Destriod Fan-thread

[taalismn]

[
Now I'm thinking about how much tobacco goes into a Zenarette. Do they even bother with filters?

Filters? I can't even imagine them finding something for that. As it is, I'm guessing that they are rolling them in canvas tarps.

Would have said fiberglass insulation, but that's like abestos on Zentraedi lungs.
And I'm figuring they later go to cardboard drums for the cigarette cylinders.
Now cigars(rolled between the thighs of Quadronos) are going to be big business with the Zentraedi officer corps. Provided that Cuba didn't get OBLITERATED.

And to keep it Zentraedi related---having one of those Destroid leg missile launch boxes, when not in use, to hold a few smokes for your full-sized Zentraedi buddies? Maybe a psych-warfare Destroid fitted out with all manner of goodies to draw in the undecided Zenns(beer coolers in place of missile racks, for instance, and a killer sound system)...and one brave pilot, because there's always a chance that he'd just get mugged.

[Seto Kaiba]

The T-hawks have had the leg mounted missiles since the 1st ed RPG, and they are present in the 2nd ed RPG as well. I'm not really concerned if they are not present in Macross, or seen firing on screen. Most of the T-hawk drivers in my games load up with half smoke and half frag. Smoke to mark targets for the VT pilots, and frag for 'infantry out in the open'.

*shrug* Not exactly an advantageous position for smoke launchers either, but that's a GM discretion thing.

And yeah, for a destroid that was not very common and increasingly unpopular due to its lack of mobility and relative fragility(relative to its size), that battle must have used a good number of the MACIIs in the entire HEMISPHERE. Khyron should have been flattered.

Possibly... tho if you take the OSM sources at face value there, they're actually not that hard or costly to build (compared to a VF-1), and they were running 'em out in large numbers for the rebuilding of the fleet and the space colonization fleets to fill their intended purpose as mobile anti-warship batteries.

that Episode has problems... the Gun-pods for the VF-1 look to be energy weapons in it... heck a Zent lights a Cigarette with one...

You'd be hard-pressed to find an episode that doesn't have at least one issue... the original series was made on a TIGHT budget, which was one of the first in a chain of events that ultimately allowed Robotech to exist. 's also why a lot of us are thinking that we might be getting an animated do-over based on Macross the First in the near future, which ought to result in some spontaneous joygasms for Destroid fans...

If you like Marker's "fusion" idea, maybe VHTs have reflex furnaces and other battloids have atomic plants. OTOH mecha do seem to acquire better performance specs when they have good pilots.

It's not Marker's idea, it's Tommy Yune's. (Tho IIRC, the Hovertank is also supposedly running on fusion... seems incredibly counter-intuitive, but let's not go there...)

[Colonel Wolfe]

that Episode has problems... the Gun-pods for the VF-1 look to be energy weapons in it... heck a Zent lights a Cigarette with one...

You'd be hard-pressed to find an episode that doesn't have at least one issue... the original series was made on a TIGHT budget, which was one of the first in a chain of events that ultimately allowed Robotech to exist. 's also why a lot of us are thinking that we might be getting an animated do-over based on Macross the First in the near future, which ought to result in some spontaneous joygasms for Destroid fans...

yeah, just alot of problems kinda came together in that 1 epsiode...
While not a huge Fan of Expost-facto caonon... a complete re-animation of the series as the Actual version of the events the way the creators want them (now that they have the money on hand).
It would drive fans insane... but I'd love lucas to stop "tweaking" episodes 4-6 and just re-do them form the ground up...

[Seto Kaiba]

yeah, just alot of problems kinda came together in that 1 epsiode...

Yep, that's what a tight budget, tighter production schedule, and farming large parts of the animation out to studios that can't draw worth a damn'll get ya. (In short, "way to drop the ball, Tatsunoko!")

While not a huge Fan of Expost-facto caonon... a complete re-animation of the series as the Actual version of the events the way the creators want them (now that they have the money on hand).
It would drive fans insane...

Err... actually, the Macross the First manga's story isn't a "do-over" of the original Macross series story, it's a significantly different version of events along the same lines as DYRL? or the recent Macross Frontier movies. There are a LOT of differences in the story, the setting, and the visuals. In a lot of ways, it's reminiscent of the novelization of DYRL by its writer, Sukehiro Tomita. The reason I think it's a likely candidate for animation is that Macross's spiritual predecessor Gundam is presently doing exactly that... animating the manga Gundam: the Origin.

(To quickly give a few examples of how MtF differs from the other versions: the setting has been updated with a modern world perspective on style and technology, Kaifun's apparently MIA and has been replaced as the "aggressive pacifist" by Misa's old-and-still-alive boyfriend Riber Fruhling who they pick up at the still-very-intact Mars Base Salla, they skip that whole battle at Saturn, Max is the one who whips Kamjin so badly he complains to/warns Milia about "the one ace on the Macross", Tomahawks kick arse and take names, the VF-1J and VF-1D got redesigned, and the Macross is a DYRL design with the Daedalus and Prometheus attached instead... something that hasn't been seen since the early promo art made back in '91 for Macross II.)

I think you're the first guy I've talked to who DIDN'T think it was an awesome idea tho... between Max getting into that Tomahawk and schooling Kamjin, and the new Daedalus Attack, destroid fans would certainly have great cause to rejoice. Love for destroids is rare, and there've been a few scenes so far that are practically love letters to the Tomahawk. (I'll have to set aside some time to scan some for ya.)

but I'd love lucas to stop "tweaking" episodes 4-6 and just re-do them form the ground up...

I'd love for someone to smack him upside the head every time he gets it into his head to "tweak" a title further... that guy is a MENACE to his own work.

[Alpha 11]

Ok, what is Macross the First? Never mind, didn't read the thread all the way through.

[Seto Kaiba]

Kamjin is Khyron right...

Right. It's officially spelled "Quamzin", just like Britai is officially spelled "Vrlitwhai", but it gets spelled "Kamjin" or "Kamujin" for ease of pronunciation a lot of the time.

B.S.! I call shenanigans! I don't give a rats butt how good Max is, Kamjin was supposed to be pretty good, and he gets schooled by a Destroid? This isn't a good story, its another attempt to inflate the Max = God mythos!

OK, two things... the first is that this takes place before Max gets that reputation for being awesome. He's still just another grunt at that point. The second thing is that it's a part of the set-up for the Max and Milia romance/rivalry story. Remember, in both Macross and Robotech she only really got interested in the Macross when she heard (during Kamjin/Khyron's dissembling) that there was a top ace aboard the Macross as well. Instead of just blowing smoke as the comic relief bad guy, he's a scary competent elite commander telling it like it is. (I'm EXTREMELY keen to see how they'll change the start of the Max vs Milia thing after this, but it was nice to see the used and abused Tomahawk destroid get some kind of crowning moment of awesome.)

Also, I want to see Destroids bouncing less powerful attacks and surviving big ones, not outmaneuvering Battlepods.

You'd probably be pretty happy with MtF then, the destroids give a pretty good account most of the time. They don't do quite as well for themselves as the rebel ones in Macross M3 etc., but they do a lot better than they did in Super Dimension Fortress Macross the series.

[glitterboy2098]

Meh, just proves you can both be wrong at the same time, that's all... ;P

Seriously though, I am not saying it's lacking agility, just that to deploy its main weapon, necessary to pop a heavily armored tank, it needs to trade some degree of agility, which we see in the series pretty well. The only real exception is the series ace, and as stated, she's a Sterling and a Parino no less! Although I have to ask, do you guys see the VHT in Battloid as being more agile than the other Battloids we see? I know we see little of their potential, but I am seeking an opinion here, rather than real performance specs...you know, those things we basically don't have from that part of the arc.

We see damn little enough of the other battloids to really give a good comparison...Usually they appear in time to get smacked down by the Tirolians' big guns or death-from-aboved by the Bioroids, while Dana's squadron is shown running serpentine and linebackering through horizontal hellfire, bouncing around, and generally dancing around the battlefield, in spite of being built like gorillas, seeming to prove that the Veritech Mystique of uber-ability is alive and well in VHTs.

footage from the original SDC:southerncross opening and ending (part of the protoculture edition robotech DVDS, now.) shows show the battloids almost as mobile as the VHT..though the VHT seems to be a bit more agile. probably part expert pilot, part VHT hoverthruster use.

i know opening credit's aren't the best thing to base stuff off of (look at the alpha's fighter mode nose lasers), but in this case it's the only footage we have of battloids actually moving, instead of just standing around.

[ShadowLogan]

i know opening credit's aren't the best thing to base stuff off of (look at the alpha's fighter mode nose lasers), but in this case it's the only footage we have of battloids actually moving, instead of just standing around.

IINM the Alpha Nose lasers seen in the credits is part of the series footage that was "cut" when it came over to RT. I don't know if they made it back in via the remastered/recut edition(s). The episode would have been "Reflex Point".

[Seto Kaiba]

Except Khyron wasn't talking about Max, he was talking about Rick,

Khyron/Kamjin didn't even know who Rick/Hikaru was... they weren't recurring personal enemies, that was like the only time they ever fought each other directly. He was just blowing smoke to cover his failure to capture the Macross with numerical and technical superiority. (Kind of like an American force would be blowing smoke to cover their failure if they lost to one of those tiny 3rd World countries whose only weapons are cold war-era surplus machine guns and harsh language.)

since Rick really is a bad mother sucker his own self.

Which doesn't really tally with the show, where he's shown to be a superb pilot with an indifferent record in combat, being shot down repeatedly.

footage from the original SDC:southerncross opening and ending (part of the protoculture edition robotech DVDS, now.) shows show the battloids almost as mobile as the VHT..though the VHT seems to be a bit more agile. probably part expert pilot, part VHT hoverthruster use.

Pretty much what I was getting at, tho OP/ED animation tends towards "does not count" status...

There's a fair amount of in-series evidence to counter the notion that the Hovertank and the Destroids were ponderous... they can be pretty spry when they need to be.

[glitterboy2098]

There's a fair amount of in-series evidence to counter the notion that the Hovertank and the Destroids were ponderous... they can be pretty spry when they need to be.

yep. but there seems to be a trend in the fandom that any mecha that isn't a hyperagile robot martial artist is going to be seen as 'slow and ponderous' like the ED-209 from robocop or the bots from Robot wars. (you know, the stop motion stuff?)

for ASC battloids, i tend to see something akin to this. good mobility, decent agility..just ground bound.

for the bigger destroids, i tend to think in terms of Gundam 8th MS team. mobile, reasonably agile for the size in the hands of a decent pilot..and extremely good in the hands of an exceptional pilot.

then again, i'm also a battletech fan, so i'm used to thinking of big highly mobile walking tanks..

[Seto Kaiba]

Khyron had just gotten back form getting into a fight with Rick,

But Kamjin/Khyron is still not Hikaru/Rick's rival... they never really meet face-to-face, and fight directly only the once in the entire war. Even if we want to dress it up like they're rivals in Robotech, it doesn't mean a thing to Macross: the First, remember?

yep. but there seems to be a trend in the fandom that any mecha that isn't a hyperagile robot martial artist is going to be seen as 'slow and ponderous' like the ED-209 from robocop or the bots from Robot wars. (you know, the stop motion stuff?)

WHY DO YOU MAKE ME REMEMBER THESE HORRIBLE THINGS?!

*brain bleach*

(At least you didn't mention Robot Jox...)

for ASC battloids, i tend to see something akin to this. good mobility, decent agility..just ground bound.

Probably a good metric to calibrate your expectations, though the "ground-bound" part is YMMV depending on whether the mecha's operating in space or not. If we're not averse to using the OSM as a yardstick, it's not unreasonable to assume it would be entirely possible, if not easy, to recalibrate the auto-balancer in one of those mecha for propellantless maneuvers in space (ala AMBAC) and kit 'em out with a booster pack. (Early tech material for the VF-1, etc. straight up pilfered that term from Gundam, later stuff renamed the airframe control AI something different.)

[Seto Kaiba]

HEY!!! I loved Robot Jox!!! And the other three or four similar such movies too!! Lay off you elitist mecha snob!

You did?

<_<
>_>

HERESY!

Your point about this being Mac da 1st is well taken, my issue is that Max was god enough, and this makes him more so,

Okay, I have to ask... what were you expecting from a character named for one of the most coveted honors a flying ace could earn in World War I?

I disagree with the view that UEDF Battloids maneuver like Gasaraki, and see them as much closer to the non Gundam units in 8th MS Team instead, which were surprisingly agile, but not truly all that mobile really.

Second question, what do you mean by "non-Gundam units" there? GMs are Gundams y'know, that's what the G in GM stands for. If the OP/ED animation is anything to go by, the UEDF battloids are a heck of a lot more agile and mobile than, say, a Guntank...

I tend to reserve the concept of high agility high mobility for VFs, unfortunately (especially in the Macross universe) VFs also tend to get heavy armor lots of firepower, and all the gadgets too.

Well, there's a reason for that... in Macross, and presumably Robotech as well, destroids were meant to be the less complex and costly alternative to Valkyries. That the Valkyries enjoyed higher agility, mobility, and better armor is, at least in part, a function of their battlefield role as the front-line combat mecha. Their armor was necessarily thin, so they had to find tech to beef it up... tech that ultimately benefited from the obscenely huge energy output the VF-1 needs to do what it does. You could make a destroid just as fast, agile, and tough as a VF... but that would run the cost of them way up to the point where it wouldn't be worth it. Their greatest virtues are their rugged simplicity and their low cost, a pair of benefits that meant that in pre-factory satellite days you could make tens of thousands of destroids for what you would have to spend to make just a few thousand Valkyries. The changing dynamics of the battlefield and the use of the factory satellites to defray production costs meant that the cost advantage of destroids was eroded pretty thoroughly in the years after Space War 1... though there were no shortage of examples that, with the right mindset and tech, it'd be entirely possible to make destroids that were considerably more dangerous than Battroids in a land battle.

[glitterboy2098]

I tend to reserve the concept of high agility high mobility for VFs, unfortunately (especially in the Macross universe) VFs also tend to get heavy armor lots of firepower, and all the gadgets too.

Well, there's a reason for that... in Macross, and presumably Robotech as well, destroids were meant to be the less complex and costly alternative to Valkyries. That the Valkyries enjoyed higher agility, mobility, and better armor is, at least in part, a function of their battlefield role as the front-line combat mecha. Their armor was necessarily thin, so they had to find tech to beef it up... tech that ultimately benefited from the obscenely huge energy output the VF-1 needs to do what it does.

actually, the SWAG energy conversion armor wasn't added to macross canon until macross Zero and Macross Frontier. the original macross, macross plus, and macross7, as well as DYRL and macross II, were all made before Kawamori even came up with the idea. so while it's existances in ZERO and Frontier force a ex-post-facto addition of it to SDFmacross, Plus, and m7, it's also true that since robotech was made almost a decade before kawamori came up with the idea, the SWAG armor isn't a factor unless HG likewise decides to add something similar in the next shadow chronicles film and retcon their own setting. frankly, robotech works great without such retcons.

You could make a destroid just as fast, agile, and tough as a VF... but that would run the cost of them way up to the point where it wouldn't be worth it. Their greatest virtues are their rugged simplicity and their low cost, a pair of benefits that meant that in pre-factory satellite days you could make tens of thousands of destroids for what you would have to spend to make just a few thousand Valkyries. The changing dynamics of the battlefield and the use of the factory satellites to defray production costs meant that the cost advantage of destroids was eroded pretty thoroughly in the years after Space War 1... though there were no shortage of examples that, with the right mindset and tech, it'd be entirely possible to make destroids that were considerably more dangerous than Battroids in a land battle.

actualy, in the macross universe SWAG was applied to destroids, where it made them even tougher than Valkyries. the destroid declined as a military unit because the UN military forces focused more on space colonization and space travel..meaning most of their battles would occur in space. since a Variable fighter was multi-enviroment (land, air, and space), VF's came to dominate the UNspacy forces. but as evidenced by the Police destroids in macross7, and the Cheyenne Mk II's seen used by both NUNS and SMS in Frontier, destroids still were employed as defensive units, just no longer primary units.
of course, the out of universe justification is the VF's were emphasised because they were seen as sexier.

in robotech, you don't have that paradigm. the ASC portion of the post-1st-war UEDF makes extensive use of non-transforming battloids even in roles where their transforming mecha overlap operation wise, and the UEEF still used non-transforming battloids like the Condor. and both forces still employed a large amount of non-transforming aerospace craft (the ASC has multiple types of air and space fighters, the UEEF had the 'Vulture' seen used against the masters, and the Conbat fighter lancer piloted.) something the macross series pretty much dropped in favor of 'all VF, all the time', with the X-9 Ghost fighter's being the only exceptions..and until frontier, that was beleived to have been a one off prototype which got abandoned after the events of Plus. (and even in frontier, they were left lobatomised by program overrides until the last episode..and after being let slip, still weren't nearly as good as the one in Plus..)

also, in robotech, by the current canon (the first comic series at least), destroids were not created as a cheaper alternative to Project Valkyrie, but rather just a less ambitious one. (actually brought up in the comic, actually) it basically worked out as ARMY vs. AIRFORCE, including having ARMY markings on the Project Excaliber Tomahawk Prototype. it was the walking tank being developed as an alternative to the multi-mode walking plane of Project Valkyrie.

[Seto Kaiba]

And I know Max is supposed to be important (never realized he was supposed to be named after the Blue Max though, the movie of the same name was pretty good though), but its literally been taken to the point that Max = God is nearly a meme, and then they have him be a top notch Destroid jock too?

Really? You never caught the Blue Max connection there? They practically club you over the head with it... his name is Max, and just about everything the man owns is bright blue. Max has never really been portrayed as "god" at anything in Macross. He's got a good deal of natural talent, but he's benefiting from crazy amounts of practical experience for much of his career. What they're doing in MtF, apart from a less arbitrary start to the Max and Milia romance, is showing what he was doing before be was one of the elite. He was a footslogger just like everyone else.

O.K., that was a bit vague, but I tend to think of them as Gundams and GM/Jims, I compare the agility of the Battloids in question to the more elite GM pilots, rather than the hero level Gundams.

Uh... well, really there isn't any difference in mobility and agility between the GMs and the limited-production Gundams. In most cases, they're using the same drive train. The difference, at least in the Universal Century, is mostly in the software, since the Gundams learning computers are partly for the purpose of building a viable combat program for the GM series that follows. (There's a great deal on this in Mobile Suit Master Archive: Earth Federation Forces RGM-79 GM, assuming you're of a technically-minded disposition.)

I even understand the genesis of the switch to VFs over Destroids, but while this makes complete sense in the Macross universe, and honestly may even make a lot of sense for Robotech, but if your a fan of Destroids, this logic tends to step firmly on your mecha of choice.

Well, to be frank... the destroids and other background mecha are casualties of the fact that they're not meant to be in the limelight. Yeah, they seldom get their fifteen minutes of fame, but that's kind of the point. Destroids get a little love later on, mostly as rebel units or in Tenjin's art works, but they're not really meant to be center stage. (Destroid fans do kinda get it in the shorts...)

Worse yet, the basis of the superiority of the VF is that SWAG armor, which isn't a part of the Robotech canon, so there is no real reason for VFs to have superior resiliency when they are essentially a significant step up in complexity and parts integration issues.

Actually, it's more complex than that... there's the aforementioned cost factor, and a few other considerations in the main timeline. It's actually something of a misconception that destroids don't possess energy conversion armor, the trick is that their power plants aren't as obscenely high-output, so they can't run it at anywhere near as high an energy level as those VFs can... and the VFs only have the surplus to pull it off because of the colossal energy requirements involved in normal operation. Even so, the (perceived) gap isn't actually all that large until the 4th or 5th Generation of VFs.

As something of a side note, the energy conversion armor technology only exists in the main Macross timeline. There are other reasons for the greater focus on VFs in the DYRLverse timeline leading up to Macross II. Cost is, again, a major factor, as is the implementation of certain technologies that greatly boost durability but are necessarily difficult to manufacture.

I would imagine that, at the very least, the cost factor exists in Robotech as well, though the RPG short-sells all the destroids because they're not main character mecha.

actually, the SWAG energy conversion armor wasn't added to macross canon until macross Zero and Macross Frontier.

Actually, you'd be wrong about that. In actual fact, the only part of the energy conversion armor concept that was new in Macross Zero was the term "SWAG". Kawamori described the technology at length quite a few years before it showed up prominently in the tech specs for Macross Zero, and reportedly conceived it even earlier than that. (It goes back as far as Macross Plus and Macross 7, if not further. The tech has been retroactively applied to pretty much all main timeline titles anyway via Macross Zero.)

actualy, in the macross universe SWAG was applied to destroids, where it made them even tougher than Valkyries.

I'm well aware that energy conversion armor was applied to destroids, but what you're saying here is drawing an unsupportable conclusion. Yes, the Macross Chronicle glossary entry for "destroid" does describe them as having heavier armor than a VF, but it does not attribute that to the energy conversion armor. It is, in fact, a function of them simply having thicker armor plating. (Energy conversion armor is powered by excess output from the mecha's power plant, meaning that the comparatively low-output single reaction power plant of a destroid would not support an energy conversion armor power level anywhere near the massive output from a VF's twin engines.)

the destroid declined as a military unit because the UN military forces focused more on space colonization and space travel..meaning most of their battles would occur in space.

Um... official material begs to differ with your assessment. The technology sheet for destroids in Macross Chronicle is quite emphatic that destroids continued to see service in emigration fleets for quite some time. The factor that led to a decline in destroid use and development was their low mobility and, to a lesser extent, their overspecialization. They were, as I've said before, far from forgotten... but were largely taking a back seat to VFs because of the greater versatility and mobility of their transforming and flying cousins. (The only example of an all-new destroid in the post-Space War 1 main Macross universe is the Annabella Lasiodora mobile weapon, which was dangerous chiefly because high mobility was emphasized in its design.)

Naturally, destroids never went away in the DYRLverse, and are still built and used in MASSIVE numbers as part of the fleet AND planetary defense network. (They also benefit from a lot of advances originally developed for VFs, and liberally apply "MOAR DAKKA!")

[...] evidenced by the Police destroids in macross7, and the Cheyenne Mk II's seen used by both NUNS and SMS in Frontier, destroids still were employed as defensive units, just no longer primary units.

Definitely not the best choices of example you could've made. I'd have to check my copy of Chronicle, but I don't believe they ever actually refer to the police mecha as a destroid. Also, the Cheyenne II is supposedly a choice largely unique to the government of the Macross Frontier fleet, not a widely-used unit. The Cheyenne II is particularly noteworthy in that they tried (and did OK at) addressing the chief drawbacks of low mobility and overspecialization that were the downfall of destroids in general.

in robotech, you don't have that paradigm. the ASC portion of the post-1st-war UEDF makes extensive use of non-transforming battloids even in roles where their transforming mecha overlap operation wise, and the UEEF still used non-transforming battloids like the Condor.

Which is, in part, why I've said that the RPG has a bad habit of short-selling the ground mecha.

and both forces still employed a large amount of non-transforming aerospace craft [...] something the macross series pretty much dropped in favor of 'all VF, all the time', with the X-9 Ghost fighter's being the only exceptions..and until frontier, that was beleived to have been a one off prototype which got abandoned after the events of Plus.

There are actually a few non-transforming fighters, but since the main enemy humanity expects to run into in Macross are the Zentradi, that VFs have almost completely taken over isn't terribly surprising. Incidentally, the Ghost X-9 was only believed to be a one-off prototype by those who missed a fairly major installment in the main Macross timeline. Mass production versions of the X-9 Ghost featured prominently in Macross VF-X2, as the AIF-9B. The AIF-7S used in the Macross Frontier series is a cheap, locally-produced version.

also, in robotech, by the current canon (the first comic series at least), destroids were not created as a cheaper alternative to Project Valkyrie, but rather just a less ambitious one.

Cost is never actually brought up, so we can't say if it is or it isn't. (As far as Macross goes, destroids weren't made to be cheaper, that they ended up that was is just a function of their less complex design and broader planned deployment. Battroids were actually based around developments in the non-transformable destroid program, not vice-versa.)

[ShadowLogan]

(Energy conversion armor is powered by excess output from the mecha's power plant, meaning that the comparatively low-output single reaction power plant of a destroid would not support an energy conversion armor power level anywhere near the massive output from a VF's twin engines.)

This just sounds counter intuitive that you can't put VF-level engines in a Destroid if one really wanted to as a way to enhance their ECA capability.

[glitterboy2098]

too bad robotech doesn't have such budget restrictions.
remember, in Macross the 3rd world war was started by the ship crashing. the VF's and destroids were all created in an enviroment where resources also had to be available to produce conventional tanks and plans and guns to fight that conflict.

in robotech, the arrival of the ship ends the 3rd world war, and the earth's 1st and 2nd world governments ally together into the UEG. the reconstruction of the ship, the creation of the ARMD platforms and grandcannons, as well as project valkyrie and project excalibur were basically given 'blank checks'. at least, thats what the comics imply, though they do not state it explicitly. but it is a period of fairly impressive world peace, with only a bit of terrorist action breaking it up.
after the rain of death there is a much more restricted amount of resources available true, but given the addition of the factory sattelite and the rather immense space construction seen with the ASC and UEEG, one would presume that earth just replaced most of it's lost earth based manufacturing and mining infrastructure with space based systems.

and frankly, robotech earth is better off post rain of death than macross earth was. in robotech earth large areas were almost untouched by the attack, and a sizeable population survived. in macross earth, you had the macross, a few million zentreadi, and that's it. Macross earth had to resort to cloning and similar methods to generate a stable population base. in robotech, the population base was already there, not to mention there being an order of magnitude more zentreadi survivors, and all that was missing was a functional government..which Gloval and the crew of the SDF-1 could help set up due to their communication systems and surviving organized military detachments.

the ASC switching to using battloids instead of destroids was likely more of a doctrine change than a resources issue, the same as the switch to the smaller, lighter veritechs. smaller and lighter units can be redeployed to trouble spots quicker, which given the post-rain zentreadi and human dissent from both the show and the wildstorm comics, was good thing. the focus on a more combined arms doctrine (battloids, veritechs, and conventional troops/vehicles) gives them more utility in zentreadi and human uprisings, many of which likely wouldn't have lots of mecha, instead having lots of full and micron sized infantry supported with regular vehicles.

[FreelancerMar]

My first post in this thred here. I completely agree with Gryphon on the Max = God thing. Destroids are not Supposed to be able to out maneuver Battle Pods, etc.... They were not designed that way. However I also agree that they got tosted way to easily in the show. If someone didn't like the destroid in the show, all they had to do is spit on it and it exploded(lol).

Destroids are supposed to be the Heavily Armored Mechanized Tank replacements. The things that litterally cause attacks to bounce off their hulls while taking minimal damage. Much like the German tigers of WWII literally bouncing Sherman tank shells off of it's armor plating while taking minimal damage. Yes This Historically Happened.

There are at least a few Video games out there that fairly accurately depicts how a destroid is supposed to be able to take quite a pounding and still be able to fight. One of my favorites among these is approaching 17 years old and yes I do still play it. I speak of the Mechwarrior2 franchise put out by Activision. the Graphics may be dated but I consider gameplay more important than graphics. Dosbox is great for these older titles. mech2.org has a very nice program setup spacifically for the old MW2 Franchise and it even allows multiplayer as well.

I now return this topic back to it's cuddly Destroid Love! lol.

[ShadowLogan]

Here's a thought, how about a Destroid flight pack that includes additional capacitors or even a second power plant just to provide that additional power?;

Something like the O-Riser (IIRC the name) from Gundam00? (w/o the pixie dust crap)

The Condor in fact does appear differently in the animation than it does in the Comics/2E RPG sporting what could be a a flight pack. The thing is the Condor as it exists really can't use it to super charge the weapons as it lacks a built in energy weapon.

As far as RT is concerned w/current canon (/2E RPG designs) I'm not sure how the additional power can be utilized since energy weapons are not their prime weapons (aside from the Tomohawk's PBC arms).

Destroids simply opt to carry heavier armor, and in many cases heavier armament, instead of more powerful power plants.

Just with a more powerful power plant they could sport even heavier armor and weapons (beam weapons could be even more powerful).

[Seto Kaiba]

(Energy conversion armor is powered by excess output from the mecha's power plant, meaning that the comparatively low-output single reaction power plant of a destroid would not support an energy conversion armor power level anywhere near the massive output from a VF's twin engines.)

This just sounds counter intuitive that you can't put VF-level engines in a Destroid if one really wanted to as a way to enhance their ECA capability.

Rather less than you'd think, actually... one of the chief virtues of the destroid family of mecha is that they're (relatively) cheap to build and maintain in any numbers. Dropping one of the most expensive and complex components of a VF into a destroid chassis would go a long way towards negating that advantage on a mecha whose battlefield applications are far fewer than the more mobile, versatile, and expensive Valkyrie. Of course, there's also the size constraints to think of. A destroid is generally smaller than a Battroid, and much of its mass is given over to the greater armor and armament which also number among its chief virtues. They don't need to fly, as such, so their energy requirements are a good deal lower than those of a Valkyrie, and thus they can scrape by with a much smaller main power system and have enough room to squeeze in a reserve in case things go tango-uniform. The (necessarily) more potent thermonuclear reaction turbines in Valkyries are fairly large, and (almost certainly) consume fuel faster. Something would have to give... cost would be a given, but they'd have to compromise on something else like size, armor thickness, armament, or some combination of all three... effectively negating the Destroid's chief advantages and sending the whole affair spiraling into "Why bother with destroids?" territory.

So you probably could have such a thing as a VF fusion turbine powered Destroid, its just that the VF has taken over that role in the UN/NUN at this point [...]

Doubtful, the thermonuclear reaction* turbines aren't small, and wouldn't fit gracefully into a destroid chassis... and likely not fit at all.

*As a point of order, VFs in Macross DO NOT RUN ON FUSION. They use an overtechnology known as thermonuclear reaction power, which is defined as being like nuclear fusion, but with significant differences that set it apart from a conventional fusion process including (but not limited to): application of super dimension spatial physics, a reaction that can be easily maintained in the plasma state at obscenely high efficiency and produces little or no harmful radiation, and being able to use a wide array of fuels that don't necessarily have to be nuclear material.

Here's a thought, how about a Destroid flight pack that includes additional capacitors or even a second power plant just to provide that additional power?

Wouldn't that be a redundant concept, since "flying destroid" pretty much overlaps with the territory of Armored Packs for Valkyries and the upgraded, human-designed versions of Zentradi powered suits (e.g. Queadluun-Rhea). Also, destroids in Macross have had secondary power systems since Day 1... usually a small backup generator capable of producing a couple hundred kilowatts. Kinda paltry compared to a VF's hundreds of megawatts, but space is at a premium...

(If my math is correct, a Destroid power plant rates in the multi-megawatt range, but nowhere near the hundreds of megawatts a VF's reaction turbine churns out.)

too bad robotech doesn't have such budget restrictions.

What makes you say that? I'll grant you, fighting the UN Wars consumed a fair amount of resources... but the UN Gov't from Macross was building its defenses on a FAR larger scale than anything Robotech's UEG ever did. To start, they did a complete structural analysis of the Macross and all its systems (so they actually understood how all of it worked, something Robotech's UEG didn't do), and followed it up by building nearly 150 starships, scratch-building a second Macross-class ship, five Grand Cannons, space colonies, a space manufacturing station at Lagrange-5, and some colonies on the moon... all that on top of multiple, parallel VF and Destroid development programs. Robotech might not have been doing things on as large a scale, or coping with a bunch of little wars along the way, but unless the government went full-communist money and the economics of mass production still figure in there somewhere.

remember, in Macross the 3rd world war [...]

It wasn't a third world war, it was a series of small, separate brushfire conflicts around the world in regions that opposed unification of the planet's governments.

the reconstruction of the ship, the creation of the ARMD platforms and grandcannons, [...]

Actually, only the one Grand Cannon in Robotech. They use a definite article to address it. It's not "A" Grand Cannon or "Grand Cannon 1", it's the Grand Cannon.

and frankly, robotech earth is better off post rain of death than macross earth was. in robotech earth large areas were almost untouched by the attack, and a sizeable population survived. in macross earth, you had the macross, a few million zentreadi, and that's it.

Your assertion about the state of Earth in Macross is incorrect in multiple aspects. The actual surviving population in Macross's version of events was fairly sizable too, including as it did the civilian population aboard the Macross, those aforementioned colonies and bases on the moon (where the SDF-2 was under construction), space colony clusters in Earth orbit, manufacturing satellites, and populations who'd been able to seek shelter in the incomplete Grand Cannons III and V.

Robotech's Earth took a pasting and had a surviving population, but largely no infrastructure remaining or any kind of offworld populations who didn't suffer the bombardment.

(This is, of course, not counting that post-Space War 1 Macross also had a COLOSSAL advantage in the post-war reconstruction, being that they had completely undamaged factories, shipyards, and population centers offworld, which, combined with the 20+ factory satellites captured and relocated in relatively short order, kind of tips the scales to what we'd reasonably call an obscene extent.)

Macross earth had to resort to cloning and similar methods to generate a stable population base.

Untrue again. Macross's Earth applied Zentradi cloning technology to bolster its population in preparation partly as a way to provide large numbers of workers with valuable skills for the reclamation effort and partly to prepare for the rather massive space colonization effort they were undertaking. (155 fleets ranging from 25,000 to 10,000,000 people within 30 years is quite a tall order... esp. since not everybody is up to the Herculean lengths Shammy Milliome went to, having 11 kids the honest way.)

EDIT: ... and that's not counting all of the satellite cities in orbit of various planets in the Sol system (at least 7 that I'm aware of), new settlements on the moon and Mars, and the mining colonies on numerous moons, etc.

the ASC switching to using battloids instead of destroids was likely more of a doctrine change than a resources issue, the same as the switch to the smaller, lighter veritechs. smaller and lighter units can be redeployed to trouble spots quicker, which given the post-rain zentreadi and human dissent from both the show and the wildstorm comics, was good thing.

Personally, I'd suspect the switch to battloids from destroids was prompted more by the tendency of fights with Zentradi rebels to turn to fisticuffs. Not having hands and having lower agility than the Zentradi is something of a liability when a Zentradi shuffles up and demands a bout under Marquess of Queensbury rules. Smaller and lighter units only redeploy to trouble zones faster if there's something to transport them faster. In the case of the actual, canon stats, it tends to go more like "smaller, heavier, and less versatile." (For example, the AJAX and Spartas are both heavier than a VF-1, and in truth the Spartas is only marginally lighter than a Tomahawk or Spartan, despite being far smaller.) The big advantages offered by the Battloids of the Masters War era in Robotech is their (marginally) greater agility and that they can compensate for the lack of built-in heavy weapons by taking a variety of different portable firearms, effectively making them an infantry squad nightmarishly scaled-up, with all the advantages that entails.

[taalismn]

[ esp. since not everybody is up to the Herculean lengths Shammy Milliome went to, having 11 kids the honest way.).

Fertility drugs?
Serious dedication to repopulation?
Maternal Masochism?

[Seto Kaiba]

[ esp. since not everybody is up to the Herculean lengths Shammy Milliome went to, having 11 kids the honest way.).

Fertility drugs?
Serious dedication to repopulation?
Maternal Masochism?

My guess would be that living on the moon is just really boring...

Not to mention that a VF-1 in atmosphere doesn't run out of fuel, and at just shy of Mach 4, without a sub orbital ballistic path, redeploying them is not an issue.

Range shouldn't be an issue... it's an explicitly-stated fact that VFs in Macross sip fuel so gently in atmospheric flight that they have effectively unlimited range and operational longevity. Weirdly, this is actually completely realistic. The US Navy's projections for a real-world fusion turbine engine for aircraft (currently under development) suggest that such an engine would be looking at a fuel efficiency to the tune of 2.8 times around the world on a single pound of fuel. It's not an issue to redeploy quickly, since even VF-1s can skim the edge of space to get where they need to go quickly, and the later (post-war) variants (unique to Macross) have top speeds exceeding Mach 4. Later craft in Robotech don't even come close to the speed you can get out of a pre-war VF-1 (and the ubiquitous Alpha's flight performance is only about on par with a VF-0).

Quickly redeploying something like a destroid or a non-transformable battloid (in Robotech) would be a lot trickier to carry off... you'd need to load them onto some kind of transport plane to get them over long ranges quickly. It's make a good deal of sense to have something akin to the converted military transport jets and mecha-carrier helicopters seen in Full Metal Panic!, and just para-drop the mecha directly into the battlefield like MITHRIL does with its M9E's. That'd use their greater agility to its best advantage and, if their stealth tech was of a decent standard, give them the element of surprise.

[ShadowLogan]

Gryphon:
Well the O-Riser was the only thing that came to mind w/increasing the available power of a given platform. The Alpha/Beta doesn't work that way in RT/GCM, atleast in the same way. Destroids did have the flight pack option in 1E, but it wasn't to increase the "power" of the platform.

Granted it really depends on what you mean by "power". For me I take it to increase the available energy levels. Which Destroids in 2E can not take maximum advantage of (1E would be another matter). Energy weapons could be made to have high power and low power modes for Destroids depending if they have the available power. To put such a degree into a VF would not be worth it due to the flight systems being in a standbye mode.

Some might take it to mean overall capability or used for movement.

I'm not against the use of force fields in RT, which to me the SWAG/ECA concept basically is. Technology that we know exists in RT (seen/hear numerous times). It was even mecha scale in the 1E RPG (not widely used for some reason), though dropped in 2E. I just don't know if I want to see it done as another recton to the established periods (TMS/TRM/NG), a post NG would be fine.

If we retcon the stuff to earlier periods how do we adjust for it in the RPG. Is that force field treated as being included in the written stat block somehow OR is this a new value to track (and if so how generic is the value)?

Seto:
I'm merely looking at the technical ability more so than the cost-benifit related stuff. Though the cost of the engine would go down if Destroids & VAlks all shared the same engine owing to the economy of scale. It looks to be a win-win situation for everyone involved since the Destroids are becoming better platforms (don't usually get something for nothing), while at the same time reducing the Valk cost.

Though I think that illustrates the whole nt-B not taking full advantage of the technology available in a given setting.

Size: Overall 1st Gen Destroids & Valkarie/VTs aren't that dissimiliar in size going off the RT.com Infopedia (which IINM is basically OSM, provided below). They are pretty similiar for the most part, the Monster being the obvious exception. The size discreptency has little to do here it would seem (as other RT design periods aren't to dissimiliar either).

RT.com Infopedia height x breadth x depth for a given TMS era mecha
Defender: 10.8 x 8.6 x 4.3m
Monster: 22.5m x 24 x 22.1m (w/o barrels
Phalanx: 11.3m x 7.5m x 5m (w/o searchlight)
Spartan: 11.3m x 7.9m x 6.1m
Tomahawk: 12.7m x 7.9m x 5.1m)
VF-1: 12.7m x 7.3m x 4.3m

With regard to quick deployment of Destroids. Maybe something along the lines of Megazone23/RT:TUS. Landry's (RT:TUS name) fighter at the end is used to carry a MODAT-ish Battloid in the final confronation. Or the security forces deploying Hargun Battloids from those hover platforms in an earlier confrontation.

[ShadowLogan]

It is a force field in the sense that without electrical energy the material loses that resiliency. That really isn't any better than force fields via an emitter.

An anti-SWAG weapon should be possible.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm merely looking at the technical ability more so than the cost-benifit related stuff. Though the cost of the engine would go down if Destroids & VAlks all shared the same engine owing to the economy of scale.

Yes, the cost of the engine would go down (to a degree) if it was a shared component between Destroids and Valkyries, though it would still drastically increase the cost of the Destroid units compared to the low-impact, low-complexity main power system they already have. Because they were going to be built on a large scale, destroids seem to have stuck to the K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) philosophy of engineering. Simple, robust, and easy to maintain.

It looks to be a win-win situation for everyone involved since the Destroids are becoming better platforms (don't usually get something for nothing), while at the same time reducing the Valk cost.

Which would be true if the more complex and sensitive power system wasn't also much larger, necessitating that destroid units either compromise other systems or increase in size to make room, or if the engines weren't also more expensive. It sounds like a quick-fix solution, but in reality (and in this case, fiction as well), mechanical engineering is seldom graceful and forgiving when it comes to major design changes.

Size: Overall 1st Gen Destroids & Valkarie/VTs aren't that dissimiliar in size going off the RT.com Infopedia (which IINM is basically OSM, provided below).

The key difference being that, while a Valkyrie has comparatively thin armor to accommodate its mission and things like its engines and fuel tanks, destroids fill that space with heavy, dense plate armor, more robust joint mechanisms, and lots and lots of extra armament. It's not a question of relative exterior dimensions, it's one of available interior space. There simply isn't room to put something as large as a FF-2001D reaction turbine in there.

Hmm...makes me wonder if a specifically engineered anti-SWAG weapon could be made? something to disperse that extra energy, or even works with that energy for destructive purposes!

An anti-SWAG weapon should be possible.

Yeah, pretty much... except replace "should be possible" with "is standard issue, and has been since before Space War 1".

Remember, Macross's Unity Government was making its tactical projections based on the technologies that they were reverse-engineering from the ship that crashed on South Ataria island. Energy conversion armor was one such technology acquired from that process, and so that's exactly what they were expecting to face. Anti-energy conversion armor ammo was a fairly logical step in preparing to face the potentially-hostile aliens if it came down to a shooting war. There's a fair amount on it in Master File too, in much more specific technical terms than are generally offered in official sources.

[glitterboy2098]

It looks to be a win-win situation for everyone involved since the Destroids are becoming better platforms (don't usually get something for nothing), while at the same time reducing the Valk cost.

Which would be true if the more complex and sensitive power system wasn't also much larger, necessitating that destroid units either compromise other systems or increase in size to make room, or if the engines weren't also more expensive. It sounds like a quick-fix solution, but in reality (and in this case, fiction as well), mechanical engineering is seldom graceful and forgiving when it comes to major design changes.

Size: Overall 1st Gen Destroids & Valkarie/VTs aren't that dissimiliar in size going off the RT.com Infopedia (which IINM is basically OSM, provided below).

The key difference being that, while a Valkyrie has comparatively thin armor to accommodate its mission and things like its engines and fuel tanks, destroids fill that space with heavy, dense plate armor, more robust joint mechanisms, and lots and lots of extra armament. It's not a question of relative exterior dimensions, it's one of available interior space. There simply isn't room to put something as large as a FF-2001D reaction turbine in there.

except that the destroid can carry a dedicated power generating fusion plant, which will invariably be smaller than a dual purpose powerplant/rocket like used by variable fighters. the fighter has to have the extra parts which channel and accellerate the plasma into sufficent exhuast for thrust as well as switch between rocket mode an completely contained powerplant mode. not to mention the fact that the rocket mode will require extra fuel to give the exhuast sufficent mass to generate the needed thrust.

and the bit about heavier armor plat is a non-arguement, since if you switch to the activie protection armor system, you don't need heavy plating, and your protection is based more on the power you can channel into it, which means the better powerplant will actually protect you better.

[glitterboy2098]

So what your saying is, you want to add a really expensive power plant to a unit to improve its defense, at the cost of heavy armor which is already a decent defensive application, and far, far cheaper? And worse yet, you want to add this to what is essentially intended to be a defensive or fixed assault attrition unit?

Even with economies of scale, using the same engine found on an F-16 on an M-1 Abrams just makes the M-1 that much more expensive and restricts, severely, the number of spare power plants you have on hand for your fighters. Any money you might save by using the same engine is more than lost when you fit it to a common unit like a tank, treads or legs not withstanding. You simply require too many of them to end up saving money, especially if you have to remove half of the tanks armor to make it work, and end up only as tough as you started.

your missing my point. SWAG is setup as this miricle protection, which gets better just by adding power. so argueing that you can't mount a powerful powerplant (based off the assumption that a non-thrust generating plant will somehow mass more than one with a thrust generating rocket bolted on) because your carrying extra armor plate is a non-arguement, since reducing the mass of armor in order to add a powerplant capable of reinforcing it via SWAG, thus improving the protection is a viable approach. especially since the mass to output ratios of fusion powerplants would generally see the protection gained from an active protection grow faster by mass than you'd get by just adding extra plating.

and i'm not comparing an F-16 to an M1. i'm pointed out that the way fusion works, a fusion rocket able to also function as a fusion powerplant is going to be havier and bulkier than a fusion powerplant that only produces power. it's rather like how the M1 and the AH-64 apache use virtually same gas turbine engine, but the Apache's engines produce less useful work per engine because their drive train is heavier and the method by which their output is harnessed is less efficent.

the claims about how the active armor works and the reason destroids were abandoned don't match up. they contradict each other, in fact.

[Seto Kaiba]

I thought the GU-11 used a combination of APFSDS-T and HEAP? Other than purely crushing kinetic penetration power, how is this specifically an anti-SWAG ammunition?

Huh? If you don't mind me asking, what gave you that idea? I know the so-called "2nd Edition" Macross Saga source book talks about various types of ammunition, but by now it's common knowledge that most of the details given for various subjects in the Robotech RPG usually have little or no basis in either Robotech or the OSM. This is certainly not an exception. As far as I'm aware, the only gun pod ever officially described as using conventional (modern) ammunition in Macross is the Howard GPU-9 carried by the VF-0. Even then, it's only really mentioned as an option rather than the typical load in the magazine. (It's described as being compatible with AHEAD rounds.)

Precisely how the Anti-ECA ammunition is optimized to defeat energy conversion armor isn't specified in any canon source I'm aware of, though there is some evidence to suggest that the technology has been applied/is applicable to most of the modern "spectrum" of armor-piercing ammunition. Outside what's strictly canon, the Variable Fighter Master File: VF-1 Valkyrie tech manual identifies at least five different types of ammunition for the GU-11 alone... including regular and Anti-ECA rounds of different types. The two that really stand out are an Anti-ECA version of HEAP (High Explosive Armor Piercing) called HEACA (which is apparently the standard) and the more conventional APDS-DU (Armor Piercing Discarding Sabot - Depleted Uranium).

(If I had to make an educated guess, my take on it would be that Anti-ECA rounds somehow disrupt the electromagnetic forces used to strengthen the armor material at the point of impact... helped a little bit by the fact that the rounds are moving down range at about twice the speed of modern rotary cannon AP rounds (more on later models)).

except that the destroid can carry a dedicated power generating fusion plant, which will invariably be smaller than a dual purpose powerplant/rocket like used by variable fighters.

I think you might have a couple misconceptions about how reaction engines work too...

and the bit about heavier armor plat is a non-arguement, since if you switch to the activie protection armor system, you don't need heavy plating, and your protection is based more on the power you can channel into it, which means the better powerplant will actually protect you better.

Putting aside the questions of misconceptions about how the system works, the more complex and powerful system is still going to negate the Destroid's chief advantage of being (comparatively) dirt cheap... it's also going to be larger, and consume more fuel to generate that greater output, which means the idea is still hosed by the aggressively limited internal space on offer inside of most any destroid chassis. You'd essentially be simultaneously raising the cost of the unit considerably, hamstringing it in at least one (and probably more) of its main areas of advantage, and decreasing its operational longevity by raising its rate of fuel consumption.

the claims about how the active armor works and the reason destroids were abandoned don't match up. they contradict each other, in fact.

Actually, they don't... it appears that you may not have understood part or all of the explanations involved.

[ShadowLogan]

The key difference being that, while a Valkyrie has comparatively thin armor to accommodate its mission and things like its engines and fuel tanks, destroids fill that space with heavy, dense plate armor, more robust joint mechanisms, and lots and lots of extra armament. It's not a question of relative exterior dimensions, it's one of available interior space. There simply isn't room to put something as large as a FF-2001D reaction turbine in there.

The Destroid doesn't need to necessarily use the VF-1 engine as is. How much of the VF-1 engine's physical size is related to propulsion (or other systems) that could be removed for a ground-only Destroid? And how does that compare to a Destroid engine after all that is taken care of?

The Destroid does have the option to (mix & match):
-grow in size to accommodate the larger engine
-remove the secondary engine to accommodate a larger main engine
-sacrificing physical armor would be offset by a stronger ECA-rating, though it does raise the question of when it becomes counter productive
-remove or relocate armament

As far as cost goes, you do get what you pay for. Destroids may be intended to be the general low cost/cheap mecha, but that doesn't mean they have to be.

Yeah, pretty much... except replace "should be possible" with "is standard issue, and has been since before Space War 1".

Didn't look into the issue, which is why I said should be possible.

[glitterboy2098]

except that the destroid can carry a dedicated power generating fusion plant, which will invariably be smaller than a dual purpose powerplant/rocket like used by variable fighters.

I think you might have a couple misconceptions about how reaction engines work too...

not really. i actually understand the principles pretty well, based off both physics and the macross canon(s). first, we need to define it. are we talking reaction engines as per the old cacross canon (fusion engines) or the new Macross frontier retcons (where they're now supposed to have been anti-matter engines the whole time?)

either way, your basically dealing with the following. you have a reactor, into which your fuel is pumped. it either fuses together (old canon) or annialites itself (new canon), producing high energy plasma. in both cases you require quite specific magnetic feild containment to keep the reaction functional. which means you can't just make the engine with one side open and expect it to work. it has to be fully contained. power is extracted by letting controlled amounts out through brief magnetic windows, into magnetohydrodynamic generators which strip electrons from the plasma. how you turn this into a drive is you build the reactor into a magnetic accellerator unit so that the bybroducts can be extracted by short lived windows in the magnetic feilds, which vent the plasma into the magnetic accellerator which then accellerates it to velocities higher than it's normal velocity caused by pressure release. basic fusion and antimatter rocket design, we have the principles and knowledge of them today (we just lack the materials to build them at the moment. fuel being the main issue). what makes the VF engines unique is that the fusion/antimatter rocket replaces the combustion stage of a conventional jet turbine, or more specificly, the 'reaction' engine replaces the primary turbine inside a turbofan. the forward and aft compressor stages are still present, which allows the entire assembly to be run as an indirect cycle thermal turbofan when in an atmosphere, so that you don't have to use extra fuel to provide remass as in space.

a destroid does not require the rocket or the turbine, meaning it only has to mount the much smaller and lighter reactor.

and the bit about heavier armor plat is a non-arguement, since if you switch to the activie protection armor system, you don't need heavy plating, and your protection is based more on the power you can channel into it, which means the better powerplant will actually protect you better.

Putting aside the questions of misconceptions about how the system works, the more complex and powerful system is still going to negate the Destroid's chief advantage of being (comparatively) dirt cheap... it's also going to be larger, and consume more fuel to generate that greater output, which means the idea is still hosed by the aggressively limited internal space on offer inside of most any destroid chassis. You'd essentially be simultaneously raising the cost of the unit considerably, hamstringing it in at least one (and probably more) of its main areas of advantage, and decreasing its operational longevity by raising its rate of fuel consumption.

so far your the only person i've seen claiming the destroids were cheaper. all of the macross canon material i've seen support the idea destroids were created more for their firepower, and abandoned because the tactical domanin changed.

if cost of the unit was a factor, the veritech would never have dominated later macross eras. earth had limited resources to work with, even after getting the factory sattelite. and you said yourself most of those went into making the colony fleets that were sent out. so since cost was a factor, why would the UNspacy adopt the veritech fighter, which uses (as yoiu claim) more resource intensive engines and armor? why not build a space capable destroid, somthing akin to a gundam perhaps or a non-transforming battroid, and support them with non-SWAG conventional aerospace fighters?
instead they went with the complex (as per your claims) more resource intensive unit.

as for fuel consumption, a destroid, even one with multiple powerplants, would actualy use less fuel for a given operational duration than a VF. fusion (old canon) and antimatter (new canon) are both remarkably fuel efficent ways to produce power. but they a far less efficent as rockets. this is because while you can use only a tiny bit of fuel to provide power, the rocket has to use far more as remass, the mass the rocket expells to provide thrust, which defines it's accelleration. using fusion power a VF engine could probably power most of new york on a few grams of hydrogen. but it would have to spit out several kilograms a second at extremely high velocities to get just the reactor moving. antimatter (new canon) is substantially better, but the same issue is involved.

the claims about how the active armor works and the reason destroids were abandoned don't match up. they contradict each other, in fact.

Actually, they don't... it appears that you may not have understood part or all of the explanations involved.

actually i understand the issues involved pretty well, as i've shown.
and funny, my statement still stands up.

The key difference being that, while a Valkyrie has comparatively thin armor to accommodate its mission and things like its engines and fuel tanks, destroids fill that space with heavy, dense plate armor, more robust joint mechanisms, and lots and lots of extra armament. It's not a question of relative exterior dimensions, it's one of available interior space. There simply isn't room to put something as large as a FF-2001D reaction turbine in there.

The Destroid doesn't need to necessarily use the VF-1 engine as is. How much of the VF-1 engine's physical size is related to propulsion (or other systems) that could be removed for a ground-only Destroid? And how does that compare to a Destroid engine after all that is taken care of?

going by official artwork of the engine the actual fusion generator part makes up about 20% of the engine. compared to the size of the engine over all, that makes the actual fusion reactor roughly the size of a human torso.
since destroids don't have to carry air breathing turbines and compressors and all the aircraft junk like a veriable fighter does, a destroid could fit 2-3 of these generators into the same space as a single VF fighter engine. given how bulky destroids are in general, they could fit 4-6 of them in easily. more if they're willing to dump the useless machinegun/grenadelauncher clusters and their ammo.

[Seto Kaiba]

Alright then, since ECA, as an established concept rather than something floating around in his head, didn't exist until recently, what did the OSM say about the GU-11 load out back in the day? Like back in the late 80s or so?

It didn't... and generally speaking, it's actually quite rare for a series creator to go to such extremes in hashing out the details. Other quantifiable properties of the gun pod were given back then, like the ammo count, the magazine and feed system type, caliber, rate of fire, and muzzle velocity, but the precise type of ammunition used isn't something that was discussed in depth. (The only other case of Macross delving so far into the details that the type of ammunition in common use is explained at length is Macross Frontier's anti-Vajra munitions.)

The Destroid doesn't need to necessarily use the VF-1 engine as is. How much of the VF-1 engine's physical size is related to propulsion (or other systems) that could be removed for a ground-only Destroid? And how does that compare to a Destroid engine after all that is taken care of?

Good question... and while I can't provide a clear-cut official answer, I can make an educated guess based on what's said about the way the engines work in official material. The heat-exchange processes of the thermonuclear reaction turbines are a significant part of the propulsion system's main stage, so they should comprise a sizable portion of the center of the turbine. (Diagrams from the tech manuals suggest that the system runs most of the length of the turbine, making it a bit too large to gracefully install in the relatively small cavity used by the 04 Series destroid chassis' more conservative power system.)

Sadly, the only (official) cases of destroids with much-enhanced power systems still never put them anywhere close to the same class of output as contemporary Valkyries. The march of technological advancement doesn't leave them behind, but they don't need the obscene output levels to achieve the same amount of protection, so they persist as-is without sacrificing operational longevity, armament, or secondary power systems.

The Destroid does have the option to (mix & match):
-grow in size to accommodate the larger engine

As was done with the Annabella Lasiodora mobile weapon from Macross VF-X2... a large-ish high mobility destroid for attacking heavy fortifications, one of two cases where a Destroid was made badass enough to justify being a boss battle during a canon Macross video game.

-remove the secondary engine to accommodate a larger main engine

Suspected to have been the case with the customized HWR-00-Mk.II Monster units used by Zentradi rebels in Macross M3, tho instead of better energy conversion armor the units were fitted with a barrier system.

-sacrificing physical armor would be offset by a stronger ECA-rating, though it does raise the question of when it becomes counter productive

Kind of a break-even solution there, one that favors the physical armor in the event of a low-power running state or a loss of main power system function. Both energy conversion armor and physical armor can be reinforced against certain classes of weaponry, though only the physical armor retains its strength if the amount of available power drops.

-remove or relocate armament

Which would defeat most of the point of the destroid...

As far as cost goes, you do get what you pay for. Destroids may be intended to be the general low cost/cheap mecha, but that doesn't mean they have to be.

No, of course not... the thing that forces Destroids into the role of the general duty econo-mecha is their limited mobility compared to the more versatile Valkyrie, which combined with their heavier armor and armament makes them ideal for the aforementioned defense roles in fleet operations. It might not be the most glorious of all duties, but it's one that destroid units continued to serve in with distinction into the 2020s in the main timeline, and clear thru into the 2090s in Macross II's timeline.

not really. i actually understand the principles pretty well,

Clearly you don't... you've just demonstrated that you quite emphatically don't:

based off both physics and the macross canon(s). first, we need to define it. are we talking reaction engines as per the old cacross canon (fusion engines) or the new Macross frontier retcons (where they're now supposed to have been anti-matter engines the whole time?)

Whooboy... where to start?

1. No mecha in Macross has ever run on conventional nuclear fusion. It has been a constant fact from Day 1 that mecha in Macross are powered by thermonuclear reaction overtechnology, which is similar in principle to nuclear fusion but different and distinct from it in many of the particulars.

2. (Certain aspects of) conventional physics need not apply, as the consistent-from-day-1 fact of the matter, as I've stated once before in this thread, is that one of the factors that sets thermonuclear reaction power apart from more traditional nuclear fusion is the application of extra-dimensional physics to the process.

3. At no point has any official source ever alleged or stated that the reaction engines in Macross Frontier use antimatter as fuel. I have no idea where you came up with that idea, but it is provably and indisputably wrong. All of the mecha in Macross Frontier use the same thermonuclear reaction overtechnology that their predecessors in the other shows use. It's kind of hard to mistake it when the words "thermonuclear reaction" are prominently included in the engine name all the bloody time INCLUDING THE OFFICIAL MACROSS FRONTIER MATERIAL.

Much of the rest of what you've written is wildly wrong, and I don't really want to spend the time dissecting all of it since I've already covered the main areas of misconception that underpin the whole affair. It is, however, worth mentioning the reaction engines do not function anything like a plasma rocket in atmospheric flight, and in space the principles at work in the engine are suspiciously similar to Star Trek's impulse engines. To draw a line under it, you're arguing based on a body of largely-false assumptions. If you want a full explanation of how the technology works, from official sources, it'd be my pleasure to help... but I'd like to do it elsewhere so we can keep this thread about destroids as much as possible.

a destroid does not require the rocket or the turbine, meaning it only has to mount the much smaller and lighter reactor.

But, because of the way reaction power systems work, the larger reactor is going to mean larger heat-exchange processes and cooling systems to generate power and keep the reactor in stable operating temperatures, which means a much larger amount of internal space consumed by the generator system and greater fuel consumption to provide the greater levels of output we're talking about. (You don't get something for nothing, after all, and if it were as simple as you're claiming then the UN Spacy would've done exactly that instead of opting for a low-power system.)

so far your the only person i've seen claiming the destroids were cheaper. all of the macross canon material i've seen support the idea destroids were created more for their firepower, and abandoned because the tactical domanin changed.

I'm not the only person, I'm in excellent company... as the assertion that destroids are CONSIDERABLY cheaper than Valkyries comes from Macross's creators, who mention in the series material on the VF-1 that the production cost of the VF-1 is undisclosed but reported to be roughly 20 times that of a standard Destroid (presumably meaning a Tomahawk Mk.VI or some other Series 04 destroid). I'm not sure where your "macross canon material" came from, but it would seem that much of what you've read wasn't official canon material at all... or possibly fan-made by people who couldn't bother doing the research.

if cost of the unit was a factor, the veritech would never have dominated later macross eras. earth had limited resources to work with, even after getting the factory sattelite.

Well, that draws a line under what I said about your supposed canon material being wrong or simply made-up... the cost of building a Valkyrie is something that Macross's creators have flogged mercilessly. It's especially prevalent in the main Macross universe, where it was one of the reasons for developing the Ghost X-9 as an alternative to the Project Super Nova design contest (see Macross Plus), and figures prominently as a motivation for design changes and choices of equipment for many of the mecha in Macross Frontier (if not their entire reason for being) including (but not limited to):

• The VF-25 itself
• The VF-25's Armored Pack
• The VF-25's Tornado Pack
• SMS's custom VB-6 Konig Monster
• The AIF-7/QF-4000 Ghost
• The VF-171 Nightmare Plus
• The YF-29 Durendal
• EX-Gear

(As a side note, it's also an explicitly-mentioned factor in the in-universe popularity/success of several other designs in Macross, such as the VF-9 Cutlass, VF-5000 Star Mirage, etc.)

and you said yourself most of those went into making the colony fleets that were sent out. so since cost was a factor, why would the UNspacy adopt the veritech fighter, which uses (as yoiu claim) more resource intensive engines and armor? why not build a space capable destroid, somthing akin to a gundam perhaps or a non-transforming battroid, and support them with non-SWAG conventional aerospace fighters?

It's "Variable Fighter", not "veritech" in Macross, but that's just me picking nits with all the fury of an amphetamine-fueled chimpanzee.

Now, to answer your question, the reason that the Unity Government didn't just scrap the Valkyrie and continue on with non-transformable fighters and destroids is because none of those non-transformable units can approach the operational versatility of the Valkyrie. The necessarily-greater complexity of the Valkyrie comes with the practical upshot that their unique design allows them to fill a wide array of battlefield roles with fewer limitations than more traditional options. The Valkyrie platform can seamlessly switch between operating as a strike fighter, a light bomber, a close air support unit in a similar capacity to attack helicopters, a combat search-and-rescue plane, mechanized infantry, and even be used in light construction and shipbuilding. With minimal modification or add-on components, it can go even further, to be used in the capacity of a heavy mechanized infantry unit, an ELINT/AWACS/ECM/Recon platform, or even a mothership for UCAVs.

Destroids are cheap, (comparatively) simple, and robust defensive mecha that can't achieve anything approaching that obscene level of operational versatility. They simply don't have the ability to rapidly redeploy themselves the way that Valkyries can, nor are they capable of most of the operational roles that a Valkyrie can fill just as well if not better than conventional alternatives.

as for fuel consumption, a destroid, even one with multiple powerplants, would actualy use less fuel for a given operational duration than a VF.

Um... why are you making a point that I've been arguing in favor of back to me as though I were arguing against it? The smaller, lower-output reaction power plants in destroids sip would naturally sip fuel even more gently than a VF's engines, not only because they're not expected to generate thrust for flight, but because they're expected to put out only a tiny fraction of what a VF's reaction turbines are.

actually i understand the issues involved pretty well, as i've shown.
and funny, my statement still stands up.

*heavy sigh*

As I've just demonstrated, your argument doesn't stand up AT ALL because it's based almost exclusively on provably-false assumptions instead of official material.

going by official artwork of the engine the actual fusion generator part makes up about 20% of the engine.

Which is funny, because there's a chunk of engine missing in that picture in the middle... and the diagram isn't labeled. It's all well and good to cite art like that, even if it's been captioned incorrectly, but you're making an unfounded assumption of what the contents are.

[glitterboy2098]

based off both physics and the macross canon(s). first, we need to define it. are we talking reaction engines as per the old cacross canon (fusion engines) or the new Macross frontier retcons (where they're now supposed to have been anti-matter engines the whole time?)

Whooboy... where to start?

1. No mecha in Macross has ever run on conventional nuclear fusion. It has been a constant fact from Day 1 that mecha in Macross are powered by thermonuclear reaction overtechnology, which is similar in principle to nuclear fusion but different and distinct from it in many of the particulars.

2. (Certain aspects of) conventional physics need not apply, as the consistent-from-day-1 fact of the matter, as I've stated once before in this thread, is that one of the factors that sets thermonuclear reaction power apart from more traditional nuclear fusion is the application of extra-dimensional physics to the process.

3. At no point has any official source ever alleged or stated that the reaction engines in Macross Frontier use antimatter as fuel. I have no idea where you came up with that idea, but it is provably and indisputably wrong. All of the mecha in Macross Frontier use the same thermonuclear reaction overtechnology that their predecessors in the other shows use. It's kind of hard to mistake it when the words "thermonuclear reaction" are prominently included in the engine name all the bloody time INCLUDING THE OFFICIAL MACROSS FRONTIER MATERIAL.

Much of the rest of what you've written is wildly wrong, and I don't really want to spend the time dissecting all of it since I've already covered the main areas of misconception that underpin the whole affair. It is, however, worth mentioning the reaction engines do not function anything like a plasma rocket in atmospheric flight, and in space the principles at work in the engine are suspiciously similar to Star Trek's impulse engines. To draw a line under it, you're arguing based on a body of largely-false assumptions. If you want a full explanation of how the technology works, from official sources, it'd be my pleasure to help... but I'd like to do it elsewhere so we can keep this thread about destroids as much as possible.

actually all the macross canon states is that their 'handwave tech' aka overtechnology lets them generate more and better plasma from the reaction. IE better efficency.

the principles of fusion rocketry are still going to apply. no mention of non-newtonian movement involved anywhere that i can find.

and the bit about antimatter (more specificially, "pair annillation") comes from interviews with Shoji Kawamori himself, who said the switch occured to further seperate the use of the term 'reaction' from the anti-nuclear sentiment, since anti-matter doesn't have protests against it. i will admit i'm not sure if the retcon is supposed to apply to engines or not, but it certainly does apply to weaponry. given that the same term (reaction) is applied to both, one would presume the same definition would too.

and you'll notice i did point out that in an atmosphere the engine would work like a indirect cycle thermal jet. real world experiments with that used nuclear fission, but the principle is applicable to any power system that generates large amounts of heat as a byproduct.

i just pointed out that the engine would work as a nuclear rocket in space, and pointed out how it would work given that the canon does specify thermonuclear..

a destroid does not require the rocket or the turbine, meaning it only has to mount the much smaller and lighter reactor.

But, because of the way reaction power systems work, the larger reactor is going to mean larger heat-exchange processes and cooling systems to generate power and keep the reactor in stable operating temperatures, which means a much larger amount of internal space consumed by the generator system and greater fuel consumption to provide the greater levels of output we're talking about. (You don't get something for nothing, after all, and if it were as simple as you're claiming then the UN Spacy would've done exactly that instead of opting for a low-power system.)

actually if you'll notice, i said it can mount the same reactor into a smaller space. a cooling system would be required yes, but such a system is going to be more compact than the jet turbine system on a VF. the VF has to mount two systems. in atmosphere it can use air cooling, but it would also have to have a radiator system for space operations and for operation while in battroid mode (when air isn't being moved through the engines).

a destroid can use just the radiator system, and doesn't have to mount the turbines and such.

so far your the only person i've seen claiming the destroids were cheaper. all of the macross canon material i've seen support the idea destroids were created more for their firepower, and abandoned because the tactical domanin changed.

I'm not the only person, I'm in excellent company... as the assertion that destroids are CONSIDERABLY cheaper than Valkyries comes from Macross's creators, who mention in the series material on the VF-1 that the production cost of the VF-1 is undisclosed but reported to be roughly 20 times that of a standard Destroid (presumably meaning a Tomahawk Mk.VI or some other Series 04 destroid).

which doesn't mean that destroids were created to be cheaper, just that they are. you've argued destroids were created to be cheaper, but their operational use is so different that you can't really compare VF's and destroids except on the most basic levels. this makes it highly unlikely the destroids were created as an alternative to the VF's, as you've claimed rather than as a suppliment to them, as we see in the show.

and you said yourself most of those went into making the colony fleets that were sent out. so since cost was a factor, why would the UNspacy adopt the veritech fighter, which uses (as yoiu claim) more resource intensive engines and armor? why not build a space capable destroid, somthing akin to a gundam perhaps or a non-transforming battroid, and support them with non-SWAG conventional aerospace fighters?

It's "Variable Fighter", not "veritech" in Macross, but that's just me picking nits with all the fury of an amphetamine-fueled chimpanzee.

Now, to answer your question, the reason that the Unity Government didn't just scrap the Valkyrie and continue on with non-transformable fighters and destroids is because none of those non-transformable units can approach the operational versatility of the Valkyrie. The necessarily-greater complexity of the Valkyrie comes with the practical upshot that their unique design allows them to fill a wide array of battlefield roles with fewer limitations than more traditional options. The Valkyrie platform can seamlessly switch between operating as a strike fighter, a light bomber, a close air support unit in a similar capacity to attack helicopters, a combat search-and-rescue plane, mechanized infantry, and even be used in light construction and shipbuilding. With minimal modification or add-on components, it can go even further, to be used in the capacity of a heavy mechanized infantry unit, an ELINT/AWACS/ECM/Recon platform, or even a mothership for UCAVs.

Destroids are cheap, (comparatively) simple, and robust defensive mecha that can't achieve anything approaching that obscene level of operational versatility. They simply don't have the ability to rapidly redeploy themselves the way that Valkyries can, nor are they capable of most of the operational roles that a Valkyrie can fill just as well if not better than conventional alternatives.

so i'm right, the ultimate reason they dropped the destroids was doctrinal, not technological, like you originally claimed?
your contradicting yourself.

as for fuel consumption, a destroid, even one with multiple powerplants, would actualy use less fuel for a given operational duration than a VF.

Um... why are you making a point that I've been arguing in favor of back to me as though I were arguing against it? The smaller, lower-output reaction power plants in destroids sip would naturally sip fuel even more gently than a VF's engines, not only because they're not expected to generate thrust for flight, but because they're expected to put out only a tiny fraction of what a VF's reaction turbines are.

actually, i was pointing out that using the same reactor, one a power only on a destroid, the other a power+rocket like on a VF, the destroid would use far less fuel for a given operational duration than the VF. because the VF has to use extra fuel to supply remass to provide thrust, while the destroid's reactor only need enough to provide power.

the macross canon backs this up, since it states the Vf engines use less power in an atmosphere (where the reactor would be able to run in power only mode and generate thrust by using it's waste heat to heat up air-as-remass.)

going by official artwork of the engine the actual fusion generator part makes up about 20% of the engine.

Which is funny, because there's a chunk of engine missing in that picture in the middle... and the diagram isn't labeled. It's all well and good to cite art like that, even if it's been captioned incorrectly, but you're making an unfounded assumption of what the contents are.

[/quote]
actually there isn't a chunk missing. if you look at the cutaway drawings of the VF-1 you'll find the front part is actually a portion found in the 'upper leg' of the VF, while the other is the main engine. the front bit looks to be a pre-compressor stage such as those employed by some high altitude aircraft in real life.

and frankly, it doesn't need labels. most of the engine in that image matches up with real world turbofans. which means that by process of elimination the parts that don't match up are the reactor and related parts.

[Seto Kaiba]

actually all the macross canon states is that their 'handwave tech' aka overtechnology lets them generate more and better plasma from the reaction. IE better efficency.

Um... well, that's completely and wildly inaccurate. Nearly thirty years of official Macross publications have kept a consistent line that thermonuclear reaction overtechnology is NOT nuclear fusion. It's similar in principle to nuclear fusion, but with distinct differences that set it apart as a separate process entirely. There's no disputing that, it hasn't changed in thirty years and it comes directly from Macross's creators. It is not fusion.

and the bit about antimatter (more specificially, "pair annillation") comes from interviews with Shoji Kawamori himself, who said the switch occured to further seperate the use of the term 'reaction' from the anti-nuclear sentiment, since anti-matter doesn't have protests against it.

*heavy sigh*

Well, that's a false statement too. It's close to the truth, but fundamentally false in most of the essentials. Kawamori did mention the existence of pair-annihilation reaction technology in Macross's main timeline, but only in the context of a reaction weapon (warhead). It has never, EVER been applied to reaction engines, which are always explicitly identified as "thermonuclear reaction" engines. Furthermore, the existence of pair-annihilation reaction warheads DOES NOT replace or retcon out thermonuclear reaction warheads, as you'd know if you'd actually read the article in question or even the very brief summation on the Compendium Wiki or Macross Mecha Manual. It's simply a new technology that came into service around the 2040s and shares the same generalized term "reaction weapon" like fission and fusion warheads both fall under the umbrella term "nuclear weapon".

i just pointed out that the engine would work as a nuclear rocket in space, and pointed out how it would work given that the canon does specify thermonuclear..

It's a rational assumption, but it's an assumption based on a number of false premises you've constructed and that I have already debunked at length. The actual means by which a reaction engine operates in space is closest in description to Star Trek's impulse engines. There's no magic mass-canceling subspace field (though there is mention of a gravity inertia control system involved in some cutaways), it's a thrust-vectored combination of a fusion rocket and an ultra-high output ion engine. It's not merely one or the other, it's both.

actually if you'll notice, i said it can mount the same reactor into a smaller space. a cooling system would be required yes, but such a system is going to be more compact than the jet turbine system on a VF.

If you're taking the same generator system and expecting it to run at the same output level, you're going to need to have heat-exchange and cooling systems at the same level of robustness (or better, considering the change in the operational environment of the system) in order to carry it off. Internal space in a destroid is a limited commodity, even moreso than space in a Valkyrie.

As a point of interest, sticking a single, more powerful engine into a destroid has been done... and it didn't produce any remarkable results. You know the culprit well: the MBR-07-Mk.II Spartan platform. There's just not enough space for a reaction power system as robust and powerful as the one in the VF-1's thermonuclear reaction turbines, but they bloody well tried to up the juice (and made it half-again as powerful as the main power plant in a Tomahawk).

which doesn't mean that destroids were created to be cheaper, just that they are.

Well, duh... that's not the point I was making when I brought it up. I was just illustrating that what you'd denied was in fact the truth... that cost was, and is, a factor. It's down to other sources that talk about the development of destroid platforms in more detail (e.g. Macross Chronicle technology sheet 02A-B "Destroids", the individual mechanic sheets, etc.).

you've argued destroids were created to be cheaper, but their operational use is so different that you can't really compare VF's and destroids except on the most basic levels.

That's... kind of my point. They were designed to do a different job... to fill a different battlefield role... and they could just as easily have gone for something like a non-transformable Valkyrie battroid, but they didn't. They opted to go for simpler designs that were just as robust (if not moreso), though less mobile, and in greater numbers. There's a reason that destroids outnumbered Valkyries on the Macross almost three to one.

this makes it highly unlikely the destroids were created as an alternative to the VF's, as you've claimed rather than as a suppliment to them, as we see in the show.

*sigh* Wrong again, chief. According to Macross Chronicle et. al., destroids started their development as an alternative, parallel anti-giant weapons development program. The other program, which later incorporated breakthroughs made in the Destroid program, became the "Battroid" and evolved into the Variable Fighter. It's impossible for their development to be planned as a supplement to VFs, because the first operable destroid and the codification of the destroid designations we know predate the launch of the first VF development program by a solid year. (In fact, the first Destroid was completed back in December of 2000, while development of the VF-0 started in February 2002, a few months before work started on the Series 04 destroid line that eventually spawned the Tomahawk, Defender, and Phalanx.)

so i'm right, the ultimate reason they dropped the destroids was doctrinal, not technological, like you originally claimed?
your contradicting yourself.

No, I'm really not... the problem is you're examining a small portion of my argument and drawing a conclusion as if it were the whole thing. The point I'm making is that the versatility and mobility of destroids was found wanting (a technological failing) and that, as a result, their place in battlefield doctrine was slowly eroded by the technologically superior Valkyries until there was little a Destroid could do that a Valkyrie couldn't do better and faster. When you think about it, all of the efforts to keep destroids viable culminated in the last destroid that occupied a niche Valkyries couldn't fill ended with the destroid in question turning into a Valkyrie. (The Shinnakasu/Northrom Grumman VB-6 König Monster.)

actually, i was pointing out that using the same reactor, one a power only on a destroid, the other a power+rocket like on a VF, the destroid would use far less fuel for a given operational duration than the VF. because the VF has to use extra fuel to supply remass to provide thrust, while the destroid's reactor only need enough to provide power.

You're actually right about this, but only in space operations... VFs don't need to consume their fuel stores at a greater rate to provide propellant during atmospheric flight, so that reaction power system in the turbine would consume fuel at pretty much exactly the same pace as a destroid with the same generator system.

the macross canon backs this up, since it states the Vf engines use less power in an atmosphere (where the reactor would be able to run in power only mode and generate thrust by using it's waste heat to heat up air-as-remass.)

Um... you're actually misconstruing things again. It's not that they use less power, it's that they use less fuel since they're not consuming reactant to provide plasma for propulsion purposes. The rate of consumption relative to the amount of energy generated would be consistent between the two (save for the VF consuming that amount on two engines at the same time). The advantage would still belong the the Valkyrie, as it has much more tank space for fuel than the relatively cramped Destroid does.

actually there isn't a chunk missing. if you look at the cutaway drawings of the VF-1 you'll find the front part is actually a portion found in the 'upper leg' of the VF, while the other is the main engine. the front bit looks to be a pre-compressor stage such as those employed by some high altitude aircraft in real life.

I said what I said because I'm looking at the cutaways. I'm not talking about the ducting in the middle of the engine mount. That's dead space, with only minor heat-exchange systems in it. I'm talking about the cutaway at that angle not showing all of the internals inside the turbine. It's also not labeled, which isn't terribly helpful, whereas the ones that I'm looking at are.

[Zer0 Kay]

Except Khyron wasn't talking about Max, he was talking about Rick, since Rick really is a bad mother sucker his own self. Its just that Max = God in the Macross setting, more so than Miriya, Roy, and even anyone else other than perhaps the duo from Macross Plus, the Diamond Force Leader, and the new guy, Princess. Khyron was telling Miriya to beware of Rick, not yet realizing that a real scary pilot had only just started to make his presence felt. Remember, Khyron is a good pilot, with a great deal of experience, and Rick fought him to a stand still.

As for Max and Miriya's relationship, I would like to see the "courtship" take longer, and have more intereaction over radio before they meet, basically trading barbs, or even non-combative flying while they "feel each other out" as a powerful, exceptionally skilled ace.

I may have to check this new Macross thing out, but I can't afford it just now. Also, keep in mind, I would love to see Destroids really serve a useful function for once, even Macross Zero and Frontier treated them like targets for the most part.

And Macross Plus... DEFINATLY treated them as targets

[Zer0 Kay]

Heresy?! Piffle, these were works of art...for their time of course. They gave me heart for a Robotech or Battletech movie. I admit the movies themselves were normally...story deficient to a degree, but the concept was so totally cool! My favorite, and its name escapes me, takes place on an Earth conquered by aliens, and involves resistance fighters discovering a human prototype of a mecha to fight back. Reminded me of that Ben Dunn comic where the Soviets invaded the US with mecha.

And I know Max is supposed to be important (never realized he was supposed to be named after the Blue Max though, the movie of the same name was pretty good though), but its literally been taken to the point that Max = God is nearly a meme, and then they have him be a top notch Destroid jock too? *shrugs* Seriously, I haven't seen the material in question, maybe they did a better job of doing this than I imagine.

O.K., that was a bit vague, but I tend to think of them as Gundams and GM/Jims, I compare the agility of the Battloids in question to the more elite GM pilots, rather than the hero level Gundams.

I even understand the genesis of the switch to VFs over Destroids, but while this makes complete sense in the Macross universe, and honestly may even make a lot of sense for Robotech, but if your a fan of Destroids, this logic tends to step firmly on your mecha of choice. Worse yet, the basis of the superiority of the VF is that SWAG armor, which isn't a part of the Robotech canon, so there is no real reason for VFs to have superior resiliency when they are essentially a significant step up in complexity and parts integration issues.

There was another movie besides Robot Wars, Crash and Burn and Robot Jox? Ah... maybe this one

[ShadowLogan]

Good question... and while I can't provide a clear-cut official answer, I can make an educated guess based on what's said about the way the engines work in official material. The heat-exchange processes of the thermonuclear reaction turbines are a significant part of the propulsion system's main stage, so they should comprise a sizable portion of the center of the turbine. (Diagrams from the tech manuals suggest that the system runs most of the length of the turbine, making it a bit too large to gracefully install in the relatively small cavity used by the 04 Series destroid chassis' more conservative power system.)

It would still be an educated guess no better than GB or my assement then.

I was looking at the cutaway tech diagrams for the Spartan and VF-1 at Robotech Research. I really don't see an issue. Is there any reason a Destroid could not be designed with the engines in the legs as opposed to the torso like the VFs do?

Kind of a break-even solution there, one that favors the physical armor in the event of a low-power running state or a loss of main power system function. Both energy conversion armor and physical armor can be reinforced against certain classes of weaponry, though only the physical armor retains its strength if the amount of available power drops.

I do see the obvious disadvantage of the ECA w/regard to power use.

When does it become counter productive to replace physical armor with SWAG under an optimal operating state though? If a destroid can't sacrifice enough material to make room for a power plant to off-set the material loss via ECA I can see not going with it (a break-even point may not be worth it either, if a surplus is being run is when I can see going with it).

ShadowLogan wrote:
-remove or relocate armament
Which would defeat most of the point of the destroid...

Presumably if you are removing armament you would focus on the less useful ones first.

the thing that forces Destroids into the role of the general duty econo-mecha is their limited mobility compared to the more versatile Valkyrie, which combined with their heavier armor and armament makes them ideal for the aforementioned defense roles in fleet operations.

The mobility is something they can overcome though w/o the use of transformation systems. They could produce offensive optimized Destroids if they wanted to. That they don't strikes me as politics more than technology holding non-variable systems down (in shows like this).

[Seto Kaiba]

And Macross Plus... DEFINATLY treated them as targets

Literally so, yeah... it definitely wasn't the Mk.II Monster's proudest moment. Nor the VF-1J's, for that matter.

Still, in its defense, by that point the traditional Monster destroid had been in the process of being phased out for close on eight years in favor of something a little more versatile.

It would still be an educated guess no better than GB or my assement then.

Just for you guys, I've bumped a few promising sections of translation work up the queue in the hope that it'll provide us a clearer, official picture of exactly how much of the engine is involved in the power generation system.

I was looking at the cutaway tech diagrams for the Spartan and VF-1 at Robotech Research. I really don't see an issue. Is there any reason a Destroid could not be designed with the engines in the legs as opposed to the torso like the VFs do?

I'll have to try and find a clean (unedited) version of that cutaway in my collection later tonight. It looks like whatever MS Paint wizard redid the labels mixed a couple of 'em up, if not outright invented new captions for a couple of 'em. Oddly, it's got the label "reaction furnace" pointing to a missile, while the actual location of the Spartan's engine wouldn't be visible in that diagram at all because the mecha's facing the wrong way. Lots of translation errors and assumptions there...

Another excellent question tho... and this time, I have a concrete, official answer.

Based on the expressed design philosophy of the Series 04 destroid family, the main reaction power system isn't located in the torso block at all. Only the Series 07 family's Spartan keeps its reaction furnace in the torso block, where it's located under the dorsal anti-aircraft laser mount. Series 04 destroids, including the Tomahawk, Defender, and Phalanx families of destroid, keep their main reaction furnace in the common Series 04 ambulatory drive system (AKA the bits from the waist joint down that they all share). There's a model-specific sub-reactor somewhere else (presumably in the equally specific upper torso block), but the main Kranss-Maffai MT828 thermonuclear reaction generator shared by all three models of the Series 04 destroids is kept in the drive (leg/hip/groin) section. It's an interchangeable parts thing, so you only need that one model of drive section and can freely swap them between models (simplifies construction, and interchangeable parts makes battlefield repair and maintenance easier).

I do see the obvious disadvantage of the ECA w/regard to power use.

You mean other than the established fact that you need to throw tons of juice into ECA to get the same results that the destroids are getting with low-power ECA and a decent thickness of OTMat armor plating? (90% of the VF-0's power was going to its energy conversion armor in battroid mode, and it wasn't until the uber-high-powered 5th Generation that VFs had the surplus energy to run their ECA in even a low power state in fighter mode.)

When does it become counter productive to replace physical armor with SWAG under an optimal operating state though?

When has anyone ever taken a machine into a combat zone under optimal operating conditions? Battlefield conditions are pretty much the textbook definition of "not optimal". I would say that the point where it becomes counterproductive for mecha to take ECA instead of physical armor is when the mean operating load of the mecha's reactor is insufficient for its ECA to match defensive capabilities of the armor plate they would ordinarily be fitted with. With the comparatively weak and necessarily compact reactors in destroids, that point is reached almost right away. Of course, as you'll see below, a destroid platoon doesn't need to cover quality with numbers... they can have their cake and eat it too. The things that got them in the end were their lack of mobility and operational versatility, which the VF had in spades.

If a destroid can't sacrifice enough material to make room for a power plant to off-set the material loss via ECA I can see not going with it (a break-even point may not be worth it either, if a surplus is being run is when I can see going with it).

The impression I'm getting from the destroid material from Macross Zero and SDF Macross is that ECA falls under the "it's nice, but we don't really need it" category for most destroids. They keep it because it affords a little bit of a boost in their defensive capabilities, but not enough to really be a game-breaker compared to their armor plate. The RPG's REALLY short-selling some of 'em toughness-wise... the Monster is described as being able to withstand a near-miss blast from a thermonuclear reaction warhead in the official sources.

ShadowLogan wrote:
-remove or relocate armament
Which would defeat most of the point of the destroid...

Presumably if you are removing armament you would focus on the less useful ones first.

That rather depends on how you're defining "less useful". Remember, the Zentradi may by the primary enemy that the UN Spacy fights, but they're far from the only ones out there. Some of those antipersonnel machine guns and whatnot are there to deal with dismounted Zentradi infantry and even human-built AFVs.

The mobility is something they can overcome though w/o the use of transformation systems. They could produce offensive optimized Destroids if they wanted to. That they don't strikes me as politics more than technology holding non-variable systems down (in shows like this).

It's something they tried to overcome, and succeeded with (to a limited extent) in models like the Spartan. The problem is chiefly one of operational range. Destroids (and humanoid mecha) don't tend to fly gracefully or especially quickly, and the disadvantages in maneuverability in flight are fairly severe as well. When the distances involved are in tens of kilometers, walking, running, or "Rocket jumping" isn't too bad, but when you're expected to quickly uproot your forces to go stomp a unit of malcontents hundreds or thousands of kilometers away, a Valkyrie has a distinct advantage in mobility.

As far as offense-optimized destroids go, that's what the Tomahawk more-or-less was. It's analogous to a main battle tank in the destroid arsenal, though its limited mobility (in space) and limited effective range on the ground mean that it was not exactly an ideal high-mobility unit for war when the distances involved are on a global (or interplanetary) scale.

At least one attempt was made to circumvent the low mobility problem of the destroids (nobody ever remembers me! *sniff*), but in the end it was more practical to use it for dedicated close-air support like an attack helicopter, because it was still outclassed in the speed at which it was able to relocate by Valkyries (who, by that point, had achieved cruising speeds exceeding Mach 5.5 on even the cheapest, low-tech Valkyries.)

[Zer0 Kay]

Actually, I am pretty sure you found the right movie there chief. I will have to take a look at it on You Tube and see though.

I liked all of them too and all the cheesy cyborg and robot movies that came out in the 80s and 90s. I miss shows like:
Doll Man
Screamers
Hardware
almost everything from Full Moon Entertainment
Now movies, even direct to video, take themselves too seriously.

[Zer0 Kay]

And Macross Plus... DEFINATLY treated them as targets

Literally so, yeah... it definitely wasn't the Mk.II Monster's proudest moment. Nor the VF-1J's, for that matter.

Still, in its defense, by that point the traditional Monster destroid had been in the process of being phased out for close on eight years in favor of something a little more versatile.

I was just going to ask you when the Koenig entered service... then I went to your link. Damn you for anticipating my question. I've really got to unfoe you, your information is far more valuable than my sanity when dealing with your blunt callousness. That is supposed to be a compliment by the way.

[Seto Kaiba]

:( Now movies, even direct to video, take themselves too seriously.

Hey now, sometimes when those bloody awful movies take themselves too seriously it results in genuine bad-good cinema... unless you're watching G-Saviour, a bad-bad movie that takes itself so seriously that it's really kind of worrying.

I was just going to ask you when the Koenig entered service... then I went to your link. Damn you for anticipating my question.

About a year ago, I would've said it's a crying shame that the König Monster doesn't get much in the way of love, as you could easily call it the culmination of Shinnakasu Heavy Industry's overly-ambitious original design for the HWR-00. I can't say that anymore, because Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa kinda punctured the "not enough exposure for this design" balloon with great prejudice. There was originally supposed to be a quartet of 50cm heavy railguns on the main mount, but they had to settle for 40cm liquid cooled cannons because the reactor wasn't up to the job of providing enough power for sustained firing. Since the König Monster can justifiably laugh that limitation out of town (five reactors, no waiting), someone at Shinnakasu clearly had a brief "A-10 Moment":

Engineer 1: Look at it... isn't it beautiful?
Engineer 2: It's just a railgun...
Engineer 1: No, it's a 320mm railgun... this is so awesome, I've got to put a plane on this gun!
Engineer 2: You mean, you're going to put this gun on a plane?
Engineer 1: No. I mean we're going to put a plane on this gun. The plane is an accessory.

Thirty years down the road, and it's still the Spacy's go-to platform when they need something really big as dead as dead gets in a hurry. Then again, S.M.S. modified theirs so much I doubt its own father would recognize it... and, considering that list of modifications, it's not altogether surprising that the massive interstellar shipping empire that owns S.M.S. was only willing to pay for one.

(The most likely culprit behind the mods is something of a nut, and that wouldn't even be her most crazy field mod by a long shot...)

I've really got to unfoe you, your information is far more valuable than my sanity when dealing with your blunt callousness. That is supposed to be a compliment by the way.

I lol'd IRL. I really did.

[Seto Kaiba]

Seriously though, the Koenig really isn't a Destroid anymore, much like the variable officer's battlepod really isn't a battlepod, and the IOB isn't a Shocktrooper. The closest thing to a real high versatility, offensive use Destroid...is a VF in an armor pack?!

Well... yes and no. If you were to go by what's down in Macross Chronicle's VB-6 mechanic sheet, then it definitely does still count as a destroid. Its type is actually listed as "Variable Bomber and Heavy Destroid". Likewise, the type listed for the Variable Glaug (either version) is "Variable Battle Pod", so it's still definitely a battle pod... its formal designation's a blatant reference to its status as a battle pod too. Other than that, I'd say you're probably pretty close to the mark when you say that the closest thing to a commonly-used, multipurpose offensive destroid is an Armored Valkyrie.

I do recall seeing the Cheyenne pull of some interesting maneuvers with both its wheels and back pack thrusters, so its possible that a higher agility Destroid for space operations could be designed, but I can't see how it could hope to compete with a VF unless it was essentially a rethink of the Quedluun Rau in some way.

Granted, the Cheyenne does pull off some interesting tricks in Macross Zero, and the features that let it do that are actually common to most of the Space War 1-era destroids, but they're not really suited to combat when they don't have something to stand on. The "backpack" thruster isn't really designed for sustained thrust, it's for the kind of rocket jumps we see in Macross Zero and more commonly in various Mobile Suit Gundam titles. They have a couple verniers just in case they get knocked off a ship or have to jump between ships in a pinch, but they're not really capable of really complex and fluid maneuvering like Valkyries are.

At the point where you've modified a destroid with all the kit it needs to fly and maneuver like a Valkyrie or Mobile Suit, it's less a destroid and more a powered battle suit (e.g. the Q-Rau, N-Ger) or a mobile battle suit (e.g. the Mardook Gigamesh, Quamzin's Mig Pitt), and when you already have something in service that does the same job just as well, why bother?

[ShadowLogan]

I'll have to try and find a clean (unedited) version of that cutaway in my collection later tonight. It looks like whatever MS Paint wizard redid the labels mixed a couple of 'em up, if not outright invented new captions for a couple of 'em. Oddly, it's got the label "reaction furnace" pointing to a missile, while the actual location of the Spartan's engine wouldn't be visible in that diagram at all because the mecha's facing the wrong way. Lots of translation errors and assumptions there...

I assumed the reflex furnace was behind the missile pod in the centerline section behind the TZ-IV guncluster in the cutaway.

When I think of putting the engine(s) for a Destroid in the legs like the VF, I mean that literally. I was including the waist/hip/groin section as the torso.

When has anyone ever taken a machine into a combat zone under optimal operating conditions? ...

When I pictured low power (in your previous post) I was thinking of something that should be in shop and not going out in the field.

I think there are other advantages of the larger power output engine. ECA isn't the only area, they could use it for more powerful servos (it may look bulky, but it moves a lot faster than expected) or more powerful beam weapons.

That rather depends on how you're defining "less useful". Remember, the Zentradi may by the primary enemy that the UN Spacy fights, but they're far from the only ones out there. Some of those antipersonnel machine guns and whatnot are there to deal with dismounted Zentradi infantry and even human-built AFVs.

Less useful as would be nice, but can make do without them. If one has to have them, then relocate them elsewhere on the platform.

It's something they tried to overcome, and succeeded with (to a limited extent) in models like the Spartan. The problem is chiefly one of operational range

The question is did they try to take full advantage of the technologies available when they did this? Did they consider utilizing design approaches the VFs use like putting the engines in the legs instead of the torso?

Examining the M2 flying destroid AGA-1JF (RPG name) you mention later. It doesn't look like it took full adavantage of technology to compete with a VF outside of G-mode. The top thrusters seem to follow the under-sized VF approach when in G-mode, when it doesn't have to. They could have mounted VF leg engine(s) there instead giving it a lot more thrust for forward flight. Might not approach VF fighter mode speeds in atmosphere due to aerodynamics, but that can probably be addressed to minimize impact. The wing span looks small compared to a VF to.

As far as operational range goes, there are several approaches to giving Destroids the needed range. They could have "buddy" vehicle to handle long range deployments (like we see in Megazone23/RT:TUS), bolt-on packs (probably more for space than atmospheric). Maybe something that appears to transform, but doesn't really to get better performance (sort of like some RL transformer costumes that go from vehicle to robot, youtube has multiple examples of this, was thinking of a RL example involving snow skis, jet propulsion, and a 3 segment shell I saw on TV in the late 80s), probably others.

[Tiree]

The AUL PA's I designed had limited power supply. In order to get into the field, they required a vehicle hauler. And since they had limited ammunition, it also let them resupply in the field.

[Zer0 Kay]

:( Now movies, even direct to video, take themselves too seriously.

Hey now, sometimes when those bloody awful movies take themselves too seriously it results in genuine bad-good cinema... unless you're watching G-Saviour, a bad-bad movie that takes itself so seriously that it's really kind of worrying.

Dang I was hoping that was good I haven't seen it and I love Gundam. That makes me sad.

I was just going to ask you when the Koenig entered service... then I went to your link. Damn you for anticipating my question.

About a year ago, I would've said it's a crying shame that the König Monster doesn't get much in the way of love, as you could easily call it the culmination of Shinnakasu Heavy Industry's overly-ambitious original design for the HWR-00. I can't say that anymore, because Macross Frontier: Sayonara no Tsubasa kinda punctured the "not enough exposure for this design" balloon with great prejudice. There was originally supposed to be a quartet of 50cm heavy railguns on the main mount, but they had to settle for 40cm liquid cooled cannons because the reactor wasn't up to the job of providing enough power for sustained firing. Since the König Monster can justifiably laugh that limitation out of town (five reactors, no waiting), someone at Shinnakasu clearly had a brief "A-10 Moment":

Engineer 1: Look at it... isn't it beautiful?
Engineer 2: It's just a railgun...
Engineer 1: No, it's a 320mm railgun... this is so awesome, I've got to put a plane on this gun!
Engineer 2: You mean, you're going to put this gun on a plane?
Engineer 1: No. I mean we're going to put a plane on this gun. The plane is an accessory.

Thirty years down the road, and it's still the Spacy's go-to platform when they need something really big as dead as dead gets in a hurry. Then again, S.M.S. modified theirs so much I doubt its own father would recognize it... and, considering that list of modifications, it's not altogether surprising that the massive interstellar shipping empire that owns S.M.S. was only willing to pay for one.

(The most likely culprit behind the mods is something of a nut, and that wouldn't even be her most crazy field mod by a long shot...)

So... your saying the Koenig like the A-10 is the UPS of flying guns? "If you absolutely possitively have to have it destroyed overnight..." What mod are you talking about? Was the Koenig seriously a field mod!?

I've really got to unfoe you, your information is far more valuable than my sanity when dealing with your blunt callousness. That is supposed to be a compliment by the way.

I lol'd IRL. I really did.

Uh... thanks I guess, too bad I didn't make your ROFLMAOIRL or LOLSMOMN...IRL (squirting milk out my nose).

[Seto Kaiba]

I assumed the reflex furnace was behind the missile pod in the centerline section behind the TZ-IV guncluster in the cutaway.

Kinda-sorta, it's actually closer to the mecha's back... there's a medium-ish door that looks to be a good foot or so thick right about where that hard-to-scratch spot would be on a human's back that's labeled "engine cover" in the line art. It's visible (w/ caption) in the top row, far left, of this line art selection on the Mecha Manual.

I think there are other advantages of the larger power output engine. ECA isn't the only area, they could use it for more powerful servos (it may look bulky, but it moves a lot faster than expected) or more powerful beam weapons.

Granted, it's possible there could've been other advantages... though they come with disadvantages of their own. By way of example, the Spartan's more powerful limbs created difficulties with the power transmission system. More powerful beam weapons is kind of a dubious thing, since they were calibrated their expectations for the armor those beam weapons would need to defeat based on their captured tech... too much power and you risk shooting clean through the target, and being prone to overpenetration isn't an endearing feature in ANY firearm.

The question is did they try to take full advantage of the technologies available when they did this? Did they consider utilizing design approaches the VFs use like putting the engines in the legs instead of the torso?

All things considered, since the main goal of the Spartas was to make a melee destroid as robust as possible against all of the bludgeoning attacks that might occur in a brawl with a giant, I'd guess that sticking the engine(s) in a place with that many joints probably wasn't a consideration they wanted to entertain.

Examining the M2 flying destroid AGA-1JF (RPG name) you mention later. It doesn't look like it took full adavantage of technology to compete with a VF outside of G-mode.

True enough, but taking full advantage of the technology currently in use in Valkyries would've run the cost right up... and like so many other destroids, being comparatively inexpensive was a fairly major bullet point in its design process. (It's not joking even a little when we refer to it as a "Poor Man's Valkyrie". That's literally how it's referred to in the official material for the destroids in Entertainment Bible 51.)

The top thrusters seem to follow the under-sized VF approach when in G-mode, when it doesn't have to.

It may be necessary to recalibrate your expectations for engine size there a little... if the Valkyrie II is anything to go by, those smallish dorsal engine mounts likely have a net thrust comparable to a VF-1 Valkyrie.

As far as operational range goes, there are several approaches to giving Destroids the needed range. They could have "buddy" vehicle to handle long range deployments

Like the VTOL jets used to deploy the "Giant Monster" destroids in Macross II? The whole point of things like rollers in the feet (seen in Macross II, Zero, Frontier) is so the destroids can redeploy themselves more quickly than they would if they had to walk.

Dang I was hoping that was good I haven't seen it and I love Gundam. That makes me sad.

I'm not a huge fan of Gundam, but I went into G-Saviour thinking "there is no way it can possibly deserve all of the bile that gets directed at it". About twenty minutes in, I was thoroughly convinced that, if anything, all the reviewers who'd crucified it had been too generous. It's bad. So bad, that Bandai/Sunrise seems to want to forget they ever approved its production.

(It reuses props from that godawful Starship Troopers movie too...)

In good Gundam-related news for fans of the ground-pounding variety, there's a 128pg+ second installment of the Mobile Suit Master Archive series out now... this time it's the RX-78 Gundam series. (The previous book was for mass-production suits in the GM series, thru the GM III.)

So... your saying the Koenig like the A-10 is the UPS of flying guns? "If you absolutely possitively have to have it destroyed overnight..."

Pretty much, yes... it's the only craft left in the UN/New UN forces that routinely carries thermonuclear reaction warheads for anti-ship and anti-formation use.

What mod are you talking about? Was the Koenig seriously a field mod!?

The VB-6 flown by S.M.S. 1st Lt. Canaria Berstein in the Macross Frontier series (and movies) was EXTENSIVELY modified using tech developed for the next-generation advanced variable fighters (the VF-25) that S.M.S. was testing on the military's behalf. Canaria's customized "Rabbit-1" used EX-Gear for its cockpit system, reducing the crew requirement from 3 to 1; its standard armor material and its ECA were replaced with the more advanced and prohibitively expensive composite armor and Advanced SWGA system off the VF-25's Armored Pack, making it slightly lighter and faster while significantly boosting its armor strength; and giving it its own pinpoint barrier system for that doubly-defensive bullet-proof goodness.

[ShadowLogan]

Granted, it's possible there could've been other advantages... though they come with disadvantages of their own. By way of example, the Spartan's more powerful limbs created difficulties with the power transmission system. More powerful beam weapons is kind of a dubious thing, since they were calibrated their expectations for the armor those beam weapons would need to defeat based on their captured tech... too much power and you risk shooting clean through the target, and being prone to overpenetration isn't an endearing feature in ANY firearm.

Well the beam weapons like could be setup for a variety of settings, that way the beam weapons can be used for a variety of targets, some of which are now currently out of effective reach. It also allows for growth and new enemies who might have stronger armor. It could also allow shorter duration blast, allowing more targets to be engaged with the same effect w/n the same time frame.

All things considered, since the main goal of the Spartas was to make a melee destroid as robust as possible against all of the bludgeoning attacks that might occur in a brawl with a giant, I'd guess that sticking the engine(s) in a place with that many joints probably wasn't a consideration they wanted to entertain.

Still they did it with the VFs which we saw was engaging in melee contests and it did not seem to be an issue for that design.

True enough, but taking full advantage of the technology currently in use in Valkyries would've run the cost right up... and like so many other destroids, being comparatively inexpensive was a fairly major bullet point in its design process. (It's not joking even a little when we refer to it as a "Poor Man's Valkyrie". That's literally how it's referred to in the official material for the destroids in Entertainment Bible 51.)

It would still offer a less costly alternative to the Valks. Granted that only becomes attractive if policy makers ditch the whole destroids have to be cheap as possible and can't be made to directly compete with the Valks overall.

Like the VTOL jets used to deploy the "Giant Monster" destroids in Macross II? The whole point of things like rollers in the feet (seen in Macross II, Zero, Frontier) is so the destroids can redeploy themselves more quickly than they would if they had to walk.

That would be one possibility. I was thinking something like in the Megazone23/RT:TUS transports we see for the Hargun battloids use(http://www.mahq.net/mecha/megazone23/me ... ertype.htm), IINM the RT:TUS version for the Pluto fighter craft is supposed to carry one for the end battle (created specifically for the RT version so the capacity would not appear in MZ23 version).

Rollers are okay for some distances, but if speed and range are a factor another method will be needed.

[everloss]

Before I started playing Robotech(Actually before I knew there was a robotech RPG) I played Mechwarrior(Battletech).
well when I found Robotech I soooooo wanted to play and I rolled up a Destroid pilot running a WHR-7K Warhammer...er...Excalibur!
lol, anyway I lasted about three rounds against a squad of female zents when the Gladiators took off running leaving me in the dust. The only ones that stuck around were me in my Excalibur, and the Rifleman...er...Defender. the Defender couldn't hit the broadside of a barn despite his bonuses, and while I took out two with my ER PPC's..er...PBC's, I missed with all my missiles, and got smoked when the Zents blasted me with their lasers and boobie cannons.

I nominate this post as my favorite Robotech/Battletech related post of all time!

[Seto Kaiba]

Well the beam weapons like could be setup for a variety of settings, that way the beam weapons can be used for a variety of targets, some of which are now currently out of effective reach. It also allows for growth and new enemies who might have stronger armor. It could also allow shorter duration blast, allowing more targets to be engaged with the same effect w/n the same time frame.

What makes you imagine they're one-size-fits-all the way they are now? There's precious little in the way of moving parts inside a beam weapon, so adjusting the output and duration of the beam are software controls and thus easier to adjust in most cases. A higher-powered reactor is not necessarily the only way to achieve those ends.

Still they did it with the VFs which we saw was engaging in melee contests and it did not seem to be an issue for that design.

True... though the original Macross series never really showed the Valkyries coming off worse in hand-to-hand, save for that one fight with Britai where he opened Hikaru's VF-1J like a sardine can. I'm thinking of other examples, from other Macross titles like Macross II, Macross Plus, or Macross Frontier, where resorting to fisticuffs doesn't quite pan out as nicely... with Valkyries either suffering limb damage or loss of whole limbs as a result of being beat on by units with superior physical strength, one such case being a leg ripped off at around the knee joint (resulting in the pilot's losing 50% of the mecha's net reactor output).

It would still offer a less costly alternative to the Valks. Granted that only becomes attractive if policy makers ditch the whole destroids have to be cheap as possible and can't be made to directly compete with the Valks overall.

But that raises the question of why they would need an alternative to the highly-effective Valkyrie family of mecha if producing that alternative means having to settle for a less versatile platform AND develop several more to take up all that slack left by adopting a less-capable main mecha. Don't fix what ain't broke, as it were.

[taalismn]

Before I started playing Robotech(Actually before I knew there was a robotech RPG) I played Mechwarrior(Battletech).
well when I found Robotech I soooooo wanted to play and I rolled up a Destroid pilot running a WHR-7K Warhammer...er...Excalibur!
lol, anyway I lasted about three rounds against a squad of female zents when the Gladiators took off running leaving me in the dust. The only ones that stuck around were me in my Excalibur, and the Rifleman...er...Defender. the Defender couldn't hit the broadside of a barn despite his bonuses, and while I took out two with my ER PPC's..er...PBC's, I missed with all my missiles, and got smoked when the Zents blasted me with their lasers and boobie cannons.

I nominate this post as my favorite Robotech/Battletech related post of all time!

In Robotech, Beware Anything with a Bra Size Measured in Terms of Caliber.

[SRoss]

In Robotech, Beware Anything with a Bra Size Measured in Terms of Caliber.

I'm suddenly flashing back to a scene in one of the Macross animes where two children were playing in a full-sized Maltrendi bra cup.

[ShadowLogan]

What makes you imagine they're one-size-fits-all the way they are now? There's precious little in the way of moving parts inside a beam weapon, so adjusting the output and duration of the beam are software controls and thus easier to adjust in most cases. A higher-powered reactor is not necessarily the only way to achieve those ends.

I don't think they are a one-size fits all, but the main reactor is a factor in the power the beam weapon can use unless it uses some type of energy storage system, which requires more space (might be a wash).

But that raises the question of why they would need an alternative to the highly-effective Valkyrie family of mecha if producing that alternative means having to settle for a less versatile platform AND develop several more to take up all that slack left by adopting a less-capable main mecha. Don't fix what ain't broke, as it were.

While the individual platforms are less versatile compared to the Valk, they would do aspects better. So that in a mixed force you end up with a force that is more capable and effective than a group of just Valks and cheap non-VFs.

Politics and cost are also factors.