Post-One Year War Mecha Miscellany

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toysdream
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Post-One Year War Mecha Miscellany

So I'm currently going though and filling in some gaps in my Mobile Suit Catalog, specifically the Universal Century stories between First Gundam and Char's Counterattack. (I figure this is a natural followup to finalizing the Gundam Unicorn specs.) A few random observations that don't really deserve their own threads...


Gundam 0083 Heights
As you may have noticed, Gundam series are inconsistent about whether the listed heights represent full height, overall height (including antennas and other extra gear), or both. When they're reprinted, the editors tend to change the labels, so it gets harder and harder to tell which is which.

In the case of The 08th MS Team, it seems like the heights were originally labeled as "head height". For Gundam 0080 and 0083, they were originally labeled as "overall height". This doesn't always make sense - many of the GMs and Gundams should be over 18 meters if we're counting their antennas - and it's created an ongoing confusion about the actual size of the crested Gelgoog. In the case of the Xamel, though, the listed height of 27.0 meters clearly isn't its head height, because the model sheets include a helpful size comparison that shows it's not much taller than a Gundam.

The Gelgoog Marine, though, is an interesting case. As we've discussed before, there are a lot of ways you could measure a Gelgoog - top of "skull", top of crest, optional commander's antenna. One of the problems is that, if the standard height of 19.2 meters includes the crest, then the Gelgoog Marine and Jaeger should be taller because they have more flamboyant crests. As it happens, the HG-UC Gelgoog Marine kit has a revised "overall height" spec of 20.2 meters. This extra meter nicely covers the bigger crest, and if you scale them based on these crest heights the Gelgoog and Gelgoog Marine seem nicely proportional:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... rison2.jpg


Core Fighter Conundrum
Speaking of proportions, there's one glaring error in the specs of the ZZ Gundam - its Neo Core Fighter is way too big. Based on the Master Grade model kit, it seems like the specs we're given for the other components - the Core Top, Core Base (including Neo Core Fighter), and the combined G-Fortress - are all highly plausible. The MG Core Top and G-Fortress are just a little longer and wider than the original specs, and the Core Base is right on the money. The Neo Core Fighter, on the other hand, is only 68mm long - that's 6.8 meters in 1/100 scale, barely half of the spec length.

As it happens, the original ZZ model sheets include a scale comparison to a 170cm pilot, for both the Neo Core Fighter and the main cockpit block. The scale comparison for the entire fighter suggests that it's less than 8 meters long.

In this case, the Neo Core Fighter would fit much better with the rest of the Core Fighter family. The original version is usually said to be 8.6 meters long (although it's smaller in the kits and toys, and the recent UC Hard Graph kit attempted to retcon this to 8.1 meters). The S Gundam's G-Core is 7.92 meters, and the Victory Gundam's version is 8.6 meters again. Here's a handy comparison graphic:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/imag ... arison.jpg


Parts Is Parts
Speaking of the ZZ Gundam, this is one of the rare cases where we actually have some data on how much the different components of the mobile suit weigh. Like so:

Neo Core Fighter: 11.6 tons
Core Top: 19.3 tons
Core Base: 37.5 tons

The Core Top includes the ZZ's head, chest, and arms, as well as its shields and double beam rifle. The Core Base includes its pelvis, legs, and backpack. The Neo Core Fighter, finally, makes up the center of its torso. Perhaps, like the original Core Fighter, it also contains reactor cores to help account for its exceptional weight...

Meanwhile, in the same series, we have the two-part Bawoo. Its full weight of 67.5 tons is actually very close to that of the ZZ Gundam.

Bawoo Attacker: 46.3 tons
Bawoo Nutter: 21.2 tons

The Bawoo Nutter consists of the pelvis and legs, plus the central portion of the torso. If the ZZ and Bawoo have similar leg construction, then, we could estimate that the ZZ's backpack weighs about 16 tons - the difference between the Bawoo Nutter and the Core Base. That may even be an underestimate, since the Nutter also includes a chunk of torso. We can also look at the S Gundam, whose G-Bomber section weighs 24.36 tons and includes a big old beam smartgun. On balance, I'd say the ZZ's pelvis and legs probably weigh no more than 20 tons, and the backpack is correspondingly heavier.

The significance here is that, for virtually the only time in U.C. history, we can make a rough guess at how much a mobile suit's backpack weighs. This also gives us a bit of context for the Core Fighter II from Gundam 0083, whose two configurations include the backpacks of the Gundam GP01 and GP01Fb.


Fully Armored
Another puzzler is the Full Armor ZZ Gundam, for which we have three different sets of specs. The FA-010S is the version featured in episode 46 of the anime; the FA-010A is the FAZZ from Gundam Sentinel, with lower-quality armor, no transformation mechanisms, and a lot of dummy parts; the FA-010B is the version released as part of the original Gundam Sentinel model kit series. I'll throw in the original ZZ and the "enhanced" MSZ-010S for comparison.

MSZ-010: base weight 32.7t, full weight 68.4t, mass ratio 1.72
MSZ-010S: base weight 32.7t, full weight 71.6t, mass ratio 1.78
FA-010S: base weight 32.7t, full weight 87.2t, mass ratio 1.54
FA-010A: base weight 45.4t, full weight 94.6t
FA-010B: base weight 43.4t, full weight 93.3t, mass ratio 1.69

The mass ratio of the original ZZ is usually listed as 1.74, but later sources such as the old 1/100 and High Grade kits revised this to 1.72 (and changed its overall height to 22.11 meters). I think in this case, the later sources are correct, since the new mass ratio yields a weapons payload that's a round number of tons. Let's break that calculation down.

MSZ-010: weapons payload 7.0t, propellant 28.7t
MSZ-010S: weapons payload 7.5t, propellant 31.4t
FA-010S: weapons payload 24.0t, propellant 30.5t
FA-010B: weapons payload 11.7~11.9t, propellant 38.0~38.2t

The FA-010B's weapons payload doesn't come to an exact number of tons, so I've listed a range of numbers to account for rounding error.

The official anime specs for the FA-010S don't strike me as very plausible. It's supposed to have propellant tanks in its leg armor - they're even labeled on the model sheet! - and yet it has less propellant overall than the armor-less MSZ-010S. The FA-010B specs, which indicate an increase of at least 6.6 tons of propellant, seem more rational.

On the other hand, there's a mismatch between the FA-010A and FA-010B specs. The huge hyper mega cannon is described in the latter's kit manual as being optional, and it probably isn't factored into the specs (which also include two backpack missile pods). But it's a standard feature of the former, as the FAZZ's main weapon. Looking at the specs, it's probably factored into the FAZZ's base weight, where it's largely offset by all the weapons and transformation systems that are omitted. If you subtract their base weight from their full weight, to get the sum total of weapons plus propellant, the FAZZ's number is 0.7 tons less. Perhaps that represents the weight of the missing backpack missiles?

Sadly, if the FA-010B is just a more plausible writeup of the Full Armor ZZ sans hyper mega cannon, we don't have enough data to guesstimate how much that cannon actually weighs. Ah well.

-- Mark
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balofo
Posts: 2437
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2009 1:45 pm

Re: Post-One Year War Mecha Miscellany

Isn't the FA-010B pretty much retconed by now?
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