Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Seto Kaiba]

58 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

It stops being an "animation error" when it affects the plot, [...]

No, it's an animation error if it's off-model without an in-story or production explanation.  If it's off model and it has an in-story or explicit production explanation, then it's not an animation error.  (For instance, Max's vertical stabilizer missiles in the original series are an attempt to address an animation error after animators noticed mid-production they drew more missiles being fired than the VF-1 actually carried.)

Whether it affects the plot or not is irrelevant.  Mistakes happen.  

 

58 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

[...] and neither Macross 30 nor Macross 7 episode 44 have plots that work if the ships aren't substantially larger than 250 meters. They just aren't capable of being carriers at that size.

My good fellow, there are real world aircraft carriers in service right now that are the same size or smaller than the Northampton-class.

The Northampton-class stealth frigate is 252.5m long according to its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet.

France's Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier, including the French navy flagship Charles de Gaulle, clocks in at just 9 meters longer than the Northampton-class at 261.5m, they're both around 60m across at the maximum cross-section.  The Charles de Gaulle carries 30-40 aircraft on average.  The Italian navy's flagship, the aircraft carrier Cavour, is smaller than a typical Northampton-class at 244m long and 39m wide at maximum cross-section, and still carries 10 F-35B's and 12 helicopters as standard.  Spain's Juan Carlos I-class is 231m long and 32m wide and typically carries about 23 fighter/attack aircraft.  That's not by any means an exhaustive list.

The Northampton-class is plenty big enough to function as a light aircraft carrier at 252.5m long.  Most aircraft carriers are around 250m long.  300m+ is pretty much just a US, China, and Russia thing.  Well, maybe just a US and China thing since Russia's only carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is drydocked and rotting.

Even Circle FANKY, who came up with their own light carrier version of it for their doujinshi, found enough internal space to fit a round dozen or more VF-11s into the Northampton-class's unmodified hull.  Their own fanmade carrier variant, which is the same size as the official version, just slaps a carrier deck on the underside and holds 25.

 

58 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

There are seriously only two solutions: Either the ships aren't 250 meters long, or they're not Northampton-class ships.

Or... and hear me out... you are operating under more than a few misconceptions in a variety of areas.

As we've demonstrated above, key areas of your argument do not stand up to fact-checking.

Edited 8 hours ago by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

No, it's an animation error if it's off-model without an in-story or production explanation.  If it's off model and it has an in-story or explicit production explanation, then it's not an animation error.  (For instance, Max's vertical stabilizer missiles in the original series are an attempt to address an animation error after animators noticed mid-production they drew more missiles being fired than the VF-1 actually carried.)

Whether it affects the plot or not is irrelevant.  Mistakes happen.  

When the mistake has gotten to the point that a whole episode that would not make sense without the mistake has been made around it, it kind of stops being a mistake and has to start being counted as "real" - or a Munchhausen tale, which given the episode's relevance to the whole plot of the show, unravels Macross 7 as a credible source.

 

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

My good fellow, there are real world aircraft carriers in service right now that are the same size or smaller than the Northampton-class.

The Northampton-class stealth frigate is 252.5m long according to its Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet.

France's Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier, including the French navy flagship Charles de Gaulle, clocks in at just 9 meters longer than the Northampton-class at 261.5m, they're both around 60m across at the maximum cross-section.  The Charles de Gaulle carries 30-40 aircraft on average.  The Italian navy's flagship, the aircraft carrier Cavour, is smaller than a typical Northampton-class at 244m long and 39m wide at maximum cross-section, and still carries 10 F-35B's and 12 helicopters as standard.  Spain's Juan Carlos I-class is 231m long and 32m wide and typically carries about 23 fighter/attack aircraft.  That's not by any means an exhaustive list.

The Northampton-class is plenty big enough to function as a light aircraft carrier at 252.5m long.  Most aircraft carriers are around 250m long.  300m+ is pretty much just a US, China, and Russia thing.  Well, maybe just a US and China thing since Russia's only carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is drydocked and rotting.

Even Circle FANKY, who came up with their own light carrier version of it for their doujinshi, found enough internal space to fit a round dozen or more VF-11s into the Northampton-class's unmodified hull.  Their own fanmade carrier variant, which is the same size as the official version, just slaps a carrier deck on the underside and holds 25.

You are looking at the length and widths of ships that are almost perfect boxes (by design, in order to maximize the internal volume usable to store aircraft), to justify that a ship where the usable volume where any hangar would be located, in the front two thirds of the ship, is an almost a perfect rhomboid pyramid with one sixth of the box volume - has enough volume to be a carrier. I *know* carriers. I build models of carriers. 

In the background, the first carrier model I had on hand that is around the right size - a model of the cancelled Soviet carrier Ulyanovsk that I made a couple of months ago. Notice first of all that it is mostly a box, with a pointy front end (below the flight deck). The hangar is about two thirds the length of the ship, stretching *all* the way back to the stern, and up to just in front of where the forward elevator is. It's not the most efficient carrier, it could have had a longer hangar, but Soviets would be Soviets and decided on a huge missile battery instead of more hangar space. Despite being so large and so boxy, the planned hangar capacity was 22 VF-sized fixed wing aircraft and 12 (relatively tiny) helicopters. The rest of the air wing would sit on the deck or be aloft.

Juan Carlos, which I have drawings of, is even more of a box, with even more of its length devoted to a full width hangar. 

By contrast, in the foreground is the game model of the standard Northampton, at the official size of 252.5 meters. Now, there is room for a box capable of containing a handful of aircraft in there. But what is critically missing is any way of getting those aircraft out. The gill intake is not big enough for any VF - maybe an AIF-7S Ghost, but nothing larger, not even a VF-1. You could, possibly, add ARMD-style launch ports - big rectangular ones - but capacity will be very limited by the shape of the hull - it tapers in every direction, quite sharply, and is nowhere near as voluminous, especially for things that would like a flat deck to sit on, as you'd think. Maybe the black voids in the back of the arrowhead shape are holes into a hangar volume. But that's still not going to be a very large volume and not one animation source uses them as such. 

As for the FANKY illustration, I believe you are misremembering it, because I have it in front of me. The top half of the illustration was FANKY's own carrier conversion of the Northampton, where the artist did whatever it took to squeeze in the 37 participants of Operation Stargazer into a 250 meter, roughly Northampton shaped hull. And I say "roughly" because the result was wider in the whole middle section, considerably taller, and used three whole triple-height decks as a hangar, and *still* didn't launch the fighters like the Stargazer. 

And the bottom half of the FANKY drawing in question shows how they estimated thirteen VF-25s in the hangar of the ARMD-L, by assuming the hangar was nearly as wide as the flight deck to a depth of three decks (it's not, the hull narrows much more rapidly below the flight deck than FANKY account for); and puts the "humanoid maintenance hangar" in the back of the ship... where the actual ARMD-L has a huge void because that's where the arm and hand of the Macross Quarter goes. 

I stand by my conclusion:

Either the Chronicle is wrong, and the ships are larger. By the "newest depiction is more accurate" rule, I can go as far as to posit that the Stargazer was *actually* a Gefion-type, that the fighters launched like they do in Macross 30 (because it makes the most sense in hindsight), and that all other depictions are the animation errors because none of those are plot-relevant.

Or the Chronicle is correct on the size, which means that there can't be a carrier version of the Northampton (since neither animated version has enough volume for what we see launch off of them canonically, and we have to write off Macross 7 and Macross 30 as The tales of Baron Munchhausen.

Or, the Chronicle is correct on the size, but neither the Gefion nor the Stargazer were actually Northamptons, but were instead actually Guantamamo-class carriers (which would be more appropriate anyway). 

Edit: I have made some measurements, and come to the conclusion that purely volume-wise, I can fit a hangar sized for about a dozen fighters in the hull of a Northampton 2059, with enough height to lift them out over each other. But the ship would need ARMD-like launch ports in the sides of the hull right around where the "gills" are. This is *not* what we see in Operation Stargazer or in Macross 30, but it's the closest I can get to a 250 meter ship with the Northampton hull profile and a hangar. 

Edited 2 hours ago by SebastianP