Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

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Rex
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Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Hi, guys. First time posting here!

I recently was watching MS IGLOO again, as I'd never finished the last episodes of either Apocalypse or The Gravity Front, when I noticed something.

There's is an event where we can measure how fast a Salamis cruiser is going.

I figured, this is the place to put that information, if there's any at all. So here we go.

During the Jotunheim's trip to the moon, we all know they encounter a training Salamis. Now, it is true that it lacks weapons, so my measurements may be somewhat off, but they're rough to begin with.

We know the Salamis needs to circle the moon. That is their mission. They deploy their Balls and then immediately adjust course to COMPLETELY EVADE the Jotunheim and go around the moon. They appear to be turning away to me, and indeed come at an angle roughly behind, if I recall, the Jotunheim when they finish their circle.

Now, the moon itself is 1,079 miles in radius, according to Google.

They are clearly above the moon. In fact, they're high enough that we can see the curvature of its surface. So I've raised this as a rough estimate to a distance traveled of 1,100. It's probably too low but it works for the purpose of getting a ballpark figure.

I began my timing a little bit after they break off from their course to avoid the Jotunheim.

I end my timing when they actually state that they have finished circling the moon. This comes in at around six and a half minutes for the trip, plus unrecorded fractions of a second or whatever.

From there the math is pretty easy.

That's 169.23 miles per minute.

That's 2.82 miles per second.

That's 10,153.85 (rounded up) miles per hour.

Converted to kilometers, that means a Salamis hits 4.54 (rounded up) kilometers per second.


I seem to recall reading that the Nahel Argama's combat cruising speed was around 5 kps somewhere on this site.

I have often wondered if one of the main reasons the Salamis was kept around was because it wasn't just cheap and ok at its job but also particularly quick as well. I think we can safely assume that the Salamis Kai with its two additional thrusters would likely be the fastest ship in the EFSF fleet.

All of this also fits in nicely with the fact that we tend to see Gundam ships close distances very quickly in their relatively small combat ranges (Thanks, minovsky particles =P ) and they seem to do the ship equivalent of knife fighting an awful lot. Assuming the Salamis has difficulty engaging targets beyond 200 kilometers due to interference, enemy target maneuverability, crew generated vibration, and so on and so forth, a Salamis could close and flank on Musais with their narrower firing angles in under a minute from that distance.

Now, some things to keep in mind. This isn't accounting for time taken to accelerate, since they were under lunar gravity and had to change course, or any of that, but it gives us a nice ballpark figure. I'm always a little iffy about MS IGLOO anything, because they mess with set events, stats, ect so much. I'll never get over the insane bullet spread that Zaku had during the battle of Loum when it shot a Salamis missile pod at point blank range. Still, this is pretty interesting, I think.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:Hi, guys. First time posting here!

I recently was watching MS IGLOO again, as I'd never finished the last episodes of either Apocalypse or The Gravity Front, when I noticed something.

There's is an event where we can measure how fast a Salamis cruiser is going.

I figured, this is the place to put that information, if there's any at all. So here we go.

During the Jotunheim's trip to the moon, we all know they encounter a training Salamis. Now, it is true that it lacks weapons, so my measurements may be somewhat off, but they're rough to begin with.

We know the Salamis needs to circle the moon. That is their mission. They deploy their Balls and then immediately adjust course to COMPLETELY EVADE the Jotunheim and go around the moon. They appear to be turning away to me, and indeed come at an angle roughly behind, if I recall, the Jotunheim when they finish their circle.

Now, the moon itself is 1,079 miles in radius, according to Google.

They are clearly above the moon. In fact, they're high enough that we can see the curvature of its surface. So I've raised this as a rough estimate to a distance traveled of 1,100. It's probably too low but it works for the purpose of getting a ballpark figure.

I began my timing a little bit after they break off from their course to avoid the Jotunheim.

I end my timing when they actually state that they have finished circling the moon. This comes in at around six and a half minutes for the trip, plus unrecorded fractions of a second or whatever.

From there the math is pretty easy.

That's 169.23 miles per minute.

That's 2.82 miles per second.

That's 10,153.85 (rounded up) miles per hour.

Converted to kilometers, that means a Salamis hits 4.54 (rounded up) kilometers per second.


I seem to recall reading that the Nahel Argama's combat cruising speed was around 5 kps somewhere on this site.

I have often wondered if one of the main reasons the Salamis was kept around was because it wasn't just cheap and ok at its job but also particularly quick as well. I think we can safely assume that the Salamis Kai with its two additional thrusters would likely be the fastest ship in the EFSF fleet.

All of this also fits in nicely with the fact that we tend to see Gundam ships close distances very quickly in their relatively small combat ranges (Thanks, minovsky particles =P ) and they seem to do the ship equivalent of knife fighting an awful lot. Assuming the Salamis has difficulty engaging targets beyond 200 kilometers due to interference, enemy target maneuverability, crew generated vibration, and so on and so forth, a Salamis could close and flank on Musais with their narrower firing angles in under a minute from that distance.

Now, some things to keep in mind. This isn't accounting for time taken to accelerate, since they were under lunar gravity and had to change course, or any of that, but it gives us a nice ballpark figure. I'm always a little iffy about MS IGLOO anything, because they mess with set events, stats, ect so much. I'll never get over the insane bullet spread that Zaku had during the battle of Loum when it shot a Salamis missile pod at point blank range. Still, this is pretty interesting, I think.
Emm...
As much as I like doing Physics on Gundam and other Sci-fi topics, there is a small flaw in your calculations, that is, you ignored the basic fact about orbital physics.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/fa ... nfact.html

If you go faster than the escape velocity, you ceased being in orbit, you escape it.(duh)
And moon's escape velocity is 2.83km/s, which is, slower than your number.

Also, in space, as long as you can accelerate(before using up your propellant), you can just keep adding speed, thus you don't really have a "cruising speed", you can also use gravity assist to increase your velocity.

http://what-if.xkcd.com/146/
opps, sorry, this one:
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/grav/primer.php
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Hi, Mythsearcher.

I actually did not know the escape velocity of the moon! Thank you for that information.

If the Salamis was really able to cover that much ground that quickly, I imagine that she had to do a lot of course correction to stay with the moon. I'm not sure what that says about her abilities, though.

As for the cruising velocity, I already knew this. I probably should have mentioned that I was comparing this to the long time it takes the Nahel Argama to accelerate to combat speeds in the anime. For some reason, that was in my head, and it just never got put in to text.

The idea was that if the Salamis can attain this on the moon so easily, that she should be able to keep up with or outpace the heavier ships, or at the very least, it grooves nicely with what we already know.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:During the Jotunheim's trip to the moon, we all know they encounter a training Salamis. Now, it is true that it lacks weapons, so my measurements may be somewhat off, but they're rough to begin with.
Just want to point out that this is not a training Salamis: it simply had the top gun removed for the racks for carrying Balls. In MS Igloo ep 3 we catch a quick glimpse of a Salamis which do has most of its front weapons removed, which launched the Balls attacking the HLVs from Odessa. In the official site you can see a picture of it:

http://www.msigloo.net/ms/rx01.html
Rex wrote:I have often wondered if one of the main reasons the Salamis was kept around was because it wasn't just cheap and ok at its job but also particularly quick as well. I think we can safely assume that the Salamis Kai with its two additional thrusters would likely be the fastest ship in the EFSF fleet.
I really doubt the Salamis Kai from Zeta is the fastest EF ship out there:

-For starters we have the Salamis Kai from 0083, which was the original proposal for an improved Salamis after the OYW. It had a huge increase in firepower and replaced its single large thruster with 4 smaller ones in a clear attempt to mimic the thruster arrangement of the Magellan class. It did came with the drawback of lacking MS carrying capacity, which ultimately was among the reasons it was discontinued. By the way, I suggest looking for more info on 0083, namely the EF's chase around the Moon of the colony Cima's forces hijacked, which will probably provide some more insight into the the actual topic.

-The Clop class cruisers from UC 0093 and beyond have 6 thrusters, just like the Alexandria class, and are supposedly as large as a Salamis. The design seems focused on carrying and deploying MS, but have slightly lower firepower though. I have little doubt they were meant to replace the aging Salamis Kai, which as far as we know could even include upgraded ships originally built before the OYW.

That being said, in UC we don't really see much discussion about certain ships being faster than others. In Gundam Seed I do recall a couple of cases that do imply such situations though:

-After the collapse of Heliopolis, Murrue Ramius express concern that while the Archangel can outrun the Laurasia class, it can't outrun a Nazca class ship.

-IIRC, after the theft of the Eternal, Rau La Creuset mentions that a Nazca class is unable to catch up with it.

That being said, there do are at least a few OYW ships I do suspect which were supposed to have high mobility: the Musai and Chibe (Chivvay) from Gundam 0080:

-The Chibe is a radical redesign of the class, to the point that even today it's sometimes classified as Tibe (Tivvay) class instead. The most prominent change ins the huge engine/thruster block at the rear of the ship, while at the same time the ships seems to have lost many of the weapons from the original model. Also, as Mark has pointed out, the fact the Tibe's hangar is wide enough to launch 2 MS-14Jgs from each half of the divided hangar does suggest that the ships is far larger than a standard Chibe.

-The Musai is supposed to be a lower cost version meant to allow Zeon to increase the size of their fleet for the upcoming final battle. It seems to lose most of its weapons except for 2 2-barrel mega particle turrets. However, closer inspection of the linear shows that unlike other Musai types, this one has thrusters not only on each of the protruded sections at the side of this, but also on the lower main body of the ships as well:

http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/File:MusaiFinal-specs.gif
Rex wrote:All of this also fits in nicely with the fact that we tend to see Gundam ships close distances very quickly in their relatively small combat ranges (Thanks, minovsky particles =P ) and they seem to do the ship equivalent of knife fighting an awful lot. Assuming the Salamis has difficulty engaging targets beyond 200 kilometers due to interference, enemy target maneuverability, crew generated vibration, and so on and so forth, a Salamis could close and flank on Musais with their narrower firing angles in under a minute from that distance.
In theory, maybe, but let's not forget that the main issue is that Musai ships were designed with MS warfare in mind, and are largely meant to just provide long range firing support in combat. And even if a Salamis mangled to break through, it would still be ata disadvantage while approaching from the front to a Musai, which has all its firepower concentrated in that direction and which would have a high chance of sinking the Salamis before it manages to flank it. That being said, operational-wise, I think the closest equivalent to a Salamis would actually be the Chibe class, which was developed around the same time and introduced the same year as the Salamis and Magellan, on U.C. 0070.
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

You're right. I don't know why I thought they lacked weapons. They obviously fired on the Oggo later on, too. I wonder what I was thinking of.. maybe the launched ships from Jaburo in the episode before?

Oh well.

As for the Salamis Kai from 0083, I do remember that they seemed like they were supposed to be fast. The fact that they so easily ran out of fuel gave me the impression that all that extra thrust did not come with much in the way of extra fuel either. I remembered that they were chasing someone, but 0083 has so many problems that even though that is what I re-watched before going through MS IGLOO, I don't remember too much about it. The characters really got under my skin, from Kou, to Nina, to.. ugh.. Monsha. I seem to recall the science being really... fuzzy.. compared to the rest of UC as well. Nothing felt like it fit what had already been established. If you remember the episode I'll go look at it again but to be honest I'm not too eager about subjecting myself to another run through of that.

Of course, MS IGLOO isn't with out its sins either.. I'm really certain that they inflated the sizes of their mobile suits, and it looks a little silly to see them towering over tanks with dinky cannons compared to their rifles, even though those cannons carry larger rounds and hit harder.

Still, it was the only instance I could think of where we know a rough ballpark figure of how far a Salamis traveled and had a rough time for it as well.

The Clop has never struck me as fast. The few instances we see of them moving, they don't seem to move any faster than any other ship. I often got the vibe of the clop and ra cailum being "Hey look, we're not titans! See these ships? They're not titans ships!" sort of propaganda vessels. Sure the ships are all capable vessels but the Londo Bell stuff just never seems to perform very well in a fight. But maybe I'm wrong. I should probably try hunting down all scenes of the Londo Bell ships fighting and see what I can figure out. They do fire their beam cannons awfully fast, if I recall, I'll give them that.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:You're right. I don't know why I thought they lacked weapons. They obviously fired on the Oggo later on, too. I wonder what I was thinking of.. maybe the launched ships from Jaburo in the episode before?
No, the ships that launched from Jaburo have all their weapons, though their turrets are facing backwards. The Salamis from episode 3 is the one you probably remember, though as I mentioned, we only get a quick look at it.
Rex wrote:As for the Salamis Kai from 0083, I do remember that they seemed like they were supposed to be fast. The fact that they so easily ran out of fuel gave me the impression that all that extra thrust did not come with much in the way of extra fuel either. I remembered that they were chasing someone, but 0083 has so many problems that even though that is what I re-watched before going through MS IGLOO, I don't remember too much about it. The characters really got under my skin, from Kou, to Nina, to.. ugh.. Monsha. I seem to recall the science being really... fuzzy.. compared to the rest of UC as well. Nothing felt like it fit what had already been established. If you remember the episode I'll go look at it again but to be honest I'm not too eager about subjecting myself to another run through of that.
It's not just the Salamis Kai that ran out of fuel, also the Magellan Kai class battleships. In short, they tried spending more propellant to catch up with the colony thinking that Cima intended to drop it on the moon, but when Cima started the colony's thrusters after convincing Anaheim to use their laser system, the EF fleet quickly came to realize that they didn't have enough propellant left to follow them to Earth's orbit. On the other hand, Delaz had already prepared resupply ships for the Cima fleet which refueled after they rendezvous with them. Meanwhile, the pursuing EF was left stranded and waiting for resupply ships to be dispatched.
Rex wrote:Of course, MS IGLOO isn't with out its sins either.. I'm really certain that they inflated the sizes of their mobile suits, and it looks a little silly to see them towering over tanks with dinky cannons compared to their rifles, even though those cannons carry larger rounds and hit harder.
The depictions of MS versus tanks doesn't seem overall wrong though. As you mention the 120mm Zaku machine gun should be smaller than the Type 61 Tanks's 155mm cannons, but Zakus are more heavily armored than the later and can survive direct hits. Let's also remember that as an option, a Zaku II can also borrow the 175mm cannon from a Magella Tank. Anyway, I gathered some pics from 1/144 gunpla which might help you visualize better the size difference these weapons:

http://dalong.net/review/hg/hu93/p/hu93_01.jpg
http://dalong.net/review/hg/hu93/p/hu93_36.jpg
http://dalong.net/review/ex/ex28/p/ex28_48.jpg
http://dalong.net/review/ex/ex28/p/ex28_50.jpg
http://dalong.net/review/hg/h34/p/h34_9.jpg

In comparison, some of the physics seen in the series makes you wonder how the crew of some the ships doesn't end up splattered inside the hull:

-The Salamis that ranges to escape after assaulting the Jotunheim at the beginning of the first episode makes a rather fast sharp turn that would probably have knocked over at least some the crew.

-In the beginning of episode 1 of MS Igloo 2 we see a rotating HLV maneuvering before proceeding to land on Earth. The catch is that realistically the g's from the spinning should have caused some of the soldiers inside to pass out, perhaps even killed some.

In conclusion, some of the odd ship maneuvers seen in MS Igloo shouldn't be realistically feasible, or at least not without potentially fatal consequences for the crew inside the ships. And with that said, I have little doubt that a Clop class should be faster and probably also more maneuverable than a Salamis Kai (Zeta refit).
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Well, heck. Now I have to go watch MS IGLOO again to see if I can hunt the weaponless Salamis down. I'm pretty sure I saw something with no guns on it. I'll check out episode 3 once this cold clears up and my head isn't so stuffy.

Looking back at it, the models and the show do match up pretty well.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_2_OjMiptksU/SiyV9 ... lstomp.jpg

But, I do still take issue with the size of the Type 61's guns compared to the Zaku's rifle.

The physics is probably the biggest sin that MS IGLOO commits, I agree. I often took issue with how much more easily the old Zakus jump around on Earth, and how fast they are in space. I feel like that would put too much strain on the pilot. I also was always dubious of the Zaku's ability to kick a Type 61 around like a soccer tank. The Zaku is not very heavy, and the Type 61 is so old, it's gotta weigh quite a bit with the older construction materials.. I always assumed closer to our Abrams. Do we know how much the Type 61 weighs?

The spinning HLV is a point of comedy for my friends and I LOL.

I'm not SO bothered by the Salamis pulling that hard adjustment early on. It's faster than I was expecting but White Base has pulled some crazy maneuvers in the past as well, including a barrel roll, and popping out from behind asteroids before zipping back behind them during a shoot out near Texas colony. I feel like anyone who wasn't holding on to something probably had some broken ribs or worse when it descended as quickly as it did. It's a much bigger ship, too. I think my problem with the Salamis and that maneuver only extends to the fact that it doesn't visually have any really big maneuvering thrusters to pull that off.

I don't really want to turn this in to "All the things MS IGLOO did wrong" though.. the list is pretty big.

As far as the Clop goes, I'd still have to gather scenes of it and compare before I come to any personal conclusions. That might be deserving its own thread.

As far as the Salamis '83 goes, do we know how long it took them to reach the moon from their destination? Any rough estimates? It'd be nice if we got a ballpark figure for that one too.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:As far as the Salamis '83 goes, do we know how long it took them to reach the moon from their destination? Any rough estimates? It'd be nice if we got a ballpark figure for that one too.
Mark might have what you are looking for on his timeline:

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/time ... ?year=0083

U.C. 0083.11.10
21:35 The Federation's remaining warships, led by the space battleship Toulon, depart Konpeitoh to pursue the runaway colony.
(Gundam 0083 episode 10)

U.C. 0083.11.11
10:40 The Delaz Fleet uses orbital transport lasers on the lunar surface to ignite the runaway colony's propellant. The colony's course is changed, and it begins falling toward Earth. The Federation fleet, its propellant exhausted, is unable to escape lunar orbit and continue pursuit. 37 hours and 16 minutes now remain until impact.
(Gundam 0083 episode 11)

U.C. 0083.11.12
13:51 The Federation fleet in lunar orbit completes resupply and resumes pursuit of the Delaz Fleet.
(Gundam 0083 episode 12)
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Wow. Nice.

Now to figure out Solomon's distance from the moon.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... agpot2.gif

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education ... lagrl5.gif

Solomon sits at L5, doesn't it?

It's been some years since I took any math back in high school. I'm not sure how to figure the distance from this alone. There's probably other variables that I'm not considering.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:Wow. Nice.

Now to figure out Solomon's distance from the moon.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... agpot2.gif

http://www-spof.gsfc.nasa.gov/Education ... lagrl5.gif

Solomon sits at L5, doesn't it?

It's been some years since I took any math back in high school. I'm not sure how to figure the distance from this alone. There's probably other variables that I'm not considering.
L5, the moon and Earth has the same distance between them, which is about 380,000km from each other.
The problem would be again, orbital physics, where you can't just leave one and accelerate to another without changing your orbit. Getting from L5 to Earth will be the easiest since L5 doesn't really have its own strong gravitational field and Earth is the greatest in all 3 of them. Getting from L5 to the moon or vice versa wouldn't be that simple since they are in the same orbit.

BTW, the Salamis probably didn't accelerate to get around the moon, but opposite, decelerated to get into orbit. It can drop the RB-79 from another orbit, change direction and altitude, and reeneter the battlefield in a short time with a velocity higher than orbital velocity, yet the time needed might still be much longer than your count, MS Igloo is not known for its time counting, the ships can turn 180 degrees in less than a second, which renders the g-forces at its end into the 3 digit zone and possibly kill everyone onboard. What we are seeing is likely a fastforwarded scene.
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

I'm sorry, Myth, but I really have a hard time believing that it's sped up. It's easier to just assume no one is in either end of the ship, and that the crew is mostly located in towards the center. There's probably no one past the forward guns.

I also don't think they can turn 180 degrees in less than a second. As fast as the Salamis can turn in MS IGLOO. It still takes it longer to do something like that than a second. It took them around a full second to do a 90 degree turn when they wanted to do a course correction. So I presume it would take roughly two full seconds to do a 180 degree turn.

I presume that everything in a combat scene is happening in real time unless it's made clear that it isn't.

We see them drop the Balls before changing course. They bail on their trainees and then accelerate away. I'm not going to just start rewriting the entire scene to fit a new narrative. We go with what we see. Or I do, anyways.

The reality is that we see them turn hard away from the Jotunheim. We don't see them completely turn around but they came back around to hit them from behind. So they probably did at one point slow down, but only because they were turning. All of their actions were hasty and a little clumsy, so I'm guessing they were doing everything as fast as they could because they were afraid.

I see not sped up footage, but characters who are afraid so they're pushing their machines to their limits, whether or not its safe for them or others on board.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

I agree with Mythsearcher here: some of the turns are simply too unrealistic.

It's not only a matter of whether the crew can survive or not the turn, but whether the ship can perform the turn so quick in the first place and if I'm not mistaken, if the hull of the ship is also able of not breaking apart from the two g-forces involved on a quick turn: the one that began the turn movement and then the one that suddenly stopped the turning.

Citing Gundam Seed again, I'm pretty sure than there was at least one scene in the animation involving a ZAFT ship showing how slow such a maneuver actually has to be despite being in combat, again, not only for the sake of crew's survival, but also for the integrity of the ship's hull. There's also the fact that most ships simply don't have big enough verniers/thrusters for performing such quick turns anyway.

In part this is also the reason why most Musai class ships are so vulnerable despite being light cruisers like the Salamis: they just can't turn around quick enough to protect their rear or bottom which has no weapons for defending themselves.
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

I think I'm more likely to err on that side of what we see is what we get.

I'm not particularly interested in trying to figure out UC ship abilities by comparing to SEED. It seems like apples and oranges to me.

At the moment, while it seems extreme to me, I am content with the Salamis being able to pull off a maneuver like that. There are instances in MSG of ships effectively knife fighting with each other, and I just don't see how that would work unless they were impressively agile to begin with.

It is true that we never see the Musai pull off any impressive maneuvers. It may be that it focuses on speed over agility. It does not have what I would call a particularly sturdy looking frame, and I agree it might rip itself apart if it tried anything like that. Federation designs seem to place some importance on it, though. More than once, we see White Base pull off maneuvers where you wonder if it really should have the impressive structural capabilities that it exhibits in pulling said maneuvers off.

I think it's best to compare the intended rolls of the vessels with real life vehicles. The EFSF ships had the modern tank design thought process. Fire power. Armor. Mobility.

They have to be able to put their fire power out in any director. They must be protected, but they must still be agile and fast enough to avoid return fire. They were built intended to encounter similar designs.

The Musai is more like a modern self propelled artillery gun.

It only needs to be able to project a lot of fire power down range as a support ship. It's not supposed to have to worry too much about return fire because there are forward troops doing the main fighting. Their guns are for providing cover or blasting things the forward troops (in this case, the suits) can't get through. They supposedly are able to engage further than the common Salamis and they hit harder from the front than any EFSF ship, as far as I can tell. They are not designed to engage and brawl. They do not need to be able to fire in any direction (although in theory, missiles give them some omni-directional capabilities). They do not need to be able to dance around the battle field. They get to where they need to be as fast as possible. Deploy their suits. Begin firing.

That's just my personal view, based on what we've seen and comparing to real life.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Actually, I just found something very interesting:

http://www.gundam0083.net/machine/12.html

It turns out that the Salamis Kai from 0083 actually keeps its original thruster and supplements it with 4 more thrusters. Considering that the Salamis Kai from Zeta also adds 2 more thrusters, I'm actually starting to think that the original Salamis may actually not be such a fast ship to begin with.

For comparison, the Musai Kai and Chibe Kai from Zeta don't have any new thrusters, and the same is true for the Magellan Kai from 0083. Taking this into consideration, perhaps the original Salamis is actually supposed be one of the slowest ship from the OYW.

Complicating matters, the Chibe which originally was considered to be a slow ship, specially compared to the Musai, might have become faster without us noticing: in recent years this perception seems to have changed, starting with the MS Igloo version which increased the number of thrusters from 5 to 7 and the version from The Origin openly mentioning that it's capable of high speed movement. The Chibe from MS Igloo is used as the base for the Chibe Kai from the Unicorn novels, just like in the case of the Musai. And if we also consider the larger rear section of the Chibe from 0080, it would seem that there's a strong push to retcon the Chibe into a faster class of warship.

In such case, I'm now inclined to think that both Salamis Kai upgrades may actually point towards the Salamis suddenly becoming the slowest cruiser from the OYW, which is why it was in need of a mobility improvement in order to keep up, while other upgraded ships don't seem to require a similar upgrade.

As for its maneuverability, I think we forgot to consider two important details that further complicate things:

-Starting with the originals series and going all the way to CCA, ship turrets are shown to be able to accommodate a gunner. In the case of the EF which is already replying enough personnel to operate two sub bridges, and who are also in a disadvantage against MS, I think it's extremely likely that all turrets are manned.

-Just like the Magellan, the original Salamis has not one, but 3 bridges, with the two secondary bridges being located at the side of the ship where the double-barreled mega particle cannons of the Salamis Kai were attached to.

These two situations mean that there are more crew members left in vulnerable spots of the ship, exposed to any major G-forces exerted on the ship, a situation that affects not only the Salamis, but also the Magellan.
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

I think we're wandering too far in to speculation territory. An increase in thrusters to me, when it comes to different artists, means that's just how they decide to draw it. This doesn't change the vehicles performance any. It may be that these are supposed to represent a number of fuel efficient thrusters instead of just a couple of big powerful ones, or something else like that. It might just be more aesthetically pleasing. There's no real further discussion that can be had about the Chibe besides guess work concerning this.

As for the Salamis and the '83 version, I thought I'd point out that the Magellan has all of its thrusters replaced with models twice as big in its refit. We can assume that the whole of the EFSF fleet has a larger emphasis on speed. Maybe it's to chase colonies.. which failed.. and why we see them back down from that. Maybe it's to better close in on monster ships like the Dolos and Gwazine that seem content to sit back and provide support fire and don't do much maneuvering. There's no way to know WHY, but we can definitely see that BOTH ships have speed upgrades.

From this alone, we can not conclude that the Salamis was the slowest ship in the OYW. That "medal" probably belongs to the Jotunheim and her sister ships. Unlike the Chibe they were not refit as extensively for combat, and their slowness is a major point in the plot repeatedly when faced with enemy opposition.

Following this, I'd say the other supply ships are probably not very fast. We rarely if ever see Columbus class ships keeping up in a moving fleet battle. The Jotunheim is able to move with Papuas, although if I remember she was the caboose. We also know the Papua was pushed as a missile boat, and these vessels tend not to be fast or maneuverable since their main role is to dump fire power in one direction.

I can't comment on the Pazock's speed.

The Dolos was also equipped with under powered thrusters, as it was always intended to be a second line ship to play the role of area denial, instead of being an offensive spread head.

I assume the Salamis was not as fast as the Magellan, so she may not have been as speedy to begin with as the Musai and Zanzibar ships, but that's as far as I'd take my guess work with out doing some comparing.

As for the Zeta model Salamis, well, it's been 7 years since the end of the OYW. There's newer model ships out there in the EFSF. They KNOW the Zeon are making new model ships too. So what we have here is an aging design, with an aging drive. They want it to be able to keep up with modern ships because the EFSF has repeatedly demonstrated that it likes a modular fleet which can swap ships in to different groups for different roles. Ships that are not easy to do this with, like the Nahel Argama or the White Base, get thrown out on their own or with little escort. So the Salamis needs to be able to keep up witht hose new ships.

It also needs to be able to perform well against the new Zeon ships, and be able to chase them down since the EFSF still intends to destroy Zeon.. or rather Neo-Zeon now.

It may also be that a more powerful power plant is in the Salamis now, since it has much larger guns than it did before, mounted where the old side bridges used to be. They're much bigger than the '83 model's guns too. They look really dangerous. They may just be using this extra power to squeeze out more speed too with new thrusters mounted on the side. Or it may be to handle the extra mass from the expanded bow, the carried mobile suits, and those big heavy new turrets.

So, I'm going to conclude that there's no reason to assume the Salamis was quite slow compared to other OYW ships. Or at least, it can easily be countered, as neither side really has much evidence beyond guesswork to stand on.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:An increase in thrusters to me, when it comes to different artists, means that's just how they decide to draw it. This doesn't change the vehicles performance any. It may be that these are supposed to represent a number of fuel efficient thrusters instead of just a couple of big powerful ones, or something else like that. It might just be more aesthetically pleasing. There's no real further discussion that can be had about the Chibe besides guess work concerning this.

As for the Salamis and the '83 version, I thought I'd point out that the Magellan has all of its thrusters replaced with models twice as big in its refit. We can assume that the whole of the EFSF fleet has a larger emphasis on speed. Maybe it's to chase colonies.. which failed.. and why we see them back down from that. Maybe it's to better close in on monster ships like the Dolos and Gwazine that seem content to sit back and provide support fire and don't do much maneuvering. There's no way to know WHY, but we can definitely see that BOTH ships have speed upgrades.
There are several problems here:

-The little info we have on the Magellan Kai indicates that the only upgrades it had were the replacement of the two side bridges with extra AA turrets and that all AA turrets were converted into laser types. There's no mention of an speed increase which you assume come from the larger thrusters, while at the same time you are unwilling to consider the same possibility for the new version of the Chibe which has the same 5 thrusters as the original plus 2 more, one on top and one below the central thruster.

But the biggest problem here is what you said: "when it comes to different artists, means that's just how they decide to draw it". Here are images of the Magellan from MS Igloo and the Magellan Kai from 0083:

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/gun ... 0621140343
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/gun ... 0903124547

As you can observe, the size of the thrusters is basically the same for both designs, which means that in this case we can indeed attribute the size difference of the thrusters to the artist, which means that the Magellan Kai didn't receive a speed upgrade as you suggest. This goes in line with the official information that doesn't mention such upgrade either.

Therefore we can conclude that the Magellan didn't need a speed improvement, nor a firepower one, which is why it didn't get new weapons. It only received an upgraded AA system which it did need after the original was insufficient for defending the ship from MS. On the other hand, the Salamis Kai (0083( clearly received an upgrade in both firepower and number of thrusters, which does point towards a problem of insufficient firepower and speed which needed to be addressed.

On the other hand, you mention that the two extra thrusters of the Chibe from MS Igloo don't add any speed despite claiming that slightly bigger thrusters you thought you saw on the Magellan Kai do provide such increase. You also mentioned that it may simply indicate a more fuel efficient design, which you could argue if 7 smaller thrusters replaced 5 larger ones, but that si not the case as the Chibe retains the same 5 thrusters from the original design PLUS another two. As far as we can tell, this is basically the same kind of speed improvement you had no trouble accepting for the Salamis Kai (Zeta).
Rex wrote:From this alone, we can not conclude that the Salamis was the slowest ship in the OYW. That "medal" probably belongs to the Jotunheim and her sister ships. Unlike the Chibe they were not refit as extensively for combat, and their slowness is a major point in the plot repeatedly when faced with enemy opposition.
I didn't say it was the slowest ship from the OYW, I said it was the slowest CRUISER, a classification that only includes the Salamis, Musai, Zanzibar and Chibe. Based on what I have explained so far, I sustain that remark based on the evidence available.
Rex wrote:As for the Zeta model Salamis, well, it's been 7 years since the end of the OYW. There's newer model ships out there in the EFSF. They KNOW the Zeon are making new model ships too. So what we have here is an aging design, with an aging drive. They want it to be able to keep up with modern ships because the EFSF has repeatedly demonstrated that it likes a modular fleet which can swap ships in to different groups for different roles. Ships that are not easy to do this with, like the Nahel Argama or the White Base, get thrown out on their own or with little escort. So the Salamis needs to be able to keep up witht hose new ships.
Actually they didn't know if Axis had the capabilities to build new ships: as it turns out Mark has pointed out that the Gwanban class ships, the sole "new" type of ship that came with the Axis fleet in 0083 were actually completed by the end of the OYW, but they weren't ready in time to participate in the final battle.

Also, your point about the Salamis Kai needing to keep up with the Pegasus and Agama classes is moot: the Pegasus class is discontinued by 0083 and the Argama was developed by the AEUG, not the EF. Quite the opposite, the Salamis Kai seems to have been designed to operate only with ships of its own class, specially in the case of the regular EF forces whose standard fleet formation doesn't include the Titans exclusive Alexandria class.

I may also point out that compared to the ambitious 0083 Salamis Kai, the Zeta variant seems lacking and potentially the result of cuts on the EF military budget, or more specifically on the budget of the main regular EF forces, while the Titans hoarded the rest for the research and development of their own weapons.
Rex wrote:It also needs to be able to perform well against the new Zeon ships, and be able to chase them down since the EFSF still intends to destroy Zeon.. or rather Neo-Zeon now.
Again, the EF had no information at all on new Zeon ships and the Axis fleet from 0083 only seemed to confirm that they hadn't been able to develop any new ships. Even the AEUG which had Quattro's information from Axis were surprised to see that Axis had more ships at Axis, which they saw fleeing just before Axis crashed into the Gate of Zedan.

It was after the Gryps Conflict and the 1st Neo Zeon War that the EF realized that the anti-EF factions did posses newer and better warships, which lead to the development of the Ra Calium and Clop classes, the later in particular as an intended direct replacement for the aging Salamis and whose main improvement seems to be greater mobility in the form of a six thrusters propulsion system similar to the one used on the Alexandria and Ra Calium classes.

The more we dig into, the more it seems that the Salamis did have a mobility problem:

-Both Salamis Kai upgrades included the addition of extra thrusters, which does seem like a clear indication of what does the EF thought that the Salamis was lacking.
-It's successor, the Clop, was built with the same six thruster arrangement as newer warships, while having lesser firepower, which again does seem like a clear indication of what does the EF thought that its current main warship was lacking.
-Other ships such as the Magellan Kai, Musai Kai and Chibe Kai didn't seem to need any additional and/or better thrusters, indicating that the speed of their original versions was good enough.

Again, it may not be the slowest OYW warship (which I never said it was), but if we consider the retcons made to the Chibe class, it at least has become the slowest cruiser from the OYW and its mobility does seem to have become a point of concern for the EF, which came up with different plans to improve in that area, and eventually design its successor to have a greater emphasis on that one aspect even at the expense of losing some firepower compared to the Salamis Kai.
Rex
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

As you can observe, the size of the thrusters is basically the same for both designs, which means that in this case we can indeed attribute the size difference of the thrusters to the artist, which means that the Magellan Kai didn't receive a speed upgrade as you suggest. This goes in line with the official information that doesn't mention such upgrade either.
The artists for 0083 clearly seemed to think the ships needed bigger thrusters. I would say that they originally intended for the Magellan to have a speed increase, but as of MS IGLOO, perhaps the design as been retconned so that it always had the large propulsion block. Maybe to make the lack of mention in improved speed make more sense.

I'm curious if the mechanical designer for the MS IGLOO ships is the same as the one for 0083. That would clear up things a lot for me, personally.

I was personally going off the look of the original Magellans from MSG and comparing to their enhanced appearance in 0083, as opposed to comparing 0083 and MS IGLOO.

In this case, we still come to the conclusion that the Chibe, like the Magellan, doesn't get faster just because they changed how it looks. All they did was retcon its appearance.

I don't really have much of an opinion on the Chibe's speed. They were originally cargo ships, weren't they? So they're likely NOT slow. Maybe not agile, but I doubt slow. That's as far as my thoughts go on them.
On the other hand, you mention that the two extra thrusters of the Chibe from MS Igloo don't add any speed despite claiming that slightly bigger thrusters you thought you saw on the Magellan Kai do provide such increase. You also mentioned that it may simply indicate a more fuel efficient design, which you could argue if 7 smaller thrusters replaced 5 larger ones, but that si not the case as the Chibe retains the same 5 thrusters from the original design PLUS another two. As far as we can tell, this is basically the same kind of speed improvement you had no trouble accepting for the Salamis Kai (Zeta).
That's because with the remodeled Chibe, it is an artist retconning the look of a vessel, but not giving any indication of altered performance. In canon, it's still the same ship. With the Zeta model Sally, it is an in canon enhanced ship design meant to improve on the original. Which means either the added thrusters are meant to maintain speed after weight has been added on, or they are meant to make the ship faster over all.

In other words, it's about reading intent from the creators. The suggestion on thruster performance was meant to explain a possible thought process in the artist's mind.
I didn't say it was the slowest ship from the OYW, I said it was the slowest CRUISER, a classification that only includes the Salamis, Musai, Zanzibar and Chibe. Based on what I have explained so far, I sustain that remark based on the evidence available.
I was responding specifically to..
For comparison, the Musai Kai and Chibe Kai from Zeta don't have any new thrusters, and the same is true for the Magellan Kai from 0083. Taking this into consideration, perhaps the original Salamis is actually supposed be one of the slowest ship from the OYW.
While you do say cruiser later on, it was the ship comment I meant to address. I should have quoted it. I'm sorry for the confusion. I probably should have realized later when you used cruiser that this is what you meant.

In my experience, it is often accepted that bigger ships are able to pull off greater speeds in space. To the point that I've seen arguments against the use of space fighters in real life because they will never have a speed advantage over the big ships. I don't know how much water that holds, and I am not interested in debating it because I don't know enough, but I see it often enough that I generally assume big flag ship type vessels like Magellans to be faster than the more run of the mill, smaller ships, like the Salamis. So I was fine with conceding that it might be slower than most of the other OYW cruisers and battle ships.
Actually they didn't know if Axis had the capabilities to build new ships: as it turns out Mark has pointed out that the Gwanban class ships, the sole "new" type of ship that came with the Axis fleet in 0083 were actually completed by the end of the OYW, but they weren't ready in time to participate in the final battle.
I'm pretty sure the Federation was spying on Zeon. We see a lot of cloak and dagger stuff during Char's Deleted Affair. It's not exactly hard to find Axis, after all.

That being said, they did get surprised by their appearance in Zeta, so, maybe not.
Also, your point about the Salamis Kai needing to keep up with the Pegasus and Agama classes is moot:
I think you misread what I said. I wasn't saying that they had to keep up with them. I was saying that the Federation has a habit of not properly utilizing ships like that. Their strategists don't seem to like them very much, probably why so few ships of those types are ever built. They like cookie cutter ships. The Salamis needed to be able to, speed wise, work with the rest of their new ship designs like the Alexandria class. So it needed the upgrade in fire power and speed or else it wouldn't be able to function in whatever role its task force was assigned, because they seem to like being able to apply ANY role to ANY task force as needed.. and ships which are not easy to fit in to a group get left on their own, like the Nahel Argama. The Salamis was at risk of this same fate if it wasn't upgraded to be able to perform with newer ships.
The more we dig into, the more it seems that the Salamis did have a mobility problem:
I think any mobility problems it had likely were due to the age of the vessel and its hardware. I think you're stretching with the thrusters count, I really do. I mean, maybe you're right that it's faster, but we don't really have anything hard to base it on. Thruster counts don't mean anything when we don't know how powerful they are.

Since I'm of the opinion that EFSF ships were more agile than Zeon ships, and didn't have as huge of a focus on speed, and that the Magellan was likely faster than the Salamis, it would seem we're kind of in agreement that the Salamis wasn't as fast as many of the OYW ships. Which means if we can settle on a speed for the Salamis, we can settle on a minimum base line which we can assume most other ships are faster than.

Which I think makes figures on the Salamis more important than before.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Rex wrote:I'm sorry, Myth, but I really have a hard time believing that it's sped up. It's easier to just assume no one is in either end of the ship, and that the crew is mostly located in towards the center. There's probably no one past the forward guns.

I also don't think they can turn 180 degrees in less than a second. As fast as the Salamis can turn in MS IGLOO. It still takes it longer to do something like that than a second. It took them around a full second to do a 90 degree turn when they wanted to do a course correction. So I presume it would take roughly two full seconds to do a 180 degree turn.

I presume that everything in a combat scene is happening in real time unless it's made clear that it isn't.

We see them drop the Balls before changing course. They bail on their trainees and then accelerate away. I'm not going to just start rewriting the entire scene to fit a new narrative. We go with what we see. Or I do, anyways.

The reality is that we see them turn hard away from the Jotunheim. We don't see them completely turn around but they came back around to hit them from behind. So they probably did at one point slow down, but only because they were turning. All of their actions were hasty and a little clumsy, so I'm guessing they were doing everything as fast as they could because they were afraid.

I see not sped up footage, but characters who are afraid so they're pushing their machines to their limits, whether or not its safe for them or others on board.
The problem is the the bridge(actually, all of the 3 bridges) is located pretty close to one end of the ship, so there's no way around saying no one is there.

g-forces involved here is simple, even if we take the almost best case scenario here, only bridges are manned, and they are about 80m from the centre(a Salamis is about 288m long, half of that is 144m, the bridges are located at about 1/5 from the back end of the ship, which is around 86m from the centre) using your 90degrees/sec turn time, we still get over 20g on the bridge, without even factoring in the sudden stop and full speed get away linear g-force here.
If we talk about the Salamis getting away after dropping the Balls, they didn't turn, but accelerated to about 3 times its hull height in less than a seconds, AND it actually accelerated downwards to get some velocity in that direction before accelerated upwards, so that's actually something like accelerating from 50m/s downward to 150m/s upwards in a second, the acceleration is more like 200m/s^2, also around 20g, just in this axis, it accelerated sideways as well, with pretty much the same range. We also see them having quite a full thrust in the main thrusters, so they are also accelerating in the forward direction. The resultant g-force will likely be in the 30~50g range.(even if we take the forward g-force to be the same as the sideway ones)

MS Igloo is not really a good sample to look at UC physics, the director is an extreme right wing militarist that used Zeons to promote militarism(already showing trends in 0083)) and to make the Feddies look like fools(the Salamis "talking" like they are street gangs with only a single "pilot" on each is a good example of this)

BTW, the UC ships design utilizes most of the internal space, there's no way no one is in other parts of the ship, at least you have people in the engine blocks to monitor the situation there, you still get the engineers and mechanics there in newer ships like the Argama and Nahel Argama and even Ra Calum. The turrets are actually manned stations(see Whitebase) since Minovsky particles rendered the radars useless and thus they need to have people to aim the guns.
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Gelgoog Jager
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

I want to point out that the Chibe didn't just get 2 extra thrusters, but actually several new features:

-A third 3-barrel mega particle cannon below the engine block on the rear, symmetrical with the one on top.
-The 12 missile launchers were moved from the very front of the ship a bit back to the sides, a decision most likely influenced by the Chibe Kai, which originally had to reduce the number of these to 8 in order to make space for a flat section which was added symmetrical to the MS catapult. With this change, the Chibe Kai base don the MS Igloo design retains all 12 missile launchers.
-The six lower machine guns (3 on each side) were moved to the top of the hull, providing better protection for the bridge area.
-Meanwhile, the space previously occupied by these is now used by options fuel tanks, which the Chibe can carry six (3 on each side).
-There's what seems to be a secondary bridge behind the main bridge and in front of the top rear main gun.
-Between the bridge and the new sub-bridge there seems to be a hollow area. My guess is that much like the MS Igloo version of the Musai, the Chibe now has a MS retrieval hatch.
-The ship got a new official length spec of 264.4m (previously 235m).

Furthermore, its not the only ship that got new features:

Gwazine:
-Number of secondary machine guns went up from 10 to 18, two now place on top of the ship between the front and middle main guns.
-Number of fuel tanks increased from 8 to 12.
The ship has a secondary bridge behind the rear main gun.
-The ship now has what seem like air intakes below the wings, like those of a Zanzibar. I guess they wanted to reference the fact that the Gwazine was supposed to operate on Earth's atmosphere, although, as we know the lone Gwazine that attempted to re-enter the atmosphere didn't survive reentry.
-The windows are now far smaller.
-Overall changes in ship proportions.

Musai:
-Number of small missile launchers went up from 10 to 16.
-Musai now has a MS retrieval hatch in from of the bridge. MS hangar can fit 4 MS in horizontal position.
-the above results on a longer hangar, but also shorter height-wise.
-Hangar hatch no longer uses the entire hexagonal rear wall, only a rectangular section.
-Can optionally mount 3 fuel tanks below the MS hangar.
-We can actually see individual thrusters on the legs of the Musai.
-Number of protruded vents on the front increased form 4 to 6.

Salamis:
-Increased number of machine guns from 6 to 8, two are placed below the sub-bridges providing bottom defense.
-The machine guns in front of the bridge got upgraded from 2-barrel machine guns to 3-barrel ones.
-Side missile launchers got upgraded from 6-tube ones to 8-tube ones.

Magellan:
-Big AA-defenses upgrade, from 14 machine guns to 22: 4 at the bottom of the ship, 12 around the sub-bridges, 4 below the main bridge and 2 at the sides of the main bridge.
-Larger thrusters similar to the Magellan Kai.

Considering all the changes these ships underwent, I'm pretty certain that fi the artist decided to draw 2 more thrusters on the Chibe, they were meant to increase the speed of the ship, much how all these other upgrades improved the capabilities of the other ships.

By the way, the Chibe was originally classified as a battleship when first built. By the OYW it has been reclassified as a heavy cruiser.

In regards to the difference between ships and cruisers, I'm inclined to think that heavy cruisers and battleships like the Chibe, Gwazine and Magellan may be faster, or rather have higher acceleration, but their size and the weight of their thicker armor means that they turn around slower, while light cruisers like the Musai, Salamis and Zanzibar may be on the opposite end of the spectrum. That being said, some maneuvers like many of those seen in MS Igloo remain unrealistic for the reasons Mythsearcher and I have mentioned previously.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Just how fast can that little Salamis go?

Gelgoog Jager wrote: In regards to the difference between ships and cruisers, I'm inclined to think that heavy cruisers and battleships like the Chibe, Gwazine and Magellan may be faster, or rather have higher acceleration, but their size and the weight of their thicker armor means that they turn around slower, while light cruisers like the Musai, Salamis and Zanzibar may be on the opposite end of the spectrum. That being said, some maneuvers like many of those seen in MS Igloo remain unrealistic for the reasons Mythsearcher and I have mentioned previously.
I'd say in IRL cruisers and battleships mainly differ in size instead of function.
Cruisers are smaller and thus more agile, but obviously less defended and with weaker weapons(especially the treaty era ones, which used tonnage and diameter of main guns to dictate their classification)
Battleships are simply bigger and more powerful in terms of weapons, have the payload for more armour, but usually slower(its just harder to push a larger ship)

Heavy cruisers are the larger and more armoured ones in cruiser, light ones are just smaller cruisers but still bigger than destroyers.
UK got battlecruisers, which would be equivalent to fast battleship, with less armour yet same level of fire power than a battleship.

In UC its much more chaotic, one can kinda understand since space works quite differently than sea, but similar principles work.
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