Weapons questions...

[Celestial Gundam]

Alright, two quick weapons questions from the CE era:

1. Does anyone know the difference between the M100 "Balaena" plasma beam cannons and the M107 "Balaena Kai" dual beam cannons?

2. Are the rail guns that the Freedom/Strike Freedom have a beam or a physical shot? The reason I ask is because in the scene where the Destiny and the Strike Freedom are fighting for the first time, Shinn makes a comment close to something like "If that was a beam, I'd be finished already. Is that what you're trying to say?" and then follows to go to SEED mode.

Thanks for anyone who can answer anything for me!

[Black Knight]

All railguns, gun-launchers, and linear cannon in the Cosmic Era fire physical rounds. That's why they're called that, and not beam, plasma, or energy weapons. The point that Kira was making was that he could have killed Shinn had he wanted to....but Kira doesn't kill (unless, of course, he really, really wants you dead...)

[Celestial Gundam]

Yeah, I've always figured they were physical, but I just wanted to clarify. So thanks for answering question #2 for me.

[Lans]

The additions with "Kai" usually means enhanced, better or revised version.

[Duraham]

The additions with "Kai" usually means enhanced, better or revised version.

kai is actually the same word as gai in chinese, which means "revised", or upgraded in this case. so one can assume that it packs more punch than the older version

[Wingnut]

The weapons on the Freedom are indeed plasma cannons as stated. (One of the rare times we actually know what a CE beam is made of too.)
The M107 weapons seen on the Abyss however are animated as regular green beams. So I would imagine that they are made of the same stuff the regular green beams that come out of beam rifles are. (Whatever that is.)
Really the only thing they have in common besides their name is the ability to flip over and be fired over the shoulders of the suit they are on.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

Yeah, Kai could mean improvements in various areas and not just sheer brute force. In terms of the Baleena and Beleena Kai weapons, perhaps with the way the M107 ones are animated as "normal" green while the normal baleena ones were multi-colored shows that the M107 ones are possibly just as strong as the original, but are able to use up much less energy than the originals would.

[Celestial Gundam]

Alright, those are both pretty logical. I just didn't know if there was any real or major difference such as strength or overall functionality and this is CE we are talking about so it's got to be difficult to understand much of the technology.

[HalfDemonInuyasha]

Yeah, considering a lot of beams look the same but are either said to be or profiles say that one is stronger than the other...like how the Baleena plasma cannons, Agni Hyper Impulse Cannon, and others look just like the Scyllia multi-phase cannon...it's weird like that, lol.

[Celestial Gundam]

Yeah, considering a lot of beams look the same but are either said to be or profiles say that one is stronger than the other...like how the Baleena plasma cannons, Agni Hyper Impulse Cannon, and others look just like the Scyllia multi-phase cannon...it's weird like that, lol.

Yeah, but they just have different placements for the most part. The Baleena Kai's just look like a redesign and might possibly be a redesign for the battery-use Abyss compared to the nuclear powered Freedom.

[young_oldtype]

I'm not that familiar of the two Balaenas. About the railgun however, I say it uses solid projectiles and CERTAINLY NOT beam shots. The beam-like emission from the barrel could have been high velocity plasma cloud generated by the rail erosion,which in turn is caused by the friction created as the projectile travels in between the two rails. (I'm sort of basing this railgun explanation to modern standards by the way) And, well, for additional information, i've had this one copied from gundamofficial.com:

Railgun
A weapon which uses electromagnetic forces, rather than gunpowder, to fire solid projectiles at very high velocities. A railgun consist of two conductive rails, to which an electrical current is applied, and a metal projectile which fits between them and completes the electrical circuit. The current flowing through the rails produces a powerful magnetic field, which interacts with the current running across the projectile to create an immense outward force that accelerates the projectile down the weapon's barrel.

[Dark Duel]

Since we're talking about them, the railguns on the Freedom/SF still tick me off for one reason - well, two reasons:
Where the **** is the AMMO stored for those guns?
And why in the name of all that is logical does it seem like those things never run out of ammo no matter how much Kira spams them?
(Well the latter could simply be because Fukuda and Morosawa were too busy trying to glorify the Freedom and its pilot in all ways possible to consider a little thing like that, but the question of where it keeps the ammo still bothers me)

[Jak Crow]

Especially on the SF where there is even less possible storage space for the rail guns. No one ever seems to run out of ammo. Some will run out of power, but ammo? Nooooo....

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

And now for an amazing technical explanation/theory!

The railguns on Gundams store their ammo as a block of metal. During firing, a laser shaves of chunks of this block as rounds to be fired. Because a railgun fires its rounds at tremendous kinetic velocity, a relatively small round would have as great or greater impact than a larger, traditional shell. The blocks thus give the guns a very large ammo supply, which can be replenished as often as the Gundam returns to a base of operations.


This is not at all official. In fact it is lovingly ripped off from the explanation given on how the weapons in Mass Effect never run out of ammo.

[Recon 5]

I'm inclined to believe that railgun- equipped MS (and ships, don't forget ships) simply draw in particles from the surroundings, compress them and fire them as projectiles. Space may not have air, but in terms of suspended particles its worse than any city on earth.

That would give them literally unlimited ammo. Improbable, I know, but CE weapon technology is quite substantial anyway.

Most likely railguns in SEED do indeed use regular projectiles (a la Gauss Rifle in Battletech) but either end their fights before running dry (by destroying their objectives or being destroyed) or their reloading is just never shown.