghost X-9 left the New UN Forces and New UN Gov't wondering what might happen if a fully-autonomous weapon like the AIF-X-9 Ghost were to take its literal orders to illogical extremes or to start acting under its own (faulty) judgement for some reason.

That's a gem of info you found there amigo!

[Seto Kaiba]

On 5/29/2024 at 6:19 PM, djivaldi7 said:

Interestingly enough, ghosts and squires have become a reality:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ngad-america-s-new-6th-generation-fighter-is-not-what-you-think/ar-BB1mvbz4?ocid=socialshare&pc=DCTS&cvid=b9332dd6741c4656bb124479dd76882e&ei=18

Thank you Macross for showing us the future!

That news is actually about ten years old now.

Next Generation Air Dominance requirements came out in '14, and multiple governments have been publicly working on unmanned "loyal wingman" systems since at least '15.  The US has been flying prototypes since at least March '19 (with the Kratos QX-58 Valkyrie). 

Mind you, the idea of unmanned escorts in fiction is a pretty old one too.  It goes back to at least the 1960s as far as I'm aware... and seems to have been the logical consequence of late 1910s and 1920s advances in remote control of vehicles via radio making their way into the commercial sector in the 1950s and a growing interest in the idea of AI and robotics kindled by 1940s developments in computing and popular fiction from writers like Isaac Asimov.  By the late 1960's and early 1970's the idea had enough traction to get used in Star Trek at least twice, with the most blatant example being Kirk's Enterprise using two unmanned Antares-class "robot ships" as wingmen against the Klingons.

 

That said, Macross didn't actually start doing "loyal wingman" style drones until 2008's Macross Frontier debuted the RVF-171 and RVF-25 acting as motherships for groups of QF-4000 Ghosts.

The Squire used by the VF-2SS Valkyrie II in Macross II: Lovers Again is not a true unmanned fighter like the Ghosts used in other Macross titles.  Rather than being an AI wingman capable of independent operation, Squires are "dumb" drones that are controlled remotely by the onboard computers of the Valkyrie II they're assigned to.  All of the thinking behind their operation is done by the Valkyrie II's computers, the Squire is just a remote weapons terminal.  That's why Macross II's official materials refer to Squire using a borrowed term from Gundam: they're Bits, not Ghosts... just controlled by computer over radio instead of via psychic waves from an ESPer.  The Macross II timeline version of the VF-4 had funnels ala Gundam too, though with the same computer-based control system.  (The distinction between funnels and bits in Macross appears to be exactly the same as in Gundam too.)