Beneath the Armor

[Amion]

Here's another of my threads again.

So, first off I apologize, I'm certain there's been many threads about this and many, many more topics or references to peruse on this topic.

What exactly is required for a mobile suit to run? I should probably not ask both, but: what would a real life machine require? And what, more importantly, would/does mobile suits according to the known data material about them require?

What exactly is in side all of those cool mecha? A cockpit and a powerplant, surely, but that's bound to be only the beginning of the story. Where's the servos, the computers, the fuel lines, the circuitry, the heat radiators, the kitchen sink? Is there a kitchen sink? Do tell.

My lapse of flippancy aside, these questions have suddenly intrigued me. Surely there is material out there...

*Flashes the Mark signal and starts theme song*

[Seto Kaiba]

What exactly is required for a mobile suit to run? I should probably not ask both, but: what would a real life machine require? And what, more importantly, would/does mobile suits according to the known data material about them require?

What exactly is in side all of those cool mecha? A cockpit and a powerplant, surely, but that's bound to be only the beginning of the story. Where's the servos, the computers, the fuel lines, the circuitry, the heat radiators, the kitchen sink? Is there a kitchen sink? Do tell.

Well, let's see...

Obviously, for starters, you've got the base structural frame of the mobile suit... which, depending on the timeframe and timeline, is made from titanium alloy, luna titanium/Gundarium alloy, or the relevant substitute materials in that timeline like Gundanium (Wing) or E-Carbon (00). That's your mounting point for pretty much every other piece of hardware that's going into the mobile suit and the connection point for the actuators that make it work.

On the frame-and-hung-armor architectures early in the OYW, you have the armor mounted on top of the suit structural frame. On the monocoque movable frame designs produced starting in the Gryps conflict, the armor essentially IS the structural frame.

On the low-functional level, to make the suit actually move you've got to have the electromagnetic actuators that make up the suit's joints, the power cabling to drive them off the main power plant's output, and the control bus cabling from the AMBAC package (or similar computer) that carries the positional data, torque commands, and target extension that would be necessary to actually move the joint X-many degrees in whatever axis to produce the desired movement.

Dampers and other shock absorbers are a must to prevent impacts from walking and fighting from damaging the joint drive systems and smoothing out ride quality for the poor schmuck in the torso cockpit. The joint motors are also going to need a coolant loop to prevent the high voltage motors from overheating in combat and also from weather-related overheating/freezing.

The torso's got most of the core functional components for a mobile suit. The cockpit and all the control computer hardware is located there, along with the suit's power plant. There's also pretty much inevitably going to be life support systems for the cockpit to provide breathable, filtered air and heating/cooling of the cabin to preserve the operator's health. Also inevitable is the coolant system, or more likely multiple independent coolant loops to service the power plant, computers, fuel tanks, and so on. The exhaust vents and intakes for the coolant system are usually found in the upper chest, under a movable armored slat or other armored cover.

For suits that use fusion power, the tanks of deuterium and helium-3 are going to be found in the torso as well... IIRC on the EF OYW designs they're actually in the pelvis. You'll need insulated fuel lines to the reactor suitable for cryofuel handling to keep the fuel from evaporating once it's outside the pressure vessel keeping it liquid.

The computer's going to need multiple control buses to monitor the condition of the joint drive, the reactor, the coolant systems, into the extremeties to connect to weaponry via the hand sockets or wirelessly, and for all the various sensor feeds from the avionics package.

The avionics package itself is a bloody mess... gyroscopes and various other sensors used for the AMBAC system to keep the thing upright and enable walking, the various gravimetric sensors and other attitude control-related sensors for space maneuvering, plus the ground-following and other radar systems for terrain navigation and targeting, along with doppler lasers, infrared, nightvision, and conventional camera systems, and probably something approximating a radar warning receiver to notify the pilot if he's being target-painted by a guided missile (though thanks to the Minovsky particle effects, that's only a worry at close range).

There's also the question of internal weapons, which varies from suit to suit, but they'll need their own internal ammo supplies (like the drum feeds in the EF suit heads), cooling systems, and some gun cameras of their own to aim from. Beam sabers and such are going to need a power tap into the Minovsky reactor to charge and a connection to the weapons control bus so the computer can moderate the beam saber's output and detect its remaining power level.



Architecturally, as I see it it won't be that much different from any other large motor vehicle... just proportionally scaled up in complexity to the suit's size and the number of articulation points.

My lapse of flippancy aside, these questions have suddenly intrigued me. Surely there is material out there...

The Master Archive Mobile Suit books are nice in this respect... we've got what, two for the RGM-79 series, one for the RX-78, one for the RX-78GP series, and one for the Zeta?



EDIT: Fixed the accidental reversal of terms in the second paragraph.

[Amion]

Thanks Seto. That's a lot, and it's exactly what I was looking for. Now, where are these manuals exactly that you speak of?

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

On the monocoque architectures early in the OYW, you have the armor mounted on top of the suit structural frame. On the movable frame designs produced starting in the Gryps conflict, the frame is part of the armor.

That's precisely backwards. A "monocoque" design is one where the outer hull or skin of a design is also the main load-bearing structure, while movable frame designs use an internal "skeleton" that actually support the structure of the mobile suit itself, and the armor (and all the other equipment) is pretty much just bolted to the internal frame.

[Seto Kaiba]

Thanks Seto. That's a lot, and it's exactly what I was looking for. Now, where are these manuals exactly that you speak of?

They're part of the Master File/Master Archive series of technical manuals published by SoftBank Creative. They're about 130 pages, on average, and they've been done for a couple different franchises. To date, they've done five for Gundam's Universal Century:

• OYW-era RX-78 Gundam
  Covering the RX-78-1 thru RX-78-7, FA-78-1, RX-78NT-1, FF-X7 Core Fighter, and White Base.
• Two volumes covering the GM series
  Volume 1 does the RGM-79G/GS Command, C/E, G Ground Type, GM II, GM III, Sniper, Sniper II, and GM Cannon. Volume 2 does the F, FP, FC, FD, S, N, Q, and Gundam Hazel.
• 0083's RX-78GP01 Zephyranthes
  Coverage includes GP00 thru GP04, Dendrobium, GP01 Full Armor, FF-XII Core Fighter, Albion, Val-Walo, and HiZack.
• MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam
  Coverage includes the MSZ-006 Zeta Gundam, 006-3S Strike version, MSZ-006X1 thru 006X3, Hyakushiki, Zeta Plus, and the Argama.

SoftBank has also done books for Macross (VF-0, 3 VF-1 volumes, VF-19, VF-22, VF-25, and some additional continuity material), Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (the ASF-X Shinden II), Galactic Drifter Vifam, and Armored Trooper VOTOMS.

That's precisely backwards. A "monocoque" design is one where the outer hull or skin of a design is also the main load-bearing structure, while movable frame designs use an internal "skeleton" that actually support the structure of the mobile suit itself, and the armor (and all the other equipment) is pretty much just bolted to the internal frame.

Whoops-a-daisy... that'll learn me to post in the dead of night. Sorry.

[toysdream]

According to Gundam Century, Zeon mobile suits used a frameless monocoque construction (in which the outer shell holds the whole thing together), and Federation ones used a semi-monocoque structure with some internal reinforcement. The latter was somewhat heavier, but it made it possible for damaged armor panels to be removed and replaced.

Most later sources repeated this claim, but the Sunrise-supervised Mobile Suit Museum reversed it, with the exhibit text commenting as follows...

It's hard to tell from the outside, but the issue of internal construction was radically reconsidered in the development of the Gundam. In the MS-06 Zaku, the mobile suit had an internal frame equivalent to a human being's skeleton. The essential mechanisms were attached to this frame, and then covered by an outer shell.

Instead of this endoskeletal construction, the RX-78 Gundam used an exoskeletal approach, with a monocoque frame just beneath its external armor. As a result, the armor was at once durable and resilient, and the mobile suit itself more responsive.

Of these two opposing claims, I actually find the MS Museum one more convincing. Given that so many Zeon machines - the Zaku, the Dom, the Gelgoog - have flared leg and skirt armor, there's obviously some internal structure holding their legs together, whereas in the Gundam the joints are more obviously integrated into the armor itself. The Gundam's torso, a hollow container for the Core Block, has no room for any internal structures and is clearly a monocoque construction. The Zeong, on the other hand, is a Zeon machine which can clearly function just fine with its armor panels removed.

On the whole, then, it does seem more plausible that the Gundam and other Federation machines used a monocoque or semi-monocoque structure, while the Zeon machines used an internal frame. In that case, the "movable frame" adopted after the One Year War - in which all the power and control systems are built right into the frame - would be an evolution of Zeon rather than Federation technology.


What else needs to go inside a mobile suit? Well, since they have powerful fusion reactors, a lot of the hardware is devoted to moving heat and energy around. Excess heat from the reactor needs to be piped through ventilators and cooling systems, or circulated around the body to the rocket engines in order to heat the propellant. You'd think that was the function of the external pipes on the Zaku II and other Zeon mobile suits, but officially those are actually a kind of hydraulic system for driving the joints.

On the Federation side, most of the joints are supposed to be magnetic "field motors". That doesn't prevent mecha and toy designed from adding in lots of hydraulic pistons as well, although perhaps these pistons are meant to be magnetic rather than hydraulic. Since we often see these in the knees and ankles, we could also interpret them as shock absorbers.

And of course, pretty much every leftover corner of the mobile suit should be packed full of propellant tanks to keep those rocket engines running.

-- Mark

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

Hm, that's interesting that the official explanation has shifted to Zeon having an internal frame and the Federation being monocoque. The smooth, rounded, seamless design of Zeon mobile suits seems more suited to monocoque construction than the Federation's blockier design with more obvious places where armor plates can be swapped out -- but at the same time, the Mk II's movable frame being a Federation adaptation of existing Zeon technology does fit the general trend of Zeta-era MS development stealing the best bits of both side's tech for their new designs.

Did the Zeong actually operate without some of its armor? It was missing its legs when it was deployed, obviously, but that just implies that its legs were fairly modular, independent pieces -- which could be true of a monocoque or an internal frame design. I don't recall any mention of the completed torso/arm/head section missing bits of armor, but admitted it's been years since I've watched the relevant parts of Mobile Suit Gundam.

[PowerdGNFlag]

Did the Zeong actually operate without some of its armor? It was missing its legs when it was deployed, obviously, but that just implies that its legs were fairly modular, independent pieces -- which could be true of a monocoque or an internal frame design. I don't recall any mention of the completed torso/arm/head section missing bits of armor, but admitted it's been years since I've watched the relevant parts of Mobile Suit Gundam.

The Zeong as used by Char lacks upper arm armor, and even in some depictions of the Perfect Zeong the thigh armor is missing as well (though if I recall correctly in CDA it was fully armored).

[toysdream]

Exactly. And then there's Zeta Gundam episode 28, where the AEUG take a captured Gelgoog, strip off all its armor, and restore it using parts scavenged from a Nemo. No way they'd be able to do that if the two machines weren't similar in construction, and at the very least this confirms that the Gelgoog has an internal frame that doesn't rely on the armor to hold it together.

-- Mark

[Amion]

I agree that the idea of Zeon units being made with an internal frame makes more sense than monocoque design, though I question the Zeong as an example. I haven't seen the thing in ages. Though I do remember the upper arms do indeed lack what one might expect from armor. Wasn't that because they were designed to detach? If I had something meant to break off as a remote weapon, I'd hardly want to be called to answer for making it part of the pertinent internal systems of the arm or mobile suit.

Like the ungainly blocky shapes of the Federation MS, I think maybe technology is at such a point in UC that stuff like pistons and hydraulics and stuff aren't necessary in the way we'd think of them in real life. But what to put on a machine when trying to model it? I guess it's down to the fact that, at the end of the day, MS are still fictional and the desire to make that fiction appealing to specific groups holds sway over arguably reasonable obsolete "ancient" mechanics.

[toysdream]

Take another look at the Zeong (and Perfect Zeong), then. The forearms detach below the elbow; it's the upper arms that remain un-armored when Char uses it, and the Perfect Zeong shows that the thighs can function without armor, too.

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

Another example I can think of are the MS-06FZ units, which are said to be upgraded MS-06F units despite the drastic changes in their external appearance.

I suppose the MS-14BR might also count as a unit that is deployed with missing armor sections, in this case the armor that should cover the thrusters around the legs. Perhaps there wasn't enough time to modify the leg armor so it would fit on top of the bulkier modified legs.

By the way, does the thrusters around the legs of the Efreet Custom, Efreet Nacht and Desert Gelgoog count as monocoque constructions?

[toysdream]

The very fact that the standard Gelgoog (and Dom) have thrusters mounted under their flared leg armor demonstrates they can't be monocoque construction - since there's a big gap between the leg armor and the structure that the feet are actually attached to, there must be some kind of internal frame that connects to the ankles. The MS-14BR is merely exposing an internal structure that we already knew existed.

Attaching extra thrusters to the outside of the leg, though, doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the construction of the mobile suit itself.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

The very fact that the standard Gelgoog (and Dom) have thrusters mounted under their flared leg armor demonstrates they can't be monocoque construction - since there's a big gap between the leg armor and the structure that the feet are actually attached to, there must be some kind of internal frame that connects to the ankles. The MS-14BR is merely exposing an internal structure that we already knew existed.

Attaching extra thrusters to the outside of the leg, though, doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the construction of the mobile suit itself.

-- Mark

To be fair, even if you use monocoque construct, for something like an MS, you still need to have room for movement, so the best you can do is connect them at joints.
Pretty much like the monocoque cars, the engine, main axis and wheels comes off as a separate structure, that is a parallel to the MS frame.
(If you look at F1 racing cars, the outer carbon fibre shell is actually covering the metal monocoque frame, think of that as MS armour)

Thinking in terms of aircraft also works, the propeller shaft and engine is separate from the air frame.

Since the limbs are the moving parts on an MS, these should be separate from the monocoque frame.

[toysdream]

Well, but then it wouldn't be monocoque construction at all. The whole point of the term "monocoque" is that the outer shell is the load-bearing structure.

I could buy the argument that no mobile suits use monocoque construction, since it's kind of a weird way to build a giant robot. But if you look at the original Gundam, whose elbow and knee and ankle joints are seemingly built into the armor plating, then you could imagine it using monocoque construction in its limbs. (In other words, like an old 1980s Gunpla, before they started getting all fancy with the joint articulation.)

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

The very fact that the standard Gelgoog (and Dom) have thrusters mounted under their flared leg armor demonstrates they can't be monocoque construction - since there's a big gap between the leg armor and the structure that the feet are actually attached to, there must be some kind of internal frame that connects to the ankles. The MS-14BR is merely exposing an internal structure that we already knew existed.

Attaching extra thrusters to the outside of the leg, though, doesn't necessarily indicate anything about the construction of the mobile suit itself.

-- Mark

Just to avoid any confusion, I meant to say that both the MS-06FZ and MS-14BR are examples of MS which have an internal skeleton rather than a monocoque frame.

As for the Efreets, my point was that in particular those extra thrusters are built into the additional layer of armor, which itself is attached to the original leg armor. The rest of the MS doesn't use a monocoque construction.

By the way, exactly where do the movable blocks construction of the Gaza C fits in the big picture?

And what about the Qubeley, which supposedly doesn't use movable frame given its development timing? Its shoulder thrusters seem to be built into its wing-like armor.

[toysdream]

If we're embracing the revisionist stance of the MS Museum, then the distinction between One Year War-era machines and movable frame designs seems a bit less drastic. If the Qubeley is kinda frame-y already, then that's less of an issue.

On the other hand, building a transformable mobile suit out of movable blocks seems more like a monocoque concept. I hadn't thought about it until now, but it would be kind of amusing if, while the Federation was busy absorbing all the Zeon design concepts, the Axis Zeons were frantically copying Federation ones; their development of Gundarium Gamma kind of hints at that.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Well, but then it wouldn't be monocoque construction at all. The whole point of the term "monocoque" is that the outer shell is the load-bearing structure.

I could buy the argument that no mobile suits use monocoque construction, since it's kind of a weird way to build a giant robot. But if you look at the original Gundam, whose elbow and knee and ankle joints are seemingly built into the armor plating, then you could imagine it using monocoque construction in its limbs. (In other words, like an old 1980s Gunpla, before they started getting all fancy with the joint articulation.)

-- Mark

To clarify myself.

I mean each part's armour is their own load bearing part, but for the whole construction, they are connected by joints. That way you can still somehow call them monocoque structures.

Think about a monocoque MBT, the turret and the main body is of two different parts, the turret itself is also load bearing(yes, the force has to be distributed to the chassis, but it still has to take it first)

[toysdream]

Yeah, that would work. I guess there are two different ways to do this - you could either have a joint block that bridges the gap between two shell-like limb segments, or the limb segments themselves could just overlap at the joint (which is how it was done in the old First Gundam and MSV kits). Probably either of those would qualify as monocoque construction, as long as the limb segments between the joints are supported by an armored shell rather than a skeletal frame.

-- Mark

[Gelgoog Jager]

On the other hand, building a transformable mobile suit out of movable blocks seems more like a monocoque concept. I hadn't thought about it until now, but it would be kind of amusing if, while the Federation was busy absorbing all the Zeon design concepts, the Axis Zeons were frantically copying Federation ones; their development of Gundarium Gamma kind of hints at that.

-- Mark

In the case of Axis/Neo Zeon, I think they were trying many different things at once, after all we have:

-The Qubeley as mentioned already seems to be using some sort of movable frame at least for its wings, despite most likely being completed before Axis had access to the proper movable frame technology. Perhaps one of the main differences between Haman's unit and the black AMX-004-2 units is the implementation of a proper movable frame.

-The Gaza C with its movable block construction might have stood out for being the first TMS produced in such high numbers. However, I suspect the rest of the Gaza family moved to a movable frame construction in order to overcome the structural problems that limited the number of times the transformation system could be used.

-The Zaku III and Dreissen were based on existing units in other to speed up their development. Given this ciscumstances, I wouldn't be surprised if they shared a similar construction to the units they are based on.

-The ReGelg and Gazu L/Gazu R most likely use the same frame of the machines they are based on.

-Then there are the entirely new units such as the Gallus J, Hamma Hamma, R-Jarja, Bawoo, etc., which have a proper movable frame.

-Finally, units like the Dooben Wolf, Geymalk and Jamru were supposedly developed in response to the surprising combat performance of the ZZ Gundam.