domino wrote:Seems you want to discuss the anime by discrediting the anime....
1. I said IF the flyers can dodge that wouldn't be too far out. There is DRAGOON technology on both sides anyway so 50 yrs advancement not necessary
2. Didn't Durandal say he chose Shinn as the pilot of the Impulse? I'm sure someone said Shinn was chosen for some special ability he had - maybe how efficiently he used the Impulse.
3. You don't spend billions building something new to hope someone will pop up and pilot it? Clearly this is the first Gundam show you've ever watched. Tons of prototype Gundams are built with no further explanation beyond "we can".
You simply refuse to accept that the Impulse works as it does....because it was designed to do so and has a pilot that can utilize it's full potential (once again - you never see Luna pulling off Shinn's tricks). It's not about luck since in-universe, we are supposed to accept it's Shinn's skill - regardless of Kira's killing intent, Shinn was able to pull off disassembly, attack and then recombination in mid-air with little effort.
Anyway, I think this topic has been exhausted. Would be great if someone had tech details of how Impulse is maintained and the storage of its separate parts vs a combined mobile suit - that's far more interesting than this constant back-and-forth
I am not discrediting the anime, I am simply telling you the facts that the anime did not support your arguments.
1) The Dragoons are much smaller and harder to detect to begin with, you don't really see pilots trying to attack the dragoons. The flyers are half MS size. The backpack flyer actually has a surface area comparable to an MS.
2) You don't seem to understand the sequence of events. The development of a military vehicle isn't and shouldn't be like that. You don't spend billions of dollars(or whatever currency) to develop a unit for a single pilot that didn't have any combat record to prove him/herself, because if that pilot goes down, so does your money. And you just don't start the development even before you know someone can use it, because if no one can use it you are still wasting your money. Thus military vehicles are built to be generalized, most people can use them. You can get people who can use them better, but that will be a long list of suitable uses and they will all be trained to the standard.
3) You don't understand a word I said. All the Gundams are not new in concept. The first Gundam was build after the Zeon Zaku, and is built for general pilots, the core block system was not a one off design, but the EFF was ready to support is and you have a lot of related development not limited to the RX series(like the core booster), the catapults for the core fighter was even designed before it for other military planes the EFF has. Mk-II is pretty much the same. Zeta was build after you have a bunch of TMS and the concept proved to be useable. The ZZ was built in a world with a lot of smaller crafts. The GP series had the GP03 as the most unrealistic child, since you don't get the budget of a MA for just an order of a MS, but the world has large MAs, so it is not really that far fetched of a concept. The Nu was built upon NT technology which is also well developed and proved useful in the battlefield. V was basically built for a much weaker faction that needed to transport MS by trucks of different sizes and need to move quickly to avoid detection, so smaller parts makes that bit more sense.(Also in a world already full of smaller military crafts) G was not for military purposes but world tournament that decides the ruler of the world, figure the money spend will be very worth it for the countries(Not saying the world view itself is realistic) W also came in a world full of MS and W0 actually was not built before them since it is deemed not suitable for general pilots and no one can use it, it was only built by a crazed for revenge terrorist minded Quatre, so rationale doesn't apply here, after the prove of concept anyway. X was one of the old world well developed time period. Strike is pretty much like first Gundam, which all 5Gs was built after the prove of concept ZAFT MSs. 00 might not be that rational, but none the less suited the whole world theme, CB was not erally a military to start with anyway and with Veda they controlled the whole world's economy and thus money is not really an issue. AGE was almost the only serious offender here, but still only building on previous concept and technology and they actually followed up and use the concepts in the mass production models. Impusle popped up in a world that already mainly uses MS as the main weapon of choice, with ZAFT having no smaller crafts to launch from time to time and thus did not have older ships where they already have smaller catapults systems to begin with, and did not really have a purpose of developing a new concept that most of their pilots couldn't use.
I am not refusing the Impusle workED, I am telling you the background of the development is irrational. it workED does not mean it is rational. The Sakura/baka bombs workED, does it mean that they are rational? Of course not, sending pilots on suicidal attacks are not rational, but did it work? Surely it did on the tactical level, efficiency wise they at least are able to take down the run way and disable the launch for quite some time with relatively low cost of resources and money compared to the down time cost of their enemy(The US). In the strategically level? wasted pilots and resources. Similar stuff happened for the AV-8, does it work? Yeah, they worked to a point where we still have AV-8 variants enlisted, so it worked even better than the Impusle in their respective world. Is it rational to develop them to begin with? At least the money spent was not efficient. They had the pilots with the best score from pilot school on them, and the long service and maintenance time made these pilots have longer ground time than same batch of pilots that went to use the F-18s, and ended up being more inexperience. The AV-8s also has more crashes(by itself, not shot downs) than the F-18s, yes, the AV-8s workED, but it's not money well spent. They kept producing them pretty much becuase they found a fix and improved them to a point where they can still use it so the development fundings are not wasted, but the Impulse? Do you see it being mass produced or the catapult used for other similar models? If no, on a military strategy scale, the Impulse did NOT work.
Spending billions of dollars developing a system for a combination MS and have it worked as one single MS worth of cost, at most 5, does not support the development. The money spent can build multiple other MSs and have it worked like hundreds of MSs. That is what working means in military terms. You spend money and time building one single cannon that has 100% acurracy, while the same money and time was place into developing 100 cannons that has only 1% accurracy for the enemy, yes, your cannon worked by getting to hit 10 enemy cannon, maybe 20 if you are lucky, but your enemy gets to destroy your whole force in a few barrages(first barrage gives your enemy a 63% chance of hitting, you can hit 1, in 10 rounds you are pretty much dead meat), which is money well spent? Try also finding info about the King Tiger against the T-34 in WWII, the King Tiger is much much more powerful, but each one has to face 5 T-34s and German simply cannot hold ground.
In military you don't build stuff and hope that it works, you build stuff planned out for it to work. This is what the Impulse lacks.
Capitalism and efficiency works really well in military, you get the most out of your budget, and that is the fastest way you can get to your strongest potential. Every dollar I spend I take down 2 dollars worth of asset from my enemy, then I am at least winning the combat and more likely the battle as long as I am not overwhelmingly outnumbered. Likely able to win the war if I am not fighting seriously stronger opponents. The warring method you are using is instead "build it, it seemed to work in destroying enemies, so all's fine." and ignored the whole efficiency thing behind it.
If ZAFT already had a bunch of older ships that was used for launching smaller crafts, the Impulse will make much more sense. Another way of justification will be a launch pad on the ground that have already used to test out the Impulse or mock ups, and mock battles. A slight difference in presentation already changes a lot of the irrationality.
monster wrote:
Even if that's true, and I'm not saying that it is, I don't see how that would suggest anything close to a 20-year advancement in technology.
Automatic evasion system that worked better than human pilots are not used in all MSs?
Why would it not be a 20-year advancement? If it workded that great, the MSs should have already all have them installed, or if it is relatively new, all new MS should have it installed in no time. Usually a new technology cannot be implemented on military carafts without thoroughly tested for an extended period of time, and that takes a decade or two. But once implemented on one, automatic evasion system is a matter of installation on the computers(since it will just be letting the computers utilizing the evasion systems the human pilots are using), thus ZAFT should be able to do it on all MSs, but we don't see that.
The anime and settings did not support an automatic evasion system, the Impulse's flyers was not dodging attacks automatically, so let's just leave it at that.
As long as they are separated, each unit would still provide a smaller target than the combined unit.
You still get more chance of being hit. Two points of easy aiming, A) At launch(which is a perfect time for snipers) B) At combination(hey a few things are flying together, it is more eye capturing)
For A), if you miss an MS, nothing after it is flying out to be hit, you hit the ship but that usually has more defence. If it is Impulse, you hit the flyer following the first. If you damage the ship's catapult, for MSs you already launched the whole thing, for Impulse, you only have part of it.
For B), well, good luck.
Each target is smaller, but since the average number of projectiles in the field is still the same, you don't get any advantage since your total area is larger. Especially considering most anti air attacks are spreaded out to attack an area. (Check
flak notice most anit air missiles work in similar concept)
Regardless, there is no reason to believe that only a special kind of coordinator may pilot the Impulse.
Then you have to prove that your average coordinator has what it takes to pilot is in a normal scramble situation, and not rely on saying Shinn was chosen and can make good decisions.
The problem of that is I can give you anti-proves where the average coordinator in the anime are pretty bad at dodging and aiming, don't see why they can do better when they need to do combination.
Of course, which is why you don't intentionally allow the worst scenario to happen. You don't leave yourself vulnerable while there are still enemy units nearby. That doesn't take away from the modular system.
In a war half of the time you don't get to choose the battlefield, your enemy chose it for you.
You don't intentionally allow the worst scenario to happen, thus you don't use designs that have more worst scenario than others...
Except a non-modular mobile suit would have already been disabled before the combining factor came into place. The reason why Shinn asked for a replacement in the first place was to fix his damaged mobile suit and rearm himself.
That is the problem here. He was lucky to be facing an enemy that only wanted to disarm him, instead of landing lethal blows from the very beginning. It would not be much different for the Impulse if Kira wanted to be a Killer from the very beginning, which Shinn will then have no chance of doing any of the modular stuff.
Shinn was only able to do so because his tactics rely solely on the fact that the enemy didn't want to kill. That is specially said in show, Shinn can do pretty much nothing if that is not the case. Obviously all of these are after the fact that Impulse was already built and in battle, thus it does not help the argument of "Building the Impulse was a good decision".
For the most part, it was. And the Minerva was designed together with the Impulse. Naturally, they are prepared to support it. There's no need to exaggerate the level of support that it needs.
Building a single ship is not really preparing to support a single unit. It only supports the argument of bad decision. If they really want to support it, before building the ship they'd already have ground based testing facilities and have much larger scale of testing.
Putting something like that on a ship is expensive(any military ships of that scale is)
But using a catapult(especially pre-existed one) and drawing a small box around it to indicate the size of the launch pad is much easier and cheaper.
A more reasonable chain of development for something like the Impulse will be first using small crafts of similar size to test out the launch sequence under enemy fire(mock battle), if that is favourable, build the Impulse test units to test in more mock battles, then maybe build the smaller catapult on ground and test a more realistic situation. Usually you can even test a few Impulses launches against a larger force, well before you choose to build a small catapult on a ship, since it will be really hard(and expensive) to modify the ship after completing it.
In the anime it will be pretty easy to show, you can have Shinn launching from a ground base and other MS involving in a supposedly planned mock battle against the Impulse switching to actual armaments and entering the fight, and the Minerva launching the backpack flyers to introduce the newly build ship which not even Shinn knew about(but heard of, so he can utter something like "If the ship is built it will be easier").
Sure, but in this case, that wasn't the only thing that Durandal was looking for. And the fact that someone like Shinn was qualified further proved that you didn't need to be a special super pilot, not to mention Lunamaria.
At least he is a red coat, and she is as well.
I think it actually makes sense because it allows regular mobile suits to launch at the same time as the parts.
Not quite, given calculation, it really doesn't go better than having an extra full sized catapult so you can choose to launch normal MS in it or other supportive vehicles.(including the backpack flyers)
