Iceblocks posted:

Wasn't that a minstranslation that was supposed to be 'half the military forces of both sides were wiped out in the first week of the war'? Outside of Unicorn and possibly the Origin I don't think the Federation ever got close enough to Side 3 to launch any kind of attack.

And if I remember correctly Side 3 had 1.5 billion inhabitants.

ImpAtom posted:

One thing to remember is that the Zabi's plan did not take population sustaining into account because one of Ghiren (and I believe Degwin's) goals was the culling of the 'excessively large' human population. This is also why he undertook atrocities like colony gassing and colony dropping. One of the stated goals was to bring humanity back to a 'sustainable' level. Zeon was not just actively engaging in war, they were specifically being guided in the most humanity-killing way possible.

Zikan posted:

I don't know much about Gundam beyond big stompy robots, so I never realized all of the talk about Zeon being "Space Hitler x100" were canon, not an exaggeration

ImpAtom posted:

No, it was the actual population, not just their military forces. Between nuclear weapons, colony gassing, colony drops and the sheer scale of the conflict, people were killed in absolutely insane numbers. A literal third of humanity was killed in a week.

Zeon itself wasn't attacked but it suffered absolutely unimaginable losses in combat. Part of the reason that the OYW didn't end with the Antarctic Treaty is because Revil was captured and saw that Zeon was absolutely devastated by the war but was able to escape and report this to the Federation. They threw almost everything they had into the war and they suffered huge losses by doing so. Everything up to the Battle of Loum was an absolute atrocity of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons being used, and while mobile suits gave Zeon an advantage against superior numbers, they still lost huge amounts of soldiers in every engagement.

One thing to remember is that the Zabi's plan did not take population sustaining into account because one of Ghiren (and I believe Degwin's) goals was the culling of the 'excessively large' human population. This is also why he undertook atrocities like colony gassing and colony dropping. One of the stated goals was to bring humanity back to a 'sustainable' level. Zeon was not just actively engaging in war, they were specifically being guided in the most humanity-killing way possible.

ImpAtom posted:

No, it was the actual population, not just their military forces. Between nuclear weapons, colony gassing, colony drops and the sheer scale of the conflict, people were killed in absolutely insane numbers. A literal third of humanity was killed in a week.

Zeon itself wasn't attacked but it suffered absolutely unimaginable losses in combat. Part of the reason that the OYW didn't end with the Antarctic Treaty is because Revil was captured and saw that Zeon was absolutely devastated by the war but was able to escape and report this to the Federation. They threw almost everything they had into the war and they suffered huge losses by doing so. Everything up to the Battle of Loum was an absolute atrocity of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons being used, and while mobile suits gave Zeon an advantage against superior numbers, they still lost huge amounts of soldiers in every engagement.

One thing to remember is that the Zabi's plan did not take population sustaining into account because one of Ghiren (and I believe Degwin's) goals was the culling of the 'excessively large' human population. This is also why he undertook atrocities like colony gassing and colony dropping. One of the stated goals was to bring humanity back to a 'sustainable' level. Zeon was not just actively engaging in war, they were specifically being guided in the most humanity-killing way possible.

ImpAtom posted:

There is a scene in the show where Degwin literally goes "man, Ghiren, you're basically Hitler" and Ghiren was like "Sounds about right."

Arbite posted:

Nah, it was more like "You remind me of Hitler." "Who? Oh. Eh."

Vorpal Cat posted:

How large are the receptive militaries of each side suppose to be? From the show it seemed like Zeon didn't have more then maybe a few thousand Mobil Suits considering how big a deal they make about the few dozen that white base chops through. But with those kind of population numbers they should be able to support militaries in the millions to tens of millions even after the mass genocides without needing to rely on child solders. With army that size it makes the scale of most of combat we see kind of irrelevant by comparison.

ImpAtom posted:

The battle of Odessa alone involved somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million troops but there were around ~200 mobile suits total on the field at the time. There is a lot of infantry and tank/plane fighting, it just doesn't get as much focus.

The numbers are also probably not overly realistic however.

ImpAtom posted:

The battle of Odessa alone involved somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 million troops but there were around ~200 mobile suits total on the field at the time. There is a lot of infantry and tank/plane fighting, it just doesn't get as much focus.

The numbers are also probably not overly realistic however.

Vorpal Cat posted:

At the start of Kursk the Germans had ~200 panthers to which the soviets had no effective answer as non of there tanks or anti tank guns could effectively penetrate it. By day three of the battle they down to only 40 from a combination land mines, artillery, airstrikes, the rare anti tanks shots that manage to hit a vulnerable spot..

FelistheIdiot posted:

It would depend on how much ground a mobile suit is meant to cover.

For example, Mobile Infantry power suits from starship troopers (the book, not the movie) were practically downsized mobile suits in capability (one of their weapons is a tactical nuclear rocket launcher, and it's said in the book that a Mobile Infantryman could wipe the floor with a squadron of tanks); and because of that capability, it only took one mobile infantryman to cover an area it would take a platoon or so of normal infantry to.

Considering what a Gundam mobile suit can do, even if there were only 200 of them they'd still have an incredible effect wherever they were. For example, if they were to be used in a spearhead assault. From what I've seen a typical team of mobile suits consists of three mobile suits and a command element, which translates to around sixty six MS teams. Since just one mobile suit is massively superior to most ground based capabilities in both armament and armor, as well as maneuverability, even one well placed team could completely gently caress the opposition.


I think it's also important to note that at the time of Kursk, Panthers were rather new and massively unreliable hunks of poo poo, so more panthers were lost to engine failure and subsequent scuttling rather than to the enemy. Thankfully in this game, the player doesn't appear to have to worry about the teething troubles of new equipment. Imagine if you were to deploy a squadron of Doms only for their systems to fail on the battlefield!

FelistheIdiot posted:

I think it's also important to note that at the time of Kursk, Panthers were rather new and massively unreliable hunks of poo poo, so more panthers were lost to engine failure and subsequent scuttling rather than to the enemy. Thankfully in this game, the player doesn't appear to have to worry about the teething troubles of new equipment. Imagine if you were to deploy a squadron of Doms only for their systems to fail on the battlefield!

Vorpal Cat posted:

Considering Zeon's RD it would surprise me if there was a non zero chance of a new suit spontaneously exploding every time you tried to use it in combat for the first time.

YeOldeButchere posted:

Considering how getting new units up to now usually involved sacrificing aces, I'm pretty sure that's accurate. And that chance is 100%. It's just that the R&D department are the ones who get to use any of the new toys for the first time.

Zikan posted:

I don't know much about Gundam beyond big stompy robots, so I never realized all of the talk about Zeon being "Space Hitler x100" were canon, not an exaggeration

Vorpal Cat posted:

Considering Zeon's RD it wouldn't surprise me if there was a non zero chance of a new suit spontaneously exploding every time you tried to use it in combat for the first time.

edit: fixed.

Samuel posted:

"Look we had to run the powerlines through the cockpit, but we can't shield them because that would cramp the pilot, so when you're running around, or take a hit, try not to hit these. They also get pretty hot sometimes when using beam cannons, so we recommend opening the cockpit for 5 minutes after extensive use."

Kanos posted:

Zeon nerve gassed the entire population of several otherwise Zeon-loyalist colonies to death in order to use the now empty shells as ballistic projectiles to ram into Earth to kill billions more people.

If Gundam were real, Gihren Zabi would be history's greatest monster.

Delta Green posted:

"Look, we redesigned everything. The Zudah is now 100% less likely to shake itself apart at standard cruising speed. Just… don't push the engine into the red too much. Seriously, don't. WEP? What's that?"

Samuel posted:

"No there isn't enough engine power left to power the weapons without melting the suit outright. To compensate this though, we were allowed to borrow an industrial extendable arm from John Deere spaceworks, which will allow you to reach for these re-purposed wind turbine blades to use as boomerangs. Just figure it out till we can fit a launch unit in there!"

TheLastRoboKy posted:

Tobias Grant posted:

Samuel posted:

Since the beamsaber is pulling so many amp's we decided to remove the gyroscopes, initial testing revealed that you can't really pilot mobile suits when the fly-by-wire software isn't getting any info on what the gently caress the suit is doing. But we worked around that by adding an extra pair of legs to the design. No it still handles like a wreck, and it doesn't do corners that well but the top speed increased to 200% by tweaking the locomotives a bit. Problem now is though that theres only two speeds on and off, and on is the equivalent of launching a rocket. Yeah, no, my thoughts exactly if they wanted melee capability they'll get melee capability.

BlitzBlast posted:

"Okay it's go time. This time, the Gundam is going down! Just you wait guys, we're going to be famous and the funding is just going to roll in!"

*a day later*

"Welp, back to the drawing board."

I would not be surprised if there were weekly "Beat the Gundam" MS design contests.

ImpAtom posted:

Fun fact: Zeon had an entire line of propaganda shows including Captain Zeon and Magical Ensign Blaster Mari.

ImpAtom posted:

Fun fact: Zeon had an entire line of propaganda shows including Captain Zeon and Magical Ensign Blaster Mari.

Onmi posted:

As lovely as the Oggo is, the BALL IS A GOD SEND FROM HEAVEN for the federation. They are cheap, come in groups of 3 or 5, and they have ranged cannons. A single ball does nothing. An army of balls will hold any line and gently caress any ship. And they're so cheap it doesn't matter if it dies.

Also an AI exploit is the AI can't tell "Oh he only has 1 unit he can use in that zone." all it will see is "Holy poo poo he has 51 units! I can't fight that!"

The GIG posted:

How good is Shiro in a Ball? This is very important to me.

Onmi posted:

I will forever. FOR. EV. ER. Be annoyed with the fact that you can never do anything to get rid of General Fatass. Because I'm not sure if Tobias has gone into this but the way Zone of Control works in this game is that the leadership bonuses bestowed are giving by the HIGHEST RANKED pilot on the field. So while General Fatass may be complete poo poo and have no stats or leadership, being a general flat out means he is nerfing every unit in his radius with better stats and better bonuses.

This is one of many dickhead traps that the Federation drops on you.

Rogue Norwegian posted:

Sounds like a good excuse to find the very cheapest space unit you have and keep sending him to do "Aggressive Recon" of Zeon's main bases. They don't give their leadership bonus when they are in the hospital right?

Koorisch posted:

I wouldn't even use his dumb rear end, I just let him rot in my roster, Forever.

Also, I just finished a Feddie OYW run in 55 turns and I can clearly say that once you get some good MS you will wipe the floor with just about every Zeon encounter, I brought NINE "Alex" to the last three bases and they just demolished just about everything they encountered thanks to their absurd survivability and agility. (of course, I did also bring like 7 White Bases and a ton of GM Sniper II's. )

I could probably have done it faster but I didn't worry too much about that, I don't even remember what you get for finishing earlier.

Onmi posted:

I always just camp Side 3 to level my pilots and advance my research.

basically invade, kill all but one enemy, retreat/pass the turn every time combat comes up, build up your army for replacements, assault, repeat.

Also. You have to wait till like... turn 70 for one of the White Dingo pilots to show up.