Other Mecha

[slade the sniper]

So, not sure if we can discuss other mecha, but...seeing as how much I enjoyed the discussions on the Alpha and Beta, I would love to see a discussion of all of the other mecha in Macross. Especially the VF-31. The Siegfried is amazing.

Anyway, if we can discuss the other mecha from the other Macross titles, I would love to see what Seto and the other experts think of them.

Also, is there a "family tree" of all the types of Veritechs?

-STS

[jaymz]

I've done all sorts of macross mecha up in palladium....

[Seto Kaiba]

So, not sure if we can discuss other mecha, but...seeing as how much I enjoyed the discussions on the Alpha and Beta, I would love to see a discussion of all of the other mecha in Macross. Especially the VF-31. The Siegfried is amazing.

Anyway, if we can discuss the other mecha from the other Macross titles, I would love to see what Seto and the other experts think of them.

Well, due to the forum rules we obviously can't discuss anything in the context of game stats since that would be in violation of the no-conversions rule. Other than that, I don't see anything that would stop us from simply discussing the designs themselves or the technical setting of the Macross franchise since Palladium did have a license to one actual Macross sequel and the Robotech adaptation of Macross's original series.

As to the VF-31, it's a beautiful design but not actually all that great of a fighter in-universe. The base model VF-31A Kairos intended for military use is something of an economy model that was developed with as many "off the shelf" parts as possible... meaning it ended up using a lot of parts developed for the VF-25 some ten years earlier. In the case of the VF-31 custom "Siegfried" type, those are one-of-a-kind aftermarket modifications of the VF-31A that are prone to a lot of issues because the engine upgrades exceed the design tolerances of the airframe, leading to a lot of downtime between sorties for repairs while also being bank-breakingly expensive to build and operate thanks to the inclusion of a cut-rate version of the YF-29's fold wave system. To put the cherry on it, their weapons were also downgraded due to their being intended for use in proximity to civilians.

Also, is there a "family tree" of all the types of Veritechs?

-STS

... oh my, yes. There have been a number of different publications that offered a VF "geneology" of sorts. Macross Plus's first This is Animation: the Select book has a piece called Variable Fighter's Aero Report that gave a brief-ish sort of overview of the VF family tree as it stood at the time (2040, in-universe). Great Mechanics DX did piece called VF Evolutionary Theory that essentially updated it for the Macross Frontier era. Delta didn't really add too many new wrinkles to it, so that's still mostly current. Macross II did the first one, a piece called VF History that ran in Bandai's B-Club Magazine. The official encyclopedia Macross Chronicle had several articles devoted to how VFs have evolved over time and even included a simplified family tree showing the design lineage of the two major developers up thru the YF-29.

It gets a bit complex once you start to add-in all the various special variants, mid cycle actions, major updates, and service life extension programs. I once attempted to draw a complete one based on all the info I had from my own translations, and the two banquet table-sized whiteboards proved to be insufficient space.

[jaymz]

yeah it gets convoluted after a while....

I mean the basics is iirc as follows:

VF-1

VF-0

VF-4

VB-3

VF-3000

VF-5000

VF-9

VF-11

VF-14

VF-17

Y-VF-19/21/22

VB-6

VF-171

YF-24

VF-25/27/31

YF-29/30

And all the variants and upgrades within each model.

Then there is the others like:

Variable Glaug (No idea where that would fit in)

SV-51/52

Feios

SV-262


Seto no doubt knows more than I but as a layman that is the list as I see it in the most general way I can think of it.

[Seto Kaiba]

yeah it gets convoluted after a while....

I mean the basics is iirc as follows:

IMO, the easiest way to outline the VF "family tree" is to start from its backbone... the various generations of Main Variable Fighter programs.

Macross's creators like to refer to the VF-0 as the Archaeopteryx/"Original Bird" of the VF family, since every VF lineage started from that one proof-of-concept technology demonstrator. Its data was used by the Earth Unification Government to develop its two rival 1st Generation VF prototypes: the VF-X-1 and VF-X-2. The Anti-Unification Alliance also obtained the development data of the VF-0 when its lead test pilot D.D. Ivanov defected to the Alliance and used it to rush out its own VF prototype: the SV-51.

The Earth Unification Government decided to select the VF-X-1 as its first Main Variable Fighter, leaving the VF-X-2 cancelled. The Anti-Unification Alliance was never able to complete its 1st Gen main VF, the SV-52, due to the Alliance's sponsors bailing on it after they nuked St. Petersburg and made a mess of the Mayan Island incident. Parts of the SV-51 design team defected back to the Earth UN Government and were put to work on the 2nd Generation prototypes: the VF-X-3 and VF-X-4.

The design competition between the VF-X-3 and VF-X-4 ended with default victory for the VF-X-4 after the VF-X-3's design team and prototypes were wiped out in the Boddole Zer main fleet's attack on Earth, while part of the VF-X-4 team and a few of its prototypes survived at Apollo Base on the Moon. So the VF-4 became the New UN Government's 2nd Generation Main Variable Fighter, but it proved to be not that great in atmosphere due to having been designed to be a space fighter, so the New UN Government commissioned a companion atmospheric VF derived from the VF-1 to support the VF-4 in planetside operations: the VF-5000. Some of the VF-4's developers later split off to develop their own supplementary low-cost 2nd Generation VFs like the VF-9, and later tossed their hats into the ring for the 3rd Generation main fighter competition.

The 3rd Generation had Shinsei Industry taking the VF-1 to its logical conclusion with their VF-11 up against the newly founded General Galaxy's attempt to improve on the VF-4's concept with their VF-14. The VF-11 won, but the VF-14 was still adopted by several New UN Gov't nations due to its excellent space performance, later falling into the Protodeviln's hands and becoming the basis of the Fz-109 and Az-130. General Galaxy later took their stealth-focused space fighter concept from the VF-14 to its logical extreme with the VF-17, a special forces VF.

Then, of course, there was the 4th Generation where Shinsei's radical new YF-19 squared off against General Galaxy's even more radical YF-21 as well as against the unmanned AIF-X-9 Ghost... and the New UN Government rejected all three because their insane specs were so ill-suited to flesh-and-blood pilots (or in the Ghost's case, because its AI was certifiably insane), opting to adopt a lot of the same tech with less extreme performance on an airframe derived from the VF-17, called the VF-171. The VF-19 and VF-22 that were derived from the YF-19 and YF-21 respectively ended up in very limited service with the Special Forces, and the Ghost's AI got gutted and it got put into service as expendable cannon fodder.

Around the same time the YF-19 and YF-21 were squaring off on Eden, the New UN Government found the Vajra and had a mass "Oh no" moment when they discovered the Vajra's combat abilities far outclassed their shiniest new VFs and launched the development of a 5th Generation main VF. Shinsei and General Galaxy collaborated on the YF-24, which turned out to be a bit of a flop due to its ambitious requirements being more than the available technology could deliver. After the project was suspended, Shinsei revived it on their own without General Galaxy and completed it was the YF-24 Evolution... which the New UN Forces approved for production as the VF-24 and snapped up as their 5th Generation main fighter. The YF-24 Evolution is also the common ancestor of all other 5th Gen VFs, including the VF-25, YF-26, VF-27, YF-28, YF-29, YF-30, VF-31, and Sv-262, which were developed by various local governments based on the YF-24 Evolution specification. Of course, the YF-30 was technically developed from both the YF-24 Evolution and YF-29, and the VF-31 is a heavily economized YF-30.


Here's a running list of basically all major VF versions that've appeared in official canon or pseudocanon media, sorted by generation:

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/topic/4 ... nt=1489914

Then there is the others like:

Variable Glaug (No idea where that would fit in)

SV-51/52

Feios

SV-262


Seto no doubt knows more than I but as a layman that is the list as I see it in the most general way I can think of it.

Those are pretty easy to fit in, since they're usually one generation newer than whatever stolen VF data they were based on... the SV-51's a counterpart to the VF-0 based on stolen VF-0 data, the SV-52's a VF-1 rival based on the SV-52, the Variable Glaug's a VF-11 counterpart based on a stolen VF-4, the Feios is a VF-19/22 rival based on a stolen VF-11, and the Sv-262 is part of a separate VF development stream by General Galaxy that includes facing competition to the VF-171 called the Sv-154.

[jaymz]

There was YF-28?


That aside my progression was more or less accurate then for simplicity's sake?

[glitterboy2098]

looking at the macross wiki and macross mecha manual, there is a VF-27 and a YF-29 but no -28 listed. at a guess ifthe -28 exists it was a 'blink and you'll miss it' reference to some development project.

[Seto Kaiba]

There was YF-28?

looking at the macross wiki and macross mecha manual, there is a VF-27 and a YF-29 but no -28 listed. at a guess ifthe -28 exists it was a 'blink and you'll miss it' reference to some development project.

Yeah, the YF-28 is mentioned only in passing in the canon light novel Macross the Ride.

It's believed (in the Macross Frontier fleet) to be a Macross Galaxy fleet rival development to the YF-29 Durandal, but may have actually been a cover for field testing of Macross Galaxy's trial production VF-27. The Macross Galaxy fleet was using a series of deliberately underwhelming prototypes like the YF-27-5 Shahar ♀ to conceal the true capabilities of the production intent VF-27 in 2058 during the events of the light novel. That deceit lasted clear through to the 14th episode of the Macross Frontier TV series (3 August 2059) when Major Brera Sterne of the Macross Galaxy NUNS finally outed the VF-27γ after his rescue of Ranka Lee from a Vajra Bishop-class hive ship.

[Seto Kaiba]

That aside my progression was more or less accurate then for simplicity's sake?

Eh, it's in the ballpark at least... there are multiple, parallel lines of development that sometimes loop back on each other or merge.

For instance, the VF-1 Valkyrie produced two successor programs at Stonewell and Bellcom. The VF-4 Lightning III and VF-3000 were developed in parallel, the former as an effort to produce a superior space fighter and the latter as an attempt to improve the already-robust VF-1 by increasing its size to make it more effective as an all-regime aircraft. The two development lines merged again after the VF-4 was deployed and the VF-3000 was cancelled, with technology from both going into the VF-5000 Star Mirage that jointly held the 2nd Gen main VF designation in the 2020s. The parallel lines that Shinsei Industry and General Galaxy had going briefly merged at the YF-24 before splitting off again and quadrupling.

[jaymz]

That's why I said for simplicity's sake