I've been having an idea for an "Original Series" Gundam fanfiction lately. The main story is set during an Ice Age between one Gundam Series and another one.
As for how I got the idea, well, I had just noticed that there wasn't a whole lot of Gundam shows that had battles in cold environments and even when there was, there wasn't any special focus put on dealing with giant mecha style winter warfare.
Also, I wanted to include the use of Mountain Cycles to explain the current level of tech and why some of the Mobile Weapons are what they are.
Any help I get for this idea would be appreciated.
Well. If I remember the relevant specs correctly, the first desert-type Zakus had issues with cooling themselves and keeping the sand out of their joints.
In an arctic environment, cooling itself isn't as much of an issue. However, thermal stress is: guns, engines and reactors naturally heat up while in use and since the ambient environment is much colder, heat exchange happens faster. In case you decide to make arctic mobile suits air-cooled to save weight, the cooling pipes will need to be checked all the time by the maintenance crew for warping due to rapid heating/cooling.
At the same time, icing is going to be a serious issue. Way back in WW 2, Wehrmacht tank divisions operating in the Russian winter repeatedly experienced the phenomenon when they stopped their tanks for the night and when they tried to get going in the morning, they discovered that the mud in the tanks' tracks had frozen rock-solid during the night, with nothing short of a flamethrower being able to get the tank mobile again. They also had problems with lubricants, motor oil and even the fuel freezing solid.
So if you want a mobile suit that doesn't risk getting immobilized by the chinks in its armor icing up, you're going to need a shitload of antifreeze. Which means antifreeze tanks and piping to deliver said antifreeze to wherever it's needed. Alternatively, dump the reactor's waste heat into the armor - but doing that will massively increase the suit's infrared signature to the point it will stick out like a sore thumb on an IR scope from a significant distance away, whereas relying on liquid antifreeze will help maintain stealth (for as long as the enemy doesn't get line-of-sight on the reactor's cooling radiators, that is).
Just curious, though, what kind of radiator and lubricant MS will use? Also, lubricant and antifreeze technology already developed way long since WW 2, so maybe you need to consider that too.
Also, while nowadays, any army worth their discipline will use inedible antifreeze agent, back in WW 2, especially infamous with Russian, antifreeze agent for vehicles also used as antifreeze agent for soldier, If You Know What I Mean.
Oh yeah, the Russians did use grain alcohol as a de-icing agent. Methinks the engines probably kept the alcohol warm because drinking cold booze is about the last thing you'd want to do in the winter (seeing how you'll lose a shitload of body heat and go into hypothermia).
edited 26th Mar '16 3:20:54 AM by amitakartok
There's also the question of logistics. As in, how are supplies going to get places?
Dogsleds and snowmobiles are definitely options for single person and small team useage, but for what a Mobile Suit team would need, I was actually thinking trains. Mainly inspired by trains that run in Alaska. Though, I suppose planes like the Medea are an option as well.
Oh yeah, another aspect of this idea of mine was an overall lack of ships that could leave the atmosphere. Land and Naval ships are definitely going to appear, but ones like the White Base or the Archangel are much less likely. After all, the focus for this is on arctic warfare.
Another detail I forgot to include until now is that I wanted it to be a major ice age, not a minor one.
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So, transport helicopters and the like? I don't know a lot of vtol transport planes.
Since I was thinking the railway system is the main form of heavy-duty transportation for the major nations of this era, they'd want to make sure they are well protected. Making the trains into mobile fortresses is an idea, but the biggest problem will be protecting the tracks. If pirates and bandits really want to rob the trains, they'd target the tracks to either try for a derail or at least pin it down.
...that is giving me a MAJOR deja vu. Last year, I begun thinking of writing an original mecha story set in 2055 and centered on a girl Falling into the Cockpit of a JSDF mecha and fighting mechas from a parallel universe where the Cold War escalated into a full nuclear exchange that plunged the other Earth into a nuclear winter. The attackers are an ex-Soviet group of survivors who are raiding the heroine's Earth for resources to supplement their rapidly depleting stockpiles with. They're not evil, they're just trying to survive and keep their families fed. Of course, things are complicated by the fact that they're also running out of fusion fuel, their commanding officer is planning to go Patrick Zala and launch a full-scale invasion for aggressive colonization purposes, the two Earths are NOT 100% immune to each other's diseases, the survivors are far too many to be fed through mere humanitarian aid... oh, and the other Earth's ex-US survivors are trying to start a world war on the heroine's Earth too for reasons that can best be summed up as Insane Troll Logic of the Red Scare flavor.
edited 26th Mar '16 6:01:54 PM by amitakartok
@Train: Well, on damaged track, there is specialized train to do that in RL
, so it would make sense for powers depend on them to developed something similar, or even something better. And developing tactic and strategy for that. It's also known fact that it was a tradition to put telegraph line parallel with train track,
to both help monitoring trains (in case something happened) and because it's cheaper to do so. In my country, the telegraph line is still used to inform and manage departure and arrival, among other things.
Make the cable integrated into railway, and suddenly non-dedicated ambushers found themselves a bit short of options, especially in open plains. On mountainous area, in other hand....
Also, considering their resources, it might be more practical for major power to have underground rail service. They can't be bothered by outside weather, ambushers-to-be found the cost is not worth it, and simple vibration sensors and/ or seismographs are all you need for lookout.
Also, considering checking World Building sections. People here are more thoughtful and in some case, downright paranoid when discussing things like this.
I'm learning more and more every day.
So the main consideration for having an underground railway is just how much more time and resources it'd take to make that possible over an overland line. Because, to be quite frank, there's going to be a lot of resource shortages in an ice and snow covered world like this one. I mean, there likely needs to be dedicated places for making drinkable water and edible plants.
Then there's also fuel supplies to consider as well. What will all this tech they need to survive run on?
See? That's why you really need to lurk in Worldbuilding Thread: Scifi Weapons and Equipment. Or play more Firaxis games.
Like I said, major. As in, "Have enough budget and resources to put 1/3 of inhabited area in the world and the in-between under their de facto jurisdiction". For guys like that, having secure, fast access to resources, industrial/ administrated regions are very important. And if said Ice Age actually already predicted before, that's an incentive for previous management to build infrastructure in the past.
Also, on energy and food and in-between: Biomass reactor
, geothermal, thorium-based nuclear reactor
, using extreme version of windmill.....
Thorium nuclear fission reactors... So more like Gundam SEED's NJC Mobile Suits than Universal Century's Minovsky Reactor ones. Which is fine for this Ice Age Gundam's Mobile Suits. For more regular use, that biogas looks like it'd work the best.
And I was thinking that the Dark History event that caused technology to be mostly erased was only a few decades before the Ice Age hit. Well, probably a bit longer than that. At least long enough to have discovered some Mountain Cycles and rebuild the tech level high enough to be able to withstand the oncoming cold. So, very likely not long enough to have planned for underground railways.
Remember that real-world VTOL aircraft (either tilt-rotor like the Osprey or vectored-thrust like the Harrier) are extremely dangerous, unreliable, and high-maintenance.
That's not a reason not to include them in your setting, but it is a reason for your characters not to like them very much, and a weakness for their enemies to exploit.
What's precedent ever done for us?
No they didn't.
I mean, it's not killing people every couple of flights any more, but it's still pretty dreadful.

Thought of the day:
"Ryu, what are you doing?! I didn't give an order to launch the Guntank!"
"I have had it with these motherfucking Zekes on my motherfucking White Base! COME ON, PENDEJOS!!!"
edited 10th Mar '16 10:25:12 AM by amitakartok