Macross Galaxy Design?

[Mafty]

So is it ever established exactly what the habitable interior of the Macross Galaxy looks like? We know it's more spartan than the Frontier Fleet, but how? Is it like an enclosed Megaroad ship?

[Seto Kaiba]

So is it ever established exactly what the habitable interior of the Macross Galaxy looks like? We know it's more spartan than the Frontier Fleet, but how? Is it like an enclosed Megaroad ship?

It is, but not in a visual medium. The topic was first raised in a Masahiro Chiba interview in Great Mechanics DX and the Macross Galaxy fleet does briefly become the setting for the story of the official setting Macross Frontier prequel light novel Macross the Ride.

Basically, the Macross Galaxy fleet's Mainland environment ship is a massive urban sprawl ala Ghost in the Shell Tokyo... but enclosed, like the "Deep" layers of Island-1 we see in the Macross Frontier movies or a Megazone with the artificial sky turned off. It's described as being rather an unpleasant place to live. The Macross Galaxy fleet's corporate government has an efficiency-first attitude towards everything, so the city's living conditions are quite bad. It's cramped, it's dirty, and it's ugly. It has no parks or other public green spaces. Several portions of it have become expansive slum districts due to high unemployment caused by the abolition of "inefficient" jobs. The environment ships that were used to provide a supply of renewable natural foods and "natural" recreation spaces were converted into factories to produce chemically recycled synthetic foods, so many of the recreation options that exist in other fleets can't be found there.

The main thing keeping it tolerable for the millions of people who call Macross Galaxy home is that they're cyborgs who live in augmented reality all the time. They can stand to live there because their senses are being tampered with to make them perceive the space as more hospitable than it is. Their cybernetic implants can adjust their perceptions so that they experience an open square as a verdant park, or to experience the awful artificial foods as delicious delicacies. They're also basically terminally online, connected at all times to the fleet's implant network so a lot of the recreation opportunities they have are virtual. Visitors can experience a limited extent of the fleet's cyberspace with AR goggles, but without them the fleet is simply a dirty, grey, rundown, and unpleasant place to be.

(Practically any emigrant ship could be described as "more spartan than the Frontier fleet" though, which is the most luxurious state-of-the-art ship available at the end of the 2050s.)

[Wingnut]

Wow. It kinda sucks to be them doesn't it?

I mean, that's probably tolerable while out in deep space, but what about when a colony site is found?

[Seto Kaiba]

Wow. It kinda sucks to be them doesn't it?

That's just the tip of the iceberg of awful that is living in the Macross Galaxy fleet... the Galaxy executives got up to all kinds of unscrupulous and/or inhumane stuff. Like trying to find ways to create cyborg soldiers without training by installing combat AIs in people's brains that take over the body during combat (like Maris Stella in Macross R). Or salvaging and reprogramming the brains of the recently deceased to reuse them as cyborg soldiers with fake memories and personalities (like Greenwich Meridian in Macross Frontier: Wired Warrior).

[MythSearcher]

Several portions of it have become expansive slum districts due to high unemployment caused by the abolition of "inefficient" jobs.

So in order to become efficient they decided to have lots of people unemployed and not contributing to society while still spending resources...
How is that efficient?
If they are really efficient they should just dump the unemployed/not tax paying people out.

[Seto Kaiba]

I mean, that's probably tolerable while out in deep space, but what about when a colony site is found?

Considering the Macross Galaxy fleet's publicly-stated mission was to locate sources of fold quartz to facilitate what was basically a gold rush for an incredible new resources, if that had been its real aim it would probably have remained a very unpleasant cyberpunk dystopia while also becoming an unpleasant mining town run on de facto slave labor.

Its actual aim was to seize control of the Vajra hive mind and use it to create a galaxy-spanning Human hive mind, so the Galaxy executives and their Mainland environment ship may not have even had a plan to permanently settle on a planet.

So in order to become efficient they decided to have lots of people unemployed and not contributing to society while still spending resources...
How is that efficient?

The Macross Galaxy fleet is, for all practical intents and purposes, a spacefaring company town without any of the false trappings of elected civilian government. The corporation and the government are one and the same.

Using as much automation as possible in manufacturing goods for domestic and export sale reduces or outright eliminates labor costs while also reducing unproductive downtime. Fully automated factory processes can run 24/7/365 except for maintenance breaks and maintain a consistent level of quality throughout.

Switching the environment ships that had previously been devoted to agriculture and aquaculture over to factory production of synthetic foods using chemical recycling means reducing or outright eliminating the significant resource and manpower requirements to maintain those artificial "natural" environments and processes and producing more food, faster, for less cost. It also eliminates the cost of maintaining recreational facilites that the populace either can't afford to use, or won't use because VR is easier.

Keeping unemployment high or intentionally raising the unemployment rate is also a very real strategy used to suppress wage growth and keep total wages low. If competition for jobs is high, people are willing to work for less money in order to have a job at all and people who already have jobs are much less inclined to switch jobs even if the working conditions are poor and raises are low or nonexistent.

It's all very efficient from a financial perspective, despite creating hideously inhumane conditions.

Of course, the Galaxy fleet's executives also have other, more nefarious, reasons to want to maintain a population of desperate people who exist off society's radar. It's a literal captive population of subjects nobody will miss ripe for unethical human experiments like:

• Project Fairy, which deliberately infected orphaned children from Mainland's slums with the lethal V-type bacterium carried by the Vajra in an effort to create a Human who could produce the same kind of fold songs used by the Vajra in order to hijack their hive mind. At least eight children (Fairy 1-8) were sacrificed this way using a lethal alien disease before a short-term viable subject (Sheryl Nome/Fairy 9) was found.
• Project Stella, a black project carried out by the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army which was evaluating a proposed method to mass-produce the fleet's cyborg soldiers. Subjects (including children as young as 13) were cyberized and fitted with both mind control implants and a combat AI that would, in theory, allow them to function like highly-trained soldiers without any training. Not only did this make the subjects mentally unstable, they were compelled to carry out attacks on friendly governments under guise of terrorist activity to evaluate their combat potential. Macross R's Maris Stella was one such prototype.
• Project Meridian: a black project carried out by the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army which was evaluating a proposed method to mass-produce combat-ready bioroid soldiers by reprogramming the brains of the recently deceased. Greenwich Meridian was one such bioroid in the Macross Frontier short story "Wired Warrior".
• Cyber-Grunts, the illegal cyborg soldiers of the Macross Galaxy Corporate Army. Subjects willing or otherwise have their entire bodies and brains modified into combat-hardened cyborgs with superhuman strength, speed, and resilience. They're subjected to mind control via their implants, and have their memories manipulated to ensure their loyalty. Their implants also allow the Galaxy executives to control them directly, en masse, at any time. For all practical intents and purposes, they are warrior-slaves.

Those are just the ones we know about... who knows how much else the Galaxy fleet got up to in the field of inhumane experimentation and medical atrocities.

If they are really efficient they should just dump the unemployed/not tax paying people out.

To where, exactly? It's not like you can just kick them out of town and tell them to walk or catch a bus. Macross Galaxy is a massive emigrant ship traveling in deep space near the galactic core, and is at least several dozen light years away from the nearest other fleet. There aren't any habitable planets nearby.

Forcibly displacing large numbers of people is an ordeal in and of itself. We're talking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Trying to relocate them all to another nearby emigrant fleet is quite a massive undertaking. Not only does the other fleet have to be willing to take them in, they have to get them there. The nearest other fleets in the region are Frontier and Olympia, which are up to 500 light years distant. It could potentially take years to successfully relocate all those people... tying up multiple large ships or starliners and their crews for dozens or hundreds of round trips plus many soldiers to corral and organize the forced displacement.

No doubt it's easier to leave them where they are, with the Galaxy fleet's Human Resources division considering them human resources of an entirely different kind.

[MythSearcher]

Forcibly displacing large numbers of people is an ordeal in and of itself. We're talking about tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Trying to relocate them all to another nearby emigrant fleet is quite a massive undertaking. Not only does the other fleet have to be willing to take them in, they have to get them there. The nearest other fleets in the region are Frontier and Olympia, which are up to 500 light years distant. It could potentially take years to successfully relocate all those people... tying up multiple large ships or starliners and their crews for dozens or hundreds of round trips plus many soldiers to corral and organize the forced displacement.

No doubt it's easier to leave them where they are, with the Galaxy fleet's Human Resources division considering them human resources of an entirely different kind.

I'm talking about just dump them, literally.
To space or subspace, wherever.

[Mafty]

Myth Search wrote" I'm talking about just dump them, literally.
To space or subspace, wherever."

As Kaiba said Galaxy's fleet had it's inhabitants in mind for a different (yet no more benveloent) project. Plus the downtrodden inhabitants might be more desperate to seek out work in a project for money. Of course how much they know about the projects goals in questionable.

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm talking about just dump them, literally.
To space or subspace, wherever.

Even if we assumed that were all judged unfit for the Macross Galaxy corporation's various unethical Human experiments... well... those bodies still contain valuable resources that you don't just throw away.

Long-distance emigrant ships are, by nature, inclined to find themselves a long ways away from the nearest outpost of civilization and can't rely upon being able to purchase and ship in supplies from elsewhere. Emigrant fleets are designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, and a big part of that is an absolutely hardcore approach to recycling. Nothing is just thrown away. Advanced mechanical, chemical, and organic recycling processes are all leveraged to ensure every last bit of waste material is reclaimed and converted into a form that can be used to make new things. Even corpses.

We actually see this very early in Macross Frontier with the funeral of Skull Platoon member Henry Gilliam who died at the end of the show's first episode. Instead of receiving a traditional burial - a high honor reserved only for military soldiers - his body is interred at a recycling facility where his remains are broken down in the ship's bioplant system so that all the various elements that made it up can be reclaimed for future use.

[MythSearcher]

Even if we assumed that were all judged unfit for the Macross Galaxy corporation's various unethical Human experiments... well... those bodies still contain valuable resources that you don't just throw away.

Long-distance emigrant ships are, by nature, inclined to find themselves a long ways away from the nearest outpost of civilization and can't rely upon being able to purchase and ship in supplies from elsewhere. Emigrant fleets are designed to be as self-sufficient as possible, and a big part of that is an absolutely hardcore approach to recycling. Nothing is just thrown away. Advanced mechanical, chemical, and organic recycling processes are all leveraged to ensure every last bit of waste material is reclaimed and converted into a form that can be used to make new things. Even corpses.

We actually see this very early in Macross Frontier with the funeral of Skull Platoon member Henry Gilliam who died at the end of the show's first episode. Instead of receiving a traditional burial - a high honor reserved only for military soldiers - his body is interred at a recycling facility where his remains are broken down in the ship's bioplant system so that all the various elements that made it up can be reclaimed for future use.

Well, then why keep them alive?
Having a slum is much less efficient in gathering resources than just having a bunch of corpses.

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, then why keep them alive?
Having a slum is much less efficient in gathering resources than just having a bunch of corpses.

As touched on previously, probably to keep competition for jobs high and thus wages low and/or as a literal captive population of subjects the general populate wouldn't miss for any or all of the Unethical Human Experiments(TM) the company was conducting. Their likely endgame was to press gang the lot of 'em into the Corporate Army once once of their programs meant to produce Instant Soldiers via cybernetics bore fruit.

[MythSearcher]

Well, then why keep them alive?
Having a slum is much less efficient in gathering resources than just having a bunch of corpses.

As touched on previously, probably to keep competition for jobs high and thus wages low and/or as a literal captive population of subjects the general populate wouldn't miss for any or all of the Unethical Human Experiments(TM) the company was conducting. Their likely endgame was to press gang the lot of 'em into the Corporate Army once once of their programs meant to produce Instant Soldiers via cybernetics bore fruit.

I was about to ask then why not use robots, but then I remembered the ghost incident in M+ which was kinda made a plot point in MF as well.

[Seto Kaiba]

I was about to ask then why not use robots, but then I remembered the ghost incident in M+ which was kinda made a plot point in MF as well.

"Why not use robots?" is actually a really good question now in the wake of Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!...

Spoiler-tagged for those who have not seen the film yet.

Spoiler

As of 2068, approximately Human-sized semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous combat robots are confirmed to exist. The anti-government organization Heimdall uses one to infiltrate Xaos's de facto command ship Macross Gigasion in the movie. It doesn't get very far before it's detected and destroyed, but it does get far enough to access and transmit the location of the surviving Xaos forces and of Lady M to Heimdall's own flagship before being destroyed. The injuries Arad sustains fighting it are why he ends up benched for the final fight.

Why we have not seen these things before and why more of them were not used is not explicitly stated, but we can assume it probably boils down to cost and capability. The autonomous combat computer is one of the most expensive parts of the QF-4000 Ghost, so employing similar hardware on an infantry robot was probably rendered impractical on a large scale for cost reasons. Bioroids and combat Cyborgs like Galaxy experimented with can use the existing Human wetware for computing power which likely keeps costs down quite a bit and are less conspicuous when used as agents operating undercover.

[False Prophet]

You know, given that cloning technology is right there, and we've seen Grace played the "I've spare bodies" card, I can see someone trying to make several lobotomized clones of themselves, give them cybernetics, then basically having in their control multiple bodies at once.

[Seto Kaiba]

You know, given that cloning technology is right there, and we've seen Grace played the "I've spare bodies" card, I can see someone trying to make several lobotomized clones of themselves, give them cybernetics, then basically having in their control multiple bodies at once.

Grace's various bodies seem to be almost entirely artificial, so it may be as simple as "requisitioning" several Human brains the Macross Galaxy fleet's corporate government "just happened to have laying around", reprogramming them, and installing them in the Grace-type body.