OYW ms development

[krullnar]

So I'm sure this has been discussed at great length but as i was rewatching the origin I feel like the development and manufacture of MS by the federation seems off. I know that in times of war mass production of military hardware can be quite fast. Even still fighters and tanks that were quickly produced during ww2 by america were not the most well built equipment. Yet the only source that i can think of that shows the shoddy production of the feddy MS is 08th MS Team. I'm wondering if this bothers anyone else or there is more info regarding this topic.

/Edit/ So while looking around I found a couple of posts here and there that briefly touch the subject, and they answered a few of my questions. It still bothers me though it was only a development/production time of what 7 or 8 months. This is just for the mainline rgm-79, that still does not factor in the development and construction of the various rx models while unfinished i'd include alex in there. Not to mention the plethora of variants based on the RGM-79.

[MythSearcher]

So I'm sure this has been discussed at great length but as i was rewatching the origin I feel like the development and manufacture of MS by the federation seems off. I know that in times of war mass production of military hardware can be quite fast. Even still fighters and tanks that were quickly produced during ww2 by america were not the most well built equipment. Yet the only source that i can think of that shows the shoddy production of the feddy MS is 08th MS Team. I'm wondering if this bothers anyone else or there is more info regarding this topic.

/Edit/ So while looking around I found a couple of posts here and there that briefly touch the subject, and they answered a few of my questions. It still bothers me though it was only a development/production time of what 7 or 8 months. This is just for the mainline rgm-79, that still does not factor in the development and construction of the various rx models while unfinished i'd include alex in there. Not to mention the plethora of variants based on the RGM-79.

Origin is non-canon.

Canon gives us much faster development of the GM, but the RX-series served as the basis.
The year they started the design is pretty easy to remember, it is their number.
In UC 0075, they started developing the RX-75 Guntank, which stayed as a Main Battle Tank design until 0079.
In UC 0077, they started designing the RX-77 Guncannon, and in UC0078, you know what I mean for RX-78 Gundam.

The problem for this is that they are separate projects on their own and each got really poor budget. EFF wasn't very fond of them and Gopp was already really nice to give them barely enough to do the engineering design work.
(I guess this "barely enough" is still a really significant sum considering normal military development and the involvement of Dr. Minovsky in it instead of having him help in the warship branch)
(Off topic, the older I get and the more I work in the Government, the more I appreciate General Gopp's character and this obviously is shared between quite some writers. He might be an evil bureaucrat only trying to protect the slow and inefficient bureaucratic system that gained him and a lot of people advantages in the original show, but keeping the system going IS important and the truth is he didn't outright banned new projects, just rationalized them to reasonable amounts that the military can pay for)

Once the war started in UC0079, and General Revil initiated Operation V, various similar projects are joined and merged and much more funding was approved, so the designed units can now be produced.
The RGM-79 GM was then built off of the Gundam's design(simplified).

So the development process, if you include the design phases, are actually before OYW, considering current engineering capabilities and computer simulation, it would be quite plausible to have working units running and operating in a few months. They may not be the best efficiency (meaning each dollar spent on them will not give you as much power as the best designed units) but EFF has the resources and money to maintain the production for a while.
You can read the B-52 development story to see an example of how fast can you engineer something into existence, considering they didn't have CAD and a lot of easily accessible computer simulation in 1940~50s. (They didn't even have easily accessible computers, the one you are using is probably more powerful than what they can use by a few orders of magnitude and I am pretty sure "a few" is also an understatement.)
With a year or so of design works without a lot of varying design target like the B-52, they should be able to give out some pretty good plans and start building prototypes right at the beginning of the OYW. Production starting in October 0079 wouldn't be that farfetched.

[krullnar]

Ok that answers a lot of the issues in the development. I still think the 2 month production and deployment of the units to win the war in december is pushing it. I wish there were more established in universe examples of the production capabilities of the Federation. You'd have to think that if they had these massive production facilities that they would have been prime targets for destruction by zeon. This has nothing to do with this topic but why didn't zeon just drop rocks on important federation facilities the math required for hitting a target with a spherical object from a top a gravity well is pretty damn easy and wouldn't violate the antarctic treaty.

[MythSearcher]

Ok that answers a lot of the issues in the development. I still think the 2 month production and deployment of the units to win the war in december is pushing it. I wish there were more established in universe examples of the production capabilities of the Federation. You'd have to think that if they had these massive production facilities that they would have been prime targets for destruction by zeon. This has nothing to do with this topic but why didn't zeon just drop rocks on important federation facilities the math required for hitting a target with a spherical object from a top a gravity well is pretty damn easy and wouldn't violate the antarctic treaty.

Considering real life numbers like the P-47 with more than 15,000 built in 1941-1945, a rough calculation gives us a 250 per month figure and that is one country with other models in production during the same period (like the P-51, P-38, F6F, tons of other stuff as well)
Granted the MS seems to be much more complicated than a piston-cylinder fighter, but that is only a matter of production machines.
If we consider the EFF has around 1000 or so MS produced from Oct~Dec 0079, each month only pumped out around 350, which is still kinda reasonable considering it to be a faction a few times greater than the US.

And from the current settings, EFF had 6 major production plants, I don't want to check the sources for which 6, but Jaburo and Lunar II are two of them. These two you will have a really hard time destroying.

Dropping rocks above a certain mass certainly violates the antarctic treaty, which also bans massive kinectic weapons like the colony drop, and Zeon wouldn't really want to anger EFF too much, since there are actually enough nuclear war heads in Lunar II that can wipe out Side 3 with the same orbital calculation and that will be impossible for Zeon to intercept before impact. (like setting a matrix of nuclear bombs on proximity sensors spacing at about 4 km apart from each other, and on a polar orbit at the moon's altitude from L3 to L2. All Side 3 colonies will be hit by at least 1 nuclear bomb, and each will be the size of maybe 2m diameter or less[consider Mk-82 of GP02A])
Even if you drop smaller rocks, without air supremacy they may still be intercepted, and even in the best case scenario where you do destroy the other 4, and hampered the production speed of the major two, EFF is likely to still have over 1/3 of the production power and you probably cannot prolong the war for more than 4 months, and launching space rocks still needed resources(especially they are not as accurate as you might think, the atmosphere and the structure of the rock can throw the thing very far from you planned orbit)

[yazi88]

I want to chime in that the Zanny (modified/captured Zaku 1, I think) also helped with mobile suit development. Unfortunately given the various forms of media with Gundam, there is conflicting/retconed information about deployment and development of certain units, especially in the OYW.

Also, lets not forget that fighters and tanks were already a mature and existing tech years before and during WW2 which also lead to better implementation of production lines, while the OYW, Federation only got starting with mass production with mobile suits in 0079 with the GM. The Guncannon itself was also limited production I think before the Luna II early GM.

Zeon was used to mass producing units by the time the OYW started, but had projects delayed due to politics/divisions between companies, and resources. Federation did have politics hindering its MS development with its big gun philosophy of ships being the factor in combat until the Battle of Loum showed the power and effectiveness of mobile suits.

[MythSearcher]

I want to chime in that the Zanny (modified/captured Zaku 1, I think) also helped with mobile suit development. Unfortunately given the various forms of media with Gundam, there is conflicting/retconed information about deployment and development of certain units, especially in the OYW.

Also, lets not forget that fighters and tanks were already a mature and existing tech years before and during WW2 which also lead to better implementation of production lines, while the OYW, Federation only got starting with mass production with mobile suits in 0079 with the GM. The Guncannon itself was also limited production I think before the Luna II early GM.

Zeon was used to mass producing units by the time the OYW started, but had projects delayed due to politics/divisions between companies, and resources. Federation did have politics hindering its MS development with its big gun philosophy of ships being the factor in combat until the Battle of Loum showed the power and effectiveness of mobile suits.

Fighters maybe, but tanks are definitely not.

The Zaku story was partly based off of German panzers, where they developed tanks and claimed that they are farming tractors. Yes, UK had tanks in WWI, but they are far from mature, pretty much just testing units and breaks down often. WWII also saw a major development of engineering progress, and we have only developed a more mature designing process during and after WWII.

The major computerization also came after WWII, as long as you know how to use the tools, designing machines by yourself at home is not impossible nowadays.

The same can be said for pre-OYW, even though Minovsky particles are really new, the other machine parts aren't. Given the specs of the material you can acquire and you can pretty much design the hardware of a MS without any trouble with a small engineering team. Get a few prominent robotics professionals and you can probably get a MS fully designed in a month or two. I'd say that the harder part is the software, but considering the processing speed increase of computers, using the bottom-up model and let the computer learn to move a MS wouldn't be that far fetched for current technology(in fact, from a science museum lecture I attended a few years ago the professor already had robots that learn from scratch to playing football in around half a year)

[yazi88]

Design is one thing, production is a different factor. Federation production lines are still a factor for mass production especially when mass producing mobile suits for the 1st time and even then it was initiated more than halfway in the OYW with the GMs. Those very high rollout numbers for the GM don't exactly seem realistic especially given how late and scrambled out they were in the OYW when thinking of how far the Federation was behind in development. V Project only got started after battle of Loum. And the Guncannon's model number doesn't make me think it actually started development until possibly late 0078. Design wise on paper it might have existed as something closer to the Guntank, but might have evolved into a true humanoid machine with the rumors of the Zaku 1 and its predecessors. Tanks and planes are much smaller compared to MS and have less burden to mass produce. To my knowledge there aren't any Federation MS production plants I can think of outside Jaburo and Luna 2 during the OYW. California base also had production plants, but was re-taken by the Federation in the last month of the war.

I can't remember if the Project V mobile suits were actually built on Side 7 and tested there, or developed at Jaburo and shipped to Side 7 for testing. I don't think Side 7 was equipped for mass production.

I actually appreciate the Origin's logic with Federation MS development and the early days of MS development with Zeon, it makes it more plausible/realistic for the Federation to rollout GMs given they started quite earlier with the Guntanks and Guncannon and had more experience despite the early failures with those units compared to the Zaku 1 and Bugu.

[krullnar]

Yeah I agree with yazi on this. Also consider in pacific rim it took them a year with the entire human race backing them a year to make just 6 units. I know this isn't the same universe but just six of them. So yeah 2 facilities to build thousands of units from initial fabrication to final roll out nuh-uh don't buy it. What about initial line production to get things going usually takes months to happen. You just can't start mass producing you have to fabricate the machines that make what you are mass producing and this has its own development time. Even if you had development of the production line going on at the same time as the ms development there are going to be issues of things not lining up this is why you generally get a finished hand made product first then develop your production line after. Assuming they used the same production lines that made the guntank then later the guncannon we're talking major retooling of the line.

Edit/ the first jeager took 14 months to build and they got faster after that. As initial development began in 2014 and the first 5 or 6 its not very clear which were built by the end of 2015 so thats two years from start to finish with the weight of the entire world behind them. Also side note cost of a single jeager is about as much as a super carrier. So economics of the oyw start to make my head hurt. There would have to have been a massive governmental debt that would have led to some serious recession or maybe even a financial depression. Which make the end of the war seen in later shows to way to cheery and I'm starting to seriously wonder about the financial decision making after the war to develop the gp project, but that's for another topic.

[MythSearcher]

They only planned to test the project V machine on side 7.

Production is not the same as design, but if you have already designed and maybe built individual parts before hand, the only slow process is producing the mass-production machines and designing the manufacturing lines.

Mechanical parts are very matured at that era, and they have obviously mass-produced a few hundred space colonies in a short 51 years which would take us about at least the same time to build a single one.(probably we need a few times more than that)
Notice they also have much more space and automation for factories.

We are not talking about a lot of MS as well, if we use the 1000 figure, they probably have started setting up the plants and machines in Sep, started pre-production trials and early production models in Oct and entered full production in Mid-Oct. Building 350~500 MS a month would give us about 12~18 a day, and each major plant gets you 2~3 MS a day.
By plant, we are not talking about single factory line, but a whole area of manufacturing sites, which can be compared to whole cities of modern day. (The EFF has VERY huge military bases and sites)
Lunar II alone is a big rock that can be compared in size with all of Taiwan, and 3-dimensional instead of 2)

[yazi88]

Earth Federation also lost a lot of territory in the early parts of the OYW. It wasn't until Odessa they started a wide offensive and that was in November and from what I've read, about 30 MS were used in Odessa by the Federation, a good number of them were the pre-production GM ground types. From what I've seen in various forms of media, I don't believe any bases on Earth have built any Federation suits outside of Jaburo during the OYW. Jaburo usually transports units via Medea to other bases on Earth.

[JEFFPIATT]

the recaptured California base did produce at least 500 RGM-79 GM units in the last month of the war. http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/California_Base
Augusta Base built the RX-78NT-1 http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/Newtype_Re ... ewtype_Lab

[MythSearcher]

Earth Federation also lost a lot of territory in the early parts of the OYW. It wasn't until Odessa they started a wide offensive and that was in November and from what I've read, about 30 MS were used in Odessa by the Federation, a good number of them were the pre-production GM ground types. From what I've seen in various forms of media, I don't believe any bases on Earth have built any Federation suits outside of Jaburo during the OYW. Jaburo usually transports units via Medea to other bases on Earth.

The 6 production plants was written in the MG Manual, and Lunar II is obviously building a lot of MS as well.

[yazi88]

The California Base I find to be dubious because it was retaken on December 15, I find it HIGHLY unlikely to make 500 GMs 2 weeks before the final battle at ABQ. This is Gundam Wiki so take a grain of salt with that.

Hmm... I'm actually curious how much Luna II has to do with MS development after the OYW although Anaheim takes over a few years after for MS development in general for mass production units.

Luna II rarely is a factor in anything aside from a command post after the OYW while it does house the Federation's space forces. It is never destroyed or abandoned in late UC but seems to be forgotten about.

[JEFFPIATT]

The California Base I find to be dubious because it was retaken on December 15, I find it HIGHLY unlikely to make 500 GMs 2 weeks before the final battle at ABQ. This is Gundam Wiki so take a grain of salt with that.

Hmm... I'm actually curious how much Luna II has to do with MS development after the OYW although Anaheim takes over a few years after for MS development in general for mass production units.

Luna II rarely is a factor in anything aside from a command post after the OYW while it does house the Federation's space forces. It is never destroyed or abandoned in late UC but seems to be forgotten about.

The RGM-79C and RGM-79[E] were both built and developed at Luna II According to Zeta Gundam post OYO the production lines at Luna II built the RMS-117 Galbaldy β and based on the model codes both the RMS-116H Hobby Hizack and the RMS-119 EWAC Zack were produced on there lines as the Zata era model codes assigned the number 11 for Luna II produced units. But during the War the base also built from the remains of the 2 destroyed RX-78-2 units White Base left there the RX-78-3 G3 Gundam that was uses as the test bed for magnetic coding.

[MythSearcher]

I must reiterate that don't underestimate the production capability of Lunar II.

It is a full blown military base with its own production plant that is the size of Taiwan in 2-Dimension.
https://truth.bahamut.com.tw/s01/201308 ... a0c98a.JPG

That place very likely have at least double the production capability of what USA had now.

[yazi88]

It might, although that size might be a factor to house the entirety of the Federation's Space Fleet too in the OYW, it is its HQ after all. Jaburo didn't seem to have as many ships compared to Luna II, although we do see ships launching to Space from Jaburo like in MS Igloo.

I'm not sure if the Galbady B was actually made at Luna II, the units were said to be stationed there like with most Space EF forces, it could've been built and sent over from Pezun which the Federation took over, plus it was limited production too. I could be wrong about that. The Hizack was made by Anaheim. Like all mass produced units for the Federation after the GM III, Anaheim took over aside from the few SNRI produced units. GM II and GM III units have likely to be built on Luna II alongside Earth factories for the Federation.

[JEFFPIATT]

I got my info from here
http://www.angelfire.com/zine/trd/etc/G ... umbers.htm

In Zeta Gundam and ZZ Gundam - circa UC 0087 to UC 0089 - the Federal Forces briefly adopt a different model number scheme. In this system, the first two digits of the model number indicate where the mobile suit was developed, while the third digit indicates the sequential order. Thus, the RMS-106 Hizack is the sixth mobile suit type developed at Granada. Here are the available development codes...

Code: Select all

Model Number
	

Development Location
	

Example

10*
	

Granada
	

RMS-106 Hizack

11*
	

Luna II
	

RMS-117 Galbaldy Beta

12*
	

Konpei Island
	

 

13*
	

Gate of Zedan
	

RX-139 Hambrabi

14*
	

Pezun
	

RMS-142 Xeku Eins

15*
	

New Guinea
	

RMS-154 Barzam

16*
	

Kilimanjaro
	

RX-160 Byarlant

17*
	

Gryps
	

RX-178 Gundam Mark II

18*
19*
	

Jaburo
	

RMS-188MD Zaku Diver
RMS-192M Zaku Mariner

[yazi88]

Ah, thank you for the info, so the Galbady B was a Luna II made unit, my bad. Because of the other units being made at Pezun I thought it also would've been part of it.

Kind of weird that a Anaheim made Hizack would have a recon model made at Luna II...

But that model number system doesn't fully make sense, the RMS-179 GM II's number would indicate it was made at Gryps but it is easily found and highly likely to be made anywhere. Same with the RX-110 Gabthley, why would a Titans prototype unit be made at the Federation base Luna II when there are other Titans plants available in space, especially a Scirocco designed unit too?

[JEFFPIATT]

Ah, thank you for the info, so the Galbady B was a Luna II made unit, my bad. Because of the other units being made at Pezun I thought it also would've been part of it.

Kind of weird that a Anaheim made Hizack would have a recon model made at Luna II...

But that model number system doesn't fully make sense, the RMS-179 GM II's number would indicate it was made at Gryps but it is easily found and highly likely to be made anywhere. Same with the RX-110 Gabthley, why would a Titans prototype unit be made at the Federation base Luna II when there are other Titans plants available in space, especially a Scirocco designed unit too?

That was the info from the old Gundam project site the third number in the code was the the sequential order that the suits were comissioned. strangly the Gabthley looks to be unit 0 built at Luna II based on Scirocco's concept. but the first two digits of the model number indicate where the mobile suit was developed. the Beta was not widely adopted by the EFSF so they never set up new lines outside of Luna II so only ships that operated out of that base got them. The Hi-zack recon and the Hobby models were developed at luna II but may have been built at other plants.

[krullnar]

Wasn't luna II were the gp series was developed at or was that von brown.