Did the Neutron Stampeder make mobile suits obsolete?

[Recon 5]

Right. Man, I keep confusing ABC with the Yata- No- Kagami and other mirror coating. Sorry.

About ships having ABC, I thought all CE ships only had laminated armor.

[Janx_Dolaris]

The Archangel also was able to shoot its beam cannons through Nazca's, so i would assume their not that heavily ABCed. Thoug maybe the Archangel got ABC over its Laminated armour in Destiny, to explain why the Minerva couldnt scratch it with beamcannons that are almost the same.

And yes i'm sorry bout the mix up over the Archangel's armour type.

[toysdream]

I've been doing some more digging through the kit manuals, and it looks like ZAFT ships do have laminated armor, as does the Freedom Gundam's shield. First, from the HG Freedom Gundam kit manual:

Anti-Beam Shield
A lightweight and superhard shield completed using technology from the hulls of warships like the Laurasia class. Its surface has been processed to resist beam weapons.

And from the MG Freedom Gundam kit manual:

Shield
While the anti-beam shields carried by the GAT-X series make use of a resonance phenomenon to refract beams, the Freedom's adopts an improved version of the laminated armor technology that was developed mainly for warship hulls.

The MG Aile Strike Gundam kit manual has more on this "resonance phenomenon," which appears to be a product of the shield material itself rather than the beam-diffusing coating on its surface. In other words, the GAT-X shields use both a beam-diffusing coating and a special alloy that resonates with the incoming beam and refracts it away from the mobile suit. The Freedom's shield is made of laminated armor that absorbs and dissipates the beam energy.

-- Mark

[DeltasTaii]

On the note of the Archangel/Minerva duel, those beams seemed to be dissipating before hitting the ships. Now, I dunno how you fire anti-beam depth charges effectively under gravity (though I suppose you could try and make a cloud), and they seemed pretty close, but I dunno, weirder things have happened.

I suppose if CE anti-beam depth charges just fire atmosphere like in UC, CE beam weapons could just be really sensitive to such things, though evidence suggests those ship cannons should be particle cannons (since the GINN's Heavy Ion Cannon is basically ripped off of a Laurasia class). If there had at least been a bunch of explosions going off inbetween...

[razgriz]

you might be able to chalk to the beam dissapation to atmospheric interference/drift same reason why a laser would have trouble keeping its coherance over a long distance in order to hit a target. assuming its just a "normal" high powered laser and not one thats say connected to the death star or a los alamos labs

[Janx_Dolaris]

According to MAHQ the cannons are "Gottfried Mk.71" 225cm high-energy beam cannon, not ion cannons like the GINN. So this should follow the same physics of every other beam weapon, which doesnt seem to suffer the same disipation issues, only accuracy issues in the desert.

But i'm sorry for sending this thread off-topic, we're now more about ship armour verses beam than NS verses...well everything. This still somewhat applies though, as the Nazca's are supposedly ABC'd or laminated. But the minverva/archangel fights (which i'm pretty sure they re-used the dual footage where they couldnt hurt eachother while in space) arent as relevant, as due to budgeting issues, neither side is gonna make MP versions of the ship cause they're too busy building weapons of mass annihalation.

The Nazca has been shown being destroyed by beam, Kira's beams, Achangel's beams, and other beams, so their ABC is probably only useful against the beamrifle, while it is ineffective against more powerful cannons. This makes the NS Nazca rather vulnerable, and being that its a one-shotter which only effects nukes, the MS > NS.

[Shadowslayer]

Freedom and the other nuke suits would survive a stampeder shot because the fuel in their reactors is only enriched by 5% or so. For a nuclear weapon to work you need an enrichment of 90 to 95%. thats why nuclear power plants can't explode in a nuclear reaction, and before you mention it Chernobyl was a hydrogen gas explosion because the reactors heat broke down the cooling water into hydrogen and oxygen which is a Bad Thing (TM). Also reactors have lots of neutron absorbing things like graphite control rods and the coolant itself. The stampeder triggers nukes by causing a neutron stampede in them which in a conventional reactor you would just get a slightly higher reaction for about the same time the stampeder is active which looks like a couple of seconds. which isn't enough time to even spike power much. Reactors take time to register power changes. Conventinal plants take days to get up to operating power and naval reactors that are started in emergancies still take about an hour to go from cold to running. Also the stampeder is probably tuned to cause plutonium to react and not the uranium thats in reactors. So using your stampeder as away to keep sir-spamalot and his friends away isn't gonna get ya far.

[razgriz]

knowing kira he would probably destroy the NS the split second before it completes its charge cycle and prepares to fire.

[Antares]

razgriz said:

knowing kira he would probably destroy the NS the split second before it completes its charge cycle and prepares to fire.

Quite true. I imagine the energy spike from the Stampeder would glow quite merrily on sensors (or in Newtype-o-vision), and since the SF has the Super-Dragoons (remote weapons that don't require Kira to go in too close), I expect the fat cow Stampeder Nazca to get demolished quite merrily in a very short order. I doubt you even had to hit it critically, just hit the general area of the Stampeder and I think you have it sorted.

I suppose you could argue that given the last nuke assault on the PLANTs, ZAFT wanted to have some sort of contingency plan if it happened again. But I dislike the Stampeder because it is the usual CE gimmick of tech trumped up for a specific purpose without explanations or elaborations as to when, how, and so on. You know, pesky details that would make the Stampeder seem like an actual piece of hardware and not a flashy exotic plot device to save the PLANTs from nukes for Djibril to slice later with the Requiem.