Mecha Talk

Interesting Jeff but did the Ball really have a speed advantage or was that only against battleships and not Mobile Suits?

I agree that the shield might have slowed it down and a beam weapon wouldn't have worked but like I said before, a GM machinegun would've worked fine even if the hand grip had to be modified a bit.

I'd be surprised if Ball pilots didn't feel like they were forced to commit suicide when using those things.

Do we have any canon ace pilots who used a RB-79 Ball?

Well, according to the mahq profiles, while the GM has an acceleration of 0.94G, the Ball has 0.96G, so speed wise the would seem quite even (at least according to those stats). Therefore I'm more inclined to think that their main problem was maneuverability, which even if it was better than a fighter (Ex: saberfish), it was probably still worse than a MS.



Zeon did consider that and that's why they equipped the Oggos with them, although in their case, the Oggo was probably designed with such capability already in mind.



And that's why some people said that they received the nickname "Mobile Coffin".



Other than Shiro, probably the RB-79M piltos who were considered aces in the middle stages of the war when it came to anti-ship combat. Then there's also those custom painted Balls seen on the first minutes of MS Igloo ep. 3, though we don't have any confirmation of their paint job being related to them being aces.

The notion of fitting Balls with leftover GM equipment seems like an obvious non-starter. Unlike the situation with the Oggo, the Federation didn't have any leftover GM equipment; if it did, they'd just give it to GMs.

As far as the Ball's performance, it would presumably be outclassed by a conventional space fighter in terms of straight-line acceleration and speed. (That's why space fighters are better for hit-and-run attacks.) And it can't really do AMBAC maneuvering, either. But the main advantage of the Ball is that's it's studded with verniers; in older sources like Gundam Century, the Ball is the only machine that's specifically cited as using attitude control verniers, and even with recent retcons the Federation's other mobile suits haven't sprouted as many verniers as their Zeon adversaries.

Given that the Ball is covered with verniers, it may actually be surprisingly nimble in close-quarters fighting. I kind of get that impression from MS Igloo too.

Speaking of which, the MG kit actually provides some whimsical back story for the Ohio team and their "sharkmouth" Balls. Apparently they fought at Solomon, and survived the destruction of their mothership Naganuma when it was blown up the Elmeth's attack on Konpeitoh shortly afterwards. Then they ended up at A Baoa Qu, bearing witness to Gato's Gelgoog as it hacked through GMs and Balls. I guess they were just off-camera during the opening scene of Gundam 0083.

EDIT: I checked Gundam Century, and it gives the Ball a 180 degree turn time of 2.2 seconds - only fractionally more than a Guncannon or Rick Dom, and substantially better than a Zaku I. Since these mobile suits are supposed to be way more maneuverable than a traditional space fighter, that's pretty impressive for a non-AMBAC machine!

-- Mark

On second thought, I think I disagree with this statement since B Gundam did that for comedic effect and Shiro had little to no problem moving around when using a hunk of space metal as a shield.I somehow doubt that his Ball (type K) had any more thrusters or advantages besides the different weapons it had equipped

Shiro was just really good at improvising with the equipment he had the type k was an ball that retained more of the construction tools of the worker pods the ball had and he was not using the plate as armor but as camouflage so he could get close to the zaku II RD-4. The ball sub types are basically the stock ball with an different turret and arms mounted to the body. What i also want to point out is the fact that zeon actually had two projects dedicated to recycling old parts in to new units. the MS-21c dra-c and the oggo. the oggo seemed to be aimed at younger cadets and other new recrutes while the Dra-c seemed to be the more advanced unit. oddly zeon seems to put all in on oggo and only post war zeon factions use dra-c units.

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That's because the Dra-C didn't exist during the One Year War. It's not developed until after the war by the Delaz Fleet, who start building them in May 0083.

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Just saying that if Shiro's Ball could carry around that huge hunk of space metal with no problem then I doubt the weight of a GM shield, either hand carried or attached to a side of the Ball would offset it's mobility too much.

Well... Balls in later days are designed for long range support anyways, they are cheap mobile artillery. Supposedly you should be behind the GMs during battle. And their main weapon is quite powerful for their size. Before the GM, they are pretty much the only thing EFSF have other than the relatively noneffective flyers. Oh and good Ball pilots mostly gett assigned to a GM, where they would definitely last longer.

oggo, on the other hand, are more like cheap units with recycled weapons. So they are a more generalized cheap unit than Ball. That is also why they are equipped with multiple weapons of short range, namely better fighting claws, a launcher (or some panzerfaust) and a zaku weapon (usually MMP-78 or a Zaku bazooka).
In other words, they are a cheap compact flying soda can designed for the use of old zaku weapons. Designed to be used en masse they stack well together in compact space.

Rea-C are supposed to be recon units by design, using old MS-06F parts.