Leopard 2A7I vs RX-78-2 Gundam

[Zinegata]

Gundam Unicorn does not 'glorify' Zeon. That is a fact. Your friends may have told you otherwise, but they are simply wrong.

Keep telling yourself that your opinion is fact.

Again, their primary concern (which you ignored, as usual, with your I MUST WIN ways) is that the plot is all over the damn place. You mention some character going "You can't ressurect Zeon using a MacGuffin!" but that's seriously just petty lip service, in a series full of petty lip service to all kinds of ideology. You need to be really grasping at straws to think this itty bitty concession (which in-universe is just the stated opinion of one character) constitutes an overall theme for the series.

Meanwhile, the new reality of Gundam combat remains: Zeon can kill EF in drove because the plot says so, and only the Gundam can save them. So really, how is that not glorifying Zeon? The SS-equivalents can once again just shoot up the poor Allied soldiers and need third party Captain America to save them?

But nah, will you ever admit this? Nope. Expect more one-off examples and more petty lip service.

[Ford Prefect]

Meanwhile, the new reality of Gundam combat remains: Zeon can kill EF in drove because the plot says so, and only the Gundam can save them.

This is the actual reality.

What you don't get is that everything in Unicorn plays a wider thematic role. In the Battle of Torrington featured above, it's true that initially the Zekes have the advantage. They sweep their enemies before them - they have tenacity the Feddies don't. However, if you watch all the way to the end (which you probably won't) you'll see that the Federation just comes along and just kills them all anyway. Because, thematically, Zeke tenacity isn't relevant any more. Nam is over. The Federation won. No Gundam involved ... though the tide begins to turn about the time Banagher starts assaulting Zinnerman for lying about what he was fighting for. That's a deliberate narrative trick as part of the wider thematics of the show.

The Battle of Palau in episode 3 features Banagher not achieving much of anything with his Gundam while Londo Bell walks all over the Neo Zeon forces stationed there.

I don't understand why you think we're at war here. I'm just trying to correct your misapprehensions of the material you're trying to argue about. If this was a competition you'd have already lost, as the 'winner' in an internet debate is the person who is most widely believed by third parties. As it stands you have admitted you have never seen any of this material and are operating on pure hearsay. I have what amounts to eye witness testimony - I own the blu-rays.

However, it is not a competition. I don't want to 'win'. I'm just trying to inform you.

[Gunhead]

Yes; the problem is then that the weird ECM issues associated with the Gundamverse tend to make things more complicated for the ambusher. Communication and coordination are affected, and I imagine that it's hard to get a large, dispersed force to coordinate against a single fast-reacting target.

Although, as Stark's clip shows, it can still work. Then again, these look like pretty big clompy giant robots, as opposed to zippy agile ones...

Not really. It would be hard to maintain communication and coverage if trying to cover a moving formation, but this is more of a problem of available resources and planning. For fire and forget goodness, you can deploy IR-seeking missiles. If you're protecting a stationary installation, you have have lay down a ton of cable, but you'd have to do that anyway so it's not really a big deal. The ECM issues would affect the robits too, namely their ability to detect ground based vehicles and their ability to do standoff attacks against them. If the robit is flying say 100m above the ground, it can be seen tens of kilometers away and the observer can be hidden by camouflage making counter detection unlikely.

-Gunhead

[Connor MacLeod]

I'll just chime in as a hopefully neutral party, and point out that there is nothing insofar as I am aware of that constitutes a canon policy for gundam, or anything even implied, so constructing some sort of 'methodolgy' for analyzing it is pretty much up to the individual. Lets keep that in mind, because its easy to get into arguments when people aren't on the same wavelength method-wise.

Now, as far sa the whole 'evidence' thing... my policy is always to take it all on an even level, and deal with it indiviudally on a case by case basis. You don't analyze dialogue like you do visuals, but it doesn't mean that one is automatically superior to the other either, and you have to be careful. We know of plenty of cases in 'visuals' being errors (scaling errors, for example), but that also does not mean we arbitrarily assume all visuals are flawed. And individual sources matter less than the whole does, so you want to aim for repetition and consistency.. which is why I tend to embrace all evidence on the same level. It could conflict, or it may not depending on how you look at it, but the more evidence you have the better, and its generally NOT a good idea to dismiss something whether you like or dislike it. When it comes to 'subs/dubs' stuff in translated anime, I'm also less inclined to read too deeply into visuals because... there's always room for error there. Again you don't assume its flawed and disregard it, but its something to keep in mind.

now, as far as the Gundam Wiki goes... I'm VERY leery of wikis in general. There's wikis Ive seen that willingly and deliberately incorporate fanfic elements (the non-LExicanum 40K wiki is one) and that can dilute the value of the evidence. Besides which I've found myself disagreeing quite strongly with the interpretations of the wiki vs the series, and when you get down to it all analysis in situations like this (40k, Gundam, etc.) pretty much boils down to 'interpretations.' Which is why you have to look at the big picture and go on a case by case basis, because modification of theories/conclusions is invariably required.


Now, that I've gotten all that long-winded pontificating out of the way. Beam weapons. We know there are all sorts and kinds. They come in different shapes and sizes (Both carried by mobile suits and mounted on starships) and vary in power. In Zeta we had the Zeta Gundam, the Mark 2 (with G-Defenser upgrade), and the various Titan/Axis/AEUG suits of similar level all pulverizing asteroids tens of metres in diameter (and in the case of the Mark 2 with G-defenser, an asteroid that may have been 50-100m in diameter and 100-200 m wide.) which is easily single to double digit GJ per shot at least, to hundreds of GJ (or TJ) on the far end. More high end stuff like the bigger mobile armours (Stardust Memory and MS 08th Team coming to mind most notably) tend to also fit into the 'high GJ/low TJ' range as I've calced it, and of course beam sabers on low power can melt/vape a shit ton of snow and make an impromptu steam bath (hunndreds of MJ easily.) My own playing around with the numbers presented (mass ratios, accelerations/thrusts, masses, etc.) has further poitned to mobile suits having gigawatt level power outputs rather than megawatt, so in those cases I'm less inclined to read too deeply into the 'spinoff' literature as absolutes (That doesn't mean it has to be disregarded mind. Variable settings could easily explain that and there's no reason to assume all beam weaponry operates at max power/effect all the time.)

AS far as how Mega particle beams work. The wiki description (which I gather is spinoff literature) describes it basically as some sort of weaponized rocket thrust type thing or something analogous to a Casaba Howitzer/bomb pumped laser in gun form. Basically, some sort of reaction is undergone by particles to form the mega particles, which seems to generate energy and provide the velocity for the beam. The rifles use I-fields (or whatever those forcefields are) to protect the gun and - I suspect - focus/direct the yield efficiently. If that is how ti works (and its not something like a covnentional particle beam, eg using Magnets or somethign similar to accelerate.) there is LOTS of room for variation in how the beams work and their effects that can mesh with the differences in barrel length and size, or could incorporate factors like differences in the I-field containment (efficiency, size, etc.), the 'size' of the reaction generating the particles (or violence) which could affect the 'mass' of the particle shot (either in size of particles or number) and the velocity (which is more than likely varaible, so we can adjust ti to accept literally any speed we might see in visuals OR spinoff literature, it would just mean that they trade speed for mass or accept increased recoil, which could have drawbacks all its own.) Different designs or parameters of beam weapons could even alter its effects on the target (penetration, range, delivery of energy, etc.) And higher velocity (or energy) is not neccesariyl a good thing.

Basically, as I see it, there's lots of wiggle room that can accomdoate multiple interpretations (and approaches.) I certainly wouldn't buy that all beam weapons travel at the same speed (they never did when I've tried clocking them.) the same way the projectile weapons never travelled at the same velocities (which has been discussed ad nauseum). Its not neccearily a contradiction or flawed evidence ro anything like that, either - it could just be variations in ammo, weapon design, settings, or whatever - one should seek to explain rather than throw out evidence whenever possible, because of that 'consistency' thing. Consistency matters.

Second tier pontificating done.

Edit: Also another factor to consider is minovsky particles in the enviroment. We're used to thinking of them impacting detection and communcations and EW and shit, but we know it can affect things physically as well. It could very well be that in a minovsky-heavy enviorment (which does happen periodically) over long distances, you can get beam weapons, missiles/projectiles, etc 'degraded' by travelling through kilometres of minovsky stuffs. It would be analogous to the way the atmosphere can affect the performance of beam weapons and projectiles - over short distances it may not be noticable, but it could be significant over longer distances. And it could impact it in different ways - loss of energy, diffusion/deflection of the beams, etc.

[Connor MacLeod]

Edit: Its also quite possible that velocity has little or no bearing on the destructiveness of mega particles (I forgot about that degeneracy bit. It could mean they're fired and then decay into some other form inside the target - they could release EM radiation, other particles (charged or otherwise) or who knows what, and damage would be determined simply by the quantity of particles fired.

Or it could even be a matter of both. You could balance the kinetic energy (and hence velocity) with the decay of the mega particles, again there may be advantages and tradeoffs in various ways iwth both (and it could affect how the beams damage the target as well.)

[Stark]

In bizarro land is providing actual evidence for trends somehow crazy or lying whereas simply making authoritative statements constantly while never providing any evidence ever is the preferred method of discussion?

Anyway, since beam SMGs are only seen in Unicorn, something he refuses to watch while describing in detail, his misapprehensions regarding their operation are not surprising. The joke is, of course, that he doesn't even disagree with me that there are a range of beam weapons for a range of roles (and thus implicitly these roles can change over time). He just hates me personally so has to disagree. I could post a clip of Byarlant fully penetrating and destroying an old suit while its fire literally pings off a newer, more armoured suit, and he'd probably declare himself the correct winner.

But I'm tired of providing evidence in an argument with someone who never provides any but his own authority, which he admits is based on hearsay.

CHAR EXPY lol. I heard from my mates etc etc

Shit I just realised this whole thing about 'velocity' may exist because I said 'SMG' and he has literally no idea what I'm talking about and assumes it must be like a beam gun firing pistol beams?! I certainly don't note any relationship between speed of projectile and power - as I already said, Hyper Mega Particle Launcher beams travel at a similar speed.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm just offering my own input into the discussion. Alot of what is being argued over is largely a point of view issue anyhow, which evidence is preferred, how/why it is measured, etc. I don't think its wrong to argue they could be near-lightspeed, but I don't think its something we really see in the visual evidence either (There's at least a few calcable instances, or estimable ones, and it would be much muhc lower than 'near-c'.) Like I said, alot of it comes down to how you figure mega-particle cannons work, and how velocity is generated/fits into that. I mean if Mega particle weaponry don't really need KE to be damaging, then velocity is only important insofar as things like accuracy goes, and a faster beam means you can shoot fewer particles (or if you shoot them faster you might get higher recoil. Even with beam weapons and shit this can be a non-trivial issue.)

IIRC there was even a comment in Mobile suit Gundam when it came to defense against beams - basically you dodged there it was aimed rather than dodging the beam itself (which suggests the beam perhaps lasts a second or less, which would fit iwth what I remember from the visual evidence too) and is a big reason why Newtypes were so effective at evading incoming fire - they had extra senses helping them anticipate aimpoints and such.

Edit: Honestly given the evidence I've seen theres LOTS of variables to pla around with. I wasn't being vague mentioning the minovsky particle thing, because that cna have a VERY adverse effect on an enviroment and might dictate all sorts of changes in weapon performance to compensate (for example) - variations in beam performance could be attributed to that, or it may even just contribute in conjunction with other factors (angle, the way a target is armoured/designed, since IIRC mobile suits are pretty modular by nature, etc.)

[Stark]

Remember when Curtis defined obviously not light speed trbolasers as light speed ? :v

I'm not even going to entertain an idea that flies in the face of evidence unless some is provided to support it. 'I read it in an encyclopedia' doesn't count. I might as well say beams travelled under the ground and ask you to disprove it. Chitty doesn't want to defend it so why should you?

Anyway, even beam sabers need force and time to burn through things. You could say that they're I-field mediated, but beam weapons also demonstrate impact force depending on type and target. Since I just posted an image of a beam flowing like water, I'd like to know how light speed water works.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well its interesting you bring up turbolasers as an example, because depending on how you interpret the evidence there was certian obvious factors that could corroborate that. You could either view them as VFX error (some did) or it could be non-physical beam properties (like the drop in gravity.) The problem was while there was some examples that corroborated that interpretation there were lots of others that didn't, so it was sort of stuck half and half 'evidence' wise. You could argue it one way and argue it another and both were perfectly valid.
Ultimately that was part of the problem of a 'single unified theory' of what glowy flying bolts in Star Wars was - you couldn't really fit every example into one single definition (even with 'projectiles' it could get pretty weird. some sort of guided, self-adaptive antigrav subsonic bullet....) You could pretend it could fit multiple definitions and that would work.

Thats also why its a matter of 'interpretation' as far as apporach goes because its a simple fact not everyone is going to view evidence the same way. And those differences/misunderstandings can bog a discussion down as people argue over things baesd on their approach (which pretty much sums up Vs debating in my opinion) - and its something I have out of habit preferred to bypass if at all possible. Treating all evidence as equal is tedious, but it can take out alot of the argument (hopefully.)

For example, It really doesnt matter WRT origins of Unicorn as far as writer and stuff goes, his political leanings, or whatever. Thats all out of universe stuff that you don't apply in universe. Unicorn is a glimpse into the UC gundam universe just as valid as every other UC series is and has to be taken as such.

And lets face it, Gundam is pretty diverse when it comes to source material (There's what, novels, manga, anime, movies, games, models, etc.) and with the absence of canon or anything structural like that (which is not a disadvantage in and of itself) it is pretty much a 'free for all' when it comes to dealing with it. Gotta start somewhere. And if there's plenty of wiggle room and its not difficult to fit in (which velocity really isn't, at least as far as I am aware for mega particle weapons and how they might work) we can just say 'its variable' and move on from there.

Plus, its pretty much a given Gundamverse combat is pretty diverse and complex by nature (eg its not just a matter of DEPLETE THE HP SHIELDS like some strategy game) so it can be pretty complex to figure out all these things and sometimes confusing.

[Stark]

Right, and saying beam weapons are usually or even often light speed when there's 30 years of animated tv show that say they aren't, that's not reconciling evidence or building compromise or interpretation; that's taking a wiki or encyclopedia and throwing out the actual show.

I'm happy to make a video showing that beam weapons across every UC show are not light speed. There's no point, because you'll just say 'harmonize' some more.

Whatever says they're light speed is wrong until I actually see evidence.

[Connor MacLeod]

*shrug* thats the problem with interpreting evidnece in a nutshell, like I said. I know you can produce that evidence, and I know its got standing, but again if there's no canon policy what makes it any better or worse than any other evidence? That's pretty much a 'personal approach' sort of thing. I can certainly point out cases where the evidence is contradictory too (powerplants measured in thousands of kilowatts, yet tank-mass mobile suits can move at around a gee or more acceleration steadily, which should require far more power.) and that can be justification but.. I'm not sure that 'justifies' my approach simply because I think it makes sense to me.

Thats part of the problem alot of SW (and other fictional franchise) analysis falls into - it assumes there must be ONE WAY to approach things and that all other approaches are wrong. But people can't AGREE always on what that approach was (ST vs SW always fell into this problem - how do we handle visuals and how we handle dialogue was a point of contention for years) so without something else arbitrating that, it can lead to alot of tedious arguing (or at least, its tedious to me. I prefer discussing the stuff and how it might or might not work in different ways.)

[Stark]

Do you see any evidence for chittys position? At all? Anywhere?

Why do you imagine it exists? Why should I give a fuck about a literally baseless statement, and why do you put such statements implicitly on the same level as the show and then condemn me as narrow minded for not uncritically accepting something broadly contradictory based on nothing?

[Connor MacLeod]

Honestly, no? And I'll be blunt, I don't know if there is any evidence for 'near-c' beams either, so if he can produce something other than the wiki ereference (quote or whatever) there's a problem there. Insofar as that goes its a burden of proof thing and he needs to address that.

That said, its my experience (and by my own approach to it) to hedge my bets. Saying that 'near-c beams' can exist costs me nothing, because saying they exist doesn't mean they're commmon. And if there is the bulk of evidence saying they aren't, well then they might exist but they're either very specialized, uncommon, experimantal, or whatever unless there is evidence to provide more context.. blah blah.

You clearly have a different approach to analyzing the stuff, and thats entirely up to you and I can't judge it right or wrong either. That's all there really is to it.

And to be perfectly blunt I could ask you 'is there only one way to interpret evidence' but that would be a frankly silly thing for me to ask because I know better. you're one of the more relative-thinking people I know.

[Stark]

My 'approach' to people making baseless statements about things that are wrong on their face is to reject them, yes. I've no doubt that there could indeed be some comic with light speed beam weapons, but not only am I not going to look for them I'm not going to imagine them into existence. Anyway this is a side issue apparently only bought about by Zinegata talking about beam SMGs from a position of total ignorance, so who even cares?

[Connor MacLeod]

Yeah it is a side issue. You bring a good point in some actual evidence (ratehr than a reference) needs to be brought forth on this (and I should have admitted that earlier, actually) because the context at this point is pretty much vague, if it even exists. I've only heard about it on a wiki, I dont know where it sources from, and that needs to pretty much be established. And even if it does it doesn't automatically override the evidence at all. But again I reiterate this is the problem with different approaches to evidence. We think about these things different ways, and its easy to slip into the habit of thinking of it your way without realizing it (which I pretty much did with my 'we treat all evidence equally'. My way is no better than anyone else's, and trying to present it as such simply leads to problems.)

Does me admtting you have a point mean I'm an official member of the Stark Fan Boy Brigade? (and yes thats me trying to defuse tension by making a joke, which will probably fail. LOL)

[Stark]

The idea of force is more interesting because at times we see some weapons

[Connor MacLeod]

PS anyone saying beam weapons fire at near light speed is blind. Anyone who says 'beam weapons' as a homogenous group are 'capital ship level' is an idiot who probably uses a single poorly informed piece of dialog as a fact.

Great, glad to see that you ignored my entire conversation where I said there were nuances to Gundam beam weapons.

Fuck off then, troll. I thought you finally grew up.[/quote]

REading this again... I don't think he directed this specifically at you or anything you said, since he was discussing with chitoryu, and there is no more reason for you to go flying off the handle than there is for me, since his argument could very well be leveled at me (since by his definition I am blind because I can allow for the possibility of near-c weapons IN SOME sort of context, if the evidence bears it out and depending on the circumstances.) Amazingly, its possible for two people to have divergent opinions and still have amicable (if heated) discussons.

In other words, could you PLEASE try not to take everything stark says in automatically the wrong way? Given what you said to Vendetta ther really doesn't seem to be any reason to be arguing with Stark anyhow and its largely a burden of proof issue at this point anyways.

Yeah, I haven't. It's a stupid show written by a Japan ultra-nationalist; which is obviously why you keep trolling it on people because you know how awful it really is - when we're primarily talking about stuff from the original series and Zeta.

Again this is a bad approach to take if you're trying to do 'in universe' analysis. Again how you choose to interpret fiction is up to you, but in my experience mixing up 'in univeres' and 'out universe' interchangably leaves you open to accusations of cherrypicking unless you have a REALLY good framework of rules in place to dictate when and when it is appropriate. Author's intent or mindset (politics or whatever) have no business influencing the analysis itself, because that frankly is bias. Hate the guy if you want, but don't transfer that feeling over to the work itself.

[Connor MacLeod]

The idea of force is more interesting because at times we see some weapons

I think something got cut off here

[Stark]

Oh. Sometimes weapons are shown physically lifting or deforming suits, so maybe density of particle is related to ammo or something. Some weapons flow like water, others like lightning, some even sort of 'spin down' instead of sharply ceasing.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm reminded of the I-fields both Kou and Gato had in their mobile suits/armour at the end of STardust memory. They kept trading hits with beam weapons and visibly knocking each otehr back quite visibly. considerable impact behind each shot (although how much energy that translates to, of course, depends on beam velocity lol)

I also noted with all those astroid destructions in zeta - very much explosive iwth little overpenetration, unlike the mobile suits where you often saw beam weapons overpenetrating (explosive effects seemed more due to setting off volatiles or reactor inside suit or something like that - again indication that precision fire matters alot with a suit's ability to damage a target, whether its a capital ship or another suit or some other target.)

There's also the fact suits sometimes 'explode' stuff, and sometimes only melt/burn it (you mentioned one example of that from Unicorn IIRC). I vaguely recall they can even vary according to duration too.

something that also struck out at me - beam sabers can in some models of suit be used as ranged ewapons as well as melee (Depending on configuration) and there are some obvious differences between how sabers and beam weapons might work too (and in the spinoff stuff I remember reading supposedly the beam saber is a forcefield confined plasma rather than a mass of particles at speed. How they may rlate or not relate can again be speculated on.)

[Zinegata]

REading this again... I don't think he directed this specifically at you or anything you said,

I'm the one who said beam weapons were likely at least capital-ship level, otherwise they wouldn't make sense. They were directed at me.

Note though: I wasn't saying that beams were not variable in power. My argument then was that they probably had a high lower limit in power - still at least "capital ship level"; otherwise it'd be silly to deploy them. Why deploy a really weak particle beam weapon when you had projectile weapons?

Chitty found a good reason why they would still be good even at non-capital ship level (particle beam should still be faster than projectiles, hence ore accurate), so in that sense he was right.

Again this is a bad approach to take if you're trying to do 'in universe' analysis.

Unicorn is literally six episodes (or is 7 now?) worth of material, covering a very specific time frame. It's not a lot of material to miss.

This is why I keep referring to the VSBR - because that has a much more comprehensive explanation of the nuances in beam rifle outputs. I did look through the gun examples in Unicorn Stark kept mentioning, but in reality they're basically human-level arms scaled up to Mobile Suit level without real explanation. They're basically like the beam sabre also being turned into beam axes or beam polearms - cool, but doesn't really explain the core mechanics.

In case you missed it, the VSBR is a special beam rifle that has two firing modes:

1) A high-velocity firing mode, wherein the Minovsky mega-particles are fired at such speed that they can punch through even hitherto immune "I-field" shielding.

2) A low-velocity "raw damage" firing mode, which fires the mega-particles at a lower velocity.

Which does show that the power of a beam may have to do a lot more with the velocity at which it throws the mega particles. This actually jives very well with current beam rifle mechanics.

(This will be a bit long, so bear with me)

Originally, beam weapons were powered directly from a Minovsky reactor. Minovsky particles were taken out of the reactor, fused into mega particles, and then fired at the enemy. This took a lot of energy (and a pretty big Minovsky reactor pumping out a lot of particles), which meant that it was a capital ship only weapon.

The "breakthrough" in beam rifle miniaturization came when the Federation came up with the idea of storing mega-particles in an "e-cap". So now, a beam rifle can have enough mega-particles to fire a dozen or so shots. Later refinements would allow replaceable e-caps, so a Mobile Suit can theoretically keep firing forever as long as it brough enough reloads (coincidentally, e-caps seem much smaller than projectile magazines, which is why I said that's another advantage of the beam gun).

However, one long-standing "mystery" in the beam rifle equation is that most early Mobile Suits apparently lacked enough power to actually "fire" a beam rifle. The RX-78-2 can fire a beam rifle, but the Zaku II can't pick up the Gundam's beam rifle and fire it. Even the GM (mass-produced version of the Gundam) couldn't fire a full beam rifle; only the weaker beam spray gun that Chitty mentioned. That didn't seem to make sense - why can't you just store the energy to fire the rifle along with the e-cap?

Talking about how particle beams work in real life with Chitty made me realize the answer to this mystery - the e-cap stores mega-particles only. To actually accelerate these particles to a damaging high-speed velocity, you still need energy from the Mobile Suit's reactor. The Gundam has a reactor powerful enough to power this particle acceleration. The GM has a reactor strong enough for only limited particle acceleration - hence its low-ranged beam spray gun. The Zaku II doesn't have enough power to do any acceleration at all.

============

Also, some notes on your questions...

I'm reminded of the I-fields both Kou and Gato had in their mobile suits/armour at the end of STardust memory. They kept trading hits with beam weapons and visibly knocking each otehr back quite visibly. considerable impact behind each shot (although how much energy that translates to, of course, depends on beam velocity lol)

Yup, that's consistent. Back in 0083 the beams simply don't have the velocity to punch through the I-field, but impart enough force for a "push back". A couple of decades later, the beams can have a high enough velocity to punch through the I-field entirely.

That said, I still don't have an explanation for the Jegan+Shield pic Stark posted earlier. As he noted, the machine's shield took a hit and it basically came off unscathe. I don't think that can happen even with very weak particle beams (there should still be some damage due to heat/kinetic energy); more likely some anti-beam unobtanium is at work.

I also noted with all those astroid destructions in zeta - very much explosive iwth little overpenetration, unlike the mobile suits where you often saw beam weapons overpenetrating (explosive effects seemed more due to setting off volatiles or reactor inside suit or something like that - again indication that precision fire matters alot with a suit's ability to damage a target, whether its a capital ship or another suit or some other target.)

I don't really have good calcs for the asteroids, but I can comment on the Mobile Suit exploding bit.

The Minovsky-Fusion reactor is supposed to be highly stable thanks to a weak I-field around the reaction chamber. If the Mobile Suit is taken out due to normal battle damage, then the fusion reactor should simply shut down without going KABOOM.

However, a beam rifle hit apparently can punch through this weak I-field, and this sudden collapse of I-field integrity causes a runaway chain reaction of sorts to cause the Mobile Sui to blow up spectacularly. The same applies to battleships, who essentially use the same fusion reactor tech.

There's also the fact suits sometimes 'explode' stuff, and sometimes only melt/burn it (you mentioned one example of that from Unicorn IIRC). I vaguely recall they can even vary according to duration too.

Burning happens more rarely, but it does happen. About a quarter of the original RX-78-2 is melted off during its last engagement after a direct beam hit. (Melting off an arm and a leg)

something that also struck out at me - beam sabers can in some models of suit be used as ranged ewapons as well as melee (Depending on configuration) and there are some obvious differences between how sabers and beam weapons might work too (and in the spinoff stuff I remember reading supposedly the beam saber is a forcefield confined plasma rather than a mass of particles at speed. How they may rlate or not relate can again be speculated on.)

Correct. Beam sabres are basically super-heated plasma contained within an I-field. The I-field itself does no damage (it's not composed of fused mega-particles, nor is it being stabbed at a high enough velocity), but matter simply passes through the I-field to get cooked by the super-heated plasma within.

Later on (around the same time the VSBR was developed), "Beam Shields" are developed which combine an I-field with a layer of super-heated plasma in between. This provides all-around protection - the I-field bounces off most beam shots, while the plasma destroys any solid munitions. They are explicitly outgrowths of the beam sabre technology, to the point that some battleship-sized beam shields can be converted into a giant beam sabre for "Drive me closer! I wanna hit them with my GIANT LASER SWORD" action.

[Zinegata]

BTW, might as well link the GIANT LASER SWORD ramming action.



Shield-to-sword conversion happens around 2 minutes in.

[Zinegata]

Sorry, missed this:

Edit: Also another factor to consider is minovsky particles in the enviroment. We're used to thinking of them impacting detection and communcations and EW and shit, but we know it can affect things physically as well. It could very well be that in a minovsky-heavy enviorment (which does happen periodically) over long distances, you can get beam weapons, missiles/projectiles, etc 'degraded' by travelling through kilometres of minovsky stuffs. It would be analogous to the way the atmosphere can affect the performance of beam weapons and projectiles - over short distances it may not be noticable, but it could be significant over longer distances. And it could impact it in different ways - loss of energy, diffusion/deflection of the beams, etc.

The answer, yes. Unfortunately, the video clips for the original series (along with most of F91, I really wanted to post a vid of the VSBR punching through an I-field) aren't available on YouTube (or I'm just bad at looking).

But the original series does show the above, namely...

During the Battle of Solomon (a massive space battle), the Federation has a bunch of missile boats launch "anti-beam cloud" missiles prior to launching their attack. These missiles seem to disperse some kinds of particles, which seems to degrade beam performance.

There were also a couple of underwater battles, but I don't recall any explicit mention of degraded beam capability

So there are definitely ways to interfering with beam weapon effectiveness outside of I-fields. It can be even be sealed in a can and opened when needed .

[Generalissimo]

- 120 mm cannon up to Muv-Luv firepower standards (meaning it should be able to penetrate Gundarium)

It really should be pointed out that the Zaku II main weapon is a 120mm cannon and it's been shown to do fuck all against a Gundam but scuff the pain a little. So there is no guarantee that it will penetrate Gundariam.

Shiro Amada, who is not a newtype, is capable of dodging Zaku rounds post firing.

Moreover not implied even slightly that he can dodge bullets like Max Payne.
Could imply Zuku rounds can be dodged an ordinary human at normal speeds on foot.

[Simon_Jester]

Or, at least from the frames I'm seeing, it could imply that the guy was already sidestepping before the giant-robot pilot pulled the trigger on that cannon, having anticipated the shot.


Side note on metallic shields absorbing energy weapon fire without obvious damage: this is actually very possible, if the material in question has extremely good thermal properties and isn't so good at blocking radiation that all the energy is dissipated into the top layer of material. You could get a situation where, say, roughly a cubic meter of armor material is heated to a dull red heat by the beam, with only the most superficial damage if any- and then that armor material steadily conducts its heat away to the rest of the surface of the shield, has it radiate/convect away into the air and so on, and when the smoke clears there is no evidence that the plate took a significant hit.

Meanwhile, shooting the same plate with 3-4 times the beam intensity could be enough to cause permanent scarring/cratering/melting.