Possible explaination for double-barrel beam cannons

[False Prophet]

The EFSF seems to have a love for double-barrel beam cannons for a long time, starting with the Full Armor Gundam and culminated with the ZZ Gundam. Is there any explaination to this? Why do they want double-barrel beam cannons on a heavily-armored, heavily-armed unit? In real life, when they advertising double-barrel pistols and rifles (like the AF2011-A1 and Gilboa Snake respectively), they talk about increasing lethality and hit probability, but I doubt these parameters are increased substantially like they say.

[MythSearcher]

The EFSF seems to have a love for double-barrel beam cannons for a long time, starting with the Full Armor Gundam and culminated with the ZZ Gundam. Is there any explaination to this? Why do they want double-barrel beam cannons on a heavily-armored, heavily-armed unit? In real life, when they advertising double-barrel pistols and rifles (like the AF2011-A1 and Gilboa Snake respectively), they talk about increasing lethality and hit probability, but I doubt these parameters are increased substantially like they say.

If you fire 2 projectiles in the same general direction, you roughly get double the chance of hitting and also have a chance of hitting both projectiles on the same target and dealing roughly double damage.

And everything has a trade off.

This is pretty much the same chain of thought of double, triple and even quadruple barrels on warship main and AA turrets, and also multiple guns installed on fighters.
When you have a low hit rate, increasing the guns firing towards the same general direction is a good way of increasing chance of a hit.

You do have a decreased turn rate because obviously it is heavier, and of course charging requires double the power/time, but firing 2 shots at the same time and not one after another shortens the time you have to keep your gun pointed towards the target, which is also a trade off(so you miss both shots if you fired at the wrong time).

Of course you can probably power up a single barrel gun that doubles the power rating and get a more powerful shot, but you might not have a readily available one you development team can conjure up on demand. At the same tech level, once you reach an optimal power, anything more than that isn't going to straight up give you a proportional increase in damaging power.(So giving it double the power input will not give you double the power output desired) Also you don't get a double fire where you get a higher chance of hitting. Also, a single barrel with higher fire power might just be more expensive than 2 most efficient guns.

[Seto Kaiba]

The EFSF seems to have a love for double-barrel beam cannons for a long time, starting with the Full Armor Gundam and culminated with the ZZ Gundam. Is there any explaination to this? Why do they want double-barrel beam cannons on a heavily-armored, heavily-armed unit? [...]

If they were smart, the reason would be to increase the beam weapon's rate of fire by staggering the firing of the double-barreled beam rifle's barrels.

Such as it is, they're usually depicted firing simultaneously so the only explanation is doubling the damage, possibly because the design couldn't accommodate a single barrel firing at twice the power.

The Wing Gundam Zero at least had a small amount of practicality behind its twin beam rifle in that it was capable of separating into two single-barreled beam rifles that the Gundam could handle and aim separately.

[...] In real life, when they advertising double-barrel pistols and rifles (like the AF2011-A1 and Gilboa Snake respectively), they talk about increasing lethality and hit probability, but I doubt these parameters are increased substantially like they say.

In reality, "double-barreled" firearms are a throwback to before the advances in technology in the early 19th century by Samuel Colt and others made repeating firearms a practical option for the average joe.

Back then, the standard rifle or pistol was a single-shot muzzle-loading cap-and-ball affair able to fire just one shot before needing to be reloaded. The only practical way to make a multi-shot weapon was to have multiple, independently-triggered barrels that could fire their single shots one after another. Designs like the volley gun, pepperbox revolver, and various designs of fowling gun emerged out of the desire for guns which could fire multiple shots before needing to be reloaded. Later variations on the idea leveraged the multiple barrels to do things like provide shots with different effective ranges by varying the choke (as on many sporting double-barrel shotguns) or to handle multiple types of ammo (as on the LeMat revolver, an interesting piece whose main barrel fired .42 or .36 and had a second barrel for a 20 gauge shotgun shell).

The introduction of reliable repeating weapons in the late 1830s made most applications of multi-barreled weapons obsolete. At least, until Dr. Richard J. Gatling decided he could make things deader by inventing the eponymous "Gatling Gun" - a hand-cranked rotary cannon - in 1861.

Nowadays, multi-barreled firearms outside of military rotary cannons are mostly sporting shotguns made to have different chokes on each barrel or impractical garbage like the AF2011-A1 made for ammosexuals and action movies.

[MythSearcher]

If they were smart, the reason would be to increase the beam weapon's rate of fire by staggering the firing of the double-barreled beam rifle's barrels.

Such as it is, they're usually depicted firing simultaneously so the only explanation is doubling the damage, possibly because the design couldn't accommodate a single barrel firing at twice the power.

The Wing Gundam Zero at least had a small amount of practicality behind its twin beam rifle in that it was capable of separating into two single-barreled beam rifles that the Gundam could handle and aim separately.

In reality, "double-barreled" firearms are a throwback to before the advances in technology in the early 19th century by Samuel Colt and others made repeating firearms a practical option for the average joe.

Back then, the standard rifle or pistol was a single-shot muzzle-loading cap-and-ball affair able to fire just one shot before needing to be reloaded. The only practical way to make a multi-shot weapon was to have multiple, independently-triggered barrels that could fire their single shots one after another. Designs like the volley gun, pepperbox revolver, and various designs of fowling gun emerged out of the desire for guns which could fire multiple shots before needing to be reloaded. Later variations on the idea leveraged the multiple barrels to do things like provide shots with different effective ranges by varying the choke (as on many sporting double-barrel shotguns) or to handle multiple types of ammo (as on the LeMat revolver, an interesting piece whose main barrel fired .42 or .36 and had a second barrel for a 20 gauge shotgun shell).

The introduction of reliable repeating weapons in the late 1830s made most applications of multi-barreled weapons obsolete. At least, until Dr. Richard J. Gatling decided he could make things deader by inventing the eponymous "Gatling Gun" - a hand-cranked rotary cannon - in 1861.

Nowadays, multi-barreled firearms outside of military rotary cannons are mostly sporting shotguns made to have different chokes on each barrel or impractical garbage like the AF2011-A1 made for ammosexuals and action movies.

Well, considering the mega beam cannon isn't that developed and they do need a way to fire it faster(with exceptions like the beam machine guns that only give a pretty poor power rating and likely not one hit kill weapons like the rest of slow firing ones)

I'd also look at it more like the guns on warships and fighters, where you simply have other constraints instead of a human handheld weapon.

I do wonder if the ones in UC are able to fire in single barrel mode, I don't recall seeing that and they seems to only have a "More is better" mind set when designing.

[False Prophet]

The EFSF seems to have a love for double-barrel beam cannons for a long time, starting with the Full Armor Gundam and culminated with the ZZ Gundam. Is there any explaination to this? Why do they want double-barrel beam cannons on a heavily-armored, heavily-armed unit? [...]

If they were smart, the reason would be to increase the beam weapon's rate of fire by staggering the firing of the double-barreled beam rifle's barrels.

Such as it is, they're usually depicted firing simultaneously so the only explanation is doubling the damage, possibly because the design couldn't accommodate a single barrel firing at twice the power.

The Wing Gundam Zero at least had a small amount of practicality behind its twin beam rifle in that it was capable of separating into two single-barreled beam rifles that the Gundam could handle and aim separately.

[...] In real life, when they advertising double-barrel pistols and rifles (like the AF2011-A1 and Gilboa Snake respectively), they talk about increasing lethality and hit probability, but I doubt these parameters are increased substantially like they say.

In reality, "double-barreled" firearms are a throwback to before the advances in technology in the early 19th century by Samuel Colt and others made repeating firearms a practical option for the average joe.

Back then, the standard rifle or pistol was a single-shot muzzle-loading cap-and-ball affair able to fire just one shot before needing to be reloaded. The only practical way to make a multi-shot weapon was to have multiple, independently-triggered barrels that could fire their single shots one after another. Designs like the volley gun, pepperbox revolver, and various designs of fowling gun emerged out of the desire for guns which could fire multiple shots before needing to be reloaded. Later variations on the idea leveraged the multiple barrels to do things like provide shots with different effective ranges by varying the choke (as on many sporting double-barrel shotguns) or to handle multiple types of ammo (as on the LeMat revolver, an interesting piece whose main barrel fired .42 or .36 and had a second barrel for a 20 gauge shotgun shell).

The introduction of reliable repeating weapons in the late 1830s made most applications of multi-barreled weapons obsolete. At least, until Dr. Richard J. Gatling decided he could make things deader by inventing the eponymous "Gatling Gun" - a hand-cranked rotary cannon - in 1861.

Nowadays, multi-barreled firearms outside of military rotary cannons are mostly sporting shotguns made to have different chokes on each barrel or impractical garbage like the AF2011-A1 made for ammosexuals and action movies.

Weren't pepperbox and LeMat revolvers are just terrible at their jobs? Their designs were far from ergonomic, the recoil was too much for black powder weapon, and the accuracy was horrendous. Having the barrels firing alternatively like the old twin-barrel shotguns (either with or without two triggers) is much more practical.

The EFSF seems to have a love for double-barrel beam cannons for a long time, starting with the Full Armor Gundam and culminated with the ZZ Gundam. Is there any explaination to this? Why do they want double-barrel beam cannons on a heavily-armored, heavily-armed unit? In real life, when they advertising double-barrel pistols and rifles (like the AF2011-A1 and Gilboa Snake respectively), they talk about increasing lethality and hit probability, but I doubt these parameters are increased substantially like they say.

If you fire 2 projectiles in the same general direction, you roughly get double the chance of hitting and also have a chance of hitting both projectiles on the same target and dealing roughly double damage.

And everything has a trade off.

This is pretty much the same chain of thought of double, triple and even quadruple barrels on warship main and AA turrets, and also multiple guns installed on fighters.
When you have a low hit rate, increasing the guns firing towards the same general direction is a good way of increasing chance of a hit.

You do have a decreased turn rate because obviously it is heavier, and of course charging requires double the power/time, but firing 2 shots at the same time and not one after another shortens the time you have to keep your gun pointed towards the target, which is also a trade off(so you miss both shots if you fired at the wrong time).

Of course you can probably power up a single barrel gun that doubles the power rating and get a more powerful shot, but you might not have a readily available one you development team can conjure up on demand. At the same tech level, once you reach an optimal power, anything more than that isn't going to straight up give you a proportional increase in damaging power.(So giving it double the power input will not give you double the power output desired) Also you don't get a double fire where you get a higher chance of hitting. Also, a single barrel with higher fire power might just be more expensive than 2 most efficient guns.

Taking the range of engagement, a MS target profile, the speed of the beam shot, and the distance between two barrels of the beam cannons, how much do you think the hit probability is increased?

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, considering the mega beam cannon isn't that developed and they do need a way to fire it faster(with exceptions like the beam machine guns that only give a pretty poor power rating and likely not one hit kill weapons like the rest of slow firing ones)

Hence why I said they'd be better served to stagger the firing of the barrels to up the rate of fire instead of the inevitable "because it looks cool" firing of both barrels at the same time.

Lucky them they don't have the potential drawbacks of multi-barrel simultaneous firing that man-portable firearms used to have... like the possibility the whole overstressed gun would simply blow up in the firer's face due to insufficient material strength.

I'd also look at it more like the guns on warships and fighters, where you simply have other constraints instead of a human handheld weapon.

I'd argue we kind of have to look at it both ways, given that a beam rifle is by definition a capital ship-class mega-particle beam weapon compacted to a size and shape where Mobile Suits can wield it the way that an average infantryman might wield a carbine.

I do wonder if the ones in UC are able to fire in single barrel mode, I don't recall seeing that and they seems to only have a "More is better" mind set when designing.

I've only ever seen them fire both barrels simultaneously, AFAIK.

Weren't pepperbox and LeMat revolvers are just terrible at their jobs? Their designs were far from ergonomic, the recoil was too much for black powder weapon, and the accuracy was horrendous. Having the barrels firing alternatively like the old twin-barrel shotguns (either with or without two triggers) is much more practical.

Quite frankly, most any firearm from that period in history could easily be accused of being ergonomically unsound, almost comically inaccurate, and borderline unsafe to operate if judged by today's standards. It was a time in history when things we take for granted like aerodynamic bullets, self-contained cartridges, and rifled barrels were emerging technologies and black powder with percussion caps was the state of the art.

In terms of simultaneous discharge, you're probably thinking of volley guns, which were made to be fired either all barrels simultaneously or in rapid succession. Most pepperbox pistols were built to be fired one barrel at a time, with many of the more popular models essentially being proto-revolvers that needed the firer to manually advance the cylinder/barrel hybrid to the next position after firing. Firing all barrels at once was decidedly unsafe, and not the intended operating mode in most cases.

The LeMat revolver was criticized for its low accuracy at long-ranges, but given that it was a cavalry issue sidearm meant for extreme short range combat that feels a bit like missing the forest for the trees. They were praised for the extra stopping power of the 20 gauge shotgun shell, which could be switched to with one hand by adjusting a flip-out pin on the hammer.

Taking the range of engagement, a MS target profile, the speed of the beam shot, and the distance between two barrels of the beam cannons, how much do you think the hit probability is increased?

I'd call the increased probability of a hit negligible, since one of the main things we're told about beam weapons is they're more or less impossible to dodge anyway if it's pointed at you when it's fired due to the speed of the beam.

I reckon it's purely about increasing damage.

[SonicSP]

In the 00 universe, one of the 00V Senki chapters noted multiple beam barrels creates a convergence effect of that increases the overall effectiveness of the beam.

In the chapter, they were doing the test with the original Astraea by firing four GN Launchers simultaneously in an experimental setup.

Astraea Quad Cannon Pic

They used the results of the test and concept on the next generation Gundam Virtue. Each of Virtue’s GN Cannon has two barrels each and when all of the barrels are fired it creates a convergence effect that increases total effectiveness. I believe Virtue’s successor Seravee also makes use of it as it has many different beams from multiple barrels converging into one big beam quite often.

Virtue Quad Cannon Pic

Arios’s rifle is twin barreled but not sure whether it makes use of the convergence effect or whether it’s there for a regular “double” shot. 00’s GN Sword II makes use of beam convergence effect for the stronger shots, though regular level shots are usually done with the one barrel that happened to be positioned on top.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if like Seto says, UC also uses it to increase damage much like they do in AD, even if the convergence effect isn’t in there.

[MythSearcher]

Arios’s rifle is twin barreled but not sure whether it makes use of the convergence effect or whether it’s there for a regular “double” shot. 00’s GN Sword II makes use of beam convergence effect for the stronger shots, though regular level shots are usually done with the one barrel that happened to be positioned on top.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if like Seto says, UC also uses it to increase damage much like they do in AD, even if the convergence effect isn’t in there.

Just like the twin drive, this sounded like they are saying it is not doubled but multiplied the power.
Makes little sense other than 2+2=2X2=2^2=4.

This is, from my memory, started from WZ's twin buster cannon where they claim using both gives a higher damaging effect, which makes pretty much the same sense. Although the TBC didn't say how much they are increased by, so it might just be a reasonable improvement (not really in show).

[Gelgoog Jager]

Several things need to be considered here, namely whether or not the EF's Salamis and Magellan were originally commissioned with ballistic weapons instead of mega particle cannons. Let me start with some events from Mark's timeline. First the order in which some OYW were first commissioned:

U.C. 0069.10
The Principality of Zeon commissions the first ship of the Papua class.

U.C. 0070.06
The Principality of Zeon commissions the first ship of the Chivvay class.

U.C. 0070.09
The Federation Forces '70s Armament Reinforcement Plan produces the Salamis-class space cruiser and Magellan-class space battleship.

U.C. 0074.04
The Principality of Zeon commissions the first of an improved type of Papua-class transport ship.

U.C. 0075.07
The Principality of Zeon commissions its first Musai-class space cruiser, a warship designed to carry mobile suits.

U.C. 0076.03
The Principality of Zeon commissions the first Gwazine-class space battleship.

U.C. 0076.06
The Principality of Zeon commissions the first Zanzibar-class mobile cruiser.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160305172 ... meline.php

Now some other relevant entries:

U.C. 0070.05
The Principality of Zeon completes the mega particle cannon.

U.C. 0072
The scientist Doctor Minovsky defects from the Principality.

Now, the 1st Chivvay is commissioned just a month after the mega particle is first completed. More importantly, while the Papua is first commissioned in October 0069, it won't be until 4.5 years later for the first of the modern Papuas to be deployed, now equipped with Minvosky fusion reactor and thermonuclear engines, replacing the old style chemical rockets, which further indicates that the Chivvay was first commissioned with old technology as well (ballistic weapons and chemical rockets), a claim that was confirmed in Gundam Century:

Papua: A missile warship constructed before the adoption of the nuclear thermal rocket engine. Its propulsion system was later converted from the old combination of plasma rockets and chemical rockets to the new nuclear thermal rockets, and it was used as a transport ship during the Zeon War. Because it had no mobile suit cooling systems, the only mobile suit it could support was the MS-05 Zaku.

Chivvay: An old model of battleship planned at the same time as the Papua class. After undergoing various modernizations such as the installation of mega particle cannons, a thermonuclear reactor as a power source, and nuclear thermal rockets for propulsion, it remained in service as a heavy cruiser even during the war.

http://www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/arch ... ntury.html

In case of the EF, the Salamis and Magellan are rolled out over a year before Dr. Minvoksy defects and provides the EF with the technology that allowed them to catch up with Zeon's.

This means that the Chivvay, Salamis and Magellan were first designed and rolled out with ballistic weapons in mind, and that therefore the Musai, rolled out in July 0075, is the first shipped actually designed with mega particle weapons in mind, as well as other Minvosky physics related technologies.

Also, while the Gwazine and Zanzibar are both rolled the very next year, the Zanzibar already has a major improvement over the Musai and Gwazine: deflection type mega particle cannons.

But let's head take a step back to the Chivvay and Musai: the former has unusual 3-barrel mega particle cannons, which might have been designed so to replace 3-barreled ballistic cannons (the se could have been based on those of the Heavy Fork or Big Tray class). Yet by the Musai sort of scales back into 2-barrel MPC turrets, lined on top of each other.

I have been thinking if an advantage of a multi-barrel beam weapon could be that the residual heat between both beams could actually be enough to cause more damage to a target. For instance, if a Chivvay hits a colony wall with one of its turret, rather than just punching 3 holes, the damage could rather be one big line as wide as the distance between the two opposite barrels, with the are between the holes where a beam hit directly melted off by the residual heat form the beam shots on both sides. Even if not fully destroyed, the structure between shots could be rendered unusable and possibly unrepairable as well.

Taking things a step further, Musai's 3 turrets could potentially do the same, but also produce the same effect between the areas damaged by the different turrets when firing a simultaneous barrage. Going back to the colony wall example, if a Musai fires its 3 turrets at the same time in the same direction, we have a rectangle formed by the six holes, where the are damaged between holes has been damaged by residual heat. Perhaps this might be bit too farfetched, specially since secondary damage of this kind can vary a lot in Gundam, but it was something I thought trying to think on a reason to justify such turrets.

Let me end with a weird comparison: in Samurai X the main character faces of against an enemy that wields two katanas that can be connected at the grip to essentially form a long double claw. The user then claims that a wound made by such weapon will be almost impossible to stitch, which will lead to infection and death of the victim:

http://kenshin.wikia.com/wiki/Renbatō

In the case of a warship, if hit by a double beam barrel turret, the area between the holes could end up too damaged by the residual heat and be very difficult to repair, if at all. I would assume that any person that was lucky enough to avoid being hit directly be the beam, but unlucky enough to be close to where it hit, would likely be killed by the residual heat next to the damaged sections.

This reminded me of a video I watched a few months ago that explained that if we tried to make sense of a Star Wars beam saber with real science and speculate how much energy it would produce, simply activating the beam weapon would kill anyone in the room due to the huge amount of heat it generates, enough to melt through a blasted door. With the same logic, we can assume that larger scale weapons of the same type will only be even deadlier even at great distance and with shorter exposition time.

Or we could always just assume that they went with 2-barrel turrets to make them look cooler, regardless of how functional they actually are.