Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Seto Kaiba]

48 minutes ago, Big s said:

Not sure if it’s a question that’s been answered, but was wondering about the pack in the right hip of the Nousjadeul Ger armors. Seems to be a similar pack with both the movie and tv show versions. The one in the left hip seems to be a simple armor piece, but the right side looks very different. 

According to Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet SDFM TV Zentradi 03A "Nousjadeul-Ger", it's a magazine case meant to hold reloads for the Nousjadeul-Ger's handheld weapons like the laser machine pistol it normally wields.

 

 

47 minutes ago, TehPW said:

Here's a idea about the UNMC: Are they supposed to be ground-based ie Destroids and Regults?

One would presume the UN Marine Corps would be primarily naval infantry, with armored and aerial support as appropriate... though we have almost no way of confirming that.

There are precious few sources that actually mention the UN Marine Corps.  The oldest, the Sky Angels VF-1 Valkyrie tech manual, mentions that there were a substantial number of Marines stationed aboard the SLV-111 Daedalus.  Not as Destroid operators, but as a naval infantry force supported by a number of marine aviators to man the helicopters, fighters, and support craft carried aboard the ship.  Sky Angels also asserts that there were UN Marine fighter and fighter/attack squadrons using the VF-1 Valkyrie.

Macross Zero does show one UN Marine Corps soldier named Katie training with the VF-0 pilots and indicates she's going to be training on a VF-0.  Official media does mention the Marine Corps had a purpose-made VF-0 variant of their own (the VF-0C).  Hasegawa did a model kit for it back in the day, and the markings they chose to give it were those of UN Marine Corps model conversion training squadron VMFAT-203 Hawks.  The Hawks are noted to have been a Hawaii-based squadron that had a number of aircraft stationed aboard SLV-111 Daedalus in 2008.  The Hawks transitioned to the VF-1 Valkyrie in 2009 and trained Marine Corps aviators on the fighter for a brief time before being transferred to being a Spacy Marine Corps squadron under the designation SVFM-31 (probably supposed to be SVMF-31) for a period of about two years until they were again reorganized by the newly established New UN Forces and became a Spacy squadron as SVF-31.

I wonder if the regular Marine Corps simply got absorbed by, or is interchangeable with, the Spacy Marine Corps past a certain point?

[Big s]

18 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

According to Macross Chronicle Mechanic Sheet SDFM TV Zentradi 03A "Nousjadeul-Ger", it's a magazine case meant to hold reloads for the Nousjadeul-Ger's handheld weapons like the laser machine pistol it normally wields.

I could see something like that for the movie version, since it’s not clear how the ammo feeds into the pistol, but the drum on the tv version appears too big for the pack 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm pretty sure they care at least a little, since they have mentioned the Dancing Skulls in other volumes and the references to the VF-3000's classified deployment to Special Forces units is pretty clearly a reference to Macross M3.

That said, I'd assume the Neo York Liberation League probably didn't purchase their VF-3000s from Shinsei Industry and wouldn't be mentioned among their legitimate/intended customers.  Of course there is also the possibility that the VF-3000s in Macross M3 are being retroactively identified as PMC craft hired by the Liberation League.

 

 

Cost-effectiveness was certainly a priority for a lot of 2nd Generation VFs, but I think a solid argument can be made that cost-effectiveness was just one of several shifting priorities which were part of the larger generational objective of developing VFs around the evolving (and at the time poorly-understood) needs of early emigrant fleets and planets.

Early 2nd Generation Variable Fighters like the VF-X-3, VF-4, and VF-3000 don't mention cost or ease of manufacture as a primary design objective.  The VF-X-3 was lost during the First Space War but was said to have performance exceeding that of even the VF-4.  The VF-4 and VF-3000 were both designed to address the shortcomings of the original VF-1 in space operations.  Larger airframes with more room for internal propellant tanks and sub-engine systems.  Larger and longer-ranged energy weapons to reduce their dependence on limited ammunition.  Improved live support systems in the event of the craft being disabled or destroyed, to preserve the life of the pilot as long as possible while waiting for a rescue.  Both of those models were introduced around the time of the very first emigrant fleet launches.

Those 2nd Generation designs that entered development or service after Humanity started to discover habitable planets are the ones that, surely not coincidentally, are described with statements like "inexpensive" and "easily manufactured on developing emigrant planets".  Once emigrant fleets started actually finding habitable worlds that they could start colonizing right away, suddenly the need wasn't just for big Valkyries with high operational endurance in space.  Now they also needed something light and inexpensive that they could use for planetside service.  Something they could manufacture on the cheap without jeopardizing their development plans for the planet's surface.  So from there, we get a bevy of low-cost, low-complexity solutions like the VF-5, VF-6, VF-7, VF-5000, and finally VF-9 that all served as supplements to the VF-4.  

Both Macross Chronicle and Master File generally agree that the thing that did the most damage to the VF-3000's prospects was the fact that it was essentially Stonewell Bellcom (later Shinsei Industry) competing against itself unnecessarily.  The company already had a largely complete next-generation main Variable Fighter program focusing on improved space performance under active testing with the New UN Forces... the VF-4 Lightning III.  If Master File is correct the VF-3000 may have served as an important test that the newly formed Shinsei Industry was up to the job of continuing VF development and manufacture for the New UN Forces (the VF-4 having been mostly a prewar program), but the final product was still basically redundant as a competitor to a design the New UN Forces had already decided to adopt.  

 

 

Based on what's said in the Macross 30: Voices Across the Galaxy novelization, the events of Macross the Ride straight-up created a market for replicas of those old model VFs.  Not only are there other cases of replicas being built, there's supposedly a direct causal relationship between the two.

In Macross 30's novel version, Leon mentions in passing that the VF-0 Phoenix in SMS's possession - the one Leon gets stuck with in the game version's tutorial - is a replica which was produced commercially to capitalize on the popularity of a particular Vanquish League racer's replica VF-0 from two years prior.  The only VF-0 that competed in the league in 2058 was Hakuna Aoba's VF-0改 "Sieg"/"Zeke", so apparently his participation made enough of a stir that someone (Shinsei?) decided to produce replica VF-0s with modern parts (from the VF-1C and VF-5000) for the civilian market. 

It wouldn't be at all surprising if Magdalena Zielonaska's SV-52γ, which participated in the league for far longer than Hakuna Aoba's VF-0改 did, created a similar stir and demand for a commercially-available replica machine.  Replica SV-51s are found on Uroboros in 2060, and someone has to be making them and selling them to civilians.  It wouldn't be all that surprising if they were already commercially available before 2060 and the manufacturer was engaged with the film's production as a product placement or something.

 

 

As far as we know, yeah... the 2059 film Bird Human was the first time the recently-declassified events of the Mayan Island incident were dramatized.

I'd assume the films Master File is referring to here are dramatizations of other incidents previously mentioned in Master File or possibly other sources like Macross the First.  They don't specify, though.  There are at least two other major engagements mentioned... the attack on Grand Cannon III in Africa and the ill-fated plan to attack the UN Forces HQ at Grand Cannon I in Alaska that was almost literally foiled before it could get off the ground.

Incidentally, I'm told the remark about the one time the VF-3000 played the role of the SV-51 by being painted black is almost certainly meant to be a reference to Top Gun, which used US Navy F-5E's painted black as the fictional "MiG-28".  

 

 

Very dubious indeed.  Epsilon Foundation absolutely has access to the Sv-303 since they make the bloody things, but regular enemies?  In Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! they're presented as a production (or production-intent) unmanned fighter that outclasses even the 5.5th Generation VF-31 Siegfried and Sv-262 Draken III.

Even Xaos's VF-31AX Kairos Plus - which Master File asserts are a hasty and incomplete conversion of the VF-31 Siegfried into a experimental/developmental 6th Generation test machine - were only barely able to keep up with them one-on-one.  Max's 6th Generation YF-29 was the only machine that really outclassed them... which probably owes at least as much to Max's own over-the-top specs as it does the YF-29's. 😆

 

 

Eh... I mean, that was kind of already explicitly the case going the other way from the YF-29's introduction in Macross Frontier: the Wings of Goodbye.

Fold quartz in general is quite rare.  It does occur in nature, but it's implied that the vast majority of what's out there is synthesized either by the Vajra or the Protoculture.  The 5th Generation VFs like the VF-24, VF-25, VF-27, and VF-31 use the stuff sparingly and only where it's absolutely unavoidable.  Namely, the Inertia Store Converter protecting the pilot from the incredible g-forces the fighter is capable of.  The rest of its systems use high quality synthetic fold carbon.  The fold quartz they use is of a size and purity that's common enough to make ISC systems with reliable output in bulk.  Presumably it's similar in size to what we see them pulling out of Vajra carcasses... an oblong sliver of gemstone around three centimeters or so long.  (Maybe 20 or so carats if we assume a comparably sized and shaped diamond?)

In short, 5th Generation VFs can be mass produced precisely because their fold quartz is comparatively low quality enough to be accessible in bulk.

The size and purity of fold quartz needed to make a working Fold Wave System for a 6th Generation VF is explicitly borderline Unobtainium, however.

The YF-29's Fold Wave System needed four 1,000 carat pieces of ultra-high purity fold quartz to function.  Sure, 1,000 carats is only 200 grams, but that's still a gemstone of about the same size as a regulation baseball at a purity level that Macross Frontier says can only be found in Vajra queens.  Master File claims that reproducing the performance of Alto's original YF-29[A] is essentially impossible because fold quartz of the requisite size and purity simply does not exist in any accessible form and that all subsequent YF-29s are lower-performance copies of the original due to inferior fold quartz.  Even ignoring Master File, such high-quality fold quartz is so impossibly rare that officially only a double handful of YF-29s have ever been built and they're all essentially irreplaceable.  Macross Delta's VF-31 Siegfrieds and VF-31AX Kairos Pluses are equipped with an economized version of the FWS which uses less (and lower purity) fold quartz.  The required material is still incredibly rare and expensive, but it's at least affordable enough for them to field half a dozen of their FWS-equipped custom VF-31s with reduced performance as the main consequence.  (Master File alleges this version of the FWS also needs an external fold wave source to operate.)

 

 

Eh... I think that still creates the problem of having a unit of invincible godmode sues whose VFs have no limits.

AKA Gundam. 

[Seto Kaiba]

58 minutes ago, Big s said:

I could see something like that for the movie version, since it’s not clear how the ammo feeds into the pistol, but the drum on the tv version appears too big for the pack 

In some of the line art, it looks like that case might almost be large enough to hold one of the drums... but we don't actually know that the drum is the laser machine pistol's magazine, or where the magazine is.

 

53 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

AKA Gundam. 

Pretty much, yeah.

The 6th Generation prototypes veer heavily towards Gundam-style Super Prototype territory heavily enough as it is.  The main thing keeping them from actually getting there is that they're held in reserve as an 11th Hour Powerup for the story's climax rather than being the main mecha, and that in-story the developers absolutely intended to mass produce them as-is instead of watering them down into a much weaker production machine.  

[JB0]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

and that in-story the developers absolutely intended to mass produce them as-is instead of watering them down into a much weaker production machine.  

That's a cliche I've never really understood. Surely the point of trialing a prototype is to find out if it meets performance expectations and is fit for purpose. Adopting a machine that WASN'T trialed based on the performance of the machine you tested just doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's like if the US had tested the YF-22 and then bought the F-35A because the -22 tested so well, instead of testing the YF-35.

[Master Dex]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

That's a cliche I've never really understood. Surely the point of trialing a prototype is to find out if it meets performance expectations and is fit for purpose. Adopting a machine that WASN'T trialed based on the performance of the machine you tested just doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's like if the US had tested the YF-22 and then bought the F-35A because the -22 tested so well, instead of testing the YF-35.

Accurate, there is a real use case for doing the Gundam thing though, and that's called a technology demonstrator. It's a unit full of new and experimental stuff designed to trial things out and figure out how to apply then to production and other prototypes. The tech demo itself is not designed to be a fielded unit, but sometimes it can take the shape of a super capable highly expensive unit. In truth doing it like this isn't economical and most tech will be tested piecemeal but it's an option to do it Gundam style. 

There is a pseudo example in Macross with the YF-30 which is in truth a tech demo for the Fold Dimensional Resonance system developed by Aisha Blanchette. To wit the flight unit is described not as a variable fighter but a variable super dimension diver. So why the YF code? In short, SMS didn't want to tell the NUNG about the specs and the laws of how VF prototypes work says they don't need to disclose details for production prototypes. So they lied. Obviously the events of Macross 30 ensured they got caught so the design became known, which indirectly led to the supposed YF-31 that became the Kairos by Surya Aerospace, which doesn't have the fancy tech in it of course.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, JB0 said:

That's a cliche I've never really understood. Surely the point of trialing a prototype is to find out if it meets performance expectations and is fit for purpose. Adopting a machine that WASN'T trialed based on the performance of the machine you tested just doesn't make a lot of sense.

It's like if the US had tested the YF-22 and then bought the F-35A because the -22 tested so well, instead of testing the YF-35.

As a trope/cliche, it has its origins in the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam series as a sort of Drama Preserving Handicap.

Mobile Suit Gundam was the first "real robot" subgenre mecha anime, and even though the series more or less established the idea of mass producing giant robots as weapons of war the titular mobile suit still had a lot of "super robot" DNA in it.  The Gundam was a de facto one-of-a-kind hero mecha that singlehandedly changed the course of the war with its incredible capabilities.  Its exotic super alloy armor made it nearly impervious to the enemy's weapons.  Its beam rifle and beam sabers were so powerful they could destroy an enemy robot in a single hit.  Its learning computer meant that it got better at fighting with every battle it fought and its kid pilot became a better fighter the more experience he gained.

White Base's mission was to return the Gundam, Guncannon, and Guntank to the Federation Forces HQ on Earth so they could be analyzed and the data from them used to complete the Federation's mobile suit program.  Resolving that thread of Gundam's plot posed a problem.  They couldn't very well have the Gundam itself be mass produced without removing their hero mecha's visual distinctiveness and removing any prospects for future dramatic tension in the story.  It wouldn't be much of a war once the Federation entered the fray with thousands of identical, nigh-invulnerable robots that could each take on whole squads of Zeon mobile suits at a time.  So they created the GM as a "loser" version of the Gundam so the Gundam would remain special and visually distinctive and the Federation could have cannon fodder machines without having to bring the Gundam down to "normal" status.

That's the Doylist explanation.  The accompanying Watsonian explanation they cooked up to justify the GM's existence is that the Federation originally did intend to mass produce the RX-78 Gundam.  The course of the war, the cost involved, and the immediacy of their need for large numbers of mobile suits in the field forced them to compromise and simplify their design to speed up production and get as many units in the field as quickly as possible.  They started with the RX-78 Gundam's basic design and started removing everything that was not considered 100% necessary and/or a potential cost or time bottleneck in production.  Luna titanium got the axe because it took too long to make and cost too much.  Core Block functions were removed as unnecessary complexity.  The simpler head design from the Guncannon was adopted because it was easier to manufacture, etc.  The end result was the RGM-79 GM, a machine with higher performance than Zeon's flagship MS's but without the invincible hero properties of the Gundam.  Had the Federation's need for mobile suits not been quite so immediate and urgent, they would have proceeded to mass produce the Gundam and the final stages of the war would likely have gone VERY differently (and a great deal worse for Zeon).  

Past that point, though... the writers kind of forget that aspect entirely and Gundams become one-off super machines that Anaheim Electronics makes to try out a new technology or simply because they have nothing better to do.

 

The next few "real robot" titles kind of played with the idea of a mass-produced hero mecha, but ultimately avoided it through plot contrivances.  Dougram had the titular mecha be set up for mass production but then the factory and blueprints were destroyed, leaving it a one-of-a-kind machine.  Xabungle also implies that the Xabungle is a production machine but a very low volume one with only a handful made.  It's not until Super Dimension Fortress Macross that we get our first real robot mecha anime with a truly mass-produced "hero" machine, eliminating the need for super prototypes or super prototype-like plot contrivances.

Edited 2 hours ago by Seto Kaiba