This makes sense for me too, for much the same reasons as supplied by Mark & Kirby. It's also worth noting that very few of the OYW Zeon MS are capable of powered flight in Earth atmosphere. The Gaws are not only convenient transport, they are necessary for the MS to make a timely appearance at all, instead of marching on foot. So the Gaws are an unsung lynchpin of ZMF strategic and tactical planning. Without them, the smaller and shorter-ranged transports aren't able to fill in the gap, and things become grim for the Zeons earthside. (None of the remnant forces featured in later anime have Gaws.)Brave Fencer Kirby wrote:This makes a lot of sense; most sources agree that (during the One Year War, at least) mobile suits are rare, valuable, and powerful units. To get the most bang out of your buck for them, you'd want your mobile suits to be in combat as often as is logistically feasible. In a conventional campaign that'd mean keeping them on the front lines, but in a place like North America in September 0079, which is at least nominally under Zeon control (and thus doesn't really have a front line) keeping them in reserve as a rapid-reaction force seems like the best way to use them. The game them becomes a matter of making sure you only engage the enemy in situations that favor you -- Zeon wants to force decisive confrontations where their Zakus can turn the tide in their favor, while the Federation wants to grind Zeon away through attrition and guerrilla tactics.toysdream wrote:What this suggests, then, is that the limited number of mobile suits are kept at major bases where they can be rapidly dispatched aboard Gaw carriers. Out in the field, most of the ground forces seem to be Magella Attack tanks and other conventional weapons, with maybe one or two Zakus here and there.
For myself, I'd like to know then how much "tail" a Zeon mechanized division could drawn on in aerial terms. The panzer divisions serving as the model had less "tail" and more "teeth" compared to a 1944 US armored division, but it was the American division that could better sustain operations due to abundant ground transport and aerial supply to second-stage areas.
toysdream: I don't think Garma's initial attack force was too small. For what was porbably a piick-up force it seemed adequate to the task. IIRC until Amuro quit whining and launched in the Gundam, Garma's force was winning, having pinned down the other 2 MS and starting to directly attack White Base. Now, Garma's attack force for the "night ambush" that destroyed him was very inadequate! Even the Midnight Fenrir couldn't save him, right Gelgoog Jaeger? (That of course was Char's fault, since he set up Garma to fail.) White Base seems to have survived their global trot to Odessa because the ZMF's over-stretched divisional commanders couldn't put together a "legged ship hunt" of sufficient strength to do the job right. Hence the appearance of Ranba Ral's force....