Macross SEED

[Valles]

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I guess what I'm saying with this is that new names and faces are desireable, even if they are in similar situations.

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That was actually what I had originally had in mind - After all, Kira Yamato != Amuro Ray - but I was drawing a complete blank on alternate names and, so...
IOW, if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them and will, in fact, volunteer to get out behind and push.
The point of having desdroids over full-armor kits is that the desdroid has, at a guess, at least three times the structural strength for considerably fewer parts/less cost. If you don't expect any foes sufficiently tough to overwhelm a full-armor, then adding them to your generalist design is all well and good. Otherwise, a specialist is called for - remember, the characteristics of a main battle tank are very, very different from those of an aerospace fighter. Valks might fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, but they're still basically tissue-paper compared to, say, a Tomahawk.
A set of engineering and construction pods would, indeed, be a good idea... and before I forget, I had been thinking that most of the arm pods would actually have basic hands, rather like those on Priss or Sylia's early hardsuits.

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I guess what I'm saying with this is that new names and faces are desireable, even if they are in similar situations.

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And, again, as long as they're capable of fitting into the same plot roles, I'm all for that.

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Edit: Okay, now that's freaky - I originally posted this at about 6pm...

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I had wondered why you were being so quiet. ^_^;
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[drakensis]

Okay, so the EDTO have two basic combat mecha (Valkyrie and Desdroid). Both can be fitted with a variety of additional pods to fill specific roles. For example, FAST packs on the Valkyrie provide the Super (space combat), Strike (anti-shipping) and Elint (Electronic Warfare) packages without preventing transformation. There are also the Armored and Monster packages that confine the Valkyrie to Battroid and Gerwalk modes respectively but add massive armour and weapons, bringing them to near Desdroid levels. (I'm downsizing the Monster significantly here of course), Desdroids can be configured in a wide variety of roles (including an Engineering package) but the main combat packages are the Tomahawk (heavy combat), Spartan (close combat), Defender (air defense) and Phalanx (artillery missiles).
Characterwise, keeping the nationalities about the same would keep the continuities about the same. So:
Rear Admiral Isidor Pyotrvich Prokopy (Russian)
- a veteran carrier commander in the Pan-Asian(?) Pacific Fleet, Prokopy commanded the military escort for the first study of the SDF-1 and ran the security of the site for the first few years. He then commanded the first ARMD for several years and was the first choice to command the relaunched SDF-1.
Commander Lydia Sigiswald (American)
- daughter of Admiral Harold Sigiswald (currently EDTO CINCPAC) and a third-generation naval officer. Distinguished herself as junior officer on an OTO carrier during the later stages of the war and served on Mars Base early in it's construction (her fiance served there until the base was destroyed). She returned to Earth to serve on the SDF-1 as Airboss but after the loss of the XO in the early stages of the Zentreadi attack, she become de facto second-in-command.
Estavan Frade (Mexican)
- son of ace Mexican pilot Rafael Frade, Estavan grew up to love flying. After his father died late in the war, his mother made him promise never to join the military so he joined a flying circus right out of high school. He remained close to his father's protege Manfred Korbinian, who invited him to the launch of the SDF-1.
Lieutenant-Colonel Manfred Korbinian (Austrian)
- one of the top OTO aces of the European theatre later stages of the war, Manfred was nicknamed 'the Baron' in honor of the legendary ace with the same first name a century before. After the war, be was one of the test pilots for the VX-0 prototype variable fighter and for the VF-1 Valkyrie. He was a contentious choice for command of the SDF-1's air group and is generally at odds with Commander Sigiswald. He flews with an elite squadron of hand-picked Valkyrie pilots who have red trim on their fighters and a skull&crossbones insignia.
Susumu Katsuro (Japanese)
- the son of engineers employed in the reconstruction of the SDF-1, Katsuro is among the civilians in the shelters carried along by the SDF-1 when it folds out into space. A devoted and very competitive videogamer, he is recruited into the military at the same time as Estevan but has to go through pilot training so he joins active service later and is assigned to fly under Estevan's command.
Ningshui Jialan (Chinese)
- a teenage girl whose parents were refugees from Shanghai, Jialan grew up in Singapore and she and her younger brother moved to Macross City to live with with their maternal aunt and uncle after their father died. Jialan's father was prominient in the peace movement during the War and her cousin Jiang Dong is a prominent member of the local pacificst movement.
Major Kamaria Malaika (Kenyan)
- Kamaria had no military background before she enlisted in the EDTO Space Force, she was a scientist who wanted to get into space. However, she proved to be a very efficient weapons officer and server with Prokopy on ARMD-01 and came to the SDF-1 with him. She has an on-again-off-again relationship with Manfred.

For the Zentreadi:
Ukko
- commander-in-chief of the Zentreadi that remained loyal to their creators, Ukko is dedicated to remaining in control of his forces and defeating the Others' rebel Zentreadi. He's very old and survives only with massive medical effort but has a corps of fanatically loyal officers supporting him.
Joukahainen
- one of the Zentreadi's most famed commanders, Joukahainen has built up one of the strongest fleets among the loyalist Zentreadi. He is not one of Ukko's clique however, and believes that changes are needed to prevent the Zentreadi from extinction as their support base collapses. His assignment to recover the SDF-1 after it went missing with the last of the Antedeluvians aboard is a form of exile by Ukko.
Nyyrikki
- young and ambitious, Nyyrikki is a notoriously reckless and cruel Zentreadi but his personal charisma has made him one of Joukahainen's most powerful subordinates as many ships follow him. He is outwardly loyal to Ukko, but privately wants to overhtrow Ukko and Joukahainen to found his own Empire.
Louhi
- a respected Meltran rival of Joukahainen, Louhi is sent to Earth by Ukko to replace her rival when Ukko uses the excuse of Joukahainen's failure to retrieve the SDF-1 to weaken the commander's position. Louhi has no more success than her predecessor however and her decision to send iniltrators into the SDF-1 ultimately leads to the Zentreadi defeat. Louhi and Nyyrikki are uneasy allies since Louhi really is loyal to Ukko to begin with.
Kyllikki
- the most respected Meltran ace in the galaxy, Kyllikki is a contempary of Louhi and has commanded troopers and Power Armour for Louhi since Louhi's first ship command. Ruthless and proud, Kyllikki and her corps of Power Armour troopers meet their match against the SDF-1 although they do succeed in killing Manfred and many other pilots. Ultimately, her rivalyr with Katsuro brings Kyllikki onto the SDF-1 and they fall in love. Her pilots follow her in the first mass-defection of Zentreadi to Earth.
No Quarter, NO QUARTER! You damn well earned your fate.
Give Harrington our compliments; we're sorry you are late.
- No Quarter, Echoes Children
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

Valkyrie FAST sets:
Super - Extensive bolt-on external armor appliques and powerful dorsal engine pods with built-in 'micromissile' launchers. Increases maximum acceleration by ~10mps^2 and more than doubles delta-v, along with decreasing pitch/roll/yaw times thanks to added RCS thrusters. Can fly in an atmosphere. Barely.
Ultra - Essentially a redesign of the Super set which trades most of its delta-v for atmospheric streamlining and additional 'intake' thrust. Compared to a clean VF-1, it increases mass by about 75%, but doubles thrust and more than triples wing area, while also adding maneuvering canards and other agility enhancements. Atmospheric performance is limited by aerodynamic factors (ie, the airframe's 'never exceed' speed), and the pilot's ability to withstand G-forces. (Meta note: It should look, overall, a bit like a cross between the YF-21 from Plus and the VF-0D from Zero.)
Weasel - A set of high-maneuverability pods based off of the Ultra design, which add relatively little armor and firepower but an extensive complement of sensor and electronic warfare gear. Mission is known as Suppression of Enemy External Defenses.
Strike - Another modification of the basic Super set, this time by removing the inner pair of missile launchers and replacing them with a pair of MSL-2 laser weapons and adding twenty-seven(!) fuselage hardpoints along the outer surfaces of the booster pods, legs, and shield. This set is usually flown with an XQ-1 heavy beam gunpod in place of the standard GAU-11.
Specific bits of jargon -
The MSL-2 is the medium-sized laser weapon you usually see on Defender set desdroids. Likewise, the XQ-1 is a Tomahawk arm.
The GAU-11, my sources tell me, is actually a real weapon - specifically, it's a four-barreled modification of the real world's GAU-8 (aka, 'that BFG on the Warthog'). Seems like it'd be an apt choice for something with the VF-1's mission roles - aircraft vaporized, ground targets maimed, anything you like, delivered.
I remain unconvinced as to whether the full-armor series would be valuable enough to be worth developing, from the point of view of a government. However, it occurs to me that if the SDF-1 had an onboard VF factory but only a limited supply of desdroids, something like them might get whipped up as a field expedient, then polished in the post-war years when the desdroids were phased out as no longer neccessary.
Character names are good to go, BTW!
Oh, before I forget, what about the Daedalus and Prometheus?
Ja, -n
===========

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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[WengFook]

Lurker suggested:

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The problem there is that everything I can think of has also been overused. Ancients, First Ones, et cetera...
Primevals?

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Primordials?
Progenitors?
engineers?

anyways.. I was just wondering if you guys were going to keep the whole zent agents who micronised themselves and snuck onto the sdf-1 thing
_____________________________
HK-47: "Love is knowing your target, putting them in your targeting reticule, and together, achieving a singular purpose against statistically long odds"
_________________________________
Take Your Candle, Go Light Your World.

[Bob Schroeck]

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For the Zentreadi:
Ukko
Joukahainen
Nyyrikki
Louhi
Kyllikki

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Finnish names for the Zentreadi? Kinky.

-- Bob
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It's a "magical" land. I think "magical" is ancient Greek for "pain in the butt". -- Bun-Bun, Sluggy Freelance, 11/9/03

[drakensis]

I suck at name invention, so I grabbed names more or less at random from one culture. No particular reason for using Finnish.

No Quarter, NO QUARTER! You damn well earned your fate.
Give Harrington our compliments; we're sorry you are late.
- No Quarter, Echoes Children
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[classicdrogn]

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I had wondered why you were being so quiet. ^_^;

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I've been playing a lot of FFX again the past few days, for one thing, instead of my usual check in every hour or two.
(Yes, I started over AGAIN, to do the character builds differently AGAIN, and, YET AGAIN, effectively play a No Sphere Grid game except for Yuna until I get a L2 key sphere, to let Wakka into the later half of Lulu's grid and go for the -ga series black magic, then teleport everyone else over there before Return-spere-ing or just moving them away from that point, playing blitzball seasons and using the reset trick to make sure I get a teleport sphere as prize every time, and a return sphere for top score... The Luca-only free agent team that pwns: Tidus, Shaami (reporter girl) Zev Ronso (on the docks) Shuu (maroon jacket girl in bar), Zalitz (guy sitting outside theatre) & Jumal (daddy sitting by fountain). Zalitz is kind of a toss up at low levels, though, which the reset trick constantly keeps you at - except for their lack of techniques one of the original Aurochs defenders are nearly as good. Ropp fromt eh trading post is much better than him, but I don't want to fight the chocobo eater until Yuna has Cura so she can keep healing it until I push it off the cliff, to get the L1 keyspheres. Haste on party/Slow on boss is definitely a freind in that fight.)
Um... now I forgot what I actually had to say about the thread topic...
... Oh, yeah, armored Valks - I see one of the things included in the armor hardpoint package is heavier duty structural integrity field generators and power links to the armor's supplemental powerplant to run them, possibly even to the point that there's a boost to the joint actuators by manipulating the fields, a feat the normal clean valk configuration can't match, thoguh a Super-pack might give the generation capacity to give a similar boost, providing an actual reason for Super Valks to be tougher and stronger than a normal valk despite the minimal coverage of actual added armor plates. Your idea of the Full Armors being a field expedient solution to limited production capabilities is also a good one, I think - it increases shared parts, obviously, and makes for unified training paths for both pilots and ground crews - all attractive when your rescource base is a single ship and its contents, rather than an entire planet, or even a nation or coalition.
I wanna see SV-51s, too - maybe when the SDF is in Ontario trying to offload civvies, since I doubt the EDTO would sell its prize new fighter to a state that refused to be part of it.
RE the Atmospheric pack, with it's own wings while the normal ones stay tucked back - this would look something like the Sound Booster for Mylene's Sound Force VF-11, then? Only with the kickass VF5K atmo pack as a core, instead of a single pod.
RE transforming SDF - I'm split on this one. You're right, it really makes little sense for a starship to transform, when there's nothing for it to go hand to hand with, but I really like the New Macross design with its docked gunship/pod as well. And, from a totally different mecha-carrier philosophy, the VLS-style bays from Genesis Climber MOSPEADA, with an overhead door that can launch an entire compliment of battroids nearly simultaneously, also has a high appeal to me. Maybe something of a three-way hybrid - for surface-navy operations it takes a form almost the same as a RL carrier, with the spinal cannon ending up submerged below the bow. From the wave crests and up, it can transform some, the dual-ARMOR flight deck splitting out to the sides like the original SDF's tuning fork main gun and the cannon rising to be roughly even with them, and the engine blocks rearranging a bit to keep the axis of thrust acting through the center of mass, ening up with something of a trident configuration. This gives the ARMORs enough seperation that they can fire their own spinal mounts at the same time and not have the beams interfere with each other. There would also be VLS bays mid-low and aft in either form to maintain flgiht operations when the ARMOR minicarriers are detached.
Well, that's how it's supposed to work, except one of the ARMORs was trashed by enemy fire... but the Deadalus was carried along in the misfold, and the ratchet jocks in engineering think they can whip up a coupling adaptor.
- CDThat which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[M Fnord]

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Primordials?
Progenitors?
engineers?

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How about Anunnaki, or Elohim, or Nommo? Something that sounds nice and alien, even if it isn't.
Dive deep into Google results for "ancient astronauts." There's a great wealth of nut literature out there just ripe for mining and use. Plus it gives the crack weasels that much more detail & insinuation to obsess over. ---
Mr. Fnord, interdimensional man of mystery.
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[ECSNorway]

I like the Finnish names, it's a cool thing.
Regarding Daedalus and Prometheus.
We're fairly certain that there would have been elements that objected to the EDTO effectively 'taking over the world', from all previous factions. This would have required a significant security presence at whatever we end up calling 'South Ataria Island'.
Hmmm.
The detachment would have been quite large at first -- two full carrier groups, at the very least. With the buildup of forces in all factions before the Global War, navies had expanded to sizes not seen since the Second World War. America alone fielded two dozen of the massive nuclear-powered supercarriers, and had invested heavily in submarines and conventional surface combatants as well. The new Kearsarge-class battleships were the latest manifestation of this, heavily armored and capable of shrugging off a Tomahawk missile hit. Its weapons are massive sixteen-inch cannon, firing rocket-assisted rounds capable of striking a one-meter target at fifty miles with ease.
At the time of the launch ceremonies, the heavy guard had diminished with the defeat of most anti-EDTO threats. A single carrier group, consisting of the carrier USS Republic, the battleship HMS Invictus, and several destroyers, frigates, and submarines. With the alien attack and the firing of the SDF-1's main gun, most of these ships would have sealed up their hatches under the anticipation of possible nuclear fallout, so the crew survival rate would be higher than zero when the island was swallowed by the misjump.
Given the loss of the fold drive and the years-long journey back to Earth thus expected, plans would have been made to refit the ships for service as spacegoing escorts. The submarines would have been easy to fit sublight drives to, their hulls already mostly airtight, and missiles could easily replace their torpedoes. Given their low reaction-fuel bunkerage, however, they'd mostly be docked with the SDF-1 and deployed only for combat.
The larger craft carry a large array of weapons and sensors that could be of use, and the carrier's flight deck and aircrews would be extremely valuable to the primarily Valkyrie-based defense that would now have to be raised. Given the huge size and mass of the capital ships, no attempt was made to fit them with drives, they were simply docked permanently to the SDF-1 and their weapons and sensors incorporated into her network.
The smaller surface combatants were less easy to deal with. Sonar and anti-submarine weapons were of minimal use. The phased-array radar systems of the destroyers were more useful, and some consideration was given to employing them as scouts. In the end, however, it was decided to strip the useful systems from them and scrap the hulls for use in the SDF-1's factories, rebuilding Macross City and adding to the Valkyrie and Destroid forces. The radar systems would be fitted to the submarines for the scouting role, and the missiles would fill their torpedo tubes.
In the end, the SDF-1 was left with five mobile units in support - the former submarines USS Charleston, USS Gato, HMS Inflexible, HMCS Manitoba, and DFNS Kronprinz Albert. Two large support platforms were tethered to her hull, and a large mass of metal, ceramics, and electronics had been added to her recycling systems.--
"Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of General Zod has been approved."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

Armor packs:
I can definitely see them having the SIF booster functions, but it seems to me that something like those packs only makes sense if the core fighter is (much) more expensive than the things you're bolting onto it. At the EDTO's tech level, I think the best candidates for the things driving the cost of a VF up are going to be the joint drivers and (especially) the powerplant.
The way I'm seeing their powertrain is that you start with a quantum generator, which literally burns spacetime to create power. Then you siphon off a bit of that first for things like avionics and set the rest arcing across the combustion chamber of what would otherwise be a vaguely conventional dual-mod jet motor. In atmosphere? Pull in outside air and compress it - when it reaches the combustion chamber the arcs'll flay it to free-floating plasma, hot as you like and there you are with your thrust. Space work is even simpler - just dump in the water you've got stored in your fuel tanks and there you are...
The FAST packs then add additional combustion chambers and reaction mass, but don't actually have to increase the machine's power - since it's got that to burn anyway.

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I wanna see SV-51s, too - maybe when the SDF is in Ontario trying to offload civvies, since I doubt the EDTO would sell its prize new fighter to a state that refused to be part of it.

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*slams down Wicked Tribe Seal of Approval*

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RE the Atmospheric pack, with it's own wings while the normal ones stay tucked back - this would look something like the Sound Booster for Mylene's Sound Force VF-11, then? Only with the kickass VF5K atmo pack as a core, instead of a single pod.

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*hasn't gotten that far in Macross 7-land*

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Well, that's how it's supposed to work, except one of the ARMORs was trashed by enemy fire... but the Deadalus was carried along in the misfold, and the ratchet jocks in engineering think they can whip up a coupling adaptor.

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Hmm. I can see that, I think. What I'd come up with keeps the tuning-fork cannon, but generally looks more like the Meltran Gunship than either canon Macross, while its original incarnation, which I've also sketched, looks a bit like the unnatural bastard son of a Shadow spidercrab and a Mon Cal cruiser. Why the vanes? Well, metatextually, they provide an explanation for the reinforced mounting points where the Terrans would eventually add massive outriggers. IC, they're, well, VLS bays for armored Zentradi. Hanging them out like that makes them more vulnerable, but it also keeps from needing to carve these endless arrays of doors or other serious weak points out of your carrier's defensive armor.
Oh, and, if we keep the Daedalus, then I'd consider it pretty likely that it wasn't the only ship that came along - just the most suitable for what was needed. We could spend an episode or so investegating the wrecks and driving home the 'horror of war' schtick with about ten times the plausability and effectiveness of having some rabid peacenik ranting about the evils of the military.
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[drakensis]

I'd suggest making the battleship HMS Inflexible (there was a battleship of that name in WWI). I don't recall an HMS Invictus offhand, perhaps HMS Temeraire?
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[ECSNorway]

Hm. How about "Resolution" for the battleship?
For small craft, especially destroyers and submarines, the common British habit has been to pick a letter and give them all names starting with that. Thus the I-class submarine (Invictus, Inflexible, Irritable, etc).
The current generation of British submarines (now under construction) are A-class (names for the first three Astute, Ambush, and Artful). Others currently in service include T-class (Trafalgar, Turbulent, Tireless, Torbay, Trenchant, Talent and Triumph).
Using 'Trafalgar' would be a nice nod to British nationalism, actually. How's that one sound?--
"Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of General Zod has been approved."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

Somehow I never thought I'd be here. I knew we were good, but if you had told me a year ago that the EDTO would even want a school band to play at the launch of their prized Macross, let alone that it would be mine that won the priveledge!
I remember reading once that the planes that carried out the atomic bomb attacks at the end of the second World War had launched from Tinian - which means that this island has ended two wars, one then and another later, by catching the Macross.
Speaking of which, I had to yell at Clara today - even if it does rhyme with a sport, Macross is a good name! The last survivor of her crew, alone, guides her shattered ship in to a safe landing, only living long enough to gasp out her own name to the first exploration team to reach her, and with her last breath, yet... I mean, how much more appropriate can you expect to be? It's romantic, dammit!
So, anyway, when we got off the plane at the runway, the ship was the first thing you noticed. I could go on and on about what its numbers are like - it's so famous I can't think of anyone who couldn't - and I've seen pictures, of course, but until you can actually see what an artificial mountain a kilometer tall and nine long looks like, there's nothing that can really bring home the way it dominates the landscape. A couple of the flutes got all vapory about how it made them feel like it was looming over them and about to fall, but they were those same two who always kept having student-teacher fantasies about Mr. Ramius, so I don't think even he took them seriously.
Then we suffered through customs - and honestly, does anyone really believe that some whacko would try and smuggle a bomb in in a tuba case at this late date? - and then got stuffed into our hotel. There must be at least five times as many people crammed onto Tinian as the island's usually got, and boy is it showing in the quality of the accommodations! Once we got over fighting about who slept where, the rest of the clarinets were all set to leave and go shopping and I had a hell of a time convincing them to learn the local shelters. I know I'm a little paranoid about that, maybe, but after the tanks blew don't I have a right? {Ed. Note: A reference to the Dec. 9, 2043 OTO cruise missile strike against the Singapore Fleet Base's fuel depot.}
And then we went shopping and it was impossibly crowded and tiring, so I'm going to leave you here and cover that in the morning.
-From the Diary of Ningshui Jialan, August 27, 2051
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

Very nice character piece, Valles.
A thought: One of the big elements of classic Macross was that Earth's native defenses were more or less completely ineffective against the Zentraedi. (As I recall it, in the initial phase of the attack, the entire fleet of ARMD's missile bombardment killed one destroyer...). The only thing that kept Earth from being wiped out in the opening days was that it was totally irrelevant to the Zentraedi, who were only after the SDF-1.
Do we want to keep this? I'm getting a general vibe of "not really", but I'd like to confirm it. If Earth -is- capable of putting up a fight, it might interest certain Zentraedi commanders... --
"Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of General Zod has been approved."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[classicdrogn]

Some quickie images of what I proposed for the SDF:
surface mode
ARMOR-1 and Daedalus swing out
main gun rotates and the VLS bays and their attendant engines move
cruising mode
main gun seperated
cruising configuration top
cruising configuration aft
The pinkish white part on the bottom was where I was thinking Macross City could go, but now I think that would better be remass storage and Macross City be about under the bridge structure shown, with the actual bridge structure larger and further aft, more like the original SDF-1.
- CDThat which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[drakensis]

I agree with you that the tower needs to be further back. I'd suggest making it a bit shorter as well. The structural integrity of the connections to the Daedalus/Armor-1 sections make me wince btw, anything that could be done about them?
By VLS bays, I'm presuming you mean the Ikazuchi-style launch bays mentioned earlier? They might be a bit difficult to keep supplied if they're on the outsides of the engines, maybe they should be in front of the engine blocks.
Since it's going to naval-capable would the SDF-1 also be capable of submarine operations? I can's see any particular reason why not (although it's too big to completely submerge except well out at sea, I suspect) and a little streamlining wouldn't be out of line.
Oh, and if there's going to be a Prometheus-equivalent (USS Republic, was mentioned IIRC) may I suggest a Catamaran style layout? A modernised verision of this www.combinedfleet.com/fur...ibai_f.htm perhaps?
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[Valles]

I managed to borrow Mom's scanner for a bit, and I've put some of my concept sketchs up on Photobucket; let's see how this goes...
The first page was mostly me fiddling with FAST packs, and the third page, which was actually mostly empty, has more polished versions. For capital ships, I started here and eventually ended up evolving things to here.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[classicdrogn]

the VF-11MAXL Sound Booster ( I think the VF-19 Kai Sound Booster also deserves consideration, as a FAST design) One of the things people complain about in M7 is the 'superhero' feel of how Sound FOrce operates, and part of that is that these boosters are launched seperately to fly up and dock like Mazinger Z's Jet Scrander. While not particularly practical in that respect, the ability to eject one and have it able to fly as a decoy or computer-controlled wingman like the VF-0 with a docked Ghost Fighter makes a small amont of sense, and the design precedent would be there.
Oh, and don't forget the SV-51 Twin Booster system for those Ontario flyboys - a handful of them might survive and end up (granted, not exactly happily) joining the SDF-1 crew after the bubble bursts.

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The structural integrity of the connections to the Daedalus/Armor-1 sections make me wince btw, anything that could be done about them?

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Lots, this is just a rough to give an idea of where the major blocks are - and I think Valles has some sketches of his own, anyway.

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By VLS bays, I'm presuming you mean the Ikazuchi-style launch bays mentioned earlier? They might be a bit difficult to keep supplied if they're on the outsides of the engines, maybe they should be in front of the engine blocks.

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Ikazuchi or Invid Clam type bays, yes, but they're only the top (battroid-scale) deck of maybe the first half of those sections - the aft half is thruster, the rest of the forward half is available as supply and working area, even on-alert quarters - the bottom sections are more remass tanks. I have no particular arguments with anything else you (Drakensis) mentioned, and a catamaran Prometheus would fit on there about the same as the ARMOR I kept on the left side, I 'magine.
- CDThat which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

As an inveterate doodler, I've been scrawling UN Spacy and Zentradi logos in the margins for... oh, call it twenty years now...
I never managed to make anything that looked like an improvement on the alien elegance of the Zentradi broken-pentagon thingy, but the UNS fighting-kite, now...
What would you think of this as a starting point for an updated version? (I tried this one before, but the wide separation of the wing-things turned out looking way too much like sinister horns and fangs.)
A smoother, Photoshopped version, circled with military logos and what-all, might look rather nice...
--Sam
""The local ninja union has demanded shorter working hours and free dry cleaning."

[classicdrogn]

I'm afraid I'm kind of 'meh' on the armored nose design you came up with, but not strongly against, certainly. I like your SDF design a bit more than mine, actually, but the more I think about things the more I want a really transforming SDF-1... it's just too ingrained in the setting. I don't think it would take a big change to what you have to make something (relatively) reasonable, though - turn your thruster bank so they're horizontal instead of vertical, mainly, and split it four ways. To transform, the central body section between the thrusters and guns lifts up, the lower two main thrusters slide in under it on either side of the pylon to the underslung ship. Outrigger ships become arms just as in the original, and the upper two thruster sections extend slightly to be somewhat stumpy legs, the thighs being the after, outer thirds of the central section. do a half roll, then pitch up 90 degrees while the main gun moves down to face forward, SDF-1's in Standing Mode, though the bridge sticks out of its chest rather than being moved to a 'head' position - no need, there's sensor arrays all over the ship, and it would just get in the way of flipping the main gun down.
- CD
ETA: EML, the only problem I have with that is that it's almost the same as my Motodyne logo - lose the split, make it straight lines instaed of curves, and you've pretty much got it, right down to how far the tips hang out of the circle. Not that I'm saying that's a bad thing, mind you... IIRC I was trying for something halfway between the UN Spacy insignia, and Starfleet's.
Edit2: the Motodyne arrowhead sans circle is visible here on the nose of my 2142 flcghtcycle, while the Gazzok has something that might do instead of the (rather bland) broken-pentagon thingy, wrapped around it's own spinal mount barrel.That which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Valles]

Drogn:
The MAXL sound booster is indeed much the right sort of thing - although *points to his last post* the Kai's equivalent, well, not quite so much, for obvious reasons.
The SV-51's boosters I was always sort of bothered by since the first time I saw them - their placement feels sort of like it's just asking for structural trouble - but that's really a little hypocritical in face of the whole 'giant robot' thing. As much as the flappy wings and mitre hat sort of don't strike the right note, it's certainly ideal for Ontario's needs... first and foremost since its conventional power plants mean that it costs, like, a quarter what a Valkyrie does for a goodly chunk of the in-atmophere performance.
A catamaran aircraft carrier has always struck me as an excellent, even obligatory idea, but, given the scale difference between, say, a Nimitz class and my proposed length for the SDF-1...
BTW, a scale model of the SDF-1 built for human crew (rather than Zentreadi), would come out about six times a Nimitz's length, and have a proportionally broader beam...
Invid clam-bays are pretty much what I was conceiving for the Zent. infantry jump-offs - instant launch without armor weakness, good design practice.
EML:
What I'd had in mind for the EDTO sigil would be the UN's globe over a shield divided slantwise between dark and light blue (sort of like the independant Babylon 5 logo), but the split kite might work as a seperate symbol for dedicated (rather than seconded from member states) EDTO military units.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Evil Midnight Lurker]

---

Which reminds me that I still need to pick the phonemes I want to use to invent Zentradese. ^_^

---

As a curiosity only, note that a Zentradi lexicon does already exist, based on DYRL?.
(It doesn't seem to include the swear-words I remember from the movie, though-- Milia was shouting something like "de:vrann de:kalcha" at Max; the fansubbers translated "de:kalcha" as "disgusting" throughout, and "de:vrann" as "scum." But I may have been mishearing the words listed here as meaning "different," which in itself says a lot about Zentradi psychology.)
On spinal-mount BFGs--it might be entertaining to copy the Tuning Fork Gun (Reflex or Reaction Cannon) design all the way down to mecha- and man-portable beam weapons.
The Precursors: Civilization One? (Civ 1 for short, making the Others Civ 2, et cetera... ) Or perhaps Culture One... Culture Prime... Come to think of it, it'd be likely that Terrans and Zentradi would use different names for 'em--the Zents might call them the Commanders, or the Great Race (not riffing on Lovecraft here, but rather on F.M. Busby).
For an aircraft carrier hauling Valkyries around... why not Sleipnir?
Henry Gloval was Russian, yes, but Bruno J. Global was Italian.
--Sam
"Hey, don't knock crazy. The Romans were crazy, and they got all the girls."

[Valles]

...*sigh*
I guess you're right. Silly or not, the Obscenely Fucking Huge robot is one of Macross' defining traits - it showed up in both of the two series that featured large-scale space battles, after all.
Mrgh. Anyway, sketching out what you're talking about, the cruiser mode has the ship sort of flying on its 'back', and the lower two engines end up as a sort of backpack? And the entire battle mode would look a little like a gorilla if it weren't for the BFG sitting on its shoulders?
Hmm. Possibly the fold drive and main gun weren't in sequence - it's just that the power runs for the latter were built a leeeeeetle too close to the former for real safety.
The reason the lines just weren't re-lain, or duplicated if the former fold drive bays had too much Wierd Shit was simply that there wasn't enough of the required superconducting cabling on hand to stretch the whole way. Earth might have had it stockpiled, or been able to duplicate it in time, but the SDF-1 alone... So, if you can't run a phone line to the mountain, the engineers decided to try bringing the mountain to Muhammed.
Another possibility is that the Zentreadi might have a weapon or special system or some such which suppresses the function of quantum beam weapons - makes space tougher, as it were - which, in turn, means that, if the ship should happen to be forced to run through its limited supply of shipkilling warheads before it could get an onboard factory up and running, the Daedelus Attack might be the only valid option.
The other thing to keep in mind about the plausability of the transformation is that there is no way in hell the ship's original builders were designing for this possibility, which, in turn, would mean that they're pretty much going to have to fabricate every joint and extra SIF generator in the system on site, then retrofit it in without the benefit of a drydock.
Take, for example, the chance that the SDF-1 didn't have the delta-v to go straight to Earth, but instead had to hopscotch from Neptune to, say, Saturn to refuel. If the Zenteadi deploy their supressor weapon for the first time during that part of the journey, then we have a nice, tense plotline where Our Gallant Crew have to slip away and hide in the rings until the frantic engineers can complete the neccessary modifications needed to allow the actual destruction of an enemy capital ship.
Hmm. It could be made to work.
Ja, -n
(Compromise is a part of any cooperative venture.)
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

Valles -- interesting. A couple of those sketches remind me of some miniatures I've been building lately. Ground Zero Games makes these for its United Nations Space Command fleet in Full Thrust:
Star-class Light Carrier
Luna class Battleship
Just for a couple of examples...
I definitely like the more streamlined look you've got going for the SDF-1 in some of those pictures, though I have to wonder how the add-ons will fit in and where they'd go on it.(And which we'd keep of the three currently proposed -- carrier, battleship, and ARMD).--
"Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of General Zod has been approved."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[classicdrogn]

Super-Gorilla Fortress One... (laughs) ...yeah, I suppose. The original Macross's ASS-1 wasn't designed to transform, either - variable geometry mecha (let alone ships, aside from the tuning fork guns) were an entriely human innovation - and developed by the Anti-UN coalition for the SV-51, after stealing the SIF from the UN. Lots of espionage all around, there.

---

And which we'd keep of the three currently proposed -- carrier, battleship, and ARMD

---

Well, there's three outrigger positions available... I'd put the ARMOR flight-deck-out on the bottom, inverted from the orientation of the rest of the ship, and just have it undock for landing operations.
Jumping back up the thread some... I always felt that the fanbase view of Kamjin was a little extreme, myself - he shot at traitors when they tried to desert, adopted the parts of human culture he felt were useful while retaining the warrior ideal of his own people, and even got his head around that wierd 'love' thing with Lap'Lamiz just before the end... I'm not seeing a really bad guy here. If he wasn't on the enemy side, he'd be a protagonist; it's like Isamu Dyson in a black hat.
Oh, and while we're on the subject, let's make the new Lap'Lamiz counterpart look like Megatokyo 2040's Sylia, just for giggles. Classic Lap'Lamiz
- CDThat which does not kill us... has made its last mistake.
SERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
" It's crazy to try to spell out all the mega-nooks and hyper-crannies of a Borg contrivance." - Doug Drexler
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows