[RFC] Being You is Deculture

[classicdrogn]

Again, sorry for taking so long to get back to this before. I can't really even plead much in the way of RL hassle as an excuse, just an excess of shiny objects vying for my attention.

Speaking from that same basis of having hundreds of hours in the Macross action games, if you're not transforming frequently, you're doing it wrong, if for no other reason than to throw off enemy targeting with the changes in flight path and speed.

Pretty much what as I thought.  Watching AdmiralTigerCla's video clips of him playing Ace Combat was pretty elucidating.  (It was like watching the Looney Tune Road Runner fly an F-15.)

What games games are these, BTW?

On PSP, Macross ___ Frontier, where you fill in the blank with Ace, Ultimate, or Triangle in order of release. If you're just going to get one, get Ultimate, because it has all the Ace content and more while Triangle has a visual novel mode for pilot creation that is damn hard to understand unless you can read Japanese and your stats/skills are locked once it's finished, unlike the other games where you improve them with use. The VFs (and destroids/power armor/etc.) themselves also gain "tuning points" from completed missions, which you can use to improve various aspects of their basic functions and the equipped weapons, which are generally some kind of gunpod or mounted gun for the primary, two flavors of missiles and a head/hip/etc. laser depending on equipment, and melee combat. Being able to strip out the base points to beef up other things even more is an unlockable, I think after you complete all the eras the first time? Maybe that's to use VFs outside their own time period. Each TV series has a couple dozen missions, while movies and OVAs tend to be more like 4-6 each. Macross II is also more or less included (I think only MTF has it as a full-up era rather than part of the Bonus Missions) but the pilot stats are all crap, even for Sylvie Gina who's supposed to be the Max of her generation.

As I understand it there are also some Gundam games that use basically the same game systems, though not being fond of Gundam aside from Mobile Fighter G Gundam I'm not really clear on the details.

On PS3, Macross 30, which uses similar controls and tuning with better graphics (Well, mostly, the landscapes are a little basic and empty) but there's only one playable pilot in the storyline (you can switch in a NG+) and he improves by your basic JRPG leveling system capped at Lv50, though you can switch freely between three different "classes" that apply different bonuses to each stat per level gained while they're selected. As a rule, you will probably hit Lv50 well before reaching the end of the game and will not max out any one stat even if not using the default "balanced growth" class. The speed of movement has been adjusted down across the board, so even at maxed out speed you can't quite outrun your own laser beams or enemy missiles, even in F

All of the "Let's play Macross 30" videos I've seen are by people who constantly sit in F when they're outside or B in the indoor levels, and it drives me utterly nuts to the point that I have literally yelled at the screen "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! TRANSFUCKINGFORM YOU IDIOT!" or "LEARN TO GERWALK GODDAMN IT!" a few times. Unlike many other Youtube users, however, I restrain myself from posting insulting comments, if mostly because the vids were all months to years old by the time I went looking for them.

There were also three-ish "Trial Frontier" demos released as bluray movie disk bonus material, with just a handful of levels each and no tuning or even save game functionality. I think they were for the two Frontier movies and the DYRL remastered edition, possibly pre-order or deluxe set only?

On PS Vita, Macross Delta Scramble, which covers the first 13 episodes of Macross Delta as shipped and the second half of the series as free DLC, though you have to have a Japanese PSN account to get it IIRC. I don't have a Vita so I don't know this one in as much detail, but apparently the tuning system has been "simplified" (read: crippled) compared to the earlier versions.

With it being about time for some new Macross material to come out (I've heard rumor of a Delta movie edition) we may well see at least an updated version of Delta Scramble, hopefully with a selection of other eras' VFs as in the previous games if not outright porting in the whole schlemiel of missions and plot lines. Being on one of the more modern consoles would also be appreciated, but apparently the Vita is still doing decently well in Japan so I'd be a bit surprised since Artdink is a smallish studio. I'd love to see it on Switch for example, but a PS4 port is probably about as much as you could reasonably even ask for, and then only because Sony has been pushing Vita as a PS4 companion unit so hard.

Strips of red on the ruddervators along with our squadron number set us apart.

While I can't say this is technically totally wrong the VF-1 is more of a partially tailless design, as the tails don't really have enough of a cant to them to effectively act as elevators. The vertical thrust vectoring on the engines, or just the aerodynamic effect of the feet/vector flaps in case of a flame out, is pretty much responsible for pitch control.

Well, either way, it was the best term I could find to fit them given that they're canted at a near-45-degree angle and lacks horizontal stabilizers.[/quote] ... I don't think they're canted anywhere near that much... (goes to check)

Yeah, no, they're like 10-15 degrees at most, definitely no elevator action there. Just call them "tails" or something, I'd say.

Hayao won't make a good officer.

But he will make for a fucking outstanding Chief Petty-Officer.

Sounds legit to me.

Earning your 'Red Wings' is an incredibly filthy joke about performing certain sex acts during your (female) partner's period.

Gotcha. Having no social circle in High School to banter with and pick them up from (and being out of the usual age range by the time I did college courses, to much the same effect) such colloquialisms slipped past me entirely.

MISSION MUTHERFUCKIN' ACCOMPLISHED.

Seriously, I feel that Kamjin as a character is grossly underutilized despite the amount of screentime he gets, so I'm aiming to do something about that.

I wholeheartedly agree, as my earlier comments about how his discovering what that "love" thing the Micronians had been blathering about all this time with Azonia over the course of that one epilogue episode and realizing it, like, less than a minute before they die is one of the most underdeveloped character arcs in the entire franchise should suggest. Heck, in M30 he falls for Mylene and joins the hero cast for the final boss fight. I'm loving what you're doing here so far.

I held no pity for her, because she of all people should expect nothing less from a woman marrying a hot-dog fighter ace like Roy.

Oh, Claudia! Hopefully Gar can arrange things to keep her and Gloval alive this time around... suggest installing an escape pod for the bridge crew, at least.

I always thought that was just a Robotech-ism that saw to Gloval getting offed like that.  But no worries.  Things are gonna diverge to such an extent that this won't even be an issue.

I'm not sure actually - like I said, it's been a very long time since I watched SDFM TV. I'm glad that you're planning on getting well off the rails, though. It's something that can be hard to do even with the best intentions since it means not being able to just lightly retool the set pieces every fan knows and loves (or loves to hate.)

The idea here is that these three are going to become a cohort and will be quickly branded as "The Triplets".  Put it this way: Imagine if the Powerpuff Girls were his daughters.  (With Hikari as Blossom, Akatsuki as Bubbles, and Hotaru as Buttercup.)

Troublesome?  Oh hell yes.  But so very worth it, because as much trouble as they'll cause, they'll also generate just as much awesome.  At the very least they won't be superpowered from the word 'Go'.

And then there will be Garrick - the ready-made father, just add kids.  (Once again, I will reiterate: I have literally had a coworker scream at me "WHY ARE YOU NOT MARRIED YET!?!?" after seeing me interact with a customer's little girl in the store.)  While there will be moments of "... Okay, color me fucking impressed, because I'll be damned if that's not a new one on me", he will be able to take those in stride, nonetheless, once he gets past his initial "How the hell did you do that?" reaction.

Heh, well, more troubles for the MC means more things to write about, so I'm hardly going to complain. Having a larger-than average family group should also mitigate the difficulty of multiple infants at once as well, since it at least means there's a pair of hands for each while still having enough spare that a couple of lucky souls can still pull the pillow over their head and go back to sleep until it's their turn.

It doesn’t matter.  You’re people and so are we.

Hands Across the Galaxy? Can't do Voices while still not understanding the spoken language, I guess

Okay, apparently I just did something inadvertent.  Care to explain?  

The subtitle of Macross 30 is "Voices Across the Galaxy," as the premise of the game is collecting the main singers from Zero through Frontier plus the new girl (who is apparently a Protoculture survivor, found in a stasis tube in the second or third mission) and using their song powers to unlock the mysterious ruins on the planet. Well, Basara is a PITA as usual and only shows up when he damn well feels like it, but the rest of them join your party and enable various combat status effects as SP Abilities when flying in the back seat. Which apparently all VFs now have regardless of model, or any form of logical sense in NG+ when you have access to Zentreadi and Meltran battle pods and power armor as well.

leader of the Adoclass Expeditionary Fleet of the Zentradi Army.  In some time, we

Its been a very long time since I watched SDFMTV - do they identify themselves as "the Zentreadi Army?" My impression was that they were the Inspection Army and the Protodeviln were the Supervision Army, but I suppose even if that was the case a few hundred thousand years ago, things might have changed after the Protoculture were gone.

I'll have to do some research on that.  I'm pretty sure it's floating around there somewhere on the Internet.

It's one of those things that's really unclear from everything I've read - sometimes it seems like it's just a variation on the terms for the same enemy (revealed later to be the Protodeviln mindslaves,) other times the "Supervision" versus "Inspection" seems like it's commenting on the difference in management style for the Protodeviln vs. Protoculture. Where Zero's "bird human" fits in just blurs the issue further.

I nodded.  “Lucky as fuck.  In my world, we never had ASS-1 crash land on South Ataria Island.  Instead, on the date of September 11th, 2001, there was a terrorist attack by Islamic Jihadists the likes of which you guys could never, ever imagine.

ASS-1 did far worse than the 9/11 attack to cities all over the world while it was aerobraking, and then they had the Unification War on top of that. I think they can probably imagine pretty well, especially with how the Anti-UN Octos mecha-subs popped up to attack with surprise in Macross Zero.

Ah, but the difference was that in our case, the battle was nowhere nearly as 'mechanized'.  It was visceral on a level that even they're having trouble imagining.  What they had was the open conflict that all the old school Cold War generals had been itching for all those decades.  What we had was downright murderous guerrilla insurgencies where every goddamn thing was hiding an IED rigged to blow at a fucking sneeze.

And on top of that was the outright implication that the USA, the people who are supposed to be the 'good guys', wound up stooping to their level in how they treated people in captured territory.

Additionally, there was the comparison to the Pearl Harbor attack - how it was focused primarily on the military facilities, whereas 9/11 had the implicit goal of mass civilian casualties.  And really, I think that's the biggest thing to set the War on Terror apart from the Anti-Unification War - the fact that civilians were a sought-after target.

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying here. The way it's written now though, it sounds like he's only referencing the 9/11 attack itself as beyond imagination, to which I'm mostly just seeing Misa's "Are you shitting me?" face.

“Queadluun-Rau.  They’re high maneuverability battle suits used only by Meltrandi because only the females have the reaction times to handle them.  They’re incredibly fast and nimble, but very lightly armored.  They pack a helluva punch, though.  Those blisters above the shoulders and at the knees?  Missile pods.  Each one packs a couple dozen micro-missiles that are every bit as maneuverable as the Rau itself.

Ammo capacity is one of those things that you definitely cannot count on the game stats for, but IIRC the Q-Rau has a triple stack of twelve on each shoulder pod and eight more in each knee according to the art, for a total of either 88 or 104 if it's eight in each side of each knee.

Gotcha, thanks.

the MMM site should have some views of the Q-Rau with its missile pods open under the supplementary line art section I'm pretty sure, so you can double check before taking my word for it. I'm more sure of the triple stacks in the shoulders than the exact number in each layer.

It's going to be fun when we get to Katanagatari and the Yasuri Siblings force the issue without knowing the full implications.  (Yes, Nanami was fully expecting that there would be 'concubines' involved, but not the sort of package deal she's actually gonna get.)

Given that Nanami is like Seto in the sense that if he doesn't marry her then she may kill him out of spite, Garrick feels he doesn't have much choice.  And yes, Yasuri Nanami being able to kill Garrick outright is a very real possibility - by far, she will be the queen bitch of the Freaks of Nature pageant without any further qualifications besides her complete and total mastery of the Way of the Swordless Swordsman.  That said, she will fit into the arrangement with ease once she fully understands that the others are her peers and not simply her subordinates.

I've never even heard of Katanagatari before, but it sounds interesting from what you say here. I really haven't followed visual media in the past decade, with very few exceptions. I think probably Macross F and Delta, Strike Witches, Konosuba, Danmachi, and One Punch Man are the only anime I've watched in that time period, aside from a few scattered first episodes of things I didn't continue to follow. Oh, right, Gurren Lagann too, because people told me it was Evangelion without being such a downer, which was mostly accurate.