Testing Phase?

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Mafty
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Testing Phase?

So do you think there would be a test phase for mobile suits prior to mass production? I know there are numerous MS of the week prototypes tested in combat, but does that happen with every unit? for example in ZZ it seems as though some units are field tested by test pilots (Pampa, Wynne and Beann, and Illia are all seen in mass production MS in limited quantities).
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John-Luck Pickerd
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Re: Testing Phase?

If they have time to conduct test. But other times the MS was forced to fight without enough testing or even being 100% complete, like the Strike.
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SonicSP
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Re: Testing Phase?

Would be pretty stupid to mass produced a mobile suit without running any tests or a testing period.
Mafty
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Re: Testing Phase?

It seems almost as the war goes on some units are rushed to the front, like maybe they tested them, and then put a limited number in combat. The ZZ examples are how Pampa, Wynne and Beann are seemingly a Black Tri Star like trio, seeming like they were among the first pilots of the Gaza-D, before it was fully mass produced. Likewise Illia is a Newtype test pilot , who is seemingly the only one on the Endra 2 with a ReGelgu (it's supposed to be mass produced, but we don't see that many of them).
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Testing Phase?

Mafty wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 12:18 pm So do you think there would be a test phase for mobile suits prior to mass production?
Assuming a developer who's following anything like a competent development process? Yes, absolutely.

But this is Gundam we're talking about... where developers waste huge amounts of money on one-off designs too expensive to ever mass produce and untested prototypes are routinely thrown onto the battlefield to be used in actual combat. It's one of Gundam's favorite tropes, so it's somewhat unsurprising that there are a lot of models that do not appear to have ever been tested, and were simply flung onto the battlefield with the assumption that things would "just work".

At least in a few stories, like Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam Before the One Year War, there's shown to be quite the lengthy development, testing, demonstration, and acceptance process before a new model of Mobile Suit is given the go-ahead for even limited production. I highly recommend reading that one, because that shows something like a realistic development environment going into the pre-operational Mobile Suit designs.
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Kuruni
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Re: Testing Phase?

Please get MS IGLOO. Kinda interesting that out of the six, only Hildofr and Zudah got through proper testing phase prior to the story (and the re-test in the series is mere propaganda). The rest of them are "tested" in actual combat (although it's clear that they actually don't expect the Jormungand to does anything).

Among them, only the Oggo is mass produced. And since they come up with the thing from sheer desperation, the actually approved the design, build them, THEN test them afterward. Ironically, the thing actually the only one that has ladting impact as it's revealed AoZ Reboot that it eventually start the Gaza line.
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Testing Phase?

Granted, the first two MS IGLOO OVAs (Hidden One Year War and Apocalypse 0079) do depict "testing"... but it's a fairly awful example because the members of the Principality of Zeon's 603rd Technical Evaluation Unit think they are carrying out the final phases of operational evaluation and acceptance testing on new weapons, but are really just ...
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[...] the clueless middlemen the Principality's military brass use to dispose of rejected/cancelled prototypes by throwing them at the Federation Forces. It takes them a DISTRESSINGLY long time to figure it out, too.

As in, it takes the Federation outing their latest prototype-under-test as a simple renumbering of a rejected Zaku I competitor before they begin to realize what it is they've been doing the entire series. It doesn't fully sink in until right before their participation in the Battle of A Baoa Qu, when they're issued a bunch of obviously hacked-together Mobile Pods and a flight crew made up entirely of child soldiers for "testing" under an obviously unhinged Colonel who insists his unit of half-trained child soldiers are "elite forces".

That's basically the theme for the entire series, too... the first episode has them roll up to the Battle of Loum with this enormous long-range plasma cannon the size of a battleship, blissfully unaware that the program was cancelled and Mobile Suits are the Principality's real ace in the hole until Char basically rolls up and tells them to GTFO.
Last edited by Seto Kaiba on Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Testing Phase?

Seto Kaiba wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 6:56 pm
At least in a few stories, like Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam Before the One Year War, there's shown to be quite the lengthy development, testing, demonstration, and acceptance process before a new model of Mobile Suit is given the go-ahead for even limited production. I highly recommend reading that one, because that shows something like a realistic development environment going into the pre-operational Mobile Suit designs.
Except for before mass production, they probably have to mass produce the old guy who can somehow make Angstrom(0.1nm) level corrections, by hand, under a microscope. ;9

Yeah, that manga is highly recommended.
But that is likely one of the longest development in UC, they have little previous experience on producing MS and the higher-ups seems to be still planning a few years ahead before the war so they have that much time to do the work.
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Re: Testing Phase?

We see test phases more often during peacetime, 0083 is good example and the SNRI machines preceding F91. The MK II was in a testing phase when it was stolen. Since a lot of Gundam is shown in the middle of world altering wars they often treat it like WW2 fiction where as soon as the latest super weapon is ready it's being rolled off to the front lines hopefully to change the tide of the war.
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Re: Testing Phase?

IGLOO is kinda neat is actually showing the battlefield testing period; it also largely avoids the issues many Gundam side stories have in putting fourth tech far too advanced for what's seen in the OYW, The tech largely seems to match original series designs, it also actually shows how bad of an idea field testing something during a war is , though really that's due to the Jotunheim being mislead about their goal.

The other issue at times is the scope of the story; understandingly there are multiple different fronts to the war, and the show mainly focuses upon the main characters. So people like Pampa , Wynne and Beann were probably testing the Storm formation attack at the end of the Gryps War, before coming to Shangri-La; the same is true of Del, Dune and Danny, who are shown to regularly travel across battlefronts on assignment. The exception is Illia who seems to be some type of Newtype graduate with limited battle experience; she's given a powerful unit and sent to the front anyway (of course there's more to her assignment than that), but that's par for the course with Newtypes to begin with.
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Re: Testing Phase?

Yeah I think with Gundam the testing phase is predominantly in sidestories like Igloo or manga (AoZ comes to mind) where that's the focus of the story. Or they show up in MSV and even have test type in their name like the Gouf Flight Test Type or the Dom High Speed Test Type. For many of the mainline entries the testing phase likely happens off-screen prior to the MS being introduced.
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Re: Testing Phase?

The problem about these side stories is that they are mostly testing the new things on the battlefield before even knowing if the new technologies are working or not.
Most of the testings in these stories should happen somewhere far from the battlefield. You don't want to test if a gun can fire or if a vehicle can normally function when facing enemies trying to kill you.

If you are in a situation where you have to do real combat testing, the unit should already been tested to a point where it should at least normally work and won't have problem functioning regularly.
The Jormungand is a good example, it can fire, and at least theoretically it can do massive damage to the target. Putting it to the test to see if it can really perform well on the field is perfectly reasonable. Most of the Igloo units being tested are pretty much these kind of things(Well, the Zudah is kinda not a new thing but something they knew to have a major flaw on) And other than the magically Oopart Big Rang that can auto-repair units of the field(no such capability was shown in any other show, even in later UC times other than 0081's Salamis' auto supply being close to this) they do have similar tech level to other OYW shows.

On the other hand, Apsalas III is a bad example for proper testing. They barely finished the thing before any testing before the idiot killed off every single development team involved, not expecting any malfunctions or flaw even though the design is pretty different from the previous incarnations. Well, that battle isn't testing but being forced to defend the base, but the fact that Ginias didn't even think the thing may not work properly is idiotic enough as a developer.
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Re: Testing Phase?

Well, isn't Ginias off his med at that point?
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Mafty
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Re: Testing Phase?

A reoccurring theme in Gundam seems to be that unstable people in a position of military power unsurprisingly rarely make good decisions (case in point, the latter half of Victory Gundam), Ginias falls into a long line of this. If he hadn't executed everyone, the situation may have resolved differently. Of course the later stage of the war may have made Zeon desperate enough to send off the unit untested without Ginias's schemes.

The Jountheim at least makes sense in that they're "testing" units away from the field in a remote part of space, thus in at least a few cases it's not tested during a battle. You can also see this in CCA wherein a remote location near Sweet Water is selected for testing Quess's abilities with the Jagd Doga (though as Gyunei already had a unit, it seems as though this was more testing Quess's abilities than anything else), the α-Azieru on the other is never shown to be tested.

I agree though the Big Rang is too extreme for the OYW (outside of Thunderbolt that is); though it also brigs up another issue with the way Zeon handled the situation, particularly at the end of the war. Even putting aside how much of a pawn the Joutenhiem team is; it still seems incredibly wasteful to send a presumably crazy expensive and massive prototype to an Engineer to pilot. Surely there were better uses for such a powerful prototype than that.
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Re: Testing Phase?

The problem of Ginias being so idiotic at the point is very contradictory at that point of the story.
Apsalas I and II are perfectly reasonable and rationale testing phases, and him killing every other developer is completely irrelevant and unnecessary to the plot at the time.(he might want to keep the results to himself, but he can surely do so AFTER proper testing.) The problem here seems to be a typical lack of understanding of mechanical development by animators. IF Apsalas III is at least more close to I and II in form, it is much more reasonable to assume it works, because those two were created to test out the feasibilities of different components(I is for Minovsky Craft and II for Mega Particle Cannon), but the back story makes it so that both are unstable with the Minovsky Craft, so they need to use 2 instead of 1 for III. Assuming the system works before actual testing is completely unrealistic even for a layman if you think about it.

Igloo is only good at how they depict the testing, the plot makes very little sense if you really think about it.
You get talking Salamis' that act like your local delinquent youth, delusional pilots, etc.
Also, not only an Igloo problem but overall OYW Zeon weapon designs problem, they don't seem to have ANY information of the older eras like WWII, MSM-07Di Ze'Gok, for example, didn't even think of a reasonable intercepting method that is well documented in WWII and the cold war, that you don't want to fire missiles when chasing your targets, but fire them when they are heading towards you.
There's also really little reason to strap the whole MS on, instead they can just take the sensors and computer out, those are the only useful parts on the MS for this mission. As seen on Apsalas and Rhinoceros, taking the head of a MS and strapping it on as the main sensor is done in the same period without any problem.
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Kuruni
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Re: Testing Phase?

^ The only justification I can think pf is that they have too many surplus Z'Gok and the whole thing is throw away after just one use (keeping only the data). And ultimately it doesn't matter anyway with Zeon has to lwave Earth' sphere and unable to utilize its test data.

Now on the bright side of G-Generatipn originals. It's noted that both Gundam Mk. IV and NT-X have proper service history of being test units with good result (interesting, both are contributed to Federation's development of quasi-psycommu system) and neither ever get in real combat (even if one take Katana to head canon, it's still a different unit made into NT-X).

Also, isn't the Shokew get proper test in space before they test it on Earth? And it only get in actual combat because Cronicle chase after V Core Fighter on his own (ironically, I read somewhere that Usso hijack it contribute much to why they later made Rig Shokew, all the damage caused by the thing, piloted by a kid, is clear proof of the design's efficiency).
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Re: Testing Phase?

Kuruni wrote: Thu Feb 03, 2022 2:55 am ^ The only justification I can think pf is that they have too many surplus Z'Gok and the whole thing is throw away after just one use (keeping only the data). And ultimately it doesn't matter anyway with Zeon has to lwave Earth' sphere and unable to utilize its test data.
Still makes little sense because they have to bring the Z'Goks to space and throw them back down every time they launch.
On the other hand, if they just take the sensors and computer, maybe also the cockpit, you can probably reduce the weight by at least 80% and can bring something like 5 times useful payload to space.
Now on the bright side of G-Generatipn originals. It's noted that both Gundam Mk. IV and NT-X have proper service history of being test units with good result (interesting, both are contributed to Federation's development of quasi-psycommu system) and neither ever get in real combat (even if one take Katana to head canon, it's still a different unit made into NT-X).
And then we get the AN-01 from somewhere...

Anyway, it would make sense that something going through proper testing but didn't get launched. Real life examples would be YF-23 and YF-32. There are also a lot of cancelled projects during WWII and the cold war.
You may get good results, but as things or situation changes, or simply them being a step towards the next phase of development, units have a lot of reasons to have no mass production.
Also, isn't the Shokew get proper test in space before they test it on Earth? And it only get in actual combat because Cronicle chase after V Core Fighter on his own (ironically, I read somewhere that Usso hijack it contribute much to why they later made Rig Shokew, all the damage caused by the thing, piloted by a kid, is clear proof of the design's efficiency).
Pretty much a lot of Gundam stories boils to this. They didn't plan to put the unit into actual combat, but somehow the situation forced it into combat and with no way of getting it back to safety, thus they go straight to combat testing.
RX-78-2 is also pretty much this, it was at Side 7 to test the beam rifle, I assume the unit was already tested to be able to move by itself because it would be pretty stupid to not have done so and you get a gun that had already been tested to be able to fire on it own and now everyone is trying to make the MS that is supposed to carry it work and pick up the gun on the field because it was not tested properly before hand.(not that it will not happen even after proper testing, just that the chance of it not working is much greater if it was not tested to work before hand)
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Testing Phase?

Mafty wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:41 pm A reoccurring theme in Gundam seems to be that unstable people in a position of military power unsurprisingly rarely make good decisions [...]
We call that "Truth in Television"... though in the case of the Principality of Zeon there is a direct real world link to the massive, irresponsible resource wastage that hamstrung the German war effort in the Second World War due to many generals and other officials pursuing their own separate, often competing and/or redundant, pet projects for various reasons ranging from corruption to political brinkmanship that would subsequently be cancelled before any gains could be made or thrown at the Allies out of desperation only to fail.

Zeon's tendency to throw half-baked prototypes at the Federation in a bid to slow them down directly mirrors the real world Nazis doing exactly that near the end of the Second World War.


Mafty wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:41 pm The Jountheim at least makes sense in that they're "testing" units away from the field in a remote part of space, thus in at least a few cases it's not tested during a battle.
The problem there is that the Jotunheim and 603rd Technical Evaluation Unit are essentially doing busywork because nobody bothered to tell them the programs they're evaluating were cancelled and their operations are all just "throw the more-often-than-not untested prototype at the enemy and hope it does something before it winds up in a million pieces".


Mafty wrote: Wed Feb 02, 2022 1:41 pm I agree though the Big Rang is too extreme for the OYW (outside of Thunderbolt that is); though it also brigs up another issue with the way Zeon handled the situation, particularly at the end of the war. Even putting aside how much of a pawn the Joutenhiem team is; it still seems incredibly wasteful to send a presumably crazy expensive and massive prototype to an Engineer to pilot. Surely there were better uses for such a powerful prototype than that.
MS IGLOO was being especially unsubtle with the comparison between the Principality of Zeon and its Nazi German inspiration there.

Like most of the prototypes the 603rd "tested", the Big Rang was a half-baked, hacked-together prototype that'd only been subjected to the absolute minimum amount of practical testing before being rolled out. It was a little unusual for the 603rd in that it wasn't a leftover from a cancelled program, being a hastily improvised fix for the hastily improvised Oggo mobile pod's endurance issues.

Like the Germans, Zeon had lost a LOT of its skilled pilots by the time the Federation advanced into its territory. Experienced pilots were extremely valuable commodities and not to be wasted on experimental or untested new model aircraft, so many new models were designed specifically to be as simple as possible to be operated by the minimally-trained conscripts and child soldier volunteers like von Kuspen's Oggo pilots. Oliver May had to be the Big Rang's pilot because Zeon literally could not spare an experienced pilot for an untested weapon in a decisive battle. The Oggo that the Big Rang was designed to support is basically Zeon's version of the Heinkel He 162 Volksjager... the stupid-simple "People's Fighter" meant to be as cheap to build and use as possible, made from improvised and secondhand parts.

Oliver May has some choice words about what an absolutely terrible idea the Big Rang is, and he doesn't keep it to himself... he literally calls the design "reckless" and he's fairly shouting when he does it. Given his objections from a purely technical standpoint, it's probable any MA pilot qualified on the Bigro would take one look at the Big Rang, laugh hysterically, and request an immediate transfer anywhere but there.
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