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 12 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.

[SebastianP]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

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.

I'm not sure I accept this as written.

At the start of the project was very likely "let's develop alien-sized robots to fight the giant aliens", but you *also* have the Unification Wars going on at the same time, and it's kind of difficult to keep your development focus on equipment strictly to fight the *next* war while you're hip deep in an ongoing war already. It would rapidly have become "the enemy is developing giant robots, so we're developing giant robots to fight their giant robots!" among those not in the know about the aliens. 

Especially when the certainty that there will be a next war is kind of fading, because the aliens don't show for ten years.

So it's not even that the Destroids were developed for the battlefield of "yesterday", they were for the battlefield of "today", only midnight came out of nowhere.

Also note that the initial battle on South Ataria Island was exactly the kind of thing the destroids were supposed to fight - a ground invasion. The fold to Pluto and having to run the gauntlet to get back home was not in anyone's plans, the idea was to get to Lunar orbit and reinforce with more space units. 

Anyway, if the UN Spacy had convincing evidence of the actual playing field, I think so many bricks would have been shat that they could have constructed the whole grand cannon system out of them by 2005. Unification War? What Unification War? We have no time for wars, the ALIENS are coming, and there's billions of them!

Edit: Also, I've been playing around with a 3D model of Battle Frontier for a bit. We are unlikely to ever return anywhere near the Macross 7 fleet, but if there ever was anything set there in the future, how far off do you think I'd be with this interpretation of Battle 7?

 

 

Edited 1 hour ago by SebastianP

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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.

They do see a bit of use, but ultimately they're very very limited by the constraints of operating aboard a space warship instead of on the ground like they were intended.  

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

I distinctly remember it was a destroid that opened the way into the hull section where Minmei and Hikaru were sealed into.)

Your memory is playing you false there, I'm afraid.

In the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross TV series, Hikaru and Minmay are found when an enemy missile with a dud warhead is mishandled and breaks through the deck above into the space they were trapped in. 

In the movie version, the emergency bulkhead just opens up.

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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

It was, yes... but it doesn't seem to have achieved any kind of widespread adoption as it is only used by the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army and only on a trial basis.  

In multiple versions of the Frontier storyline, the Macross Galaxy fleet has a penchant for keeping older designs (or even competitor designs) in service past their use-by date as a weird sort of flex in favor of their parent company's products.  In Macross the Ride they've tried to modernize the Defender and have a local spec of the VF-19C specifically to flex on Shinsei Industry by building a better VF-19.  In the Macross Frontier TV novelization, they're using modernized VF-9s and VF-17s in their forces.

Both cases, well... a basic beam CIWS system seems to have eaten their lunch thanks to lower cost and no ammo limitation.

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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

Same deal as the above, for most ships the same job can be done with a fixed launcher system.

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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. 

We've actually seen two dedicated police mecha in Macross 7. 

One is an armored car sort of machine that turns into something vaguely akin to a Zaku Tank armed with a bazooka, and the other is a twin ducted fan aircraft with arms and a deployable tricycle undercarriage for a body that can wield a gunpod.

Ironically, the reason for their existence is given as the number of surplus Valkyries and Destroids which were making their way into civilian hands.

Past 2030, though, giant Zentradi communities are quite rare.  They're banned on Earth, and most emigrant fleets don't permit Zentradi to live as giants for resource reasons.  The Frontier fleet is quite rare for allowing that.  One could call it a very substantial and very blatant display of the fleet's immense wealth.  

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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

It stopped being a Destroid, though... it became a glass cannon variable bomber due to its structural issues.

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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

The Cheyenne II already has a pair of large particle beam cannons slung under its rotary cannons.

 

10 hours ago, SebastianP said:

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. 

As of Frontier, they seem to end up in the New UN Spacy Marine Corps which has dedicated Zentradi units and seems to pull a lot of garrison duty to give them the structure they need in life.

 

 

23 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

At the start of the project was very likely "let's develop alien-sized robots to fight the giant aliens", but you *also* have the Unification Wars going on at the same time, and it's kind of difficult to keep your development focus on equipment strictly to fight the *next* war while you're hip deep in an ongoing war already. It would rapidly have become "the enemy is developing giant robots, so we're developing giant robots to fight their giant robots!" among those not in the know about the aliens. 

Eh... I'd call this half right?

The Earth UN Government and Earth UN Forces were pursuing development of weapons based on alien overtechnology to construct a planetary defense against a hypothetical alien invasion.  We know the requirements involved in development of the Battroid and Destroid were constructed around that premise rather than any possibility of use against other humans.  The UN Forces reluctantly pressed developmental and prototype weapons into service towards the end of the Unification Wars as a response to Anti-Unification forces obtaining and employing OTM-based weapons themselves, some of which were developed not just for fighting aliens but also with an eye towards practical use against humans.

After all, the UN Forces had a massive advantage in manpower and resources.  Most of the Unification Wars was little peacekeeping actions to suppress minor regional disputes along ethnic, sectarian, or regional lines and even when those groups started forming their own Alliance they were massively, massively outgunned most of the time.

The general public was already aware that aliens existed even before the Unification Wars started, so no such excuses would have been necessary.  The United Nations made the formal announcement that the existence of alien life had been confirmed in June 2000.  That announcement was quickly followed by the announcement that the nations of Earth had agreed to band together to form a world government.  The Unification Wars started the next month.  That the aliens used giant robotic weapons themselves was also not all that secret, since several combat pods were recovered from the wreck and extensively studied to reverse-engineer their technologies.  The main point that was secret was that those aliens were expected to be 10m tall.

 

23 minutes ago, SebastianP said:

Anyway, if the UN Spacy had convincing evidence of the actual playing field, I think so many bricks would have been shat that they could have constructed the whole grand cannon system out of them by 2005. Unification War? What Unification War? We have no time for wars, the ALIENS are coming, and there's billions of them!

They would probably have learned all they could, then chucked the ship back into space and sent it on a blind fold jump somewhere - anywhere - else in the hopes that the Zentradi would pass them by.