Zeon as a power in the Battletech Universe

[Norade]

Except that even with the less than perfect computer he probably did little aside from have the computer predict where to fire and then order it to do so.

Uh... prove it? Do you know how guns are laid with Mobile Suits?

I'll watch the scene in question again tomorrow and see what controls we see him use while he calculates the shot.

Had he made the shot manually, or lined that shot up under fire, it would show actual pilot skill, as it was he had time and his own life wasn't at risk so it was hardly a difficult shot.

Shooting guy you can't even see = not hard.

Shooting stationary giant mech 20m away = missing acceptable.

Got it.

Except that Gundam also does that, they just also fire piss weak rounds that don't do anything more than kick up dust on buildings. Using your example would also be like trying to say that because there were snipers in Vietnam all US soldiers are crack shots, except in your case those snipers still missed with their first shot.

Put it this way, in modern fighter combat which matters more, his skill or his aircraft's radar and his munitions ability to track and hit a target?

Define 'modern fighter combat' and we can talk about whether you have a point or if you're just being a dickhead.

Current day fighter combat. Which matters more, your aircraft, its computer control and avionics package, and its weapons systems, or your training and overall skill? Assuming you're skilled enough to operate the aircraft at an acceptable level, I would have to say the plane and the weapons it carriers matter far more than pilot skill.

Put it this way, in modern fighter combat which maters more, his skill or his aircraft's radar and his munitions ability to track and hit a target?

What matters is who flies home and who makes a smoking crater in the floor.

No shit. Except that I was taking issue with Stark trying to claim that two shots make up for the horrible accuracy we see in Gundam and I was trying to provide an explanation for why that might be the case.

[PainRack]

If you don't like what FASA wrote trying to blame it on FanPro and Catalyst Games Labs (mostly the same people) makes you look like a whiny bitch. FanPro and Catalyst are in allmost all cases continuing things lade down by FASA. This is a good example. Your bitching about something that started in (being conservative hear) the FASA published Aerotech 2 (most likely the origonal 80s Aerotech 1).

If the effective range of Battletech weapons is so short explain why a fighter a few meters off the deck has much larger effective ranges than a mech does.

The effective ranges of mechs in the standard ground game are assuming the mech is dodging about inside of the hex (there are various bonuses for shooting at a mech that's actually standing still: fallen mechs and standing still). If a mech stands still and deliberately takes aim with a single arm, effective range is much higher.

lololololol.

Ok, its clear I was referring ENTIRELY to the "ranges are compressed for gameplay" statement, which has led many players to simply say that Mech combat take place at much longer ranges in the BTECH universe than that seen in the game...... even though precious little sources deal with this.

As for the challenges you made, pssstt.... I have done so. Guess what? It even incorporates your mech dodging bit.

The Noisiel Summer Games from Mercenaries Supplemental II. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say mechs are as agile as Mobile Suits.

I'm not, I'm asking for a source so I can dig it up and post it. Unfortunately, Merc Supp II is not a source I have. Do you have direct quotes?

I'm talking about what KE a NAC-35 round would have if it took 60s to reach 432km (24*18km). As expected it's well below a kiloton, because the actual velocity has to be many times the minimum to hit anything at that range. This lines up with the size of the craters produced from orbital bombardment and the nuke rules.

Ah. We're using different high end then. I'm referring to the 1s-10s fudge they used to get the hit small fighters ,which give us hundred kt range.

The Marshals defended newly settled worlds between the TC and MoC. Of course they're not going to have any mechs unless someone gives them some, they've just been colonized. Off the top of my head it was in Star Lord (how many books cover events in the Periphery) a single city in the Periphery had a beet up centuries old mech. Your reference to the outback, IIRC doesn't cover noble forces, corporate security, or privately owned mechs.

I'm actually referring to the force the Marshals were built on, referenced in the Accessory, the Periphery Sourcebook. The Outback include noble forces and has referenced pure conventional forces in the region. Ditto to Periphery worlds in the face of the Clan invasion, which were defended by roving sheriffs of privately owned mechs. Or had worlds which had no mech resistance whatsoever.

The Clan invasion sources where bad about listing militia units. Modern sources give more detail and more data points to form an average. I pointed out Tikinov was a high end, but it was also 22 years before the current setting. There have even been IIRC era specific rules for generating a garrison force written since then.

Yeah. A company of mechs and several regiments of conventional forces.

A quick once over gives many times that number. I'll see if I can get you a complete TO&E. IIRC, 3 Regiments is about the size of a Star League RCT.

Errr, My bad. For some fucking reason, I was referring to a SLDF brigade.

I would point out however, that the Star League sourcebook does detail the TO&E, and refers to the Mech regiment as having 2 mech with one supporting infantry.

[PainRack]

The best part is where you can handwave away Btech's accuracy problems, but the Gundam setting being built around a conceit to avoid all the very practical counters to Mobile Suits means... they suck? In the OYW period in particular its pretty clear to me that given time people would develop counters to MS, but the war ended and everyone embraced them due to versatility. Turns out when you're taken by surprise by an entirely new form of warfare you can struggle to deal with it?

I guess its how MS are easy targets because... they're only as/more agile than the most agile mechs. Obviously!

Are you referring to me or other posters? Cause you know my beef is not with the can hit MS suits, but rather with Btech accuracy problems.

They DO have a bad accuracy issue, but the issue can be rationalised via their armour and associated damage issues. This will NOT carry over into other universes, as such, we should be looking at the fact that mechs can hope to engage aerospace fighters flying NOE or other hijinks for more accurate protrayls of their abilities against ground targets.

Its a fucking necro because if Rho was the one who challenged me on this, fine, I have to dig up and repost the whole shebang agian. But you and Bats... we debated this before.

[Bakustra]

Yes, I was aware of the Falcon issue and the sets as well as the tubes leading to the turrets having a placement issue. Unlike most other issues that is a tougher one to resolve, I would say that the only available footage of the Falcon was shot externally so they had to recreate the internal scenes and the documentary crew fucked up. All other scenes would be considered real footage unless there is a reason to believe otherwise.

I would generally write Gundam stuff off the same way, but that doesn't excuse the things we should see but don't or the times we see suits standing still while being cut down.

You say that you "generally resolve Gundam stuff the same way", but previously said that you would consider the possibility that Mobile Suits literally change size from scene to scene. The point is that there are constraints on film-making that you are willing to overlook for Star Wars, but the constraints are in many ways larger for a animated television series, yet you are unwilling to overlook said constraints for Gundam. For example, the case of Mobile Suits changing size. That is blatantly impossible, but is either a constraint of the budget and production time, or a deliberate stylization, or both. The point is that it can be safely ignored, and dismissed as an artifact of the medium, like soundtracks and credits.

The greater point, though, is that different media must be analyzed differently, thanks to their constraints. Literature lacks visual depictions, comics abstract the flow of time within their visuals, video games are constrained by playability concerns, and animation is stylized. TV suffers from limited budgets and production times, so things are done cheaper. Film also suffers from this to a somewhat smaller extent (these are on average, of course). Ultimately, different media require different treatment, if they are to be analyzed in-universe, and for that analysis to be sensible.

So what does this imply for the current situation? I don't know enough about Gundam to really give you an answer, nor do I particularly care about Battletech or the intersections of the two, except insamuch as the revealed tidbits have been both amusing and interesting. But perhaps you should consider what it would take to depict visual interference "on-screen", how annoying that would be for an audience, (either a fictional one watching a dramatization of the One Year War, or the real TV audience) and the potential costs of animating nigh-upon every single battle that way would be, in an age before photo-manipulation software. That might be helpful... or not.

Except that in most cases a visible spectrum laser shouldn't be effected any worse than the visible light that we can see perfectly fine through in nearly all Gundam combat scenes.

Look up. But let's consider how laser communication would work, and why light-scattering would create problems with that. Let's just sit for a moment and consider that, and consider the similar implications for using laser-guided missiles.

[Norade]

Yes, I was aware of the Falcon issue and the sets as well as the tubes leading to the turrets having a placement issue. Unlike most other issues that is a tougher one to resolve, I would say that the only available footage of the Falcon was shot externally so they had to recreate the internal scenes and the documentary crew fucked up. All other scenes would be considered real footage unless there is a reason to believe otherwise.

I would generally write Gundam stuff off the same way, but that doesn't excuse the things we should see but don't or the times we see suits standing still while being cut down.

You say that you "generally resolve Gundam stuff the same way", but previously said that you would consider the possibility that Mobile Suits literally change size from scene to scene. The point is that there are constraints on film-making that you are willing to overlook for Star Wars, but the constraints are in many ways larger for a animated television series, yet you are unwilling to overlook said constraints for Gundam. For example, the case of Mobile Suits changing size. That is blatantly impossible, but is either a constraint of the budget and production time, or a deliberate stylization, or both. The point is that it can be safely ignored, and dismissed as an artifact of the medium, like soundtracks and credits.

The greater point, though, is that different media must be analyzed differently, thanks to their constraints. Literature lacks visual depictions, comics abstract the flow of time within their visuals, video games are constrained by playability concerns, and animation is stylized. TV suffers from limited budgets and production times, so things are done cheaper. Film also suffers from this to a somewhat smaller extent (these are on average, of course). Ultimately, different media require different treatment, if they are to be analyzed in-universe, and for that analysis to be sensible.

So what does this imply for the current situation? I don't know enough about Gundam to really give you an answer, nor do I particularly care about Battletech or the intersections of the two, except insamuch as the revealed tidbits have been both amusing and interesting. But perhaps you should consider what it would take to depict visual interference "on-screen", how annoying that would be for an audience, (either a fictional one watching a dramatization of the One Year War, or the real TV audience) and the potential costs of animating nigh-upon every single battle that way would be, in an age before photo-manipulation software. That might be helpful... or not.

I would argue that animation can show whatever you want and that simple things such as items remaining a uniform size should be expected from anybody operating at a level above a student making a flip book. The same goes for the coloring of characters, no matter your time constraints it shouldn't be hard to make a note of which color each part of a character is with a simple an easy to understand code.

Animating other things such as M-particle effects or grunt suits and their actions is trickier as that does take time and effort and in the case of M-effects I understand how annoying it would be to watch a show through a fuzzy blurry lens. Yet at the same time what do we assume in these cases? We have nothing to go by visually, and in the case of grunt suits stock footage could be used to show them attempting to counter the attack that destroyed them. For M-effects a throw away line of dialogue, or showing the effects in some none intrusive way could easily be done. For example maybe a small mirage like shimmer in a none action shot to show light effects and some form of outline around mobile suits with other environmental details fading into the background for heavy effects. We don't even see them making an effort to show these effects so how do we know their severity or if or if not these effects are even present for a given scene?

Except that in most cases a visible spectrum laser shouldn't be effected any worse than the visible light that we can see perfectly fine through in nearly all Gundam combat scenes.

Look up. But let's consider how laser communication would work, and why light-scattering would create problems with that. Let's just sit for a moment and consider that, and consider the similar implications for using laser-guided missiles.

I understand your point above, but it's telling that we never see any attempts to show any effects in the normal visual range for most battles. I most mediums failure to show or mention such effects would lead to us assuming none are present. We know that in Gundam there will be some effects of M-jamming in each battle, but the amount is almost never given meaning that it's hard to know what would or wouldn't work in those cases. Given the usual position on visuals I have to argue that based on what we see the visual range is only effected under the heaviest M-effects.

[Norade]

So Mike's asteroid destruction calculations are wrong now because Star Wars has a musical score? Fuck off.

We would discount that scene as possible replacement footage when real footage wasn't available. Do you throw out Mike's asteroid destruction calculations because there are effects and continuity errors in Star Wars?

Yes, and so should you. They're wrong for a lot of reasons, including the unreliability of the medium.

Assuming what we see is God's canon is absurd; it has gaffes and scores and whatnot. The next thing is saying God's canon.... but heavily edited, with scenes replaced and things changed. That editing introduces reasonable doubt. How do you know the asteroid scene wasn't a recreation? How do you know the editor didn't muck around with it?

You don't.

So how the fuck do we analyze events as portrayed in a visual medium then? Or are you pulling some typical butt hurt Trekkie shit and trying to argue that it can't be done?

It's obvious that a score was added to real footage in post to make the scenes more watchable.

Calling it real footage makes things even sillier. So instead of an orchestra following them around, we have multiple camera crews, that just happened to be there, in position. That really stretches the suspension of disbelief.

So, I don't give a shit if your suspension of disbelief is stretched, I'm attempting to use the visuals to analyze an event as portrayed in the 08th Mobile Suit Team and your straw manning by saying that your SoD is broken by any movie or TV show. Fuck off you useless cunt.

Never mind that a jet fighter or a tank massing as much as a mobile suit would be faster, more stable, could carry larger weapons, and would be easier to shield from M-effects than a mobile suit is.

I imagine that's why there's several examples of tanks and fighters being used in the original series. Mobile Suits were actually a pretty small part of the one year war, on the Federation side anyway. They get shown more often in the series though, since it is called Mobile Suit Gundam rather than Federation Tank Battalion.

Except that any reasonable military would have focused on the development of tanks, planes, and ways to defeat Minovsky effects as any and all of these things are more effective than humanoid fighting vehicles. This goes a long way to showing that militaries in Gundam are pants on head retarded for trying to solve an issue in the worst possible way. At least in battletech we get a test proving that mech > tank.

[SAMAS]

In the clip SAMAS posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o0FrsPU7Nw

At 0:33 we see that a man portable rocket can bring down a Zaku if you hit a weak point.

Yep, one of the Federation's first responses was in fact a man-portable missile designed to damage Mobile Suits. Imagine that.

At 1:32 we see Shiro dodge a 120mm round at point blank on foot, he then shoots the magazine which explodes but not violently enough to harm the nearby Shiro.

This shows that tiny rounds can defeat Zakus.

Or that Zeon ammunition isn't as volatile as IS rounds.

Rule of Drama. Same reason a 10 second conversation or action only takes three during a countdown.

Compare with the Episode 8 clip again, showing the Zaku's 175mm cannon cover roughly 10km/s uninterrupted from shot to impact.

Rule of drama my ass,[/quote]

Translation: I don't like it

we see 180mm rounds moving at sub 100m/s speeds on more than one occasion.

And see both them and the smaller guns fire in excess of that. Again, because the animators wanted to show the shots in action.

Also, in that clip, Norris deliberately targeted the 08th's Beam Rifle and the cannon while taking on the Guncannons because they were threats to the Kergeren's liftoff. So in-story evidence also supports a fast velocity for the cannons as well.

We also see incredibly weak 75mm shots not collapsing buildings as we should expect such fire to do.

Only if they hit or damage the structural supports.

You know, except for the fact that the mech further back is actually scoring a hit that looks to be tearing the other suit's arm off.

That's winging it at best. Furthermore, said "winging" is enough to throw the targeting off that much? The rest of the mech is unaffected by the hit. Note the low movement of the water around it's legs.

[Sinanju]

Except that while that command truck could have a powerful receiver as well that doesn't explain why Noris could receive Shiro's communications without static. Unless you're trying to claim that the command truck was operating on a frequency that Noris was also tuned to.

Prove that Norris was actually communicating with the 08th MS Team via radio. He's pretty obviously thinking out loud (he starts doing it before he's even joined the battle), and the only times he seems to get a reaction (or when Shiro gets a reaction from him...) as if he was actually heard are when we can hear him (or Shiro) from outside the MS. By your own standards that means they obviously had to be using external speakers.

What other in universe explanation is there for Starscream changing colour? Also dishonest can also be used to mean unfair which is what using examples from across many series to show why Gundam doesn't have to show effects we should see is.

Dishonest (dis-onist) adv. 1. Disposed to lie, cheat, defraud, or deceive. 2. Resulting from or marked by a lack of honesty.

That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Except that I asked where the source was from, you said official profiles without listing a source and then proceeded to claim that I was attempting to disprove that the M-effect in Gundam. You shifted the goalposts first, not I.

I'm kind of impressed that I can point to a site full of nothing but the official profiles, translated into English, and still have you asking for a source. Again, where did you think these things came from?

Or the militaries in Gundam are run by retards and they don't use the best technology available because bipedal combat systems = awesome.

Ahhh, and now we see why you're so desperate to argue that the Minovsky effect wasn't in play at various times. Turns out if you ignore the reason a decision was made, the decision looks kinda stupid in hindsight? Who'da thunk?

[Sinanju]

Ah. We're using different high end then. I'm referring to the 1s-10s fudge they used to get the hit small fighters ,which give us hundred kt range.

Uh...wat.

According to TR 2750 naval autocannon shells top out at around 1.2 tons. If a 1.2 ton projectile covers 432 kilometers in 10s that's 0.3 kiloton and not "hundreds".

[Stark]

This thread gets better every time I go to bed. He's complaining there's no in-universe 'test'for MS being good when Zeon conquered the entire fucking planet and I've been talking about attempts to create anti-Zaku tactics and Zaku-fright for pages?

And 'the designs of a universe are stupid if you ignore the central conciet of the technology' has to be one of the dumbest things said on SDN. Stupid galaxy-wide empire! FTL IS IMPOSSUBLE!

[Sinanju]

This thread gets better every time I go to bed. He's complaining there's no in-universe 'test'for MS being good when Zeon conquered the entire fucking planet and I've been talking about attempts to create anti-Zaku tactics and Zaku-fright for pages?

And 'the designs of a universe are stupid if you ignore the central conciet of the technology' has to be one of the dumbest things said on SDN. Stupid galaxy-wide empire! FTL IS IMPOSSUBLE!

I thought the whole 'yes Gundams really do change size from shot to shot' thing was pretty classic myself.

Also, careful man. You switched universes on him, he's gonna get confused.

On another note, when I rewatched the Gouf Custom battle today I noticed that when Norris first appears on top of the building you can see wireframes and buildings popping out of thin air on his viewscreen. Kind of a neat way to show the MS' computer at work.

[Commander 598]

Zeon's successes prove that mobile suit > tank.

To be fair, Fed tanks appear to be terrible tanks probably mounting dual barreled howitzers for guns, probably skimping on armor, and mostly loaded with HE because they were likely designed and their bases outfitted with the express purpose of shelling insurgent villages and Zeon tanks, aside from the Eins, are fucking huge and likely have little armor.

[Stark]

Type 61s aren't that bad; even turning the invasion they had successes. If you fit one with a Zaku machine-gun it'd probably be much more effective, but type 61s weren't designed to fight something crazy like '17m agile robots at close range'.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Zeon's successes prove that mobile suit > tank.

To be fair, Fed tanks appear to be terrible tanks probably mounting dual barreled howitzers for guns, probably skimping on armor, and mostly loaded with HE because they were likely designed and their bases outfitted with the express purpose of shelling insurgent villages and Zeon tanks, aside from the Eins, are fucking huge and likely have little armor.

I've never seen anything that would suggest the Type 61 is inappropriately armored or is using howitzers, given we've seen shots of it covering 10km/s much like the Magella, depending on the series and the needs. But if we're going to talk about it as a serious design there's the matter of the raised turret which would act as an RPG trap in conjunction with the badly angled glacis plate, of course the 08th MS version is better in this regard, but still. The idea of a two barreled tank is cool and all but for those two cannons you could just put in one really big cannon and have the added bonus of more ammo.

As for production values and changing size or appearance, well... that's the nature of Gundam. According to official policy these machines are all exactly the same model of GM, the RGM-79.





Or more demonstratively, these are the same machine:



And again:



Look totally different due to being drawn by two different authors, but the same machine.

[lord Martiya]

At least in battletech we get a test proving that mech > tank.

The same with mobile suit vs tank: M'Kube, with an outnumbered army and serious problems with air superiority (no offense, but Zeon's fighter airplanes just sucks), conquered half of the world. I think this kinda proves something...

[Bakustra]

I have a hard time believing that there are camera crews following them around in-universe for no reason.

Maybe this is a strawman. Mike's method is more like "this is exactly what you would have seen, if you were there", not "this is footage literally collected from a camera that was there".

But that doesn't change the actual thrust of things, that mistakes are absurd to rationalize in universe and the medium is too unreliable to analyze with great precision. You still have to look at the big picture.

My method is somewhat similar, but is more like "what we see is generally a dramatization or documentary, so mistakes are a natural consequence, while the bulk is an accurate depiction". It still ends up at a similar place, if from wildly different premises, but I'm not sure where the asteroid calcs fit in, unless this is your personal crusade against firepower figures in Star Wars coming to the front again, because, if so, ugh. I mean, the big picture is that "asteroid shot = asteroid gone", so unless you have some clear evidence that the intent was obviously to have the asteroids gently puff apart before the fragments tear the Star Destroyers to shreds right through their weak natural semen-free realistic shields, I don't see any major conflict. It's like the examination of Alderaan blowing up. The big picture is "Alderaan shot by Death Star -> Alderaan explodes like a bomb", and there's no conflict with Dr. Saxton's figures. Or am I missing something critical here, apart from the sarcasm?

This thread gets better every time I go to bed. He's complaining there's no in-universe 'test'for MS being good when Zeon conquered the entire fucking planet and I've been talking about attempts to create anti-Zaku tactics and Zaku-fright for pages?

And 'the designs of a universe are stupid if you ignore the central conciet of the technology' has to be one of the dumbest things said on SDN. Stupid galaxy-wide empire! FTL IS IMPOSSUBLE!

I thought the whole 'yes Gundams really do change size from shot to shot' thing was pretty classic myself.

Also, careful man. You switched universes on him, he's gonna get confused.

On another note, when I rewatched the Gouf Custom battle today I noticed that when Norris first appears on top of the building you can see wireframes and buildings popping out of thin air on his viewscreen. Kind of a neat way to show the MS' computer at work.

The best part, for me, was when he claimed that recognizing the Millennium Falcon had incompatible sets was equivalent to the size-changing suggestion. I guess consistency is another weak point for him.

I would argue that animation can show whatever you want and that simple things such as items remaining a uniform size should be expected from anybody operating at a level above a student making a flip book. The same goes for the coloring of characters, no matter your time constraints it shouldn't be hard to make a note of which color each part of a character is with a simple an easy to understand code.

Animating other things such as M-particle effects or grunt suits and their actions is trickier as that does take time and effort and in the case of M-effects I understand how annoying it would be to watch a show through a fuzzy blurry lens. Yet at the same time what do we assume in these cases? We have nothing to go by visually, and in the case of grunt suits stock footage could be used to show them attempting to counter the attack that destroyed them. For M-effects a throw away line of dialogue, or showing the effects in some none intrusive way could easily be done. For example maybe a small mirage like shimmer in a none action shot to show light effects and some form of outline around mobile suits with other environmental details fading into the background for heavy effects. We don't even see them making an effort to show these effects so how do we know their severity or if or if not these effects are even present for a given scene?

Do you know anything at all about how animated shows are produced? They don't usually have a lot of time to devote to shot continuity, since they're often on both a time crunch and budget crunch. This is less of a problem for series that have a larger budget and are guaranteed a certain degree of success (such as later Gundam series), but the original Mobile Suit Gundam did not and was a commercial failure initially. Anime in particular also is primarily animated as a single frame or cel, as opposed to the Disney style of making a cel with the character and then adding the background separately. This means that poorly scaled cels are harder to adjust without throwing them out and starting afresh. So the time crunch and budget crunch means that mistakes are often incorporated if they're not too grotesque or obvious (and many will be hidden by the nature of film anyways). Granted, this is primarily a concern for TV series. Animated movies tend to have larger budgets and more lead time, so fewer mistakes need to be incorporated.

When it comes to the presence or lack of Minovsky interference, you'd be better served asking people with more knowledge of Gundam.

EDIT: When it comes to Schatten's pictures, I will note that you can easily tell that the machines are related (except for the more extreme comparison) as they have the same basic proportions and shapes as each other. Even the more extreme differences still have the same basic layout of features.

[Ritterin Sophia]

When it comes to Schatten's pictures, I will note that you can easily tell that the machines are related (except for the more extreme comparison) as they have the same basic proportions and shapes as each other. Even the more extreme differences still have the same basic layout of features.

No, not just related, they are the exact same machines. Bog Standard RGM-79, no additional type code. The RX-78-7 full stop. And the only RX-78-2.

I could also add the Evolve version for the RX-78-2.


The exact same as the other two.

[Bakustra]

When it comes to Schatten's pictures, I will note that you can easily tell that the machines are related (except for the more extreme comparison) as they have the same basic proportions and shapes as each other. Even the more extreme differences still have the same basic layout of features.

No, not just related, they are the exact same machines. Bog Standard RGM-79, no additional type code. The RX-78-7 full stop. And the only RX-78-2.

I didn't quite make myself clear; you could tell that the different versions of the Gundam are at a minimum closely related without any clarifying remarks by the producers. With clarifying remarks, they are definitely the same machine, but even without they still have the same basic proportions and shapes (except the 78-7) and I'm just being overly cautious.

[SAMAS]

Of course, the Gundam MK II is also just about as similar.

[Commander 598]

I've never seen anything that would suggest the Type 61 is inappropriately armored or is using howitzers,

Maybe not howitzers but: How many times have we ever actually seen it use sabots vs How many times we've seen it use HE or maybe HEAT rounds? We have plenty of evidence that sabots can swiss cheese a Zaku (And do a number on a Gundam) with no problem so Zaku's certainly aren't shrugging them off so I'm left with the opinion that the Federation was just not equipped to fight 17m mecha with often underestimated armor materials and started the war with very little in the way of anti-armor munitions...

But if we're going to talk about it as a serious design there's the matter of the raised turret which would act as an RPG trap in conjunction with the badly angled glacis plate, of course the 08th MS version is better in this regard, but still.

The Magella is pretty big.



It's 6m tall, 12m long, and weighs 95 tons. Also going by 08th Team it's pretty speedy. So I'd say it's pretty light for it's size making it a huge poorly armored target with an excellent gun.

The idea of a two barreled tank is cool and all but for those two cannons you could just put in one really big cannon and have the added bonus of more ammo.

It's already fitting a 150mm, so how's this?

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b329/ ... 665168.jpg

and for the Magella:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b329/ ... 286709.png

I'm rather proud of the latter concept.

[Stark]

The upgunned Type 61 demonstrates the tank can work fine with a driver and commander/gunner (although situational awareness suffers). That should mean they can make a Russian-style low-profile tank with the largest possible gun... like the crouched RTX-440 (which shoudl just have the arms removed and be locked in crouch).

[Zinegata]

Hold it.

At 0:33 we see Karen fire and miss high over Noris' shoulder, he is not moving at that time.

Noris in fact, moved. He lowered his Gouf's shoulder at the last second to evade the shot. It's totally dishonest to say he "did not move".

At 0:45 seconds we see Noris drop down and the Guntank doesn't make any attempt to evade in spite of the fact that you should be able to hear a mobile suit crash through a skylight, see the shards of glass falling around you, or be warned by your buddies who can communicate with you and know where you're positioned.

You're criticizing the fact that an artillery piece on tracks does not have the same maneuverability as a Mobile Suit? Seriously, watch the rest of the episode and see how long it took for the Guntank to move into the buildings.

Your first two examples alone are full of blatant lies. Do we really have to go through each example line by line?

[Bottlestein]

Not having seen all of Zeta - what did Zeon have planned after Gelgoog Jaegers? They have quite a good ability to tack on updates as the suits are being mass produced. The suit used by Char at the end of Char's Counterattack - was there any mass production version planned for that?

[Zinegata]

Except that while that command truck could have a powerful receiver as well that doesn't explain why Noris could receive Shiro's communications without static. Unless you're trying to claim that the command truck was operating on a frequency that Noris was also tuned to.

Prove that Norris was actually communicating with the 08th MS Team via radio. He's pretty obviously thinking out loud (he starts doing it before he's even joined the battle), and the only times he seems to get a reaction (or when Shiro gets a reaction from him...) as if he was actually heard are when we can hear him (or Shiro) from outside the MS. By your own standards that means they obviously had to be using external speakers.

Noris heard Shiro declaring his love for Aina. No matter how loudly Shiro shouts, that's gotta be carried over a radio to be heard .

That being said, there is absolutely no reason for Noris to let his own words be heard by the enemy. The 08th MS Team certainly don't react as though they heard anything from the Noris, specifically. Noris was probably just monitoring the enemy radio chatter. And when Shiro rebooted his MS, his radio was probably set to broadcast out on an open channel where everyone could hear it.

Personally, my reaction to that scene was "Okay Shiro. You just broadcast your love for an enemy over an open channel. You are so getting court-martialed if you survive this "

[Stark]

In IGLOO they often do seem to be speaking over speakers, and don't seem to have a button they press first. Is that normal or another IGLOO-ism?