Was the Sazabi badly designed?

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domino
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Was the Sazabi badly designed?

During CCA we see Char surprised that
- The Sazabi mega particle cannon "lost power" after launching a salvo at the Nu Gundam
- The Sazabi's beam saber was "weaker" than Nu Gundam's (hyper?) beam saber

This is surprising since he clearly knew about the Nu Gundam's development and given Sazabi's armament it would appear that Char only gave the psycoframe tech because the Sazabi had an overwhelming advantage without it. Char must have been pretty confident that his Sazabi would not hamper him at all during his final bout with Amuro however that appears to not be the case. In my opinion, Amuro is definitely the better pilot and stronger newtype but the Sazabi also failed Char at times.

Were these issues due to the Sazabi being over-engineered to meet Char's desire for more speed and power in order to face Amuro such that its generator could not meet the suit's constant energy demands?

Or was it simply that Char pushed the already high-spec mobile suit beyond its capabilities?
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Seto Kaiba
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

domino wrote: Mon Mar 25, 2019 12:25 pm Were these issues due to the Sazabi being over-engineered to meet Char's desire for more speed and power in order to face Amuro such that its generator could not meet the suit's constant energy demands?

Or was it simply that Char pushed the already high-spec mobile suit beyond its capabilities?
Really, I don't think it was that the MSN-04 Sazabi was over-engineered or badly designed... I think Char was pushing the brand-new Mobile Suit he'd had Neo Zeon's engineers design for his final confrontation with Amuro as hard as he could without truly being familiar with the design or its limitations.

Considering how many energy-thirsty systems were making demands on the Sazabi's 3,960kW Minovsky reactor, that the scattering mega-particle cannon quit on him mid-battle quit on him mid-battle isn't surprising. It isn't designed like a beam rifle with an e-cap to minimize the burden it puts on the reactor. Every time it fires, it has to recharge its particle condenser to build up enough Minovsky particles for another shot. He was probably expecting it to work like the beam rifles he was used to using in battle... and that extremely powerful beam rifle the Sazabi was lugging around likely wasn't doing the recharge on the scattering mega-particle cannon any favors.

As to the beam saber situation... Char may have handed over the psycoframe technology to Anaheim Electronics to give to the EFSF, but it's doubtful he was privy to everything they were doing. He was probably expecting a Londo Bell Gundam to be equipped with the standard 0.5MW-class beam sabers that'd been the standard since the initial Gundam. Amuro kinda caught him with his pants down by equipping the Nu Gundam with the more powerful large beam saber rated at 0.85MW.
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

There's also the fact that just as Char was firing the mega particle cannon, Amuro had shot it several times with the Nu Gundam's vulcans.
"I'll show you that a superior mobile suit has its limits when it goes up against a superior pilot!" - Char Aznable, The Red Comet
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yazi88
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

Yeah, there is nothing wrong with the Sazabi's performance, it is a powerful unit. Amuro got a lucky shot in that ended the fight. Sazabi still put up a good fight too.
domino
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

HalfDemonInuyasha wrote: Mon Apr 08, 2019 1:10 am There's also the fact that just as Char was firing the mega particle cannon, Amuro had shot it several times with the Nu Gundam's vulcans.
Great point. Upon rewatching, Nu's vulcans did cross the Sazabi's mega particle cannon as soon as it fired off a salvo. Perhaps Char didn't fire it quickly enough.

I guess Char underestimated Nu Gundam :lol:
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

So, if the Sazabi had the Doven Wolf's or the Geymalk's reactor, how big it would need to be? When did people actually make breakthrough in generator miniaturization then?
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yazi88
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

Sazabi was already pretty big for a MS during that time, it's about the same size as Doven Wolf and Geymalk. But it did not have as many heavy weapons as those units or the ZZ. Sazabi has less than half the generator power as Geymalk, but Geymalk was filled with beam weapons everywhere, and the Doven Wolf had multiple cannons and its large beam launcher as well as beam cannons on its binders. Sazabi had one beam cannon on its torso and funnels. You don't need too much power for funnels as neither any of the Qubeley types nor the Nu Gundam had particularly high generator strength, although since the funnels for both Sazabi and Jagd Doga were pretty strong in terms of beam strength they had higher generator strength, around 3300 for Jagd Doga and near 4000 for Sazabi.
domino
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

That's interesting yazi88, I just realized that I'm unclear of how mobile suit energy consumption physics work

The Sazabi has a fusion reactor with output rated at almost 4000 kW as you mentioned. That's 4MW. However the same mega particle cannon is rated at 8.8 MW. That's almost double!

I do understand that most optional hand armaments are powered in 0093 by rechargeable e-caps however base weaponry like the mega particle cannon and the vast array of thrusters are certainly an energy drain! How does a "belly cannon" with potential output nearly double the max output of its generator affect the operating time of a mobile suit? I'd love to see some calculations - the Sazabi didn't seem to have an operating time limitation

The Doven Wolf is a similar case (and potentially worse):
Generator: 5.25 MW
2 x mega particle cannon : 5.3 MW each
2 x beam cannon: 4.2 MW each
2 x wire-guided remote beam gun: 2.3 MW each
I'll ignore the insane beam mega launcher which has a max output (when linked) of 40.2 MW!!

So is there some conversion happening here or a system of sub-generators that stores energy over time before being used by various weapons? That would indicate a potential recharge time for the entire mobile suit and perhaps for individual high-energy weapons
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

domino wrote: Thu Apr 11, 2019 6:57 am That's interesting yazi88, I just realized that I'm unclear of how mobile suit energy consumption physics work

The Sazabi has a fusion reactor with output rated at almost 4000 kW as you mentioned. That's 4MW. However the same mega particle cannon is rated at 8.8 MW. That's almost double!

I do understand that most optional hand armaments are powered in 0093 by rechargeable e-caps however base weaponry like the mega particle cannon and the vast array of thrusters are certainly an energy drain! How does a "belly cannon" with potential output nearly double the max output of its generator affect the operating time of a mobile suit? I'd love to see some calculations - the Sazabi didn't seem to have an operating time limitation

The Doven Wolf is a similar case (and potentially worse):
Generator: 5.25 MW
2 x mega particle cannon : 5.3 MW each
2 x beam cannon: 4.2 MW each
2 x wire-guided remote beam gun: 2.3 MW each
I'll ignore the insane beam mega launcher which has a max output (when linked) of 40.2 MW!!

So is there some conversion happening here or a system of sub-generators that stores energy over time before being used by various weapons? That would indicate a potential recharge time for the entire mobile suit and perhaps for individual high-energy weapons
They have capacitors installed to store the energy. For example, RX-78's skirt yellow squares are capacitors and is what gives it 4 times the energy gain than a normal MS. As if Amuro even knew what energy gain a normal MS hass since the only normal MS at the time was Zeon's.
The basic idea is simple, you store the excess energy and release it when needed. Works pretty much the same in real life. The electronic reactive armour releases a very high power charge when a round hits and closes the circuit; railguns use high power capacitors to give a burst of power needed.
W means J/s, so you can design systems that say, store the 4MW power for 20 seconds and release them in a burst of 80MW for a mere second.(efficiency checks in and thus you always get a lower energy but you get the general idea)
Another way of thinking of this is the most powerful laser the Japanese made in 2015. The power rating is ridiculously high 2PW or 2,000TW or 2,000,000,000MW, yes, 500 million times of Sazabi's generator output, while the World's power consumption is about 18TW, while Japan only had a electicity generation capacity of around 240GW.
So how does that work? Surely we did not shut down the world for around 2 mins, or shut down Japan for 2 hours every single time we fire the most powerful laser humankind has to fend off some blue crystal flying octahedron (Which the positron rifle took a 180GW input, calculated by using the 180GW energy consumption when the show first aired 1995)?

The answer is simply, the laser shot lasts only for a pico second, or a trillionth of a second, thus even when it required 2000TW, it doesn't need 2000TJ, but only 2000J for the whole period it is firing, your microwave at home uses the same energy if you have it working at 1000W for 2 seconds.

This is one of the smart moves Gundam settings gives you. You actually have no sense of how much energy the weapons are using, but only a pretty much useless power output rating because they never tell you how long they operate per shot.
Even the beam sabre ratings are dubious because you can always say that the rating is for a EM field holding the Minovsky plasma inside and the plasma itself has its own energy.
domino
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

Thanks. That's a great explanation. I've found some dubious calculations for determining mobile suit operating times. Do you have any that you've done or that you recommend?
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MythSearcher
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

domino wrote: Mon Apr 15, 2019 9:13 am Thanks. That's a great explanation. I've found some dubious calculations for determining mobile suit operating times. Do you have any that you've done or that you recommend?
Not quite. I have tried to tackle the question myself, and calculate the total propulsion time with the available thrust, generator output and mass.

KE=0.5mv^2
F=ma
v=at

Given F and KE, t=1s
find m

2KE/m=v^2
v=(2KE/m)^1/2

a=v/t
F=mv/t
F=[m(2KE/m)^1/2]/t
F^2=2KEm/t^2
F^2=2KEm for t=1
m(per second)=F^2/2KE

For RX-78-2, F=55480kgf=554800N, Generator output(using the highest spec available)=65000HP=48470kW thus 48470kJ/s.
Assuming 100% efficiency.(Because whatever efficiency I use, there will always be objection, so let's be generous)
m(per second)=554800^2/2(48470000)=3175kg.
Yes, you need 3175kg, or 3.175 tons of propellant per second.

RX-78-2 max gross mass being 60t and empty mass is 43.3t, even if it does not carry any weapons and ammo and shield, and only carry the 16.6t as propellant, it can give you a max thrust time of 5.23s.
Strike Freedom's numbers are even more ridiculous, you get something in the milliseconds if I recall right.(didn't bother to check, but it got lower power (about 5 times that of Freedom) and a higher thrust.)

The lower the power output(The current most common figure we have is 1380kW), the and the lower the efficiency, the lesser time you get.
You can argue the 65000HP is only the electricity output and the thrusters are using something else, but unless you give it something like 100 times more, in which quite obviously will make it really stupid because then it can get much higher output for charging capacitors for it's weapons when it is not using it's thrusters.(which is quite often.)


On the other hand, we did have Sentinel with a description of an operation having S[Bst] and Z+C1 operating for more than an hour, given, most of the time they are operating are not utilizing thier max thrust.
domino
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

I'm not sure if the power output needs to contribute directly to the rocket thrust. Since the mobile suits are using rocket engines then isn't the fuel superheated by power from the generator and the ignited fuel generates thrust?

I suppose there are many hidden variables when calculating a mobile suit's operating time
- weight of fuel being carried
- amount of fuel being carried
- amount of energy used by beam weapons directly from capacitors per shot (as Yazi88 explained)
- amount of energy used to maintain mobile suit basic systems (i.e. do the psycommu and bio-computers drain the generator to any relevant degree?)
- number of energy capacitors and storage capacity of each

It sounds like Gundam 00's GN drives and GN capacitors gave some insights into how the generator and capacitor energy storage systems work in tandem to power the mobile suits/Gundams but it would be great to see a detailed breakdown
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Re: Was the Sazabi badly designed?

Sazabi? Badly designed?
Pfft.
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