So the commander should be italian? Sorry, I've seen as much robotech as macross. Easily amended though.
It occurs to me that there's probably not enough hydrogen aboard to get halfway across the solar system on thrusters (so skimming off gas giants is anecessary precursor) - missions out this far usually have tanker support (or in the Zentreadi's case, fold there directly).
From what I've heard about the main gun it's sounding a bit like a core tap (the thing Dahak runs off of). A deliberately uncontrolled core tap. So it's probable that the gun, when secured, acts as a power source for the fold drive and is brought on line very carefully. This turns the notion of activating a fold drive in an atmoshpere less of a navigation hazard (plenty of other reasons for a misjump) and more of a 'if this goes wrong, god's personal tsunami will wipe out the entire pacific rim'.
So the opening up of the prow to use the gun would be part of the original design of the SDF-1 and the same as that on the rest of the zentradi fleet. After being rebuilt, the SDF-1 had a nice carrier flight deck out front, because the engineers thought that the core tap was just a power source. Then the SDF-1 fired it's opening shot to the war, and naturally blew it's own nose off in the process. Thus the grafting of ships onto the nose when they were putting it back together to head for earth.
For transformation, how about the two halves of the prow (jointed aft of the attached vessels for elbows) become the arms, with the tip of the main gun as the head - if we went away from the tuning fork idea to make it smaller.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
It occurs to me that there's probably not enough hydrogen aboard to get halfway across the solar system on thrusters (so skimming off gas giants is anecessary precursor) - missions out this far usually have tanker support (or in the Zentreadi's case, fold there directly).
From what I've heard about the main gun it's sounding a bit like a core tap (the thing Dahak runs off of). A deliberately uncontrolled core tap. So it's probable that the gun, when secured, acts as a power source for the fold drive and is brought on line very carefully. This turns the notion of activating a fold drive in an atmoshpere less of a navigation hazard (plenty of other reasons for a misjump) and more of a 'if this goes wrong, god's personal tsunami will wipe out the entire pacific rim'.
So the opening up of the prow to use the gun would be part of the original design of the SDF-1 and the same as that on the rest of the zentradi fleet. After being rebuilt, the SDF-1 had a nice carrier flight deck out front, because the engineers thought that the core tap was just a power source. Then the SDF-1 fired it's opening shot to the war, and naturally blew it's own nose off in the process. Thus the grafting of ships onto the nose when they were putting it back together to head for earth.
For transformation, how about the two halves of the prow (jointed aft of the attached vessels for elbows) become the arms, with the tip of the main gun as the head - if we went away from the tuning fork idea to make it smaller.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.