ShadowLogan wrote:Which is what I am looking at to. This would be a lot easier though if they engaged a common target, but we don't have that.
ON SCREEN the characters with the higher kill counts are non-Macross ones. ON SCREEN the VF-1 suffers higher casualties (by dialogue is another matter). Both of which are the basis for forming our impressions on effectiveness of such units.
Eh… a big part of the problem here is that you’re forming your impressions from what is, by any rational standard, an apples-and-oranges comparison. Not even for the reason you think it may be, but for a completely different reason you keep overlooking.
Specifically, not only are the Earth forces in the latter two sagas fighting hostiles that are a great deal less capable than the Zentradi on the battlefield… you’re trying to draw your conclusions on what is explicitly the atypical performance of the main characters of those sagas. This goes well beyond simple “plot armor”. The 15th ATAC in the Masters Saga is explicitly acknowledged as a unit that’s consistently and inexplicably achieving well above the level of every other unit, and as a result they end up as the brass’s go-to unit for special missions. Scott’s band of irregulars are operating under highly atypical conditions where the difficulty level’s a lot lower. They’re fighting behind enemy lines, against tiny groups of Invid who patrol the Earth’s human-inhabited regions who aren’t expecting and generally aren’t prepared for heavily armed resistance. Even then, it’s acknowledged that they’re out there achieving WAY more than the average resistance group, so not only are they fighting the Invid Five-O instead of the Invid’s real military, they’re also doing a LOT better than the average group trying.
The Macross Saga doesn’t have this problem, and Skull squadron is never identified in-series as elite or as achieving better results in combat than other squadrons.
So, essentially, what you’re doing here is trying to compare the average performance of the VF-1 in actual battlefield conditions against the highly atypical, not-under-actual-battlefield-conditions, performance of the Alpha.
If we just count the ships we see onscreen, more Alphas are destroyed in the first episode of the New Generation than there are VF-1s destroyed onscreen or off in the entire Macross Saga by a SIGNIFICANT margin. If you look at the OSM fleet composition for that scene, we’re talking the Alpha’s losses in that one scene totalling ten times more aircraft than the SDF-1 even carried… never mind that the Alpha’s loss rate in combat is also orders of magnitude higher than the VF-1 in terms of the percentage of aircraft deployed vs. lost on any given sortie.
ShadowLogan wrote:If we where talking about a conventional aircraft in Robotech I would agree this definition, but Veritechs by their nature muck this up. Their multi-mode nature has each mode excelling compared to the other in a given role.
Maybe the VF-1… but the others don’t appreciably change performance between modes, they just free up a few more missiles or maybe one extra gun. The Alpha performs poorly no matter what mode it’s in.
ShadowLogan wrote:When you have missiles this versatile it doesn't seem necessary to require a more diverse set of options. That doesn't mean the Alpha couldn't benefit from having a diverse set of options.
When you have missiles that ineffective, it doesn’t seem necessary to produce the aircraft that’s carrying them when you could simply produce coffins with a much smaller expenditure of money and resources… which is kind of the point.
ShadowLogan wrote:This is more of a training aspect rather than a technical capability. The UEEF pilots are overly reliant on their avionics to find and lock-on to the enemy that use of WWI/WWII style dogfighting techniques seems to largely be uknown.
False. We see dogfighting going on even in the series, so these skills are clearly still taught.
Your assertion that they’re overdependent on avionics is just manifestly silly. These are jets, and armed with guided missiles and off-axis guns. Dead reckoning by eyeball is NOT VIABLE at the kind of speeds we’re talking about, or even well below them. That’s why mechanically-assisted aiming systems were invented back in the 1930s, and were rapidly introduced in combat aircraft during World War II. Firing guided missiles without a lock is no better than firing a rocket, and it may actually be worse since the guidance system is unprogrammed and thus may not even turn the safety off on the warhead. At the speeds involved, your chances of hitting anything that way are virtually zero.
The problem is not one of training, it’s technological… the UEEF’s shortsightedness made them entirely dependent on radar-guided munitions, which are useless if the enemy has a low or zero radar cross-section.
ShadowLogan wrote:Now UEDF pilots might not be as reliant from a training perspective, but the Alpha and the VF-1 would both find their active sensors in the same bind in this situation thanks to TSC-expansion of the Shadow Device effects.
Not really, the VF-1’s weapons supported optical-only computer-assisted aiming and guidance…
ShadowLogan wrote:While they might be invisible to Protoculture Sensors of the Invid they are not truely invisible to the Invid, IF we take Invid POV shots at face value as what the pilot sees in the animation. We know they could still "see" the Shadow Fighters, they just don't have the glow-ie spots to help the Invid know where you are or set them off.
This is rather at odds with the end of the New Generation, wherein the Invid at Reflex Point are seemingly unable to even see the Shadow Drones wreaking havoc in the hive.
ShadowLogan wrote:I don't know if I'd consider the shown/implied losses before retentry to be overwhelming. There are instances of entire VF-1 squadrons getting wiped out in dialogue.
… the hell? The fleet is indicated to have been wiped out, and Scott is one of the few people to survive long enough to make planetfall. That’s the textbook definition of overwhelming losses...
ShadowLogan wrote:I disagree, if it isn't part of a given canon-universe then it would be by definition an alternate universe one that may or may not be canon (essentially we have canon universe, canon alternate universe ((titan)), and non-canon alternate universes for respective properties). FAN-FICTION I would agree would not fit this, only licensed products.
Sorry, but in this case disagreeing literally just means you’re denying reality. You are wrong.
If it’s not recognized officially as an AU, then it’s just non-canon. That’s the way it works in pretty much every franchise, and HG was quite open about the non-canon materials being non-canon and has NEVER treated them as an AU.
ShadowLogan wrote:Yet they managed to design how many new mecha for Sentinels (at least ~20 IINM), some of which transformed? Not to mention they could have reused some of the early concepts from GCM/NG to achieve the same thing without creating continuity problems.
They created a handful of new designs on the cheap, which were mostly attempts to redesign
Macross designs in ways they felt would be “different enough” from their
Macross roots to not incur a lawsuit... same as what they did with the character designs. HG, of course, now looks back on that with the benefit of experience and quietly buried the lot because they know they’d never get away with it if Big West noticed. The rest were terrible generic nonsense like that robot unicorn chariot, or a generic delta-wing plane that only had a “guardian” mode and may have been a ripoff of the Bronco II from
Orguss.
ShadowLogan wrote:I agree Invasion isn't borne out by other materials, but it is worth considering.
If it’s inconsistent with everything else, then it probably ISN’T worth considering.
ShadowLogan wrote:If early Invid the UEEF encounters use the same Scout/Trooper designs, but the pilot is different biologically gaining better and better mental prowess (its sort of like playing people of different ages or skill levels in the same game, you sort of notice the difference).
That’s not how Invid evolution works in the series, though… they don’t do slow evolution, it’s all by leaps and bounds with improved performance coming with radical changes in form.