When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

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Scorpius7692
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When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Note: I didn't know exactly where to put a question like this, so if its in the wrong place, I'm sorry. I'll learn better for next time.

Exactly what it says on the tin. When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War? I just finished watching MS IGLOO, and it seemed to me that the Balls appeared rather early on. I do know that converting a work pod into a mobile pod was definitely a stopgap measure against the Zakus, but when did they start doing it? (And they couldn't have armored them better? One shot through the obvious cockpit would kill the pilot. One shot anywhere would kill the pilot). This is just out of curiosity. Thanks aplenty in advance for those who answer it.
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Scorpius7692
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Gggrrr, got it wrong. Oh well. Question still stands.
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mcred23
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Well, Entertainment Bible 1 says the Ball is created as part of the Vinson Plan that rebuilds the EFSF into the force we see at the end of the war. 08th MS Team has Shiro using one in early October, which IIRC is before IGLOO shows them being used after Odesssa in November (Unless IGLOO showed them some other time I'm not remembering), so I'd guess that the RB-79s began to enter service at around the same time the Federation began to deploy their first mobile suits into combat in that late September/early October period.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Scorpius7692 wrote:(And they couldn't have armored them better? One shot through the obvious cockpit would kill the pilot. One shot anywhere would kill the pilot).
That's exactly the point of Type F Ball, make it a little more tougher.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Scorpius7692 wrote:I do know that converting a work pod into a mobile pod was definitely a stopgap measure against the Zakus...
This is a fairly common misconception for some reason. The Ball was always meant as a complement to the GM, not as some stopgap to buy time for their production. That's why, as per Red's analysis above, all evidence points to them first getting deployed around the same time as EF mobile suits. It was less "stopgap" and more "desperation move", since they were at their lowest point in the war and were willing to put a gun on anything just to provide some kind of support unit for their GMs.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

There's actually some relevant info on this in the MSV-R manga. See the end of this thread.

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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Oh wow, so they really were, at least initially, a stopgap measure then? Did any previous publications suggest that or is MSV-R the first one to explicitly state it?
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

it was a stopgap project along the lines of the Public class. The EFSF had an major lack of equipment late in the war. The federation went and retrofitted shuttles and construction pods in to support units to fill the gaps in there forces jabaro and luna II could only produce so many gm's and battleships. and in the Balls defense it's cockpit is much more armored than the SP-W03 Space Pod it was derived from.
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Geoxile
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

When Amuro got into the Gundam, is this a serious question?

Oh wait.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

The MS Era book depicts an armed Ball at the Battle of Loum, but that source has been mentioned as being incompatible with others before. I'm hesitant to believe it myself, since the Ball was supposed to be an anti-MS weapon, which the EFSF had discounted before the OYW began. So, why should be believe the EFSF would have an anti-MS weapon so soon? After all, Loum was supposed to have been the incontrovertible evidence that MS were war-changing weapons. The June '79 introduction of the Ball makes sense, given by then that Zeon MS had been recognized as a priority threat, and realization that Operation Victory would be a long-term project. So the Ball would be a parallel development weapon to the EFSF MS, to both prepare the way for the GM, and to serve along it to further outgun the ZMF.

I liked the observation that the Ball's operational tactics were changed from a bombardment/ranged attack role to a close combat/defense role. It fits in nicely with MSG, MS IGLOO, and 0083 in showing the need of the EFSF to change its ways to deal with the new dominance of the MS.Although close combat against a Zaku seems very dangerous to us as observers, it was the only real way the Ball pilots could score hits on their opponents. The Zakus and their pilots were supposed to be able to maneuver through barrage fire to hit their targets, and they did. The close-combat Ball fights trained future GM pilots to play ship defense, forcing ZMF MS to abandon their attack runs to fight the defenders. Sallies and Maggies not desperately fending off MS could then turn their main attention to the ZMF ships transporting said MS. It must have been effective, because after Odessa the ZMF fleets were pushed back to Solomon and Granada, when before they had free movement, even as far as Side 7.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Geoxile wrote:When Amuro got into the Gundam, is this a serious question?

Oh wait.
Well, there are many of the school of thought that the first Balls appeared after the first Brightslap was delivered.

But it was quite a long while before anything else was actually "equipped with balls." I say this of course, at the risk of juggling topics and ending up in a a tangent, so to speak. :lol:

Back on track of course, interesting topic. I always thought the Ball was a stopgap, and had only recently been told otherwise, to some contention. Nice to have some clarification on the matter, and a bit more detail to go off of. I never thought too hard on the matter of the venerable little Ball.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Zeonista wrote:The MS Era book depicts an armed Ball at the Battle of Loum, but that source has been mentioned as being incompatible with others before. I'm hesitant to believe it myself, since the Ball was supposed to be an anti-MS weapon, which the EFSF had discounted before the OYW began. So, why should be believe the EFSF would have an anti-MS weapon so soon? After all, Loum was supposed to have been the incontrovertible evidence that MS were war-changing weapons.
Uh.. where? I don't see a Ball in MS Era's Loum picture, it all looks like Zakus and ships to me...
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

The first profiles of the ball have it as an stopgap unit since the saberfish was not introduced until msv. it's looking like the newer productions are pushing back the deployment date of the RB-79. the Ball is pretty much an uparmored worker pod with an gun turret mounted to the roof. unfortunately the default paint job turns the port hole into an bulls-eye with the red trim on the hatch. the MSV-R line includes an even more up-armored ball and it seems that there was an push to produce an true rx-77 mp unit to replace the worker pod. by 0083 the C type ball is being used as an worker pod by the EFSF.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Besides what has already been said, I just wanted to mention the less known variants of the Ball:

RB-79N Fisheye: From the MS Igloo manga. A ball modified for underwater combat (the idea was probably copied from Gundam X's Daughtap). There's doesn't seem to be any info on this unit such as when was it depoyed and how many units were built.

RB-79K Ball Work Type: Another largely unknown unit, but with little doubt the version of the Ball that was used for labor and the EFSF's military version of the civilian SP-W03 Mobile Pod.

RB-79 Ball Custom: Check the image of the MS Igloo version. A team made of 3 Balls with such custom paint scheme attempted to attack a Zeon supply fleet on October 24th, before being surrounded and eventually chased away by the Jotunheim's Zudah team. Maybe one of the Federation's few actual Ace Ball Teams?

RB-79 Ball alternate color scheme: Just a regular Ball using a green color scheme instead of the traditional colors (maybe the text says where these green Balls were stationed at).

Finally, after going through all these Ball variations, it seems that there are two main types of Balls, which have different arms:

Simple arms:
RB-79 (Original version)
RB-79F
RB-79M

Double Arms:
RB-79 (MS Igloo version)
RB-79C
RB-79K (08th & Gundam Crisis versions)

Unique arms:
RB-79N

I mentioned this since I think that the RB-79K form 08th Team, whose earliest confirmed deployment is October 6th, always struck me as a sort of prototype to test new equipment for the Ball, particularly close combat equipment in the form of the double barrel machinegun turret and the claw-like arms. The later upgrade seems to have become the standard for all later Ball variations and even some standard Balls were even modified the same way, as seen on MS Igloo.

At first I thought that the MS Igloo Balls were actually C-types, but the C-Type profile does indicate that the standard Ball used a 180mm cannon while the C-Type used a 120mm cannon. After comapring the image of the C-Type against the MS Igloo version I was able to confirm that the later's cannon does have a noticeable longer barrel.

By the same logic, all the single arm Balls are probably early models.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

The orignal profile for the RB-79K actually explains shiro's k type ball.
Though the Federation has at last begun production of its own mobile suits, these new weapons are late to reach the frontlines, and the pace of production is frustratingly slow. To shore up its space forces, the Federation has begun adapting civilian worker pods for combat duty. The RB-79K Ball is an early example of these battle-ready space pods, a dual-cannon version which retains the headlights and utility winch of its civilian ancestors. Only a fool - or a lucky optimist - would take one of these makeshift fighting machines into battle against Zeon's dreaded Zaku.
The work type seems to be an alternate configuration since the federation was still testing out what turret to mount and had three models for space use. post one year war they seemed to be moveing the ball back to an worker role at least until uc 113 when the ball is brought back with three mounted cannons as the Model 133 Ball.
Zeons Mobile Pod the MP-02A Oggo is an actual desperation weapon akin to the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger an cheap fighter unit that can use the left over zaku hand weapons. the diffrence between the oggo and the ball was zeon needed cheap units to put cadets in while the ball was filler unit based on an existing hull type used to fill in the gaps while the new GM units rolled out.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

JEFFPIATT wrote:Zeons Mobile Pod the MP-02A Oggo is an actual desperation weapon akin to the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger an cheap fighter unit that can use the left over zaku hand weapons. the diffrence between the oggo and the ball was zeon needed cheap units to put cadets in while the ball was filler unit based on an existing hull type used to fill in the gaps while the new GM units rolled out.
IIRC someone mentioned that another reason for producing the Oggos was to use the left over generators of the J-type Zakus, which is why they have the same output (976 kW).
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Rather than the Ball Type-K, why didn't they ever attach extra GM shields to the sides of the regular Ball? Even attach the missile launcher pod from the Guncannons onto some of the regular Balls as well?

Like the Oggo, the Feddie engineers on the ships must have thought of using extra GM machineguns on the Balls. Couldn't the Ball's hand-manipulators have held the GM machineguns?

I don't think Feddie engineers put much thought into the Ball or the survivability of the pilots. I can understand wanting to cut production costs but my above ideas only required the use of existing GM weapons.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

Well, the Newtype Test GM Juggler showed us that the Federation did adapt a beam cannon for the Ball, but unfortunately, a standard Ball would lack the generator output to use it.
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Re: When did the first Balls appear in the One Year War?

B Gundam answers that question strapping an normal ms shield to an ball would destroy the balance of the pod and slow it down. the advantage the ball had was it's speed. the reason the ball never carried RGM series hand arms was the fact that the ball clamp hands lacked the hand plugs to fire them limiting it to only holding an pre activated beam saber and the arms are basically left over from it's construction role.
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