The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

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yazi88
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Sorry if this was been brought up before, but does anyone know which Valkyrie that was during that flashback picture of the Wind Knights in that picture after their revelation? It didn't look like a specific Valkyrie to me, maybe it was a exclusive Windimere design?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote:Sorry if this was been brought up before, but does anyone know which Valkyrie that was during that flashback picture of the Wind Knights in that picture after their revelation? It didn't look like a specific Valkyrie to me, maybe it was a exclusive Windimere design?
It hasn't been addressed. We don't know if it's even a VF.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote:Sorry if this was been brought up before, but does anyone know which Valkyrie that was during that flashback picture of the Wind Knights in that picture after their revelation? It didn't look like a specific Valkyrie to me, maybe it was a exclusive Windimere design?
No data yet. It doesn't conform to any previous Valkyrie design, but then as azrael noted we don't know if it's a VF or not.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Yeah, given Windimere's role against New UN Spacy, its likely a predecessor fighter to the Draken as Windimere's fighter squadron.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Has anyone been able to obtain any information that says that the Draken is indeed a Sukhoi design?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote:Yeah, given Windimere's role against New UN Spacy, its likely a predecessor fighter to the Draken as Windimere's fighter squadron.
Windermere was a New UN Government member state at the time that fighter was shown though... it didn't secede from the New UN Government until 2060.


ChaoticSheep1 wrote:Has anyone been able to obtain any information that says that the Draken is indeed a Sukhoi design?
To the best of my knowledge, there have not been any publications covering the development history and technical specifications of the new fighters in Macross Delta yet. The only thing that's been said about the origins of the Draken III is that engineers affiliated with an anti-government group did have a hand in its development.

That, unfortunately, isn't enough to tell us whether the Draken III was developed independently by Windermere with technological aid from outside, or if it was simply purchased by Windermere via a corrupt corporation looking to carry out illegal weapons testing. Most previous anti-government VF designs were of the latter type.

There hasn't been any prior indication that any part of the Sukhoi Company survived the end of the First Space War.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

ChaoticSheep1 wrote:Has anyone been able to obtain any information that says that the Draken is indeed a Sukhoi design?
The information on the Draken III's is scant. The only thing I've "heard" (via press interviews) is that anti-government groups help the Windermerans design the Draken. Considering you have groups like the Epsilon Corporation providing assistance to Windermere, it won't be far fetched that anti-government groups and corporations that would benefit from Winderemere's plot reached out and are also providing services to Windermere.
Keep in mind, Sukhoi doesn't exist by this point in time. IIRC, Kawamori made a note of this during those press junkets. Their decedents in some form or another exists, but companies like Sukhoi do not.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

It could be a possibility that some individuals/groups/corporation revived the aesthetics and concepts from the Sukhoi designs in the Macross world after Space War 1 given that the survivors of the Valkyrie manufacturers and engineers also re-founded the companies after Space War 1.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

We probably won't get much useful info about the Draken until the 1/72 kit comes out in August.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote:It could be a possibility that some individuals/groups/corporation revived the aesthetics and concepts from the Sukhoi designs in the Macross world after Space War 1 given that the survivors of the Valkyrie manufacturers and engineers also re-founded the companies after Space War 1.
It's possible. Keep in mind that after nearly 60 years, ideas and concepts would likely be mixed around and diluted among such a large number of people, that elements would be borrowed from each other. A VF-11 is Sukhoi-ish. Production-wise, Kawamori based it off Sukhoi designs, namely the Su-27 along with the Su-33 and 35. In-universe, the VF-11 is based off the VF-1, but it was also influenced by the VF-4 and the VF-5000. By the time the VF-11 was developed, some of the developers may have brought in those Sukhoi designs. At the same time, the Feios Valkyrie, which is an anti-government-made fighter, was based off a stolen VF-11. So those designers would derive ideas from that design which was based off other designs. We've seen pirates selling VFs on the black market, so you can bet other groups are strip-mining those VFs for ideas. Then, when other groups see those designs, they start mixing those ideas into their own design lineages. So as I said, eventually they all use each others ideas that someone got from somewhere.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

yazi88 wrote:It could be a possibility that some individuals/groups/corporation revived the aesthetics and concepts from the Sukhoi designs in the Macross world after Space War 1 given that the survivors of the Valkyrie manufacturers and engineers also re-founded the companies after Space War 1.
It's theoretically possible... but, IMO, rather implausible.

Back in Macross R, we did have one corporate heiress living in the Macross Frontier fleet claim that her family had ties to the old Anti-Unification Alliance. Wisla & Oder's Magdalena Zielonaska did publicly profess that her grandfather was an Alliance Sv-51γ pilot during the Vanquish League's 2058 season, and that the "Sv-52γ" she races with is her grandfather's old fighter retrofitted with modern overtechnology. Her claim is, however, highly dubious. She professed that her grandfather flew the Sv-51γ for the Alliance during the First Space War... which would've been rather difficult for a couple of reasons. Namely, the Alliance had been disbanded before the First Space War ever started, there were no conflicts prior to the bombardment where the Sv-51 could've fought (since it wasn't able to operate in space and the only Zentradi surface attack was focused on South Ataria Island), and that almost all of the Sv-51s that survived the incident at Mayan were in UN Forces hands when the war started. (Personally, I suspect she's spinning a yarn to justify her insane expenditure of money and resources to fly an antique aircraft, since she's a history buff.)

As far as we've been told, the engineers who have been developing new variable fighters for various anti-government factions are defectors from UN Forces defense contractors who joined those anti-government movements in the 2020's and 2030's. Usually their approach is to steal the latest UN Forces VF and build a new aircraft around that technology, leavened with a much greater portion of Zentradi overtechnology than the UN Forces normally use.

My suspicion, based on what the UN Forces did when they captured the Variable Glaugs in the late 2010's, is that the "Sv" designation is a boilerplate assignment given to anything anti-government forces field that isn't nicked from the UN Forces arsenal.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Courtesy of the soon-to-be-released VF-31J model kit from Bandai, we have our first look at the specs for Delta Platoon's custom "Siegfried" version of the VF-31 Kairos.


Base Design: Sūrya Aerospace
Renovation: Kaos Valkyrie Works
Overall Length: 19.31m (fighter mode)
Overall Width: 14.14m (fighter mode)
Overall Height: 3.85m (fighter mode, without landing gear)
Overall Height: 15.33m (to the top of the head, battroid mode)
Empty Mass: 8,525kg
Airframe Design Load: 29.5G (probably the ISC's capacity, not the structural limit)
Engines: 2x Shinsei/P&W/RR FF-3001/FC2 Stage II thermonuclear reaction turbine engines
Peak Output: 1,875kN (in space), output increases 15% when overboosted by the fold wave system
Verniers: P&W HMM-10A
Maximum Speed: Mach 5.5+ (at 10km)
Armaments:
  • Beam machine gun (mounted on the monitor turret)
  • Howard LU-18A Beam Gunpod (mounted on ordinance container)
  • Multidrone charger (mounted in ordinance container)
  • Rapid-fire railgun pods (mounted under the wing root in fighter mode, on forearms in other modes)
  • Internal micro-missile launchers (6, mounted on the engine nacelles)
  • AK/VF-M11 assault knife (2, one in each forearm shield)
  • MDP-001W Cygnus multi-drone plates (16, 8 stored in the back of each engine nacelle)
  • Under-wing hardpoints for pylon-carried ordinance (4, 2 per wing)

We've also had clarification in a couple publications like Great Mechanics G and Animage that the stock VF-31A and VF-31B are actually known as the Kairos, and that only the Delta Platoon units which have been customized by Kaos's own engineers are called "Siegfried".
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote:[*] Internal micro-missile launchers (6, mounted on the engine nacelles)
Specifically, from Ep 10 it seems there are two launchers on the outboard side of each nacelle, one on each inboard side, and that each launcher fires two missiles per salvo. It appears that they truly are launchers, firing one missile at a time but still rapidly enough to stack a salvo; who knows how many missiles it carries internally?

The Sv-262, by contrast, has something closer to a VLS system, where all missiles (a total of 60) can potentially be fired in very rapid succession, though it appears they're normally fired in sets of 12 to allow sufficient clearance (they're stowed in a diagonal, partially-on-top-of-each-other pattern).
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Areku wrote:
Seto Kaiba wrote:[*] Internal micro-missile launchers (6, mounted on the engine nacelles)
Specifically, from Ep 10 it seems there are two launchers on the outboard side of each nacelle, one on each inboard side, and that each launcher fires two missiles per salvo. It appears that they truly are launchers, firing one missile at a time but still rapidly enough to stack a salvo; who knows how many missiles it carries internally?
That approach to micro-missile launchers in Macross's universe is essentially the standard one... going all the way back to the QF-2200 Ghost and the earliest FAST packs. They've always been very good at missile spam like that.

I'd assume they're probably somewhat less capacious than the YF-29's similarly-situated launchers since the VF-31's legs are slimmer and the third launcher on each leg is inboard instead of aft and outboard. On that basis, I'd guesstimate 8 missiles per launcher or so... giving it 48 to the YF-29's 100 total internal micro-missiles.


Areku wrote:The Sv-262, by contrast, has something closer to a VLS system, where all missiles (a total of 60) can potentially be fired in very rapid succession, though it appears they're normally fired in sets of 12 to allow sufficient clearance (they're stowed in a diagonal, partially-on-top-of-each-other pattern).
The Sv-262's launchers are probably set up like that because, unlike the VF-31's, they're not actually part of the airframe. They're a bolt-on FAST pack that can be ejected once the missiles are gone or when they need to put something between them and incoming missiles (as we saw Keith do in Ep10).
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Seto Kaiba wrote:That approach ... is essentially the standard one... going all the way back to ... the earliest FAST packs.
Is it? I'm no expert on the matter and would need to do some research before making any definitive claims, but I could have sworn most FAST packs utilized the diagonal/VLS approach, similar to what we saw with the SV-262 in Ep.10. Everything else you said sounds correct, but that abbreviated quote sounds fishy to me. This is also the first time I remember seeing a Valkyrie (the VF-31) launch internal micro-missiles with such detail, which is why I specified what I saw. Again, I'm no expert on the subject, so please don't mind my freshly reinvented wheels. :P

Regarding the SV-262, I somehow missed that those came from a FAST pack, I probably wouldn't have remarked on anything more than the actual missile count if I had.

---

On another subject, is there any in-universe technology that could explain the aerodynamic disparity in the design of the VF-31 (specifically the variants) and the Sv-262? From what we see in-show, it would seem that the Sv-262 is capable of matching or exceeding the VF-31 in maneuverability. Clearly the pilots/ISCs are going to be a limiting factor in the the crafts' G-limits, but both seem to be getting pushed to the limit of what the pilot can sustain; despite any differences between human/Windermerian G-tolerances and the efficiency of their respective ISCs, the two crafts seem to share a similar practical G-limit. So my specific concern is this: What's the point in designing the VF-31 to be so aerodynamically maneuverable (lack of stability) when the same level of practical maneuverability can be achieved with a much bulkier, more aerodynamically stable design? All other things being equal, the VF-31 must be making significant trade-offs to achieve that aerodynamic maneuverability, so why make the trade-offs when you don't actually gain anything? Is there anything in Macross lore/tech that would explain this design philosophy?

It occurs to me that the Sv-262 could achieve its maneuverability by using the drones that attach to its wings, but it still seems to match the VF-31's maneuverability even when they're detached, so that doesn't sufficiently answer the question. Is it that the Sv-262 was built with superior ISC or other artificial maneuverability technology so they chose a maneuverability-parity, higher-power/defense design, or is it simply because the VF-31 is such a beautiful plane, consistent portrayal of technology be damned?
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Got a question, is the Macross Elysion a Quarter class like in Frontier? It resembles it, but seems to be just as large as the original SDF class and the Battle class.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Yes it seems be a Quarter class but it has two new ARMD vessels for arms. But I think the colony ship on Ragna just seems to be alot smaller than most colony vessels.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

Areku wrote:
Seto Kaiba wrote:That approach ... is essentially the standard one... going all the way back to ... the earliest FAST packs.
Is it? I'm no expert on the matter and would need to do some research before making any definitive claims, but I could have sworn most FAST packs utilized the diagonal/VLS approach, similar to what we saw with the SV-262 in Ep.10.
Yeah, it's pretty much the standard... the VF-1's FAST packs were, in production terms, the ones to get the ball rolling on that approach, where the missile pops out laterally from a slot and then starts moving forward. In in-universe chronology terms, the VF-5000 was the first VF to get internal micro-missile launchers of that type in the 2010s.


Areku wrote:Everything else you said sounds correct, but that abbreviated quote sounds fishy to me. This is also the first time I remember seeing a Valkyrie (the VF-31) launch internal micro-missiles with such detail, which is why I specified what I saw. Again, I'm no expert on the subject, so please don't mind my freshly reinvented wheels. :P
Sadly, neither side has used a lot of missiles in this series... we've only had maybe two closeups of them being fired, both being the same reused shot from shortly before Messer's death.


Areku wrote:Regarding the SV-262, I somehow missed that those came from a FAST pack, I probably wouldn't have remarked on anything more than the actual missile count if I had.
If you look at the official website's page for the Sv-262Ba that most of the Aerial Knights fly, they show views both with and without the missile packs: http://macross.jp/delta/mechanic/index08.php


Areku wrote:On another subject, is there any in-universe technology that could explain the aerodynamic disparity in the design of the VF-31 (specifically the variants) and the Sv-262? From what we see in-show, it would seem that the Sv-262 is capable of matching or exceeding the VF-31 in maneuverability. Clearly the pilots/ISCs are going to be a limiting factor in the the crafts' G-limits, but both seem to be getting pushed to the limit of what the pilot can sustain; despite any differences between human/Windermerian G-tolerances and the efficiency of their respective ISCs, the two crafts seem to share a similar practical G-limit. So my specific concern is this: What's the point in designing the VF-31 to be so aerodynamically maneuverable (lack of stability) when the same level of practical maneuverability can be achieved with a much bulkier, more aerodynamically stable design?
We'll know more for sure when we finally get some official specs for the Sv-262 Draken III, but one thing that's been noted is that the VF-31 Siegfried units used by Delta Platoon opted for a forward-swept wing to preserve low-altitude maneuverability since they're expected to operate in close air support of Walkure on the ground.

Given that what little material we've had thus far about the Sv-262 Draken III suggests that it was made specifically for Windermere with aid from engineers who had defected to an anti-government force some decades earlier, I would assume that the Draken III was designed with the Windermere people's superior physical abilities in mind.

If I had to guess based on existing technological trends and known facts from Macross's setting, I would have to say the Sv-262 Draken III is likely operating with slightly better engines than those detuned FF-3001/FC2's in the VF-31, and is almost certainly operating without the limiters that are normally found in VF airframe control AIs to prevent the pilot from flying the fighter to bits. Those limiters are sometimes required by galaxy law (as on the VF-19EF Caliburn) to ensure that variable fighter variants intended for export or built locally are inferior to the versions of the same fighter in the federal New UN Forces arsenal, and others are implemented to prevent the pilot from reaching levels of g-forces that exceed the safety margins of the airframe and/or would achieve an injurious level even with ISC assistance. Without those limiters, a pilot could push the airframe as hard as he or she wanted until it literally fell apart.




yazi88 wrote:Got a question, is the Macross Elysion a Quarter class like in Frontier? It resembles it, but seems to be just as large as the original SDF class and the Battle class.
ChaoticSheep1 wrote:Yes it seems be a Quarter class but it has two new ARMD vessels for arms. But I think the colony ship on Ragna just seems to be alot smaller than most colony vessels.
Per recent revelations in Great Mechanica G 2016 Summer, it's been confirmed that the Macross Elysion is not a Macross Quarter-class vessel.

She seems to be a similar design, but she's roughly twice the size (828m in Storm Attacker mode).

The emigrant ship on Ragna seems to be one of the very earliest New Macross-class ships. It doesn't have a shell, so it's probably Macross-1 or Macross-2.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

ChaoticSheep1 wrote:Yes it seems be a Quarter class but it has two new ARMD vessels for arms. But I think the colony ship on Ragna just seems to be alot smaller than most colony vessels.
Not quite, the Elysion just shares a lot of aesthetics with the Quarter, it's actually quite a bit bigger.
The given height is 828m. More than double the Quarter's 316m, while noticeably shorter than Battle 7's 1177m.

It's listed in the purple box, along with the specific roles for the various VF-31 variants.

J= Area Support fighter
C= Tactical Support fighter
F=Area Control fighter
E=Recon and electronic warfare
S=Commander

(calubin on Macross World provided the translations)

Ninja'd while working on editing and setting up my post.
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Re: The Official Macross Delta Mecha Thread Mk I

http://imgur.com/wg3dC0x

http://imgur.com/a6iywCn

http://imgur.com/shCHfYi

Anyone have any clue what that VF is? It looks like the Siegfried, but the wings aren't forward swept and the canopy looks like it's got a solid armor plate over it. Like it might use cameras for projecting the plane's surroundings like the old YF-21, and the VF-27.
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