Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 04:37 AM Posted Monday at 04:37 AM (edited) 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 Monday at 04:59 AM by Seto Kaiba Quote
SebastianP Posted Monday at 10:18 AM Posted Monday at 10:18 AM (edited) 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 Monday at 11:15 AM by SebastianP Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 03:13 PM Posted Monday at 03:13 PM 4 hours ago, SebastianP said: 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. Nobody else seems to struggle with the premise that the two or three scenes in that episode that depict the Northampton-class as unusually roomy or launching fighters from ports that shouldn't be able to fit them are anything but animation errors. The creators of Macross 7 have had 30 years to correct the size of the Northampton-class based on that scene if it really is not an animation error. They haven't changed its size. 4 hours ago, SebastianP said: You are looking at the length and widths of ships [...] Cutting straight to the point, you asserted that the Northampton-class was not big enough to be an aircraft carrier and I pointed out that it's actually about the same size as many modern aircraft carriers. You yourself then provided a visual aid that shows that, yes, the Northampton-class (Frontier version) is comparable in size to an aircraft carrier. We both agree that it's absolutely not set up to BE one, but that's beside that particular point. It's still large enough to hold a nontrivial number of Valkyries internally, as you agree later on. That's why Macross 30 introduced a carrier conversion of one in the form of the Gefion... to specifically address the point of egress. It's a model from a video game so it's not in perfect scale in-game, but it suffices. 4 hours ago, SebastianP said: 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. I was looking at it when I wrote my post, and I'm looking at it again now... it is the same size as the stock Northampton-class in terms of length and width of the hull. It's very very slightly taller, but all they really did was slap a carrier deck on the bottom of the ship and call it a day. That deck only protrudes slightly from the ship's diamond profile. Yes, they use most of the ship's interior as hangar space, but that was already true for the Gefion as well (at least in the novel). They actually only use two decks as hangar space, the third (uppermost) is equipment storage according to their diagram. Even if you omit the largest and lowermost deck, the only one that changed the Northampton's profile, they still show you can theoretically fit a dozen or so VF-11s into a single Northampton-class in a plausible manner. 4 hours ago, SebastianP said: I stand by my conclusion: Standing by a conclusion that doesn't tally with the facts isn't a particularly useful stance to take. Anyway, the official size of the Northampton-class is 252.5 meters long. We know the episode of Macross 7 contains animation errors that mistakenly represent the Stargazer as larger than it actually is. We accept that these are errors and move on with life. Pobody's nerfect. By your own admission, the Northampton-class is actually big enough to hold a dozen or so Valkyries. The Gefion-type solves the problem of "how do they get out" with the two modest gates and hangar decks added to the sides of the design. Yeah, the game model doesn't make the gates quite big enough to allow the very largest craft available in the game to work that way, but it's a game and that's just acceptable breaks with reality in action the same as the ship's hammerspace arsenal of every VF you unlock in-game. For rational purposes, we can assume they're not actually present or not actually canonically used. Ukyo Kodachi's novelization of Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy does confirm the Gefion is a modified Northampton-class stealth frigate, so we can safely assume that she really is 252.5 meters in length. Quote
SebastianP Posted Monday at 03:54 PM Posted Monday at 03:54 PM (edited) 45 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: Nobody else seems to struggle with the premise that the two or three scenes in that episode that depict the Northampton-class as unusually roomy or launching fighters from ports that shouldn't be able to fit them are anything but animation errors. The creators of Macross 7 have had 30 years to correct the size of the Northampton-class based on that scene if it really is not an animation error. They haven't changed its size. You mean, no one else who frequents this site has the energy to argue with someone who refuses to budge on "the books are always right". 45 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: Cutting straight to the point, you asserted that the Northampton-class was not big enough to be an aircraft carrier and I pointed out that it's actually about the same size as many modern aircraft carriers. You yourself then provided a visual aid that shows that, yes, the Northampton-class (Frontier version) is comparable in size to an aircraft carrier. We both agree that it's absolutely not set up to BE one, but that's beside that particular point. It's still large enough to hold a nontrivial number of Valkyries internally, as you agree later on. That's why Macross 30 introduced a carrier conversion of one in the form of the Gefion... to specifically address the point of egress. It's a model from a video game so it's not in perfect scale in-game, but it suffices. It's not the length, it's the shape. An aircraft carrier is has an optimized shape for volume, and basically every carrier has a rectangular hangar that goes from the stern of the ship up to two third to three quarters if its full length, and the full width of the ship. The Northampton class can *at most* use *one* third of its length as a hangar, and the bit it can use is only marginally wider than normal carrier. The volume usable for a hangar is only big enough for about a dozen fighters, packed like sardines (i.e. not with the kind of walkaround space that you'd want on a real carrier). And no version of the ship has the kind of hangar access port which would be required in order to *use* this space - you'd need Star Wars Style side mounted hangar doors on both sides to turn this into anything close to an acceptable "baby carrier", and that's not what's been done for *any* of the three attempts at it. 45 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: I was looking at it when I wrote my post, and I'm looking at it again now... it is the same size as the stock Northampton-class in terms of length and width of the hull. It's very very slightly taller, but all they really did was slap a carrier deck on the bottom of the ship and call it a day. That deck only protrudes slightly from the ship's diamond profile. Yes, they use most of the ship's interior as hangar space, but that was already true for the Gefion as well (at least in the novel). They actually only use two decks as hangar space, the third (uppermost) is equipment storage according to their diagram. If the upper deck is just storage, the the capacity is just 29 fighters. But okay. The whole reason why I am even arguing this is because, if I want to use the Gefion design in a 3D scene, doing its thing, I need to make it 1000 meters long, to be visually consistent with what we see in the game (i.e. being able to walk a battroid in there.) My brain does not allow me to fudge things, things have to fit at true size, or my brain hurts. If the Gefion has to be 1000 meters long to support the best scale-able visuals, then I will also need to make the Northampton the same size, because it is the same ship. Again, my brain would hurt because of the inconistency if I didn't. Similarly, the Guantanamo-class, at least the one I have, also has features from the anime that my brain says "this has to be *this big* to work properly, So I sized the ship appropriately. If I had a model based on the *other* Guantanamo shooting model (the "Maizuru" model, instead of the "Maiduru"; I wouldn't have so much of a problem, but I *might* just go with "if there's two inconsistent models, they might be different ships". Which is a common trick in for example the Star Wars fandom. I also arrive at this from *several* fandoms where "if the number obviously doesn't fit, throw it out and calculate the actual one" is what we *do*. A building consistently shown with 30 floors is obviously not going to be 100 feet tall, it's going to be 100 meters tall. If a ship is obviously more than ten times the size of another ship, of course it's not going to be just 5 times the size even if the books have said so for 20 years. So what I'm doing is I'm using the official models to figure out what I think is the actual size implied by the VFX shots, just like fans have been doing in every other Sci Fi franchise since the dawn of DVD freeze frames, and checking how weird things looks if I use those sizes. The answer, so far, is "not very", despite the Uraga being unchanged size-wise. There just aren't all that many shots of the Uraga model dwarfing a Northampton that I'd need to ignore. And I will never really accept a book size figure if the very first instance where that size would have become relevant, flat out ignored it for plot reasons. It literally has the same vibe as the time the studio that animated all the VFX for Stargate SG-1 made the whole Daedalus ship at 650 meters long, down to the bridge and hangar interiors, and because someone corporate wrote "225 meters" in a DVD liner booklet, the ship is now officially so small that the fighters it launches out by the dozens will not actually fit through the hangar bay doors that are now a third of the size they were designed to be. Edited Monday at 03:58 PM by SebastianP Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 04:43 PM Posted Monday at 04:43 PM (edited) 1 hour ago, SebastianP said: You mean, no one else who frequents this site has the energy to argue with someone who refuses to budge on "the books are always right". No, I mean most Macross fans understand that animation errors are a thing and don't assume that a single moment of off-model animation overrules decades of official material from the people who make the show. That kind of questionable reasoning is more in line with another fandom that we don't talk about here. 1 hour ago, SebastianP said: The whole reason why I am even arguing this is because, if I want to use the Gefion design in a 3D scene, doing its thing, I need to make it 1000 meters long, to be visually consistent with what we see in the game (i.e. being able to walk a battroid in there.) My brain does not allow me to fudge things, things have to fit at true size, or my brain hurts. Your particular preferences don't mean the official information is wrong, though. You know that Macross 30's game engine is not representing the Valkyries, ships, etc. at true scale. You didn't need me or anyone else to tell you that. Your struggle seems to be because you chose to change the size of the ship rather than acknowledge that the game employs some acceptable breaks with realism to allow the characters to operate a lot more VFs than is realistic or accept that the animation is not perfect. What you do with your own fanworks is nobody's business but yours. People are going to raise eyebrows or argue if you go around telling people you know better than the show's actual creators, though. Edited Monday at 05:18 PM by Seto Kaiba Edited for tone. Quote
SebastianP Posted Monday at 05:43 PM Posted Monday at 05:43 PM 10 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: What you do with your own fanworks is nobody's business but yours. People are going to raise eyebrows or argue if you go around telling people you know better than the show's actual creators, though. And some people - demonstrably, because this is what happened in the other place I've been posting about it - go "okay, your argument is convincing, What does this mean for the other ships? Which ships can we do similar comparisons to?" because most of them are also Star Wars fans who remember when the Executor was changed from 8 km to 19 km because of determined fans fact-checking Lucasfilm until they gave up; Star Trek fans who remember when the Defiant would change size from episode to episode; Stargate fans who used screen evidence to prove the liner notes false years before the VFX people chimed in and said "yeah, we actually made it three times bigger and some dude in PR pulled a number out of his behind and since we no longer work for the rights holders we can't change it". It's said that during the middle ages, a learned man who was asked "how many teeth does a horse have", he'd go find his copy of Aristotle's textbook on the matter, and go "Aristotle says it has X teeth, therefore that is the answer." One of the hallmarks of the Renaissance was when the default option shifted to "I don't know, lets go to the stable and check". You, my friend... are being medieval in mindset, and trusting the Philosopher over your own senses. Quote
JB0 Posted Monday at 07:09 PM Posted Monday at 07:09 PM 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: You mean, no one else who frequents this site has the energy to argue with someone who refuses to budge on "the books are always right". Nah. 1 hour ago, SebastianP said: Star Wars fans who remember when the Executor was changed from 8 km to 19 km because of determined fans fact-checking Lucasfilm until they gave up And that number is still considered very wrong, so what did the fans actually win? And the official Death Star sizes that originated with the West End RPG are still unchanged despite being far more difficult to reconcile with the films. Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted Monday at 07:09 PM Posted Monday at 07:09 PM 10 minutes ago, SebastianP said: And some people - [...] Some people will, sure... that doesn't mean the argument is sound. Most people - fans and casual viewers alike - simply accept the easily verifiable reality that these occasional inconsistencies are mistakes that were made in production and not anything meant to have significance to the setting or the narrative. For example, you don't see Star Trek fans arguing that the USS Enterprise-A is three times her stated size in Star Trek V because the deck numbers in the turboshaft scene show numbers as high as 78 (and in reverse order) on a ship that only has 23 decks. It's just a mistake in set dressing and nothing more. Same as when, in Star Trek: Nemesis, Riker somehow kicks the Viceroy down into an inexplicable bottomless pit on the lowest deck of the ship (29)... somehow five decks below the previous lowest deck of the ship (24). Just a dumb mistake. To give another, you don't see Star Wars fans claiming the Millennium Falcon doesn't actually have a radar dish based on the fact that it's MIA when the ship is first seen in A New Hope. Or that Anakin obviously visited our galaxy to buy lightsaber parts given that the bottom of his lightsaber in Empire clearly bears the stamped words "MANUFACTURED BY GRAFLEX" and "ROCHESTER NY USA". Or that the Republic has only actually been around for 1,000 years based on Palpatine's dialog in the prequels. Sometimes... a lot of the time... an error is just an error. No hidden messages, no secret authorial intent. Just an honest-to-goodness screwup that didn't get caught. Quote
sketchley Posted yesterday at 01:38 AM Posted yesterday at 01:38 AM 9 hours ago, SebastianP said: You mean, no one else who frequents this site has the energy to argue with someone who refuses to budge on "the books are always right". My 2 cents are: the Northampton has been listed as 'about 250 m' since "This Is Animaton Series Macross 7 Animation Materials" (1995/07/20, first printing). HOWEVER, the artwork of the bridge et al are obviously penned by a different artist. Therefore, I think that Kazutaka Miyatake—the designer of the ship—decided on the size, but the writers of the Stargazer episode didn't remember (or have access to that number), and played rule of cool, and commissioned another artist to create such things as the bridge layout. I'm getting too old/not having enough time to argue, but may I suggest instead of trying to convert those that refuse to budge, just agree to respectfully disagree? I think a fair case has been made that the sizes are wrong, and plenty of evidence was provided to prove that point, and now it's best to leave it out there for others to mull over. I also really like your resizing of the Northampton. 👍 Not only does it answer (or explain away) some things, it also reframes things in a most satisfactorily way: by stimulating the imagination. Quote
aurance Posted yesterday at 02:56 PM Posted yesterday at 02:56 PM (edited) 23 hours ago, SebastianP said: You mean, no one else who frequents this site has the energy to argue with someone who refuses to budge on "the books are always right". Hah, you're not alone on this one. I've felt like this on multiple occasions. I suspect there's a certain bias due to the amount of (not un-respectable, mind you) work they've put into the publications. I *could* say something, but it'll go round and round until we agree to disagree, or I just lose interest in continuing to argue a super niche topic. However, in this case I would say it's an animation error - for personal edification either imagine some sort of attachment/hangar that does fit the size, or pretend it's some other class that's similar. If I were an animator I'm not sure I'd go back and "correct" such things. It's just not that important, except to a very small subset of people. The "same size" argument counting only the length is a little disingenuous though, I agree. Edited yesterday at 02:59 PM by aurance Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted yesterday at 05:29 PM Posted yesterday at 05:29 PM 2 hours ago, aurance said: The "same size" argument counting only the length is a little disingenuous though, I agree. It didn't consider only length... but the point there was to illustrate how silly the idea that the Northampton-class can't function as a carrier being "only" 250m is. There are several modern light or escort carriers that are very close in size to the Northampton-class, even if we're only considering the columnar center of the ship's design that's about 250m x 30m. It's never going to be as capacious as a ship that's essentially just a gigantic box built for nothing but holding aircraft... but there's nothing conceptually wrong with the Gefion at its 252.5m size as a light carrier holding a platoon or two. Quote
SebastianP Posted yesterday at 05:58 PM Posted yesterday at 05:58 PM 14 hours ago, sketchley said: I also really like your resizing of the Northampton. 👍 Not only does it answer (or explain away) some things, it also reframes things in a most satisfactorily way: by stimulating the imagination. Thanks! And I can agree that it's likely that the artists involved never double-checked with each other and this is why we ended up like this. I'm coming at this from both the Star Wars fandom, where "see that speck over there? It's a thing, with stats, and we have to figure them out" has been a thing since the 80s and where if the book doesn't match what's seen on screen we make a stink and sometimes get it changed; and the model building scene, where models in the same scale have to fit, and if they don't they're not the same scale and need correcting. In this case, the models did not fit at what was supposed to be the same scale, so obviously the scale on one of them was wrong. And.... it wasn't going to be the Variable Fighters. 2 hours ago, aurance said: However, in this case I would say it's an animation error - for personal edification either imagine some sort of attachment/hangar that does fit the size, or pretend it's some other class that's similar. If I were an animator I'm not sure I'd go back and "correct" such things. It's just not that important, except to a very small subset of people. The "same size" argument counting only the length is a little disingenuous though, I agree. As mentioned, I think it's a little beyond "an" animation error, where every scene in the whole episode involving fighters relative to the ship show the ship to be much, much bigger than the book said it was. It was basicially the whole episode that was the animation error. And when this was the "hero" episode for that ship, the one episode which *focused* on the ship in question? I find it easier to throw the book out than the episode, as mentioned. And yeah, the point of showing the ships side by side was to show that only about a third of the total length of the Northampton at this scale is suitable for a hangar, as opposed to two thirds to three quarters of the carriers Seto Kaiba mentioned; and the real carrier has some *serious holes* in the side for the aircraft to leave the hangar through, which would need to go somewhere. I can make a "baby carrier" 250 meter Northampton. It would look like it came out of Star Wars, because of the side mounted hangar bays, and it would have to drop the forward torpedo tubes, but I can make it. But it would not be the Stargazer. And it wouldn't be the Gefion. Both of which are shown launching fighters in a way that make them much bigger than 250 meters... 6 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: It didn't consider only length... but the point there was to illustrate how silly the idea that the Northampton-class can't function as a carrier being "only" 250m is. There are several modern light or escort carriers that are very close in size to the Northampton-class, even if we're only considering the columnar center of the ship's design that's about 250m x 30m. It's never going to be as capacious as a ship that's essentially just a gigantic box built for nothing but holding aircraft... but there's nothing conceptually wrong with the Gefion at its 252.5m size as a light carrier holding a platoon or two. The full context was "it can't function as a carrier for the nearly 40 fighters launched out of the Stargazer", because there's not enough cubic volume in it suitable for a hangar of sufficient size. Even the FANKY version only managed 29 fighters total, and that was with the huge belly hangar/flight deck, which is not what we see in either Macross 7 or Macross 30. I repeat - even the FANKY version could not launch the 36 + 1 fighters called for in the episode script. Also, the problem with your examples of real world carriers is that 1 - all of them have two thirds to three quarters of their full length, and their full hull width, devoted to hangar floor space, in a triple-height deck; and 2 - basically every carrier's listed capacity has half the aircraft up on deck, because they won't fit in the hangar. A Nimitz-class only has room for 34 jets and six helicopters below deck. It has a hangar that is nearly as big as the whole Northampton by footprint area, being a 206 x 33 meter almost-rectangle, and it still only fits that number of jets. On the Northampton, only the center third of it is even thick enough and wide enough for a hangar, because the ship tapers sharply both towards the ends and from the centerline. There isn't really room for more than one level of hangars either, because of the taper. And as I said above, I can probably make a 250 meter Northampton into a carrier that can take some VFs without altering the profile, but it won't look like either the Gefion or the Stargazer, it most certainly would not be capable of launching a 36 fighter alpha strike as shown in Macross 7. And even with all that... I could not fit the official bridge design inside the conning tower, because it's at least two person-heights wide and the bridge window on the model (which is accurate proportionally to the old line art) is only 2.3 meters. Enough people involved in the production of Macross 7 and Macross 30 ignored the 250 meter length for their hero unit spaceship, to make that 250 meter figure irrelevant. Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted yesterday at 07:12 PM Posted yesterday at 07:12 PM (edited) 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: The full context was "it can't function as a carrier for the nearly 40 fighters launched out of the Stargazer", because there's not enough cubic volume in it suitable for a hangar of sufficient size. Even the FANKY version only managed 29 fighters total, and that was with the huge belly hangar/flight deck, which is not what we see in either Macross 7 or Macross 30. I repeat - even the FANKY version could not launch the 36 + 1 fighters called for in the episode script. Actually, the full context included the Gefion from Macross 30 if you go back the bit I quoted... The Gefion is home to far, far fewer VFs than the animation error Stargazer from Macross 7. Around ten when all is said and done, based on the game and novel, which I'm sure you'll agree is a vastly more plausible figure for a ship of its official size that has undergone extensive modification to serve as a light aircraft carrier. Nothing about the Gefion's official complement of VFs requires it to be vastly larger than 250m. (She is not, in story terms, actually carrying the huge array of unlockable VFs the game offers.) 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: Also, the problem with your examples of real world carriers is that 1 - all of them have two thirds to three quarters of their full length, and their full hull width, devoted to hangar floor space, in a triple-height deck; and 2 - basically every carrier's listed capacity has half the aircraft up on deck, because they won't fit in the hangar. That's not necessarily applicable to all of the examples I went for... several are listed purely with the hangar capacity. Of course, the Northampton-class can (and per the Macross 30 novelization, does) cheat a bit by using multiple decks worth of converted cargo bays for VF storage. It may not be one contiguous hangar deck, but its available space is not limited purely by the ship's length in a single run. 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: And as I said above, I can probably make a 250 meter Northampton into a carrier that can take some VFs without altering the profile, but it won't look like either the Gefion or the Stargazer, it most certainly would not be capable of launching a 36 fighter alpha strike as shown in Macross 7. We all agree that Macross 7's showrunners dropped the ball with Ep44 and the Stargazer. I don't think there's anything wrong with the Gefion's design, though. There's physically enough room to fit the Gefion's much smaller required number of VFs inside the ship without issue, and there are gates large enough to get them onto the catapult deck (though some may need to do so with their wings folded). Likewise, I don't think there's any particular issue with the Northampton-class's launch mechanism from Macross 7 PLUS either... the main sticking point is the exact physical location of the ramp, but there's a fair amount of real estate down there. 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: And even with all that... I could not fit the official bridge design inside the conning tower, because it's at least two person-heights wide and the bridge window on the model (which is accurate proportionally to the old line art) is only 2.3 meters. It's an animation error... what more can we say? They dun goofed. 3 hours ago, SebastianP said: Enough people involved in the production of Macross 7 and Macross 30 ignored the 250 meter length for their hero unit spaceship, to make that 250 meter figure irrelevant. I disagree with that conclusion, though. Even if we didn't say that the fact that those handful of scenes in Macross 7's 44th episode being clearly off-model weren't enough to toss it as evidence, the preponderance of evidence WRT the Northampton's size skews very heavily towards the official number. After all, this is a ship that appears in many dozens of shots throughout multiple series. Now, I'm sure you will not disagree that in those many dozens of fleet shots the Northampton-class is clearly drawn a good deal smaller than the Guantanamo-class. You've also said previously that the detail shots of the Guantanamo-class closely match the ship's official size of approximately 352m, even if the smaller CG model used for distance shots is not quite accurate in terms of surface detail. If we take your conclusion as accurate and enlarge the Northampton-class to three to four times its official size as you argue, then we either have to posit that LITERALLY EVERY fleet shot in multiple Macross titles is completely and utterly incorrect or we have to scale the other ships seen with the Northampton-class up by the same factor to match. We immediately start to run into problems there. The Guantanamo-class, for instance, is seen in close formation with Northampton-class frigates many times. If we scale that up to match, then we either have to treat the oft-reused launch scenes in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier as animation errors as well... or we have to scale up the Valkyries that they're shown launching by the same amount. If the VF-11 and VF-171 are also three times to four times larger than their official sizes to make the animation correct again, that means we've changed everything's sizes but fixed nothing because we're right back where we started with VFs too bit to fit into or out of the ship in Macross 7 Ep44. And that's not counting all the knock-on implications of arbitrarily enlarging those designs 3-4x. Like, for instance, the pilots having to also be enlarged by the same amount so scenes showing pilots getting into or out of their VFs work, or Alto's complaints about Island-1 no longer making sense because a 4x enlarged Island-1 would have a "ceiling" of 8,000m not 2,000m, meaning instead of kvetching about the sky being "too low" he'd be struggling to breathe or passing out (hypoxia starts setting in at about 5-6km, and the "death zone" is around 8). My preference, of course, is for the simplest answer that requires the fewest assumptions. That being, Macross 7 Ep44's Stargazer is just an animation error and the ship really is meant to be just 250m. Edited 22 hours ago by Seto Kaiba Quote
SebastianP Posted 22 hours ago Posted 22 hours ago (edited) 4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: If we take your conclusion as accurate and enlarge the Northampton-class to three to four times its official size as you argue, then we either have to posit that LITERALLY EVERY fleet shot in multiple Macross titles is completely and utterly incorrect or we have to scale the other ships seen with the Northampton-class up by the same factor to match. We immediately start to run into problems there. The Guantanamo-class, for instance, is seen in close formation with Northampton-class frigates many times. If we scale that up to match, then we either have to treat the oft-reused launch scenes in Macross 7 and Macross Frontier as animation errors as well... or we have to scale up the Valkyries that they're shown launching by the same amount. If the VF-11 and VF-171 are also three times to four times larger than their official sizes to make the animation correct again, that means we've changed everything's sizes but fixed nothing because we're right back where we started with VFs too bit to fit into or out of the ship in Macross 7 Ep44. I would pull the "animation error" card on the "Maizuru" model instead of the "Maiduru" model, yeah. We never see it very often (I can only remember the scene from Frontier 1, and Itsuwari no Utahime), whereas the Maiduru model shows up all the time. But here's the thing. The one thing I actually care about really is "make the Gefion work as a carrier without changing its model". It is a very very nice model, it is just too small. But it doesn't need to be *four times* the size to work - the hangar pods are wide and tall enough to work at just *twice* the size, if I throw out the "battroid walks in the back door" screenshot as an animation error. There's enough clearance - barely - to move fighters from the pods into the hull; and the hull would have enough volume to hold around 40 fighters. And now that we have a modern carrier version of the Northampton, we toss out the Stargazer animation, and declare "Stargazer was a Gefion-type all along". The script, aside from the VFX callouts, will work. From there, let's look at what scaling each ship up by the same factor does for us: Starting with the Maiduru model, the largest hangar access ports will now be large enough to squeeze a VF through, and the small ones are big enough for a Ghost. We're tossing the Maizuru model as an animation error, it is not plot relevant that the Guantanamo-class is a specific size beyond it being able to launch fighters. The Stealth Cruiser does not have a stated size in the first place, our estimates are based on the size of the Northamptons it shares the scene with anyway. Scaling it up to twice the size just means it's 2 x unknown. The Quarter, I've complained about for years and years is too small to do what we see it doing in the show. The ARMD-L is too thin for a hangar, the elevators on the model are too small for the fighters, and at one point we see it flying in formation with *dozens* of SMS VF-25As who which had to come from somewhere, and there is no room inside that ship for them. Scaling it up to twice the size solves nearly everything. I would not bet 100% on the hangar capacity, but it's a lot less implausible at least. The Elysion, as mentioned a few times already, looks like it was modeled by a VFX artist at one size, and then some time after episode 2 aired, someone outside the VFX department declared it was the height of Burj Kalifa and then the model was resized without any further work being done, resulting in a bunch of weirdness. Like the VF-31 not being able to fit through the hangar access ports between the main flight deck and the upper flight deck. Scaling it up to twice its "canon" size would basically restore it to where it was originally, and allow VFs to use the facilities, as it were. The Uraga... doesn't need a resize, that one was well thought through at its canon size, and it's almost a shame to change it. If I can't write off the size discrepancy as an animation error, well at least it now has an easier time handling large battroids like Queadluun-Rau/Rhea, or the VB-6 König Monster. The New Macross Class... also doesn't need a resize, other than for matching the animation. But at least scaling them up will also scale the cities up, and give four times more area and eight times the volume to play around with. And if we play a little with the "new design iterations supersede old versions of the same design", then City 7 is now Island-One sized, but double the canon, which means that scenes like Basara living in a slum miles from the city are more plausible, because there are actual miles to drive! If we want to go even further and bring up ships which never share a scene with any of the above? DYRL Macross would benefit greatly from being twice the size because there'd be room for a cityscape inside the ship, and I think I measured at one point that the ARMDs at their canon size would have trouble with the launch scene from the opening sequence because the ports are too small. I'll have to revisit that sometime. I don't remember if the DYRL Macross ever punched anything in the face that would need to be rescaled, but I'm willing to call "animation error" to avoid this becoming a problem. Megaroad-01 at double the size might actually have room for that racetrack from the M3 intro. TV Macross would not work, though, because Daedalus and Prometheus are already ridiculously large for surface ships. But TV Macross is technically not canon anyway because it was superseded by the DYRL version. Macross The First Macross would not work either, for the same reason as above. Edit: Illustration of what 2x size will do for certain ships Above: the Macross Chronicle sizes for everything. Notice the ludicrous size of VB-6 relative to the Quarter, and how the VF-25 does not fit the hangar pod on Gefion. VB-6 and VF-25 scaled down to 50%, which is the same as scaling up the ships to 200% except I don't have to move them around to maintain the formation. Notice how the VB-6 fits the elevator now (it completely fits if you fold the wingtips up), and how the VF-25 will fit on the landing side of the ship too. Edited 19 hours ago by SebastianP Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted 19 hours ago Posted 19 hours ago 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: The one thing I actually care about really is "make the Gefion work as a carrier without changing its model". It is a very very nice model, it is just too small. But it doesn't need to be *four times* the size to work - the hangar pods are wide and tall enough to work at just *twice* the size, if I throw out the "battroid walks in the back door" screenshot as an animation error. There's enough clearance - barely - to move fighters from the pods into the hull; and the hull would have enough volume to hold around 40 fighters. My read of your earlier images is that the Gefion's actually about the right size. The game itself, of course, plays fast and loose with scale on all large objects for the same of gameplay and visual appeal as noted previously, but even corrected for scale you showed that the Gefion's scale in-game is not THAT far off. A VF-25 can still get through the gate. It doesn't need to be big enough to hold 40 fighters either, it's meant to be an extremely small ship that can only hold a couple fighters, so IMO it's pretty darn close as it is. Making it big and capacious enough to rival a Guantanamo for capacity with even more firepower both defeats its purpose in the story and the purpose of the Guantanamo. 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: Starting with the Maiduru model, the largest hangar access ports will now be large enough to squeeze a VF through, and the small ones are big enough for a Ghost. We're tossing the Maizuru model as an animation error, it is not plot relevant that the Guantanamo-class is a specific size beyond it being able to launch fighters. Consider that Macross Frontier is not the only series to show the Guantanamo-class launching fighters. It's much easier to assume that the texture used on the low-detail model for distance shots is simply inaccurate, or that the larger hangar gates have been closed with an armored door similar to what we briefly see in Macross Delta. 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: The Stealth Cruiser does not have a stated size in the first place, our estimates are based on the size of the Northamptons it shares the scene with anyway. Scaling it up to twice the size just means it's 2 x unknown. Eh... it does and it doesn't. Macross Chronicle doesn't give an exact number, but multiple sources including Chronicle say it's roughly the same size as the Northampton-class stealth frigate, and/or that it's a derivative of the Northampton-class stealth frigate. 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: The Elysion, as mentioned a few times already, looks like it was modeled by a VFX artist at one size, and then some time after episode 2 aired, someone outside the VFX department declared it was the height of Burj Kalifa and then the model was resized without any further work being done, resulting in a bunch of weirdness. Like the VF-31 not being able to fit through the hangar access ports between the main flight deck and the upper flight deck. Scaling it up to twice its "canon" size would basically restore it to where it was originally, and allow VFs to use the facilities, as it were. The Macross Elysion-type is probably the one ship in Macross where I am not happy with the official size. It feels like it was made to be MUCH smaller than it allegedly is. Especially since its fighter complement, in total, is only like 20 planes despite having two carriers attached to it. It feels like it was made to be the same size as the Macross Quarter officially is, not double that. 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: [...] which means that scenes like Basara living in a slum miles from the city are more plausible, because there are actual miles to drive! Looking back at it, I don't think they ever really present the Acshio district as being far away from everything. It's abandoned because it's rundown as all get-out, but anytime Mylene has to get there she gets there within just a few minutes and it's basically walking distance from the parks that Basara's constantly performing in. Half the time, people don't even bother to drive and just walk there which makes sense given that at one point IIRC we see Mylene has to drive her car down a staircase to get there. It's basically just the Jeniuses who seem to take cars into that area. 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: Megaroad-01 at double the size might actually have room for that racetrack from the M3 intro. I don't think that racetrack is actually meant to be inside a Megaroad-class ship. Look at the sky in the OP, the Megaroad-class didn't have a seamless holographic skybox like the New Macross-class does and there's no sign of the structural members that you should be able to see from the ground. I think that's just meant to be a jump cut to elsewhere (and elsewhen?). 2 hours ago, SebastianP said: TV Macross would not work, though, because Daedalus and Prometheus are already ridiculously large for surface ships. But TV Macross is technically not canon anyway because it was superseded by the DYRL version. Macross The First Macross would not work either, for the same reason as above. That's incorrect on several levels. Officially, Macross runs on broad strokes continuity and there is no "canon". No one version of any given story is "true". The creators play Multiple Choice Past whenever they do a new series leading to some interesting mixing and matching, most blatantly in Macross Delta which devoted the better part of an episode to a history lesson that freely mixed bits from the TV and movie versions of previous titles. The official setting treats both versions as equally valid, and generally regards the DYRL? designs as postwar improvements to the TV series designs. The DYRL? VF-1 being a later production block of VF-1, the DYRL? Macross being a post-war repair/remodel of the ship and the design of the later mass production type using parts diverted from shipyards, etc. If you look in Ernest Johnson's office in Macross Delta, he's a got a TV Macross model for decoration, so it clearly does exist. Quote
SebastianP Posted 16 hours ago Posted 16 hours ago (edited) 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: My read of your earlier images is that the Gefion's actually about the right size. The game itself, of course, plays fast and loose with scale on all large objects for the same of gameplay and visual appeal as noted previously, but even corrected for scale you showed that the Gefion's scale in-game is not THAT far off. A VF-25 can still get through the gate. It doesn't need to be big enough to hold 40 fighters either, it's meant to be an extremely small ship that can only hold a couple fighters, so IMO it's pretty darn close as it is. Making it big and capacious enough to rival a Guantanamo for capacity with even more firepower both defeats its purpose in the story and the purpose of the Guantanamo. A VF-25 can get through the *front* gate, if folded up with the fins down. The rear landing strip is too narrow, even if the opening is as wide as the front one. To make both ends work, I need to go up to 150% of the modeled size, and at that point, I feel like I might as well make the nice bridge from the line art fit as well, and go up to 200%. And 40 fighters is just the maximum I think is feasible at this size, which is nice because it makes the size of Operation Stargazer feasible. Guantanamo, being scaled up similarly, will have other benefits over the Gefion - you can launch a König Monster out of the front maw; and the Gefion has no place to launch space-type Ghosts without landing gear out of, while the Guantanamo has plenty. 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Consider that Macross Frontier is not the only series to show the Guantanamo-class launching fighters. It's much easier to assume that the texture used on the low-detail model for distance shots is simply inaccurate, or that the larger hangar gates have been closed with an armored door similar to what we briefly see in Macross Delta. Hmm. I would like to know what the other instances are if you can point me in a rough direction. Guantanamos are in the background everywhere, but they're pretty much always the "Maiduru" model. And if you're talking about Macross 7 or Macross Plus, I'm willing to call "animation error" or "model superseded" on those. 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Eh... it does and it doesn't. Macross Chronicle doesn't give an exact number, but multiple sources including Chronicle say it's roughly the same size as the Northampton-class stealth frigate, and/or that it's a derivative of the Northampton-class stealth frigate. It's still never plot relevant what size the ship is, though. Scaling this ship up by the same factor as the Northampton does not meaningfully change what we know about it. 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: The Macross Elysion-type is probably the one ship in Macross where I am not happy with the official size. It feels like it was made to be MUCH smaller than it allegedly is. Especially since its fighter complement, in total, is only like 20 planes despite having two carriers attached to it. It feels like it was made to be the same size as the Macross Quarter officially is, not double that. The model is definitely larger than the official size says - there are similar issues with hangar bay opening widths as there are for Gefion, with wings clipping the sides of the walls at "official" scale. Not to mention the ginormous size of the ship from its establishing shot. This is our first overall shot of the Elysion. Note the fighters on the deck. Since we know their size, we can estimate fairly accurately the length of the Aether. It has to be pretty substantial. I didn't do the math myself, someone on reddit did a long time ago, but it worked out to around 900 meters give or take. This was supported by this shot, which has the fighters in the same parked configuration. The flight deck here is somewhere around 200 meters wide at the widest point. In episode 12, we have this interior hangar shot, showing fighters arranged in a configuration that's around 60 meters wide. There are 15 fighters shown in this sequence (five on the right, as there's a gap; four in the middle, and the six you can see on the left), we don't know how far the line extends backwards. At the official size of the ship, the hull is not wide enough for this below decks - if Elysion is 900 meters overall, then Aether's hull is around 40 meters wide at best. If the ship is the size indicated by the first two shots, then there's enough space for this to be only half the complement. So, the first half of the show has a bunch of this stuff where it's obvious that this is not a small vessel... and then the script sends everyone off so that only Delta is on hand most of the time. Also, at the "official" size, only *one* of the ten obvious flight deck access points for VFs are actually large enough for a VF-31 - the centerline tunnel from under the upper deck. The side tunnels are too narrow and the wings will clip; and both the four deck edge elevators and the three elevators up to the upper deck are too small. Also, forget the "tour bus" shuttle, it won't fit anywhere. Could the role the script gives to the Elysion have been handed to a smaller ship? Very likely. Was the Elysion intended to be small? No. There's enough evidence to the contrary in the first half of the show to put paid to that idea. (I don't know when the Burj Kalifa statement was made, but most of the evidence prior to the halfway point of the show suggests the larger size. I think there's an outlier in the form of the space episode, it's almost five in the morning and I'm not going digging). Edit: Having slept on it and had time to do the digging, Episode 6 definitely shows the fighters not clipping into each other's lanes during the launch sequence, which suggests a minimum size of around 1200 meters overall for Elysion in ship form, and 1500 is about the minimum for the fighters to fit on the elevators. I may try to replicate the parked fighters on the Aether's deck from Episode 2 at this size,. and the launch layout from episode 6, but at first glance, 1500 looks about right for Elysion as shown in the first half of the show. I am aware that later depictions, like the Delta movies, made the ship smaller, but as mentioned, at the smaller size there are problems just getting the fighters to the deck through the provided openings... 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Looking back at it, I don't think they ever really present the Acshio district as being far away from everything. It's abandoned because it's rundown as all get-out, but anytime Mylene has to get there she gets there within just a few minutes and it's basically walking distance from the parks that Basara's constantly performing in. Half the time, people don't even bother to drive and just walk there which makes sense given that at one point IIRC we see Mylene has to drive her car down a staircase to get there. It's basically just the Jeniuses who seem to take cars into that area. Yeah. As I said, the New Macross class ships are some of the ones that don't really benefit from being scaled up other than keeping the animations the same. (Edit: Though.... the Diamond Force launch sequence suggests the bridge block of the Battle 7 is a fair bit larger than the overall views of the ship supports, if the ship is 1600 meters overall. The hatches and launch arms for that sequence are not small, and the best attempt I've seen at replicating the Battle 7 in 3D, has those hatches at around half the required size. It is not an official model so it won't count for anything, though. And swapping the base design to the Battle 25 version, which has a much bigger bridge block to begin with, and trading the turrets for launch bays? That would solve it even at the 1-mile scale). 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: I don't think that racetrack is actually meant to be inside a Megaroad-class ship. Look at the sky in the OP, the Megaroad-class didn't have a seamless holographic skybox like the New Macross-class does and there's no sign of the structural members that you should be able to see from the ground. I think that's just meant to be a jump cut to elsewhere (and elsewhen?). The opening sequence goes "Miria is racing, Max and new daughter are playing pool in a building overlooking the race, Max gets an alert on his watch, Milia gets one in her helmet, leaves the race to join Max on the highway, cut to Max and Milia in their fighters with the daughter waving at them from the control booth, and the fighters pulling out of the Megaroad's side pod." My inference was that this was all on the ship, but since the ship is over a terrestrial planet, maybe they took a shuttle up so they could scramble their fighters....? Meh. Also, given that the Chronicle changed the number of colonists aboard the Megaroad from 80,000 to 25,000 according to Macross Mecha Manual, I'll withdraw my other reason for changing the size of it (namely, the sheer amount of space the colonists' living quarters will take up. Half the population of the original Macross in a volume that is already *ginormously* bigger is much more plausible.) 9 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: That's incorrect on several levels. Officially, Macross runs on broad strokes continuity and there is no "canon". No one version of any given story is "true". The creators play Multiple Choice Past whenever they do a new series leading to some interesting mixing and matching, most blatantly in Macross Delta which devoted the better part of an episode to a history lesson that freely mixed bits from the TV and movie versions of previous titles. The official setting treats both versions as equally valid, and generally regards the DYRL? designs as postwar improvements to the TV series designs. The DYRL? VF-1 being a later production block of VF-1, the DYRL? Macross being a post-war repair/remodel of the ship and the design of the later mass production type using parts diverted from shipyards, etc. If you look in Ernest Johnson's office in Macross Delta, he's a got a TV Macross model for decoration, so it clearly does exist. The TV macross has next to nothing in common with the DYRL macross except for the transformation sequence itself, none of the components themselves are shared. If that's a rebuild, they tore her down to atoms and reconstituted them... But since DYRL macross never interacts with anything that my scale change has affected, it can stay at its official size. Edited 9 hours ago by SebastianP Quote
JB0 Posted 9 hours ago Posted 9 hours ago So the best-case here is "no one in the history of the franchise has ever cared about scale and it is wildly inconsistent"? Seems odd to take a firm stand about accurate numbers when that's the starting point. But what do I know? Quote
SebastianP Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago 1 hour ago, JB0 said: So the best-case here is "no one in the history of the franchise has ever cared about scale and it is wildly inconsistent"? Seems odd to take a firm stand about accurate numbers when that's the starting point. But what do I know? Sort of. There *is* consistency in the actual animation, much of the time. It's just that except for the VFs, it's not consistent with the *chronicle*. Seto Kaiba and I have a difference of opinion about whether to throw out the animation that doesn't match the Chronicle specs as "animation error", or whether to throw out the Chronicle specs that don't match what we see on screen as "textual inaccuracies". Quote
pengbuzz Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago (edited) 10 hours ago, SebastianP said: The TV macross has next to nothing in common with the DYRL macross except for the transformation sequence itself, none of the components themselves are shared. If that's a rebuild, they tore her down to atoms and reconstituted them... Unfortunately, no one told that to Hasegawa when they issued their TV and DYRL? versions (DYRL was issued first, then TV Version); all they did was change a few parts; aside from that, they used the same basic kit: They also did this for the "fortress mode" versions for both. But to the point: if the DYRL version were the "reconstructed" TV version, they would probably have to had tore her down to the framework after Kamjin's kamikaze attack at the end of the TV series (given the catastrophic damage to her starboard shoulder and the booms). Overall though, unless it directly impacts a model I'm working on or a creation for the RPGs that I'm in, I really don't care too much about ship/ mecha scale. 10 hours ago, SebastianP said: I am aware that later depictions, like the Delta movies, made the ship smaller, but as mentioned, at the smaller size there are problems just getting the fighters to the deck through the provided openings... That would make for a fairly amusing cartoon: a battroid stuck in a hatch like Wile E. Coyote having fallen into one of his own traps, trying desperately to squeeze through! Edited 6 hours ago by pengbuzz Quote
SebastianP Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago 1 minute ago, pengbuzz said: Unfortunately, no one told that to Hasegawa when they issued their TV and DYRL? versions (DYRL was issued first, then TV Version); all they did was change a few parts; aside from that, they used the same basic kit: They also did this for the "fortress mode" versions for both. But to the point: if the DYRL version were the "reconstructed" TV version, they would probably have to had tore her down to the framework after Kamjin's kamikaze attack at the end of the TV series (given the catastrophic damage to her starboard shoulder and the booms). Overall though, unless it directly impacts a model I'm working on or a creation for the RPGs that I'm in, I really don't care too much about ship/ mecha scale. Yeah, the "TV" SDF-1 from Hasegawa was a major letdown. At least they put those scalloped cutouts on the inside of the gun booms on the Assault mode, on the Fortress version those were missing and the main gun booms were just rectangular. For myself, the whole issue basically stems from "Hey, I have all these neat 3D models of both the ships and the fighters and I want to make a diorama of ships with fighters on the decks, but... they don't fit when the ship is sized as in the book". From there, my conclusion is "book is wrong, I must find a better size". Seto Kaiba's conclusion is "Book is correct, it must be an animation error". (even when it means making large changes to the model to fix the issue...) The process of finding the "better size" is ongoing. I'm not married to 200% of Chronicle scale, or to using the same scale factor for every ship. I'm just looking for each individual ship type for "the size where it works". (And *then* we can make RPG stats for them, that I'll never use...) Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted 5 hours ago Posted 5 hours ago 3 hours ago, JB0 said: So the best-case here is "no one in the history of the franchise has ever cared about scale and it is wildly inconsistent"? Seems odd to take a firm stand about accurate numbers when that's the starting point. But what do I know? The best case is to admit that the reality of animation is that it's never going to be perfect. The official sizes of the ships are set by the designers who created them, as guidance for the animators. The animators get "close enough" the vast majority of the time, and that's all they really need to do in order for the show to look right and look good. 100% fidelity is not, and never will be, a realistic expectation. The animators aren't given that much time or anywhere near enough resources to deliver perfection. What we're looking at here is mostly those odd cases where the animators didn't get "close enough". Most folks would write those moments off as animation errors and think no more about them. Some devoted fans want to examine everything in minute detail. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: A VF-25 can get through the *front* gate, if folded up with the fins down. The rear landing strip is too narrow, even if the opening is as wide as the front one. To make both ends work, I need to go up to 150% of the modeled size, and at that point, I feel like I might as well make the nice bridge from the line art fit as well, and go up to 200%. And 40 fighters is just the maximum I think is feasible at this size, which is nice because it makes the size of Operation Stargazer feasible. I'd just change the proportions of the rear gate and leave it at that, TBH. That way it fits neatly with the handling of the Gefion both in-game and in the novel. 40 fighters is way too much for the Gefion in either version of the story. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: Guantanamo, being scaled up similarly, will have other benefits over the Gefion - you can launch a König Monster out of the front maw; and the Gefion has no place to launch space-type Ghosts without landing gear out of, while the Guantanamo has plenty. Considering how rare Konig Monsters are and how they almost invariably operate from larger main force carriers like the Mother Raven-type or a Battle-class, I'm not sure that's necessarily a useful advantage. The Gefion having no place to launch space-type Ghosts is a bit of a non-issue as it doesn't carry any, IIRC. It wasn't designed as a carrier, it was converted into an ad hoc one, so missing or having less-than-optimal carrier functions is not only not a dealbreaker... it's expected. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: Hmm. I would like to know what the other instances are if you can point me in a rough direction. Guantanamos are in the background everywhere, but they're pretty much always the "Maiduru" model. And if you're talking about Macross 7 or Macross Plus, I'm willing to call "animation error" or "model superseded" on those. There's several cases in Macross 7 where VF-11s can be seen launching from the front bay of Guantanamo-class ships. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: So, the first half of the show has a bunch of this stuff where it's obvious that this is not a small vessel... and then the script sends everyone off so that only Delta is on hand most of the time. The disparity between the interior and exterior shots is quite something too. The interior shots, for the most part, make the Elysion look on the small side. Particularly given that there are only ~15 fighters in its carriers. The exterior, yeah, is out of all proportion to the point that you have to question is the animation team understands how big 800m is. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: The opening sequence goes "Miria is racing, Max and new daughter are playing pool in a building overlooking the race, Max gets an alert on his watch, Milia gets one in her helmet, leaves the race to join Max on the highway, cut to Max and Milia in their fighters with the daughter waving at them from the control booth, and the fighters pulling out of the Megaroad's side pod." My inference was that this was all on the ship, but since the ship is over a terrestrial planet, maybe they took a shuttle up so they could scramble their fighters....? Meh. It's an OP, random jump cuts are pretty standard. But yeah, if we were assuming that racetrack is on the ship I would wholeheartedly agree something is clearly off. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: Also, given that the Chronicle changed the number of colonists aboard the Megaroad from 80,000 to 25,000 according to Macross Mecha Manual, I'll withdraw my other reason for changing the size of it (namely, the sheer amount of space the colonists' living quarters will take up. Half the population of the original Macross in a volume that is already *ginormously* bigger is much more plausible.) IIRC, they essentially clarified that the 80,000 is the population of the fleet not merely the one ship. Of course, there's also some material about how the living conditions in a Megaroad-class ship were actually pretty awful to the point that riots were apparently a not-altogether-infrequent occurrance. Enough so that, by 2040, the New UN Gov't had commissioned the Macross Concern to work on ways to help keep populations calmer... resulting in the Sharon Apple system in 2040. 11 hours ago, SebastianP said: The TV macross has next to nothing in common with the DYRL macross except for the transformation sequence itself, none of the components themselves are shared. If that's a rebuild, they tore her down to atoms and reconstituted them... But since DYRL macross never interacts with anything that my scale change has affected, it can stay at its official size. Bro... did you... forget... that Earth totally rebuilding the ship to the point that its external appearance was radically different from its original form was literally how this all started? That sh*t is not only not beyond them, they've literally already done that once before. Presumably easier the second time around, since they were mass-producing Macross-class ships in orbit and could just ship parts down to replace destroyed sections en masse. Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted 4 hours ago Posted 4 hours ago 1 hour ago, pengbuzz said: Unfortunately, no one told that to Hasegawa when they issued their TV and DYRL? versions (DYRL was issued first, then TV Version); all they did was change a few parts; aside from that, they used the same basic kit: Model kits and toy companies are gonna do stuff like that as much as they can to keep costs down even if it's not necessarily screen-accurate. A lot of 'em are probably very happy that Macross is so friendly to parts-reuse with many variants of the same model that share most of their parts in common. 1 hour ago, pengbuzz said: But to the point: if the DYRL version were the "reconstructed" TV version, they would probably have to had tore her down to the framework after Kamjin's kamikaze attack at the end of the TV series (given the catastrophic damage to her starboard shoulder and the booms). Her hull's modular, they likely replaced or tore down and rebuilt entire modules where necessary. With factories in orbit producing more Macross-class parts, it probably wasn't particularly difficult... except for doing it under gravity. (Or maybe they just hauled the whole ship up.) Quote
SebastianP Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago 1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said: The disparity between the interior and exterior shots is quite something too. The interior shots, for the most part, make the Elysion look on the small side. Particularly given that there are only ~15 fighters in its carriers. The exterior, yeah, is out of all proportion to the point that you have to question is the animation team understands how big 800m is. The interior shots make the ship look *huge* if you know what you're actually looking at. To wit, the hangar where the VF-31s are lined up three wide, wings out, boosters attached, has to be able to fit inside the core hull of the Aether, because the ship is in space and the deck is flat. I took the fold-down flight deck extensions off the game model to see what the core hull looked like, and it is quite narrow. But it does have very distinct hangar bay side looking details right under the deck where you'd expect them to be. This is roughly the arrangement used in the hangar bay shot from Episode 12. I used the wrong fighters in more than one respect - since I used the printable models instead of game assets, my computer really doesn't like moving them all around, and since they're Siegfried instead of Kairos models, they're actually taking up less space. I'll see if I have a video game Kairos to use for more experimentation. This is with the Aether at 600 meters, which is *about* 50% larger than the "canon" scale, with Elysion being something like 1450 meters overall. Now imagine trying to fit that on the official size of the ship... As you can see, there's still issues - the ship is not quite wide enough, and VF-31As would stick out more, so I'm going to need to scale it up a bit further (10 to 20%) to make the fighters fit in that section of the hangar. Also, the hangar narrows forward, but there should be room for at least 20 more fighters two abreast in the forward section. And before you go "but you could put them further back where the hull is wider", the problem with that is that there's another shot where Delta lines up five wide below the deck, and that has to fit somewhere as well. And if you try it with the roughly 400 meter long Aether suggested by the Burj Kalifa statement, their wings will be clipping through the side of the hull. Something to remember when comparing Aether to the other carriers is that: 1 - compared to all the others, Aether is really skinny, I mean seriously skinny. 2 - Aether looks like it's designed with a single, normal-height hangar deck along the lines of a real carrier, or Prometheus or ARMD-L, rather than the high-volume hangars of the Guantanamo or Uraga 3 - the entire lower hull of the ship is the Macross Cannon. Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago 11 minutes ago, SebastianP said: The interior shots make the ship look *huge* if you know what you're actually looking at. I was thinking more of the crew spaces themselves, where most of the onboard shots take place. The Elysion's bridge appears no bigger than the Macross Quarter's, for instance. The briefing room where they hold several of their discussions with Berger and others is barely large enough to accommodate the main cast. To an extent, I suspect this is because of reused interior design from the Quarter. 11 minutes ago, SebastianP said: Something to remember when comparing Aether to the other carriers is that: 1 - compared to all the others, Aether is really skinny, I mean seriously skinny. 2 - Aether looks like it's designed with a single, normal-height hangar deck along the lines of a real carrier, or Prometheus or ARMD-L, rather than the high-volume hangars of the Guantanamo or Uraga 3 - the entire lower hull of the ship is the Macross Cannon. There are some shots in the TV series where the hangar appears to be a split-level affair to permit embarkation of VFs without ladders. As to the size of the Macross Cannon and whether it's present on both ships or just one... that's not officially confirmed AFAIK. Quote
pengbuzz Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago 3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Model kits and toy companies are gonna do stuff like that as much as they can to keep costs down even if it's not necessarily screen-accurate. A lot of 'em are probably very happy that Macross is so friendly to parts-reuse with many variants of the same model that share most of their parts in common. Yeah... just a nightmare for accuracy's sake though. O.o 3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said: Her hull's modular, they likely replaced or tore down and rebuilt entire modules where necessary. With factories in orbit producing more Macross-class parts, it probably wasn't particularly difficult... except for doing it under gravity. (Or maybe they just hauled the whole ship up.) *Imagines giant tube of glue being held by several valks as they position a new module in place* Quote
Seto Kaiba Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago 3 minutes ago, pengbuzz said: Yeah... just a nightmare for accuracy's sake though. O.o Depends on the model, I guess... not so much of an issue for something like the VF-1 or Regult. 3 minutes ago, pengbuzz said: *Imagines giant tube of glue being held by several valks as they position a new module in place* I've got nothing for a Glue Valkyrie... but when it comes to welding, we've got you covered: https://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/vt-1-battroidwork.htm Quote
SebastianP Posted 1 hour ago Posted 1 hour ago (edited) 34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said: I was thinking more of the crew spaces themselves, where most of the onboard shots take place. The Elysion's bridge appears no bigger than the Macross Quarter's, for instance. The briefing room where they hold several of their discussions with Berger and others is barely large enough to accommodate the main cast. To an extent, I suspect this is because of reused interior design from the Quarter. There are some shots in the TV series where the hangar appears to be a split-level affair to permit embarkation of VFs without ladders. As to the size of the Macross Cannon and whether it's present on both ships or just one... that's not officially confirmed AFAIK. You can't really scale by "small compartments" though, because in that case I could go "the Nimitz class has really a really small toilet, so it must be a really small ship". And the size of the bridge seems to vary quite a bit. Just for reference, the bridge window on the Elysion at "canon" scale is just over 11 meters wide at its widest point. I think this is a fair bit wider than 11 meters, personally,especially since the window needs to go over the sides of those grey pods too. I just don't have the skills to scale it properly. By single level, I meant that there's only one deck for the fighters, but there's more than that in the back because you also have the upper hangar just below the bridge. And back there there's enough volume for it to go deeper, as well. Not so much in the rest of the ship, since there's visible machinery. Edited 1 hour ago by SebastianP Quote
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