MS better suited for space combat: GM or Rick Dom?

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Cardi Doorl
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The official reason for the lower Rick Dom II stats in 0083 (as compared to the 0080 Rick Dom II) has never been given. The idea that it's due to a lack of parts is a reasonable fan speculation, but not to be mistaken for official information.
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mcred23
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FA-ZZ wrote:Except that 0083 Rick Dom II was downgraded because of the lack of spare parts, so it doesn't have as much thrusters as the 0080 version. Also, those were GMs Kai, not basic GMs.
Dispite not being as good as the uber-0080 version of the MS-09RII, the 0083 version of the Rick Dom II is still better performing than a normal Rick Dom.
FA-ZZ wrote:Well, machine guns are GM's most commonly used weapon as well. We don't see that many GM with BSG.
Not quite. The Beam Spray Gun was, by far, the GM's most commonly used weapon. Machine guns are used during the One Year War by GM's, but it was never as often as the beam spray gun.
FA-ZZ wrote:Even in 0083 machine guns are the GM's standard weapon.
Yes, but a lot of things have changed between the One Year War and 0083, such as the standard mobile suit and the standard weapon.
FA-ZZ wrote:About the mobility, we don't see many GMs zipping around and dodging sideway like Rick Dom do.
I don't ever recall the Rick Dom's ever perfoming that well, nor do we see them outperform GM's (However, we do have several cases of GM's outperforming Rick Doms).
Cardi wrote:The official reason for the lower Rick Dom II stats in 0083 (as compared to the 0080 Rick Dom II) has never been given. The idea that it's due to a lack of parts is a reasonable fan speculation, but not to be mistaken for official information.
Yeah. The lack of parts is one common reason, another being 0083's generally odd stats (Such as the Gelgoog Marine, which is said to be one of the highest performing MS-14 types, yet it's stats have have it barely faster than a Rick Dom).
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toysdream
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mcred23 wrote:I don't ever recall the Rick Dom's ever perfoming that well, nor do we see them outperform GM's (However, we do have several cases of GM's outperforming Rick Doms).
I'm not sure what you mean by "outperforming" here. It's true that we see at least a couple of examples of GMs defeating Rick Doms in close combat in Gundam III, and no examples of Rick Doms defeating GMs. On the other hand, we also see Rick Doms destroying a couple of warships, including the legendary White Base.

I think the moral of the story is that both mobile suits perform extremely well in their intended roles - for the GM, this means fighting other mobile suits, and for the Rick Dom, this means attacking enemy ships. It's really an apples-and-oranges thing, like comparing tanks and helicopters - or, as domtropen put it a few pages back, fighter planes and divebombers.

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domtropen
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As Mark said Rickdom and GM are MS intended for different role. However the outperforming part in papers doesn't seem to be shown well in the movie III. Again from Movie III that has been shown earlier there are only 4 scenes with GM deals or be dealt with Zeon MSs, and none show GM as really more agile MS than Rickdom. GM kills Rickdom only once in upfront fight-it-out fashion, and its BSG get knocked out of its hand by a swing from Rickdom's bazooka. Another upfront fight has Rickdom successfully parry the beam saber with heat saber and turns table with Rickdom becomes aggressor instead. And there is scene with Zaku II kicks a Ball right into the GM, killing both GM and Ball. Last scene is GM swoops in cutting Rickdom that takes its time disable ship's gun [become stationary] and Rickdom explodes destroying the ship's bridge in the process. These scenes are too few to really show the actual performance of these MSs. Probably the scenes with GM outperforming other Zeon MSs by a margin are from the TV series?

At Side 6 battle a Rickdom dodges 2 shots from Amuro successfully but get shot by 3rd shot. At least the scene shows that Rickdom can dodge rapidly to the side. Also other Rickdoms in that battle are pretty fast, but Amuro has ability to sense what's coming and need to move Gundam only slightly in order to dodge and counter accordingly; something most GM pilots are unlikely to be able to do.

Unless the weight specs are screwed Rickdom's empty weight is about the same as Gundam and only 3 tons more than GM. This would be interesting to check if Rickdom's armor is as thick or strong as Zaku II, Dom or GM.
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domtropen wrote:And there is scene with Zaku II kicks a Ball right into the GM, killing both GM and Ball.
Speaking of which, looking over my notes on the TV series and movies, it's generally the Ball that gets the worst of it in mobile suit battles. I count only a handful of occasions where we see GMs being destroyed onscreen - one by Char's Z'Gok, one in the crossfire as it approaches Solomon, four or five by the Big Zam, one blown up by the Elmeth, one in the battle with Kycilia's fleet just before the Battle of A Baoa Qu, and a bunch more during the chaotic Battle of A Baoa Qu. But Balls die like flies, especially during the Battle of Solomon. It's ironic that, in what may be the only case where a Zaku destroys a GM, it does so by kicking a Ball into it. :-)
At Side 6 battle a Rickdom dodges 2 shots from Amuro successfully but get shot by 3rd shot. At least the scene shows that Rickdom can dodge rapidly to the side.
Some of the footage from the Side 6 battle, though, is simply recycled from the battle with the Black Tri-Stars on Earth. As a result, not only do we see Rick Doms skating around as if they were hovering on the ground, but they're maneuvering as skillfully as the Black Tri-Stars, at least up until Amuro casually guns them down.
Unless the weight specs are screwed Rickdom's empty weight is about the same as Gundam and only 3 tons more than GM.
I'd file that under "screwed", personally. :-)

One other thing concerning the Dom series: Unlike most other Zeon mobile suits, not to mention the Gundam and GM, they don't carry shields. Their heavy armor surely helps protect them from anti-air fire and ship defenses, but it's useless in melee combat. Sure, a Dom or Rick Dom can still block with its heat saber, but this prevents it from using its only melee weapon and seems like something of a desperation move. If one of these machines finds itself in a close combat situation, its best hope is probably a hit-and-run slashing attack, like the one Gato's wingman uses against that Federation Zaku II in the early episodes of Gundam 0083.

-- Mark
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razgriz
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the hit and run tactic would definitely be a desparation move in itself, no telling how long that heatsaber will hold up after having to cut through a number of enemies one right after the other the heatsaber would probably be prone to breakage after extreme use unlike a beam saber which can keep cutting til its power source runs out. take into the fact that the very unlucky dom is being shot or slashed at from conceivably every direction. i guess the most the dom could hope for is to take out as many suits as it can before it is taken out.
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razgriz wrote:the hit and run tactic would definitely be a desparation move in itself, no telling how long that heatsaber will hold up after having to cut through a number of enemies one right after the other
True enough. The Dom isn't intended for melee combat, after all, and the heat saber is probably just a backup emergency weapon. The Rick Dom II that appears in Gundam 0080 doesn't even carry a heat saber, relying entirely on its bazooka and other ranged weapons. Charging into melee combat with a single flimsy heat saber and no shield is something most Dom pilots should try to avoid.

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The amount of thrusters doesn't determine a MS' speed. A MS could have lots of small weak ones but still move slower than one with two huge powerful ones. The size of them doesn't matter either but in Gundam the bigger ones are usually more powerful.
I'm well aware of that, but I'm not talking about speed or acceleration, I'm talking about mobility. Having more thrusters still improves it, doesn't it?
Dispite not being as good as the uber-0080 version of the MS-09RII, the 0083 version of the Rick Dom II is still better performing than a normal Rick Dom.
Of course, I never disagreed with that. What I meant was that even though GM Kai is better than the 0083 Rick Dom II on paper, Karius still owned them with his downgraded MS.
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As we've said before with the Black Tr-Stars thing on the last page, if you get a good enough pilot, they can make up for a machine having a lower performance. The Delaz Fleet pilots have had three years of running and fighting, and many came out of the battle of A Baoa Qu, so they all know what they are doing. The same really can't be said of the average Federation pilot from 0083, most of whom are fairly new to the game and never actually seen combat (Let alone a battle comparable to some of the ones from the last parts of the One Year War).
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razgriz
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and the DOM Trooper is godlike compared to the either the Rick Dom II or GM Kai.
hehe sorry i know that really doesnt have much to do with anything but hey its still a DOM or if you can consider it, the DOM Trooper is everything a Dom/Rick Dom couldve/shouldve been. it cleaned up all the shortcomings that Mark pointed out, beam saber and beam shield equipped as well as a dual purpose RCL cannon and the chest beam launcher actually had some real use to it besides being a glorified flashlight.
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mcred23
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The DOM Trooper has absolutely nothing to do with this thread. It is a very different mobile suit from an entirely different universe from the mobile suits we are talking about. Lets keep this thread on it's subject of the UC (Rick) Dom and GM.
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razgriz
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did the teams that worked on 0080 and 0083 have the same mecha designers for their grunt suits? to explain the similarities and at the same time the differences between their respective units.

obviously a real life explaination could be that the 0080 mechs performed better in that they were pre-production types using untested battlefield technology and the 0083 units were more like post production units and or field upgrades done in areas like the garden of thorns where a large military infrastructure and budget was not as handy as during the war years.
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I should point out that the Rick Dom II profile on the official Japanese Gundam 0083 website uses the Gundam 0080 specs. I really don't think there's much reason to come up with theories to explain why the 0080 version is better than the 0083 one - it seems like they're meant to be the exact same machine, no matter what numbers they make up for any given show.

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once again mark u come through with the most logical answers hehe. so much for me sounding like i know what i am talking about. oh well one less mech spec for me to worry about. now i can wonder more about how the gm kai is better performing (not to mention better looking) than the gm ii, supposedly.
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The GM Kai is worse than the GM II.

Having more thrusters can help with mobility but again if they are all weak thrusters they won't be doing much of anything to increase the MS' mobility.
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domtropen
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toysdream wrote:
domtropen wrote:At Side 6 battle a Rickdom dodges 2 shots from Amuro successfully but get shot by 3rd shot. At least the scene shows that Rickdom can dodge rapidly to the side.
Some of the footage from the Side 6 battle, though, is simply recycled from the battle with the Black Tri-Stars on Earth. As a result, not only do we see Rick Doms skating around as if they were hovering on the ground, but they're maneuvering as skillfully as the Black Tri-Stars, at least up until Amuro casually guns them down.

-- Mark
That's true [especially for the skating forward while shooting scene] but the dodging scene is not the recycled Black Tri-stars moves, so it should represent some of Rickdom's capability and not Dom's.
toysdream wrote:One other thing concerning the Dom series: Unlike most other Zeon mobile suits, not to mention the Gundam and GM, they don't carry shields. Their heavy armor surely helps protect them from anti-air fire and ship defenses, but it's useless in melee combat. Sure, a Dom or Rick Dom can still block with its heat saber, but this prevents it from using its only melee weapon and seems like something of a desperation move. If one of these machines finds itself in a close combat situation, its best hope is probably a hit-and-run slashing attack, like the one Gato's wingman uses against that Federation Zaku II in the early episodes of Gundam 0083.
That is what happen in Rickdom parrying GM's attack scene. It is a defending move and the return attack is more likely to drive GM away rather than trying to go full melee. Still it does show that Rickdom is not so helpless up close and GM is not as far superior as thought.

Dom's dashing slash doesn't seem to be that effective for Rickdom in space though, since in space GM has easier time dodging the slash than GM on Earth that can't dash or jump as quickly as in space.
Last edited by domtropen on Tue Mar 13, 2007 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FA-ZZ
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RGM-79 GM wrote: Having more thrusters can help with mobility but again if they are all weak thrusters they won't be doing much of anything to increase the MS' mobility.
Well, of course, nobody would massproduce a MS with useless thrusters. At least that's not the case with Rick Dom. And the verniers added to the Rick Dom II were certainly not useless.
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I'm not saying they are useless. Just that more doesn't always mean better. Because it seemed like you were saying if one has more than another it will have better mobility. Well the Zaku II's thrusters were rather useless compared to other MS. I mean on the ground not in space.
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true, more thrusters, more propellant, more weight, more chance to use up said propellant. and we all know what can happen to an ms that runs out of gas *ahem kampfer ahem*
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domtropen
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In space you don't have to fire thrusters continuously, but still need to fire when major direction change or acceleration are need. Rickdom, while having more thrusters and a bit heavier, may last longer than GM though since it can carry quite a lot more propellent.
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