Differences between Mobile Suits

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Mafty
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Differences between Mobile Suits

How different do you think mobile suit types are? do you think a MS Pilot could operate most units? I know that some units are specially designed for Newtypes(or whatever variant an Alternate Universe has) but what about the rest of the mainline mass production units(ie Heavy Mobile Suits, Combat Mobile Suits, Aquatic Mobile Suits, Reconnaissance Mobile Suits, and that's not counting all the mass produced units that are only slightly different like the Zssa and Regelgu, the Rig Shokew and the Zollidia, etc); do they require specific training, or could anybody with mobile suit pilot training operate them?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Differences between Mobile Suits

Mafty wrote: Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:20 am How different do you think mobile suit types are? do you think a MS Pilot could operate most units? I know that some units are specially designed for Newtypes (or whatever variant an Alternate Universe has) but what about the rest of the mainline mass production units [...]; do they require specific training, or could anybody with mobile suit pilot training operate them?
This is one of those "Yes and No" sort of questions where the answer varies pretty heavily title-to-title... but mostly it's just handwaved or outright ignored unless it's necessary for the plot.

Gundam's standard story formula seldom focuses on the rank-and-file Mobile Suit pilots of the world. Most of the screen time is bogarted by the Newtypes, who are naturally inclined towards becoming elite super-aces, whose supreme reaction times and natural intuition camouflage any difficulties that might ordinarily come from switching from one model of MS to another. On the rare occasion that normal MS pilots are shown swapping to a new MS, the new MS is usually a newer model in the same series so the controls are either identical or very similar. The Reality Ensues outcome of jumping into the cockpit and not knowing how to work the damn thing only seems to happen in circumstances where it can cause maximum drama (like Amuro's first outing in the original Gundam).

Most MS's within a series are drawn with very similar or identical cockpits for the convenience of the animators, but it's rare for a Gundam series to actually acknowledge any efforts towards standardization. In the UC, it can be taken as read after a while that MS cockpits started to become standardized because Anaheim Electronics became a single-source supplier to all takers for a while. The Reguild Century expressly acknowledges a total standardization across all MS equipment (the "Universal Standard"). One of the few times, outside of the "it's my first time piloting any MS" situation that control difficulties come up is in IBO where Tekkadan struggles with their captured Graze due to its purely manual controls in the absence of an Alaya Vijnana (which otherwise renders MS control totally intuitive).


So... realistically, there should be a lot of difference between MS units that should require retraining if switching to a new MS even if the controls are the same due to differences in performance and handling, but it's handwaved almost every time by the incredible natural talents of the pilots (or technological cheats, like Alaya Vijnana).
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MythSearcher
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Re: Differences between Mobile Suits

As Seto basically has it all, the only special mention is Zeon's MSs.
Before the UMP, each individual manufacturer has their own UI and even the same model of MS-06 can have different cockpits if produced by different contractors. So a Zeonic Zaku II can have a different cockpit than the Zimmad Zaku II. Out-universe, this is used to explain the different cockpits you see in shows.
MS-09 has a vastly different cockpit to the MS-06 as well, which triggered a lot of problems and thus the higher-ups actually took the UMP seriously. (It was actually proposed much earlier by M'Quve but ignored because the majority of forces at the time is led by Dozle instead of Kycillia)

There is also speculation about the GM produced during OYW has similar problems, where the 6 production sites all produced slightly different parts like WWII USA's M3s and M4s.(Most obvious difference is the Jaburo types and the Lunar II types, which are mostly designed by Okawara and other designers[Izubuchi for 0080 and later mostly by Katoki] respectively, special cases exists, like 79SC is produced in Lunar II so it is just a quick but not so accurate generalisation) The logistics problem was solved by shipping parts from the same production location to the same units without mixing them. So if you assign MSs produced in Jaburo to say, Mexico, you only ship parts produced in Jaburo to Mexico and never assign MS produced by other production sites to Mexico. However, even in in-universe reality, this is hardly strictly followed as a lot of advanced units are produced by Lunar II and thus during the shortage of elite models, Jaburo actually started using Lunar II models before their own(79SP actually participated in the Battle of Jaburo, which is obviously a Lunar II type.)
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