Mobile Armors

>I hate to bring in IBO

Why not bring it in? It's a Gundam series.

Also, I read Mobile Armors somehow gained sentience and tried to destroy Humanity in that series according to their history, which is one of the reasons they apparently are't seen or produced anymore.

Which raises the question, are Psycommu (and it's equivalents) and Artificial Intelligence the only ways to get the most efficiency out of the Mobile Armor concept?

Apparently pre-calamity war there was an arms race that greatly advanced drone type technology that resulted in mobile armors being produced in "countless" numbers.

At some unspecified point during or before the war the MA went full killbot and started just killing humans and they needed like a whole fleet just to defeat one or two of them.

MS were developed to fight against them and at least prevented humans from getting totally raped in battle. Then humans developed AV and the gundams, finally allowing them to make a full counter offensive and wipe out at least all the known ones (Hashmal was hidden by the half metal around it or something).

At the end of the war 1/4 of humanity was dead. Not as impressive as what Zeon managed but pretty close.

>Why not bring it in?
Probably because the entire discussion will devolve down to

That sounds dumb.

Also seems pretty super robot, not particularly a fan of the tech gimmicks from this setting.

>needed like a whole fleet just to defeat one or two of them.

So it was the Big Zam level of power then?

Zeta is a bit of an outlier to the rest of the franchise in terms of how it sees MA and MS. Interestingly enough, according to the HGUC boxart/manuals, the Messala, Asshimar, Baund Doc, and Gaplant are referred to as transformable MA. However, the Gabthely and the AEUG's Methuss are referred to as transformable MS instead. All of their alternate modes are referred to as MA mode, however.

The Zeta and every variant, offshoot, re-development, and successor henceforth used Waverider Mode to describe their alternative forms. In Unicorn, the parallel-lineage Delta Gundam and the Delta Plus also use Waverider Mode to describe their alternate forms, as does the Re-GZ in CCA and the ReZEL in Unicorn as well. They are all simply known as transformable MS. I'm not clear on if there's a distinction between being called Waverider Mode and simply being called MA mode.

The Psycho Gundam and its lineage use Mobile Fortress to describe its alternate mode, which is for all intents and purposes a kind of MA in itself given its bulk.

This sometimes repeats itself again later on; in Wing where the Epyon transformed is referred to as an MA (Wing/WZ does the same thing, but it's called Bird/Neo-Bird Mode instead) and in Gundam X where the Gadeel is basically a fighter craft with a Daught-type head plonked on it (other more typical MA exist in X). Technically the various non-bipedal variants of the Death Army in G would count, but they are never referred to as such.

No hard and fast rule, it seems.

I always just figured they were dead men's legacies.

Like, you remember Star Trek's 'The Arsenal of Freedom', where the crew comes under attack by all these automated weapons, then near they end they run into a salesman hologram who reveals the whole thing has been a demonstration of weapons his creators are eager to sell? But his creators are long dead, their whole civilization wiped out, and the system just keeps doing what it's doing because it doesn't know to do anything else, and no one's left with the authorization to tell it otherwise?

Something like that - one of the wars that was fought, the mobile armors were hard to beat so they killed off the softer target, the faction that made the Hasmals. Unfortunately, in do doing, no one was left that could turn the things off and they just kept killing until a means was come up with to stop them.

To be fair a single mobile suit with a bazooka could take it down, or a squadron of saberfish with dumbfire missiles.

The I-Field was a game-changer but part of that was because it caught the enemy offguard.

> despite not fitting any MA traits

MA don't have any traits. Except perhaps "not a mobile suit".

Zeta had such a fucking hardon for the 'transforming' gimmick, you can kind of justify it in-universe for all the military leaders getting obsessed with the 'new' concept and thus funding designs with that specific feature in mind.

Weapon designers making mad bank, the true winners of the war.

> MA don't have any traits

Well, I've heard of these traits being assigned to them by the UC Gundam Officials guide book:

> High mobility (high acceleration or high terminal velocity in atmospheric/subsuface conditions)

> High maneuverability (having high ability to turn and aim)

> High fire power (usually means carrying different types of weapon for various enemies or high power mega beam weapon.)

> Strong defense (usually I-Field generators)

Apparently a Mobile Armor must have two of these traits to be considered one.

The Unicorn is a mobile armor by these standards, though.

> all the military leaders getting obsessed with the 'new' concept and thus funding designs with that specific feature in mind.

It seems they recycled that concept of Zeta in SEED then.

One the defining features of Blue Logos (and the Earth Alliance to an extent) was that they apparently believed transforming Mobile Armors were the future of the Earth Alliance military over Mobile Suits, which they shunned as a "spacenoid weapon".

Yes. Whoever the misanthropic engineers were from the Calamity War in IBO created MAs that were so powerful that they had to use scores of mobile suits to take down a single unit, plus the MAs could regenerate using drones and had on-board manufacturing capabilities for said drones (Plumas).

That would actually be interesting if they kept at it in a setting though, one side mostly focusing on using non-humanoid Mobile Armors both big and small while the other favored more your standard humanoid mobile suits.

Would still allow some degree of overlap with both sides using models of the 'opposing' design theories to a much smaller extent.

The Unicorn is a big pile of dumb bullshit, it gets to be whatever it wants.

I'm not a big fan of GN Arms in 00, but Assault Container is nice and I like the normal Container mode. To bad they killed the idea in Season 2.

>single mobile suit with a bazooka could take it down, or a squadron of saberfish with dumbfire missiles
The Big Zam is heavily armored, you'd need beam fire or a beam saber to cut through the armor or fire at the (slightly less armored) underbelly. Even that might not work, as Sleggar's explosion knocked it aside. You need something stronger than a Dom's bazooka.

Most Gundams are, especially relative to contemporary mobile suits. V2 probably hits all 4 traits for instance, even if you have to give it packs for some of them. Even the original RX-78-2 was effective partially because it had high fire power in the form of a miniaturised beam weapon that could kill most units in one hit, and because it's Gundarium/Luna-Titanium armor made it impervious to most contemporary mobile suit weapons. And the Gelgoog had beam weapons and was fast by war's end despite being a mass produced suit.

Yes.

>Beam proof and extremely resiliant armor.
>Beam cannon.
>Self learning combat AI.
>Pile drivers in the claws.
>Highly accurate and flexible tail blade.
>Attack drones it can manufactor more of itself if properly supplied.
>The drones can gather supplies for it and repair it in addition to attacking enemies.
>Sat buried underground for 300 years, woke up, trashed a ms squad, wrecked a military base full of MS while still trying to resupply, and then went on to trash three supposed ace pilots.
>It took the strongest current pilit/machine combo in the series to stop it and thats only after cutting it off from most of its drones and he had to cripple himself and trash his gundam to beat it.
>Even then the last attack missed skewering him in the cockpit by mere inches.

And there were supposed to be like hundreds of these or similar machines during the calamity war.

The Big Zam has visible cockpit windows, also absolutely no weapons coverage against attackers coming from above which is a pretty huge vulnerability when you fight in 3-dimensional space and are incredible slow and sluggish.

What is up with all the wank. in this show? If you renamed the 'Gundam frames' to something else would it even be a gundam series?

I assume Mobile Armors were outlawed in the IBO universe after that.

Speaking of which, were they outlawed in G Reco?

I saw one of the characters mentioning the Amorzagan as being a "forbidden weapon".

You just described most AU gundam series.

But the problem wasn't with the mobile armours, it was with the fact they were unmanned and had skynet uploaded into them?

I'd hate to see what that conflict was started over.

>a squadron of saberfish with dumbfire missiles

Has anyone tried taking down a Mobile Armor with aircraft in any series?

I always see them throw Tanks and Mobile Suits at the problem, but never aircraft.

I'm pretty sure some core fighters and the Gunperry fuck up the Grabro in MSG. Other than that, it's not like fighters are too fast for mobile armors to take down, nor do they have a lot of specialized or heavy firepower that makes them dangerous to MAs.

Heavy bombers would fuck up the Big Zam's in terrestrial combat

>Heavy bombers

Does the Federation have any of those?

Have you not played Gihren's Greed?

I haven't played any of the games yet.

Not that I won't once I have time to dust off the old PS2.

The Federation's superior air force is a major factor of why they were able to hold out on Earth before they got their own MS, even with the Minovsky Particle bullshit.

Have a bunch of different aircraft like fighters, fighter-bombers, bombers, heavy bombers. Also hover-helicopters, ground-attack planes, anti-submarine planes and of course scouting & reconnaissance aircraft.

I loved the Big Rang on MSIgloo, for something that was piece together so quickly and didn't had great pilot in it still performed quite good.

For what amounted to a desperation measure, it was pretty effective.

Hildofir wasn't bad either, thought I'm not sure if that was a Mobile Armor or not.

>Didn't the Grublo here do heavy damage to the White Base when it attacked?

Yes, but it was unable to complete the mission and was destroyed by a single MS.

No point in using an elephant that's scared of mice.

The Vagans actually succeeded in mass-producing their Big Zam and deploying them in combat.

Then there's SID, but that's a separate story altogether.

>Look at dem sexy gams!

Junya Ishigaki was wasted on AGE.

They also apparently created an improvement, which is described as being a "portal fortress".

It can also defend itself better in combat if need be given each of it's fingers and toes is a beam saber and a beam cannon, in addition to it's tail also being a weapon.

In IBO, I think humanoid MS are justified.

Beast like MAs has the bipedal advantage of MS.

But these beasts rebelled against humanity.

So MS, especially those with the AV system, symbolised an extension of humanity, both in-universe and out of universe.

And of course, they needed arms to wield melee weapons.

Did these MP ones ever appear in the show?

MP?

They were fodder for AGE 3's first appearance

If you mean those of that particular color, yes.

In fact, they were part of the Vagan attack on Earth in the third season.

Apparently Flit seems to have some knowledge of them as he knows they create a large blast when destroyed, something he warns his grandson of when he takes him into a skirmish for the first time (despite the Reganner's size, Flit's grandson has no problem using his Gundam to kick it into the air before it's destroyed).

Totally forgot about these guys. AGE had as many designs as First Gundam did for a given generational arc.

I just remember that Vagan hid countless MS on Earth, enough to make them appear like a video game random enemy encounter.

One of the oddest things I've ever seen classified as a Mobile Armor.

What would the redesign of the Zock featured in Road to Jaburo count as?

Yes, but had that Mobile Suit been anything other than a Gundam, isn't it likely Flanagan Boon would have succeeded?

Do any of those bike things from victory gundam count as mobile armors?

I've never seen that before, what series is it from?

Isn't it just some sort of armored vehicle?

Chinese tank from 00

>with little explanation
I remember the first time Zamza-Zah launched, an EA officer said something along the line of "I believe that MA like this one is our future, not those MS we copied from ZAFT".
So we can conclude that during Destiny time there are factions in EA who dislike the idea of using MS due to its ZAFT origin (petty reason but this is CE anyway). MA from the last war like Moebius cannot compete with MS in agility, so they simply make it bigger and more heavily armed this time to compensate that.

It's a tank called the "Jianchong" that is used by the Human Reform League (merger of China, Russia east of the Urals and parts of South East Asia) in Gundam 00.

It's apparently what preceded the use of Mobile Armors such as the HRL Fanton.

They come automated and with a variant used in engineering duties.

They're also apparently kind of small.

Well, they kind of had a point to a certain degree didn't they?

I don't know how resource intensive later Mobile Armors were for the Earth Alliance, but some like the Gells-Ghe and Destroy usually accounted for themselves well against ZAFT forces.

Now granted, they likely wouldn't replace Mobile Suits, but the Mobile Armors were a nice touch for making the campaigns more costly for ZAFT.

>I always just figured they were dead men's legacies.
>it was with the fact they were unmanned and had skynet uploaded into them?
Well we honestly don't know it WAS a Skynet situation, Hasmal does feature the same triangular Power/A symbol featured on both Barbatos and Bail.

>So MS, especially those with the AV system, symbolised an extension of humanity, both in-universe and out of universe.
Hell, I think it's be outright said that the AV system is WHY Mobile Suits are humanoid in the first place; The more similar the vehicle is to the body of the Controller, the easier it is to operate.

>They're also apparently kind of small.
Looks like they're the direct meta-predecessors of IBO's "Mobile Workers," which makes sense in this era of Technicals and other random vehicles with guns strapped to them...

>Bail
C'mon man.

I was just assuming they were outlawed as I haven't seen anymore being constructed.

Then again, I'm not that familiar with the mechanics of Iron Blooded Orphans so.

>C'mon man.
Sorry, never been good with names and am running on little sleep...

>I was just assuming they were outlawed as I haven't seen anymore being constructed.
>Then again, I'm not that familiar with the mechanics of Iron Blooded Orphans so.
Well that's the thing about the setting: Gjallarhorn, the Organization credited with ending the Calamity War, were the ones who started rebuilding civilization.
While they did allow for several Economic Blocks on Earth to create their own independent Governments, Gjallarhorn made itself a non-partisan Peace Keeping force for the Solar System at large, and seized pretty much anything to do with the advanced weapon technologies that had been developed.
The most key being the production of the primary power-plant for the series, Ahab Reactors, which can continue to produce large amounts of energy for literal centuries, but also creates large amounts of electromagnetic interference meaning they could only really be used on Space Ships.
Of course, a Mobile Suit is the smallest vehicle that can fit an Ahab Reactor (The circular part on the center back pictured, the titular Gundams mount two synchronized ones giving them insane power), but only Gjallarhorn can produce new ones, and only a few other large organizations have access to the rare resources used to create a Mobile Suits' ultra-durable Frame.
Thus, only a few large outfits could manage to build or maintain frames, most only refurbishing salvaged MS left over from the War that already had functioning Ahab Reactors, let alone construct a much LARGER weapons platform that was responsible for nearly driving mankind extincted.

>I-Field

Is that extremely expensive to produce or something?

It seems more like they should have mounted that on warships at some point.

They should, but...
>Gundam
>Caring about warships as anything but MS carriers

No idea, but I-Fields for early Universal Century are huge, and have limited operational time.

That being said, there was no excuse for ships using them later down the time line.

In the series that's mostly ancient history. Also it's made pretty clear that history was written by the winners, so that's probably not the whole story.

Though, from the one example seen in the series, Mobile Armors were dangerous and powerful.

> huge, and have limited operational time.

That actually describes Big Zam to T.

It's said that Big Zam only had 20 minutes of operational use due to overheating issues from having four large reactors.

I'm curious to know if there are any others lurking out there or if the fact that they could be still around is going to be relevant.

I feel like there is room for one more Mobile Armor appearance before season ends. Last resort from ether side.

Alternativelly, if there is third season or some kind of sequel series, there is room for more.

I will keep my fingers crossed then.

If you count the spin-offs, then this one is the most successful Mobile Armor to date.
This is also my favorite.

probably helps that the MA it's derived from, the Bigro was one of the more effective MA's Zeon deployed(and was one of the only ones to have full Mass Production, although of the ones we see in Original Gundam, only the Big Zam was a oneoff, all the others had at least 2 units built)

>although of the ones we see in Original Gundam, only the Big Zam was a oneoff, all the others had at least 2 units built)
I'm pretty sure Zakerello, Braw Bro, and Elmeth were also one-offs

> I'm pretty sure Zakerello, Braw Bro, and Elmeth were also one-offs

Interestingly in the side materials, I believe Big Zam (in it's original iteration or close to it) is still the only Mobile Armor not to be produced beyond a single proto-type.

Also, is the Elmeth only made to be piloted by female New Types?

Of all the ones seen so far, the pilots have always been female.

Had a neat prototype too.

And the Zakrello prototype beat it in the competition using AMBAC

The prototype Zakrello looks much better without the face.

And here's what Izubuchi's (or at least a 0080 style take) on the Bigro and Zakrello look like.

Okay fine I like that one a little too.

What Zeon learned from Bigro, they improved on with Val Walo, which is one of the most effective machines I've seen.

Interestingly it mentions that three were present at A Baoa Qu. Yet I don't believe their role or appearance in the Zeon defense of that space going fortress has ever been covered, with only one apparently surviving the war.

I'm also curious to know what the Federation did with impounded Zeon Mobile Armors at the end of the conflict, assuming they weren't slipped to Zeon Remnants.

Eh if you wanted to describe it in gundam terms IBO is basically just "What if Celestial Being defeated a mobile doll army and turned into aristocratic Titans" vs "Child Soldier Mars Crossbone Vanguard", by means of peace princess realpolitik.

So its pretty Gundam.

Nah it was that they were poorly programmed or used for false flag attacks that got out of hand (depending on how you read the setting) AND had interanl factories that made their own bugs/mobile dolls/g-bits that could in turn fix the main armour, and may even have been full von neuman machines if given enough time.

So it could easily be one group tried to use them for political gain and fucked up the off switch, and now the entire solar system is crawling with the fucking things.

But yeah they became literal Taboo, "do not even talk about making things that could be thought of as maybe similar", level of outlawed afterwards.

Of course given IBO tech they could be piloted by AI copies of humans, as the main antagonist gundam has a pretty literal EXAM Human Simulation program, or they could even have human brains floating in nanotech preservation vats, because thats a thing too.

So they could actually be secretely piloted by "humans" and things just got a bit too Robocop 2.

there were two Braw Bro units seen in MSG(and a third one appears in Space To The End of A Flash), the Zakrello had at least one more unit built(if we take UC Era as canon), and there was at least one other Elmeth built(I remember fighting one during the Thoroughbred story in Encounters In Space)

the X1 is pretty neat

the Zeonic AMBAC prototype is really meant to be more of a extremely primitive ancestor to the Zaku(it even has the Zaku tubes)

>I'm also curious to know what the Federation did with impounded Zeon Mobile Armors at the end of the conflict, assuming they weren't slipped to Zeon Remnants.
well at least in The Origin the only MA known to survive the war was the Bigro(which in The Origin never saw combat and had it's role as Zeon's MP MA replaced by the Zakrello), as for the main continuity, well presumably the Federation scrapped most of the surviving ones, although they did make a Mobile Armor based on the Braw Bro during the Gryps Conflict in one of the more recent Advance of Zeta spinoffs

I think a total of four Elmeths were constructed as four pilots are listed for the unit.

>But yeah they became literal Taboo, "do not even talk about making things that could be thought of as maybe similar", level of outlawed afterwards.
Well they weren't outright OUTLAWED, like I said here Gjallarhorn basically seized most of the means to even PRODUCE anything like it.

I point this out because we actually DO see a weapon system they DID ban in the second season; The Dainsleif "Rods of GOD" Railguns that fire stakes made out of the same things they make Mobile Suit frames out of.

While Gjallarhorn did make any sort of human-machine interfaces taboo, it's more of a literal case since there aren't any laws against doing so, it's just considered extremely unsightly.

>Of course given IBO tech they could be piloted by AI copies of humans, as the main antagonist gundam has a pretty literal EXAM Human Simulation program, or they could even have human brains floating in nanotech preservation vats, because thats a thing too.
>So they could actually be secretely piloted by "humans" and things just got a bit too Robocop 2.
This is actually what I want to find out the most about this setting, since my fanfiction idea for my IBO Gunpla centers around a mysterious mad scientist Uncle traveling with a Mobile Armor companion.

>Has any faction in any Gundam ever had any success with mass producing these things?
Jupiter Empire's Divinidads?

I thought those were all destroyed.

Is it ever explained in series why other factions like the Zanscare Empire, Jupiter Empire and Neo Babylonia make use of Mobile Armors?

And do they ever mention getting the idea from Zeon (or mention Zeon period)?

>human-machine interfaces taboo

Like the Pyscommu system that creates problems in the Universal Century?

That mobile armor was kinda it's own thing. Mostly IBO is pretty grounded, no beam weapons outside of that one case. Instead they wave slaps of metal around, shoot projectile guns and the big bad banned evil weapon to not be used is just railgun shooting big lances at targets.

That mobile armor implies that back in the day, in far history of the series powerlevels were something ridiculous, but it also gives weight to the idea that old tech should be kept hidden, forbidden and forgotten.

None of their mobile armors are really that related to any other pre-existing mobile armor. I mean, come on, mobile armor is just a super vague term. Anything that isn't shaped like a mobile suit and isn't a warship is called a mobile armor, so it doesn't mean they're they're carrying on any kind of tradition or were inspired by Zeon.

Except the tradition of motorcycles from the middle ages, of course!

>and the big bad banned evil weapon to not be used is just railgun shooting big lances at targets.

The railgun itself isn't even the banned weapon. It only becomes illegal when it's loaded with a certain type of ammunition made from MS frame alloy. That's how Tekkadan could get away with using the Flauros despite it having two of the railgun, they were using conventional ammunition for it.

>Like the Pyscommu system that creates problems in the Universal Century?
Actually far more direct than that, Pyscommu is just a passive Brainwave scanner and transmitter, hence why it's mostly used by the psychically empowered Newtypes.

The Post-Disaster Alaya-Vijnana systems are DIRECT neurological linkages made possible via NANOMACHINES SON, meaning you have to plug into whatever your operating, Ghost in the Shell style.

Given the themes of exploiting children/the underclass in IBO, it really wouldn't surprise me if the Mobile Armors of the Calamity War didn't actually use human brains as central processors.

>he big bad banned evil weapon to not be used is just railgun shooting big lances at targets.
>That mobile armor implies that back in the day, in far history of the series powerlevels were something ridiculous, but it also gives weight to the idea that old tech should be kept hidden, forbidden and forgotten.
>The railgun itself isn't even the banned weapon. It only becomes illegal when it's loaded with a certain type of ammunition made from MS frame alloy.
Actually, I'd say the Dainsleif Weapon System is a better argument for keeping particular tech forbidden.

While Alaya-Vijnana can fuck you up and mostly requires a pubescent subject to properly integrate into the nervous system, it's honestly a pretty useful technology; Giving uneducated, illiterate children an innate ability to operate compatible machinery.

The Dainsleif Weapon System, on the other hand, is the only ranged weapon that outright surpasses the INSANE armor technology of the IBO universe, which has otherwise forced a regression to Melee MS and Naval Ship Combat.

Least we forget, Sir Issac Neuton is still the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in Space, so that Dainsleif Rod is going to penetrate the shit out of SOMETHING and a stray shot that doesn't embedded itself into the armored hull of a Warship is unlikely to be stopped by anything less.