Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[JB0]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Wasn't Stealth a box office flop? 😆

They don't know, because the sales records were destroyed in the bombardment.




Edit:: And I've nerd-sniped myself. I've spent the last couple hours imagining the Stealth-class frigates being named after pre-war movies, and which movies would be great or terrible. 

Like, who wouldn't want to be on the NUNS Kickboxer? That's just an awesome name. Or the NUNS Phantom Menace. 
But NUNS Broken Arrow? Heck naw, you'll never hear the end of the unsecured weapons jokes. The NUNS Die Harder? What does that even mean?!
Maybe NUNS Independence Day, but I want the the ID4 to be a New Macross-class. We need this name attached to something with a really big gun. Also, Independence Day isn't nearly as cool after the aliens have ACTUALLY laid waste to your homeworld. 

And then I realized the timeline allows for an NUNS Goldmember, and I wept at the wound I have inflicted upon myself. . 

Edited March 7 by JB0

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

They don't know, because the sales records were destroyed in the bombardment.

I'd just cross my fingers and hope that all copies of that one were lost in the war.

 

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Edit:: And I've nerd-sniped myself. I've spent the last couple hours imagining the Stealth-class frigates being named after pre-war movies, and which movies would be great or terrible. 

Like, who wouldn't want to be on the NUNS Kickboxer? That's just an awesome name. Or the NUNS Phantom Menace. 
But NUNS Broken Arrow? Heck naw, you'll never hear the end of the unsecured weapons jokes. The NUNS Die Harder? What does that even mean?!
Maybe NUNS Independence Day, but I want the the ID4 to be a New Macross-class. We need this name attached to something with a really big gun. Also, Independence Day isn't nearly as cool after the aliens have ACTUALLY laid waste to your homeworld. 

... a few of those you might be able to get away with. 😅

There's a city named Broken Arrow in Oklahoma, for instance, and we know they name ships and classes after municipalities still (e.g. Northampton, Uraga, Brampton).  You could probably get away with Hunter's Moon too... we've had Silver Moon and Red Moon.  There've been a few warships named Chameleon already.  A few named Legion too.  Star Runner doesn't sound too out of place either.  Kickboxer wouldn't even look that out-of-place... the US and British navies have had a BUNCH of ships named Boxer (and yes, the original ship was named for the sport).

I'd be worried about a ship named the Hard Boiled.  That seems like they'd cause a lot of unnecessary property damage.

 

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

And then I realized the timeline allows for an NUNS Goldmember, and I wept at the wound I have inflicted upon myself. . 

In the wise words of Radiohead... "You do it to yourself, you do. And that's what really hurts."

[sketchley]

Well, for better or worse, the producers of Macross use different naming schemes (a la Delta's characters named after famous jets and pilots), and they seem to choose less silly names out of public suggestions*—such as "Messiah" in the Newtype mail-in promotion during the initial part of Frontier's run.

 

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRS_Sir_David_Attenborough#Naming_poll

... though, it would be great to see NUNS ships named "Boaty McBoatface" and "It's Bloody Cold Here"! 🤣

[RangerKarl]

Every different world/emigration fleet should honestly have their own fleet naming scheme. It might detract from whatever theme the writer wants at the time though. 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 3/7/2026 at 2:27 AM, sketchley said:

... though, it would be great to see NUNS ships named "Boaty McBoatface" and "It's Bloody Cold Here"! 🤣

It's all fun and games until someone has to actually serve on the Northampton-class Domo Arigato Mr. Furigato.

 

11 hours ago, RangerKarl said:

Every different world/emigration fleet should honestly have their own fleet naming scheme. It might detract from whatever theme the writer wants at the time though. 

Well, you'd think with dozens of different nations right here on Earth each maintaining their own navy there'd be some pretty significant variation in naming schemes... but most of them go in for the same basic strategy of naming ships after places (major cities, states/provinces/counties, landmarks), heads of state, celebrated veterans, objects of national pride (e.g. official state flowers, birds, etc.), or various adjectives of an aspirational nature (e.g. "fearless").

Most of the emigrant fleets and planets don't have enough history yet to have their own body of celebrated veterans, heads of state, etc. and the like to name ships after.  

[RangerKarl]

Sad, but I guess Culture-style ship names don't come off the same way in Japanese

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, RangerKarl said:

Sad, but I guess Culture-style ship names don't come off the same way in Japanese

They have their own approach to it...

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has a profound love of theme naming.  In most cases, all the ships of a particular class follow the same theme.  You've got the usual ones named for provinces, towns, islands, peninsulas, etc.  Then you've got the ones where they really went ham with it and every ship of the class is named for kinds of rain, or wave, or ocean current or just different adjectives stuck in front of a common word.  <Something> Dragon, <Something> Moon, <Something> Whale, etc.

China does something similar, with all their submarines of a type have the same name.  All the boomer subs are Long March #, and all the regular ones are Great Wall #.  

 

Maybe farther down the road, once some of these emigrant governments in Macross are more established, we'll start seeing more idiosyncratic naming schemes for their warships.  (Though I guess it's pretty hard to maintain a theme across potentially hundreds of warships.)

[Valkyrie Driver]

Holy moly, this thread still exists almost a decade after I started it.

[Seto Kaiba]

42 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

Holy moly, this thread still exists almost a decade after I started it.

Well, every new title adds new mecha and new trivia and we're translating more stuff all the time. 👍

[Valkyrie Driver]

I’ll admit that I haven’t been keeping track. Too much stuff going on in my life right now. 
 

What have I missed in the last 6 years?

[Seto Kaiba]

7 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

I’ll admit that I haven’t been keeping track. Too much stuff going on in my life right now. 

I know that feeling. 😅

 

7 minutes ago, Valkyrie Driver said:

What have I missed in the last 6 years?

In the last 6 years?

Well, the biggest bullet point would have to be the 2021 release of the second Macross Delta movie Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!! with its all-new story and Macross Frontier's short film epilogue Macross Frontier: the Labyrinth of Time.  That gave us a look at 6th Generation VFs and Ghosts, some info about Lady M, the fate of the Megaroad-01, a little hint about the fate of Alto and Sheryl after The Wings of Goodbye, and an array of other related topics.  (Not to mention 2021 being when the Macross licensing embargo finally broke, with select Macross titles now available on Hulu/Disney+.)

There's been a few more artbooks, a new Master File for Absolute Live!!!!!!'s new Valkyrie, some fan efforts to translate the Macross Frontier, Macross Delta, and Macross the Ride light novels, the promise of a new Macross series from Bandai Namco Filmworks at some point, etc. 

[Valkyrie Driver]

Cool, I guess I have a bunch of stuff to check out.

[JB0]

On 3/26/2026 at 6:55 PM, Valkyrie Driver said:

Holy moly, this thread still exists almost a decade after I started it.

Best thread on the forum!

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, JB0 said:

Best thread on the forum!

Definitely my favorite... it's one of the rare cases where my tendency to overanalyze things is actually useful. 😅

I've been doing a bit more poking at the VF-25, VF-31, and VF-31AX Master File books for more details on stealth technology lately.  There's some bizarre concepts in there.  I think the weirdest being the idea that the VF-17's passive stealth coating is made up of microvilli-like structures similar to an intestinal lining to maximize its surface area to allow it to intercept and absorb radar waves from all angles.  

[cheemingwan1234]

Are baseline humans a rare thing in the Macross universe post Space War 1? Given how small is the population of humanity, they would have bred into the Zentraedi genome as time goes on.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Are baseline humans a rare thing in the Macross universe post Space War 1? Given how small is the population of humanity, they would have bred into the Zentraedi genome as time goes on.

Nope.  Humanity used the cloning technology they acquired from the Zentradi to carry out a large-scale Human cloning program designed to bolster the overall Human population, artificially boost the availability of personnel with essential skills and training, and support the provisioning of the early emigrant fleets with military crews and emigrants.  A lot of the Humans living across the galaxy in the late 2050s and 2060s are the descendants of the clones produced between 2010 and 2030 before the program was halted.  It's not clear if it was commonplace, but several characters who started families in that post-war period ended up having large numbers of children.  Max and Milia's seven daughters are the most talked-about example, though Shammy Milliome and her husband supposedly had eleven children after she retired from the military.  

The population ratios aren't talked about, but Humans are still treated like the default/main species in the New UN Government into the 2060s.  Part-Zentradi are common enough that nobody seems to find them at all remarkable and as the number of other Protoculture-created species joining the New UN Government grows we can assume that there'll be more interspecies marriages in the future.  (It's already been going on long enough for there to be at least one named character with three-species ancestry: Michael Blanc from Macross Frontier.)

Edited 11 hours ago by Seto Kaiba

[cheemingwan1234]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Nope.  Humanity used the cloning technology they acquired from the Zentradi to carry out a large-scale Human cloning program designed to bolster the overall Human population, artificially boost the availability of personnel with essential skills and training, and support the provisioning of the early emigrant fleets with military crews and emigrants.  A lot of the Humans living across the galaxy in the late 2050s and 2060s are the descendants of the clones produced between 2010 and 2030 before the program was halted.  It's not clear if it was commonplace, but several characters who started families in that post-war period ended up having large numbers of children.  Max and Milia's seven daughters are the most talked-about example, though Shammy Milliome and her husband supposedly had eleven children after she retired from the military.  

The population ratios aren't talked about, but Humans are still treated like the default/main species in the New UN Government into the 2060s.  Part-Zentradi are common enough that nobody seems to find them at all remarkable and as the number of other Protoculture-created species joining the New UN Government grows we can assume that there'll be more interspecies marriages in the future.  (It's already been going on long enough for there to be at least one named character with three-species ancestry: Michael Blanc from Macross Frontier.)

Would that result in inbreeding issues due to a relatively small sample to clone from (meaning genetic bottleneck) coupled with natural reproduction?

Macross Humans are going to make the Valaryians from Game of Thrones look genetically diverse in the gene pool.

Edited 8 hours ago by cheemingwan1234

[Seto Kaiba]

3 minutes ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Would that result in inbreeding issues due to a relatively small sample to clone from coupled with natural reproduction?

Yep.  In fact, the reason given for why the cloning program was discontinued in 2030 was a marked rise in hereditary diseases in children.

(Gene therapy exists in Macross, so presumably they were able to fix at least some of that.)

[cheemingwan1234]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yep.  In fact, the reason given for why the cloning program was discontinued in 2030 was a marked rise in hereditary diseases in children.

(Gene therapy exists in Macross, so presumably they were able to fix at least some of that.)

Still, they are gonna make House Targaryen's gene pool look vast in comparison.

Edited 6 hours ago by cheemingwan1234

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Still, they are gonna make House Targaryen's gene pool look vast in comparison.

No, it's nowhere near that bad.  Most sources agree that the number of Human survivors of the First Space War numbered approximately 1 million.

[aurance]

3 hours ago, cheemingwan1234 said:

Would that result in inbreeding issues due to a relatively small sample to clone from (meaning genetic bottleneck) coupled with natural reproduction?

Macross Humans are going to make the Valaryians from Game of Thrones look genetically diverse in the gene pool.

No, it wouldn't be that bad. I touched on this before this thread, but that population size immediately after First War devastation (1 million) is orders of magnitude beyond what's needed for pretty problem-free breeding. (I was a molecular genetics major in college.)

If there are hereditary disease issues, it's due to something other than just remaining population. Clustering, etc. But I find it hard to believe government policies/desire for society wouldn't solve that either, other than for the odd groups of hermits here and there.

The Valyrian/European monarch gene pool limitations are on another scale altogether. There we're talking about a handful of people, maybe a couple hundred. That caused some problems.

Edited 4 hours ago by aurance

[cheemingwan1234]

On 3/10/2026 at 1:38 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

They have their own approach to it...

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has a profound love of theme naming.  In most cases, all the ships of a particular class follow the same theme.  You've got the usual ones named for provinces, towns, islands, peninsulas, etc.  Then you've got the ones where they really went ham with it and every ship of the class is named for kinds of rain, or wave, or ocean current or just different adjectives stuck in front of a common word.  <Something> Dragon, <Something> Moon, <Something> Whale, etc.

China does something similar, with all their submarines of a type have the same name.  All the boomer subs are Long March #, and all the regular ones are Great Wall #.  

 

Maybe farther down the road, once some of these emigrant governments in Macross are more established, we'll start seeing more idiosyncratic naming schemes for their warships.  (Though I guess it's pretty hard to maintain a theme across potentially hundreds of warships.)

Just hope they don't name any ship the Kamchatka or the William D. Porter...

Edited 3 hours ago by cheemingwan1234