Super Macross Mecha Fun Time Discussion Thread!

[twich]

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

The idea being that it's a lot harder to take over something that's not concentrated in one place anymore, right?

 

I'm a bit astounded that Xaos could afford the customization parts (and attached increased maintenance needs ) for their fighters, given how cash-strapped they are.

 

Hmm... I wonder if Xaos ever considered selling the plans to NUNS Central?

 

The microcode glitch I've been reading about? I heard it's been hitting 13th and 14th gen chips.

I know that it says that XOAS is so cash strapped and that at one point in the series, they don't have enough money to buy ammo for their VF-31's, but on the other hand they are on a Macross class ship (Macross 1/2) or whatever the class designation.  That cannot be a small investment.  The also have at least 4 of these things, plus all the VF-31A/B Kairos squadrons.  So, I wonder how much the being cash strapped is a true statement.

Twich

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, twich said:

I know that it says that XOAS is so cash strapped and that at one point in the series, they don't have enough money to buy ammo for their VF-31's, but on the other hand they are on a Macross class ship (Macross 1/2) or whatever the class designation.  That cannot be a small investment.  The also have at least 4 of these things, plus all the VF-31A/B Kairos squadrons.  So, I wonder how much the being cash strapped is a true statement.

Oh, I have no doubt that it's a true statement because of those factors.

Xaos's PMC division is neither the largest nor the best funded PMC operator out there.  Nevertheless, the Xaos PMC division's branch office on Ragna is based out of a large Macross warship with two attached aircraft carriers.  The upkeep and operating costs alone on the Macross Elysion, Aether, and Hemera have to be pretty darn substantial.

Spoiler

Seriously, let's lowball the **** out of this one.  The US Congressional Budget Office estimates that the per annum operating and maintenance costs of a next-generation frigate (the new Constellation-class) to be approximately $300 million (US).  That's about $822,000 per day.  For a much larger ship like a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the daily cost of the ship's operation and maintenance falls upwards of $6,000,000.  Considering the Elysion is technically three ships including two aircraft carriers, her operating and maintenance costs probably run a fair bit higher but let's treat her like a single large ship for the sake of argument.

We're fairly certain that Xaos did not have to pay for any of the ~20 VF-31A's that were delivered to the Macross Elysion given that the Brisingr Alliance New UN Forces loaned them out to Xaos for operational evaluation testing c.2067.  They are, however, picking up the daily operating costs and maintenance.  Back in FY2018, the US GAO reported that the total operating and maintenance cost per annum of the F-35 was approximately $13,500,000 per aircraft and the F-22A was approximately $22,000,000.  That's about $37,000 per day for the F-35 and $60,000 per day for the F-22.  Let's lowball this again and assume the VF-31 has a per diem operating cost closer to the F-35's despite being a twin engine aircraft and transforming giant robot to boot.  

Then, of course, we have to pay the crew.  We don't know how big the ship's crew is so we can't really estimate this well but we know there are twenty or more pilots on the Elysion's two attached carriers.  A PMC specialist operator in a conflict zone can earn anywhere from $150,000-250,000 per year.  Let's lowball that say $150K per head and that all the pilots get paid the same for a total cash burn rate per day of about $11,540 just for those twenty people.  The ship's captain is probably paid similarly, and there are likely at a hundred or so other crew aboard the ship.  If we assume they're making about $80K a year, that brings the per diem cash burn rate for salary to around $75,000.  It's almost certainly far more than.

Assuming we ultra-lowball the Elysion as a single small aircraft carrier and the VF-31s like F-35s, we're looking at about $6,830,000 per day cash burn rate just to keep the ship and its twenty VF-31s operating in peacetime.

 

 

Let's consider ammo now.  The F-35's GAU-22/A rotary cannon with 180 Nammo 25mm PGU-47/U APEX rounds.  That's the same basic caliber as the VF-31 Siegfried's railguns, so let's use that as a benchmark and assume the railgun has similar capacity too since it's similar to that of other Macross gunpods.  Each of those PGU-47/U APEX rounds costs about $150 and the VF-31 has two railgun pods.  Reloading just one of those guns'll set you back $27,000... about the MSRP of a 2026 Toyota Prius. 

Missiles are exponentially worse.  The AIM-9X Sidewinder is a modern infrared-guided short-range air-to-air missile, a reasonably close analogue to the micro-missiles stored in the VF-31's Bifors CIMM-3B micro missile launchers.  They are $400,000 a pop.  Let's assume that the vastly more capable and smaller OTM version costs half that.  Replenishing the VF-31's internal launchers would set you back an eye-watering $7,200,000 to replace all 36 internally carried missiles.  That's not counting any larger, longer-ranged missiles that might be carried in the internal bays on the back of the legs or hung on wing pylons either.

If just Delta Flight sorties, rearming those five aircraft afterwards is going to theoretically cost something on the order of $36,270,000 to reload their railguns and missile launchers.  Should all twenty VF-31s stationed aboard the Elysion sortie together, it balloons out to a whopping $145,080,000.  

When all's said and done, based on these low-end rough real world estimates, just showing up to a fight costs Xaos about $151.9 million dollars... and at the time Xaos is worried about money, they've just lost their only client.  Windermere's occupation forces are not likely to let the Ragna government continue cutting checks to Xaos, and to be fair Ragna's government isn't likely to feel obligated to keep cutting those checks either considering Xaos screwed up so bad that Ragna ended up occupied by the enemy.

Your average large corporation has enough funds to sustain operation for around 12 months without any revenue before going bankrupt.  Small businesses or companies with large operating costs tend to only have around 1 month's expenses in reserves at a time.  Considering operating on a war footing is exponentially more expensive than peacetime, Xaos is likely operating without a huge "war chest" of funding since their main operating profile was low impact suppression of Var riots.  So it's completely believable to me that they could have eaten through practically all of their cash reserves after losing multiple battles and having to flee from the Brisingr cluster with a ship full of refugees in tow.  Especially since they would now have to be sourcing all their supplies from outside the cluster, which is likely to drive costs WAY up given how remote the cluster is.

Edited August 2 by Seto Kaiba

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Oh, I have no doubt that it's a true statement because of those factors.

Xaos's PMC division is neither the largest nor the best funded PMC operator out there.  Nevertheless, the Xaos PMC division's branch office on Ragna is based out of a large Macross warship with two attached aircraft carriers.  The upkeep and operating costs alone on the Macross Elysion, Aether, and Hemera have to be pretty darn substantial.

  Hide contents

Seriously, let's lowball the **** out of this one.  The US Congressional Budget Office estimates that the per annum operating and maintenance costs of a next-generation frigate (the new Constellation-class) to be approximately $300 million (US).  That's about $822,000 per day.  For a much larger ship like a Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, the daily cost of the ship's operation and maintenance falls upwards of $6,000,000.  Considering the Elysion is technically three ships including two aircraft carriers, her operating and maintenance costs probably run a fair bit higher but let's treat her like a single large ship for the sake of argument.

We're fairly certain that Xaos did not have to pay for any of the ~20 VF-31A's that were delivered to the Macross Elysion given that the Brisingr Alliance New UN Forces loaned them out to Xaos for operational evaluation testing c.2067.  They are, however, picking up the daily operating costs and maintenance.  Back in FY2018, the US GAO reported that the total operating and maintenance cost per annum of the F-35 was approximately $13,500,000 per aircraft and the F-22A was approximately $22,000,000.  That's about $37,000 per day for the F-35 and $60,000 per day for the F-22.  Let's lowball this again and assume the VF-31 has a per diem operating cost closer to the F-35's despite being a twin engine aircraft and transforming giant robot to boot.  

Then, of course, we have to pay the crew.  We don't know how big the ship's crew is so we can't really estimate this well but we know there are twenty or more pilots on the Elysion's two attached carriers.  A PMC specialist operator in a conflict zone can earn anywhere from $150,000-250,000 per year.  Let's lowball that say $150K per head and that all the pilots get paid the same for a total cash burn rate per day of about $11,540 just for those twenty people.  The ship's captain is probably paid similarly, and there are likely at a hundred or so other crew aboard the ship.  If we assume they're making about $80K a year, that brings the per diem cash burn rate for salary to around $75,000.  It's almost certainly far more than.

Assuming we ultra-lowball the Elysion as a single small aircraft carrier and the VF-31s like F-35s, we're looking at about $6,830,000 per day cash burn rate just to keep the ship and its twenty VF-31s operating in peacetime.

 

 

Let's consider ammo now.  The F-35's GAU-22/A rotary cannon with 180 Nammo 25mm PGU-47/U APEX rounds.  That's the same basic caliber as the VF-31 Siegfried's railguns, so let's use that as a benchmark and assume the railgun has similar capacity too since it's similar to that of other Macross gunpods.  Each of those PGU-47/U APEX rounds costs about $150 and the VF-31 has two railgun pods.  Reloading just one of those guns'll set you back $27,000... about the MSRP of a 2026 Toyota Prius. 

Missiles are exponentially worse.  The AIM-9X Sidewinder is a modern infrared-guided short-range air-to-air missile, a reasonably close analogue to the micro-missiles stored in the VF-31's Bifors CIMM-3B micro missile launchers.  They are $400,000 a pop.  Let's assume that the vastly more capable and smaller OTM version costs half that.  Replenishing the VF-31's internal launchers would set you back an eye-watering $7,200,000 to replace all 36 internally carried missiles.  That's not counting any larger, longer-ranged missiles that might be carried in the internal bays on the back of the legs or hung on wing pylons either.

If just Delta Flight sorties, rearming those five aircraft afterwards is going to theoretically cost something on the order of $36,270,000 to reload their railguns and missile launchers.  Should all twenty VF-31s stationed aboard the Elysion sortie together, it balloons out to a whopping $145,080,000.  

When all's said and done, based on these low-end rough real world estimates, just showing up to a fight costs Xaos about $151.9 million dollars... and at the time Xaos is worried about money, they've just lost their only client.  Windermere's occupation forces are not likely to let the Ragna government continue cutting checks to Xaos, and to be fair Ragna's government isn't likely to feel obligated to keep cutting those checks either considering Xaos screwed up so bad that Ragna ended up occupied by the enemy.

Your average large corporation has enough funds to sustain operation for around 12 months without any revenue before going bankrupt.  Small businesses or companies with large operating costs tend to only have around 1 month's expenses in reserves at a time.  Considering operating on a war footing is exponentially more expensive than peacetime, Xaos is likely operating without a huge "war chest" of funding since their main operating profile was low impact suppression of Var riots.  So it's completely believable to me that they could have eaten through practically all of their cash reserves after losing multiple battles and having to flee from the Brisingr cluster with a ship full of refugees in tow.  Especially since they would now have to be sourcing all their supplies from outside the cluster, which is likely to drive costs WAY up given how remote the cluster is.

In other words: they're hosed.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

In other words: they're hosed.

Sort of?

It's not Xaos's fault that the PMC division was financially unprepared to wage an extended war without the financial backing of their client government.  Their contract with Ragna and the Brisingr Alliance was to suppress Var outbreaks and provide preventative measures.  Legally speaking, they weren't supposed to be participating in the war at all because they are not strictly speaking soldiers.

In truth, what it really shows is how wildly popular Walkure were in that part of space.

Walkure were able to raise enough money to resupply Xaos's PMC division forces for continuing combat service in a single cluster-wise "guerilla live" event over the Galaxy Network.  They livestreamed a concert to two dozen or so planets and it made enough money to fund a small army for at least a couple weeks!  What must have been hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least.  

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Sort of?

It's not Xaos's fault that the PMC division was financially unprepared to wage an extended war without the financial backing of their client government.  Their contract with Ragna and the Brisingr Alliance was to suppress Var outbreaks and provide preventative measures.  Legally speaking, they weren't supposed to be participating in the war at all because they are not strictly speaking soldiers.

In truth, what it really shows is how wildly popular Walkure were in that part of space.

Walkure were able to raise enough money to resupply Xaos's PMC division forces for continuing combat service in a single cluster-wise "guerilla live" event over the Galaxy Network.  They livestreamed a concert to two dozen or so planets and it made enough money to fund a small army for at least a couple weeks!  What must have been hundreds of millions of dollars at the very least.  

Yeah, I meant their PMC division was hosed as far as finances.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/2/2025 at 8:14 PM, pengbuzz said:

Yeah, I meant their PMC division was hosed as far as finances.

On a lark, I did some research and the more I think about it the more I wonder how any PMC in the Macross setting can even afford to function.

Modern PMCs have it pretty easy.  Equipping infantry can be done fairly cheaply, with most nations spending between $5000 and $20,000 per head for basic infantry equipment like basic uniforms, PPE, firearms, and so on.  That cost can balloon out to the low six figures if specialist equipment is involved, however.  

That's got to be peanuts compared to PMCs in Macross, where the standard soldier is a Valkyrie pilot operating a plane that's got to cost at least the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars.  I guess that explains why every PMC so far seems to have spun off of a megacorporation that was doing business in other industries.  They'd need a massive amount of seed capital to start a business like that.  Even a used, two-generations-old Valkyrie is not exactly cheap by all indications.  The VF-1 and replica VF-0 are apparently cheap enough that the hobbyist market can afford them, but Chelsea Scarlett blows her Vanquish League winnings for the entire 2058 season on three decommissioned VF-11s in order to cobble together just one working aircraft... and that's implied to be like Formula One-level prize money (potentially hundreds of millions of dollars), and it's still two generations old at that point.  It's enough to make you wonder how much these PMCs are getting paid that they can afford this equipment, and how it compares to just having a regular New UN Forces unit funded using the same amount of cash.

I'm sure I'm overthinking it massively, but that's what I do.  I'm an engineer, I analyze things ruthlessly.

[guyxxed]

And we love you for it.  😉 

Considering that Sheryl puts SMS's services on her credit card for an extended battle with the Quarter and full air support, it's probably not quite to the level you're thinking, but you're not wrong that it's got to be expensive.  I can imagine that factory satellites and the infinite resources of space make ammo and fuel less costly than today's equivalents, even if the equipment itself is ballooning to small nation GDP levels.  It's still an insane level of capability in the hands of privateers, though.  Wonder how many go pirate like the SMS or Battle Astrea?  I keep picturing Amazon or Google with nukes and deciding that Apple needs to go away.  😉 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, guyxxed said:

Considering that Sheryl puts SMS's services on her credit card for an extended battle with the Quarter and full air support, it's probably not quite to the level you're thinking, but you're not wrong that it's got to be expensive.

It could very well be at the level I previously guesstimated and still be 100% in-line with her charging it to a credit card.

That sounds insane, but hear me out.

At the time, Sheryl Nome was in her second year as the top idol in the galaxy.  She charges SMS's services to a credit card, sure... but it's a black card.  That term's been devalued a bit in the years since the film came out thanks to some rebrandings and some imitators, but what they're referencing there is the most elite and exclusive by-invitation-only tier of credit cards that only the super wealthy who meet specific secret criteria have.  They generally have no credit limit and a variety of other perks catering to rich and famous.  (For the record, the largest known single purchase ever charged to a black card was in excess of $170M.)  Sheryl's the kind of rich where money is no object.

But from the promotional art for the first movie, even she is absolutely gobsmacked by the invoice from SMS after the film's events.

 

4 hours ago, guyxxed said:

I can imagine that factory satellites and the infinite resources of space make ammo and fuel less costly than today's equivalents, even if the equipment itself is ballooning to small nation GDP levels.  It's still an insane level of capability in the hands of privateers, though.  Wonder how many go pirate like the SMS or Battle Astrea?  I keep picturing Amazon or Google with nukes and deciding that Apple needs to go away.  😉 

Probably, yeah.  Then again, the ammunition is also a lot more complicated than today's equivalents thanks to hybrid guidance and the need for sophisticated ECCM on many of the larger missiles so the price may not have gone down by that much.

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But from the promotional art for the first movie, even she is absolutely gobsmacked by the invoice from SMS after the film's events.

I wouldn't want to even guess what the interest on that would be...

 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/6/2025 at 4:24 PM, pengbuzz said:

I wouldn't want to even guess what the interest on that would be...

Assuming Sheryl's "VEGA" black card works the same way as its real world equivalents, that wouldn't be a concern.

Spoiler

Basically, they're charge cards rather than true credit cards.  You have to pay the full balance each month but there's no interest charge on purchases, the balance doesn't count towards your credit utilization, and there's no preset spending limit.

It's why a black card is a status symbol of sorts.  It's a tangible proof that the holder is so profoundly wealthy that they can spend without restraint on whatever takes their fancy.

That Sheryl has a black card is a pretty clear indicator that her status as the galaxy's #1 idol has made her fabulously wealthy.

That the card issuer, "VEGA", doesn't decline Sheryl's attempt to charge what must have been a literal fortune to her personal card in order to hire an entire PMC is proof that she has absolutely ridiculous amounts of money at her disposal.  That she's still stunned rigid by the size of the invoice is a pretty solid argument that hiring a PMC like SMS must be a hugely expensive undertaking in its own right too.  😆

 

[pengbuzz]

31 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Assuming Sheryl's "VEGA" black card works the same way as its real world equivalents, that wouldn't be a concern.

  Reveal hidden contents

Basically, they're charge cards rather than true credit cards.  You have to pay the full balance each month but there's no interest charge on purchases, the balance doesn't count towards your credit utilization, and there's no preset spending limit.

It's why a black card is a status symbol of sorts.  It's a tangible proof that the holder is so profoundly wealthy that they can spend without restraint on whatever takes their fancy.

That Sheryl has a black card is a pretty clear indicator that her status as the galaxy's #1 idol has made her fabulously wealthy.

That the card issuer, "VEGA", doesn't decline Sheryl's attempt to charge what must have been a literal fortune to her personal card in order to hire an entire PMC is proof that she has absolutely ridiculous amounts of money at her disposal.  That she's still stunned rigid by the size of the invoice is a pretty solid argument that hiring a PMC like SMS must be a hugely expensive undertaking in its own right too.  😆

 

Okay; that said, were there interest, I bet it could fund a small government.

[Seto Kaiba]

On 8/8/2025 at 2:11 AM, pengbuzz said:

Okay; that said, were there interest, I bet it could fund a small government.

Undoubtably... though it's entirely possible what Sheryl spent on that operation itself could equal or exceed the GDP of a small country in its own right.  (You'd be surprised how small the GDP of some of the smallest countries is!)

(Never mind her own net worth.)

[pengbuzz]

On 8/9/2025 at 10:17 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Undoubtably... though it's entirely possible what Sheryl spent on that operation itself could equal or exceed the GDP of a small country in its own right.  (You'd be surprised how small the GDP of some of the smallest countries is!)

(Never mind her own net worth.)

Guess she never has to worry about Macross collectible preorders, huh?

[JB0]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

Guess she never has to worry about Macross collectible preorders, huh?

Nope. She gets a good night's sleep, then pays the scalper markup. Doesn't even hesitate.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Guess she never has to worry about Macross collectible preorders, huh?

She probably has people for that. 😆

Her tour crew has to have a fair few administrative staff dancing attendance on her wants and needs, as well as the hotel concierge staff wherever she's staying, as well as any personal shopper benefits her black card might afford her.  And if that's not enough to get through preorder madness with her sanity intact she's got Grace and/or Brera, both of whom have a literal cyberwarfare suite in their brains.

 

Hell, in Master File, Sheryl is able to get the SMS branch in Macross Olympia to not only assign a pair of VF-25s as her personal guard but to repaint them in custom livery and change their modex numbers purely for symbolic/nostalgic reasons.  (To match her and Alto's birthdays... 1123 and 727 respectively.)

Edited August 11 by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

On 7/22/2025 at 9:22 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

One of the several reasons I privately suspect - in the absence of any hard statements either way - that the Elysion-type is an older generation of Macross than the Macross Quarter-class is that its greater size doesn't seem to afford it any significant advantage.  It has a few more beam turrets than the standard Macross Quarter-class, but is outclassed there by a variant Macross Quarter-class from the movies.  Neither its turrets nor its Macross Cannon seem to be particularly powerful either... and it flat-out lacks an equivalent to the Macross Quarter's gatling buster. 

Perhaps most tellingly, despite being twice as large it seems to have only about 1/2 the mecha capacity of its smaller counterpart.  The New UN Spacy's smallest standard carrier is home to around 40 aircraft in normal operating conditions.  The Macross Quarter-class supposedly holds around 60 mecha in total, counting emplaced unmanned destroids for air defense, Ghosts, Valkyries, and Battle Suits.  The Macross Elysion's only home to twenty Valkyries between its two support carriers Aether and Hemera, presumably having room for around 30 in total without Walkure's special equipment getting underfoot.  That's pretty darn small for such a large ship.  Doubly so considering that one ship is Xaos's only force covering multiple inhabited planets simultaneously whereas a single Macross Quarter-class is covering a single emigrant fleet.

On that basis, I don't think they really have enough firepower to take over the Brisingr cluster solo... I think they'd probably get taken out through sheer weight of numbers in a similar way that Windermere IV did once Heinz was out of action.  

 

I've told you, and I've shown you, there's no room on the Quarter for that kind of a mecha complement. Not a chance. The ARMD-L - the carrier section, where the fighters are supposed to go - is the size of an Essex-class carrier... with three quarters of the hull chopped off (the stern half to make room for the Quarter's arm, and the bottom half to slim it down) if you take the official 472 meter size as gospel. (Also a huge part of how large the air wings of the Essex class were was deck storage, and knockdown storage, where the whole air wing didn't physically fit on the hangar deck in ready-to-fly state). And the biggest interior hangar shot I've found (and I've been looking) shows 12 VFs, and I'm not sure as of right now whether I can fit a box containing that number inside the hull of the "canon-size" ARMD-L. Maybe in the legs, but that's not where the VFs go. 

The one possible solution is if you scale the ship up so that the *ARMD-L* is 472 meters - that makes a whole lot of things work much better, as now the elevators won't clip the noses and wings off of VF-25s, and the marked landing strip on the flight deck is wide enough to actually land on. And the catapult tracks are separated widely enough to use simultaneously. But at that point, the Quarter is not 1/4 the size of the Macross except maybe by displacement. 

On the other hand, the Elysion, without changing its size any, has at least 20 fighters per carrier, given that we can see and count sixteen VF-31As with super packs below deck in the ready hangar awaiting launch in the show, *on top* of the four Delta Squadron fighters that are in a separate part of the ship at that point. (And we know they're on the Aether because it says "Aether" on the fins).

I can even work out how to fit those fighters into the hull at the "canon" size, even if barely; and some of the other scenes where they have the Deltas five wide below deck are beyond iffy at that size.

And if you scale the Elysion up to the point where the model's features start to make practical sense (elevators being sufficiently large for VF-31s, bridge windows being big enough, the hangar capacity *explodes*, because things do that when you give them 800% of their original volume. I can fit 40 fighters on a single contiguous hangar deck when I do that, and there's potentially room for a second one below the first. 

 

This is what the "scaled by features" versions of the Elysion and Quarter look like, with the fighters on deck outlining the area where there's enough room for a hangar deck below. Keep in mind that at official scale the ARMD-L would also be half as thick, the outline for a possible hangar be substantially smaller relative to the size of the deck, while the fighters would be twice the size relative to the ship. 

I will at some point make comparable "official scale" versions so you can see the extent of where there's actual room for a hangar (and also, how big a VF-25 is relative to the marked landing strip and catapults on the ARMD-L showing how they can't be actually used at that scale)

I maintain that the only ships whose size I have no complaints about based on the scale of the features of the models, are the Battle class and the Uraga. Everything else feels like someone drew it at one size and then someone else decided that "nah, it's this other size instead" without spending any energy correcting the features for the new scale. Those two are big enough at their stated size to carry any mecha and launch them with a convincing amount of safety margins. The only complaint I have are the spurs on the backs of the legs on the Battle class because they're sticking up into the landing glidepath for the marked flight deck...

Edited Monday at 08:21 PM by SebastianP

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, SebastianP said:

"Amazing. Everything you just said was wrong."

Rude... and demonstrably incorrect given the subject matter.

 

6 hours ago, SebastianP said:

I've told you, and I've shown you, [...]

... your fan theories, yes.

As I've gently reminded you many times now, this thread is mainly discussions about the information in official setting materials and other official publications.

Your theories, no matter how convincing you may believe them to be, are still just fan theories.  They're borderline off-topic in a discussion of what's said in official media, especially where they contradict the official material.

 

6 hours ago, SebastianP said:

there's no room on the Quarter for that kind of a mecha complement. Not a chance.

 

Bearing in mind that 80 mecha is listed as the maximum capacity not the standard operating capacity and that that figure is inclusive of Valkyries, Ghosts, Battle Suits, and Destroids which may be stored in places other than ARMD-L... we don't actually know what the Macross Quarter's normal operating capacity is.  If it's anything like a normal aircraft carrier, it's probably around 1/2 of the maximum... so about 40 machines in total.  That's inclusive of Valkyries, Destroids, Battle Suits, and Ghosts, not all of which are stored in ARMD-L's main hangar space, so that doesn't seem like an unreasonable number to me. 

EDIT: At least five specific VF platoons are mentioned (Skull, Apollo, Blue, Purple, and Vermilion) as well as the one Battle Suit platoon (Pixie), suggesting the Macross Quarter's fighter complement included at least 20 VF-25s and three Battle Suits.

Maximum capacity on an aircraft carrier usually means measures like leaving craft out on the deck, stashing them in the elevators, the maintenance spaces, and what have you so an ordinarily unsustainable amount can be carried.  We do see VF-25s being stored in places other than the main hangar at a few points, though it's not clear where.  

 

6 hours ago, SebastianP said:

On the other hand, the Elysion, without changing its size any, has at least 20 fighters per carrier, given that we can see and count sixteen VF-31As with super packs below deck in the ready hangar awaiting launch in the show, *on top* of the four Delta Squadron fighters that are in a separate part of the ship at that point. (And we know they're on the Aether because it says "Aether" on the fins).

Much about the Elysion is vague and poorly documented, as we've touched on previously.

That said, I don't disagree that the Elysion's supporting carriers should theoretically be able to manage ~20 fighters apiece given that we know that in normal operations they have fifteen VF-31As stationed on the Hemera.  Theory and practice are two different things, however.  They actually seem to operate with far fewer aircraft than that in practice.  All the available info in-series and out suggests the Elysion is home to just twenty combat aircraft (plus at least two trainers and one shuttle).  

Edited Tuesday at 01:49 AM by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Your theories, no matter how convincing you may believe them to be, are still just fan theories.  They're borderline off-topic in a discussion of what's said in official media, especially where they contradict the official material.

 

 

Yes, I know I was rude. That's why I changed my mind and edited it out. Apparently not fast enough. 

What constitutes proof? Physically building the interior and trying to fit them into the official model? Or will you claim that the model used in the game has the wrong shape? Do you have any conception of how "wrong" the shape would have to be in order to fit this quantity of stuff inside?

One of our best interior hangar shots, from Sayonara no Tsubasa. I count three visible portside vertical tails along the left side of the hangar, and three on the right. (Some of the other shots from early in the TV series indicate the hangar is *even bigger*, btw, but there was no nice replicable scene where I could prove it.)

An attempt at recreating this layout in 3D. Note that I've erred on the side of smallness throughout - the movie screencap shows that you can see between the fighters all the way down to the far end, which doesn't work for my scene because they're too close together (hangar is narrower than in the movie); and the two pairs of "ass-to-ass" fighters look especially weird like this. But they fit in this box, and the box can't be made too much smaller - certainly not narrower.

This is how much the hangar I built sticks out of the hull on the official Macross Quarter model from the video games, scaled to 472 meters overall for the Quarter.. If this model is not accurate, I don't know where we'd find a better one. Note how the the hangar is too wide for the hull the entire way, and too wide for the *flight deck* at the front end. 

Box in the same position, showing that it pokes through at the back too, and that there's no rear hull to the ARMD-L

This hangar does not fit in the ARMD-L, and a 6 meter tall hangar that does fit would be tiny and very narrow at the front end, barely big enough for a single row of fighters. I might be able to squeeze in eight VF-25s. 

Box is also wider than the whole leg, so it obviously doesn't fit there either.  

I physically can not fit twelve fighters on one deck anywhere on the Quarter at its official size. There's no volume big enough for that. 

Have we moved beyond "this is just a fan a theory" yet? I can't make the fighters fit. I invite  you to try for yourself, the models are available and Blender is free (even if that's not what I used). 

Bonus: The VF-25 sitting on the too-small elevator of the ARMD-L. None of the other elevators are any larger. (This is an orthographic picture, so there's no perspective distortion to make the elevator look smaller. And while the model of the VF-25 is not official, it's correctly scaled in all particulars). 

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Bearing in mind that 80 mecha is listed as the maximum capacity not the standard operating capacity and that that figure is inclusive of Valkyries, Ghosts, Battle Suits, and Destroids which may be stored in places other than ARMD-L... we don't actually know what the Macross Quarter's normal operating capacity is.  If it's anything like a normal aircraft carrier, it's probably around 1/2 of the maximum... so about 40 machines in total.  That's inclusive of Valkyries, Destroids, Battle Suits, and Ghosts, not all of which are stored in ARMD-L's main hangar space, so that doesn't seem like an unreasonable number to me.

Where would those hangars be? I showed above, there's no room for a hangar matching what we saw internally anywhere on this ship. No section is large enough to hold it, not at the canon size. The whole ARMD-L is is about as thick as a Queadluun is tall at its thickest point as well - and I think even the legs would have trouble finding standing room for a Queadluun. I certainly don't see anywhere to launch and recover one through. 

 

At this point, either the anime depiction is false, and all other visual depictions based on it are false, in order to satisfy the book stat line; or the book statline is false, It's very binary. And discarding the book statline, and reinterpreting the *two* scenes in the anime (Quarter alongside Battle Frontier for the Macross Cannon shot, and Quarter charging Battle Galaxy with a Macross Attack) that rely on the ship being 25% of the *length* of the Battle class is less damaging to the coherency of *everything* than discarding all visual depictions because they don't match the Chronicle statline. 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 02:07 AM by SebastianP

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, SebastianP said:

What constitutes proof? Physically building the interior and trying to fit them into the official model? Or will you claim that the model used in the game has the wrong shape? Do you have any conception of how "wrong" the shape would have to be in order to fit this quantity of stuff inside?

An internally consistent argument that does not depend on assumptions, unofficial sources, etc. is obviously the ideal.

Observation from the animation is of course very good.  The animation model sheets even better.  Descriptions from official media are also fine.  Authoritative official sources are in general preferred.

 

1 hour ago, SebastianP said:

One of our best interior hangar shots, from Sayonara no Tsubasa. I count three visible portside vertical tails along the left side of the hangar, and three on the right. (Some of the other shots from early in the TV series indicate the hangar is *even bigger*, btw, but there was no nice replicable scene where I could prove it.)

Based on the animator's model reference produced by Macross Quarter mechanical designer Junya Ishigaki which may be found in his personal artbook ROBO no Ishi as well as the Mechanic Sheet for the Macross Quarter in Macross Chronicle, this appears to be approximately 1/2 of ARMD-L's main hangar.  The bow end, based on the design of the back wall there and the lack of the large double airlock to the Super Parts installation are and elevators. 

The full length of the hangar as drawn is eleven of those segmented wall panels long (plus approximately one VF-25 length from the emergency shutters at the rear), and there are I think five sets shown in this shot, suggesting this is approximately the middle of the hangar facing toward the bow.  With thirteen planes fitting neatly into that space, the Macross Quarter's primary hangar should hold approximately 26 VF-25-sized aircraft, not counting the 2+ machine capacity of the Super Pack fitting area and the 7 machine capacity of the Battroid maintenance area at the rear.  That puts the interior capacity of the ARMD-L at 35 machines based on the animation and animator's model reference.

This does not account for the other maintenance areas that we see VF-25s being stored in in the series and movies.

EDIT: (We're not really concerned with the CG model... but rather how the visuals of the series line up with each other.  Artistic license is a thing, after all... nobody's expecting perfect veracity.)

Edited Tuesday at 03:49 AM by Seto Kaiba

[SebastianP]

8 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

An internally consistent argument that does not depend on assumptions, unofficial sources, etc. is obviously the ideal.

Observation from the animation is of course very good.  The animation model sheets even better.  Descriptions from official media are also fine.  Authoritative official sources are in general preferred.

 

Based on the animator's model reference produced by Macross Quarter mechanical designer Junya Ishigaki which may be found in his personal artbook ROBO no Ishi as well as the Mechanic Sheet for the Macross Quarter in Macross Chronicle, this appears to be approximately 1/2 of ARMD-L's main hangar.  The bow end, based on the design of the back wall there and the lack of the large double airlock to the Super Parts installation are and elevators. 

The full length of the hangar as drawn is eleven of those segmented wall panels long (plus approximately one VF-25 length from the emergency shutters at the rear), and there are I think five sets shown in this shot, suggesting this is approximately the middle of the hangar facing toward the bow.  With thirteen planes fitting neatly into that space, the Macross Quarter's primary hangar should hold approximately 26 VF-25-sized aircraft, not counting the 2+ machine capacity of the Super Pack fitting area and the 7 machine capacity of the Battroid maintenance area at the rear.  That puts the interior capacity of the ARMD-L at 35 machines based on the animation and animator's model reference.

This does not account for the other maintenance areas that we see VF-25s being stored in in the series and movies.

To get a battroid maintenance area aft of the main hangar, the ship needs to be *ginormous* - there's simply not enough depth. At 472 meters overall, forget there being standing battroids *at all* on the ARMD-L,, the whole hull isn't tall enough.

Here I've scaled the ARMD-L up to 200%. The forward grey rectangle is the old hangar, extended lengthwise to 200% to match your estimate of how big the full hangar is. The smaller red rectangle is how much of the hull is left aft of the main hangar where there's enough depth for a Battroid to stand up. It is not very much. Aft of that is another grey rectangle showing how far you could extend the main hangar deck without breaking through the underside. (This is with the hangar deck 7 meters below the flight deck, which seems reasonable to me.)

The larger red rectangle shows where the hull is deep enough that there's standing room *under* the main hangar. I went with 22 meter height for the hangar ceiling - if you make this space narrower or less tall, you can extend it forward by a fair amount. That's the only space that works for a "battroid maintenance area" at this size. 

The more the ship is scaled up from here, the further forward the main hangar can be moved and the red section aft of it extended.

Taking into account that the hangar I drew originally was narrower than shown in the anime, I think we're looking at a thousand meters overall for the whole Quarter in order to fit Junya Ishigaki's hangar layout inside of the ARMD-L .

 

[Seto Kaiba]

12 hours ago, SebastianP said:

To get a battroid maintenance area aft of the main hangar, [...]

Regardless of your conclusions, this is all off topic to the comparison of the Macross Quarter and Macross Elysion based on their official setting info so let's leave it there please.

[pengbuzz]

@Seto Kaiba On another note Seto: I recall in SFDM that Britai tore the chestplate off of Hikaru's VF-1J when Hikaru, Kakizaki and Max Jenius engaged him aboard his command cruiser. My question is this: I know that Britai was unusually tall for even Zentraedi, but how hard would it be for a Zentraedi to do something like that to a modern Valkyrie nowadays (i.e. vf-25 and up)? I would imagine with the magnetic shifters binding the torsos in place it would be pretty hard even for someone like Britai.

Edited Tuesday at 08:15 PM by pengbuzz

[SebastianP]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Regardless of your conclusions, this is all off topic to the comparison of the Macross Quarter and Macross Elysion based on their official setting info so let's leave it there please.

Is proving that the Quarter cannot have its stated hangar capacity off topic for a discussion about the Quarter's hangar capacity now? 

If you can't fit the main 36-fighter hangar on the Quarter at its given size, then what hope have you of fitting 60 mecha total

If the ship is not 472 meters long and has to be twice the size to fit the hangar we see in the show, how is it more space efficient than the Elysion? 

And if you try to rule out the officially licensed 3D model from the Frontier games (yes, this was the actual extracted model, not a conversion for 3D printing or anything) as "fanfic", then I will have to say the same for the Chronicle - it's equally worthless as a source of accurate information due to its contradictions. 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

29 minutes ago, pengbuzz said:

@Seto Kaiba On another note Seto: I recall in SFDM that Britai tore the chestplate off of Hikaru's VF-1J when Hikaru, Kakizaki and Max Jenius engaged him aboard his command cruiser. My question is this: I know that Britai was unusually tall for even Zentraedi, but how hard would it be for a Zentraedi to do something like that to a modern Valkyrie nowadays (i.e. vf-25 and up)? I would imagine with the magnetic shifters binding the torsos in place it would be pretty hard even for someone like Britai.

According to Macross Chronicle, Commander-type Zentradi like Vrlitwhai are engineered to be larger, stronger, and more durable than the far more numerous "General Soldier-type" clones who make up the bulk of their forces.  

That said, it's hard to say if one would be up to the task of taking on 4th or 5th Generation Valkyrie the same way due to the improvements that've been made in armor and structural materials since then.  The Mechanic Sheet for the 3.5th Generation VF-17D/S Nightmare claims that the improved energy conversion armor of that model gave it durability on a level rivaling an Armored Valkyrie.  Exactly how tough the Armored Pack is is a whole other matter.  The most authoritative sources generally decline to put specific number and usually go for vague statements like "significantly" or "several times".  A few older sources like Sky Angels have put the improvement in defensive ability at anywhere from about 2.5x to 10x the defensive ability of the Valkyrie's own armor.

It's likely that that level of durability is beyond what someone like Vrlitwhai could mess up by hand... or if it isn't, they'd really have their work cut out for them.  

[azrael]

Arguing about fictional stats from a work of fiction....Only in sci-fi does this happen. 🙃

[pengbuzz]

15 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

According to Macross Chronicle, Commander-type Zentradi like Vrlitwhai are engineered to be larger, stronger, and more durable than the far more numerous "General Soldier-type" clones who make up the bulk of their forces.  

That said, it's hard to say if one would be up to the task of taking on 4th or 5th Generation Valkyrie the same way due to the improvements that've been made in armor and structural materials since then.  The Mechanic Sheet for the 3.5th Generation VF-17D/S Nightmare claims that the improved energy conversion armor of that model gave it durability on a level rivaling an Armored Valkyrie.  Exactly how tough the Armored Pack is is a whole other matter.  The most authoritative sources generally decline to put specific number and usually go for vague statements like "significantly" or "several times".  A few older sources like Sky Angels have put the improvement in defensive ability at anywhere from about 2.5x to 10x the defensive ability of the Valkyrie's own armor.

It's likely that that level of durability is beyond what someone like Vrlitwhai could mess up by hand... or if it isn't, they'd really have their work cut out for them.  

Yeah; I had that somewhere in the back of my mind about Vrlitwhai (thought his name was " Britai", from where they got the RT name "Breetai") but didn't quite flash on it. I ask because I was thinking about that fight and got the idea "What if Hikaru and gang had the VF-25 Messiah or something later like the Siegfried?"

I also thought about (for the sake of argument):

1) Isamu in the YF-19 taking on a commander-type Zentraedi, and how they would fare against a "Booster Punch" (I know the YF-19 probably has greater strength than the VF-1's servos and motors).

2) A later VF in the same scenario Roy Fokker was in during DYRL, where the cockpit of Skull-1 got crushed and the chestplate torn off by Quamzin (I don't  think Quamzin was a "commander-type" like Vrlitwhai, but I might be mistaken).

Sorry if all of this is a little all over the place, but overall, just curious about the overall specs and structural strength of more modern valks in situations where the VF-1 got busted up. 

Edited Wednesday at 12:34 PM by pengbuzz

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Yeah; I had that somewhere in the back of my mind about Vrlitwhai (thought his name was " Britai", from where they got the RT name "Breetai") but didn't quite flash on it. I ask because I was thinking about that fight and got the idea "What if Hikaru and gang had the VF-25 Messiah or something later like the Siegfried?"

In Japanese, his name is written ブリタイ・クリダニク (lit. Buritai Kuridaniku).  "Britai" is a viable romanization of that.

From long (bad) habit, I tend to mostly default to the official "alien" romanizations that were used in Do You Remember Love? since those are used in a lot of product packaging and artbooks.  Most of those spellings are "close enough" though some are truly just "alien for the sake of looking alien".  The banner in DYRL? when they have the ceasefire agreement spells "Zentradi" as "Zjentohlauedy" if you translate the alien text.

The Robotech versions of a lot of the romanizations are often just straightforward slightly tweaked literal readings of the Japanese text that try to make them less tongue twister-y.  For example, the Robotech name for the Queadluun Rau battle suit is "Quadrano", which is a lightly tweaked version of the Japanese クァドラン・ロー (lit. Kwadoran Rou).

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

1) Isamu in the YF-19 taking on a commander-type Zentraedi, and how they would fare against a "Booster Punch" (I know the YF-19 probably has greater strength than the VF-1's servos and motors).

Considering the much improved armor, actuators, and generator capacity of those Gen 3.5 and later machines like the VF-17, VF-19, and VF-22 and the fact that they were several generations on from the understanding that the Zentradi use mecha too, I'd assume that a Zentradi soldier might put up a fight but would probably be outpowered by the sheer torque those superconducting motors can produce when you throw a couple gigavolts at 'em.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

2) A later VF in the same scenario Roy Fokker was in during DYRL, where the cockpit of Skull-1 got crushed and the chestplate torn off by Quamzin (I don't  think Quamzin was a "commander-type" like Vrlitwhai, but I might be mistaken).

Quamzin's a commander-type Zentradi in most versions of the story, yeah.  He's a good head taller than the normal soldiers under his command.

[Big s]

7 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

2) A later VF in the same scenario Roy Fokker was in during DYRL, where the cockpit of Skull-1 got crushed and the chestplate torn off by Quamzin (I don't  think Quamzin was a "commander-type" like Vrlitwhai, but I might be mistaken).

 

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Quamzin's a commander-type Zentradi in most versions of the story, yeah.  He's a good head taller than the normal soldiers under his command.

I’ve rewatched that DYRL scene about a billion times trying to catch details about the Queadluun Rau for the hasegawa release of the kits to compare with the movie, and he’s definitely not a tall dude in the movie. The show he’s a fairly big guy, but movie version, it looks like he’s barely up to mid chest height to the VF-1, if not a little shorter. Not as bad as Dinklage choosing a fight with a six foot dude, but kinda close in comparison of wild scenes when you really pay attention.
One of, if not the only examples of their height compared to a battroid and fairly close if not spot on to the size charts from the movie. So I’m just assuming that he probably is actually around a head taller than the folks under his command. Almost reminds me of the whole reason for promotions in Invader Zim, with the leaders known as the Tallest are actually just in charge because they’re taller than the rest

[aurance]

10 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Forgive me for saying, but those things aren't actually all that separate.

The vast majority of the official setting material is literally material produced in development and production of the series to tell the writers what and how to write or tell the animators what to draw and how to draw it.  Instructions to the writers expressing the limits of what things in the fictional world can and cannot do, how big they are relative to each other, what kind of weapons they have and how many shots they can fire, who the characters are as people, how the world around them works, and so on so the writers and animators can bring that artistic vision to life as faithfully as budget, technology, and human fallibility permit.  The onscreen evidence is a product of this material, not separate from it.

In the west, collections of such documents are called "Series Bibles" or "Writers Bibles".  In Japan, this pre-production and production material is usually published as series artbooks and often come with lengthy staff commentary from the directors, the designers, the voice actors, you name it.  Narrative intent is not a mystery.  The creators are almost literally queuing up to spell it out for us in detail.  Everything from what their inspiration was to why they made the creative decisions they did to little random in-jokes they hid in specific scenes and the meaning of them.  Some books made for cancelled shows even spell out how the series was supposed to end and what was supposed to happen in the parts that we didn't get to see.  Some creators are so prolific about it that there's vastly more material from them about their narrative intent and the greater scope of their story that isn't on the screen than there is in the actual story by orders of magnitude.  (Lookin' at you, Mamoru Nagano and Masaki Kajishima.)

 

Are there going to be inconsistencies in the final work?  Absolutely.  The production staff are only human.  So sometimes things get drawn incorrectly (e.g. the VF-1A with 3 lasers).  Sometimes they miss a detail in a scene and have to go back and make a hasty correction (Max's tail missiles).  Sometimes they cut corners to keep costs down (e.g. recycling animation or using low quality textures or out-of-proportion 3D models for far away objects).  Expecting perfection or perfect consistency from any work is wildly irrational at best.

Sometimes it's *quite* different, but I don't want to do this dance again, so you win.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 minutes ago, Big s said:

I’ve rewatched that DYRL scene about a billion times trying to catch details about the Queadluun Rau for the hasegawa release of the kits to compare with the movie, [...]

Bless you for your diligence. 😁

 

2 minutes ago, Big s said:

[...] and he’s definitely not a tall dude in the movie. The show he’s a fairly big guy, but movie version, it looks like he’s barely up to mid chest height to the VF-1, if not a little shorter. Not as bad as Dinklage choosing a fight with a six foot dude, but kinda close in comparison of wild scenes when you really pay attention.

One of, if not the only examples of their height compared to a battroid and fairly close if not spot on to the size charts from the movie. So I’m just assuming that he probably is actually around a head taller than the folks under his command. Almost reminds me of the whole reason for promotions in Invader Zim, with the leaders known as the Tallest are actually just in charge because they’re taller than the rest

He's a good head shorter than Vrlitwhai and the VF-1 Valkyrie even in the original TV series:

The statistically average Zentradi soldier is supposed to be around Exsedol's size in this image at ~10m, though that's a round order average cited in a bunch of different titles and quite a few of the ones listed are actually shorter (with Milia being a mere 8.55m) or taller (e.g. Klan, our poster child for inconsistently rendered height).

 

DYRL? does a much better job of drawing the rank-and-file Zentradi in correct scale to the VF-1 and it also made several characters explicitly shorter.  Look at how sharply Vrlitwhai closed the size gap between himself and Exsedol, who stayed the same height in the movie version:

It wouldn't be at all surprising if he got a bit shorter in the movie version the same way Vrlitwhai did.

 

Even if he has probably been downgraded from the stuff of basketball legend to merely taller than average, his bios in the Macross: Do You Remember Love? Data Bank, This is Animation: the Select #11, and Macross Chronicle all still describe him as being a Commander-class Zentradi though.

[pengbuzz]

On 8/20/2025 at 12:18 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

In Japanese, his name is written ブリタイ・クリダニク (lit. Buritai Kuridaniku).  "Britai" is a viable romanization of that.

From long (bad) habit, I tend to mostly default to the official "alien" romanizations that were used in Do You Remember Love? since those are used in a lot of product packaging and artbooks.  Most of those spellings are "close enough" though some are truly just "alien for the sake of looking alien".  The banner in DYRL? when they have the ceasefire agreement spells "Zentradi" as "Zjentohlauedy" if you translate the alien text.

The Robotech versions of a lot of the romanizations are often just straightforward slightly tweaked literal readings of the Japanese text that try to make them less tongue twister-y.  For example, the Robotech name for the Queadluun Rau battle suit is "Quadrano", which is a lightly tweaked version of the Japanese クァドラン・ロー (lit. Kwadoran Rou).

Thanks for clarifying that; sometimes the names can drive me up a wall!

 

On 8/20/2025 at 12:18 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Considering the much improved armor, actuators, and generator capacity of those Gen 3.5 and later machines like the VF-17, VF-19, and VF-22 and the fact that they were several generations on from the understanding that the Zentradi use mecha too, I'd assume that a Zentradi soldier might put up a fight but would probably be outpowered by the sheer torque those superconducting motors can produce when you throw a couple gigavolts at 'em.

Ah, okay. So Britai wouldn't be tossing them around like he did during SW1.

 

On 8/20/2025 at 12:18 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Quamzin's a commander-type Zentradi in most versions of the story, yeah.  He's a good head taller than the normal soldiers under his command.

Ok; what threw me was how much shorter than Britai he was.

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Thanks for clarifying that; sometimes the names can drive me up a wall!

Yeah, some of those deliberately-alien spellings are downright awful.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Ah, okay. So Britai wouldn't be tossing them around like he did during SW1.

Probably not.

 

3 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Ok; what threw me was how much shorter than Britai he was.

The original Super Dimension Fortress Macross series had a much wider array of sizes for Zentradi soldiers, but it wasn't super great at keeping them in scale with each other.  A lot of the background Zentradi seen near VF-1s tended to get drawn around 12-13m tall instead of the 10m they were supposed to be.  They were much better about it in the movie.

They run the gamut from Milia at a humble 8.55m all the way up to Vrlitwhai at 13.54m and Boddole Zer standing a full head taller than him (~16-17m?).  

Scale 'em down to Human size the same way they do Milia, and the Commander-type Zentradi are still giants.  Quamzin would be 237cm (7'9"), Vrlitwhai would be 271cm (8'11"), and Boddole Zer would be around 320cm (10'6").  

If basketball is still played in the Macross universe, there has to be a Zentradi-only league because that's just plain unfair.

[JB0]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If basketball is still played in the Macross universe, there has to be a Zentradi-only league because that's just plain unfair.

I think this is the topic of a postwar drama, Cyan Men Can't Jump.