So how can the "Moonlight Butterfly" of Turn A be countered?

[Siroh32]

For anyone that has at least read about the [Turn A Gundam] (and [Turn X]), let alone watched the anime, the "Moonlight Butterfly" is the most powerful attack usable by either Turn A Gundam or Turn X, and has been responsible for destroying human civilization before. I can go on about how there has been powerful weapons before in the Gundam Franchise's history, but that would be too obvious a route to go.

I've recently watched again a clip of the final battle between Turn A and Turn X on YouTube. I may personally like Turn A as an MS design, but it wasn't because of the Moonlight Butterfly. Still, I thought it was nice to watch that part of the last episode again and it got me wondering; how can the nanomachines of the Moonlight Butterfly attack be countered?

Unless someone with more knowledge than I can counter it, I don't recall that it can even remotely be tried "in-universe" (save for possibly being in the line of fire of a devastating giant weapon that escapes my mind at the moment), since Turn A and Turn X happen to be among the most powerful mobile weapons in the Gundam franchise to date.

But I'm asking in general rather than in the context of the franchise. I'm no expert on the franchise or on science, but that has not stopped me from wondering. I have probably one answer based on what I may have heard quite some time ago, but as I haven't truly looked into it deeply, I'm not ready to present it, so I'm just asking the question.

[Dark Duel]

If deployed early enough that the nanomachines have not yet spread too much, an electromagnetic pulse(EMP) might work - causing the nanomachines and the Turn-(whichever) to shut down, thus preventing further spread.

[Geoxile]

They use high power I-field generators to contain the flow of MLB but the effects areN'T spectacular IIRC.


Edit: Lol, meant aren't. Not are

[Siroh32]

I have seen the clip of it on YT again (viewable [here]). Before (on episode 49, YT clip [here]), Harry, Poe, and the other SUMO pilot used I-Field barriers, but the barriers were repelled by Gym's Moonlight Butterfly attack.

Later, when the Soriel activated it's protective barriers (I don't think I-Field was specified... Was it specified in the manga or novel?), the Moonlight Butterfly bounced off and the attack ceased soon after. Whether it ceased because of the Soleil's barriers or not, I don't know, but I'm doubting it. If it was, then it only seemed to have halted it for a moment because it was used again.

[Destiny_Gundam]

How do you stop nanomachines? Why, with the power of love of course!

[Geoxile]

How do you stop nanomachines? Why, with the power of love of course!

Or with NT powers lol. This actually happens in one of the Dynasty Warrior: Gundam games though

[1-4-4]

I've recently watched again a clip of the final battle between Turn A and Turn X on YouTube. I may personally like Turn A as an MS design, but it wasn't because of the Moonlight Butterfly. Still, I thought it was nice to watch that part of the last episode again and it got me wondering; how can the nanomachines of the Moonlight Butterfly attack be countered?

Well, one of the most basic ways to counter something like that would be to subvert either its drive or control systems. But the drive is probably Minovsky craft based, and I don't know about the control system (are they like funnels? Or strictly computer controlled?) - since all that is steeped in fantasy, it's hard to say what could counter it...

So let's think about some of the more basic ways a system like this could be countered:

Heat
There's a huge number of these machines, of course, and they have strange power that lets them fly around and consume things - but when you get down to it, they're made of some kind of combination of ordinary materials... Probably some metal, maybe some plastiic. Their strength isn't in their individual power, but the combined threat of several million (or billion?) of 'em. So heating them up (say, with a particularly effective flamethrower, or a small nuclear weapon) should destroy them. The nanomachines may have some exotic defense against this, however.

Shock Wave
These machines are tiny after all: so propagating a shock wave (i.e. from an explosion) at them through the atmosphere could be enough to smash them or rattle them apart.

Sonic/Resonance
Kind of similar to the shock wave idea, but the concept is to find the resonant frequency of some critical component and emit it. With luck it'll smash 'em. On the other hand, if there are multiple different types of nanomachines, there may not be a single resonant frequency that would work on all of them.

Chemical attacks
The strength of the nanomachines is that they are legion: billions of microscopic machines working together to break down materials (presumably making more nanomachines in the process) - but what if something attacked them on an even smaller scale? So the idea here is to attack the nanomachines at a molecular level, chemically. Corrosives, adhesives, chemicals that could ionize and electro-plate the surface of the machine (inhibiting its movement), reactive chemicals that would produce high levels of heat when coming in contact with the nanomachines, and so on. For this to work, though, you'd have to spray the material over the whole area where the machines are operating, so there could be huge levels of collateral damage.

Nano-scale Reactive Armor
This would be a hard one to implement. But let's say the swarm of machines are coming to consume your vehicle. What if the whole vehicle were coated with a material which, when damaged at a small scale, would react with a tiny explosion? Each nanomachine that attempts to break down a bit of the machine that's treated this way would be met with a little explosion at close range, and destroyed. The tough bits are implementing this system in the first place, and making sure there are no gaps the nanomachines can exploit.

Large-scale electrical discharge
This is basically another way of imparting a high level of heat onto the nanomachines. Assuming they have some conductive metal component, a cloud of them will be more conductive than the surrounding air... So if you can produce an electrical discharge (like a lightning bolt) from an airborne machine, the discharge will likely find a path to ground through those machines. One of the difficulties here is that each bolt will take one path (maybe with a certain number of branches) but probably won't be enough to destroy the whole swarm... So the attack would have to be continuously maintained. It also wouldn't help you against an attack from above, probably, unless you used two flying machines and formed the lightning between them.
Since this is the Gundam universe we're talking about, you could also consider things like the Plasma Leader system used by the Adzam and Val Valo, or some variation on the Gouf's heat rod.

Nano-scale guided bombs
This is kind of like the chemical attack: it relies on destructive materials (explosives, possibly adhesives to get the bombs in contact with a nanomachine) and some way of guiding the chemical to a nanomachine (magnetism? Static charge? Or even a real guidance system?) - this trick probably only works if there's some easy way of getting the charges to their targets.

Bigger Fish
A horde of tiny nanomachines attacking a giant space ship is a threat because the space ship probably doesn't have any defense that can meet the nanomachines on their own ground. The giant ship is simply torn apart, like a mammal being consumed by a vicious bacteria. So the idea here is to counter the tiny machines with slightly less tiny machines (or creatures) which can feast on the tiny nanomachines the way a whale can feast on brine shrimp. But this could be considered just a variation of countering nanomachines with nanomachines.

Indigestion
The trick here is to get the nanomachines to "eat" something that would destroy them in the process. For instance, create a mist of a corrosive acid, coat the mist droplets with a thin membrane of rubber and then coat the rubber with a thin layer of metal. Fire the resulting micro-beads out at the nano-machines as a cloud of dust. Nano-machines tear into the metal, rupturing the rubber membrane and dousing them with acid. There is some question of whether the nanomachines could be tricked in this way, of course.

And finally, it's worth noting that most of these methods would require a high degree of fore-planning and the manufacturing facilities to pull it off. One would expect most of these techniques are just fundamentally beyond what the militia would be capable of, though Moonrace technology might be able to pull it off.

[Arsarcana]

The problem with most of those ideas is that MB worked on the entire Earth back in the Dark History period. They presumably knew more about it than anyone in the present time and couldn't do anything about it aside from the specially sealed and buried suits. I'm also sure the nanomachines ran into at least some of these things while going about munching on all Earth's advanced technology. Heat from power plants, shock waves from things blowing up when the nanomachines were destroying stuff and so on. Also, some of the ideas like sonic disruption would be useless in a vacuum. Pretty much anything that works on destroying some of them definitely fails if you buy the outside sources claiming the thing could affect everything in the solar system from the sun to Jupiter. With the amount of nanomachines that would have to be involved to be effective (and the power to deliver them over those distances) you'd need a simply ridiculous amount of whatever your attempted counter is to even make a dent in the number of things. Heck, just what's observed onscreen (affecting the whole earth) is enough if you're only targeting a single battlefield. At best you'd probably just slow the process down a bit.

TLDR version: Get another Turn unit or (possibly) a really powerful I-Field. That's about all that's known to work.

Nano-scale Reactive Armor
This would be a hard one to implement. But let's say the swarm of machines are coming to consume your vehicle. What if the whole vehicle were coated with a material which, when damaged at a small scale, would react with a tiny explosion? Each nanomachine that attempts to break down a bit of the machine that's treated this way would be met with a little explosion at close range, and destroyed.

Assuming you could engineer such a thing, the problem is that you'd probably run out of reactive armor well before MB ran out of nanomachines.

Bigger Fish
<snip> So the idea here is to counter the tiny machines with slightly less tiny machines (or creatures) which can feast on the tiny nanomachines the way a whale can feast on brine shrimp. But this could be considered just a variation of countering nanomachines with nanomachines.

Of course, you'd need a way to keep the nanomachines from eating the bigger fish from the inside or for all the nanomachines that don't get eaten from devouring the bigger fish from the outside... It really depends on how exactly the machines know what to target. Might work.

Indigestion
The trick here is to get the nanomachines to "eat" something that would destroy them in the process.

Probably encountered a lot of dangerous stuff while sending Earth back to the stone age. Chemicals all over the place, the inside of fusion or fission reactors, nuclear or other industrial waste. Didn't seem to bother them much in the long run.

[1-4-4]

The problem with most of those ideas is that MB worked on the entire Earth back in the Dark History period. They presumably knew more about it than anyone in the present time and couldn't do anything about it aside from the specially sealed and buried suits.

We actually know very little about how that all went down. As far as I know we have no basis for making assumptions about whether they saw it coming. But, yes, that does present a problem. And there's my other big assumption: I assume that an individual nanomachine is fragile. I think that's a very reasonable assumption but this is a cartoon after all...

As you note, one of the big problems is that it's (presumably) pretty easy to destroy a few hundred thousand nanomachines, but then all the ones you didn't get in that first attack come and get you.

As for the chemical attack methods I described: you mention that the nanomachines "probably" encountered a lot of dangerous stuff while devouring the Earth - but there's a big difference between randomly encountering something dangerous and having something dangerous directed at you. Also, the "indigestion" method specifically relies on being able to bait them into a situation that will destroy them: a naturally-occurring condition that would do that would be exceedingly rare.

The question of what it takes to deplete the supply of nanomachines is kind of tricky. They have some kind of self-replication capability, right? In that case, an Earth-felling swarm could be considerably larger than the number of units ordinarily stocked. (Turn-A releases its full stock of nanomachines, which then doubles itself several dozen times over by consuming matter and building more nanomachines - hence, an Earth-engulfing swarm could be billions of times larger than the number of machines normally carried) So destroying an ordinary swarm of the machines is a much simpler problem: and fending off individual attacks is even easier. We also don't know how long it takes for nanomachines to build more nanomachines, or what specific raw materials they'd need to do it.

Probably the easiest way, though, is just destroy the mobile suit controlling them. That works, right? At least, I don't think the nanomachines keep operating autonomously without the controlling MS... In that case, the problem is rather different. Instead of billions of (presumably) weak targets, you have one fairly tough one protected by the swarm... A beam rifle wouldn't work due to the I-Field, and I guess most physical projectiles could be consumed by the swarm prior to impact... Maybe an ultra-dense slug fired from a rail cannon? Combine ultra-high velocity with a heavy, dense projectile, and the swarm may not be able to stop it before it hits. And there's still the nuclear weapon option, or other WMD's like colony lasers and so on... (Though if I-Fields can deflect heavy-metal particle beams, can they also deflect a high-energy laser? I'm not sure how that works...)

[DuelGundam2099]

The gundams themselves can be taken out by much stronger mobiles suits like say the Double X, Ashtaron Hermit Crab and Viraso Chest Break, Freedom, Justice, Providence, the Destiny quadrio, and pretty much most Gundams from 00 save 0.

The moonlight butterfly, I imagine anyway, cannot break down beams or lasers, so something like a DRAGOON system or bits should work in the early stages. The power of the Shuffle Alliance did cancel out the DG Cells in G Gundam and as far as I'm aware the nanomachines are basically evolved versions of that, so there could be some type of negative reaction to that. How they would react to something like say GN particles I would imagine would be bad for them, but due to their sheer numbers it would have to be a hell of an attack.

Now the mythical "extending to Jupiter" Newtyope pilots can do with simply can't be countered with Gundam technology or any real robot attack save for maybe a Macross cannon, but even that is a stretch. In terms of hybrid bots the only one I see that could outright take it out is Overdevil from King Gainer; Big O probably could if it uses either it's force field or Final Show. Supers with planet and star busting capabilities like Shin Getter Robo, Genesic GaoGaiGar, Sol or Ultimate Gravion, Diebuster, Arc/Super Galaxy/Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, BellXephon and QuonXephon, Aquarion, Ideon, and the Alpha version of Mazinkaiser would easily match up to it; Nirvash TypeZERO Spec 3 from Eureka Seven could be a stretch, but depending on how fast it can get to either Turns I don't see how it can't.

[Arsarcana]

I'm not entirely certain most of those 'stronger Gundams' you listed actually are. In Ep. 39 Turn A and X both survived being in the middle of a nuclear explosion (Turn X's head alone managed to create a barrier that also protected two suits behind it) and in 44 the Moonlight Butterfly wings blocked a battleship's assault, beam and solid rounds included. All the suits you named rely on similar weapons to fight so I doubt they'd get through if a battleship couldn't. A GN Field might stop the nanomachines temporarily since they can block physical objects but we've seen them disrupted so it's not clear if it would be effective for long. 00's drive output alone blocked beam shots so 00 Raiser or 00Q's Trans Am Burst might generate enough particles in a wide area to create a safe zone (although that has a known time limit). The particles probably wouldn't affect the nanomachines functionality since nanotech is in everyone's body in 00 (particularly the Innovades) but they weren't adversely affected at that level from what we could see and you can't mess with the thoughts of machines that don't actually think. A psychoframe might work given CCA, though I'm not sure it would survive the attempt.

So yeah, while it's theoretically simpler to stop MB by taking out the suit, I'm not certain anything short of a colony laser would get through the barriers the Turn suits exhibit. Even that's iffy if you buy the out of animation assertion that Turn A's rifle is a colony laser, although if you go that far you've also got to deal with the regenerative abilities that the outside sources hype up. At that level you'd probably need technology that's even more physics-defying than the Turn A tech already is.

[Geoxile]

We know the general idea.

The Moonlight Butterfly engulfed the world and destroyed most of the technology, excluding some lucky suits (let alone things like Zakus and Kapools). Plus we see it disintegrate parts of Corrin's suit and the setting is defined and given as world where the technology of humanity was reverted to that of the dark ages by the MLB.

Oh and, stronger suits? I don't understand...lurk around MT more please.

As for beams and barriers? The soleil's barriers being directed had trouble containing the MLB and IIRC the hand held I-field units carried by the SUMOs were almost useless. These things have been shown to not only decompose matter but carry overwhelming force and/or electromagnetic properties.

I wonder if they're even destructible by any of the means mentioned above unless you were to force a situation in which they are doomed. In other words, fan fiction.

In fact...the only time we see them counteracted is in the game, Gundam Musou 2 like I mentioned. Of course entirely non-canon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLND9sx5jYk

Really, this is semi-solar system devastating stuff.

Oh and just a few other things.

1) IIRC, the Turn X is engineered using DG cells. Turn A I believe came from beyond the solar system.

2) Why are Big-O and Overdevil even on that list. Nothing they showed even comes close to what the Novel Turns can do...Final Stage was actually literally underwhelming, and force field? Ermm...Plasma gimmick?

3) I'd question Genesic GGG too actually. it may be BA but it didn't do anything impressive on its own, only the Goldion Crusher, which destroyed the miniature sun of the Sol Masters. Hell, Might Gaine killed the embodiment of the studio exec.

4) Turn types' I-fields are supposedly able to deflect just about everything in novelization, even physical weaponry. We don't see this in the anime but the anime alone suggests we only see a fraction of the Turn types' powers which is really already impressive for Gundam short of 00 Raiser or Qan[T]

[DuelGundam2099]

I don't understand...lurk around MT more please.

I'm afraid I don't follow.

IIRC, the Turn X is engineered using DG cells. Turn A I believe came from beyond the solar system.

Actually it's the other way around, Turn X is the one believed to be created outside the solar system.

Why are Big-O and Overdevil even on that list. Nothing they showed even comes close to what the Novel Turns can do...Final Stage was actually literally underwhelming, and force field? Ermm...Plasma gimmick?

Big O I'll admit I was iffy on. As for Overdevil, it's Overfreezing powers could possibly freeze a really big portion of the MB. It is strong enough to freeze bullets and whatever got within 80 feet of it completely froze.

I'm not entirely certain most of those 'stronger Gundams' you listed actually are. In Ep. 39 Turn A and X both survived being in the middle of a nuclear explosion (Turn X's head alone managed to create a barrier that also protected two suits behind it) and in 44 the Moonlight Butterfly wings blocked a battleship's assault, beam and solid rounds included.

Those suits do have somethings battleships do not: Speed and maneuverability, not to mention they're much smaller and can just move out of the way. As for the nuke thing, Turn A did get damaged pretty bad from the Minichi drill so I imagine a similar attack with enough force would at least slow it down.

[Geoxile]

Follow the novelization moar

Actually, there are discrepancies on either side but Turn A being the original floats around as well. In fact, it would make more sense for the Turn X to be the copy as it is commonly related to as a derivation of the Devil Gundam (and more specifically DG Junior). Also, Gym calls the X the successor.

Freezing MLB wouldn't stop it...considering how limited it was.

Turn A's power varies quite often in the series but they actually relate this to the head being damaged, from which we may infer its head is directly correlated to its power.

Also, those suits also generally lack what battleships have, Large-scale firepower.

[DuelGundam2099]

Also, those suits also generally lack what battleships have, Large-scale firepower

Not even the Double X's colony + destroying Twin Satellite Cannon that can be fired from the other side of Earth's orbit? Not even the METEORs that fired dozens of lasers and missiles at once and single handedly stopped a fleet of nuclear missiles? Not even Providence Gundams 128 DRAGOONs? Not even....... Actually I think that's all I've got. Well, at least I tried.

[Geoxile]

Minus the double Satellite cannons no. Spamming small arms isn't that impressive considering the minor beam batteries on the meteor appeared to be around the scale of a typical beam rifle. And 128 Beam webbing wasn't that impressive either lol. Compare them to mid-late UC battleships that spam large caliber beam weapons and carry enough missiles to completely raze the surface of Axis (specifically in CCA). They both fall short by quite a bit. On the other hand Meteor's one catch is the giant beam saber that was able to extend to stupid lengths. It was so out of place...IIRC between the two Meteor units they were able to completely dissect one of the colonies, none of the other weapons came close to that.

[Graham Aker]

From what i remember from the 00 series GN particles by nature block all non-CB coms and it is even shown that the 00 Raiser's trans am raiser/trans am burst can block QBW of innovades which were genetically modified not nanomachined (00 Qan[t] has a similar feature called Quantum Burst). Which means the link between the Turn gundam and the nanomachines would be severed. After that it is just a matter of finding a GN powered suit which can defeat the Turn A (probably 00 Raiser or 00 Qan[t]) and given how by the time of the movie even the tau drives had trans am which tripled the performance of that unit.

[MythSearcher]

The gundams themselves can be taken out by much stronger mobiles suits like say the Double X, Ashtaron Hermit Crab and Viraso Chest Break, Freedom, Justice, Providence, the Destiny quadrio, and pretty much most Gundams from 00 save 0.

The moonlight butterfly, I imagine anyway, cannot break down beams or lasers, so something like a DRAGOON system or bits should work in the early stages. The power of the Shuffle Alliance did cancel out the DG Cells in G Gundam and as far as I'm aware the nanomachines are basically evolved versions of that, so there could be some type of negative reaction to that. How they would react to something like say GN particles I would imagine would be bad for them, but due to their sheer numbers it would have to be a hell of an attack.

Now the mythical "extending to Jupiter" Newtyope pilots can do with simply can't be countered with Gundam technology or any real robot attack save for maybe a Macross cannon, but even that is a stretch. In terms of hybrid bots the only one I see that could outright take it out is Overdevil from King Gainer; Big O probably could if it uses either it's force field or Final Show. Supers with planet and star busting capabilities like Shin Getter Robo, Genesic GaoGaiGar, Sol or Ultimate Gravion, Diebuster, Arc/Super Galaxy/Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, BellXephon and QuonXephon, Aquarion, Ideon, and the Alpha version of Mazinkaiser would easily match up to it; Nirvash TypeZERO Spec 3 from Eureka Seven could be a stretch, but depending on how fast it can get to either Turns I don't see how it can't.

Moon Light Butterfly, it absorbs beam/laser/whatever as its energy source, and uses whatever material it can to build more of itself, that is how they got that sheer quantity and quality. It got all information from human civilization(in all Gundam timelines) so not even GN particles can do much to them.
The one seen in the show caused enough destruction even without an attack command and is just spreading out preparing for further actions. In this case, MS and warships in the show can simply use I-Field to repel the nano-machine, but if that works under an attack command, the Earth's human civilization(and highly possibly also all of the human habitation in Earth's sphere all the way
to Jupiter sans the moon) would not be destroyed at the beginning of CC. At least a majority of newer MS of the time would have I-Field or GN Field(for that matter) equipped to counter that.
(even the replicate Kapool has I-Field for the sake of it) And I must asset that they were not hit by surprise, they were in a war with the moon race, and the moon race did utilize Turn X in their control.(which is likely why they survived)

The Gundams you listed are nowhere as powerful as the Turn series, they are comparatively much older models, use much older technology and is nowhere as energy efficient than even the Sumo, which uses a Degenerative Drive instead of older nuclear tech.(Seriously, the Nuclear fission generators in the CE verse is likely the worst in all of these) The Sumo and Turn series use I Fields to move their limbs, as well as moving across space. Technically you are not fighting them as MSs, you are fighting them inside their controlled territory once you are in their I Field zone. BTW, they can warp space-time, so you will be fighting teleporters. Speed of the suit is not that important anymore, 00 and 00Q might be able to do something since they can also teleport, but the teleporting ability is orders of magnitude higher for the Turn series.

Not commenting on other series, but the MLB setting was built on top the idea that no matter how strong you make the Gundam series setting technology to be, as long as its not after the Turn A(CC2345) time frame, it can automatically become better by the "Built on top all previous human civilization). So if you want to do a crossover with other series, unless you are using some kind of alien technology and that series' humans never obtained that technology's information at all, the MLB will just become more powerful by default.(So in the Gurren Lagann world, the MLB will be able to utilize spiral energy and at least has all the abilities of the anti-spiral, in the Gaogaigar world, the MLB will create nano versions of their own G-stones, Diebuster, the Buster corps will likely be replaced by the MLB and each MLB can likely cause space-time anomally, etc.) You can claim a competition of other series against the "Gundam world limited" MLB, I guess.

[Kuruni]

Great. Necro almost five years old thread without bringing anything new to table. GN field is just lke I-field composed of different particle.

(I sent notice to mod, just in case)

[ShadowCell]

haha wow didn't duelgundam2099 get banned like a year ago?

anyways guys, please check the date of the last post before you drag threads back to the world of the living