What happened to the Duel and Buster

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by 4Tran

What I meant was that, since they already knew that Phase Shift Armor wasn't economical, why would they bother putting it on newer prototypes like Impulse? In-universe, prototypes are still supposed to be test platforms for new technologies, so why go to the expense of adding unique equipment that they already know will be impossible to implement?

The other side of the equation is that I don't think that Phase Shift Armor is pointless at all; just because most people are implementing beam weaponry doesn't mean that an enemy will change all of their weapons to beams. Even in Destiny, there are still lots of conventional weapons around. And if the Cosmic Era universe were portrayed more realistically, Phase Shift Armor will also provide almost total protection from infantry attacks and the like.

Your second paragraphs sort of answers your question on the first paragraph; the Custom-mobilesuits still use Phaseshift because the ace pilots they protect are generally far more valuable than the grunt pilots. I did not say PS is useless; rather, it was not as worthwhile as it used to be if it doesn't improve survival that much.

As for prototypes being test platforms... As I mentioned in the past, units like Freedom and Destiny are not really prototypes.
In fact, here is an example of a REAL prototype:
YFX-600R GuAIZ Experimental Firearms Type


The weapons of Freedom and Justice were fine-tuned on this machine, before they were finally implemented. The YFX-600R was not nuclear-powered, and as such has a ridiculously short operation time. But it still saw action, by having itself attach to a fix power-source. So yeah, all the later hero units you see in the CE TV series are not Prototypes, even if you weren't told about where all the real prototypes went.

(Other examples: Destiny's equipment was tested on Impulse as a pack. Impluse's cockpit was tested on a Zaku called Zaku Splendour. Chaos Gundam's flight-mode was tested with a non-transformable prototype called ProtoChaos. Gilbert may have called Destiny and Chaos Prototypes purely because it is embarrassing to show people the real prototypes, which would be full of design flaws.)

[Zertz]

Question number 2: Why build one when you can build two for double the price? Why arn't there entire sqaudrons of Calamities and the like?

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Zertz

Question number 2: Why build one when you can build two for double the price? Why arn't there entire sqaudrons of Calamities and the like?

1. Because grunt pilots aren't worth spending that much money on. They wouldn't live long enough to take advantage of the expensive equipment.

2. There are actually squads of Forbidden Gundams in Destiny. But Calamity and Raider were not mass produced because... well, Kira's combat record on the Strike Gundam was so impressive, that the focus of EA was on building better Strike-packs on Daggers. For grunts, it is easier to give them one machine and supply them with different packs for different jobs.

(There were also small squads of Blitz and Buster mass-production models)

[Archer]

Originally Posted by Zertz

Question number 2: Why build one when you can build two for double the price? Why arn't there entire sqaudrons of Calamities and the like?

There are squads of Forbidden Gundams (although those are Deep Forbiddens, mainly used for underwater purposes). However, the investment isn't worth the cost. (Aside from the original trio, there are also three copies of Raider Full-Specs and Sword Calamities created, but those are reserved for the greatest of Earth Alliance soldiers such as Ed the Ripper and the Cherry Blossom. Oh, and they give one of each to an Orb private army assisting them at the time.)

[Zertz]

Why not produce more Extendeds then? Surely there are more candidates like the druggies.

Or rather, to appease both the accountants and generals, I would expect now the focus would be to mass produce Gells-Ghe and related concept mobile armours. Combined with the Dagger and Windams the Alliance seems to have an effective combat team when not engaging the plot armoured characters.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Zertz

Why not produce more Extendeds then? Surely there are more candidates like the druggies.

The lab that produces them was destroyed. The inmates escaped and killed everyone, as the Minerva crew found out.

Anyway, the Extendeds really sucked compare to the human CPUs. They sacrificed too much combat capability in exchange for control. Instead, EA used training-camps to mass-produce mentally conditioned pilots seen in Stargazer. The drugs was just too hard to use without an army of doctors at the ready.

[4Tran]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Your second paragraphs sort of answers your question on the first paragraph; the Custom-mobilesuits still use Phaseshift because the ace pilots they protect are generally far more valuable than the grunt pilots. I did not say PS is useless; rather, it was not as worthwhile as it used to be if it doesn't improve survival that much.

Not exactly. My point is that if Phase Shift technology is too expensive to be worth putting in line units, then, since price issues are much greater in unique units, it'd be even worse to put it in custom machines. At least prototypes/test platforms have the excuse that they're exploring the idea of putting it into future models.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

As for prototypes being test platforms... As I mentioned in the past, units like Freedom and Destiny are not really prototypes.

I know; and I partially agree with you. Unique machines like Freedom and Destiny don't correspond to any real-world military classification (other than as bad ideas). "Test platform" seems to come closer to anything else.

Originally Posted by Zertz

Question number 2: Why build one when you can build two for double the price? Why arn't there entire sqaudrons of Calamities and the like?

Gundam logic; which may or may not bear any relationship to real-world logic. I don't think it's supposed to hold up under scrutiny.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

1. Because grunt pilots aren't worth spending that much money on. They wouldn't live long enough to take advantage of the expensive equipment.

While the idea of reserving advanced machines for ace pilots isn't unknown, the idea of building unique machines for them is silly. The development costs for advanced military equipment is often a hundred times or more the actual production cost ($28 billion, and under $200 million USD in the case of the F-22 Raptor). So it'd be as cheap to build one hundred advanced models as it is to produce two different prototypes.

Originally Posted by Zertz

Or rather, to appease both the accountants and generals, I would expect now the focus would be to mass produce Gells-Ghe and related concept mobile armours. Combined with the Dagger and Windams the Alliance seems to have an effective combat team when not engaging the plot armoured characters.

From what I can tell, OMNI was very unprepared for fighting a full-scale war, and their record reflects that. The mobile armors only really had an impact when they were first fielded, and ZAFT hadn't had time to adapt (although it seems that Durandal already knew about them in advance). Once their strengths and weaknesses had been analyzed, ZAFT could exercise effective counters against them. The clever thing to do in this case, would have been to only initially field them in large numbers, and in decisive battles - much like what the Germans tried to do at Kursk. With OMNI operating under the doctrine that they used, and with their loss of the strategic initiative early on, there wasn't much they could do to change the course of the war.

[X207]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

(There were also small squads of Blitz and Buster mass-production models)

where were these and were there any pics of these 2 units??? and were they MC capable?
was the blitz dagger the n dagger n?

nvm, i think i found it
http://home.comcast.net/~turinu/Fran...litzdagger.gif
actually thats most likely not it, its a fan creation from a user on mahq.net forums

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by X207

where were these and were there any pics of these 2 units??? and were they MC capable?
was the blitz dagger the n dagger n?

nvm, i think i found it
http://home.comcast.net/~turinu/Fran...litzdagger.gif
actually thats most likely not it, its a fan creation from a user on mahq.net forums

I did mean the N-jammer Dagger N.

[X207]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

I did mean the N-jammer Dagger N.

shoot. i thought they would come up with a better design for a blitz dagger. green looks so horible on n dagger.