It's a Gundam thread!

Re-uploaded it. Go here.

Niiiiiiiiiice.

... Well obviously... #1 would have been the greatest mook suit ever... if they were fighting Space Vampires and all the suits had a Bat motif to them!

So a buddy of mine brought to my attention that Daemon X Machina has a guy in a red mech. I mean yet it sounds run of the mill but they really sold it home how much a mecha homage this game is because said red mecha pilot has a voice that sounds UNCANNILY like Shuichi Ikeda. That's awesome. (Also I swear another character, Diablos, is voiced by Toru Furuya so now we have Char AND Amuro in this game and that's amazing)

Can we have Romi Park now so I can have my Loran fix?

Honestly? I wouldn't mind getting a Switch for that game now that you've mentioned that.

Hell yeah

(also if this means we get Takehito Koyasu as a not-Zechs, that'd be rad as well. Or even Furuya pulling double duty as an Amuro AND as a Ribbons copy)

Another fun Gundam Question. Which series had the best use of tactics, what actually felt like a war story? All Gundams are accepted, Manga, novels, movies, not just animes and ovas.

Either War in the Pocket or 08th MS Team. (Though that last one is admittedly a bit more like MASH.)

Now, those are two questions that are frankly unrelated.

I'd say 08th MS Team felt the most like a war story. Good and bad people on both sides, focus on day-to-day life of a grunt, mechanics and logistics, chain of command, all that jazz. However, other than Shiro's tangle on-foot against the Zakus, tactics didn't really enter the fray so much as coordination, formation, and keeping your cool.

Similarly, despite being gritty and combat having serious weight, the fights in IBO aren't terribly tactically complex since they kind of revolve around "be faster and stronger than the opponent" for the most part.

GBF had a lot of tactically-driven fights (notably Renato Bros. vs. Meijin) and the Force Battle in Divers were pretty great in terms of tactics and coordination. They just, you know. Weren't war stories. At all.

If you want both, then yeah, War in the Pocket is probably your best bet.

I’ll echo the sentiments that 08th MS Team felt the most like a war story as far as genre.

As to which series has the “best” tactics, that very much depends on your use of the word best. I always liked the modular mecha in SEED though. The Impulse transformation is a little silly but the Strike is cool. IBO has some of the best looking fight scenes, and I really like the mechanical design as well.

edited 19th Jun '18 4:22:08 PM by archonspeaks

I agree that 08th MS Team is the closest to feeling like a war story.

As for tactics, 00 Season One has some good strategies by the enemy aces against Celestial Being, although by Season Two combat largely devolves into whose mech can glow the brightest.

X's Garrod pulls some cool tricks with the Satelleite Cannon, but I'm not sure that I would call that tactics given that Garrod isn't given to long term thinking.

Long term thinking would be Strategy. Tactics suits Garrod just fine.

The problem in general is most series, tactics get forsaken for "having the bigger stick." I think SEED and Destiny are the worst offenders for this, because the first suits the pilot has are entirely built around unique tactics and gimmicks, and further limited by their battery life. Then they get their Midseason Upgrade that takes away everything unique about them for sheer performance and... yeah.

Actually, Kou was pretty great at tactics and thinking on-the-fly. Helps that the GP 01 didn't really outstrip everything else. And that the GP 02's weakpoint was its shield.

... no, I will never let it live that down.

Seriously what the hell was anyone thinking, in universe or out, when they approved the GP 02’s design?

Combat was secondary to the shield's purpose.

I mean, just think about it. That weak point is the cooling system, right? It has the cooling system because it's designed to protect the suit from the thermal pulse of a nuclear warhead going off in close proximity. This isn't a case of arbitrarily defective design, this is a case of overspecialization for one thing at the purpose of everything else (which is quite common in the Universal Century, actually).

'Everything else' including getting stabbed with a beam saber - and as far as I'm aware, the shield didn't have beam-resistant coating (like, say, the Nemo's shield) anyway, so it wouldn't have stopped that beam saber even if there wouldn't have been a weak point right there.

That being said... if I would design that suit, I'd make that shield into an extra attachment on top of the same shield the GP 01 uses. Aside from easier logistics due to parts compatibility, the big shield could be detached and stowed onto the back of the suit while not nuking so that it's not in the way during combat, possibly with some extra thrusters X-Divider style so that its weight does not debilitate the suit's mobility either.

edited 20th Jun '18 3:52:36 PM by amitakartok

IIRC, the GP-01 and GP-02 were originally meant to be used in combination, so that kind of puts a different light on it as well.

GP-01 is the one primarily designed for anti-MS combat (and especially with the full vernier upgrade to shoot its mobility through the roof), and the GP-02 is primarily designed just to Nuke 'em.

So, anyone remember that silly War Lemon from Gundam AGE?

Apparently, it can get sillier in appearance. There's an updated version that resembles the Snitch from Harry Potter.

so what does that make the Stamen?

Asemu...yer a wizard

edited 21st Jun '18 12:46:42 AM by MightyKombat

Wasn't the GP-03 meant to be built as a one-man colony defense team?

Perfect indeed.

I can sure as fuck see that, the thing's a monster.

The GP-03 was supposedly an "area defense platform" or something like that. Essentially the idea is that it was basically a mobile fortress, with firepower to match, so it can protect an entire region of space by itself.

In reality, this is super domb. Mobile suits are terrible defensive weapons in general. They're more like fighter jets than tanks — they launch, use up all their ammo on targets, then return to base to rearm. What the GP-03 really is is a fleet-killer — it's a wrecking ball for smashing through an enemy formation and destroying everything in its path. You wouldn't want to park it outside a colony and say "come at me bro", because anything it's assigned to protect is likely to be hit by the missile swarms and beam spam it's throwing around. You want to point it at a bunch of enemies and say "go nuts".

New IBO content to be revealed in a week. Possibly/probably movie compilation, but a part of me will always hope for Calamity War stuff.

edited 22nd Jun '18 8:30:08 PM by TheAirman

I'd also like a Calamity War prequel.

I always liked the Gundam designs in that show, so varied & distinct from each other.

It's good content.