Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Battles (Spoilers)

[Tanasinn]

As I recall, Hyperion was actually part of a class of ships, just with a winceworthy paint job. A bit different than the Imperial uniques.

[Vympel]

Hyperion is somewhat similar to the ship Dusty Attenborough uses near the end of the series, but there's no other ship exactly like it.

In general, Alliance fleet flagships can have a lot of similarity, but there's always pretty noticeable differences in their design.

The two ships that look must alike are the Ajax (brown paintjob, seen in My Conquest Is A Seas of Stars and the Gaiden) which is the overall Alliance fleet flagship (possibly the 1st Fleet?) and the Patroclus. Virtually identical, but the Ajax has a few minor surface detail differences which you can see in the 4th Tiamat screenshot.

Imperial ships which look similar (but again, noticeable differences) are:-

* Tristan and Beowulf;
* Salamader, Skirnir and Forseti; (Wahlen, Lutz and Kesler)
* Barendown and Cuchulainn; (Wagensiel and Droisen)
* Eistla and Ulfrun (Grillpalzer and Knapfstein)

Though as noted Wilhelmina, Ostmark and Berlin actually are completely identical - save for the 'wing' thingies.

[Darth Fanboy]

Y'know that would actually be a really neat thread/project of its own where you identify and post hi-res screenshots of the individual flagships with bits of information gleamed from the series.

[Darth Fanboy]

I found this on google, which appears to be a decent illustration of the size difference between the Alliance big battleships and their normal battleships.

[Vympel]

Y'know that would actually be a really neat thread/project of its own where you identify and post hi-res screenshots of the individual flagships with bits of information gleamed from the series.

I'm definitely planning to do that. As a gift to LOGH fandom in general I am seriously considering sending off the booklets that come with my LOGH miniatures to a professional translation service, though it could be extremely costly so it might take a while to get them all done.

Currently, I can give accurate dimensions and exact crew complement for every ship there's a miniature for (i.e. the majority, though a fair few still need to be done)

Alternatively, perhaps I can send scans of them to the Central Anime people ....

EDIT: I can vouch for those dimensions in that picture, btw. They're exactly in accordance with my miniatures (though Pan Gu hasn't been done by the miniatures yet, it was probably done in the previous run of inferior miniatures from a seperate company).

It is interesting how much larger GE cruisers are to their FPA counterparts.

[Darth Fanboy]

I thought that was almost some kind of error to be honest and that the Empire ship labeled cruiser is supposed to be their run of the mill battleship and that the smaller destroyers we see fill that smaller ship role like the Alliance cruisers?

And I know I voted that the Empire ships were cooler looking but the Alliance ships grew on me more as the series moved on, especially once you started to see them less and less after Season 3

[Darth Fanboy]

Further thought.

Is it just me or are the Spartanian fighters superior to the Valkyries? It appears as if they get the upper hand in every engagement and while some of that could be attributed to pilot quality I find it hard to imagine that some of the kill ratios the Spartanians enjoyed were entirely due to piloting skill.

[Darksider]

The observed kill ratio between alliance and Imperial fighter forces might be due to the fact that their is a secondary/tertiary character who pilots them on the Alliance side, but no corresponding character on the Imperial side. Fighter duels usually consist of Poplan kicking copious amounts of ass. I'm sure if there were an imperial fighter ace in the series the score would be more even.

Is anything said to indicate that the Spartinian is a superior fighter? Especially considering the fact that the Empire maintains technological superiority.

[Darth Fanboy]

Spoiler

The Kill Ratio for the Spartanians in one of the last battles of the series was obscene. I can't remember but it was at least 10 to 1 I think and while you can make the argument that the Alliance had better pilots they also had a lot of raw recruits to Poplan was repeatedly depicted as training.

[Vympel]

I thought that was almost some kind of error to be honest and that the Empire ship labeled cruiser is supposed to be their run of the mill battleship and that the smaller destroyers we see fill that smaller ship role like the Alliance cruisers?

Nah. The official material explicitly labels both sets of ships as cruisers, whilst their larger cousins are both battleships. Goes like this:-

Standard Imperial Cruiser

L: 576m H: 141m W: 144m

Standard Alliance Cruiser

L: 327m H: 94.5m W: 74.4m

Leda II-type Alliance Cruiser

L: 486m H: 55m W: 62m

Standard Alliance Battleship

L: 624m H: 65m W: 136.5m

Standard Imperial Battleship

L: 677m H: 179m W: 228m

As you can see, even the standard Imperial battleship is larger and more voluminous than the standard Alliance battleship (nevermind the even bigger fast battleships) - the difference between the respective cruisers is simply the most pronounced. Imperial ships are just well ... bigger.

Destroyers are way too small (sidenote:- we see real Alliance destroyers from Season 3 onward, though we do see one in Overture to a New War, we see Imperial destroyers way more often) for the standard alliance cruiser to fit into that niche.

And I know I voted that the Empire ships were cooler looking but the Alliance ships grew on me more as the series moved on, especially once you started to see them less and less after Season 3

My favorite Alliance battleship design is probably the Shiva.

[Vympel]

This is an Alliance destroyer, btw:-

[Uraniun235]

The two ships that look must alike are the Ajax (brown paintjob, seen in My Conquest Is A Seas of Stars and the Gaiden) which is the overall Alliance fleet flagship (possibly the 1st Fleet?) and the Patroclus. Virtually identical, but the Ajax has a few minor surface detail differences which you can see in the 4th Tiamat screenshot.

Isn't Rio Grande also very similar?

[wautd]

And I know I voted that the Empire ships were cooler looking but the Alliance ships grew on me more as the series moved on, especially once you started to see them less and less after Season 3

Ditto.
While the Empire's ships are aesthetically prettier, the Alliance ships are cooler. Aesthetics be damned, by looking at them you know they mean business and nothing else. And that makes them cooler.
(+ being ugly has a niceness of its own. Case in point, English bulldogs).

[Vympel]

Isn't Rio Grande also very similar?

She's very close, however she has a wider 'neck' that is flush with the main guns section, whereas Patroclus and Ajax both have the same "pinched" neck arrangement.

[Darth Fanboy]

So how did that one Alliance (vide admiral?) guy get a tiger painted ship? That was pretty interesting to see.

[That NOS Guy]

So how did that one Alliance (vide admiral?) guy get a tiger painted ship? That was pretty interesting to see.

IIRC, he was from a border fleet, so it's possible he was far enough away that no one would care about such a non-standard paint job.

[Vympel]

IIRC, he was from a border fleet, so it's possible he was far enough away that no one would care about such a non-standard paint job.

No, Maurya had the same paintjob as Hyperion when the Yang Fleet was formed. It only got the new paintjob sometime in between the Alliance Civil War (when it was in original colours) and the Battle of the Fortresses.

EDIT: To be clear, Guen (Nguyen?) van Hugh was always part of Yang's Fleet. He fought against the 11th Fleet in the Civil War, and he was there at Iserlohn before Yang and the reinfrocements showed up. Check the relevant entries. It was the other Admiral who wasn't part of Yang's fleet. They were both very stupid people, however

[Tanasinn]

Van Hugh was also a total nutjob, as I recall, too. He's the one who is thrilled to be flying though the middle of an enemy formation because there's "targets everywhere."

I liked him and his doofy ship, to be honest.

[Vympel]

Yeah, I took a screencap of him when he's carrying on like a maniac in the middle of the 11th Fleet talking about how great it is because "everywhere you look, there's an enemy ship. You don't even have to aim!"

Even in death he was kind of insane - moments before he's blown to bits he laughs out loud at the mess that he is in.

Next batch of DVD rips is out, too.

[Vympel]

Uh oh. I've discovered a flaw in the DVD remasters. The fansub is selective with what names of characters - and names of ships - that it decides to show, because the encode doesn't bring those over automatically, they have to be added in manually. I just downloaded Episode 35 to check, and indeed, Admiral Sandar Alarcon's ship - a regular battleship - is named the Marduk.

Fuck.

For the sake of completeness, I will now re-download every episode in laserdisc format (I still have episodes 57-110 in laserdisc), to ensure I have missed nothing.

EDIT: amended Battle of the Fortresses. Added Admiral Alarcon's first name (as far as the Japanese are concerned?) - together with correcting the spelling of battleship Maurya and adding a screenshot of Marduk getting blown in half, together with amending the caption to make it clearer what happened.

[Vympel]

I figured out why the animation style is different within episodes!

The DVD version has actually been remastered from the original show. Observe!

Admiral Fahrenheit, laserdisc version, Episode 48:



Same shot, DVD version, Episode 48:-



Apparently, where they weren't satisfied with how the animation looked, they fixed it.

[Uraniun235]

Yeah. There are parts where it's an improvement, but I'm not always enamored with it. The remastered facial animation seems off at times.

[Vympel]

Yeah. There are parts where it's an improvement, but I'm not always enamored with it. The remastered facial animation seems off at times.

Yeah, luckily its not used in the battle sequences until all of Season 2 of the Gaiden (in which there aren't many battles anyway), where it just doesn't work as well.

[Darth Fanboy]

Does anyone else think that the twin fortresses in the Phezzan corrdior proposed by Mittermeyer seemed like a very expensive idea and possibly even a very bad one?
Spoiler

I mean given that Iserlohn had been captured TWICE and all external enemies had been defeated, what would those fortresses accomplish that a Phezzan stationed fleet of greater size could not?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Does anyone else think that the twin fortresses in the Phezzan corrdior proposed by Mittermeyer seemed like a very expensive idea and possibly even a very bad one?
Spoiler

I mean given that Iserlohn had been captured TWICE and all external enemies had been defeated, what would those fortresses accomplish that a Phezzan stationed fleet of greater size could not?

Spoiler

Because such a fleet needs a base of operations.
Under ideal circumstances you could have a fleet defend an area like that, but it needs a base of operations I am prety sure there are no planets in the area that could be used as a base so buildig new forts is a viable option