How much of a deathtrap are/were Balls, really? You periodically

>>15499067
Not anymore than your standard grunt suit, if anything Balls are better suited to space combat than a regular MS.

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>>15499075
>"Balls are better suited to space combat than a regular MS."

>Slow
>No armor
>No AMBAC
>Has to rotate itself more to aim at targets
>One big slow cannon that can't hit moving targets easily
>Can't reload or pick up new weapons

>"better suited to space combat"


No, mobile suits are better.

>>15499075
The Ball is just a worker pod with a gun attached to it

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>>15499203
It does have armor; the Gundam Wiki states it is in fact well placed for a machine of its size, but it is thin. As we know, the F type and Plot Armor type had more of it, F types apparently were liked by their pilots.
>"slow" cannon
It's shown firing rapidly multiple in MSG, namely in the Solomon episode just before the Big Zam appears. The 120mm twin machine guns are also a thing.

Mobile Suits are still better.

>>15499067
They were a stopgap measure, hastily assembled because the Federation didn't have mobile suits mass-produced yet. They are inferior to a GM by a good margin; they will die faster and have less firepower, simply put. They are also less combat versatile in that they can't enter a colony, for example.

To their credit, even after the GM rolled out, Balls were still a standardized part of a GM squad. Extra eyes and an extra gun, still capable of hurting an MS, is still pretty useful.

>>15499067
The traditional nonvariant recoilless rifle ball is just a glass cannon.

In a 1v1 dogfight with an MS, it's going to get totaled by the far more agile and faster MS even if just whittled down a bit with a machine gun. A normal (space-outfitted) Zaku is much better than a Ball from a theoretical standpoint.
However, the Ball's recoilless rifle is essentially just a bazooka for all intents and purposes so any hit from it will one shot an MS unless there's plot/scene armor that would make it lose a limb instead.

A Ball's strength is in numbers and fire support for a team because they're a cheap and easy way to fire a lot of very powerful anti-MS/anti-ship shells all at the same time from a good distance.

That's not to say a very good MS pilot wouldn't hold their own against an MS, but even for the mass production GM that's a tall order considering it's so far behind in agility and combat options.

>>15499067
When you consider how many Balls the Federation produced (a shitload) and how many we actually see get destroyed, they have a pretty good record.

I'd hate to be the poor fuck who goes through training and gets assigned a Ball though.

>>15499606
I'm not sure you're entirely right on GMs there; statistically they're superior to a Zaku in nearly every way, and on par with Doms.

>>15499067

they should have been better than MS and easily outranged them but still lost because lolmecha

never forget the fear B Gundam struck.

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>>15499740
GMs are superior to Doms too. Gelgoogs outspec them, of course, but Gelgoogs also outspec the RX-78-2.

>>15499203
>ambac
>actually working like it's shown IRL

Early on, they were death traps because they're not suitable for close engagements and dog-fights. After the Federation changes approach, to take advantage of their relatively small profile, and used them for flanking ranged support they probably weren't any worse than being on a ship.

>>15499203

Their main cannon configuration might be slow, but they were consistently shown to single shot zakus, and when use at full range, a zaku would have to be moving pretty straight, most of those weren't high mobility types capable of extremely broad jink maneuvers.

I'm surprised the Feddies didnt put beam guns on the Ball later on in the war.

Could it be done or no?

>>15499799
Unfortunately that chart doesn't show their mass. And the Gelgoog is actually really massive when loaded for battle. The Gelgoog and GM have similar empty weights but when loaded the Gelgoog has 25% greater mass.

>>15499203
the cannon is gymbalised

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>>15499799
>Sensor ranges between 3.2 and 6.3km.
What the fuck, modern electro-optical systems are better than that.
I thought Gundam was set in the future, not the 1960's.

>>15500459
Are any suits ever shown to actually use AMBAC in any series?

>>15499067
It used solid fuel so even if you managed to avoid being shot you probably didn't have any way to return to your ship after.

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>>15501162
Too small, likely nowhere near enough power output, though you get Junior Mobile Suits using Hyper Beam Guns in Zeta.
Victory Gundam would give us the Gwigsy, a kinda-sorta land capable Ball used by the Zanscare & co., but even for the advances of the time it carried no beam weapons.

>>15502550
Science fiction writers cannot into numbers, news at eleven.

>>15502550
The series was written in the 70's by a layman you fucking autist, /k/ is that way >

>>15502550
Almost like it's somewhat difficult to predict the future. Or alternatively, they know that throwing on some random numbers is plenty good enough to please the autists that care about that kind of thing.

>>15502789
>The series was written in the 70's
The 1870's?

> by a layman
You accidentally wrote "layman" where the term "idiot" would be more suitable.

>>15502799
Predicting the future has nothing to do with real-life hardware already outpacing it by the seventies, let alone when those stats were written.

>random numbers is plenty good enough to please the autists that care about that kind of thing.
You could hardly set the bar any lower.

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>>15502550
>>15502789
>>15502799
All wrong, the in-universe answer is Minovsky physics. Gundam actually goes to some length to explain why WWII-ish combat has come to reign again.

Minovsky particles once spread automatically align into lattices that disrupt *all* electro-magnetic waves including radar and *light* itself, so optical measurements can't be relied on. (In the book Tomino goes into detail on how computer assisted algorythms are necessary to somewhat mitigate the effect for recognition purpuses).

They also disrupt electric circuits unless they're heavily shielded. This is why you don't have drones, radar guided missiles or (practical) long range artillery in Gundam. New-Type Psychic stuff are important because they seem to sidestep the Minovsky interference, Lalah's Elmeth was a dangerous weapon because she could engage from ranges normally thought impossible.

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>>15499067

Well, they're still around decades later during the events in Crossbone Vanguard.

So something might be said for their survivability there.

>>15502834
>has absolutely no idea what he's talking
>talks shit on the writer
You're the biggest idiot in this thread. Why don't you shut your mouth when you don't know shit about what you're arguing?

>>15504350
I know how minovsky particles effect things, the problem is that it still wouldn't be enough to bring back combat ranges comparable to WW2, let alone melee combat.
With sensor fusion and data-links even if you can't range a target with a laser, radar and the sight picture is too blurry to even use a coincidence rangefinder you could use the parallax effect between friendly suits and spacecraft to determine exactly where a target is.
And even when the minovsky interference is too bad for using active and semi active radar guidance or even wire guidance (by then even the suits should be shorting out and besides, they worked fine in IGLOO), it would still be better to hang back, guesstimate range and salvo fire rockets as large as possible fitted with mechanical fuses set to explode at a varied pattern of ranges within the likely margin of error.

Tomino certainly put a lot of thought into justifying the way combat works in the setting, but it's obvious he either simply didn't have the military knowledge to make it work, or didn't care because he wanted giant-robot lightsaber duels in space.

>>15504838
>He has no argument, only add-homs.
Why don't you shut your mouth when you don't know shit about what you're arguing?

>>15499203
>No AMBAC

It has limbs, that's all you really need for AMBAC. You don't need a humanoid form for it really.

>>15505835
And you don't have am argument either aside from your moronic autism over something that doesn't even remotely matter.

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>>15505963
>Only two arms and two legs with very limited range of motion
How can humanoids even compete?

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>>15499067
>deathtrap
If you mean by trapping zeeks into death

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>>15505835
>it would still be better to hang back, guesstimate range and salvo fire rockets as large as possible fitted with mechanical fuses set to explode at a varied pattern of ranges within the likely margin of error.

You're underestimating how VAST space is. You could do that, but it's a horribly unreliable tactic when large rockets can be intercepted by mobile suits that have similar levels of thrust output and far more maneuverability, and you have Mega Particle Cannons that can actually put out a steady bombardment with half the expenditure of resources. With the rockets, you'd fail to destroy you're targets more often than not, and there's no point in using in that much ordinance when you can just send in a squadron or two of mobile suits and destroy the target far more reliably (Zeon proved this during the Battle of Loum.)

So to chime in here, I guess my point is that things don't HAVE to be WW2 ranges in UC, it's just that Zeon proved at the outset of the war that if the Federation wanted to win, they'd have to find a way to match Zeon at WW2 ranges, because that's how they were fighting and the feds were getting creamed. The feds had Zeon beat in terms of long range warfare; that's for certain. What is also certain is that Zeon was getting in close far too quickly for that advantage to really be the deciding factor in a battle, meaning the Federation had to beat Zeon at their own game

Hence, the proliferation of mobile suits over conventional warfare.

>>15506280
We can't, that's why we're losing against the Hideauze.

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>>15505835
>it would still be better to hang back, guesstimate range and salvo fire rockets as large as possible fitted with mechanical fuses set to explode at a varied pattern of ranges within the likely margin of error.

That only really works against stationary targets, which almost nothing worth shooting at is in a UC battlefield, whether on earth or in space. Don't forget, even ships in UC tend to be pretty fast if they have to be.

>>15507276
>You could do that, but it's a horribly unreliable tactic when large rockets can be intercepted by mobile suits
In an atmosphere it would be, but in space it doesn't matter whether something is struck by fragments from a blast one hundred meters away or ten thousand since there's nothing to slow them down, hence why I mentioned fuses set to likely viable ranges.
You already know how hard a time they had in the setting trying to stop suits from getting close enough to hit them with an axe, how do you think they'd cope intercepting, without using anything radar or rangefinding lasers, a salvo of 200-400mm rockets before they can close to a range where their fragmentation pattern became a threat?
Note for comparison that the missiles in your webm are for some reason actually trying to hit their target instead of just getting in the general area before exploding.

>it's just that Zeon proved at the outset of the war that if the Federation wanted to win, they'd have to find a way to match Zeon at WW2 ranges,
That's the exact opposite way of looking at it.
If the enemy is better than you at something, you try and deny them the opportunity.
Look at how in the opening years of WW2 the Japanese outfought the US in turning dogfights.
The USAF didn't start building planes for maneuverability: they stopped getting caught up in turning fights.

>What is also certain is that Zeon was getting in close far too quickly
You're underestimating how VAST space is.
You can't get anywhere fast enough to avoid a long period between being detected and reaching a destination without pulling more G's than a human can remain conscious through.

>>15506280
>SQUIDBAC
at last I truly see.


But yeah, since the ball doesn't tend to need it's limbs for holding it's weapons, it should be capable of using them for ambac about 2/3 as well as a mobile suit, which will need to get it's weapon arm pointed at the enemy to shoot.

Maybe the ball fleet just needed a firmware update to compete.

>>15505963
AMBAC relies on thrusters on the limbs, which I don't believe Balls have

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>>15507676
>In an atmosphere it would be, but in space it doesn't matter whether something is struck by fragments from a blast one hundred meters away or ten thousand since there's nothing to slow them down, hence why I mentioned fuses set to likely viable ranges.

Project RHO is suggested reading, statements like yours (X - will happen, because Z - is in effect) are a bit suspect since there are *many* variables in play and the lack of atmospheric friction is only one of them.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php

>You're underestimating how VAST space is.
>You can't get anywhere fast enough to avoid a long period between being detected and reaching a destination without pulling more G's than a human can remain conscious through.

...however in this case, I'd argue that you're not being even handed. If combatants can detect targets, they can also detect missiles or dumb ordnance fired on them and try to evade.
In fact massive artillery salvos are already a viable and used tactic in the Gundam-verse, just keep in mind that they're using *dumb* artillery or particle canons, sometimes mixed with missiles at certain engagement ranges.

>Note for comparison that the missiles in your webm are for some reason actually trying to hit their target instead of just getting in the general area before exploding
I'd posit that the animators/story-board drawers were either unfamiliar with the limits of their genre, or maybe guidance system become viable at very short ranges.

In closing: I'd really like to see how combat would evolve in a "Children of a Dead Earth" type simulation but with Minovsky physics added.

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>>15509861
*dumb* artillery OF particle canons (Fixed myself)
Addendum: said artillery can keep up a volume of fire conventional ordnance would be hard pressed to match, since mega-particles are a by-product of (Gundam) fusion reactors, hence you run out of fuel before you run out of "ammo" for your mega cannons.

>>15499067
They'd basically be glass cannons wouldn't they? Their cannon could probably take out much stuff pretty easily but basically anything could one-shot them. I wonder why they're never shown holding small shields or anything of the like.

>>15502550
It's almost like it was written around that time.

>>15508447
The purpose of AMBAC is literally that it allows you to reorient yourself in a zero gravity environment WITHOUT thrusters, allowing you to save fuel. You basically use the inertia from moving a limb to spin yourself thanks to Newton's third law.

>>15507287
delete

>>15499203
Yeah, but there's no reason for a MS to be better.

Pretty much every advantage they have could be applied to the ball, technologically speaking. If anything, the ball would be preferable to an MS in space, where you don't have to worry about flailing limbs generating uneven thrust vectors and the shape allowing for more propellant carry capacity.
It's the same argument against MS vs tanks: if the tech exists to make MS function , said tech could be applied to a more logical vehicle layout and make for a far more practical warmachine.

Balls are probably the closest thing to a realistic space fighter we're going to get. Something with middling delta-v, decent armament, and good maneuverability for in-orbit combat

>>15510330
Balls can't gas colonies, therefore they're shit.

>>15509970
Don't you need fuel to move the limb though?

>>15510977
Are you using a gas motor for your joints or running your machine on a gas powered generator?

And when I said fuel I should have said propellant. Or rocket fuel.

>>15510977
>Don't you need fuel to move the limb though?

No, mobile suits use electricity for all their joints, that's why they've got minovsky reactors inside them, they can flail their limbs around forever, the joints would wear out before it runs out of energy.

Mobile suits using limbs to rotate on their center of mass saves precious rocket fuel that would've been used up in lots of vernier thrusters, to use for main thrusters, giving them a larger amount of fuel to use propelling themselves in any direction, giving them longer range.