Battletech Clan Invasion of UC Gundam Earth

[Norade]

Actually, chalk that up to my misreading of the Sarna wiki. It mentiones tidal forces felt within 27 kilometers of the emerging ship, not some unbelievably large amount I imagined. Still, how feasible would it be to destroy a heavily armored ship (weighing in at around half-a-million to seven hundred thousand tons) appearing, say, at 180k kilometers from Earth, loaded with nukes and possibly firing in all directions?

Depends on what your definition of destroy is and how tough the ship is. It also depends on how fast the ship is and what you have nearby.

You could destroy it in the sense that you render it unable to maneuver and ensure that it misses its main targets. This can be done via lasers at a rather long range as that is well under a light second range. The way I see this being done is burning holes in, or warping the engine nozzels or simply detonating or otherwise making unusable the fuel source the ship needs for thrust and maneuvering.

If the ship is moving fast enough just send some heavy flak at it and let physics kill the thing for you. You could also aim to blind it so it doesn't know when to arm and detonate the nukes on board.

[Batman]

Completely feasible. It would ALSO completely fail to do any noteworthy damage to the planet.

[Balrog]

Seriously? The one you pointed to as evidence that conventional weapons work against ammo magazines has a Zaku II going from standstill to exiting the frame in less than a second, hell look at Char's Zaku II it's 0.09, yet we clearly saw it moving fifty or so meters in totally disparate directions.

Given that both mobile suits and the camera are constantly moving around during the entire scene, and with a lack of any frame of reference, I'm not convinced.

Except the weapons magazine going up didn't destroy the ship.

The ship disappeared behind a giant big blue explosion; it'd be safe to say it was, at the very least, heavily damaged. And you're still ignoring all the other examples of conventional weapons blowing ships up in that scene.

Exactly, this means outside of Minovsky Jamming they'll be operating at a much longer range.

Except just about everything is dependent on the Minovsky effect, whether it's for jamming, powering mobile suits, mega-particle cannons, etc.

[Connor MacLeod]

How exactly do you figure that Gundam doesn't come close? 500TJ is like 120 kilotons. Stuff like the Apsalus and Big Zam actually carry multi-megaton main guns, though they wouldn't figure into such an early time period. This is setting aside the fact that the Clans have frankly pitiful range, and that the Earth Sphere forces have shockingly superior ECM.

I come to this discussion late, but I am wondering on reading this. What kind of weapon are we talking about? A projectile weapon ro a beam weapon? If we're talking the latter I'm gonna call BS, unless the gundam either masses more than a Titan or can accelerate as fast as an ISD (or some combination thereof.) Recoil on a multi-megaton weapon is nasty (hell a warlord titan is unlikely to have multi-MT guns based on that mere fact alone.)

Edit: In case I wasn't clear enough, this point clearly needs far more explanation and probably analysis.

[SylasGaunt]

The guns in question are particle beams.

Also the two units in question aren't mobile suits, but rather mobile armors (which are much larger) and are basically built around their weapons.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Given that both mobile suits and the camera are constantly moving around during the entire scene, and with a lack of any frame of reference, I'm not convinced.

Then you're a blatantly dishonest moron with an axe to grind. The frame of reference is the MS and the ships themselves, they are easily moving the body length of those ships in a single frame. A pre-refit (which these are since it's the Battle of Loum and they don't have the later launch catapults) is 288m long by 68.5m wide, and 61.3m tall.

At 0:34 we see Char traverse the distance between a Salamis and a Magellan (assuming the length of a Salamis, it's not it's more like 1.5-2 times that) in under a second going from a complete stop, that's almost 30G in and of itself. It is self-evident that the 'Official Stats' are wrong, much like when Mark Simmons (the guy they

The ship disappeared behind a giant big blue explosion; it'd be safe to say it was, at the very least, heavily damaged. And you're still ignoring all the other examples of conventional weapons blowing ships up in that scene.

At 0:03 an MS-06C fires two rounds from a 280mm Bazooka, at 0:04 those rounds impact the dorsal mega particle cannon at the fore of the ship and the port dorsal twin AA guns ahead of the main bridge structure. Not destroyed.

0:10 an MS-06C maneuvers in close to set off the weapons magazine of a six tube missile launcher with 120mm fire at point blank range, at 0:13 the warheads cook off and an explosion occurs which obscures our line of sight. Inconclusive.

At 0:25 Char fires his 120mm MG directly into the bridge section of a Salamis at point blank range and then maneuvers away as an explosion that originates fore of the bridge section, an area he didn't touch. Inconclusive. It's possible Quattro sensed danger with his burgeoning Newtype powers and avoided stick around as allies destroyed the Salamis.

At 0:36 Casval fires what appears to either be a Panzer or Sturmfaust. The weapon penetrates the turret of a twin barreled MPC at the mid-dorsal section of a Magellan-class. It appears to penetrate all the way down into the reactor as the ship touches off soon after. Destroyed by a dedicated anti-ship weapon.

Except just about everything is dependent on the Minovsky effect, whether it's for jamming, powering mobile suits, mega-particle cannons, etc.

Yes everything is dependent Minovsky effect, but you don't get Minovsky Jamming effects unless you purposefully do it.

That is what is required for a normal-sized MS to create a jamming effect. Simply shooting MPCs is not going to get it done. The reason you have to do this is you need to find a way to safely disperse the Minovsky Particles without also letting out dangerous levels of radiation from the MS' fusion reactor.

The guns in question are particle beams.

Also the two units in question aren't mobile suits, but rather mobile armors (which are much larger) and are basically built around their weapons.

Specifically These:

That thing in the middle above the cannon is a Zaku's head for scale reference,

The Gundam comes up to about this things mid-shin.

[Ford Prefect]

I come to this discussion late, but I am wondering on reading this. What kind of weapon are we talking about? A projectile weapon ro a beam weapon? If we're talking the latter I'm gonna call BS, unless the gundam either masses more than a Titan or can accelerate as fast as an ISD (or some combination thereof.) Recoil on a multi-megaton weapon is nasty (hell a warlord titan is unlikely to have multi-MT guns based on that mere fact alone.)

Edit: In case I wasn't clear enough, this point clearly needs far more explanation and probably analysis.

Neither the Big Zam or the Apsalus II are Gundams (they're not even mobile suits). The weapon in question is a beam cannon, and the events in question are the Apsalus III shooting mountains. The first time creates an enormous, persistent fireball and actually melts the shields of a couple of Gundams several kilometres away, and the second time the pilot takes out the Federation command vehicle by shooting through a mountain. As a weapon it was actually explicitly designed with the intention of shooting through mountains: it was intended to cripple or destroy Jaburo, which is a city sized armoured base built in and under a mountain. You can see it in action here, pardon the dub. While the Big Zam doesn't actually have anything quite as dramatic as a shot of a vast, glowing hole blasted out of an honest to God mountain, side-materials indicate that the Apsalus III was essentially equivalent, only for atmospheric operations.

[OmegaChief]

How exactly do you figure that Gundam doesn't come close? 500TJ is like 120 kilotons. Stuff like the Apsalus and Big Zam actually carry multi-megaton main guns, though they wouldn't figure into such an early time period. This is setting aside the fact that the Clans have frankly pitiful range, and that the Earth Sphere forces have shockingly superior ECM.

I come to this discussion late, but I am wondering on reading this. What kind of weapon are we talking about? A projectile weapon ro a beam weapon? If we're talking the latter I'm gonna call BS, unless the gundam either masses more than a Titan or can accelerate as fast as an ISD (or some combination thereof.) Recoil on a multi-megaton weapon is nasty (hell a warlord titan is unlikely to have multi-MT guns based on that mere fact alone.)

Edit: In case I wasn't clear enough, this point clearly needs far more explanation and probably analysis.

By this logic TIE fighters can't be weilding megaton range weapons either, as they don't mass the same as a titan or accelerate as fast as ISDs and must be crushed by the recoil of megaton range weapons.

[Ford Prefect]

Star Wars explicitly has magical technology which can be used to counter that can counter that sort of thing, Mobile Suit Gundam does not. I think it's probably more pertinent to ask 'how exactly does the Apsalus not melt?', but there we are.

[Batman]

Small problem-nobody ever claimed they DO. I can't recall anybody ever granting TIEs direct fire weapons with more than low double digit KT firepower and even if they HAD TIEs DO have the acceleration to compensate for that.

[Connor MacLeod]

By this logic TIE fighters can't be weilding megaton range weapons either, as they don't mass the same as a titan or accelerate as fast as ISDs and must be crushed by the recoil of megaton range weapons.

Yah, see the convenient thing is, star wars fighters accelerate at thousands of gees (more on repulsors, but basically as fast or faster than an ISD) and their guns max out at single digit kilotons, so you're entire line of argument is a red herring. Do some more research before shooting your mouth off, mmmkay?

[OmegaChief]

I apologise and withdraw my statment

[Connor MacLeod]

Neither the Big Zam or the Apsalus II are Gundams (they're not even mobile suits).

Conceded.

The weapon in question is a beam cannon, and the events in question are the Apsalus III shooting mountains. The first time creates an enormous, persistent fireball and actually melts the shields of a couple of Gundams several kilometres away, and the second time the pilot takes out the Federation command vehicle by shooting through a mountain.

See, I watched that vid, I'm not at all that trusting of the fireball in that case. It's obviously not a nuclear-type fireball due to various qualities (color and expansion are iffy in that case, but the real thing that bugs me is how you get this massive fireball like thing when after it vanishes we see its drilled a cylindical hole through the mountain. You would think blast and pressure effects would have done considerable damage on their own, meaning I find it hard to believe that the hole in the mountain would remain that cylindrical.)

It could be a plume of vaporized matter, but I'm not sure it would persist like that and the results would be pretty.. how shall we say.. insane. (I'll cover this below.)

If we go by fireball duration it should be at least 150-200 megatons, and might go up to 400-500 megatons or so by what we saw (a bit over a minute give or take a handful of seconds). Sounds impressive I know, but then you have to match that up with the hole drilled through the mountain (see below for problems) as well as the diameter of the fireball (~7-10 km diameter fireball for 150 MT, which would be nearly as tall or taller than the biggest mountain on Earth.. you get the idea) and blast radius effect (20 psi at 20 km.. that's alot of force and I'd be hard pressed believing any mechan wouldn't be knocked over by blast.) and so on.

As a weapon it was actually explicitly designed with the intention of shooting through mountains: it was intended to cripple or destroy Jaburo, which is a city sized armoured base built in and under a mountain. You can see it in action here, pardon the dub. While the Big Zam doesn't actually have anything quite as dramatic as a shot of a vast, glowing hole blasted out of an honest to God mountain, side-materials indicate that the Apsalus III was essentially equivalent, only for atmospheric operations.

Assuming the mountain way say, 2 km tall we might figure on a 1 km or so diametre, 1-2 km cylindrical hole blasted through.

Melting? No chance in hell. Nevermind that there would be millions of tons of molten lava flooding the surroundings and starting fires, it would be an output hitting 1-2 gigatons minimum Vaporizing that much rock would be worse, so I ain't going to even bother calcing that. And this assumes a 1 km diameter hole. There's no way that fireball was 1 km in diameter and the duration of a multi GT blast would greatly exceed the observed effects.

overall, I don't think this is easily calcable. At least not without me doing far more research into it than I care to. The duration of the fireball lasts well over a minute (which you could fudge somewhat due to scene shifts of course) but that isn't quite going to match up with the level of devastation drilling through that mountain (playing around with Luke Campell's peak intensity laser death ray calculator the least estimat eI could get was 20-30 megatons, but I am not entirely positive that would be a problem-free estimate either, especially since we're clearly dealing with a sustained beam weapon and the calculator I was playing with dealt with short term pulsed beam weapons..) It might be possible to technobabble a contrivance to make it all fit, but if you're doing that its probably just better to say it's technobabble to begin with.

I'll also add that the bit where the chick in pink standing above the gun before it fires (at the emitter point) tends to point to the beam weapon being non-standard as well - thermal and radiation effects from a particle beam in an atmoshpere would be.. nasty to say the least, and she clearly is neither burnt to a cinder nor lethally irradiated.

Hell recoil is going to be a side issue given all that, but still needs to be accounted for as well (EG how the energy is delievered, but given "magic beam weapon" seems to be a foregone conclusion one can postulate something exotic - a beam particle beam decaying into photons or some other energetic particle rather than a particle beam relying on KE for example.)

[Ford Prefect]

First of all, could you not do that? I have a massive aversion to people needlessly (and it is almost always needless) splitting posts into little chunks. And honestly, you're reading so much into this that it's mindblowing. I'm not even vaguely surprised that you mentioned Aina standing above the beam cannon and thus making the allusion that it's some sort of funky technobabble weapon which we can't conclude anything off, but what exactly is the problem with taking it at face value? A big laser beam blew up a mountain, and exhibited more or less appropriate side effects. I mean, yes, there are some funky things going on there, but why do you care? We could spend all day talking about things like waste heat and radiation and recoil and how a couple of Doms somehow managed to produce that much energy, but I don't see the point. What matters is that we can come to a reasonable conclusion which fits into the context of the setting, not one which comes up with an endless array of silly 'justifications'.

PS. You don't have to concede over a piece of minor trivia about a couple of shows you've never watched, dude.

[Connor MacLeod]

First of all, could you not do that? I have a massive aversion to people needlessly (and it is almost always needless) splitting posts into little chunks.

Too bad. Not my fault if you're a tl;dr type Seriously though, are you saying it owuld have been better if it were one solid chunk of paragraphs? I personally find that harder to read through, especially when you have to cross-link points from a lengthy reply.

And honestly, you're reading so much into this that it's mindblowing. I'm not even vaguely surprised that you mentioned Aina standing above the beam cannon and thus making the allusion that it's some sort of funky technobabble weapon which we can't conclude anything off, but what exactly is the problem with taking it at face value? A big laser beam blew up a mountain, and exhibited more or less appropriate side effects. I mean, yes, there are some funky things going on there, but why do you care? We could spend all day talking about things like waste heat and radiation and recoil and how a couple of Doms somehow managed to produce that much energy, but I don't see the point. What matters is that we can come to a reasonable conclusion which fits into the context of the setting, not one which comes up with an endless array of silly 'justifications'.

I'm guessing you didn't read all of my reply.

1.) I never said it HAS to be a funky technobabble beam weapon that we cannot conclude anything off of. I said that the complications in analysis make it HARD to calculate and it probably would be far simpler just to say "technobabble." There is a difference.

2.) How are we taking it "at face value?" I was taking it at face value, and that's the start of the problem. What you're saying is "why can't we just ignore the specifics and go with the intent?" Which is fine if you don't want to derive calculations from it, because otherwise this is like saying you can calculate phaser firepower from visuals because the NDF part doesn't matter Can't have it both ways, dude. At least not without working for it. (Analysis being difficult? OMGWHATASHOCK! )

3.) You want a relatively "simpler" approach? Go with the earlier non-mountain bits. Melting through or slicing holes through Gundams. The beam looks to be quite wide, it looks like it would have melted a sizable volume. Hell, you could calc the beam based on a rough estimate of how much ground it melted.

EX: eyeballing it with the chick above the beam emitter, it lokos to be say, 20 meters or so (could be alot larger, or could be smaller.. I'm not up on the mecha scalings in these things and I'm too lazy to bother with the "official" stats right now) If we assume the beam vaporizies a 20 m diameter cylinder to a dpeth of say, 5 meters.. it would take 7 TJ to melt that much (using Mike's "1 hour, one meter" BDZ variables from the SW firepower page) from a single shot, or nearly 2 kt minimum. There would still be issues, but far less, and it could go higher (beam diameter could be greater, or less, the beam could cut deeper into the ground, etc.) A single or double digit Kt/sec beam will also be no problem recoil wise, since looking at the official stats those things probably mass several thousand tons easily or may float on antigrav (I suppose you could argue the levitation device also acts as an anchor to counter momentum)

[Balrog]

Then you're a blatantly dishonest moron with an axe to grind. The frame of reference is the MS and the ships themselves, they are easily moving the body length of those ships in a single frame. A pre-refit (which these are since it's the Battle of Loum and they don't have the later launch catapults) is 288m long by 68.5m wide, and 61.3m tall.

At 0:34 we see Char traverse the distance between a Salamis and a Magellan (assuming the length of a Salamis, it's not it's more like 1.5-2 times that) in under a second going from a complete stop, that's almost 30G in and of itself. It is self-evident that the 'Official Stats' are wrong, much like when Mark Simmons (the guy they

Actually, no. At 0:32 we see Char, having spun around and slightly drifted away from the destroyed Salamis, activate his rockets and accelerate towards the Magellan. At 0:34 we see him spin around again and fire his weapon at the ship. Around 0:36-7 we see him land on the Magellan, then boost away as it blows up. So it was hardly "under a second," never mind that there were cuts in between each scene. Now, if you want to determine the actual distance between his starting and stopping point, rather than make up a number you think sounds nice, in order to prove your point, I can wait.

At 0:03 an MS-06C fires two rounds from a 280mm Bazooka, at 0:04 those rounds impact the dorsal mega particle cannon at the fore of the ship and the port dorsal twin AA guns ahead of the main bridge structure. Not destroyed.

0:10 an MS-06C maneuvers in close to set off the weapons magazine of a six tube missile launcher with 120mm fire at point blank range, at 0:13 the warheads cook off and an explosion occurs which obscures our line of sight. Inconclusive.

At 0:25 Char fires his 120mm MG directly into the bridge section of a Salamis at point blank range and then maneuvers away as an explosion that originates fore of the bridge section, an area he didn't touch. Inconclusive. It's possible Quattro sensed danger with his burgeoning Newtype powers and avoided stick around as allies destroyed the Salamis.

At 0:36 Casval fires what appears to either be a Panzer or Sturmfaust. The weapon penetrates the turret of a twin barreled MPC at the mid-dorsal section of a Magellan-class. It appears to penetrate all the way down into the reactor as the ship touches off soon after. Destroyed by a dedicated anti-ship weapon.

Rather than argue about each point, I'll concede and return to the main argument, that the Zakus were damaging/destroying the ships with weapons that simply do not compare to capital-scale BT weapons. A 120mm machine gun is something you'd more likely find on 'Mechs themselves, making Gundam ships rather vulnerable to BT fighters and DropShips.

That is what is required for a normal-sized MS to create a jamming effect. Simply shooting MPCs is not going to get it done. The reason you have to do this is you need to find a way to safely disperse the Minovsky Particles without also letting out dangerous levels of radiation from the MS' fusion reactor.

Very well. So Gundam is going to give up using Minovsky particles for jamming...just because? After all, the best they can do is 2000km for the big-ass space gun (300km under jamming conditions). It's not like they'll suddenly be fighting at light-second ranges with Gundam ships picking off the Clans like snipers. Which is what would really be needed to make a difference, considering BT ships (who already fight at ranges of hundreds of km) are traveling fast enough that they can close the gap quite quickly.

[PainRack]

Shouldn't the real issue be Clan logistics as well as massively inferior numbers?

Do the Clans suffer from the months of travel from Clan space required to ship in supplies and reinforcements?

The Clans are MASSIVELY outnumbered here. They have to start tossing in mechs to make any form of difference numbers wise. Come on, 50 odd warships and a count of several hundred fighters aren't going to make any difference here. Or are we no longer limiting forces to the Invading Clans bid?

I'm really too lazy to do a serious count of the potential forces assigned, but seriously, does anyone here believes the Clans aren't facing such crazy odds?

[Commander 598]

At 0:34 we see Char traverse the distance between a Salamis and a Magellan (assuming the length of a Salamis, it's not it's more like 1.5-2 times that) in under a second going from a complete stop, that's almost 30G in and of itself. It is self-evident that the 'Official Stats' are wrong, much like when Mark Simmons (the guy they

While I'm not going to argue that Schatten saying the official stats are bullshit is wrong, I will say that MS IGLOO is full of contradictory bullshit.

[Dark Hellion]

IGLOO is no worse than the rest of UC when it comes to goofy stuff. Zeta gundam has a ton of retardedly fast accelerations because the animators didn't realize the shear scale of an O'Neal colony. Double Zeta is arguably worse with Judau and the ZZ Gundam jumping something like 10-20km in just a few seconds, in atmosphere.

The "Official Stats" are total bullshit though because they are contradicted repeatedly by visuals, dialogue, and plot elements throughout UC. Simple examples include firing beyond maximum sensor ranges in ZZ, accelerations throughout the series, the power level of beam weaponry throughout the series, etc.

As Painrack states though (again, I am agreeing with Painrack on something, the apocalypse is near) this isn't very fair for the clans. Even if they get to go all out there are massive logistics issues posed by distance, there is the whole Minovsky effect thing shutting down their sensors at range and shutting off their ships electrical systems up close, the cheating nature of mega particle beam weaponry and the general loose nature of gundam physics.

For people who doubt the actual power of beam weaponry, watch Gundam Unicorn. While taking place in a later UC date it clearly demonstrates that beam weaponry puts out obscene amounts of energy for the tech level involved.

[Commander 598]

What I meant was that IGLOO Loum is directly contradictory to basically every other depiction of it...there's also the tank kicking in IGLOO 2...that was fucking terrible.

[PainRack]

As Painrack states though (again, I am agreeing with Painrack on something, the apocalypse is near) this isn't very fair for the clans. Even if they get to go all out there are massive logistics issues posed by distance, there is the whole Minovsky effect thing shutting down their sensors at range and shutting off their ships electrical systems up close, the cheating nature of mega particle beam weaponry and the general loose nature of gundam physics.

For people who doubt the actual power of beam weaponry, watch Gundam Unicorn. While taking place in a later UC date it clearly demonstrates that beam weaponry puts out obscene amounts of energy for the tech level involved.

Frankly, Minovsky particles must interact with reality in some form or other. There isn't any reason to assume why general shielding won't work just as well to protect against magic particle of the week.

Given that Clan Warships have no problem working with PPCs and etc, they really shouldn't be a major problem. As it is, tanks and even civilian vehicles have no problem working with a MHD fusion reactor, suggesting that Btech shielding is significantly compact effective.

The sensors are going to become bullshit, but given btech abilities with sneak suits and stealth armour, the Spector and Exterminator, this probably isn't going to be as much a problem on the ground as some has suggested. Space on the other hand......

We COULD also point out that exotic weaponery such as Magnetic Pulse warheads could seriously screw up Gundam fusion reactor, making insta boom.......

[Dark Hellion]

While they should be able to rig up shielding eventually, normal EMP hardening does not work against minovsky interference. IIRC a lot of civilian deaths in the OYW come about because Minovsky interference has totally devastated the power grids of Earth. So, while the electronics damaging effect is probably a one trick pony, its a damn good one because it will burn out the power supplies of the first clan wave completely and force them to rebuild and refit their entire armed forced, which is probably as good as a victory.

The sensor thing is a much bigger issue. Minovsky interference will cause the visual haze present during things like the Battle of Loum or Operation Maelstrom and mean that both sides have to get into the 100km slugging matches that UC ships and suits are designed to fight at. This takes away pretty much any range advantage of Btech.

The thing is that it will be a bloody war of annihilation and frankly UC gundam is just better at it than the Clans.

I think a more interesting match-up would be to have small squads or task forces attempting to complete operations against other universe defenders and vice versa. This would probably make for much more dynamic and fair interactions.

[Norade]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way? I mean haze or not, you'll know where things are, you can also aim for the spots where radar returns are the worst and try to track ships that way.

[Ford Prefect]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way?

No, you can't. It comes up quite frequently that Minovsky particles can reach such densities that they screw up more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum, creating situations where you can't even tell what something is by looking at it. A particularly tense moment in The 08th MS Team involves Karen Joshua and 'Shinigami' Sanders attempting to snipe some Zakus at ten kilometres. Minovsky interference with their sensors has totally smeared the image, meaning they can't actually be certain they're going to hit the Zekes without hitting their reactors. The interaction of mega-particle beam weapons and Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors is a nuclear explosion, and the Zakus are standing in the middle of a civilian village.

Minovsky particles can create an environment where even your eyes cannot be trusted. This is reason for such short range battles in the UC timelime. We've actually seen battleships and higher end mobile suits open fire at thousands of kilometres, on screen (well not actually on screen, if you follow) when Minovsky interference isn't so much an issue.

[Norade]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way?

No, you can't. It comes up quite frequently that Minovsky particles can reach such densities that they screw up more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum, creating situations where you can't even tell what something is by looking at it. A particularly tense moment in The 08th MS Team involves Karen Joshua and 'Shinigami' Sanders attempting to snipe some Zakus at ten kilometres. Minovsky interference with their sensors has totally smeared the image, meaning they can't actually be certain they're going to hit the Zekes without hitting their reactors. The interaction of mega-particle beam weapons and Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors is a nuclear explosion, and the Zakus are standing in the middle of a civilian village.

Minovsky particles can create an environment where even your eyes cannot be trusted. This is reason for such short range battles in the UC timelime. We've actually seen battleships and higher end mobile suits open fire at thousands of kilometres, on screen (well not actually on screen, if you follow) when Minovsky interference isn't so much an issue.

If your aim is to kill whatever is in that blob then does a poor resolution matter? For example if a battle is fought over an area of 100 miles and you're sitting back at around a light second looking in. They can't see you at all, but you can see them or at least the general haze of the area they're fighting in. My first question, what if any information can you gather about what's going on inside that bubble?

Next, what's stopping you from sending in weapons with either A a wide AoE and a preset non-electrical trigger mechanism, or B just spamming dumb weapons over a wide area and hoping for hits. Either way their sitting ducks so a low hit rate doesn't matter much to you. Or better yet, sit a probe as close as you can with it still being able to send information back, say using particles instead of laser pulses, and use its better resolution images to target with your main fleet sitting further away.

In the end I just don't see Minovsky particles as being much of an issue.