Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[Captain Global]

Recently I've been rewatching Zero with the gorgeous new remaster and found this little guy. 

It seems like a mig 29 with sv 51 canards and micro missile launchers. 

I've seen Zero quite a few times and it wasn't until now that I saw it, also I have not seen it mentioned on the forums or the official renders on the artbooks.

Nothing spectacular, but I find it really odd they modeled it just for the final battle.  

[sketchley]

1 hour ago, Captain Global said:

Recently I've been rewatching Zero with the gorgeous new remaster and found this little guy. 

It seems like a mig 29 with sv 51 canards and micro missile launchers. 

I've seen Zero quite a few times and it wasn't until now that I saw it, also I have not seen it mentioned on the forums or the official renders on the artbooks.

Nothing spectacular, but I find it really odd they modeled it just for the final battle.  

 

There's two possibilities that I can think of:

1) they reused existing modelling assets and mashed them onto the MiG-29 (aren't the canards and micro-missile launchers directly ripped from the Sv-51?)

2) the publicity at the time of the remaster's release stated that they used AI to 'enhance' the images.  Could this be an example of an "AI hallucination" during that process?  Or could Kawamori-san possibly have used the tool to add additional details to the footage?

[RangerKarl]

No, the canard Fulcrum was there in the original release as well.

[Master Dex]

Besides the AI was used in upscaling, not generative imaging.

The only Macross product to date that has used any AI generative imaging was the clip of Angel Paints from Flashback that's on the 4K DYRL release and it's very obvious (and to be clear to those not aware, it's a separate clip, not in the DYRL movie)

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Captain Global said:

Recently I've been rewatching Zero with the gorgeous new remaster and found this little guy. 

It seems like a mig 29 with sv 51 canards and micro missile launchers. 

I've seen Zero quite a few times and it wasn't until now that I saw it, also I have not seen it mentioned on the forums or the official renders on the artbooks.

Nothing spectacular, but I find it really odd they modeled it just for the final battle.  

Yeah, it's one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments.

It doesn't get discussed much because we know basically nothing about it and the Macross Zero CG model(s) for the MiG-29 aren't detailed enough to identify which variant of the MiG-29 is even being used.  Even Variable Fighter Master File: VF-0 Phoenix, which goes into much more detail, barely mentions Mikoyan Gurevich's designs in passing since it has almost its entire focus on Sukhoi since they did a lot of the heavy lifting in the Alliance's VF program.  (The only MiG it really mentions is an OTM testbed called the MiG-2000 that appears to have nothing in common with the real/proposed MiG-2000, and which is itself mentioned only in passing in a section about a Sukhoi transitional model that rejoices in the uninspiring designation of SuX-27.)

The only book I know of that actually mentions this aircraft is the first volume of Tenjin Hidetaka's Valkyries artbook series.  On page 43, in a note on the box art for the Hasegawa 1/72 Macross Zero MiG-29 Fulcrum kit from 2002, a brief mention is made that a canard-equipped version of the MiG-29 appears in Ep5.

Presumably this unknown MiG-29 with canards is a lukewarm/early OTM adopter similar to the UN Forces F-14++ Tomcat Double Plus that was being used to both return an older model aircraft to service and evaluate some technologies being developed for future use in Variable Fighters.  Using the SV-51's missile pod/drop tank units isn't terribly surprising since the SV-51 is backwards compatible with Warsaw Pact hardware and given how ineffective the F-14's weapons were against the active stealth-equipped VF-0 they'd probably want some OTM-based munitions so they could actually fight the Asuka II's VF-0s.

 

[Sildani]

How long did it take to reverse-engineer the OT that was found? Materials science and understanding of quantum mechanics certainly took a couple of orders of magnitude's leap; but how long would that have taken to become anything practical? I recall Star Trek IV when Scotty showed the chemical arrangement of transparent aluminum: "It'll take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix."

[TG Remix]

I went through a personal journey of going through Variable Fighter Master File for the VF-19, and I came across it's detailing on how Earth orbital fleet is structured. Of course it's not official per se, but it's a nice perspective regardless.

 

As of 2050, Earth's defense line has up to 17 task force fleets (excluding special and 30 patrol fleets), including the reserve fleet, and each of them has an average of 150 ships. That's a whopping 2550 ships between Earth's orbit! Much bigger then any fleet we've heard of. It certainly felt that big when we saw it in Plus, they really don't want another repeat of SWI, huh. Interesting how it points out Jupiter and Mars being the second and third lines of defenses with two fleets each. Makes sense due to their positions, but aside from the Jupiter satellite cities, I'm not aware of the planet itself being noteworthy like Mars is with its cities and Apollo Base.

 

Each fleet is described to be composed of an amphibious command flagship, an amphibious assault ship, a guided missile cruiser, an Aegis destroyer, a stealth frigate, an aircraft carrier, and auxiliary vessels of the logistical support force such as supply ships. Fleets on the first and second defense lines may also be accompanied by beam gunboats and jamming stations.  The composition seems a lot more varied then what animated material gives us, mostly being carrier based with frigates and the odd cruiser (exceptions like the Varauta Army notwithstanding.)

 

The amphibious command ship I'm assuming is a Uraga, the frigates and carrier most likely the Northampton and Guantanamos, the amphibious assault ship I'm not sure if it's supposed to be either of the Zentradi or Meltradi types, but it'd go with the MF's notions of the remaining Zentradi fleet being deployed as the Solar System's first line of defense, and VF-X2's utilization of the latter type as both cargo and combat ready ships.  I have no idea what the guided missile cruisers would be, much less the Aegis destroyers. Doesn't seem like it'd be the transforming Destroyer in VF-X2, but the mention of beam gunboats could allude to the Atlantic-class Vandal from the same game. 

 

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Presumably this unknown MiG-29 with canards is a lukewarm/early OTM adopter similar to the UN Forces F-14++ Tomcat Double Plus that was being used to both return an older model aircraft to service and evaluate some technologies being developed for future use in Variable Fighters.  Using the SV-51's missile pod/drop tank units isn't terribly surprising since the SV-51 is backwards compatible with Warsaw Pact hardware and given how ineffective the F-14's weapons were against the active stealth-equipped VF-0 they'd probably want some OTM-based munitions so they could actually fight the Asuka II's VF-0s.

I always wondered, what are the differences and additions OTM technology would give to regular aircraft? Certainly not the transforming limbs, unless you count the F-14's wings lol. I'm not aware what would OTM-based munitions would be, unless they were laser based weapons.

Edited Sunday at 12:24 AM by TG Remix
Additional details and sentences.

[aurance]

I feel like even 2500 ships of various sizes wouldn’t stand up to a Zentraedi main fleet. I wonder what types of mass evacuation strategies they have created for the population of Earth itself to survive, other than the existential colony fleet plan.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Sildani said:

How long did it take to reverse-engineer the OT that was found? Materials science and understanding of quantum mechanics certainly took a couple of orders of magnitude's leap; but how long would that have taken to become anything practical?

Presumably it varied a bit depending on how similar the technology in question was to what we already had or whether they were simply practical versions of technology that already existed in theory.

After the establishment of OTEC in 2000 and the Earth Unification Government in 2001, the investment in OTM research was both global and massive.  Human-made imitations of at least some OTMaterials were available as early as March 2001 (after about 2 years of study), and once they solved certain core principles the dominos started falling faster and faster with a crude OTM thermounuclear reactor being brought online by November 2002, etc.  Practical laser weapons seem to have also been developed quite quickly, first seeing use in the mid-2000s.  

 

2 hours ago, Sildani said:

I recall Star Trek IV when Scotty showed the chemical arrangement of transparent aluminum: "It'll take years to figure out the dynamics of this matrix."

That is a bit different, IMO.  Scotty didn't hand the formula for transparent aluminum to a multinational research organization with unlimited funding backed by a world government.  He handed it over to a material scientist turned plant supervisor at a small plexiglass manufacturing company in 1980s San Francisco (or Burglingame, per the script).  

Spoiler

Mind you, Star Trek: Picard suggests Dr. Nichols had it figured out within 40 years of mostly solo work and the non-canon Pocket Books novel series suggest he may have had it figured out as early as 1993 (just 7 years later).  

 

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

I always wondered, what are the differences and additions OTM technology would give to regular aircraft? Certainly not the transforming limbs, unless you count the F-14's wings lol. I'm not aware what would OTM-based munitions would be, unless they were laser based weapons.

What little information we have on the subject indicates that both US and Russian-made "legacy" fighter designs like the F-14 and Su-27 that were improved with OTM were mainly receiving structural improvements/reinforcements using early/crude pseudo-OTMaterials to make them more durable and slightly stealthier.

At least where the F-14++ Tomcat is concerned, it's often mentioned that these were old/retired/mothballed airframes being rushed back into service with whatever improvements could be thrown together quickly due to a critical shortage of viable aircraft.  Such improvements were typically limited to replacing certain parts with harder-wearing ones made from early OTM composites, avionics modernization, and newer model engines.  

Master File opines that the experimental SuX-27 Flanker its writers invented for backstory purposes also received a prototype laser cannon similar to those that would one day be adopted by the Octos and VF-0.  We see that MiG-29 deploying early infrared-guided micro missiles, and Master File suggests that those and early hybrid-guided longer-ranged missiles like the OTM-based hybrid guidance AMRAAM2 were also on the table.  Since VFs with active stealth had yet to really make their presence known, most of the weapons used were conventional NATO and Warsaw Pact hardware like the AIM-9X, AIM-120D, etc.

[Seto Kaiba]

17 minutes ago, aurance said:

I feel like even 2500 ships of various sizes wouldn’t stand up to a Zentraedi main fleet. I wonder what types of mass evacuation strategies they have created for the population of Earth itself to survive, other than the existential colony fleet plan.

That's depend on the size of the main fleet... they run from a few hundred thousand to a few million ships.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur relates the story of an encounter with a 120,000 ship main fleet in 2037 as part of the VF-19/VF-22 development backstory.  After losing a colony in the Alpha Virginis system to the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet the New UN Forces rounded up every ship and Valkyrie within 300 light years of Earth and proceeded to throw them all at that main fleet spamming pretty much every thermonuclear reaction weapon they could lay hands on until the much-reduced enemy fleet was driven off.

Emigrant fleet defense forces of a few hundred ships are meant to be enough to run off or wipe out a Zentradi branch fleet.  2,500+ ships won't run off a Zentradi main fleet the size of Boddole Zer's ~5 million ships, but it will absolutely bring enough hurt to drive off or destroy smaller forces that are more typically encountered.

[aurance]

43 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's depend on the size of the main fleet... they run from a few hundred thousand to a few million ships.

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur relates the story of an encounter with a 120,000 ship main fleet in 2037 as part of the VF-19/VF-22 development backstory.  After losing a colony in the Alpha Virginis system to the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet the New UN Forces rounded up every ship and Valkyrie within 300 light years of Earth and proceeded to throw them all at that main fleet spamming pretty much every thermonuclear reaction weapon they could lay hands on until the much-reduced enemy fleet was driven off.

Emigrant fleet defense forces of a few hundred ships are meant to be enough to run off or wipe out a Zentradi branch fleet.  2,500+ ships won't run off a Zentradi main fleet the size of Boddole Zer's ~5 million ships, but it will absolutely bring enough hurt to drive off or destroy smaller forces that are more typically encountered.

Okay? So 2500 ships supposedly match your lower bound limit of main fleet ships of N00,000 Zent ships. There’s a whole huge range between that and N,000,000, for which I would think evacuation would be the best option. Unless they get lucky with some kind of protoculture shock again.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, aurance said:

Okay? So 2500 ships supposedly match your lower bound limit of main fleet ships of N00,000 Zent ships. There’s a whole huge range between that and N,000,000, for which I would think evacuation would be the best option. Unless they get lucky with some kind of protoculture shock again.

Even if evacuation is your aim, being able to delay the enemy while you prepare that evacuation is pretty important.

From that same account in Master File, the 73 ships and ~600 Valkyries of the Spica III New UN Spacy defense force were able to stall the advance of the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet for a period of several hours using their entire stockpile of thermonuclear reaction weapons.  Their sacrifice buys enough time for a partial evacuation to be organized and get more than 20,000 civilians offworld and out of harm's way.

[aurance]

Oh absolutely, I wasn’t implying a robust delaying force wouldn’t be critical.

[TG Remix]

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Variable Fighter Master File: VF-19 Excalibur relates the story of an encounter with a 120,000 ship main fleet in 2037 as part of the VF-19/VF-22 development backstory.  After losing a colony in the Alpha Virginis system to the Zentradi 1,534th Main Fleet the New UN Forces rounded up every ship and Valkyrie within 300 light years of Earth and proceeded to throw them all at that main fleet spamming pretty much every thermonuclear reaction weapon they could lay hands on until the much-reduced enemy fleet was driven off.

Emigrant fleet defense forces of a few hundred ships are meant to be enough to run off or wipe out a Zentradi branch fleet.  2,500+ ships won't run off a Zentradi main fleet the size of Boddole Zer's ~5 million ships, but it will absolutely bring enough hurt to drive off or destroy smaller forces that are more typically encountered.

It's certainly a lot more off a bombastic reason to have 4th Gen Valkyries be developed, isn't it? That feels like an event that if it happened in official material, it'd probably hang over the heads across the galaxy. Arguably more so then the time it happened on Earth, since there's millions of humans all over the galaxy to witness and know of it.

 

17 hours ago, aurance said:

I feel like even 2500 ships of various sizes wouldn’t stand up to a Zentraedi main fleet. I wonder what types of mass evacuation strategies they have created for the population of Earth itself to survive, other than the existential colony fleet plan.

 

Which is funny to me because that's easily the biggest number given to a fleet by far. The Macross 7 fleet had 185 ships plus its liaison and civilian ships, and then there's the Master File's notion that the Frontier fleet had 600. The only Navies in our world that exceeds that size is Russia's and China's, with none of the population numbers they have. Makes me think that UN ships are made to be a lot more autonomous then conventional craft, and that's without factoring the widescale adoption of drones.

 

Going through the VF-19 book again, it goes into detail about its Air Carrier Wings, in the next pages no less. Specifically the "Earth Mobile Fleet Squadron," which seems to be structured a lot like ours. It sounds a bit obvious, but it states each CVW has a base on the ground (some on stations on orbital satellites,) where they conduct the usual training and maintenance. This kind of arrangement seems plausible with the Uraga, less so with the space only Guantanamo. Although it seems their capacity are a bit more inflated, with the former being able to hold up to 105-120 aircraft carriers.

 

Them being said to accompany immigrant fleets make sense, considering notable pilots like Timoshee was a captain of escort units of the Macross 3 and the fleet that made it to Eden, and Gilliam and Wilbur being enlisted to one for thhe 28th Ultra Long Range Emigrant Fleet. But it's also said by 2050 there's 140 of the Air Wings; 68 on Earth, 40 on the Moon, and 30 on Mars. Again...That seems pretty miniscule, especially compared to the 2550 ships Earth's defense. Though being a mobile fleet squadron, they probably do have more autonomy compared to the aforementioned. It does make me wonder how many ships from said fleets return to Earth and how many stay with the fleet when they settle somewhere. It does seem like a factor to the decentralization of the UN, with some being way too far to return back to Earth, and Gilliam mentioning that independent governments aren't given enough intel from the central UN and are forced to borrow troops from them, if not just applying military pressure against frontier planets with their own governments.

Edited Sunday at 06:54 PM by TG Remix
Additional details and sentences.

[TG Remix]

16 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Emigrant fleet defense forces of a few hundred ships are meant to be enough to run off or wipe out a Zentradi branch fleet.  2,500+ ships won't run off a Zentradi main fleet the size of Boddole Zer's ~5 million ships, but it will absolutely bring enough hurt to drive off or destroy smaller forces that are more typically encountered.

In general I can see some more firepower from Earth's neck of the woods, considering both of their Macross 13 units and the Battle Astraea, they most likely have their own fleet of Macross-class ships, which as 7 and Frontier show, is strong enough to send away branch fleets or similar sized attacks as debated here.

 

(Sorry for double posting, forgot this bit and I couldn't edit this reply in the first message!)

Edited Sunday at 06:51 PM by TG Remix

[Seto Kaiba]

18 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I went through a personal journey of going through Variable Fighter Master File for the VF-19, and I came across it's detailing on how Earth orbital fleet is structured. Of course it's not official per se, but it's a nice perspective regardless.

To be accurate, what's described there isn't just Earth's defenses.  That's the combined forces of the Solar System Defense Perimeter that protects all of the inhabited planets of the Sol system.

Fans often forget - because we are not often reminded - that there are a lot of other places in the Sol system that people live besides Earth's surface.

Luna has multiple colonies and at least one military base on it.  There are O'Neill cylinder space colonies, factory stations, and multiple factory satellites at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.  Mars has cities on its surface.  There are "satellite city" constructs orbiting Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.  There are bases and possibly colonies on the Jovian moons including at least seven on Europa (given that Isamu is assigned to Europa Base 7 at one point).  There is at least one base in the asteroid belt.  This massive fleet that Master File's describing protects all of that.

 

 

18 hours ago, TG Remix said:

The amphibious command ship I'm assuming is a Uraga, the frigates and carrier most likely the Northampton and Guantanamos, the amphibious assault ship I'm not sure if it's supposed to be either of the Zentradi or Meltradi types, but it'd go with the MF's notions of the remaining Zentradi fleet being deployed as the Solar System's first line of defense, and VF-X2's utilization of the latter type as both cargo and combat ready ships.  I have no idea what the guided missile cruisers would be, much less the Aegis destroyers. Doesn't seem like it'd be the transforming Destroyer in VF-X2, but the mention of beam gunboats could allude to the Atlantic-class Vandal from the same game. 

One thing of note is that there are, at least according to official media, a bunch of variants of the Northamption-class and similar that we have simply not seen.

Macross Chronicle mentions the Northampton-class having specialized variants intended for enhanced combat capability, reconnaissance, or early warning/picket duties.  The same is likely true of its derivatives, like the NUNS stealth cruiser from Frontier.  The aforementioned aegis destroyer is probably the early warning variant Northampton.  We've only really had two or three classes of cruiser in-series so far, so odds are the guided missile cruiser is a variant of the 2050s-era stealth cruiser fitted with more missile launchers in place of its beam turrets.  There's only really one known candidate for a NUNS-affiliated beam gunboat and that's the Zentradi one.

 

 

41 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

It's certainly a lot more off a bombastic reason to have 4th Gen Valkyries be developed, isn't it? That feels like an event that if it happened in official material, it'd probably hang over the heads across the galaxy. Arguably more so then the time it happened on Earth, since there's millions of humans all over the galaxy to witness and know of it.

Yeah, perhaps too much so given that it's never even mentioned in Project Super Nova.  That's not the kind of thing that's easy to cover up.

 

 

41 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

Which is funny to me because that's easily the biggest number given to a fleet by far. The Macross 7 fleet had 185 ships plus its liaison and civilian ships, and then there's the Master File's notion that the Frontier fleet had 600. The only Navies in our world that exceeds that size is Russia's and China's, with none of the population numbers they have. Makes me think that UN ships are made to be a lot more autonomous then conventional craft, and that's without factoring the widescale adoption of drones.

One important thing to note about the numbers published by/for the Russian and Chinese navies is that they tend to inflate the number of available ships by counting anything the government owns that floats as a Navy ship.  Including ships like military-owned conventional motorboats, launches, landers, and ships that are not even technically operational but still kept on the fleet register for morale/propaganda reasons like Russia's infamous drydock queen and only aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov.

 

 

41 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

Going through the VF-19 book again, it goes into detail about its Air Carrier Wings, in the next pages no less. Specifically the "Earth Mobile Fleet Squadron," which seems to be structured a lot like ours. It sounds a bit obvious, but it states each CVW has a base on the ground (some on stations on orbital satellites,) where they conduct the usual training and maintenance. This kind of arrangement seems plausible with the Uraga, less so with the space only Guantanamo. Although it seems their capacity are a bit more inflated, with the former being able to hold up to 105-120 aircraft carriers.

Yeah, that's a bit large... official media usually says that the Guantanamo-class carries ~45 aircraft and and the Uraga-class ~75 aircraft.

It's possible that these air wings are being split across multiple ships in the same taskforce, since some ships like the Northampton-class can carry up to a single platoon of Valkyries in normal operations (meaning just one squadron might be split across 5+ ships).

 

41 minutes ago, TG Remix said:

Again...That seems pretty miniscule, especially compared to the 2550 ships Earth's defense. It does make me wonder how many ships from said fleets return to Earth and how many stay with the fleet when they settle somewhere. It does seem like a factor to the decentralization of the UN, with some being way too far to return back to Earth, and Gilliam mentioning that independent governments aren't given enough intel from the central UN and are forced to borrow troops from them, if not just applying military pressure against frontier planets with their own governments.

It makes more sense when you consider that, under normal circumstances (at least based on 7 and Frontier) that carriers make up 1/3 or less of a typical fleet formation.

The 37th Large-Scale Long-Distance Emigrant Fleet's military component amounted to 186 ships with 66 carriers of various grades and 120 escorts.  The balance is arguably a little different from that in normal operation since the Battle-class, four Uraga-class, one Guantanamo-class, and one Northampton-class are tied up with emigrant ships of varying types, leaving the operational fleet with 60 carriers (16 Uraga-class and 44 Guantanamo-class) and 119 Northampton-class frigate escorts.

[Seto Kaiba]

23 hours ago, TG Remix said:

It does make me wonder how many ships from said fleets return to Earth and how many stay with the fleet when they settle somewhere. It does seem like a factor to the decentralization of the UN, with some being way too far to return back to Earth, and Gilliam mentioning that independent governments aren't given enough intel from the central UN and are forced to borrow troops from them, if not just applying military pressure against frontier planets with their own governments.

Probably very few, if any at all.

The farthest-flung emigrant fleets and planets are said to be literal years away from Earth by space fold due to a combination of distance, system limitations, and route conditions.  By the same token, the military component of an emigrant fleet has always at least nominally been under the authority of the emigrant fleet's civilian government and most if not all of it was always meant to stay with the emigrant government as the foundation of its local New UN Forces.  The military reforms imposed after the Second Unification War cemented that local control over an emigrant fleet's attached New UN Forces.

IINM the only known case of an emigrant fleet ship ending up back in service of the central New UN Forces that we know of is one or more of the Macross-class SDFNs that were used to scout ahead of early emigrant fleets.  The SDFN-04 General Bruno J. Global ended up back in Earth NUNS hands and was later used as flagship of the 117th Research Fleet for their voyage into Vajra space.

[sketchley]

Expanding on what Seto said: in the initial period, there were 2 types of Emigrant Fleet: close range (within 100 ly of Earth*), and long range.

It makes sense that elements of the close range fleets would return to Earth and be reused due to the distances involved (E.g. parts of the fleet that discovered Planet Eden; located a mere 11.7 light years from Earth—about 1 day's travel.  Isamu took around 18 hours* with the experimental Fold Booster).

To give some numbers on the farthest flung Emigrant Fleets: the Macross F Fleet was described as having taken "20 years" to navigate to the vicinity of the centre of the galaxy, and it would take about half that time (10 years one-way) for a ship to return to Earth.  So, I think the NUNS crews and civilians knew that they were on a one-way trip when they launched.

The advent of the Super Fold Drive (in Macross F) reduced travel times to 1/10, but that would still take 1 year.  Not impossible, but not really feasible.

 

* back of the envelope math.  100 ly takes about 8.33 days to traverse with a standard Fold Drive.

Edited yesterday at 04:47 AM by sketchley

[Seto Kaiba]

16 minutes ago, sketchley said:

To give some numbers on the farthest flung Emigrant Fleets: the Macross F Fleet was described as having taken "20 years" to navigate to the vicinity of the centre of the galaxy, and it would take about half that time (10 years one-way) for a ship to return to Earth.  So, I think the NUNS crews and civilians knew that they were on a one-way trip when they launched.

The advent of the Super Fold Drive (in Macross F) reduced travel times to 1/10, but that would still take 1 year.  Not impossible, but not really feasible.

That may have more to do with the 55th Fleet doing a lot more exploring and scouting on its way towards the galactic core since their objective was Vajra space for the sake of a fold quartz gold rush.  Fold faults may be denser near the core too, which may also account for it.

Megaroad-04 crossed the entire galaxy and ended up running into the fold faults surrounding Windermere IV on the far side of the Brisingr globular cluster in 2027, a bit over ten years after departing Earth c.2015/2016.

 

16 minutes ago, sketchley said:

* back of the envelope math.  100 ly takes about 8.33 days to traverse with a standard Fold Drive.

It seems to vary heavily, explicitly dependent on the quality of the fold system (and its fold carbon core), the precision of the fold navigation calculations, and local conditions (e.g. intense gravity fields, fold faults).  (For instance, the trip to Gallia IV that would have been almost instantaneous if not for fold faults that turned it into a day-long trip with a week's time loss.)

Master File has one of the very few semi-official statements of an actual distance-over-time, with the account of the Spica III incident noting that the ~260 light year distance between Earth and Spica III in the Alpha Virginis system is less than a day's travel time for a high-speed cruiser c.2037.

Prior to that, the only other explicit mention of travel time without stops was a speed record for the Eden-Earth run (11.7ly) at 112 minutes from a piece that was done to promote a model kit.

 

[sketchley]

Yeah... Fold speeds are a grey area.  The only "official" specifics we have are from material about Macross Plus (the distance and travel time—given as a broad time frame) or the doubly vague "20 years to the centre of the galaxy" from Macross F.

While Macross Plus is great for nerding out over, it's also for an 'experimental and disposable' Fold Booster.  So, erring on the side of caution, that's on the slower side of the scale and a ship-scale Fold drive ought to be significantly faster and/or traverse greater distances.  Then we get statements like the Varōta High Speed Cruiser being able to travel even faster than a "normal" ship-scale Fold Drive... 😵

Ultimately, it seems to boil down to "speed of plot", and probably best not to get too deep in the weeds about.  Especially as there are some stories that play fast and loose with the rules (the penultimate story beat in Macross Digital Mission VF-X to name 1 of many...)

[TG Remix]

On 3/1/2026 at 3:07 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Luna has multiple colonies and at least one military base on it.  There are O'Neill cylinder space colonies, factory stations, and multiple factory satellites at the Earth-Moon Lagrange points.  Mars has cities on its surface.  There are "satellite city" constructs orbiting Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.  There are bases and possibly colonies on the Jovian moons including at least seven on Europa (given that Isamu is assigned to Europa Base 7 at one point).  There is at least one base in the asteroid belt.  This massive fleet that Master File's describing protects all of that.

Looking through the character bios in Macross Generation, they seem to expand on them ever so slightly. Passero, the main character, grew up in the Blangongne district (which seems to be a play on Burgundy, it's spelled ブランゴーニュ instead of ブルゴーニ) of Jupiter's satellite city. The wording implies that there seems to be only one of them per planet, so presumably she came from White Flora, the same one Miho Miho came from. Rafale came from District 15 of  Jupiter's Miranda settlement, and Liza from District 14, which probably explains where they met each other and became a couple. Although the wording implies it's within the planet's atmosphere, like Mars' HG Wells City. Most amusingly is where Ghana came from, as he's from the Redswood district of Saturn's ring shaped satellite city, even more hilarious that it's the only one we have an inking on how it looks.

 

On 3/1/2026 at 3:07 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Macross Chronicle mentions the Northampton-class having specialized variants intended for enhanced combat capability, reconnaissance, or early warning/picket duties.  The same is likely true of its derivatives, like the NUNS stealth cruiser from Frontier.  The aforementioned aegis destroyer is probably the early warning variant Northampton.  We've only really had two or three classes of cruiser in-series so far, so odds are the guided missile cruiser is a variant of the 2050s-era stealth cruiser fitted with more missile launchers in place of its beam turrets.  There's only really one known candidate for a NUNS-affiliated beam gunboat and that's the Zentradi one.

I keep forgetting the existence of the Stealth Cruisers. It'd probably help if they got an actual name...

 

I did mention the Vandal from VF-X2, but I suppose in the context of the game, it was used by Vinderance instead of the UN/Latence. But in my defense it was one of the doohickeys that Critical Path Corporation made, so every super boss barring the Macross 13 was made by them. This includes the Annabella Lasiodora, which was in both the UN's Ceres Base and Vinderance's home base.

 

7 hours ago, sketchley said:

It makes sense that elements of the close range fleets would return to Earth and be reused due to the distances involved (E.g. parts of the fleet that discovered Planet Eden; located a mere 11.7 light years from Earth—about 1 day's travel.  Isamu took around 18 hours* with the experimental Fold Booster).

To give some numbers on the farthest flung Emigrant Fleets: the Macross F Fleet was described as having taken "20 years" to navigate to the vicinity of the centre of the galaxy, and it would take about half that time (10 years one-way) for a ship to return to Earth.  So, I think the NUNS crews and civilians knew that they were on a one-way trip when they launched.

So in regards to short range fleets, I'm assuming their ship situation would be different. I'm not sure if it means if they have to build a new fleet from the ground up if they settle on a planet, either relying on Earth's factory satellites or one they happen to find elsewhere, or if their escort fleet would reach the same size as Macross 7's or the Megaroad-01s. In that sense I can also see them being a bit smaller in a general sense, since unless they're not tied to the Central UN, they can just rely on their next door neighbors for help more then somewhere further away.

 

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Megaroad-04 crossed the entire galaxy and ended up running into the fold faults surrounding Windermere IV on the far side of the Brisingr globular cluster in 2027, a bit over ten years after departing Earth c.2015/2016.

And then there's the Megaroad-01 itself, which reached the center of it in 4 years time. All around it does make it seem like emigrating to other planets a very sporadic process, where some take significantly longer then others to find a suitable planet.

 

3 hours ago, sketchley said:

Ultimately, it seems to boil down to "speed of plot", and probably best not to get too deep in the weeds about.  Especially as there are some stories that play fast and loose with the rules (the penultimate story beat in Macross Digital Mission VF-X to name 1 of many...)

While you are absolutely correct, Digital Mission VF-X is also a game that doesn't bother to do anything other then the bare minimum, and even then it's stretching it. Was disappointing to learn that Elysium just has zero explanation on why such a developed colony (4 giant metropolis; and a few military bases that reach similar sizes) was abandoned, amongst other things.

[sketchley]

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

So in regards to short range fleets, I'm assuming their ship situation would be different. I'm not sure if it means if they have to build a new fleet from the ground up if they settle on a planet, either relying on Earth's factory satellites or one they happen to find elsewhere, or if their escort fleet would reach the same size as Macross 7's or the Megaroad-01s. In that sense I can also see them being a bit smaller in a general sense, since unless they're not tied to the Central UN, they can just rely on their next door neighbors for help more then somewhere further away.

There is very little information on those short range fleets.  Some supposition is that the SDFN class (from Macross F) and Akusho (from Macross 7) may have at one point been involved in those short range fleets.

The Battleships Of The Galaxy Book 3: Zentrādi Military Vessels (a fan-made dojinshi) supposed that the Unified Government converted the Zentrādi Kirutora Keruēru into Environment Ships (the Kirutora Keruēru-class Environment Ships), but the write-up indicates they were for the Super Long-range Emigrant Fleets.  Nevertheless, it does suggest that other converted Zentrādi ships could have been used in those short range fleets.

Those short range fleets also appear to mostly have occurred only during the initial period shortly after the end of the First Interstellar War.  The limited materials on them suggest that they started being launched before the completion of the Megaroad-01.  So, the supposition that ships used in those fleets later returned to Earth and were repurposed to other roles or fleets makes a lot of sense.

 

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

And then there's the Megaroad-01 itself, which reached the center of it in 4 years time. All around it does make it seem like emigrating to other planets a very sporadic process, where some take significantly longer then others to find a suitable planet.

Macross Chronicle did have a poetic line about some Super Long-range Emigrant Fleets being fated to spend "half an eternity" looking for a habitable planet.

 

2 hours ago, TG Remix said:

While you are absolutely correct, Digital Mission VF-X is also a game that doesn't bother to do anything other then the bare minimum, and even then it's stretching it. Was disappointing to learn that Elysium just has zero explanation on why such a developed colony (4 giant metropolis; and a few military bases that reach similar sizes) was abandoned, amongst other things.

Yeah.  The production team really played fast and loose with continuity in that game.  I'm glad that they were reined in a lot more with VF-X2!

Edited yesterday at 03:33 PM by sketchley

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, sketchley said:

Then we get statements like the Varōta High Speed Cruiser being able to travel even faster than a "normal" ship-scale Fold Drive... 😵

Which was initially difficult to explain, but now has an easy/obvious answer in "they're just using larger and/or higher-purity fold crystals in the fold system".

Ever since Macross Frontier - or technically Macross Dynamite 7 - the size and quality of the fold crystals used in many forms of overtechnology has been the go-to explanation for differences in performance and capability in almost every major form of overtechnology.  High-purity fold crystals are in high demand in the military and private sectors for use in fold navigation, fold communication, cross-dimensional radar, thermonuclear reactors, gravity and inertia controllers, beam weapons, and so many more technologies essential to Humanity's burgeoning interstellar civilization.

It certainly explains why the poachers in Macross Dynamite 7 were so determined and so suspiciously well-connected.  The previous vague statements about how the products of galactic whales could be used in spacecraft engines almost certainly means they contain very high-purity fold carbon which would naturally be a rare and high-demand material until synthesis processes caught up.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

Rafale came from District 15 of  Jupiter's Miranda settlement, and Liza from District 14, which probably explains where they met each other and became a couple. Although the wording implies it's within the planet's atmosphere, like Mars' HG Wells City. 

It may well be.  

Jupiter is a gas giant, after all.  It may not have a surface you can stand on but that doesn't mean it doesn't have obvious value beyond pure scientific curiosity.  It's basically a giant ball of fuel that mother nature obligingly gathered into one place.  The atmosphere is principally hydrogen and helium isotopes, meaning collection and processing of atmospheric gases can yield valuable fuels for thermonuclear reactors as well as elemental hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells and combustion engines.

(Gundam's Universal Century timeline has permanent colonies around Jupiter for the same purpose, to extract and process deuterium and helium-3 to be shipped back to Earth in the massive tankers of the Jupiter Energy Fleet.)

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

I keep forgetting the existence of the Stealth Cruisers. It'd probably help if they got an actual name...

Yeah, we gotta go through that footage and find the first one that gets named and just use that... the same way Star Trek does for ships without an official class name.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

So in regards to short range fleets, I'm assuming their ship situation would be different. I'm not sure if it means if they have to build a new fleet from the ground up if they settle on a planet, either relying on Earth's factory satellites or one they happen to find elsewhere, or if their escort fleet would reach the same size as Macross 7's or the Megaroad-01s. In that sense I can also see them being a bit smaller in a general sense, since unless they're not tied to the Central UN, they can just rely on their next door neighbors for help more then somewhere further away.

Available materials suggest they used lightly converted Zentradi ships from the former Vrlitwhai branch fleet.

Having remained within a 100ly distance of Earth means they were able to lean much more heavily on Earth for resources to set up their colonies too.

 

6 hours ago, TG Remix said:

And then there's the Megaroad-01 itself, which reached the center of it in 4 years time. All around it does make it seem like emigrating to other planets a very sporadic process, where some take significantly longer then others to find a suitable planet.

There's definitely an element of luck to it.

The process of exploration, at least as it's been defined for the audience, is pretty simple.  The emigrant fleet folds into a region of space and dispatches pilot fleets from its escort that scout out the nearby star systems for either usable resources or viable planets to colonize.  If they don't find a suitable planet among the star systems they've scouted in that region they jump to the next likely area their advance scouting detail identified.  They repeat this process until they find a suitable planet.

They lack Star Trek-style FTL sensors that can identify habitable worlds from light years away and the means to scan the worlds they pass while folding (because fold navigation is basically teleporting) so a map of the space they're exploring might look like a string of pearls with each pearl being the sphere of space they studied between fold jumps.

[pengbuzz]

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah, we gotta go through that footage and find the first one that gets named and just use that... the same way Star Trek does for ships without an official class name.

Northampton-class, by any chance?

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

Northampton-class, by any chance?

The New UN Spacy stealth cruiser is presented as a distinct class of warship separate from the Northampton-class frigate it's based on.

The problem is that it is has only ever officially been referred to as "stealth cruiser", never by any kind of name in official media.

It's listed in Macross Chronicle as "Space Cruiser Stealth Cruiser".

[TG Remix]

 

6 hours ago, sketchley said:

There is very little information on those short range fleets.  Some supposition is that the SDFN class (from Macross F) and Akusho (from Macross 7) may have at one point been involved in those short range fleets.

The Battleships Of The Galaxy Book 3: Zentrādi Military Vessels (a fan-made dojinshi) supposed that the Unified Government converted the Zentrādi Kirutora Keruēru into Environment Ships (the Kirutora Keruēru-class Environment Ships), but the write-up indicates they were for the Super Long-range Emigrant Fleets.  Nevertheless, it does suggest that other converted Zentrādi ships could have been used in those short range fleets.

Those short range fleets also appear to mostly have occurred only during the initial period shortly after the end of the First Interstellar War.  The limited materials on them suggest that they started being launched before the completion of the Megaroad-01.  So, the supposition that ships used in those fleets later returned to Earth and were repurposed to other roles or fleets makes a lot of sense.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Available materials suggest they used lightly converted Zentradi ships from the former Vrlitwhai branch fleet.

Having remained within a 100ly distance of Earth means they were able to lean much more heavily on Earth for resources to set up their colonies too.

I'm aware of the Otani Macross Frontier interview with Kawamori that stated old Zentradi ships were repurposed for those, and I'm assuming that's what the doujin was somewhat referencing too. There was a timeline from the Macross 7 and Plus Movie Program book that charted everything up to the two series (it's where the Second Battle of Macross City was first documented iirc) and it mentioned that they were indeed planned alongside the long distances fleets, but while those were for the survival of the human species, the short range ones was to deal with the population explosion on Earth and resource shortages. It also states they were carried out using lightly equipped, refurbished transport ships. I suppose that's the reason why the Quiltra Queleual was chosen since it was practically one but for giants and weapons for giants, but the Akusho also feels like it could've fitted the mold as well, it's smaller size explains why most of the short range fleets carried up to several thousand, or several hundreds of thousands, at most.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It certainly explains why the poachers in Macross Dynamite 7 were so determined and so suspiciously well-connected.  The previous vague statements about how the products of galactic whales could be used in spacecraft engines almost certainly means they contain very high-purity fold carbon which would naturally be a rare and high-demand material until synthesis processes caught up.

Going through many supplementary material such as the Master File books and M3, they do take time to reference things like resource planets. Makes me wonder when the synthesis process started to get good and if it'd render stuff like fold carbon mines obsolete. Maybe not, but I suppose it depends on what's being mined or collected.

 

54 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The problem is that it is has only ever officially been referred to as "stealth cruiser", never by any kind of name in official media.

It's listed in Macross Chronicle as "Space Cruiser Stealth Cruiser".

the same series that sketchley mentioned I believed called it the Osaka-class, which is referring to the first ship Max captained in Macross M3. But it is a wild shot in the dark, and I always assumed the stealth cruiser was a relatively new model of ship.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

I suppose that's the reason why the Quiltra Queleual was chosen since it was practically one but for giants and weapons for giants, but the Akusho also feels like it could've fitted the mold as well, it's smaller size explains why most of the short range fleets carried up to several thousand, or several hundreds of thousands, at most.

The Akusho-type is too new... it screams 2030s construction, and seems natively compatible with a late 2030s 3rd Generation emigrant ship.  Whether it even has an independent propulsion system is unknown.

The Qultra Queleual-class, well... that'd be the obvious choice among Zentradi ships since it's a comparatively lightly-armed ship that is basically a massive box designed to have the maximum possible carrying capacity.  If you're looking to haul a lot of stuff in the short term, it's probably about the best option available at the time.

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

Going through many supplementary material such as the Master File books and M3, they do take time to reference things like resource planets. Makes me wonder when the synthesis process started to get good and if it'd render stuff like fold carbon mines obsolete. Maybe not, but I suppose it depends on what's being mined or collected.

They do, though given what we know of fold carbon and the fact that fold quartz was not properly known or understood until the late 2040s it seems unlikely that anyone was out there mining for fold carbon when it could be synthesized in industrial quantities.

(The assumption that fold carbon was being mined at all comes from the bizarre statement about the presence of coal mines on one emigrant planet... a material that would be totally useless to a civilization with ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power.)

 

1 hour ago, TG Remix said:

the same series that sketchley mentioned I believed called it the Osaka-class, which is referring to the first ship Max captained in Macross M3. But it is a wild shot in the dark, and I always assumed the stealth cruiser was a relatively new model of ship.

Yeah, Circle FANKY's Battleships of the Galaxy Vol.2 gives the ship the unofficial/fan name of "Osaka-class".

Max's first command, which he is promoted to at the end of Macross M3 Episode 6, is the stealth space cruiser Haruna.  (ステルス宇宙巡洋艦ハルナ suterusu uchuu jun'youkan Haruna)  Oddly, this is the second Spacy ship Haruna with the first having been ARMD-10.  We're never told what class the second Haruna was, but given the circumstances it's probably also an Algenicus-type stealth space cruiser.

It's perhaps worth mentioning that FANKY's attempt to explain the nonexistence of the Frontier stealth cruiser in Macross 7 is that the class was not introduced until ~2041, which would pass the sniff test as a justification for why it is not seen among the Earth defense flotilla in 2040 or the 37th fleet in 2045-6 but is present in the 55th fleet forces.  Official media generally suggests that the Macross 7-era ships are mostly products of the very late 2020s and early-to-mid 2030s.  The Northampton-class seems to be the oldest, being present in the Macross 1 fleet alongside ARMD II-class space carriers while later fleets had the Guantanamo-class and Uraga-class.

[sketchley]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(The assumption that fold carbon was being mined at all comes from the bizarre statement about the presence of coal mines on one emigrant planet... a material that would be totally useless to a civilization with ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power.)

That's kind of assuming that those ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power capabilities are being freely shared.  As the Macross Galaxy Fleet suggests, not every government plays nice with its civilians.

However, putting all that to the side, this could be a sign that Kawamori-san had the concept of Fold Coal and Fold Quartz in mind all along—akin to the Energy Conversion Armour idea that he purportedly had way back at the time of SDFM but didn't formally introduced until Macross Zero.

It also goes a long way to justifying why there was a mining settlement on the planet Basara visited in The Galaxy Is Calling Me.  (Perhaps a precursor or initial attempt at the idea that got refined and clarified in the Macross Frontier materials as Fold Carbon & Quartz?)

 

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It's perhaps worth mentioning that FANKY's attempt to explain the nonexistence of the Frontier stealth cruiser in Macross 7 is that the class was not introduced until ~2041, which would pass the sniff test as a justification for why it is not seen among the Earth defense flotilla in 2040 or the 37th fleet in 2045-6 but is present in the 55th fleet forces.  Official media generally suggests that the Macross 7-era ships are mostly products of the very late 2020s and early-to-mid 2030s.  The Northampton-class seems to be the oldest, being present in the Macross 1 fleet alongside ARMD II-class space carriers while later fleets had the Guantanamo-class and Uraga-class.

I agree that those explanations are neat.  However, due to some other oddities and unusual hangups in those books, I can't fully accept them into my head cannon... 😅

[TG Remix]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The Akusho-type is too new... it screams 2030s construction, and seems natively compatible with a late 2030s 3rd Generation emigrant ship.  Whether it even has an independent propulsion system is unknown.

In all fairness, it definitely looks rusted enough to be a bit more then 15 years old, lol. The Macross Chronicle glossary also says it might have originally been a "self propelled colony capsule."

I could see it being a development from the old converted ships as well, since the Frontier fleet seems to adopt them as Environmental ships for housing smaller populations.

 

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(The assumption that fold carbon was being mined at all comes from the bizarre statement about the presence of coal mines on one emigrant planet... a material that would be totally useless to a civilization with ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power.)

It's just one of those cases where the lore evolves over time, and new stories try to rationalize older things that contradicts it, if not outright ignore it. It's a somewhat messy situation, but a very familiar one being a Mega Man fan as one of many examples. Story wise though, it's more to show how screwed Isamu might have been if it wasn't for his transfer to Eden lmao.

 

12 hours ago, sketchley said:

However, putting all that to the side, this could be a sign that Kawamori-san had the concept of Fold Coal and Fold Quartz in mind all along—akin to the Energy Conversion Armour idea that he purportedly had way back at the time of SDFM but didn't formally introduced until Macross Zero.

It also goes a long way to justifying why there was a mining settlement on the planet Basara visited in The Galaxy Is Calling Me.  (Perhaps a precursor or initial attempt at the idea that got refined and clarified in the Macross Frontier materials as Fold Carbon & Quartz?)

That's another good way of putting it though, many things presented in the Zero/Frontier era seemed to be presenting the same concepts from 7 but with further elaboration under different contexts, explaining the science of things like Sound Energy and Spiritia through Fold Waves, Fold Resonances, etc. It's not too out of reason to imply Fold Carbon and Fold Quartz is apart of that too.

 

In fact, we actually have a game that does this, Macross VF-X2, as Mission 3 involves protecting the Embatelion transport ship (Ironically for us, a Meltran Landing Assault Ship,) carrying a material called "hyperspace resonance crystal," which was discovered in 2043. It seems to check some boxes the fold quartz has, as it creates a spatial resonance when hit with vibrations of a certain wavelength, and was used for communication and hyperspatial navigation through the Die Zauberflöte comm device. Kodachi seemed to made the connection as well, tying them together officially in his Frontier novelization.

 

12 hours ago, sketchley said:

That's kind of assuming that those ultra-high efficiency renewable energy sources and thermonuclear fusion power capabilities are being freely shared.  As the Macross Galaxy Fleet suggests, not every government plays nice with its civilians.

Not only that, not every government also either doesn't play nice with the UN or more independently minded from them. That was the source of many conflicts with M3 like Cristrania being founded and characterized through Zentradi fundamentalism, the delicate balance between Neo York's planetary government and the New York Liberation League, and the attempted coup by Anti-UN insurgence in Belfan. And with VF-X2, that was the entire conflict!

 

12 hours ago, sketchley said:

I agree that those explanations are neat.  However, due to some other oddities and unusual hangups in those books, I can't fully accept them into my head cannon... 😅

I have a lot of the same hangups with the Master File books too, so I totally get that. But isn't that the beautiful thing about the continuity of Macross? For better or worse, you can pick and choose what interpretation of events, lore, and mechanical details, and make them your own! Headache for some, but opportunities for others I'd say.

Edited 5 hours ago by TG Remix
Completely forgot to add a point I had for the Akusho

[pengbuzz]

13 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Max's first command, which he is promoted to at the end of Macross M3 Episode 6, is the stealth space cruiser Haruna.  (ステルス宇宙巡洋艦ハルナ suterusu uchuu jun'youkan Haruna)  Oddly, this is the second Spacy ship Haruna with the first having been ARMD-10.  We're never told what class the second Haruna was, but given the circumstances it's probably also an Algenicus-type stealth space cruiser.

It was probably the Matata class... another ship in that class was named the Simba...