Question regarding Heavy Metals

[Omega]

as the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?

The reveals of updated L-Gaim kits has me curious...

IK some have beam sabers, but are they actually common, or is it more a later thing?

And I assume the beam guns on them are like buster rifles in a way?

Also, the D.Sserd is basically a mass production version of the title mech?

Sorry for stupid questions if any are here, just trying to make sense of it

[Seto Kaiba]

as the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?

Can you be more specific about the nature of your query?

IK some have beam sabers, but are they actually common, or is it more a later thing?

As I recall, pretty much all of the humanoid Class A and B Heavy Metals have at least one saber... some of the more advanced units carry multiple sabers, like the Auge. The non-humanoid Heavy Metals tend to be armed only with a laser launcher and/or missiles.

And I assume the beam guns on them are like buster rifles in a way?

So... "yes and no". There are two different kinds of beam gun in L-Gaim.

The normal beam gun is called a power launcher, and it's just a high-powered laser cannon that draws its power off a Heavy Metal's solar generator.

There's a heavier weapon called a buster launcher, which is a massive beam cannon bigger than a Heavy Metal which requires either the full power output of a Class A Heavy Metal or a group of Class B's to fire, but offers much greater damage sufficient to cripple or destroy ships. It's kind of like the Hyaku Shiki's Mega Bazooka Launcher in that sense. (When the setting concept was further developed into Five Star Stories, buster weapons got a further power boost to the level of the largest class of buster weapons being able to destroy planets while even the smallest were WMDs able to vaporize ships and cities with ease.)

Also, the D.Sserd is basically a mass production version of the title mech?

Sort of? Because it's not possible to reproduce the technology of a Class A Heavy Metal for mass production at the Pentagona system's modern tech level, the D.Sserd is more like an economized version of the L.Gaim similar to the GM's relationship to the original Gundam. The expensive or difficult-to-replicate bits were stripped out in favor of more economical substitutes, so despite sharing 80% of its parts in common with the L.Gaim and being a copy of a Class A Heavy Metal its lower performance makes it a Class B Heavy Metal (albeit on the high end of Class B). The first trial production D.Sserd used by Gau Ha Lessy had better performance than the standard type, and the later super prototype Nouvelle D.Sserd was Class A.

[Arsarcana]

as the title says, I'm curious... how do the mecha of L-Gaim work?

If you mean 'how are they powered', the answer is sunlight. Heavy Metals are armored with something called... Genepla I think they called it. It's able to absorb solar energy that can power the unit.

some of the more advanced units carry multiple sabers, like the Auge.

And then there's the Original Auge which carries, like, fifty.

[Omega]

How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like? Other than that TY you guys, this actually helps quite a bit in understanding them

[Seto Kaiba]

How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like?

As Arsarcana noted, they're powered by solar energy... the outer skin of the heavy metals is a solar collector which captures sunlight for power generation.

The cockpit is fairly roomy, very reminiscent of the Mobile Suits c. Zeta Gundam with the panoramic monitors and linear seat... except instead of a chair, on several of them incl. the titular L-Gaim it's more like a motorbike's seat with a motorbike-esque control yoke. On at least one or two, the controls are actually a separately operable hoverbike.

[MythSearcher]

How they work like what powers them for sure, and what are their cockpits like?

As Arsarcana noted, they're powered by solar energy... the outer skin of the heavy metals is a solar collector which captures sunlight for power generation.

The cockpit is fairly roomy, very reminiscent of the Mobile Suits c. Zeta Gundam with the panoramic monitors and linear seat... except instead of a chair, on several of them incl. the titular L-Gaim it's more like a motorbike's seat with a motorbike-esque control yoke. On at least one or two, the controls are actually a separately operable hoverbike.

Luckily they do not operate on Earth.
Because a MS sized humanoid has at most 200m^2 surface area and will have approximate 200kW at the equator during peak sun hours at almost 100% efficiency.

They must have a really strong sun, strange they don't have darker skin(and a much more hellish environment, very little green house gases, I guess?). Well, I guess they aren't really human so may work differently on skin colour and UV exposure.

[Seto Kaiba]

Luckily they do not operate on Earth.
Because a MS sized humanoid has at most 200m^2 surface area and will have approximate 200kW at the equator during peak sun hours at almost 100% efficiency.

They must have a really strong sun, strange they don't have darker skin(and a much more hellish environment, very little green house gases, I guess?). Well, I guess they aren't really human so may work differently on skin colour and UV exposure.

As with Mamoru Nagano's later work, Five Star Stories, it's not exactly solar power as we understand it... it's converting photons into something else and producing way more power than should be possible with the light of the sun. One of those areas where the science of the Pentagona system is beyond modern understanding.

Its more developed version in FSS was the ezlaser semi-perpetual photon conversion engine.

[MythSearcher]

As with Mamoru Nagano's later work, Five Star Stories, it's not exactly solar power as we understand it... it's converting photons into something else and producing way more power than should be possible with the light of the sun. One of those areas where the science of the Pentagona system is beyond modern understanding.

Its more developed version in FSS was the ezlaser semi-perpetual photon conversion engine.

So, basically magic.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, basically magic.

Yup... Mamoru Nagano gets a LOT of mileage out of Clarke's Third Law in his original works.

Heavy Metal L-Gaim is a lot more subdued about it than its more successful derivative Five Star Stories, but it still prominently features several "sufficiently advanced" technologies. Super-efficient solar power is still on the low end too, with the cake being firmly taken by Oldna Ppossoidal's bio-relation system. That was a perpetual motion machine that served as a source of unlimited energy, conferred eternal youth and immortality, and various other benefits.

(Which isn't as over-the-top as the seemingly magical psychic abilities that the descendants of the Super Empire's genetically engineered super-soldiers had in FSS... or any of a hundred other things FSS did that were sufficiently advanced technology.)

[MythSearcher]

Yup... Mamoru Nagano gets a LOT of mileage out of Clarke's Third Law in his original works.

Heavy Metal L-Gaim is a lot more subdued about it than its more successful derivative Five Star Stories, but it still prominently features several "sufficiently advanced" technologies. Super-efficient solar power is still on the low end too, with the cake being firmly taken by Oldna Ppossoidal's bio-relation system. That was a perpetual motion machine that served as a source of unlimited energy, conferred eternal youth and immortality, and various other benefits.

(Which isn't as over-the-top as the seemingly magical psychic abilities that the descendants of the Super Empire's genetically engineered super-soldiers had in FSS... or any of a hundred other things FSS did that were sufficiently advanced technology.)

Oh well, I can accept Magic Knight Rayearth, so FSS isn't really much of a problem.
I just rather he focus more on the plot. FSS had less density than Hunter X Hunter.(There's more settings book than actual manga volumes since 20 years ago)

[Seto Kaiba]

Oh well, I can accept Magic Knight Rayearth, so FSS isn't really much of a problem.
I just rather he focus more on the plot. FSS had less density than Hunter X Hunter.(There's more settings book than actual manga volumes since 20 years ago)

One of Mamoru Nagano's favorite themes that he explores heavily in both Heavy Metal L-Gaim and Five Star Stories is an "after the end" type scenario in which humanity is in the midst of its terminal decline, with modern humans living in the distant aftermath of the collapse of our masterpiece civilization.

In Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Ppossoidal's power is in no small part built on relics of lost technology like the Class A Heavy Metals and the biorelation system... though no real specifics are given about what that ancient civilization is like.

In Five Star Stories, humanity's advanced technology is either a surviving example of the advanced technology developed by the Super Empire Farus Di Kanon that ruled the galaxy in the AD Era or an inferior reproduction of the Super Empire's technology. Even most of the characters technically count, since their powers are inherited genetic abilities from the Super Empire's various breeds of superhuman that've diminished with time due to their bloodlines being diluted with baseline human DNA.