Sometimes you just need a bigger gun
>>23865808>SuperweaponMore like super useless.
>>23866658Most superweapons historically have been.
>>23865808This could've won the OYW but zeon was corrupt as fuck.
Armored Core 6 didn't have enough giant superweapon
>>23866684Gihren didn't get the memo
>>23866684>>23869081You can't say superweapon don't work in Gundam when they almost won the day multiple times.Ignoring the colony drop (that nearly had the EFF capitulate)The EFF "Solar system" proved extremely efficient against fortified installations. It's a pain to set up but it can be moved, it doesn't use fuel, and destroying it once deployed take a lot of time. It was planned to be used against "Á Bao A Qu" the name is awesome but it's a pain to write if it was destroyed first.The Solar Ray destroyed half of the Federation fleet. If it didn't also destroy a part of Zeon's fleet and destroyed the White Base it would have won the war.And even when it come to more modest superweapon like the Big Zam or Newtype weapons, most of them would have proved extremely efficient if the EFF didn't zerg-rush them before completion and didn't happen to have their own amazing newtype.
IRL nuclear weapons can be considered a superweapon, and our entire world is defined around you having them or not.The next superweapon will likely be AIs. Whoever develop first an AI they can order to replace a bazillions of hackers or even engineers will essentially control the world and outpace everyone technologically.
<<Incoming fire from Stonehenge!>>
>>23869081>>23869123Came here to post this. While most super weapons are some massive inefficient mega project, and you have Zeon (and the Titans) clearing out whole colonies for a single use laser, the Federation just uses a couple mirrors and the unmatched power of the sun.It's elegant in its simplicity
>>23865808Gando Rowa, this sea urchin looking, God-killing weapon of the Buff Clan from Ideon. 500km wide and 300km tall, it's so gargantuan that it made an appearance as a map background instead of final boss in SRW alpha 3.
>>23870660>a couple mirrorsTo be fair, that would realistically be a teratons of mirrors and the only way to coordinate them is via a method that minovsky physics if not a solar flare utterly fuck up.Those massive superweapon are usually easier to control. Also the Solar Ray would annihilate everything on a line (even using the moon gravity to as a slingshot) instead of only being lethal at the single point of convergence.>superweapon as a standard orbital defense satellite
>>23869209AI isn't real, retard
>>23870920Anon was also slightly off topic, this is for /m/ works Also the ai bubble popped so it matters not>>23870710The title of God killer really made sense with this monstrosity
>>23870942>the ai bubble poppedLel
>>23870942NO THEY HAVE TO FINISH BUILDING THE NUCLEAR PLANTS FIRST
>>23869123>And even when it come to more modest superweapon like the Big Zam or Newtype weapons, most of them would have proved extremely efficient if the EFF didn't zerg-rush them before completion and didn't happen to have their own amazing newtype.Its hilarious to me how they say the Big Zam was so expensive and resource intensive to build. That's why it took so long to build one. Yet Zeon can spit out thousands of ships including massive ships like the Gwazine. I know it's a cartoon and you shouldn't think about it too much but just set that aside for a minute. Just 1 or 2 extra Big Zams probably would have won the Battle of Solomon. It would have tipped the scales in favor of Zeon.
Fortress Iserlohn official cutawayhttps://www.pixiv.net/artworks/86263967
>>23870991Miniaturization is its own hurdle.Mass-producing ship with regular size reactors and plenty of room? No problem.Producing a MA with a reactor more powerful than ever, without it blowing up? We are working on it.Also the wiki say there was only a dozen of Gwazine. One retcon mock that pilot claimed to have shot more enemy MS than there was MS deployed during the war.Speaking of giant ship, let's have a Dolos-class, only two built. A super-super-carrier that's apparently flawed by having only 7 catapults to get the hundred of MS out.
>>23873237It was clearly a first attempt in making a massive carrier dedicated to mobile suits, even then it might’ve not been surpassed in it’s capacity if I’m not mistaken
>>23871079That's cheating TwN is a super robot show, anon.
Superweapon number 7 right there
>>23870942So…what did it do? Super star killer etc?
>>23875960Not all of them are big, at least not at first.
>>23873237>A super-super-carrier that's apparently flawed by having only 7 catapults to get the hundred of MS out.I genuinely don't believe that at all. Your picture shows 13 to 15 catapults. And even if was 7, it's not a big deal. A US carrier only has 4 catapults but can launch 1 fighter every 15 seconds in combat. Thats 4 per minute. 240 fighters per hour. I would assume Dolos can achieve similar performance with 7 catapults. Assuming 2 mobile suits per 15 seconds that's 8 suits per minute. 480 mobile suits per hour. Why is that being painted as a huge negative when the Dolos only carries about 200 mobile suits?
>>23870660>single use laserSince when? The Colony Laser could be fired repeatedly and has greater range than the Solar system mirror the Feds use
>>23886924US navy carriers can detect enemies approaching from hundreds of miles away and have time to launch. Enemies approaching the Dolos under cover of minovsky particles means they can't be detected until they're already super close. There's nothing wrong with a supercarrier or mobile base, just don't put it on the front lines, have it operate in the rear with a protective escort.>>23886926Even the original Solar Ray as intended by the Zeeks was capable of multiple shots, but they rushed construction and it being the first time a colony laser was ever built and used, it ended up suffering damage when it was fired for the first time and they couldn't repair it to be fired a second time before the battle of A Baoa Qu started. Gryps was used multiple times just fine.
>>23886926The colony laser is a Zeta onwards thing and more refined. Back in 0079 it was the solar say, and they make a note about how they're only gonna get one chance to fire it.
>>23886972>Enemies approaching the Dolos under cover of minovsky particles means they can't be detected until they're already super close. Yes but you can detect the Minovsky jamming and particle density rising. So you send out suits anyway as a matter of procedure.
>>23887030sounds like a waste of fuel
>>23886924>I genuinely don't believe that at all. Your picture shows 13 to 15 catapults.Guess I have a reason to post this other pic.The other "catapult" are just hangar door for smaller vehicle or supply.
>>23886926>The Colony Laser could be fired repeatedlyActually the colony laser couldn't fire again because of a precooling that took weeks.Realistically, if you are operating at the limit of your technology, chance are that you have to replace a fucktons of components, and it takes time.So the real question is what is cheaper to refurbish?A: The bazillion of complex & specific subsystem of a colony laser?B: Identical and rather simple mirrors you mass-produce anyway?Fiction isn't allowed to have fail-safe win all superweapons, but realistically, if you can produce at that scale, using a "Solar system" set of reflector would easily count as a swarm superweapon that's too numerous to neutralize quickly.Also realistically, you may not have a reason for "warship" unless both side become mortally afraid of debris destroying the infrastructure, making warship into glorified police cruiser.
>>23886924>And even if was 7, it's not a big dealAircraft carriers don't operate in a Minovsky environment that reduce detection range and encourage reaction time.Even if we take this pic >>23889374 loosely and give it wide corridors, it could take a lot of time to prepare MS and organize their take-off.When our IRL carriers prepare an assault, they have all their aircraft on the bridge, and have to be prepared to recover/rearm the aircraft fast enough so that none of them run out of fuel waiting.Our IRL carrier are also meant to be always escorted.Anything that would take on a DOLOS would do so expecting 200 MS plus escort.So what would happen if the DOLOS is attacked by 200+ GM?Even supposing Minovsky cheat isn't enough to make it a surprise, the assault may be detected too late to deploy the full complement in time.The elephant in the room however is that SPACE CATAPULT ARE RETARDED IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!Those are not here to save you a bit of deltaV or give initial speed in a limited direction. They exist solely to give a cool looking take-off and give a parallel to WWII carrier (more like Battle-carrier tho for the heroes tho).Logically they could operate like heli-carrier except the heli can wait around near indefinitely without using fuel.So you need to introduce an aspect that discourage from deploying MS too early.
>>23889386Penrose Mirror?
>>23889386The mirror system is more vulnerable since its massive. Zeon destroyed it by blind firing a ton of rockets at it from far away.
>>23889428>Aircraft carriers don't operate in a Minovsky environment that reduce detection range and encourage reaction time. Zeon can detect Minovsky particles. If the density is high then radar is jammed. If radar is jammed then they know it's an attack. Which means you send out mobile suits. Plus militaries always send out scouts and patrols 24/7. If radar is not jammed, then you will see the enemy company.
>>23889587>Penrose Mirror?No idea what you are talking about, but I googled a fun superweapon, it's not even gunbuster onehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_bomb
>>23889720Ended up rewatching episode 35 & 36Firing tons of rocket is costly, they fire all of their missiles at it and it was still capable of attacking a fleet later.And the Solar system is massive but extremely spread apart.One of the thing people ignore (or forget) is that in the vacuum of space explosions are much weaker.So you need kinetic weapon.But if you create fragmentation bombs, you need fragments that remain dense enough to do damage thousand of mirrors, and those mirrors look like they could easily keep working with some holes in them as long as their maneuvering system isn't kaput.
>>23889723And yet this is a setting where they had entire armies sneak up in debris.Scouts can be killed without the ability to communicate their enemy arrival because of the jamming.Decoys can be sent ahead to waste your scout times, purposefully spreading far more Minovsky particles ahead so you do go all out, find nothing, start going back, then they attack while you are fatigued and need to refuel.Let's suppose the DOLOS always has 50 MS out, rotating them.When the enemy finally attack, you still have to launch 150 MS.If the enemy will be on you in 30 time unit, you need to launch at least 5 MS per time unit to have them all fighting in time.Episode 35/36 showed a long battle with fighters and MS coming back to the ship for repair/rearm.What if you end up with MS waiting? The design could be a bottleneck.I wouldn't be surprised if there's a side-story made to talk about the Dolos-class.
>>23890751This Zeon ship carried around 150 mobile suits, but only had 2 catapults. Yet not one databook says it had a massive flaw with the catapult design. Therefore it makes no sense that the Dolos should have that same weakness when it has over 3 times the amount of catapults.
>>23889386>So the real question is what is cheaper to refurbish? >A: The bazillion of complex & specific subsystem of a colony laser? >B: Identical and rather simple mirrors you mass-produce anyway? The mirror system is highly complex. Not because the mirrors were complicated to manufacture, but because it took an entire space fleet to operate the mirror system. The databooks say that a significant amount of ships were needed to coordinate the movement of all the mirrors. Each ship coordinated a small section of the mirror system. During battle, signals needed to be slowly relayed between each ship because the mirror system was so massive. Minovsky Particles m could also make this situation worse and significantly slow down communication and coordination between ships. Plus the firing arc was limited. The whole mirror system needed to be redployed if the target moved out of the firing arc.So while the colony laser used more physical resources (a large colony), it was significantly easier to operate and maintain. Unlike the mirror system, you didn't need a fleet of ships remaining in very specific positions to operate the colony laser. This freed up a ton of military resources for other tasks.
>>23890675Sorry, was thinking about Foundations Novacula.
>>23890764Kind of random but I'm curious if there are Gundam stories that address what happened to these ships? Were they put into storage in some dry dock somewhere after the anime ended? Were they repainted and used as a normal ship? I'm annoyed Gundam never tells us.
>that time when Zeon tried their hand at terraforming>Gihren instantly wanted to weaponize it
>>23870920Yet
>>23891131I would not trust technobabble written with the goal of balancing a weapon for the setting.To be direct I consider the anime rather highly exaggerated the power of the number of mirrors shown.>Solar systemYou can consider it like IRL drone swarm weapons, cheap but it takes a lot of them to do any real damage. Jamming would fuck up drones, but here you need super-jamming because to deserve notice.The logistic is big but that's just a lot of space trucks, and mass production is the Federation specialty.And I see no reason they couldn't fire from anywhere in sunlight, aimed with gyros with the only data needed per mirror: your position, sun position, target position.Aside a Solar furnace would more logically be a continuous firing weapon than as sudden burst of extra-sunlight. Realistically, overheating spaceship in a vacuum would work wonder.>Solar rayThis one is the massive one.The colony alone is likely heavier than equivalent mirrors and ships put together by several magnitudes. I challenge every word about it being easier to operate or maintain. It's top-level laser technology on a ridiculous scale.It would also require a gigantic support fleet, cooling system a lone mirror don't need, and unlike the mirrors, it's likely very fragile, damage anything and I would imagine it unable to fire without blowing itself up. Turning it around could realistically take weeks just to avoid bending systems.The wiki say it requires a week of cooling and all the energy Zeon can produce, IMO I think that's far too low for a "laser" melting a fleet in seconds without aiming finely.Analyzing these superweapons against real science help a lot see how much they cheated with physics.
Today, I will remind themhttps://youtu.be/43LCg8F2T4k
>>23866819these things are basically the planet-scale version of the toyota truck with a machinegun on top
>>23896527We were so fucking cheated
>>23897344For not getting another series? Sure were.Unless you are one those guy who believe the start was a bait&switch and only wanted the (generic) mecha battle.
Thinking about it, getting GOD-TIER mecha in a setting that regressed to the industrial era count as a Superweapon.
>>23897455Oh no, the hilarity of that intro was the GF was already wiped out.
>>23886926They specifically say when they use it that the ray has like a focusing membrane/lens over the front that was experimental and single use
>>23897461How about a Super Robot in a medieval setting?
>>23901393Anon oh anon. They built the solar ray in like a week. I'm sure Zeon could fix one broken component. Possibly even improve it. No problem.
>>23903759Looking at the tech difference between the faction in Escaflowne and Zaibach, all their mecha are capable of flight, firing energy projectiles, and also have invisibility cape.You'd need at least an army of laser firing Escaflowne, or to be protected by fate to match that.
>>23905225What part is that scene from? I forget if Escaflowne is one of a kind or the only surviving one of its type like in The Big O.
>>23905263Dornkirk's fever dream.
>>23905263It's from the episode where the alliance led by Hitomi counter-attack and storm Zaibach capital with their mass produce Escaflowne.It's portrayed as a Zaibach (internal?) propaganda, implying the Zaibach troops are told bullshit about the reasons they need to capture that lone mecha and the girl.>I forget if Escaflowne is one of a kind or the only surviving one of its typeJoke aside, it is only one of a kind for the human.The Ispano tribe has a factory mothership, one can only wonder WHY. The franchise never had much of a setting even if you take the (very) different manga that was produced at the same time.While /m/en would need no other reason to produce mech, one can only wonder the reason things ended like that.>like in The Big O.If you include the 2nd season it's also not one of a kind. There's just no other in service in the simulation.
Speaking of SUPERWEAPON, I would say Escaflowne has one that's incredibly powerful, and you can hardly defend yourself against it.Best use of a fate altering machine
Not really related but closest enough no need to make a new thread: What's the closest theoretical handheld gun IRL that could use a exo suit type arm reinforcement on a normal soldier that would be equivalent to handling a beam magnum?
>>23905920I dunno, a 40K bolt pistol or some sort of "handgun" firing 15~30mm ammunition
why do beam guns have recoil anyway
>>23905933most beam guns fire off beam shots that seem to take up more space than the internals of the gun, and when the shots exit the beam gun's barrel they almost always expand a bit to be a little wider than the barrel's sizeif the beam gun is producing that much volume of beam shot, then every time it's shooting, the beam gun is probably building up pressure inside and the beam "ammo" that hasn't been fired yet and are held in storage are probably highly compressedif there's pressure, then when the beam "ammo" is released and is shot out of the gun, there's going to be some pushback from the force of the beam shot moving out of the gun's barrel
>>23905933If the magical particles you are firing have mass, you still have to propel that mass.Also there's functionally little difference between beam propulsion, and beam gun. If you are concentrating all the power into one shot, then you are also concentrating a long weak acceleration into a short strong acceleration.
