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Lots of people are still interested in the old hoplite: can we update its article? Workhorses ftw

OsakanOne

OsakanOne

Retired Member
Pretty simple question. I'm writing a modern variant and I realized LOTS of people really really dig the machine. Could we update the article to confirm to current standards? I got asked by like six people about it (three being new players) and that's why I'm even writing about it (mainly so I can learn about it) but I'd be happy writing a "compatible" article then embedding the original article as "See old article" or something.

To write it today's standards, I need to know more about it.

I figure its so old and ubiquitous now that running one is really cheap and even law-enforcement are using it and schematics aren't hard to get hold of so lots of variants probably exist for specific purposes including personal versions following the original template.

A fighter-jet that can do complex manipulator work or land and walk? That's kind of awesome.

I don't imagine its terrible potent without serious modification but I bet its absolutely tough as bloody nails by modern standards even if its smashed to bits it fixes more easily than modern gear. The Toyota Hilux of the setting, if you please.

I imagine too that by today's standards its movements are very clumsy and slow, it can't run without thrusters, it skims rather than walks because of its gawkishness and it relies on big guns rather than any stabby stabby kind of action.

To fly a Hoplite and make kills takes skill, planning and determination, not flashiness.

"Its hard to beat that old iron, kid", you know?

But? To fix a Hoplite means ductape, a good wrench and a few hours listening to Nepleslian radio. Your big worry is getting irradiated by the nearby sun and needing to buy radiation pills and the fact you're out of range of Sargasso Radio so you have to listen to YBC Radio 2, not whether or not you'll get it started again.

Half of them are surplus or salvage. Given some love and made to purr.

Every idiot and his mother has one. Cops, robbers, hotrods, haulers you name it.

So, whoever made this beautiful magnificent bastard: Tell me about your baby.

The romance of the SARP is why we keep coming back.

This is a legacy, one loved by players even new and we need to maintain it.


Link related: Not the original by any means, just a nice reliable cheapychips escort: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=lazarus:super_hoplite
 
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@OsakanOne OhmyfrellingGod YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! :D

...

...anyways, moving on...in all seriousness, I heartily approve of this - as I'm working on a character (for another plot :confused:) that would love to fly one of 'em again.
 
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This is just my rendition of what I think a modernized one looks like but I imagine the transformation sets the arms able to hold the guns forward as turrets in fighter-mode (hence why we have the quad turret layout today) and its really wide for stability over the ground. The construction would be like some hard as nails endoskeleton with the hull added over. As it takes hits, the outer hull comes off in chunks and that tough as balls inner skeleton is what they've mostly got in common.

I bet the original is really chunky. A bit of A-10C in its blood alongside F14E.

Like those Japanese toys with diecast skeletons and then plastic outer coverings.

Different revisions of it adjust the skeleton. Provided the skeleton is largely unchanged and some specific contact points are the same, the bodywork can differ wildly with the transformation staying largely the same.
 
With the exception of a very tiny number, all of these fighters got scrapped and recycled long ago (13 years before the present day SARP and close to that in IRL time). They were out of service even before the destructive First Mishhuvurthyar War began. The problem with the Hoplite was it was a pretty original attempt I made of making a Star Army version of the YF-21 seen in Macross Plus -- later I came to despise it for being a lame shadow of the craft that inspired it and decided it was for the best if it was essentially purged from the setting except historical notes. I still feel the same way.
 
Congratulations, you just crushed something lots of players are really enthusiastic about and care about and want to use in stories.
 
@OsakanOne I really, really hate to be harsh...but with all due respect please don't involve @Frankly in this without asking him about it first - as, well, the quit was most likely due to internet issues, not the Hoplite...
 
Interesting timing.

Either way, transforming plane/robots are a very very old trope. Macross polished them but its not the sole source:

A list of media with transforming fighterjets. This may surprise you.

  1. Macross (duh)
  2. Cavelry Southern Cross
  3. Genesis Climber MOSPEDA
  4. Transformers
  5. Getter Robo
  6. LFO
  7. Zoids
  8. GaoGaiGar
  9. Super Robot Raiden
  10. Gundam (almost all of it)
  11. Sky Girls
  12. Sora Wo Kakeru Shoujo
  13. Rinne no Lagrane
  14. Code Geass
  15. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
  16. Argento Soma
  17. Karas
  18. Bubblegum Crisis
  19. Mazinger Z
  20. Ninja Senshi Tobikage
  21. Fairy Tale
  22. The Terror
  23. One Day on Mars
  24. Ambassador Magma
  25. Almost all of Super Sentai/Power Rangers
  26. Battletech
  27. Mekton
  28. Transformers
  29. BIONICLE
  30. Super Robot Wars
  31. Crackdown
  32. Gunstar Heroes
  33. Viewtiful Joe
  34. Xenosaga
  35. Command and Conquer 3: Red alert
  36. R-Type
  37. Mischief Makers
  38. starcraft II
  39. Lost Planet
  40. Starfox II
  41. Twisted Metal
  42. Sakura Wars: So long, My Love
  43. Gradius
  44. Zone of the Enders
  45. Okami
  46. Starhawk
  47. COR
  48. Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
  49. Link: faces of Evil
  50. Future Cop LAPD
  51. Battle Engine Aquila
  52. Kid Icarus: Uprising
  53. Armnored Core
  54. Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
  55. Airmech
  56. Cybermorph
  57. Vanquish
  58. Time Crisis 5
  59. Scrap Mechanic
  60. Wild Arms 2
  61. The Perry Bible followship
  62. Bob and George, Treble & Bass
The fact your hoplite is a YF21 doesn't mean everybody elses is going to be. Reading the damn article, the YF21 didn't even appear in my mind (I've got like 6 model kits of the damn thing to boot and I've flown and crashed it in flight simulators for over 300 hours made in like 1996 using a flightstick worth over $500) because all of the tropes in its article are so goddamn homogynous now that they're in everything. If anyone's going to see the YF21 in the damn thing, its me with my utter utter obsession with the 21 as the bridgework between Zentradi and UN Spacy technology.

Shit, I even own this garage kit of the VF 22 Sturmvogel II.


I based my sketch on the 太空历险记/Astro Plan (affectionately known as 'Chinese Macross' because its a bootleg but it has unique working designs) trailer's lead machine:


How much of a hilarious but well done ripoff was Astro Plan of Macross?


I mean, you have to giggle but the transformation mechanism in the XFS-1, 5 and 7 are totally unique, unlike anything Shoji Kawamori's ever produced with a different mechanical layout. The show might suck but it takes about a hundred hours to make a transforming robot that actually works in 3D, let alone rigging the damn thing which is easily another 200 hours. I respect that enormously.

Kawamori's the man behind Transformers too, by the way. If there's a transforming show its almost always based on his existing schema of transformation or they hire him. Astro Plan did neither. The show sucks but holy shit the mecha design is so clever.

Look past your own vision of the SARP, Wes: We'll strip off all the bizzaro transposition/magical bullshit, we just want transforming fighterplanes.

I mean, you know why people get excited about Zeon in Gundam, right?

They find clever ways to re-use old gear.

Its a legitimate form of fanservice.

Retrofitting new gear onto older units is literally called
ゼオン -オタクのオナニー

This literally translates to "Zeon fanwank".
 
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Fun fact: the Uno was going to have a gerwalk mode thanks to two massive underslung cannons, that kinda doubled as legs/landing gear but that didn't quite make it in to the final design.


Much like battletech's unmentionable designs, the Hopilite was retired for good reason. Perhaps instead of naming it in this article directly you could hint that this is based on an earlier design but just not use the name?

A nudge-nudge wink-wink to sarp history better left burried.
 
I feel obliged to mention that anyone who comes and tries to take Kumiko's Hoplite away from her will have a small-scale war on their hands for the attempt.
 
What I can say was the Miharu Light Industries have managed to scrounge/reverse engineer the Hoplite and get their hands on manufacturing the Nodachi. It was a pet project of theirs, mostly meant on cobbling up something like the Hoplite for @Doshii Jun 's character Yukari to be able to fly since she was so fond of it.

It was a slow project, MLI's never really touched much in the way of starfighter design before, and most of the transformation research they've done is directed toward split-boom deployable main gun (dropped in production in favor of a fixed double-pronged prow - the transformation was too expensive, large-scale, fragile under abuse and prone to design headaches) and for their M15 Kishi frontal boarding feature (and that one they mechanically are cheating through by heavy use of nodal tech developped in the NH-19 and the M8 Nadia trial units).

Internally, at the moment, they consider their tranformable starfighter project as vaporware. They were strongly inclined just to make Yukari a cool shuttle unless (someone like Miharu Nimura) made a breakthrough.

I happen to think Osaka's sketches look very good, and any reticence I'd have toward large mecha in Yamatai have already been trod and stomped on by the Origin mecha. I wouldn't see the harm in MLI being the outlet for producing a more modern version of the Hoplite. It'd need to be its own machine rather than a rebuild of the new one (they'd mostly base themselves on the Nodachi's frame since it's the best fightercraft the Yamataian have in their eyes and they wanted a cool hotrod for Yukari), but I could see them making a limited production to offset the costs of making a cool ride for Yukari (and justify why it's not too widespread and not a military-endorsed product).

Basically, I don't mind finding ways to make a few members of the community happy if we can find a way for Wes not to be miffed about it as well. MLI could be a good portal for it; especially since I know that even if Osaka makes it on his own via Lazarus, Wes would just block that avenue (because, reasons).
 
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Sorry. I usually try to make whatever I write about you gender-neutral. I blew it in my last paragraph.

In my defense, I work in an IT call center, and I was trying to squeeze out something before my next call.
 
That was just my connection crapping out at work, I don't even know what I'm being used to argue, haven't read the thread yet
 
The art is cool, and I'm okay with variable fighters in the setting, but these fighters have been gone from the setting for a long time and that was intentional. Instead of recycling my unwanted stuff, I'd prefer that in this case that it be a new creation that's not directly taking some of these fighters that were never sold as surplus that I can remember (I think Yukari got hers either as salvage or via the prestige system), at least in any quantity because they were military tech. When the Artemis was made, at least it
 
Shame. The whole "tough as old boots" workhorse from a previous era feel really gave it a lot of character.

Something that did its best and by today's standards isn't that good, needing love and modification to become anything special, as a baseline of outdated but unique performance that has a rich history.
 
Rich history? It was around for a couple years, had basically no appearances in actual RP, and was quietly disposed of as soon as power armor became a thing in Star Army.
 
Lots of people have roleplayed ex pilots talking about it, reminiscing about their days in the SAOY. I forget their name but one was a hauler and another was a miner and they got together and had a few drinks and shot the shit and had a lot of good times talking about it.

Really made me interested in it and the stories I've heard from players too were super cool.

Do we have any rules about introducing something retroactively, like its been around for a while in the civilian sector and it only "just got good enough" with a recent revision in its growth cycle to be viable for anything better than law enforcement?

The SARP lacks old ships and old planes and old gear.
 
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