Best designed warship in UC

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bensellers22
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Best designed warship in UC

What is the warship best designed to survive in the combat environment of the Universal Century? Personally, I'd pick the Nahel Argama because of its heaviest AA armament and simply because it's the most modern (I think) ship we see.

First post yay!
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MythSearcher
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Technically speaking, the Salamis.
It literally survived from 0070s to 0150s.
No other ship design survived longer than that.

The survivability comes from the fact of its "incompleteness".
It was designed to be highly modifiable and adaptable to different tasks, thus it can be relatively easily upgraded to adapt to the changing environment.(From gunship to MS carrier, addition of beam shield and so on. It also has variants for electronic warfare, space fighter carrier, AA ship, etc since before OYW.)
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Within the first universal century, I'm torn between the Gwazine and the Sadalahn, at least as standalone ships:

The Gwazine is already well-known as the most powerful type of battleship (not overall warship, that likely goes to the Dolos) during the OYW. It has a rather large MS hangar with a capacity for 20 MS (I believe at least one source claimed it to be able to carry as many as 24). It has the capacity to reach the asteroid belt from earth without resupplying. Also, much like the Gaw, the Gwazine supposedly has a large amount of AA guns across its hull, namely 155mm machine guns. While its large size affects it maneuverability, it is still one of the fastest OYW ships and supposedly its main guns have longer range than any EF warship.

The MS Igloo redesign further improves several aspects of the ship, adding a sub-bridge, increasing the number of propellant tanks from 8 to 12, and increasing & relocating its secondary MPC turrets, increasing from 10 to 18 and accomodating two of them between the front and middle main guns:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/YFX-600 ... 0.jpg.html

The ship was designed to be able to fly within Earth's atmosphere, but unfortunately Zeon was unable to bring one down due to insufficient data and the first and only attempt resulted in the loss of a ship. Perhaps by U.C. 0087 a Gwazine could have used a ballute to descend to Earth and fulfill its role as an universal use warship.

Fast forward to U.C. 0088, while at first glance it may not seem so outstanding, the Sadalahn is one of the more complete UC ship designs, specially when compared to her brethren Axis/Neo Zeon battleships, which have some problems which the Sadalahn seems to address:

Weapon-wise, it's rather well rounded, with confirmed 6 x 2-barrel main guns and 31 x laser guns. Its profile says it also has 6 missile launchers, though I want to point out that during the occupation of Dakar, its shown having a vertical multi-tube missile launcher, which IIRC had at least 10-12 tubes. I'm not certain if these 6 missile launchers might refer to this type of weapon, or if it could refer to something more akin to the "torpedo-like" missile launchers of OYW ships. More questionable is the infamous mega particle guns that are supposedly located inside the yellow hatches the sides of the ship, similarly to the Argama's.

Personally I can only remember seeing an image of an SD Gwanban deploying a two-barrel hyper mega particle cannon from one such hatch it has in front of the ship, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Gwanban, Argama, Endra and Sadalahn all share such feature, after all we do know Char provided technology from Axis to AE and the AEUG, and even if the Gwanban's weapon was a later refit, it would be fair enough to assume that the other ships could undergo similar modifications, specially considering Anaheim Electronic's tendency to sell weapons and technology to both sides of a conflict.

Moving on, much like the Endra and Argama, the Sadalahn is capable of descending to Earth and has a Minovsky craft system to fly around. It's important to note that other ships such as the Rewloola would have limitations if required to operate on Earth, for instance, restricted access to the lower MS hangar due to its inverted positioning. it's also not clear if ships like the Gwadan and Gwanban might have the Minovksy Craft system as well (at least the Gwanban is supposed to have been finished by the very end of the OYW). The Gwadan as essentially a direct successor to the Gwazine class might have tried to retake the concept of operating on Earth as well, but it also has some unique problems of its own, starting with its size (the largest assumption being that it had a length of 1,200 meters), but also its bottom:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/images/gwadan960.jpg

While the Gwazine could remove its lower propellant tanks and thus be able to land on its belly (the MS hangar), a Gwadan or Gwanban wouldn't be able to do so given the shape of their bottom sections. This doesn't mean that they can't operate on Earth, since they could still land on water, but they would certainly face more restrictions than ships that do can land and make stops on the ground. That being said, I don't actually remember if we see the Sadalahn landing on the ground, but given that it was meant to operate with its Endra escorts I would like to assume that it was designed with such consideration. Worst case, I would like to think that just like we saw that during reentry it could retract and reposition parts of its hull, that it might have to do some similar adjustments for landing on the ground.

Naturally, by the second UC new technologies, specially beam shields, help increase the survivability of later ships. Also, as Mythsearcher points out, it's also important to account other aspects such as cost, but I will discuss those at another time.
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BrentD15
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

I personally like the Rewloola.
Fast, sleek, and balanced firepower.

Heck, I'd choose most Zeon ships over a Federation craft.
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Geoxile
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

MythSearcher wrote: Fri May 26, 2017 12:10 pm Technically speaking, the Salamis.
It literally survived from 0070s to 0150s.
No other ship design survived longer than that.

The survivability comes from the fact of its "incompleteness".
It was designed to be highly modifiable and adaptable to different tasks, thus it can be relatively easily upgraded to adapt to the changing environment.(From gunship to MS carrier, addition of beam shield and so on. It also has variants for electronic warfare, space fighter carrier, AA ship, etc since before OYW.)
Hard to beat service life and cost. And IIRC they were even retrofitted with minovsky crafts in Victory, or some were anyway. I'm surprised we didn't see a Salamis variant that just has hangars mounted on both sides of the ship. I guess letting your MS hang from the hull is cheaper but I have to question how easy it is to maintain MS in that environment
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MythSearcher
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Geoxile wrote: Sun Jul 30, 2017 12:56 am Hard to beat service life and cost. And IIRC they were even retrofitted with minovsky crafts in Victory, or some were anyway. I'm surprised we didn't see a Salamis variant that just has hangars mounted on both sides of the ship. I guess letting your MS hang from the hull is cheaper but I have to question how easy it is to maintain MS in that environment
Sadly, that is likely because of the influence of sea faring ships.
most of the structures are still built on the "top" side of the ship.

Hanging the MSs outside should be nightmare for mechanics, other than the obvious risks(like debris) hitting the MS and mechanics, other problems include tools and staff floating off to space, impossible to do almost any kind of maintenance when ship is accelerating(which, during battle, you have to keep doing), no buffer between returning units and dock(although you can land the returning units on other sides of the ship, guess you can rationalize why they don't have MS hanging on the other side)

That is why the outer mounts is just a temporary arrangement, they needed the space to launch that many MS from a limited number of ships that are not designed to hold them.
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yazi88
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Ra Cailum seemed to be a pretty good ship, it had good ms carrying capabilities, good firepower with its main cannons being rapid fire compared to the Nahal Argama, and seemed to be pretty maneuverable too.

Reinforce Junior from Victory Gundam I think is a very well designed ship. Can hold large number of MS, good number of main weapons, and its beam shield is quite effective for defense use. Zanscare ships were amongst being some of the strongest in UC, some being very large, lots of firepower, and effective in land battles with those large wheels, plus some even had beam shields.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Geoxile wrote: Sun Jul 30, 2017 12:56 am
Hard to beat service life and cost. And IIRC they were even retrofitted with minovsky crafts in Victory, or some were anyway. I'm surprised we didn't see a Salamis variant that just has hangars mounted on both sides of the ship. I guess letting your MS hang from the hull is cheaper but I have to question how easy it is to maintain MS in that environment
Ummm... They did. The Nelson Class from MSV-R which for OYW Era I believe is the best designed warship alongside that of the Pegasus Class.
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Geoxile
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Deathzealot wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:22 pm
Geoxile wrote: Sun Jul 30, 2017 12:56 am
Hard to beat service life and cost. And IIRC they were even retrofitted with minovsky crafts in Victory, or some were anyway. I'm surprised we didn't see a Salamis variant that just has hangars mounted on both sides of the ship. I guess letting your MS hang from the hull is cheaper but I have to question how easy it is to maintain MS in that environment
Ummm... They did. The Nelson Class from MSV-R which for OYW Era I believe is the best designed warship alongside that of the Pegasus Class.
Wow, too bad we didn't see any of those in animation. And that Trafalgar is just funny. It's not even an addon to the Magellan anymore, the Magellan looks like the addon.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Shrug. There was a fanart of a better Trafalgar Class but it got pulled by the author a few years ago sadly. It made the class look a bit similar to the Nelson just with stacked flight decks on either side. It was an interesting idea.

Yeah. It was shame the Nelson Class never really saw action in the OYW and they were mostly used as carriers for another MSV-R Product the Ravensword and a couple Mobile Suits. Sigh. Would love to someday do a fanfiction story based on one. If I had the time and energy to do it.
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

The Musai class, of whatever UC story variation. It is a no fuss, no muss, combat space ship. It is laid out in a straight line, every thing in its place with no wasted space, fast & manueverable, great fields of fire for the main armament, and (most of all) the MS can launch without hindrance or extra equipment. This is important, because the Musai is not a space cruiser so much as a space carrier that can provide support for its MS squad. Everything else in UC worth mentioning is a Musai with more widgets and "basic options" added, and (sometimes) more MS to haul around.
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Deathzealot
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

In my opinion, the Musai is one of the bad designs of UC. Yeah it has some good weapons but it has no Anti-Air Weapons at all. Which I think is a great oversight on the part of the designers. Not to mention it barely can handle more than three mobile suits in its hanger.

But that is only my opinion. I know many love the design but I don't see it.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Deathzealot wrote: Thu Aug 10, 2017 4:00 pm In my opinion, the Musai is one of the bad designs of UC. Yeah it has some good weapons but it has no Anti-Air Weapons at all. Which I think is a great oversight on the part of the designers. Not to mention it barely can handle more than three mobile suits in its hanger.

But that is only my opinion. I know many love the design but I don't see it.
In my opinion, the EFSF ships showed more design thoughts to it.
Both the Magellan and Salamis have more turrets able to point in most directions in space, while the Zeon ships are more like seafaring ships (Musai, Chivvay and Gwazine) that have most of their turrets on the "top" side of the ship(G-force speaking, the actual top is the "front" of the ship though) or fighter(Zanzibar) The Musai is also pretty obviously a flipped Enterprise from Star Trek with a sharper front. We only have a little better designed Chivvay that has a turret in the bottom, still pretty sad in space.
WhiteBase isn't that good of a spaceship design but at least we know that this one got a more artistic license design.
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Ra Cailum, I remember that when I saw a thread on a now defunct Taiwan Forum eleven or twelve years ago, the author described Ra Cailum as "the cumulation of Federal warship technologies", even "a remedy of all those ship-building failure in the past".

It may be exaggerated, but it is a well-balanced ship.
MythSearcher wrote: Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:09 am In my opinion, the EFSF ships showed more design thoughts to it.
Both the Magellan and Salamis have more turrets able to point in most directions in space, while the Zeon ships are more like seafaring ships (Musai, Chivvay and Gwazine) that have most of their turrets on the "top" side of the ship(G-force speaking, the actual top is the "front" of the ship though) or fighter(Zanzibar) The Musai is also pretty obviously a flipped Enterprise from Star Trek with a sharper front. We only have a little better designed Chivvay that has a turret in the bottom, still pretty sad in space.
WhiteBase isn't that good of a spaceship design but at least we know that this one got a more artistic license design.
I think the Zeon ship designs are more MS-orientated, they cover the blind spot of turrets by MS.
Both Magellan and Salamis are designed in the Big Gun era, EFSF in those days hates fighters and carriers. Since there may be few fighters providing cover, the ships have to defend themselves.
Having turret on almost all direction is a must for them.

Am I the only one think that Salamis in V can perform well in sub-orbital strike?
They can hover at very high attitude with Minovsky Craft and the 8 turrets that can point downward keep firing to the ground, if the beams they fired retain enough firepower to destroy the enemy.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Phonix_1 wrote: Sun Aug 13, 2017 12:25 pm Ra Cailum, I remember that when I saw a thread on a now defunct Taiwan Forum eleven or twelve years ago, the author described Ra Cailum as "the cumulation of Federal warship technologies", even "a remedy of all those ship-building failure in the past".

It may be exaggerated, but it is a well-balanced ship.

I think the Zeon ship designs are more MS-orientated, they cover the blind spot of turrets by MS.
Both Magellan and Salamis are designed in the Big Gun era, EFSF in those days hates fighters and carriers. Since there may be few fighters providing cover, the ships have to defend themselves.
Having turret on almost all direction is a must for them.

Am I the only one think that Salamis in V can perform well in sub-orbital strike?
They can hover at very high attitude with Minovsky Craft and the 8 turrets that can point downward keep firing to the ground, if the beams they fired retain enough firepower to destroy the enemy.
The problem is that they designed some of those ships before MS and obviously even Dozle, who is in charge of the main fleet, didn't think of using MS as turrets before Battle of Loum.

On the other hand, EFSF trans-OYW ships seems to have more AA guns than Zeon ships, which would be more important in carriers.
Also, EFSF supposed to have space fighters providing support, they are just rendered pretty useless under Minovsky Particle.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Personally I find the Musai Late Production Type one of the best ship designs in the UC:

-It addressed the problem of AA defense.
-It increased firepower by adding turrests that also covered some of the blind spots of the original model.
-It added frontal MS catapults while increasing the hangar capacity to 4.

Most importantly, Zeon intended to replace their Musai vessels with the new model, at least until the war switched back to space and instead the tried to close the gap on fleet sizes with the Musai Final Production Type.

As for other Zeon ships, some key points:

-The Zanzibar was meant to operate on space as well as within Earth's atmosphere, so its gun placement had to consider both environments. Games like EF vs Zeon made an interesting change: they gave the Zanzibar as well as the Gaw ballistic main cannons (the Gaw had a central ballistic cannon and MPC turrets on the wings), which make more sense to use on Earth due to their firing arc.

-Then there's the Zanzibar Kai upgrade from MSV-R, which could turn a Zanzibar into a proper MS carriers by adding hangar space as well as a large catapult.

-The Gwazine is in a similar spot: it was also designed to operate on Earth, however after the first test failed, Zeon gave up trying to take Gwazine's to Earth. Despite this fact, Gwazine's are very well armed, with 3 main cannons on top and 10 MPC on the belly, as well as many unseens 155mm AA turrets (the Gaw also has many AA turrets around its body). The MS Igloo version boosts the number of secondary turrets to 18 and adds more propellant tanks. Then there's the cavernous MS hangar which can deploy MS both to the front and rear of the ship.

-The Chivvay class is certainly the one type of ship that has undergone the most retcons, going from being a slow old ship to being more commonly associated as a fast command ship. The 0080 version went to great lengths to emphasize the much larger engine block to draw a line with the base model which was then considered a slow ship. The MS Igloo version not only added a bottom turret, but also added two more thrusters to the engine block and added a MS retireval hatch. The secondary guns were relocated so they could better protect both the top and bottom of the ship and added the option to carry external propellant tanks. The Chivvay Kai, both the original version as well as the newer version that uses the MS Igloo design as a base added more turrets around the ship and as well as a much needed MS catapult.

-Regarding the Tivvay or 0080 Chivvay, a while ago Mark and I discussed how it must be much larger than a standard Chivvay since it hangar divided on two sections could fit an horizontal MS-14JG on each side. IIRC, Mark estimated it to be around 400m, which along its classification as a battleship put it in the same league as the Gwazine. Perhaps similarly to the 0080 Musai it was designed as lower cost alternative to a Gwazine capital warship? The MSV-R manga has Johnny Ridden attack a Tivvay in a simulation, which is used to test tactics intended against a Gwazine surrounded by Musai escorts.

As to Zeon's early warship development, while the Chivvay was indeed developed before MS were properly adopted, the Musai certainly took it into consideration.

Lastly I want to comment on an often overlooked detail that few ship designs have respected: spaceships operating MS need a specialized area for retrieving MS and cooling them down afterwards. The MS Igloo versions of the Musai and Chivvay both took this somewhat obscure detail into consideration. I recall that Mark said that the 4th MS spot in the redesigned Musai was meant to be solely used for MS retrieval and cooldown afterwards. The hatch behind the redesigned Chivvay bridge seems to serve the same purpose. Ships with more space such as a Zanzibar or Gwazine likely have such areas as well, even if they don't have a dedicated hatch. I remember reading that Dolos has a huge cooling unit for purpose of cooling down its huge MS complement and that the Papua can't operate MS other than Zaku I due to limitations on its cooling system.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Best designed warship in UC

Gelgoog Jager wrote: Tue Aug 22, 2017 6:32 pm Personally I find the Musai Late Production Type one of the best ship designs in the UC:

-It addressed the problem of AA defense.
-It increased firepower by adding turrests that also covered some of the blind spots of the original model.
-It added frontal MS catapults while increasing the hangar capacity to 4.

Most importantly, Zeon intended to replace their Musai vessels with the new model, at least until the war switched back to space and instead the tried to close the gap on fleet sizes with the Musai Final Production Type.

As for other Zeon ships, some key points:

-The Zanzibar was meant to operate on space as well as within Earth's atmosphere, so its gun placement had to consider both environments. Games like EF vs Zeon made an interesting change: they gave the Zanzibar as well as the Gaw ballistic main cannons (the Gaw had a central ballistic cannon and MPC turrets on the wings), which make more sense to use on Earth due to their firing arc.

-Then there's the Zanzibar Kai upgrade from MSV-R, which could turn a Zanzibar into a proper MS carriers by adding hangar space as well as a large catapult.
This would seriously challenge the flight capability IRL though.
unlike the WB, which attains flight by minovsky craft, both the Gaw and Zanzibar flies somehow by aerodynamics and strong enough propulsion.
If they fire ballistic main cannons which will have strong recoil, it should be straining the air frame and also disrupting the air flow so much that it will likely stall the unit.

Also, since they are already flying at high attitude, I don't see the MPC being that bad at firing at a distance. At 5km height, you can already draw a straight line to a distance of around 252 km to the ground and at a 30 km height, you get 620km (cheated with AutoCAD) So unless you are using the GM Sniper II beam sniper which has a 1000km range in OYW, and you cannot achieve that distance of LOS unless you are at 80km height, I don't really see a big problem with MPCs since ballistic cannons can't really shoot at targets at 250 km.
They are under influence of M-particles and BLOS shots aren't going to help much anyway.
-The Gwazine is in a similar spot: it was also designed to operate on Earth, however after the first test failed, Zeon gave up trying to take Gwazine's to Earth. Despite this fact, Gwazine's are very well armed, with 3 main cannons on top and 10 MPC on the belly, as well as many unseens 155mm AA turrets (the Gaw also has many AA turrets around its body). The MS Igloo version boosts the number of secondary turrets to 18 and adds more propellant tanks. Then there's the cavernous MS hangar which can deploy MS both to the front and rear of the ship.
I was thinking, wouldn't it make more sense to have turrets below and shoot at ground targets rather than have main turrets on top if they are going to operate on Earth? On the other hand, the AA turrets would make so much sense to be on top to prevent a diving attack?
-The Chivvay class is certainly the one type of ship that has undergone the most retcons, going from being a slow old ship to being more commonly associated as a fast command ship. The 0080 version went to great lengths to emphasize the much larger engine block to draw a line with the base model which was then considered a slow ship. The MS Igloo version not only added a bottom turret, but also added two more thrusters to the engine block and added a MS retireval hatch. The secondary guns were relocated so they could better protect both the top and bottom of the ship and added the option to carry external propellant tanks. The Chivvay Kai, both the original version as well as the newer version that uses the MS Igloo design as a base added more turrets around the ship and as well as a much needed MS catapult.
The Chivvay Class is also the only main ship class with a 3 gun turret in OYW.
It makes sense to be constantly modifying this class, since it is probably the oldest ship class the Zeon had operational.
-Regarding the Tivvay or 0080 Chivvay, a while ago Mark and I discussed how it must be much larger than a standard Chivvay since it hangar divided on two sections could fit an horizontal MS-14JG on each side. IIRC, Mark estimated it to be around 400m, which along its classification as a battleship put it in the same league as the Gwazine. Perhaps similarly to the 0080 Musai it was designed as lower cost alternative to a Gwazine capital warship? The MSV-R manga has Johnny Ridden attack a Tivvay in a simulation, which is used to test tactics intended against a Gwazine surrounded by Musai escorts.
I recall using the bridge size comparison method, we should also get a much larger ship.
As to Zeon's early warship development, while the Chivvay was indeed developed before MS were properly adopted, the Musai certainly took it into consideration.
Designed as a battleship, it got downgraded as a heavy cruiser, but the larger hull meant it has a lot of potential to be modified as a MS carrier.
It is probably like the Salamis, which is an incomplete design and left a lot of places for modification.
Lastly I want to comment on an often overlooked detail that few ship designs have respected: spaceships operating MS need a specialized area for retrieving MS and cooling them down afterwards. The MS Igloo versions of the Musai and Chivvay both took this somewhat obscure detail into consideration. I recall that Mark said that the 4th MS spot in the redesigned Musai was meant to be solely used for MS retrieval and cooldown afterwards. The hatch behind the redesigned Chivvay bridge seems to serve the same purpose. Ships with more space such as a Zanzibar or Gwazine likely have such areas as well, even if they don't have a dedicated hatch. I remember reading that Dolos has a huge cooling unit for purpose of cooling down its huge MS complement and that the Papua can't operate MS other than Zaku I due to limitations on its cooling system.
Actually, some military fan friends of mine also mentioned a carrier needed to have area for testing the units as well. You really don't want to test fire the thrusters inside the hangar, so you at least need to have an open area to do so.

The cooling MS part I saw was mainly talking about EFSF ships, in which the RB-79 Ball has the advantage of not needing to cool down after returning and thus easier to carry by military transports that don't have the space to carry to cooling unit around.
I speculate that this is also one of the reason the Ball had a bad reputation since the pilots needed to return to the battlefield much more frequent because of this and therefore in more risk and death rate.
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