Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[TG Remix]

17 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Destroids were practically abandoned as a concept after the First Space War.  The only "new" models we've seen are modernizations and retrofits of pre-war 03 or 04 Series units like the Cheyenne II or Super Defender.  The only commonplace one seems to be the Cheyenne II, partially (possibly mainly) via the unarmed Destroid Work model and the scaled-down Workroid.

You'd think they'd be mostly abandoned, but not only we have said modernizations (which seemed to be popular in their own right,) but they appear as the occasional enemies in VF-X2. Initially I thought they were only used by Vinderance, a resistance group that used what they can get their hands on, who may or may not got potential backing from Max himself (that's probably the reason why their fleet is made up of the same type of Meltran ships the UN uses in there.) But come Mission 10A, Defenders, Phalanxs, and Tomahawks acted as the main defense force of the under construction Ceres Base; and it wasn't a place in the middle of the boonies, Vinderance specifically target it as it was a front line base in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter against external threats, as its wide-range jamming capabilities can divert attention away from Earth.

 

(Granted the near identical Mission 10B where you destroy the Vinderance Base not only has the same Destroids and Annabella Lasiodora as the boss, but looks exactly the same as an incomplete Macro-Training Base Ship we see in the Macross 7 fleet, but it's Macross, you can hand wave it somehow, if not for how the Latence route almost definitively didn't happen.)

 

My guess is that Destroids would be better suited as a economic solution to base and city defense compared to the more costly VFs since Frontier and Delta have them in those roles; though then again there were the VF-1s stationed at Apollo Base in Mars and the Diamond Fleet being relocated as City 7's defense, so who's to say?

[pengbuzz]

39 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

You'd think they'd be mostly abandoned, but not only we have said modernizations (which seemed to be popular in their own right,) but they appear as the occasional enemies in VF-X2. Initially I thought they were only used by Vinderance, a resistance group that used what they can get their hands on, who may or may not got potential backing from Max himself (that's probably the reason why their fleet is made up of the same type of Meltran ships the UN uses in there.) But come Mission 10A, Defenders, Phalanxs, and Tomahawks acted as the main defense force of the under construction Ceres Base; and it wasn't a place in the middle of the boonies, Vinderance specifically target it as it was a front line base in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter against external threats, as its wide-range jamming capabilities can divert attention away from Earth.

 

(Granted the near identical Mission 10B where you destroy the Vinderance Base not only has the same Destroids and Annabella Lasiodora as the boss, but looks exactly the same as an incomplete Macro-Training Base Ship we see in the Macross 7 fleet, but it's Macross, you can hand wave it somehow, if not for how the Latence route almost definitively didn't happen.)

 

My guess is that Destroids would be better suited as a economic solution to base and city defense compared to the more costly VFs since Frontier and Delta have them in those roles; though then again there were the VF-1s stationed at Apollo Base in Mars and the Diamond Fleet being relocated as City 7's defense, so who's to say?

I also wonder if surplus destroids were purchased by several municipalities and modified for other purposes?

*Imagines a destroid plowing the road after a snowstorm in December*

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, TG Remix said:

You'd think they'd be mostly abandoned, but not only we have said modernizations (which seemed to be popular in their own right,) but they appear as the occasional enemies in VF-X2. Initially I thought they were only used by Vinderance, a resistance group that used what they can get their hands on, who may or may not got potential backing from Max himself (that's probably the reason why their fleet is made up of the same type of Meltran ships the UN uses in there.) But come Mission 10A, Defenders, Phalanxs, and Tomahawks acted as the main defense force of the under construction Ceres Base; and it wasn't a place in the middle of the boonies, Vinderance specifically target it as it was a front line base in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter against external threats, as its wide-range jamming capabilities can divert attention away from Earth.

Thus far, only two attempts to modernize existing Destroid lines have been mentioned across not quite 60 years of in-story time.  Only one of which was successful (the Cheyenne II).

No mentions of any new model development for the New UN Forces or PMCs in all that time either and we know the military's decommissioning and selling off the First Space War machines to civilian users for conversion into heavy construction equipment.

WRT Ceres Base, I'd assume there are old, possibly formerly mothballed, Destroids stationed there because the base is incomplete and it's one of the few spacecraft large enough to have Destroids maneuver inside of it safely.  Presumably once the base comes online, they'd replace the Destroids with static point defense guns and missile launchers like all of the other New UN Forces ships and rely on Valkyries for local area defense.

 

4 hours ago, TG Remix said:

My guess is that Destroids would be better suited as a economic solution to base and city defense compared to the more costly VFs since Frontier and Delta have them in those roles; though then again there were the VF-1s stationed at Apollo Base in Mars and the Diamond Fleet being relocated as City 7's defense, so who's to say?

Given what we know about tactics in Macross, there's not a lot of value in basing defenses on a planet's surface.

The thousands of remaining Zentradi main fleets are the main threat at large in the galaxy.  Their usual MO is to blast their way to orbital supremacy and then simply flatten enemy surface targets from orbit like they did to Earth in the First Space War or to Spica III in Variable Fighter Master File.  That's why the New UN Spacy's defenses are organized around avoidance first and foremost using active and passive stealth technology, and then around keeping enemy forces away from orbital space with various defensive fleets and orbital defense stations.  

Destroids on the ground aren't much use against an enemy that's never going to come down there to fight.

That's almost certainly why the Al Shahal NUNS is only able to muster token resistance to the Var-affected NUNS Marines on the surface.  Their defenses are mainly up in orbit, so what they had on hand while the space defenses were occupied by the Aerial Knights was the Valkyrie units that'd been rotated to surface postings and the handful of air defense destroids that'd probably been configured for remote operation in static emplacements until things went south.  Maybe that's why they struggle to hit anything in the episode... hasty switchover from unmanned to manned operation and/or out-of-practice pilots.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

I also wonder if surplus destroids were purchased by several municipalities and modified for other purposes?

*Imagines a destroid plowing the road after a snowstorm in December*

We see a fair bit of that in Macross 7's 15th episode, "A Girl's Jealousy".

In that episode, the citizens of City 7 bring out their privately owned Valkyries and Destroids for a carnival that's a low-key recruitment drive for an ad hoc defense force.  There are a number of privately owned VF-1s in the crowd, but also several Destroids that have been disarmed and modified as various kinds of construction equipment.  There's a Spartan that has both hands replaced by drills, a Defender with a vertical drilling rig fitted, a Tomahawk with what appears to be a massive pair of dozer blades, a Phalanx with a massive cement mixing drum and trowel, etc.

Of course, some of the Destroids ended up being used as literal target practice as seen in Macross Plus.

[SebastianP]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Given what we know about tactics in Macross, there's not a lot of value in basing defenses on a planet's surface.

The thousands of remaining Zentradi main fleets are the main threat at large in the galaxy.  Their usual MO is to blast their way to orbital supremacy and then simply flatten enemy surface targets from orbit like they did to Earth in the First Space War or to Spica III in Variable Fighter Master File.  That's why the New UN Spacy's defenses are organized around avoidance first and foremost using active and passive stealth technology, and then around keeping enemy forces away from orbital space with various defensive fleets and orbital defense stations.  

Destroids on the ground aren't much use against an enemy that's never going to come down there to fight.

Yeah, Destroids make more sense in the "defending against other ground units" role, but since Plus combat has gone more towards the "lightning VF raids", I do wish we'd have seen more destroids in Delta since they're noted to be cheaper to produce than VFs and Brisingr Cluster isn't giving off "super rich" vibes. 

Then again, while watching the Aerial knights fly face first into a crossfire set up by a bunch of Super Defenders and Cheyenne IIs and get deleted would have been amusing, it would have made for a short show if the enemies ran out in episode 3. ;D

[pengbuzz]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We see a fair bit of that in Macross 7's 15th episode, "A Girl's Jealousy".

In that episode, the citizens of City 7 bring out their privately owned Valkyries and Destroids for a carnival that's a low-key recruitment drive for an ad hoc defense force.  There are a number of privately owned VF-1s in the crowd, but also several Destroids that have been disarmed and modified as various kinds of construction equipment.  There's a Spartan that has both hands replaced by drills, a Defender with a vertical drilling rig fitted, a Tomahawk with what appears to be a massive pair of dozer blades, a Phalanx with a massive cement mixing drum and trowel, etc.

Of course, some of the Destroids ended up being used as literal target practice as seen in Macross Plus.

Ix that the episode where a trio of old monster pilots accidentally blow up a building?

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, SebastianP said:

Yeah, Destroids make more sense in the "defending against other ground units" role, but since Plus combat has gone more towards the "lightning VF raids", I do wish we'd have seen more destroids in Delta since they're noted to be cheaper to produce than VFs and Brisingr Cluster isn't giving off "super rich" vibes. 

Then again, while watching the Aerial knights fly face first into a crossfire set up by a bunch of Super Defenders and Cheyenne IIs and get deleted would have been amusing, it would have made for a short show if the enemies ran out in episode 3. ;D

Even in the original Macross series, the Destroids weren't able to do the jobs they were designed for because they ended up in space aboard the Macross instead of planetside on Earth waiting for an invasion that wasn't coming.

Macross Plus, Macross 7, and later titles simply did the logical thing and replaced 'em with more compact and efficient point defense guns and launchers.

Destroids may be cheaper than a Valkyrie, but they're also far more limited.  They're either groundbound or stuck in specially designed bunkers on the outside of a handful of rare ship classes that actually support them like the Macross Quarter-class or the Macross Elysion-type.  With most of Macross Delta's combat taking place either in space away from ships or in the air over population centers and Protoculture ruins, working them into the story would be difficult.  And it would take a certain je ne sais quoi out of the story if their antagonists were shot to bits by a ground-based anti-aircraft machinegun during their flashy maneuvers.

 

2 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Ix that the episode where a trio of old monster pilots accidentally blow up a building?

Yup, that's the one.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even in the original Macross series, the Destroids weren't able to do the jobs they were designed for because they ended up in space aboard the Macross instead of planetside on Earth waiting for an invasion that wasn't coming.

Macross Plus, Macross 7, and later titles simply did the logical thing and replaced 'em with more compact and efficient point defense guns and launchers.

Destroids may be cheaper than a Valkyrie, but they're also far more limited.  They're either groundbound or stuck in specially designed bunkers on the outside of a handful of rare ship classes that actually support them like the Macross Quarter-class or the Macross Elysion-type.  With most of Macross Delta's combat taking place either in space away from ships or in the air over population centers and Protoculture ruins, working them into the story would be difficult.  And it would take a certain je ne sais quoi out of the story if their antagonists were shot to bits by a ground-based anti-aircraft machinegun during their flashy maneuvers.

I think the most use they ever came in was when Misa Hayase organized them in the bow of Daedalus for the Daedalus Attack.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yup, that's the one.

Good; my memory still works then.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

I think the most use they ever came in was when Misa Hayase organized them in the bow of Daedalus for the Daedalus Attack.

Also the final battle of the war, with the Macross Attack.

[SebastianP]

 

+9

[SebastianP]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even in the original Macross series, the Destroids weren't able to do the jobs they were designed for because they ended up in space aboard the Macross instead of planetside on Earth waiting for an invasion that wasn't coming.

They did see plenty of use though - aside from standing around on the hull and potting battlepods that got close, as well as the Daedalus attack, they were also used in the city (both in the few fights that broke into the city, and for rubble cleaning and construction work. I distinctly remember it was a destroid that opened the way into the hull section where Minmei and Hikaru were sealed into.)

The only one of the original destroid designs I'd consider retiring without replacement is the Tomahawk, because it's a tank on legs that's supposed to fight other tanks on legs, and it never really had the mobility for what it needed to do.

The Defender was already upgraded into the Super Defender, filling a similar role to the Cheyenne.

The Phalanx, I could easily imagine having a use in the modern era, as missiles never go out of style. 

The Spartan I'd consider turning into a police mecha, Patlabor style, because mixed Macro/Miclone communities exist, as well as work destroids. Though I suppose the canon solution is Macronized Zentraedi cops. 

The Monster was also already upgraded to give it all the mobility the original lacked and then some. 

I would *consider*, maybe, tomahawking or phalanxing the Cheyenne chassis (i.e. giving it bigger, slower-firing guns, or large missile pods), 

Then again... given the vibe we see in the shows, it feels like only Zentraedi who crave the warrior lifestyle seem to sign up for ground combat duty and they'd be in Macro-scale mecha, which already have the mobility that the destroids lack. 

Edited 8 hours ago by SebastianP

[pengbuzz]

I think one important role the Destroids served in the story was to point out how the "battlefield of yesterday" doesn't necessarily prepare you for the battlefield of tomorrow. 

UN Spacy developed the Destroids on the assumption (as previously pointed out by @Seto Kaiba on several occasions) that whoever came looking for the ASS-1/ Macross would be conducting a traditional ground war that would deal in holding territory. It never crystalized in anyone's thinking that when they came, it would be largely space-based. I also think Seto pointed out that as the reason there wasn't more of a focus on the fuel capacity of the VF-1's in space, as it was assumed most action would be in atmosphere.

 All of that said: I think if UN Spacy had a better idea of the actual "playing field", we'd have seen more fighters with a larger fuel supply (maybe something more akin to the VF-4 out the gate), perhaps less of an emphasis on transforming fighters, and a far greater emphasis on planetary defenses like the orbital network in Macross Plus.