MS Weapons: Range Against The Machine!

[toysdream]

As part of my ongoing Gundam games research, I was just looking through an old game guide for Gundam Side Story: Rise From The Ashes. There's a sidebar in there about the specs of the weapons used by the heroic White Dingo team, one of which is the 100mm machine gun introduced in 08th MS Team. For game purposes, it apparently has a range of 550 meters and carries 28 rounds of ammo.

Like most Gundam games, the weapon ranges in Rise From The Ashes are really short - that's actually far longer than the range of this weapon in Zeonic Front (150 meters), Battlefield Record U.C. 0081 (300 meters), or Bonds of the Battlefield (approx 250 meters). But something about these specific numbers rang a bell. Compare against the weapon specs in Master Archive RGM-79 GM (catalogued for you in this thread); in this book, we're told the 100mm machine gun has a capacity of 28 rounds and an effective surface range of 5500 meters.

That seems a bit too close for coincidence, doesn't it? If all the ranges in Rise From The Ashes are 1/10 of the "real" numbers, then here's how they'd spec out:

100mm machine gun: 28 rounds, range 550 -> 5500 meters
rocket launcher: 6 rounds, range 650 -> 6500 meters
240mm GM cannon: 15 rounds, range 750 -> 7500 meters
prototype beam rifle: 6 shots, range 900 -> 9000 meters
60mm vulcan gun: range 300 -> 3000 meters
hand grenade: range 100-400 -> 1000-4000 meters

This all seems pretty compatible with the specs in the Master Archive book. Here, we're told that the 90mm GM machine gun has an effective surface range of 5300 meters (6200 meters for the rifle version), the GM Cold Climate Type's machine gun has a range of 4500 meters, and the GM Sniper II's apocryphal shell-firing sniper rifle has a range of 7500 meters.

The catalog from the old Mobile Suit Museum, meanwhile, gives us effective surface ranges for the 120mm Zaku machine gun, which is listed at 4200 meters, and the Gundam's head vulcans, which are somewhat implausibly listed at 3500 meters.

If we take these numbers as a baseline, then, we can say that mobile suit machine guns generally have an effective surface range of 4500-6000 meters. Rocket launchers and Guncannon-style shoulder cannons have a longer range - 6500-7500 meters in these examples - and beam rifles longer yet. A range of 9 kilometers for the prototype beam rifle meshes nicely with the scene in 08th MS Team where Sanders sniper-shoots a Zaku from 10 kilometers away.

As far as longer-range weapons, the Hildolfr's 300mm cannon has a maximum range of 32 kilometers (effective range less than 20 kilometers). The Xamel's 68cm cannon has a maximum range of 50 kilometers, and the White Base's main guns have an effective surface range of 70 kilometers on Earth.

-- Mark

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

What exactly does "maximum range" mean in this context? Targeting range? Range where accuracy becomes more a matter of luck than skill? Range where, even if you manage to hit your target, you're probably not going to do much damage? Some combination of those?

Generally speaking, those ranges seem rather long. With a handful of exceptions, like Sanders sniping in 08th MS Team, combat in UC Gundam seems to take place at spitting distance. Of course, if Gundam featured long-range indirect fire weaponry, then there'd be no chance for the giant robots to shine, since they'd be cut to pieces by artillery from 30 kilometers away.

[toysdream]

They do draw a distinction between "maximum range" and "effective surface range" - for example, in the case of the Hildolfr, the maximum range is more than half again as long. For these big guns, the maximum range is probably based on a ballistic trajectory where you lob shells up into the sky and then they fall on the enemy's heads. The Hildolfr specs say that the "effective range" is based on visual-range combat under Minovsky particle conditions, so that's probably the best you can do when you need to be able to see the enemy.

There are probably a bunch of factors that affect the ranges of projectile weapons - how fast they fall to the ground, how much they're slowed by air resistance, how quickly the target can move out of the way, etc. I suspect that for a machine gun or tank cannon, these basically all come down to muzzle velocity, and the faster the projectile is moving the further away it can hit the target.

Anyway, these distances don't seem too unreasonable to me. Living in San Francisco, where most of the city blocks are 100 meters long, a person at the next street intersection will appear the same size as a mobile suit one kilometer away. The longer blocks are about twice as long, and it gets hard to see people at that distance. So it's easy for me to imagine spotting a mobile suit at a distance of 1-3 kilometers, and if you have a targeting scope at your disposal, you could get further still.

Alternatively, using human-scale weapons as an analogy, I believe pistols are generally limited to under 100 meters, a rifle like the M16 is good to about 500 meters, and sniper rifles can reach a kilometer or more. That's like mobile suits shooting each other at distances of 1, 5, and 10 kilometers, respectively; from what we see in games and animation, most of the fighting would be towards the shorter end of that spectrum.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

They do draw a distinction between "maximum range" and "effective surface range" - for example, in the case of the Hildolfr, the maximum range is more than half again as long. For these big guns, the maximum range is probably based on a ballistic trajectory where you lob shells up into the sky and then they fall on the enemy's heads. The Hildolfr specs say that the "effective range" is based on visual-range combat under Minovsky particle conditions, so that's probably the best you can do when you need to be able to see the enemy.

There are probably a bunch of factors that affect the ranges of projectile weapons - how fast they fall to the ground, how much they're slowed by air resistance, how quickly the target can move out of the way, etc. I suspect that for a machine gun or tank cannon, these basically all come down to muzzle velocity, and the faster the projectile is moving the further away it can hit the target.

Anyway, these distances don't seem too unreasonable to me. Living in San Francisco, where most of the city blocks are 100 meters long, a person at the next street intersection will appear the same size as a mobile suit one kilometer away. The longer blocks are about twice as long, and it gets hard to see people at that distance. So it's easy for me to imagine spotting a mobile suit at a distance of 1-3 kilometers, and if you have a targeting scope at your disposal, you could get further still.

Alternatively, using human-scale weapons as an analogy, I believe pistols are generally limited to under 100 meters, a rifle like the M16 is good to about 500 meters, and sniper rifles can reach a kilometer or more. That's like mobile suits shooting each other at distances of 1, 5, and 10 kilometers, respectively; from what we see in games and animation, most of the fighting would be towards the shorter end of that spectrum.

-- Mark

Well, that reminds me of this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ximumRange

Usually we see much closer range than what it should be, just so that it is easier to show on screen.

In games, if they did give you that long of a range to battle, the power of the CPU & GPU would need to be much greater, since they need to manage much more things on the field(since the field would be much bigger)
Also, it'd probably be much more boring as a game, since you don't meet enemies that frequent(given the big field and a slow moving speed and projectile speed augmented for the general slower reaction players)

About the sensing range of the MS though, if we look at the PG manual of RX-78, the 5700m range is a widered range mode, it can do a bit further if focused.
If we are talking about the GM Sniper II, it's own sensing range is 8700m, but the beam sniper rifle has a really unreasonable range, where its error is just a few cm in 1000km. The magnitude is completely different. So, as examples, one can aim at an enemy MS's centre of the head, and still hit 100% of the times at around 1500km away, if you don't really care about damage. Within 1000km though, aiming at MSs will not be a hassal, you can aim so precise that shooting down specific limbs would be simple. One can also aim at human troops and take them out one by one if the sniper is located some where in the sky. Or you can shoot down most LEO satellites from the ground without trouble.
I must say, come to think of it, why did the EFF lost in the beginning of the OYW? If they have such technology level, Zeon forces should have been shot down before they enter the atmosphere, which is just about 100km high up, so if one can build a beam rifle that is so accurate about 10~11 months into the war, they should not have much trouble scrambling beam cannons that has 1/10 of its range a year earlier...

[toysdream]

I think the "1000 km" thing must be hyperbole, or at least without Minovsky particle interference. As we've discussed before, throughout most of the One Year War, the maximum targeting range is limited to about 300 km - even for things like the Jormungand!

-- Mark

[Brave Fencer Kirby]

from what we see in games and animation, most of the fighting would be towards the shorter end of that spectrum.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Having weapons that are effective out to 10 km on the outside is entirely reasonable, from a real-world physics perspective -- it's just that we hardly ever see MS actually fighting at those distances.

[MythSearcher]

I think the "1000 km" thing must be hyperbole, or at least without Minovsky particle interference. As we've discussed before, throughout most of the One Year War, the maximum targeting range is limited to about 300 km - even for things like the Jormungand!

-- Mark

Well, without the ability to spread Minovsky particles to that far in the OYW, it is not hard to use that range.
(Dispersing it with ships you get a 100km radius only)

and the Jormungand, if it got a recon ship out to relay the location, it is able to do the 1800-2000km range.
And technically speaking, the Jormungard should have a much greater error given its size and aiming methods.

[toysdream]

Exactly - the Jormungand requires a forward observer to send it targeting coordinates, precisely because you can't see that far under Minovsky particle conditions. There's no way a mere mobile suit could manage precision shooting at several times the maximum visual range of a warship, mobile armor, or giant death ray!

Because Gundam Officials is a junkpile of random info from unattributed sources, I tracked down the original source for that "few centimeters at 1000 kilometers" claim. Turns out it's from the "U.C. Mechanics" article in the back of the second "Gundam 0080 the OVA Movies" film comic, which is generally a pretty respectable source, but other than Gundam Officials I don't think many other publications have picked up on it. Original text:

This machine had specially adjusted weapons for precision shooting. These could be used even by a normal GM, but since the mobile suit itself couldn't follow the advanced aiming system, they could function only as low-powered beam guns.

This special rifle system demonstrated its evolution with a sniper-series GM. Its firing accuracy had an error of only a few centimeters at 1000 kilometers. Far higher precision would have been possible if using a normal laser beam, but since mega particles were deflected by the influence of the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field, this firing accuracy was amazing. (The Gelgoog Jg's firing accuracy was only slightly lower.)

The GM Sniper was also designed to use physical projectiles. Precision shooting with physical projectiles was very difficult, since it was hard to predict their recoil, but this was already within the realm of practical use for GMs of this era.

So yes, on the face of it, this does indicate that the GM Sniper II can manage precision fire with a mega particle beam weapon at a range of 1000 kilometers. (No idea what this beam weapon would actually look like, since the standard GM Sniper II rifle is a projectile weapon.) But this account doesn't say anything about Minovsky particle effects, and every other source agrees that these put a hard limit of a few hundred kilometers on your effective range.

What's more, I'm quite skeptical that the beam from a mobile suit hand weapon would actually remain coherent and effective at a range of 1000 kilometers. That really doesn't seem consistent with what we've seen in every other source aside from this one film comic essay.

-- Mark

[AmuroNT1]

So yes, on the face of it, this does indicate that the GM Sniper II can manage precision fire with a mega particle beam weapon at a range of 1000 kilometers. (No idea what this beam weapon would actually look like, since the standard GM Sniper II rifle is a projectile weapon.)

What about the long-range beam rifle we first see wielded by the original GM Sniper? It seems to turn up in the Sniper II's hands quite often, at least in video games.

[toysdream]

It's possible that's what the film comic writers had in mind - the film comic was published after the release of 08th MS Team, and that rifle does seem to have a lot of weird and unique characteristics.

Meanwhile, a couple more data points to add to the list!

* On the "human-scale weapons times ten" front, the model sheets from Gundam 0083 say that the sturm faust used by the Dom Tropen has a range of 600 meters. That's exactly ten times the range of the World War II-era Panzerfaust.

* By that logic, the Dom Tropen's 880mm raketen bazooka - which is clearly influenced by the 88mm Panzerschreck, right down to stealing its blast shield - would have a range of just 1500m. In practice, mobile suit bazookas seem to fire smaller shells than human-scale ones, so they're really more like grenade launchers. But this does raise the possibility that, compared to beam rifles and even to machine guns, mobile suit bazookas may be relatively short-range weapons.

* On the longer end of the scale, I note that Gundam Officials puts the range of the Guncannon's beam rifle at 30 kilometers. (It doesn't say whether this is in space or on Earth.)

* This seems pretty consistent with the sources that put the range of the Gundam's beam rifle at about 20 kilometers. In particular, the PG kit manual has a goofy chart relating the rifle's range to the electrical power input; the chart cuts off at 10 MW input, at which point the range curves are starting to level out. At this 10 MW cutoff, the "maximum effect" range is exactly 20 kilometers, the "minimum effect" range is about 24 kilometers, and the "effective targeting distance" is a little short of 10 kilometers.

* It's also been widely claimed that the Guntank's main guns have a range of 240 km, and its bop missile launchers have a range of 20 km. The former figure seems really high for ground combat, but not unreasonable for space - again, it's pushing the envelope of visual detection.

* And finally, Gundam Perfect File 12 makes a lot of specific claims about the AMX-109 Capule. No idea what their source was - an unreleased HG-UC kit manual, perhaps? - but in regard to the Capule's chest missiles, it says that precision guidance is difficult, but in a ballistic attack (i.e. launching missiles up into the air and then letting them fall on the enemy), it can bombard areas about 30 kilometers away.

So far, then, it seems like mobile suits are limited to a range of about 10 kilometers using direct-fire weapons in ground combat. (The Hildolfr's 20 km range is an extreme outlier.) Using ballistic trajectories - up, then down - you can bombard targets at longer distances, such as 30km for the Capule's missiles or 70 km for the White Base's main guns.

In space, of course, the situation's going to be a little different...

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Exactly - the Jormungand requires a forward observer to send it targeting coordinates, precisely because you can't see that far under Minovsky particle conditions. There's no way a mere mobile suit could manage precision shooting at several times the maximum visual range of a warship, mobile armor, or giant death ray!

Because Gundam Officials is a junkpile of random info from unattributed sources, I tracked down the original source for that "few centimeters at 1000 kilometers" claim. Turns out it's from the "U.C. Mechanics" article in the back of the second "Gundam 0080 the OVA Movies" film comic, which is generally a pretty respectable source, but other than Gundam Officials I don't think many other publications have picked up on it. Original text:

This machine had specially adjusted weapons for precision shooting. These could be used even by a normal GM, but since the mobile suit itself couldn't follow the advanced aiming system, they could function only as low-powered beam guns.

This special rifle system demonstrated its evolution with a sniper-series GM. Its firing accuracy had an error of only a few centimeters at 1000 kilometers. Far higher precision would have been possible if using a normal laser beam, but since mega particles were deflected by the influence of the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field, this firing accuracy was amazing. (The Gelgoog Jg's firing accuracy was only slightly lower.)

The GM Sniper was also designed to use physical projectiles. Precision shooting with physical projectiles was very difficult, since it was hard to predict their recoil, but this was already within the realm of practical use for GMs of this era.

So yes, on the face of it, this does indicate that the GM Sniper II can manage precision fire with a mega particle beam weapon at a range of 1000 kilometers. (No idea what this beam weapon would actually look like, since the standard GM Sniper II rifle is a projectile weapon.) But this account doesn't say anything about Minovsky particle effects, and every other source agrees that these put a hard limit of a few hundred kilometers on your effective range.

What's more, I'm quite skeptical that the beam from a mobile suit hand weapon would actually remain coherent and effective at a range of 1000 kilometers. That really doesn't seem consistent with what we've seen in every other source aside from this one film comic essay.

-- Mark

The problem is not the GM Sniper II itself, but the problem that its beam rifle can be that accurate.
It really doesn't matter if the GM Sniper II can only do 10km sniping or 9km.
The fact that the EFF had something like that in hand means that with a better aiming device, like the observatories on Earth and tons of Satellites that are still intact at the beginning of the War, it'd be pretty easy to aim and shoot from the ground pretty precisely when Zeon forces are trying for Entry, since they would be just around 100km~120km from the ground, and on really big and slow moving targets.

BTW, the Sentinel FAZZ and Xeku Eins were firing their beams and are still with damage in a few dozen km distance, so 1000km is really not that far away.
And still you only need 200km and that'd be pretty much enough to shoot down Zeon ships and HLVs.

Oh well, the EF is really slow reacting and burrecratic, I guess that covers all the explanation.

[toysdream]

Sentinel is kind of a weird example. For one thing, there's not supposed to be any use of Minovsky particles, so detection and targeting ranges are way longer than in any other Gundam show. (Although for some reason, dummies still work for camouflage, and they keep losing track of enemy ships.)

There's a reference early on to the FAZZ team exchanging fire with the New Decides fleet from "tens of thousands of kilometers," but otherwise all the range references are in dimensionless numbers - for example, the S Gundam's beam cannons have a "commence firing range" of 12,000 mystery units, and at one point in the novel version we're told that its enemy search radius is 13,000 units. And the lunar battle for Ayes City is fought at an incredibly small scale - one week into the siege, the New Decides territory has shrunk to a ten kilometer radius around the central dome, but it still takes four more days for the battle to end. So it's pretty hard to tell what kind of scale the Sentinel battles are meant to be taking place at.

If you're shooting from the ground with beam weapons, with Minovsky particle interference, then precisely targeting fast-moving objects at an altitude of 200 km would be pretty impossible by normal Gundam standards. Even in space, the limit for visual targeting seems to be 300 km, and perfect accuracy is hardly guaranteed at that range!


EDIT: So we have some conflicting claims on the upper range limit for mobile suit-carried beam weapons. The Gundam's and Guncannon's beam rifles are pegged at 20 and 30 km, respectively; the 0080 film comics suggest at least 1000 km for the GM Sniper II's mysterious beam rifle; that one passage in Gundam Sentinel suggests tens of thousands of kilometers. Here's one more data point:

According to the kit manual for the Gundam F90II-L, its super-advanced long rifle - which can fire either beams or projectiles - uses state-of-the-art technology to form an I-field inside its barrel, suppressing the diffusion of the resulting beam to the absolute minimum. As a result, its effective range is "greater than 100 km," roughly the distance between colonies within a Side.

This example argues against the more outrageous claims noted above, and seems compatible with the figure of 20-30 kilometers for first-generation beam rifles.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Sentinel is kind of a weird example. For one thing, there's not supposed to be any use of Minovsky particles, so detection and targeting ranges are way longer than in any other Gundam show. (Although for some reason, dummies still work for camouflage, and they keep losing track of enemy ships.)

There's a reference early on to the FAZZ team exchanging fire with the New Decides fleet from "tens of thousands of kilometers," but otherwise all the range references are in dimensionless numbers - for example, the S Gundam's beam cannons have a "commence firing range" of 12,000 mystery units, and at one point in the novel version we're told that its enemy search radius is 13,000 units. And the lunar battle for Ayes City is fought at an incredibly small scale - one week into the siege, the New Decides territory has shrunk to a ten kilometer radius around the central dome, but it still takes four more days for the battle to end. So it's pretty hard to tell what kind of scale the Sentinel battles are meant to be taking place at.

If you're shooting from the ground with beam weapons, with Minovsky particle interference, then precisely targeting fast-moving objects at an altitude of 200 km would be pretty impossible by normal Gundam standards. Even in space, the limit for visual targeting seems to be 300 km, and perfect accuracy is hardly guaranteed at that range!


EDIT: So we have some conflicting claims on the upper range limit for mobile suit-carried beam weapons. The Gundam's and Guncannon's beam rifles are pegged at 20 and 30 km, respectively; the 0080 film comics suggest at least 1000 km for the GM Sniper II's mysterious beam rifle; that one passage in Gundam Sentinel suggests tens of thousands of kilometers. Here's one more data point:

According to the kit manual for the Gundam F90II-L, its super-advanced long rifle - which can fire either beams or projectiles - uses state-of-the-art technology to form an I-field inside its barrel, suppressing the diffusion of the resulting beam to the absolute minimum. As a result, its effective range is "greater than 100 km," roughly the distance between colonies within a Side.

This example argues against the more outrageous claims noted above, and seems compatible with the figure of 20-30 kilometers for first-generation beam rifles.

-- Mark

Well, the problem lies not in the sensing part, but the ability to aim so precisely at that kind of distance, and a continuous beam(as featured in 08MS's sniper).
You don't really need to have too much of a sensing ability, all you need to know is "something is travelling this path at this velocity", and aim your contiuous beam in front of that object.
Then your target hits your beam, not your beam hits the target.
They don't really have that much freedom once entering the atmosphere, and judging from the EB's book talking about the EFF did tried to intercept Zeon forces in orbit and with some success(totally loss the battle but is at least able to shoot down some Zeonic forces), the sensing part really shouldn't be that much of a problem.(Being able to get to the right place at the right time in orbit, and within combat relative velocity is not easier than aiming up)

And the F-90II L-type, with a 5m virtual barrel formed by minovsky particles(i.e. I-Field) in front of the actual barrel, it is state of the art in UC0120, but if I recall right, it talks about the solid, semi-homing round(it can turn once after leaving the barrel) with a 100km range,(which should not be really much affected by the I-Field barrel) and the Beam firing can get further, but didn't mention the actual distance? Also, it seems like this model focused more on gadget/gimmick about the I-F Barrel and changing the path of the projectile rather than precision/accuracy.

[toysdream]

The range of a beam in atmosphere isn't long enough to shoot down HLVs and such from the ground, though. As per the original setting notes, it's limited to 20-30 kilometers, and we've certainly seen no subsequent evidence to contradict that.

As for the F90 II-L, I'm afraid you don't recall correctly. Verbatim from the kit manual:

The long rifle that is its most distinctive equipment is a compound type rifle that can choose to fire either beams or physical bullets. With the perfection of technology that allows the formation of a beam-guiding I-field within the gun barrel (if this weren't possible, the rifling inside the barrel would be melted), this became practical for the first time. The emitted beam is for super-long range firing, with the diffusion rate suppressed to the absolute limit, and its effective range is greater than 100 kilometers.

This makes it sound like the I-field doesn't really contribute much to the beam at all - it just says it preserves the rifling used by the bullet-firing mode. In any case, the 100-km range absolutely applies to the beam mode. The "tens of thousands of kilometers" implied by that throwaway reference in Sentinel remains a freakish outlier.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

The range of a beam in atmosphere isn't long enough to shoot down HLVs and such from the ground, though. As per the original setting notes, it's limited to 20-30 kilometers, and we've certainly seen no subsequent evidence to contradict that.

We have seen setting changes and the original settings aren't set in stone.
What Tomino instended and what the later writers input are is of no direct interference, especially what Tonimo intended was power suits instead of 18m tall war machines.
It would not be strange if the height of the machines are 10 times taller that we are looking at 10 times the range.

Most of the settings we now have about the limited range are contributed to the sensing range being reduced significantly by the M particles, and much less talk about the focusing power of the beam itself.
Even something as large as the Jormungard, firing really far away is not the main problem(the aiming would be hell for something that big, and the beam should be less focused given the calibre ratio.)

As for the F90 II-L, I'm afraid you don't recall correctly. Verbatim from the kit manual:

The long rifle that is its most distinctive equipment is a compound type rifle that can choose to fire either beams or physical bullets. With the perfection of technology that allows the formation of a beam-guiding I-field within the gun barrel (if this weren't possible, the rifling inside the barrel would be melted), this became practical for the first time. The emitted beam is for super-long range firing, with the diffusion rate suppressed to the absolute limit, and its effective range is greater than 100 kilometers.

This makes it sound like the I-field doesn't really contribute much to the beam at all - it just says it preserves the rifling used by the bullet-firing mode. In any case, the 100-km range absolutely applies to the beam mode. The "tens of thousands of kilometers" implied by that throwaway reference in Sentinel remains a freakish outlier.

-- Mark

The problem here is that we all know that a solid round travels much slower than a beam and thus the effective range should be in order of magnitude less.

Also, the ZMT-29S seems to have no problem hitting a ground target firing its Zaneck cannon from the stratosphere, penetrating clouds, which should be more effective in dispersing particles, yet still maintaining most of its power.
With a simple dispersing model, doubling that length should not make it much less powerful, yet only likely to have its power density lowered to 1/4 at most.(the covering area becoming 4 times of the original beam.)

And if we look at the GM SP's sniper 1000km and Sentinel's few tens of thousand km range comparison, the Sentinel account is not a one off account.
During the OYW, the Minovsky particle related technology advanced pretty fast, but is still pretty ineffecient. The technology evolved afterwards before 0087, we have much higher generator output, the FAZZ got over 5 times the power output of the GM SP, Xeku Eins is still 1.3 times more.(with a much weaker beam), the Sensing range of MS are much higher(even if you don't take into account the EWAC Nero's 6750km.) The output of the beam weapons are fearfully higher(even if you don't look at Sentinel MSs, the ZZ MSs are much higher).
And eventhough we have no idea how far Hyakushiki shot the Mega Bazooka Launcher to hit the Dorgers Giar, we know that the main problem lies more in the skill of the pilot instead of the beam dispersing.(Which Char complained)
Also, we are talking about ship class cannon for the FAZZ, without M particales to disperse it, travelling that far while maintaining its power should not be a great problem, hitting it.(not knowing if you hit your target until 3 seconds is up is really slow)

[toysdream]

Still not finding this at all convincing. Since you mentioned Victory Gundam, we see here that in U.C. 0153, a state-of-the-art super death ray with huge particle accelerators can shoot at ground targets from beyond the stratosphere (at least 50 km up) - and since the upper layers of the atmosphere are relatively thin, most of this distance is roughly equivalent to open space.

EDIT: The Zanneck's probably not a good example anyway. The Zanneck cannon, and Keilas Guile, are charged particle weapons - that's why they have those big ring-shaped accelerators. Whatever they're firing, they can't possibly be mega particles, which are electrically neutral. So the best comparison is probably the Jormungand cannon, which as we know from MS Igloo, had a longer firing range than the mega particle cannons used by space warships.


That throwaway line in Sentinel, on the other hand, suggests that a mobile suit of the Gryps Conflict era could stand on Texas Colony and exchange fire with a mobile suit on the surface of the moon. That doesn't sound like anything in Gundam.

As for sensor ranges in Sentinel: Aside from the EWAC Nero, which is specifically intended for use in areas where the Minovsky particle density is negligible and you can use old-fashioned radar, they all have the usual tiny sensor radius specs. 18,800m for the S Gundam, 21,000m for the Zeta Plus with smartgun and radome, a mere 16,200m for the FAZZ, 28,000m for the combined form of the Zod'-iacok. If the Sentinel staff are trying to update the setting to allow for longer ranges, they're not doing it in the specs!

Presumably, the sensor ranges listed in the specs are for visual combat under Minovsky particle conditions, which don't really apply throughout most of Sentinel. Still, this provides no evidence that the sensor ranges of the mobile suits are exceptionally high.

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Still not finding this at all convincing. Since you mentioned Victory Gundam, we see here that in U.C. 0153, a state-of-the-art super death ray with huge particle accelerators can shoot at ground targets from beyond the stratosphere (at least 50 km up) - and since the upper layers of the atmosphere are relatively thin, most of this distance is roughly equivalent to open space.

EDIT: The Zanneck's probably not a good example anyway. The Zanneck cannon, and Keilas Guile, are charged particle weapons - that's why they have those big ring-shaped accelerators. Whatever they're firing, they can't possibly be mega particles, which are electrically neutral. So the best comparison is probably the Jormungand cannon, which as we know from MS Igloo, had a longer firing range than the mega particle cannons used by space warships.

Charged particles have a higher disperse rate, since they are all of the same charge and thus is pushing each other away. So it should be a good comparison, meaning the Mega Particle weapons should not be doing worse than them.

Also, I am talking about attacking things doing reentry, so the less air reasoning also works.

That throwaway line in Sentinel, on the other hand, suggests that a mobile suit of the Gryps Conflict era could stand on Texas Colony and exchange fire with a mobile suit on the surface of the moon. That doesn't sound like anything in Gundam.

As for sensor ranges in Sentinel: Aside from the EWAC Nero, which is specifically intended for use in areas where the Minovsky particle density is negligible and you can use old-fashioned radar, they all have the usual tiny sensor radius specs. 18,800m for the S Gundam, 21,000m for the Zeta Plus with smartgun and radome, a mere 16,200m for the FAZZ, 28,000m for the combined form of the Zod'-iacok. If the Sentinel staff are trying to update the setting to allow for longer ranges, they're not doing it in the specs!

Presumably, the sensor ranges listed in the specs are for visual combat under Minovsky particle conditions, which don't really apply throughout most of Sentinel. Still, this provides no evidence that the sensor ranges of the mobile suits are exceptionally high.

-- Mark

The specs of the sensing range is under the influence of M particles, at a density of 100mf/m^3, which is a standard density of M particles and not the maximum sensing range of the sensors.(p.21 of Ver.1.5)

The EWAC Nero can do 6750km, and would be a perfect unit as relay stations, since most units can't hit something a few thousand km away. Ships can probably do more, given that they have larger capacity to store the optical equipments for the sensors. This is not a new technology, looking at the PG RX-78 manual, we see the it got a datalink with the WB, and can use the sensing data of WB for sniping.(and the sensing range given in the same page is way more than the usual data we see)

BTW, the FAZZ vs Xeku Eins battle would be mainly relying on the ships and/or relay stations, the ship sensed the enemy ship launching MSs, before they scramble the FAZZs for a counter move.

The sensing range in Gundam is not that pathetic, they can still see what their enemies are up to and prepare before they come.
Think of Loum, where the EFSF can gather ships and form a large fleet against Zeon forces, when M particles are used extensively and both sides are really far from each other.

The idea of MSs needing to rely on their own sensors is kinda strange, Jormungard can do relay firing, RX-78 can as well, actually, quite a lot of real life weapons relied on relay data from the frontline, and when you are doing indirect firing(BLOS), that is all you can do.
The 1000km and few tens of thousands km would fall into the BLOS category pretty well, and it'd make a lot of sense with the ultra long sensing range of the EWAC Nero.

[toysdream]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but are you saying the EWAC Nero sensor range is for visual detection under Minovsky interference? Even though its range is more than 200 times that of the EWAC Zack or Zod'iacok or any other Sentinel machine? Even though its profile specifically says it's made for radar detection when there aren't a lot of Minovsky particles around? Really?

-- Mark

[MythSearcher]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but are you saying the EWAC Nero sensor range is for visual detection under Minovsky interference? Even though its range is more than 200 times that of the EWAC Zack or Zod'iacok or any other Sentinel machine? Even though its profile specifically says it's made for radar detection when there aren't a lot of Minovsky particles around? Really?

-- Mark

Sigh, you are still missing the point. The EWAC Nero doesn't JUST rely on radar, it has a wire controlled camera equiped on its right hand that can be shoot out. It is obviously designed much more advance than the Eyezack, with extra sensors, more operators and much more volume in the added units, usually meaning a much more precise signal aquiring ability in radars. That is not really a main point though.

I am not even trying to argue if the EWAC Nero can sense that far under denser M particles standards(like you said, the FAZZ vs Xeku Eins battle is likely to have no M-particles dispersed anyway, so your point is kinda moot) I am talking about the effectiveness of relay sensors for indirect firing.

I'll use OYW exclusive examples.

The MAN-08 has a sensing range of 245km, MAN-03 156km, MA-05 111, MA-08 134.
It is not really that hard for the EFF to set up a ground station that can do the same sensing range(or much more since they don't have as much mass restrain than MAs) and a precise enough mega particle cannon to shoot down Zeon forces that are trying to enter the atmosphere.
Along with relay stations(say, observatories all over the Earth), and unpreventably heated up to 4 digit targets(entering the atmosphere, meaning a big bright white target appearing on screen as compared to the low temperature background), and a precision of "a few cm error in 1000km"(even if they can't hurt in 1000km, 80~100km would be 10 times easier for damage, only 1/4~1/3 the range of Jormungard, and this precision means "a few mm in 100km" with linear deduction) I don't see what makes it impossible technologically to hit targets entering the atmosphere.

Simply put as an example, against the Jormungard, the EFSF ships like Magellan and Salamis seems to have at least somewhat of a 80~100km effective range. If placed on a ground based turret, it should not be hard to make a precision cannon that can hit 80~100km away with the technology of the GM Sniper II. And the sensing range for this turret is not really a problem, as long as they can set up observatories with sensors that are bigger and better than the relatively small MAs(i.e. larger diameter telescopes, which should be all around Earth already like modern Earth), they should be in pretty good shape in the beginning of the war.

[toysdream]

Not much to say about your notion of ground-based beam cannons to intercept descending objects - it doesn't seem like they've ever tried this in the U.C. series, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's impossible. After episode 4 of Gundam Unicorn, in which Zeon remnants fly from all around the world to attack Torrington without being detected by radar - during peacetime, when there shouldn't be any Minovsky particle interference - it seems like the writers just aren't going to give the Federation any credit for basic competence.

Just to try to wring out a last little bit of value from the discussion, though, let me run through a few discrete issues...


Physical range limits on Earth: I don't think we have much reason to question the initial assumptions - beam weapons are limited to 20-30 km in the atmosphere, as per the original setting notes, and mobile suit beam rifles even more so (about 10 kilometers for the RX-79 rifle).


Physical range limits in space: Highly controversial! Setting aside the matter of sensors and targeting, we have a huge range of claims for how far a mega particle beam can travel in space before losing its effect. You're clearly very attached to the "tens of thousands of kilometers" claim from Gundam Sentinel, and you seem inclined to dismiss the lower numbers (20-25 km for the Gundam's rifle as per the PG kit manual, 30 km for the Guncannon's rifle as per Gundam Officials, 100+ km for the Gundam F90 II-L's rifle).

Which is probably a matter of personal preference! But I think you should at least acknowledge that the Japanese sources don't agree, and that you're choosing one set of claims over another.


Physical range limits for charged particle weapons: As previously noted, the Zanneck cannon and Keilas Guille fire charged particles, not mega particles. (Hence the big accelerator rings.) Likewise for the Jormungand, which is a plasma cannon. All three of these weapons have exceptionally long ranges, which may partly be thanks to their sheer size, but also seems a bit surprising since charged particles should be more prone to repel each other and scatter the beam.

My hunch is that the charged particles fired by these weapons are moving much faster than mega particles - after all, they can be magnetically accelerated, whereas mega particles get their velocity only from the initial mass-to-energy conversion and some clumsy I-field squeezing. We normally assume that mega particles are moving at something close to the speed of light, but I'd suggest that this may not be true.

Anyway, the Japanese sources insist that the Jormungand has a longer range than the mega particle cannons of Federation warships. Presumably that's why warships don't bother with the forward observer tactic they tried to use with the Jormungand - the Jormungand could take out targets up to 2000 km away if it only knew where they were, but not so for a warship.


Sensor limits without Minovsky particles: Potentially huge, but really only applicable to Gundam Sentinel. The sensor radius spec of 6,250 km listed for the EWAC Nero seems entirely reasonable for unobstructed radar, and like it says in the color pages of Gundam Wars III, the EWAC Nero is "mainly for radar enemy search under low Minovsky particle densities." (The arm-mounted camera unit presumably has a lower range because it's wire-guided.)

Gundam Sentinel, where nobody's using Minovsky particles, is one of the few cases where we're seeing beam weapons at their maximum physical range rather than limited by visual sensors. It's an interesting case study, but I just wish the one actual number they came up with were less ridiculous...


Sensor limits with Minovsky particles: MS Igloo very definitely states that visual observation is limited to 300 km for most of the One Year War. The Jormungand, which could potential hit targets 1800-2000 km away, is limited to 300 km by this factor. The sensor specs for One Year War-era mobile armors listed in Entertainment Bible 1 support this, since they vary from 100 to 250 km.

In practice, it seems like a lot of U.C. space battles are fought at closer ranges - often at the 20-30 km distance that marks the maximum range of 20th century naval warships. Entertainment Bible 39 claims that, during the Battle of Loum, Revil's fleet opens fire on the Zeons at a range of 28,000 meters, and this seems to be about the distance between the two sides in the first episode of MS Igloo.


Sensor limits with Minovsky particles (alternative): Aside from MS Igloo, another notable set of claims comes from Gundam The Origin. Here, the White Base is able to pull up a visual image of Char's Musai in Earth orbit at a range of 1000 km. During the Battle of Loum, Ryu Jose can see the lights of the battle with his naked eyes from 300 km, and the Great Degwin detects the Tianem Fleet approaching when it's 4000 km away. These figures are a few times bigger than MS Igloo's, and the notion that you can get visuals on an enemy ship at 1000 km just barely supports that tidbit about the GM Sniper II. Assuming that the long-range beam rifle used by the GM Sniper has the same range as a warship cannon, this means that with One Year War technology you can just barely target and hit a space warship with a mega particle cannon at 1000 km. (That's still just half the range of the Jormungand, which means the MS Igloo info isn't totally wrong.)

Incidentally, 1000 km is also said to be the maximum range of the White Base's main guns. And in Gundam Officials, there's also some discussion of the Guntank's rough-draft armament, which includes "reach missiles" with a range of 1200 km. The text goes on to say that "in visual-range combat under Minovsky particle dispersal, a missile with a range of 1200 km was meaningless," which implies that 1000 km is pretty much the limit.

In a previous thread, I noted that the three combat lines around Solomon are meant to indicate maximum firing range, maximum visual range, and maximum detection range respectively. If we use Gundam The Origin as our reference point, rather than MS Igloo, this suggests that the second and third combat lines should be at about 1000 and 4000 km respectively. As it happens, the Gundam 0083 novels claim that the overall "Solomon Sea" extends at least 30,000 km from Solomon itself - this is the distance to the remote Bougainville control sector - and the accompanying maps indicate that the "vital patrol sector" bounded by the third combat line is about 15% of this distance, or about 4500 km.


Sensor limits with Minovsky particles (conclusion): All in all, then, I'm inclined to discard MS Igloo's claim about visual detection and embrace the numbers from Gundam The Origin. This makes the scales consistent with the Solomon maps from Gundam 0083, lets us accommodate the 0080 film comics' claim about the GM Sniper II, and still gives the Jormungand longer range than any warship weapon.


Mobile suit sensors: Since you mentioned the PG Gundam kit manual: Yes, it has a diagram showing various ranges for the Gundam's main sensors. There's a blue zone in front and in back of the head, extending 60 miles forward and 50 miles backward, and wider green zones in front and in back extending 80 and 60 miles respectively. On the left and right sides, a green zone extends 40 miles in all directions.

There's no accompanying explanation, but since the front and back blue zones are centered on the head cameras, they probably represent the visual sensors while the green zones might include all the other sensor equipment. In that case, the Gundam would have a visual sensor range of almost 100 km, and its detection radius would vary from 65 to 130 km depending on the direction. According to Entertainment Bible 1, the "effective sensor radius" spec represents the mobile suit's enemy search range. This mysterious diagram suggests that, in the worst case scenario, the Gundam should be able to detect approaching enemies at a range of about 60 kilometers - ten times the listed spec.

Which works for me! If we took all the mobile suit sensor radius specs and multiplied them by ten, then the Zaku II would be able to detect enemies within 32 kilometers, the length of a standard space colony. The mobile armor sensor specs, which are already quite reasonable, could probably stay as they are. Then the GM Sniper II would have an enemy search radius slightly greater than that of the Zeong, which makes perfect sense to me.

In any case, the PG kit manual also indicates that the physical range of the Gundam's beam rifle is much less than its sensor range (as noted above). So the limiting factor there would be the weapon's physical constraints, not the Gundam's sensors.

-- Mark