Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

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Mafty
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Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

So how much space would it actually take for an army to construct their weaponry? (ie ships, suits, armors, etc). It seems as though most of the earlier Federation units were constructed on Earth then shipped to space. And with Zeon they were manufactured in varying facilities in space (Asteroid Bases and Lunar Cities appear to be the most common location).
But could a Colony Side itself manufacture either of these? Granted as discussed before MS may be easier to manufacture in a colony setting; however space ships seem like they would take up more room. For that matter did OYW era Zeon have Lunar and Asteroid facilities, or did they build everything in the Colonies?
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Chris
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

Going by The Origin, Zeon had the secret "dark" closed cylinder military colony where they were developing mobile workers and suits, so yeah, you presumably could have both a testing facility and manufacturing lines in a colony. Similarly, the manga version of The Origin had a part of Side 7 that was completely sealed off from the civilian area that served as a testing ground for the Prototype Gundam. Wouldn't surprise me if there was some manufacturing/assembly going on there too.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

Mafty wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 5:01 pm So how much space would it actually take for an army to construct their weaponry? (ie ships, suits, armors, etc). It seems as though most of the earlier Federation units were constructed on Earth then shipped to space. And with Zeon they were manufactured in varying facilities in space (Asteroid Bases and Lunar Cities appear to be the most common location).
But could a Colony Side itself manufacture either of these? Granted as discussed before MS may be easier to manufacture in a colony setting; however space ships seem like they would take up more room. For that matter did OYW era Zeon have Lunar and Asteroid facilities, or did they build everything in the Colonies?
I'd say not much more than the size of the ship.
A lot of modern ships are built with modules, off site, and only assembled on site. You also get more working space inside the ship than a MS.
Granted, military ships may need to be more rigid so may need to have the hull built on site, but still, it wouldn't really take that much more space compared to the size of the dock of a colony.(which are shown to be able to house multiple Pegasus class ships)

I'd say they probably can manufacture ships in Lunar II, but they didn't do so during OYW because they have a lot of ships needed to be upgraded per Winson plan and all of their other major bases in colonies were destroyed so most of their ships are now packed into Lunar II.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

Chris wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 9:40 pm Going by The Origin, Zeon had the secret "dark" closed cylinder military colony where they were developing mobile workers and suits, so yeah, you presumably could have both a testing facility and manufacturing lines in a colony. Similarly, the manga version of The Origin had a part of Side 7 that was completely sealed off from the civilian area that served as a testing ground for the Prototype Gundam. Wouldn't surprise me if there was some manufacturing/assembly going on there too.
It seems like most if not all of Side 3 colonies are close types in the regular continuity, not just the secret/military ones. At least their capital is a close type(contrast to the windowed open type)
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

Mafty wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 5:01 pm So how much space would it actually take for an army to construct their weaponry? [...]
But could a Colony Side itself manufacture either of these? Granted as discussed before MS may be easier to manufacture in a colony setting; however space ships seem like they would take up more room. For that matter did OYW era Zeon have Lunar and Asteroid facilities, or did they build everything in the Colonies?
Eh... you have to remember, Mobile Suits, Mobile Armors, space warships, and the like aren't developed whole cloth by the manufacturer. The factories building them aren't River Rouge Plant-style facilities that combine every phase of production from raw material all the way up to the finished product. They're final assembly plans that produce a finished mobile weapon or ship from internally-sourced and supplier parts shipped in from factories elsewhere, with as little onsite manufacturing of parts as possible.

Unless you're using a moving assembly line for a high rate of production - which really isn't practical for something so large - the amount of factory floorspace you need per unit is only about twice the footprint of what you're building if you don't count parts storage. Multiply that by the number of units you're actively working on at one time, and that's approximately your required floorplan.

Space colonies have, by design, large-ish dock complexes built into them so I'd expect Side 3 has adequate drydocks to assemble a modest space fleet even without dedicated large-scale shipyard facilities.

Developers: Mobile Suit Gundam Before the One Year War offers a look at the prototyping of the Zaku I at the facilities of a machinery and equipment company called Hoshioka Manufacturing in Side 3. Hoshioka's prototypes of the Zaku I are manufactured in what seems to be a medium-sized industrial park inside a single colony. The factory floor we see in Origin where Char and co. take delivery of their Zaku I's before Loum is much larger, looking to to be several times the size of Hangar One at Moffett Field, but still something that could easily fit inside a colony's interior.
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MythSearcher
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

Seto Kaiba wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:38 am Space colonies have, by design, large-ish dock complexes built into them so I'd expect Side 3 has adequate drydocks to assemble a modest space fleet even without dedicated large-scale shipyard facilities.
There is also mobile docks(close type in FG in Side 6 which got destroyed before we see it in action and open type like the Lavie en Rose) so I guess they can always assemble the ships in the open if they no longer need to keep it a secret.
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Re: Mobile Suit/ Ship Construction Facilities.

MythSearcher is correct with the mobile dock ships like La Vie en Rose, however the one we see in Side 6 are classified as a "floating dock" and are stationary. A different variety of them appeared in the Origin as well on the Zeon side, and they appear to be about 5x the length of a standard Musai. These appear to be where the ships are assembled and at the very least are maintained and refurbished.

As for shipbuilding for the Federation, in this image you can see that the ships were constructed on the exterior of Luna II as well as in orbit around the asteroid as opposed to inside.

In terms of production facilities and whatnot, we're told that when for the MS-05B, production lines were opened up outside of Zeonic’s main factory, and production began at a total of eleven facilities across five colonies, including subcontracted assembly lines. If memory serves me, there was typically at least one manufacturing colony on each of the Sides, so I wouldn't doubt that Side 3 probably had quite a few to crank out things. Plus, with how big facilities were on Granada, it stands to reason that production would be ramped up there.
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