2008-05-12, 21:20 | Link #61 | |
Illegal Additives
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The thing about the VF-19 and 22 is the need for some really ace pilots to bring the best out of them. As it is, the rationale for downgrading a special operations fighter [vf 17] to a frontline heavy fighter[vf 171] makes better sense for the rank and file air grunt. It's fairly robust, is a proven design with all the requisite hardpoints for any operation and doubles up as a stealth fighter when needed. I suspect that cheap and effective is what the current military government is aiming for. So that leave private enterprise to throw in the money for higher end mecha and experianced personnel. Makes sense when genocidal war and unknown terrority become bad for business |
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2008-05-12, 21:23 | Link #62 | |
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- Tak |
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2008-05-12, 21:34 | Link #63 | |
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Anyone else think that Klein Klan sounded almost like a saleswoman there? "They never, EVER break down!" is a nice way to pitch a weapon. As for the uniformity of fighters across fleets, we know that the companies in question were (at least originally) based on Earth, and the spacefold technology makes it so that you could make deliveries of such technology, or at least the templates for the automated factories, fairly feasable as long as you keep in regular contact with Earth (which they do, as far as we can tell) and Eden. Beyond that, it comes down to a matter of the budgets that the fleets have for their branches of the UN Spacy/NUNS as well as the level of training and logistics they can support. Frontier's fleet seems to have been spoiled by peacetime, while Macross 7's fleet (given they had Max and Milia Jenius along as commander and mayor) seems to have kept up training pretty well. That, and this way the NUNS provides the 'grunts' who get blown out of the sky to make our heroes in SMS look good... |
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2008-05-12, 22:57 | Link #64 |
Loveable Jerk
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Err not really acutally if you pay attention at all it's pretty blatantly obvious that the humans are leaving the Zent stuff behind rather rapidly AND that it's breaking down all the time; acutally this is a major plot point in the first series the Zents are flabbergasted that the humans acutally repaired the ship becasue they can't fix there own when they break (which they DO). I mean for god sake with a good pilot a VF-1 could fight off a Queadlunn Rau and I'd kind of hope that a fighter built oh 50 years later could outperform the first VF ever. Personally I think these Queadlunn Rau's MUST have been subjected to some serious upgrades over the years, and that would make sense after all the UN dosen't seem to be building new full sized Zent mecha so they'd be stuck with improving what they have if they wanted to go into combat in that form. To that end the Queadlunn Rau is easily the most capable design they have and so would be the logical choice for an upgrade program.
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2008-05-12, 23:06 | Link #65 | |
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As for the Quads, although they look the same, the Macross F version is known as the Queadluun Rea. - Tak |
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2008-05-13, 07:44 | Link #66 |
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Spoiler for End of SDF Macross:
I've noticed Macross 7 was kinda like Florida in terms of really old people taking an option of retiring there. Most were UN Spacy vets. Macross 7 , the retirement fleet. lol Last edited by 4Tran; 2008-05-13 at 08:04. Reason: Added spoiler tags. |
2008-05-13, 10:12 | Link #67 | |
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Now, if that isn't a statement on zentradi quality then I don't know what is |
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2008-05-13, 10:18 | Link #68 |
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Well, we never had concrete evidence stating Zents couldn't repair or maintain their own ships. Although Milia and a certain Ally Killer came back with the same battlesuit/battle pod over and over again after numerous battles. Moreover, the three Zent spies who infiltrated Macross were also shown to be able to repair their own tac-pods.
Certainly they know how to repair their crap. Some tend to cite the 'broken glass' on Breetai's battleship as an example, but who the heck keeps a spare 'glass' on stand-by? Even modern naval vessels don't have that. And one should remember the Zent fleets were also very far away from their nearest supply joint. For the duration of Macross, Breetai was stationed near Earth and almost never had the opportunity to leave. But otherwise, the quality of Zent weapons is guaranteed no matter when it was made - Tak |
2008-05-13, 15:04 | Link #69 | ||||
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Acutally I'm 99% sure it's stated that they have no real clue how allot of there stuff works and that this was done on purpose. Understanding of underlying concepts is not at all required to use or even perform crude repairs of a machine. Many of us can perform small repairs on our cars, but we can't replace a transmission or rebuild a blown engine block. After all the Zent's weapons were pretty much all built in giant automated factories (that themselves by the time of the Macross where starting to fail) which ought to be proof enough that none of them really understood how they worked so almost surely ruled out any complex high level maintenance. All we really need to look at to see this fact is that even after thousands of years they use the exact same weapons no attempts to adapt, no feild modifications, no new models just slogging along with the same stuff they always had churned out by an increasingly dwindling supply of automated factories to and ever shrinking Zentradi fleet. The Zents were on the slow road to extinction before they encountered the UN. Quote:
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5 Million guys with rocks and sticks could killed one guy even if he had a machine gun and unlimited ammo.
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2008-05-13, 15:38 | Link #70 | |||||
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There is also absolutely no evidence to suggest their 'factories' were in a dire need to 'resupply'. Based on the comments of Exsedol and/or the comments of Breetai, there could be millions, if not billions of factories in existence. Oh, and btw, the factories do maintain themselves, and it is also suggested that new factories could be planted. And I don't know where you even got the "Zents were on the slow road to extinction" came from. Since no Zent ever suggested their race was on a slow road to decay, or the confident comments of Breetai, who stated not only once that to make Zents impotent as a war machine was either unthinkable or impossible, I highly doubt 'extinction' besides contacting culture or losing an all-out war against the Supervision Army was planned. Even by Space War I, the automated factories were still churning out additional fleets, the Zent fleet was growing, not dwindling. They are just being kept busy fighting another war. Quote:
The flagship did look rather ramshackle, but once again, they've not returned to any of their supply stations ever since they stationed near Earth orbit. The SDF was itself pretty banged up for a long duration of the show if you noticed. But while the SDF can return to Earth for maintenance, the Zents could not, or chose not to. That is where I applaud the production staff for being consistent. Quote:
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- Tak |
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2008-05-13, 16:14 | Link #71 | |
Holy Beast ~Wuff!~
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Sure it sounds absurd (I'm a product designer by trade! cost-to-operational life cycle! After market potential! ) but when we have space ships that can "fold" all over the universe, robotic planes and giants. that's the lease "absurd" thing in this universe.
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2008-05-13, 20:26 | Link #72 |
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Well, for the record Tk, I should point out that the Quadlunn-Rau, for the most part, was seen in combat in atmosphere - a big round ball with arms and legs that depends on jets to maneuver or hover probably won't do quite as well in the maneuverability department as a Valkyrie in that case. And even then, they did a hell of a number on VF-1's, due to their incredible missile loadout. In space, they're probably quite a bit more effective where air resistance and gravity aren't big factors. The Quadlunn-Rea seems to have added that shoulder cannon to improve the direct-fire capability, and it compares very well with the current top-line prototype VF-25, even with FAST packs on it. I don't see this as being very inferior to human weapons at all.
Hell, human weapons for the most part aren't cracking Vajra shells to judge by how poorly the NUNS is doing, and it took a Zentradi weapon to kill this last Vajra as even Klein Klan's shoulder cannon at point-blank range didn't do more than put a crack in the shell. In comparison, a weapon that had literally been lying around for thousands of years in an asteroid belt not only killed it, but survived the ensuing explosion without a visible scratch while Alto's VF-25 was apparently disabled and a little crispy afterwards. Don't forget that Zentradi ships DO have large cannons like those used to bombard Earth; the same type of gun that the Macross used time and again to one-shot opposing Zentradi ships. And they had millions of ships with those - the humans' best weapon for anti-capship warfare was of the same type of design as the Zentradi's... and we've yet to see the humans improving on those. Human technology, from what we can tell, has focused mostly on kinetic weapons and missiles, along with drone weapons like the Ghosts... which are sufficient against the Zentradi, but apparently not as much against the Vajra, who are (at least apparently) light-years ahead of the humans in electronic warfare. The whole 'Zentradi can't repair stuff' thing is, IIRC, derived more from Robotech than Macross. That 'lack of repair abilities' was enforced by the Robotech Masters there, to keep the Zentraedi from overthrowing them. |
2008-05-13, 20:59 | Link #73 |
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Quite true. The Queadluun Rea is, for the most part, may not be as maneuverable as Valkyries, but on the other hand, the Queadluuns traditionally sport far more basic firepower than their human counterpart. In addition to its ridiculously numerous missile load-out. I take it as some sort of freakish balance
Besides, why upgrade? Can anyone prove, with definite evidence that human conventional weapons ARE better than their Zent counterparts? Absolutely not. In fact, UN SPACY is still learning from their newfound allies. As for Zent weapons, a good fellow once said this regarding an AK-47, "you want to destroy an AK-47? run it over with a tank!" With that, I present "you wanna destroy a Zentradi gun? Run it over with a Monster!" Yes, Zent guns are THAT good. On the other hand, Robotech, its so craptastic I really don't want to deal with it. Cannot stand how the show 'manage' to answer its own questions then suddenly forget about it. Its a hastily re-arranged franchise, that is both poorly connected and an insult to our intelligence. The moment I found out Protoculture became 'an energy source' in Robotech, I had to devour an entire bottle of vodka to suppress my urge to pull a 911 on Harmony Gold... - Tak |
2008-05-13, 21:11 | Link #74 | |||
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The major advantage the UN Spacy seems to have is that they can construct Macross-style cannons, which is a capability the Zents seem to have had reduced over the years due to the Supervision Army, from what I recall reading, destroying their factories which specialized in this sorta thing. Outside of that, Zent weapons appear to be prized still - look at how Ozma chewed Alto out for not only getting his VF ripped up but also for possibly damaging a precious weapon like the liquid-plasma gun. I suspect that a certain busty blue-haired Meltran will be using THAT particular field piece in the next few episodes. Quote:
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It certainly did better in meshing together completely unrelated series than Lucas did with Star Wars Episode I in comparison to Episode 4... :P Yes, I'm one of those former SW fans who felt the first series was a travesty, after building up the mystical part of the Force and then making the Jedi so... oh, midichloriantastic. |
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2008-05-13, 22:09 | Link #76 | ||
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Besides, she'd have to fight Alto for that - Tak |
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2008-05-13, 22:43 | Link #78 | |
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Besides, she's a) his superior officer, b) she can crush him in Meltlandi form should she choose to, and c) her loli-form defeats his trap-form. Plus, the way things are going, SHE could be the twist to the relationship. :P She combines the loli appeal of Ranka with Sheryl's bustiness and impulsiveness. And did I forget to mention she's Meltlandi? |
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2008-05-13, 23:41 | Link #80 | |
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Maybe... P.S.: Blame Milia for my own thing for Meltlandi... and for Klein-sama. |
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