Gundam Quantification Project

[Dark Hellion]

In many ways, I have wanted to start this thread for years, but haven't had the guts until now. The idea of this is two-fold, an attempt to quantify and qualify the numerous technologies and fighting machines of the Gundam UC century time line and to generate an overall picture of their technology level.

Firstly, I am going to lay out some basic assumptions that I will be making to attempt to accomplish this.

1) I will be admitting that the medium is animation that was largely drawn by hand. Because of this, not all scaling will be correct. All calculations based upon sizes themselves will have some inherent error. Distances may or may not be distorted as such, and so all calcs will be general numbers and few hard numbers will be generated.

2) Despite the above flaw, the animation is still the primary medium. There exist stats in numeric form but these often are nonsensical or wildly disagree with the show. Despite this, certain statistics will be considered valid, those that appear repeatedly and bear approximate confirmation, such as mobile suit height, the size of certain vehicles, or certain ammunition numbers.

While the first two assumption mean that the numbers are generally only approximations, they allow for us to work with a medium that otherwise could produce exceedingly diverse numbers without having to throw out too many as outliers.

3) The goals of quantification and rationalization will be separated between the first and second goal. The first tasks goal is simply the acquisition of numbers, without regard to the why, simply that the numbers exist. The second tasks goal is to attempt to formulate theories that explain these numbers, and to apply them to the modern world.

4) Full Suspension of Disbelief will be in effect at all times. The mechanical problems of mecha will not be considered if the show produces conclusions that contradict them. We know that the show has altered laws of physics similar to SW, so we will assume that what happens in the show will happen in real life, just as we assume that the force and hyperspace exist for SW debates.

5) Because of the inconsistent nature of the medium itself, the goal of the first task is primarily to come up with high-ends which we can say "it isn't more powerful than x" because in any animation ludicrous low-ends tend to exist in far higher quantities that other mediums.

At first, I will be describing scenes that happen in shows. I have all of UC gundam in various video formats, but I will admit my incapability at screen capture, and thus I will be required to lay out the scene verbally, and then give numbers and show calculations. This will be a learning process for me. I will be refining this thread repeatably, most likely daily, and will attempt to add at least one piece of major content per week. Help will be appreciated, but calcs that are not my own will be labeled as such, because methodology may differ.

Posts about the physical impossibility of some feat should be avoided unless said feat requires extra-ordinary rationalization. Mecha bashing of any type should not go in this thread. I would like this to be a technical discussion, free of most flames.

This will be a grand process, and I hope that when it is accomplished we are capable of utilizing gundam in a debate manner that we were previously incapable.

I also will be busy, and thus my contribution probably will be sporadic at first, as I have hundreds of hours of video that I will have to go through for this. Thus I will probably focus on specific capabilities at specific times instead of a broad approach. As various abilities are generated, the approach will broaden and the second task will start to come into play.

If you do post your own evidence, please post the Series, Episode, and approximate time of the scene as well as the 5 w's.

Thank you all, and welcome to the journey.

[Dark Hellion]

Feeling bad about not providing anything, I will start with one quick calc from the 1st episode of the original 1979 gundam. At approximately 15 minutes we see a shell from a Zaku's 105 mm machine cannon impact against an embankment. After the impact (which appears to be primarily some form of HE) we are left with a crater in the embankment. This crater appears to be between 30 and 40 feet across, and 6 to 12 feet deep. From this we can tell it has no more than a total energy of .2 tons (the calculator on this site won't go smaller, so I will figure it out tomorrow to a better degree). From what I could find this is the cratering similar to high explosive artillery shells of similar size, if not slightly more.

From this we can conclude that at high-end the Zaku's machine cannon is no weaker than a 105mm HE shell of modern origin.

[Icehawk]

Zaku machine cannons are 120mm actually.

[Dark Hellion]

I believe they have both a 120mm and a 105 mm machine gun. You may be right though. I believe they switched from the 120mm earlier in the war to a 105mm later, as nothing the 120mm killed the 105mm couldn't and the 105mm had more ammunition and better refire. I will have to locate a source for that.

As such, I should make the addendum to the above that the shell may be a 120mm instead of a 105. However, the fact remains that the crater is still quite large compared to what I could find for 105 and 150 mm artillery on google.

[SAMAS]

It was 120mm normally, and a different 90mm version seen in 0080 and 0083.

[SWPIGWANG]

MS-05 Old Zaku: 105mm Machinegun
MS-06s Zaku II: 120mm Machinegun
MS-06FZ+ Zaku II: 90mm Machinegun (distinct design that looks like a assault rifle as opposed to having a ammo tray)

[VF5SS]

Man, I'm glad you guys can differentiate between Zaku machine guns.

I don't know if you guys are interested in the model kit manuals, but all of the Perfect Grade kits come with extensive technical details on each Mobile Suit. This includes some graphs of things like thrust performance, weight distribution, etc.

[Dark Hellion]

Most of the performance stats don't match the show. Zeta gundam is full of lots of really high G thrusts during the various battles around space colonies that blow their thrust performances away. Its part of the problem in debating gundam, numerical stats exist but they are almost completely off the performance we see in the show. Such as the Dooben Wolf and Dreissen having weapons that literally outrange their sensors by more that 2 to 1, or the MS IGLOO battle of Loum with 150km ranges on ships and several km between ships that Zakus can cover in seconds.

The primary point of this thread is that most people took those stats at face value, but watching the canon the stats are very far off and thus calculation needs to be performed to give some ranges of stats in order to place gundam in any kind of versus debate.