never underestimate the value of putting a gun on the cheapest/most plentiful vehicle you have. the events of the Toyota war illustrate this perfectly.
Let's also point out how the bleeps are getting shorter and shorter so they don't actually bleep anything at all. And I swear sometimes he pauses mid-profanity to allow time for the bleep, because many times I've heard him say "what the f- [BLEEP] -uck"
The big difference between the two is the Ball goes fast as fuck. But then, space doesn't quite let you park in the local garage waiting for a MadCat to walk by.
@@theriveracis5172 Balls and Urbies are very fucking scary when you get to why they're effective at what they do. Especially since they both can punch WELL above their weights when piloted right.
@@kabob0077 The Urbies're known as 'pocket assaults' for good reason. I've actually got a lance of those boys painted up in 'stealth' colors, due to fun rule nonsense when it comes to jump jets taking no movement penalty at night, and tracer rounds halving the aiming penalty. The last thing my enemy hears is the short sputter of an Urbanmech's jumpjet, and the sudden wail of an autocannon round screaming past.
Check out my deuce-in-a-half truck with quad fifties on the back for proof. Or the vietnam specials they made where they'd just strap as many m60's a m2 fifties to each side and hose the jungle on the roadside.
@@Papercut337 I think there was a GM or Zaku based construction model that has a jackhammer heat weapon or shovel. With heated edges. It's as goofy as it looks awesome.
On the whole 'sunk cost' thing quickly; Being that this is a repurposed construction unit, there is none, in practice. Even if they were producing these things brand new, the machining, spare parts, and logistics base already exists for them. All you're doing extra is adding on a gun, which as you say is bolted on the top and certainly not difficult to produce, and in some variant cases, welding armor plates to it. Even the minelayer, while most likely produced from new stock, doesn't deviate enough to need a retooling of any major factory. From a logistics point of view, these things are less expensive to make than the squishies inside them, and are basically perfect for a vanguard unit. Hell, they're still capable of what they were originally built to do, no less. So now you've got reinforcements for your supply salvage and repair vehicles, who are also capable of helping to a fair level. My friend, if you think this is crazy, do not look up the gun truck. They've taken cargo trucks, slapped armor on, and put as much firepower as they could fit. This isn't the first time it's been done. Turns out putting a TOW launcher onto something you already have is quite a lot cheaper, and miles more practical than outfitting every engineering force or garrisoning backliner with Bradleys let alone MBTs.
Yeah, these things.... they look like Space Technicals... or Space Killdozers, in the case of the up armored one. Figure a yard tug is gonna have a whole mess of delta-v, a bunch of torque, and be responsible for reattaching your armor plates and guns, so it's gotta be reasonably precise. I doubt they're building new ones, exactly, it looks more like they keep using the Space Hilux there, and pissed off humans keep strapping guns to them. This isn't sunk cost, this is "we will weaponize anything."
@@Tomyironmane If memory serves from cannon, they're one of the most maneuverable things out there. Insanely fast, can turn on a dime, and even have some grapples I belive for some interesting swing tether moves. No idea how that works given the solid fuel though. Pin it to writers not really knowing how this stuff works. Or otherwise being separate from the tech manual types who add that sort of detail.
The real kicker is that the balls actually excelled in melee, so they started being given mech scale heat knives to counter Zeons heat axes. Then some one bolted a gun to it and it became terrifying. Until it got shot by a beam gun, then the "up armored" one was made. It needed a bigger gun, so of course they got a mech scale machine gun bolted on. This repeats as usual.
@@andreasmuller4666 mech make sense when they're integrated with a military force. A mech has the advantage of moving sideways without turning, so they can step out from behind a skyscraper and fire, then move back behind cover. They can go prone and be no higher than a tank. They can navigate slopes that tanks would have issue with. And if you're going from space to a habitat, a mech is a model that can make that transition cleanly. What doesn't make sense is an army of 1000 mechs... and nothing else. combined forces are an asset!
The more I think about it, the more I find myself absolutely loving these stupid looking balls. They just flat out make sense. Sure they have a massive list of downsides and are the practical definition of a temporary stopgap becoming permanent, but they frankly work. They're space technicals that every capitol ship and space dock will have lying around anyways, that punch so far above their weight class it's kinda silly not to have ready-made retrofit options for them when the situation demands.
Alright so the funny thing is that just about all of your complaints except for the solid state fuels are acknowledged in universe, and the only reason they kept using them was because the gun on top could actually damage the enemy’s grunt unit with a solid hit and even if it took five ball units to take out a single ZAKU 2 it was still cheaper. Not to mention the ball actually had a higher top speed and easier to learn controls to boot. So yeah, a weapon system with just enough power to be useful, with just enough speed and armor to survive a mission if they got lucky about a tenth the price point of the next step up, and comparatively idiot proof controls. Nothing could possibly scream “military admin” louder than that.
Yeah, Earth definitely operated on the "Russia in WWII" model. "One Gundam per two pilots. When the first pilot dies, second pilot takes over the controls."
Well, model kit wise 1/144 high-grade Balls ARE sold as two per box... And since Gunpla Is Freedom, noone stops you from kitbashing them onto 1/60 scale megaparticle cannon or something.
I mean, two Balls, a mega particle cannon, and probably a large engine or two is charging after you, I'd run even if it looked hilarious that's a terrifying amount of firepower that could be aimed at you
The ball is easily the most reasonable fighting craft of the Universal Century. No pointless legs or anthropomorphic hands. We're being invaded and have no extra production? Stick guns on what we've already got and trained with. It works well enough? Keep doing it. The lack of endurance isn't a big deal since these are used as fire support and if needed, they can still drop the gun and fulfill their original function. Given how much you criticize other designs for unneeded complexity I'm surprised you're not all over these balls.
The Great Irony is that the Earth Federation enemies, the forces of the Principality of Zeon, made their own version! The MP-02A Oggo (Got I wanna say eggo here) is a big yellow pod (Not a sphere) and it uses excess hand weapons from their Zaku mobile suits. The problem is that the Oggo didn't work that well...and Zeon was running outta pilots compared to the legions of Ball Pilots (many veterans of which had moved on to the GM mobile suit) so the Oggos had rookies in them! And they got their asses handed to them on a epic scale. Worst of all...the Oggo is not meme-worthy like a Ball. The Oggo looks like a trashcan flipped on its side.
being spherical would total increase its crushing resistance. Would probably make a good cockpit for something larger and combat oriented, have it double as an ejection system. Kinda like Faye Valentine's ship the red tail. I would op to have the ball internally to any combat vehicle.
Fun thing about the Ball is it actually had an impressive kill rate to the point where it had quite a few aces. I always loved that the Federation kicked Zeons ass mostly with Planes and Tanks
Well, zeon are still humans, only a different nation, but other than that, you summed up the oyw pretty well. Except operation british. That was a clusterfuck
Zeonoid butchers are not human and shouldn't be regarded as such, we had our chance to assault Side 3 directly and eradicate these menaces once and for all, but we didn't and let their ridiculous nation stand untouched, while corpses of 5 billions space colonists they slaughtered floating in the cold void. Anything less than total annihilation to the last trace of their existence is going too easy on these Zeonoid scums.
Honestly the Ball is both loved and memed. Heck one of the best examples of the best pilots was Umon Salmon from Crossbone Gundam. He started in a ball with a Gundam mask and the results were hilarious. Also despite the janky design of the Ball was scary for Zeon to fight because it had better performance than their mobile armor heavy weapons systems. Best series of Gundam that shows the Ball's terrifying abilities is Gundam MS Igloo.
The Ball is a lot like the Urbanmech, it's small, it's deceptively nonthreatening at first glance, and it's all fun and games until it blows a hole through your mech and leaves you either dead or inoperable. Don't underestimate EITHER of them in battle.
The reason for the underwater variant existing is kind of funny from my limited understanding. Basically Zeon high command figure that because earth is mostly covered in water a good chunk of the invasion force should be amphibious, thinking that the earth federation would logically try to protect the oceans and coastlines in the event of an invasion. For a bunch of reason though (lack of resources, their navy being wiped out when zeon deorbited a colony unto Australia, the fact the air travel was so common they just didn't use traditional naval stuff, ect), the federation just ignored the oceans almost entirely until after the war. At which point most zeon hold outs were hiding in river ways, isolated beaches, or in submarine bases. So the federation just started waging a poorly run war of attrition against anyone left on earth, which kept getting side tracked by all of the other terrorist attacks happening at the same time. This also possibly part of the reason why zeon lost the war, because they put so much effort and material into building a traditional navy that was almost entirely useless. Some one correct me if I'm wrong about any of this though.
You are largely right. Something I would like to add is Zeon invasion forces captured a series of new cutting-edge submarines from Federation when they occupied North America, and decided to use them to jump start their at-this-point nonexistent navy. Combined with the fact that there aren't that many Fed surface vessels left for capture, resulted in a very underwater-focused navy. However Federation soon figured out that best way to counter submarines is to spam ASW patrol planes, that's why Fed only put in token efforts to develop amphibious MS, they don't really fight Zeon seafoods head on. Another interesting thing is Federation Navy deteriorated so much in the following years of OYW, they have to make sure they have enemies to fight to justify their existence. To this end they formed a weird symbiotic relationship with seabourn Zeon remnants, Feds don't put that much efforts into actually track down and eradicate rogue Zeon subs, and said Zeon subs commits low intensity pirating to sustain themselves, giving Fed navy some works to do and convince Federation Congress don't just axe the navy entirely.
The mine layer makes perfect sense, since they are not supposed to be close enough to the enemy to be shot at anyway. Edit: I mean using that particular vehicle as a mine layer.
I personally think it's a wonderful design, along the lines of TIE Fighters. Yes the enemy can create a expensive platform to put their weapons system on, but these are much more efficient for the job.
I can see that analogy, and I quite like it, tie fighter of the gundam universe. However... The difference as I understand it is that the Empire chose to go that route, but the Federation was forced to take that route.
I feel the need to point out that you *can* actually have throttle control on solid-fuel rockets, including the ability to shut off and reignite the rocket. It's just that most solid-fuel rockets don't bother in the name of simplicity and cost savings. So the thrusters on this thing aren't quite as crazy as they appear at first glance.
Actually, the "here's a thing we have, bolt as many guns on as will fit" method is something of an American tradition. It shows in WW2 naval vessel anti-aircraft armament and I recall hearing of army transport trucks, tired of getting ambushed, bolting machine guns on wherever they'd fit. I think that was a Vietnam thing, but I don't remember for sure.
Layered Solid Fuel is a better description. Take your solid fuel, mold it to the shape of it's container. Cut it into sections that each provide one G of thrust for one second to whatever mass you're moving. In between each section of fuel put a metal chip as a separator. When you need thrust provide a current to the lowest most fuel chip. It fires off, the metal chip above it seals the next slug of fuel from igniting and provides a thrust floor. If you need more than one slug of thrust, give current to the next slug of fuel. It ignites, kicking the bottom metal chip out. When you have the thrust you need, just stop adding current to the next fuel chips and they stop firing.
What you are describing is the "Metal Storm" gun pointing backwards. It might work, but not well. It is a version of "superposed projectiles," the best known of which is the simple roman candle. A better solution would be similar to the nuclear propulsion of Project Orion, in which a nuclear fission device is ejected behind the vehicle and explodes against a "pusher plate." Experiments were done with conventional explosives and it works, but isn't super controllable.
Pizzed Ahff : Your layering concept does much the same thing as pelletizing, but with pelletizing you can more easily implement very small thrusts, making it better for maneuvering thrusters. Which should not be taken as an endorsement of pelletizing solid rocket fuel, because it's a phenomenally horrible explosion hazard (as in, "instantaneous combustion rate easily exceeded that of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters" levels of phenomenal; also, any fuel that doesn't go up immediately gets strewn all over the surroundings to burn more stuff).
“Dockmaster, please, you have to stop turning our battle frigates into cubes! It’s the third one this rotation and I’m fairly certain the Dominus is going to strangle me if we loose another one in such a way!” (Please review the Cabal ships from Destiny if you ever get the chance! I’d love to get your insight on their designs!!)
I've actually got a few kills in a Ball in Gundam Battle Operation 2. OYW era suits don't have many long range options outside of the snipers units, and they're usually getting harassed by raid units. Sneaking in a few shots in the back while the enemy is distracted by team mates is hilarious, and pretty viable.
The top of these has a universal industrial connector: basically just a really big plug socket. *That* is really what made militarizing these things easy! Pretty much the only work that needs to happen involves modifying the guns to use the connection. The modularity of these seriously expands their mission profile as well. If you look at the records, these things have literally dozens of different weapon loadouts, most of which can probably be changed in an hour by anyone experienced in spacecraft maintenance.
Project V strikes again, this time with a pair. God, aside from the guntank and the GM this is the best thing that came from that (yes, the rx-78 is cool, but come on, were else can you say spray and prey other than the GMs beam sray gun?).
It's a common thing for a force that can't produce combat vehicles to repurpose civilian and industrial vehicles for combat with armour plates and guns strapped wherever it can fit.
_Points at the catch-all term of "Technicals", especially the glorious Toyota Helux pick-up truck and its modular weapon systems_ Humans are fucking weird yet somehow awesome.
@@internetzenmaster8952 The modern war chariot for when you are on a budget. If aliens ever were to invade I would expect to see many pick up trucks and jeeps with armor plates slapped on and all manners of firepower bolted down to them.
"You took a maintenance vehicle, stuck a gun on it and called it a day" And now you know why there are so many pickup trucks with 50.cals rolling around the Middle East and South America, because they are simple and they work
Wait wait wait... Ontop of no armour, bad gun, bad targeting system and hideously bad TWR... It has some sort of weird solid rocket fuel too? I mean, I know Tomino liked to kill his characters off, but this adds another dimension to that... Also, as an add-on, the actual mole suits in Gundam were construction vehicles too. The big issue was a power source for them, on a construction site a bulky stationary generator with power cables to the unit was fine, but that wouldn't work in battle. Zeon's first mobile suits were basically up-armoured and armed construction vehicles too, with a very, _very_ unstable main reactor that made them like walking thermonuclear bombs.
v gundam and its mas produced version had 3 reactors that let them use segments as anti ship missiles by raming them witch caused reactor to blow up this is in the top 5 most advanced gundams
It's got nothing to do with Tomino wanting to kill his characters off. The Ball is what the Federation had at the time , and they were losing the war. They had to scrape together something from the bottom of the barrel while Project V continued.
@@mechanomics2649 ok the cutting edge newer suits got totally wrecked by 80 year old suits thats like a Sherman tank taking out Abraums actually no that's not even as bad it be like a Abraums be taken out by a Nepolan horse towed muzzle loaded field gun. that make it clear?
Surprised you didn't go with the salamis, the magellan, pegasus, musai, gwann, irish, ra cailum, agama, or the always bulky zaku 3. You must have balls of steel
never watched gundam but that mine layer ball makes a lot of sense to me... After all in ZeroG what is moveing keeps moveing... Therefore accelerate at the enemy fleet, open the wings/containers/mine modules, Release the mines and deaccelerate then transition into getting out of there... Suddenly minefield right infront of the enemy fleet moveing in on them. other option keep the wings close behind you while you move/spin, release the mines one after another ....bingo spreading mine field.... You can do even more shenanigans depending on if the mines and if they got a self stabialising mechanism or not... Granted there are a few design improvments that can be made
The wing actually fold up when the machine is out of Operation area. The minelayer was use by the federation to stop Zeon from dropping for force om to Earth and harrass Zeon material transport route
So, essential explanation to these things. They were originally the meat shields for the cannon fodder Mobile Suits. They were literally construction equipment press ganged into service that somehow worked amazingly according to the expanded lore. Also, in cannon, a Ball actually was kicked by a Zaku hard enough that it hit and blew up a GM. But the real kicker? As any UC fan know, the actual combat mecha of the series started out as repurposed construction vehicles. So the Ball makes even more sense.
@@mechanomics2649i mean, they where top of the line (at least during the OYW.... the GM III was used way beyond it being considerd that iirc) the GM are, at their core, Downscalled(in terms of armor, and firepower) RX78-2s, The Lunar titanium armor the gundam had all across its body was to expensive for mass production so only vital areas(aka the chest mostly) got a lunar titanium armor on the GM. Same with the BeamSpraygun, instead of the Beam rifle of the RX78-2 which was powerfull, but not every efficent. The problem with the GM wasnt the machines themself(as a good GM ace was a menace on the battlefield) but the pilots, The pilots had barely any time to train before being pressed into combat.
So... pelletized... solid... propellant? Giant balls that are propelled by dumping a load of balls into a can through some sort of valve/gate/thing from a larger bladder or tank or magazine full of balls, lighting the balls in the can on fire, and then watching the stuff coming out of the burning balls shoot out of a hole at high pressure :D Terrifyingly human indeed.
One of the big benefits was that these were VERY cheap comparatively. Normally in the games/Anime that show these being used, it shows thousands of them being deployed. However, I suspect that the ease of construction, and its swarm capabilities allowed the deficiencies to be corrected over time
Exactly Mobile artillery that's good for highway speeds Who needs armor when you're a quarter of the size of other targets and can swerve as fast as RCS will let you!
Ahh the ball, much like the type 61 main battle tank is the real hero of the one year war and gave the federation the time it needed to turn the tide. It's design was so favored that 11 years after the war, ships still used one year war refit balls in leau of a fifth GM.
The Earth Federation, who else would decide that armored construction pod with a cannon strapped would be an effect tool against mobile suits. Well turns out they were right the Ball surprisingly has lower than expected death rates and higher than expecting yield of aces. The war in Mobile Suit Gundam like Battletech is entirely a human war. The Ball is also made to build Space Colonies. That Orange one is actually much weaker with only two I forgot how big machineguns
Okay, so caveat: I have no idea what the source material is, but I'm reminded here of some of the 1941-1942 early Red Army stuff when they were taking ZIS-5 and GAZ-AA/GAZ-MM trucks and bolting artillery (and eventually BM-13-16 Katyushas) onto the backs. Mind you, this is really before Lend-Lease and the Murmansk Life Line really begin to have much impact, so the Soviets are just doing this out of total desperation (if you don't believe that, then look at the early ZIS-5-mounted Katyusha, which could literally only fire sideways, or some of the "gun trucks" that had to be facing BACKWARDS to fire at the Germans), although even then, they're at least trying to install gun shielding to protect the crews on the "gun trucks". Thing is, as soon as the Matilda and Churchill tanks start arriving, along with British artillery, you really stop needing this expedient stuff; and while the Soviets actually do keep almost all of it in service, they do so in a training role to familiarize a gunner member of a gun crew with the weapon on the truck. Now, I'm sure some defender of this universe who is familiar with the Eastern Front in WWII is probably going to say "oh, but the Soviets kept using the Stalinets-35 tractor to pull their artillery and used gun trucks as AA guns!" Well, yes, they did. BUT, the tractors were also VERY heavily escorted by supporting infantry and light armored vehicles (including light tanks like the T-70M and the Stuart, the latter of which came via Lend-Lease) and also, very importantly, the only reason the Soviets loved using tracked tractors (not wheeled tractors, please let me emphasize that) to pull their towed artillery was because they had very small target profiles and were smaller than VW Bugs, yet could pull about what a GAZ-AA/GAZ-MM could pull as far as weight (and that truck was as big as a Ford F-350, roughly). The gun trucks with AA guns, meanwhile, were stationed well behind the lines. If a German fighter-bomber or fighter was going to get them, chances are it was with a 20mm cannon that would blow away a lightly-armored vehicle anyway. My overarching point is, once the Soviets got access to better equipment, they pulled most of their "emergency weapons" off the front lines. The Red Army already has an unfairly-terrible rep in the equipment department for WWII, but if they suddenly kept those gun trucks and side-mount Katyushas on the front lines, then created even more variations while having access to better stuff, the "unfairly-terrible" rep would suddenly turn into a "very reasonably-terrible" rep. If the people in the source material have the resources to make minelayer and submarine variants of this thing, then it's either like the Empire and the TIE Fighter in Star Wars where they just view everyone as disposable or alternately, they're not seeing what a fair midway point between a ridiculously expensive mech suit and an altered construction vehicle would be, and I--and I think most people coming from an "outsider looking in" point of view--would try for that "midway point".
The Ball is a more heavily armored and weaponized the Space Pod. The rcs style thrusters used pellets that are used in a directed explosion. The main thrusters were liquid fueled and loaded using quick swap tanks. It is quick bursts of speed. The idea is it was used more for long range fire supports. They got a bad reputation due to the anime showing them. But they are actually surprisingly capable units. Hence why a large number of video games considers them on par with Mobile Armors. It is also referenced that the directional thrusters can be used to damage an enemy. Now do the Gundam Seed equivalents. (Mobius and Mobius Zero) Also the Iron Blooded Orphans Mobile Workers.
I'm imagining just what would happen to the poor forklift that actually tried to *fire* that canon (from raised forklift tines). The levereage generated by that recoil might do interesting things!
Up-armoring a construction/maintenance vehicle and sticking a big honking gun on it was *exactly* our first choice when we began designing tanks; we took tracked tractors, armored them and put various sizes of guns on them. The ones we eventually fielded were purpose-built, but we also stuck more guns *and* bulldozer blades on some of them, so basically the same thing. On the other hand, tanks have contact with a planet to handle recoil forces when firing their big honking guns- the balls will just go into a dizzying backspin every time they fire their big honking guns.
I can't imagine how practical a construction unit with solid rocket motors could possibly be. Even if you considered that each thruster was something like a shotgun shell that would fire once and load the next propellant pack, that's an awfully inefficient way to do things.
Yeah, it really should be using some sort of monopropellant or other liquid propellant for fine control. The solid fuel pellets could be an auxiliary propulsion system, mainly used for increased trust when carrying a heavy load: i.e. ripping a damaged armor plate off of a combat vehicle or forcing an E-Stop. Actually when you put it like that, this design becomes an even better retrofit. Just use the pellets to get up to combat speed or for major thrust changes with the monopropellant as a fine control. A sphere, while silly looking is incredibly structurally sound when dealing with pressure vessels and ironically, that silly viewport is the proper shape for a low-pressure environment. Most of the variants honestly feel like "semi-official" field modifications, excluding the underwater one.
@@oracleofspace3931 A sphere doesn't have structural advantages in space (aside from collision resistance) in the same way way that it does under water. In space, the pressures are coming from the *inside* . Eggs do a reasonable job of protecting what's inside from what's outside. If they were as good at protecting from inside pressures; then, birds would be screwed!
@@oracleofspace3931 On some of their more distant craft, NASA JPL has released small quantities of fuel (just a little puff) without igniting, for fine RCS control. Really, all you need is reaction mass, and letting out a little whiff is sometimes all you need.
the ball use oxigen-aluminium trusters because they are cheap as fuck in gundam (and are not a solid but hybrid roket) since the explotation of lunar resources is masive (remember that 7 billion pepole live in onile isla 3 habitats) the movil suit also where partiali made for lunar mining
@@anuvisraa5786 That could make sense. Give a puff of powdered aluminium-oxide and oxygen gas, and supply a spark. That would be a solid-hybrid rocket. I don't know how efficient it would be, but when you're working in micro-gravity, and you're not trying to change orbit, you don't need much. You won't get much hydrogen or carbon from the lunar regolith, but it's littered with silicon, iron, calcium, aluminium, and magnesium oxides. Silicon and calcium oxides aren't very combustible as powdered aerosol, but iron, aluminium and magnesium oxides ARE. So really, all you need to do is have a canister of lunar regloith, similar in function to the air-powered sandblasting gun you might have in your shop, a bell nozzle, and an ignition source. Give a puff of oxygen gas from your tank, and you've got a very cheap thruster. If you can refine the silicon, calcium, and other impurities out of it, it'll work better, but plain old lunar regloith, as a fine powder, ought to work in a pinch as a dry fuel.
i honestly was half expecting a mention of the bob stempl tank, which is a 'tank' that new zeland made during world war two that was just a tractor with armor and guns
It would be gay if the balls were touching. The other side running short on materials made their own stop gap measure, and they looked like a canister. It was a very suicidal war for both sides, and it didn't really end after UC 0080. There was soon another series of events that lead up to the Gryps War, the OYW never really ended for some.
They were used for construction of space colonies, before mobile suits became a thing. Then when the Zakus and RX-78 Gundam started to show up, that's when the One-Year-War war took a different turn, from warships and nukes, to mobile suits like the Gundam and mobile armors like the Big Zam. Also, the GM was mass-produced in the middle of the war. There were even Gundam models like the RX-78 Ground Type that were mass-produced Gundams deployed in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
To be fair to the rest of the "standard combat units" of that universe, if you take all the mechs back to their origin, they where also up armored and weaponized construction vehicles. Not just the ball, the zaku (the first viable combat mobile suit) was a modification of a construction suit, with a reactor, and a gun. (That first construction vehicle was powered by an umbilical cord, and didn't have a independent reactor, and thus had a very, VERY limited range)
If you want to see balls...I refer you to Heavy Object. The Baby Magnum is a tracked ball with multiple cannons. The Tri-Core is three of these bloody balls with water mobility and an ad-hoc drilling platform. Of course, in this world, ground armies are essentially obsolete due to the shear overkill and armor from these Objects. So...Yeah, balls I say. Balls.
Reminds me of Gardians of the Galaxy when tehy all steal those construction skiffs and are being chased by ronans fighters and the main guy goes "these things are industrial vehicles, they are indestructable" then one of the others retorts "not against their weapons" i forget what the line was, ecto plasma or something made up. the first guy says back "thats not what i mean by indestructable" and it clicks in the other guys mind that you can just ram the attacking fighter ships and come away unscathed as they are reduced to mangled scrap. Also during WW2 New Zealand came up with the "Bob Semple" tank which was just a tractor with some machine guns and armour plating strapped to it. The main gunner basically had to lay ontop of the hood right above the very hot heat producing engine whilst encased in steel and concrete. They did this in preperation of a japanese invasion that never came.
Funny thing with that title is that there is a machine that uses 2 balls in it's design, its called the GM juggler. Its literally just a variant of the regular GM with 2 balls stuck to its shoulders.
3:10 "a situation where you humies couldn't build your combat vehicles fast enough so you took F8cking maintenance vehicles and straps guns to them," yup that is exactly what we do may i interest you in some tactical Toyotas?
This if you evolve it more this would make a lot of sense. Imagine a starfighter with the composite to fix your capital ships or literally use its arms to tear an enemy ship apart.
"I am astonished that there wasn't a model w/a pair RB-79 Balls stuck together w/a megacannon on top" You missed the GM Juggler then it has two balls strapped to it's back each with twin mega partical cannons
Tank terrors were also an example of slapping armor and a gun to a vehicle intended for work, they were deployed against infantry with no tank support and were quite effective.
Someone really should throw some gunpla together to make that. You are correct. I was hoping you'd start with the Zaku and the AMBACs concept and Minovsky particles, but the Ball works.
Moving into Gundam opens up a whole can of worms, the One Year War stuff starts to look down right practical compared to the Monstrosities that show up later in that particular Gundam setting (there are nearly a dozen alt universes in the franchise that operate pretty much separately except when some writer's try to merge them which is always a terrible idea).
So i have recently been reading some gundam manga(MSV the return of johnny ridden ) that covers a lot of obscure or minor weapons and vehicles of the one year war as an post war report of sorts, and i found out that these.. were intended to basically just act as disconnected ship guns for fleet on fleet fighting. They only later got reused for close defense after zeon curb stomped the federation in the initial fleet engagements using MSs.
My favorite story with the ball is that one guy built a gundam head front pice for his. And when the enemy seen it, they freaked out for they thought the federation built a giant gundam. I mean they did but much later with the phyco gundam
This also reminds me of the Urbanmech from the Mech Warrior franchise. Ridiculous, but everyone loves the Urbie, aka the walking trashcan. "They filled me with trash, I filled them with Lead." - GOAT Urbanmech Pilot
never underestimate the value of putting a gun on the cheapest/most plentiful vehicle you have. the events of the Toyota war illustrate this perfectly.
Ah, a fellow man of culture I see.
I mean that's how the panzer project in 1930's Germany got going... xD
@@taliawtf6944 soviet engineers entered the chat
@@illidan814 That's a whole other bag of lunacy xD
@@taliawtf6944(pre-ww2 Germany be like) They are not tanks! They are military grade tractors!
"The humans were being invaded by a massively superior force"
Yes
Humanity's greatest enemy:
Themselves
The real reason the Feddies won the one-year war?
Because they had balls.
Rock SOLID comment
You think you're joking, but you're not.
They excelled at flooding the battlefield with their balls.
@@wr1ght939 10/10...
Same reason the Soviets did so well against the Germans... Drown the enemy in your balls! ...I mean blood.
"I hate censoring myself because I have to listen back to myself."
*immediately launches into what is possibly the most profanity-laden episode yet.*
Oh, this is /hardly/ the most colorful episode.
@@SacredCowShipyards Indeed.
In the distant future, expletives earn tax credits (because they help artificial intelligences more correctly model sophont speech processes)
The ball got him acting up
Let's also point out how the bleeps are getting shorter and shorter so they don't actually bleep anything at all. And I swear sometimes he pauses mid-profanity to allow time for the bleep, because many times I've heard him say "what the f- [BLEEP] -uck"
"they built an up armored version."
SPACE KILLDOZER!
Ypu aren't wrong , the ball was often just used by either rookies or people that upset the military
All the Colonies wanted was an easement.
Urbanmech pilots would salute Ball pilots for being ridiculously brave for just getting in the thing.
The big difference between the two is the Ball goes fast as fuck.
But then, space doesn't quite let you park in the local garage waiting for a MadCat to walk by.
@@theriveracis5172 Balls and Urbies are very fucking scary when you get to why they're effective at what they do. Especially since they both can punch WELL above their weights when piloted right.
@@kabob0077
The Urbies're known as 'pocket assaults' for good reason.
I've actually got a lance of those boys painted up in 'stealth' colors, due to fun rule nonsense when it comes to jump jets taking no movement penalty at night, and tracer rounds halving the aiming penalty.
The last thing my enemy hears is the short sputter of an Urbanmech's jumpjet, and the sudden wail of an autocannon round screaming past.
Now I want someone to drop an Urbie on the Dock just to hear the dockmaster cry "who the fuck left this trashcan here?"
@@theriveracis5172 Wait they are legit nicknamed POCKET ASSAULT MECHS!?!?
Strapping guns to things not meant to have guns is par for the course.
Check out my deuce-in-a-half truck with quad fifties on the back for proof. Or the vietnam specials they made where they'd just strap as many m60's a m2 fifties to each side and hose the jungle on the roadside.
Battletech: if you can’t make a battlemech, put a gun and some more armor on a constructionmech and have it use its jackhammer as a melee weapon lol
@@Papercut337 I think there was a GM or Zaku based construction model that has a jackhammer heat weapon or shovel. With heated edges. It's as goofy as it looks awesome.
Basically how air combat started so yeah, deffinitly
CANNON VESPA CANNON VESPA
The RB-79 "Ball." Because there's nothing more permanent than a temporary, stopgap solution.
The zurge rush manuver
If only we'd remember that when they were telling us "two weeks to flatten the curve," almost two years ago.
@@canisblack wtf does this have anything to do with gundam
and really, stop hating on us humies, the zentraedi did the same exact shit, and let's not even get into know-where.
I mean... Yeah RGM-79 2's were just refit GM's from the one year war so yeah stopgaps sometimes become the standard. lol
On the whole 'sunk cost' thing quickly;
Being that this is a repurposed construction unit, there is none, in practice.
Even if they were producing these things brand new, the machining, spare parts, and logistics base already exists for them.
All you're doing extra is adding on a gun, which as you say is bolted on the top and certainly not difficult to produce, and in some variant cases, welding armor plates to it.
Even the minelayer, while most likely produced from new stock, doesn't deviate enough to need a retooling of any major factory.
From a logistics point of view, these things are less expensive to make than the squishies inside them, and are basically perfect for a vanguard unit.
Hell, they're still capable of what they were originally built to do, no less. So now you've got reinforcements for your supply salvage and repair vehicles, who are also capable of helping to a fair level.
My friend, if you think this is crazy, do not look up the gun truck. They've taken cargo trucks, slapped armor on, and put as much firepower as they could fit.
This isn't the first time it's been done. Turns out putting a TOW launcher onto something you already have is quite a lot cheaper, and miles more practical than outfitting every engineering force or garrisoning backliner with Bradleys let alone MBTs.
ball cheaper to build then the ak
@@dragonjaj But commrade... what if you equip ball with AK?
Yeah, these things.... they look like Space Technicals... or Space Killdozers, in the case of the up armored one. Figure a yard tug is gonna have a whole mess of delta-v, a bunch of torque, and be responsible for reattaching your armor plates and guns, so it's gotta be reasonably precise. I doubt they're building new ones, exactly, it looks more like they keep using the Space Hilux there, and pissed off humans keep strapping guns to them. This isn't sunk cost, this is "we will weaponize anything."
@@Tomyironmane
If memory serves from cannon, they're one of the most maneuverable things out there.
Insanely fast, can turn on a dime, and even have some grapples I belive for some interesting swing tether moves.
No idea how that works given the solid fuel though. Pin it to writers not really knowing how this stuff works. Or otherwise being separate from the tech manual types who add that sort of detail.
@@Tomyironmane it cost 3 times more
The real kicker is that the balls actually excelled in melee, so they started being given mech scale heat knives to counter Zeons heat axes. Then some one bolted a gun to it and it became terrifying. Until it got shot by a beam gun, then the "up armored" one was made. It needed a bigger gun, so of course they got a mech scale machine gun bolted on. This repeats as usual.
Squichie mood be like
And we are back at the start of "mechs make 0 fucking sense and are utter shit, garbage combat systems".
@@andreasmuller4666 Yep. Rule of cool is entirely why it works in the first place.
dynasty warriors gundam 2 has a missions where EVERYONE is in balls
@@andreasmuller4666 mech make sense when they're integrated with a military force. A mech has the advantage of moving sideways without turning, so they can step out from behind a skyscraper and fire, then move back behind cover. They can go prone and be no higher than a tank. They can navigate slopes that tanks would have issue with. And if you're going from space to a habitat, a mech is a model that can make that transition cleanly. What doesn't make sense is an army of 1000 mechs... and nothing else. combined forces are an asset!
The more I think about it, the more I find myself absolutely loving these stupid looking balls. They just flat out make sense. Sure they have a massive list of downsides and are the practical definition of a temporary stopgap becoming permanent, but they frankly work. They're space technicals that every capitol ship and space dock will have lying around anyways, that punch so far above their weight class it's kinda silly not to have ready-made retrofit options for them when the situation demands.
Alright so the funny thing is that just about all of your complaints except for the solid state fuels are acknowledged in universe, and the only reason they kept using them was because the gun on top could actually damage the enemy’s grunt unit with a solid hit and even if it took five ball units to take out a single ZAKU 2 it was still cheaper. Not to mention the ball actually had a higher top speed and easier to learn controls to boot.
So yeah, a weapon system with just enough power to be useful, with just enough speed and armor to survive a mission if they got lucky about a tenth the price point of the next step up, and comparatively idiot proof controls. Nothing could possibly scream “military admin” louder than that.
"If it's stupid; but it works, it *might* not be stupid after all."
@@randlebrowne2048 Or alternatively "If it's stupid but it works....it's still stupid and you're lucky it worked."
Yeah, Earth definitely operated on the "Russia in WWII" model.
"One Gundam per two pilots. When the first pilot dies, second pilot takes over the controls."
It's amazing how the Ball perfectly symbolizes most flaws of the Earth Federation
Well, model kit wise 1/144 high-grade Balls ARE sold as two per box... And since Gunpla Is Freedom, noone stops you from kitbashing them onto 1/60 scale megaparticle cannon or something.
Or making a GM Juggler by using the ball twin pack and a GM ground type.
@@barrybend7189 gm command type
@@dragonjaj nope it uses a ground type body.
Someone made a Char Custom Ball with a Zeong hand for a cannon and a command horn.
I mean, two Balls, a mega particle cannon, and probably a large engine or two is charging after you, I'd run even if it looked hilarious that's a terrifying amount of firepower that could be aimed at you
"I have big gun on mah balls" -The Engineer.
Yep, now I got kids.
The ball is easily the most reasonable fighting craft of the Universal Century. No pointless legs or anthropomorphic hands. We're being invaded and have no extra production? Stick guns on what we've already got and trained with. It works well enough? Keep doing it. The lack of endurance isn't a big deal since these are used as fire support and if needed, they can still drop the gun and fulfill their original function. Given how much you criticize other designs for unneeded complexity I'm surprised you're not all over these balls.
The Great Irony is that the Earth Federation enemies, the forces of the Principality of Zeon, made their own version! The MP-02A Oggo (Got I wanna say eggo here) is a big yellow pod (Not a sphere) and it uses excess hand weapons from their Zaku mobile suits. The problem is that the Oggo didn't work that well...and Zeon was running outta pilots compared to the legions of Ball Pilots (many veterans of which had moved on to the GM mobile suit) so the Oggos had rookies in them! And they got their asses handed to them on a epic scale. Worst of all...the Oggo is not meme-worthy like a Ball. The Oggo looks like a trashcan flipped on its side.
That is the odd thing, the only machine in the original UC0079 is either the balls and type-61.......Which is the ball and the twin cannon tank.
being spherical would total increase its crushing resistance. Would probably make a good cockpit for something larger and combat oriented, have it double as an ejection system. Kinda like Faye Valentine's ship the red tail. I would op to have the ball internally to any combat vehicle.
Fun thing about the Ball is it actually had an impressive kill rate to the point where it had quite a few aces. I always loved that the Federation kicked Zeons ass mostly with Planes and Tanks
@@MrPikaGammer actually got the master grade model kit for the thing and built it, love weird little goobers like *The Ball*
Well, zeon are still humans, only a different nation, but other than that, you summed up the oyw pretty well. Except operation british. That was a clusterfuck
Weren't they genetically enhanced humans? Or is that just in Gundam Seed?
@@randlebrowne2048 that's Gundam SEED.
Zeonoid butchers are not human and shouldn't be regarded as such, we had our chance to assault Side 3 directly and eradicate these menaces once and for all, but we didn't and let their ridiculous nation stand untouched, while corpses of 5 billions space colonists they slaughtered floating in the cold void. Anything less than total annihilation to the last trace of their existence is going too easy on these Zeonoid scums.
Honestly the Ball is both loved and memed. Heck one of the best examples of the best pilots was Umon Salmon from Crossbone Gundam. He started in a ball with a Gundam mask and the results were hilarious. Also despite the janky design of the Ball was scary for Zeon to fight because it had better performance than their mobile armor heavy weapons systems. Best series of Gundam that shows the Ball's terrifying abilities is Gundam MS Igloo.
Don't forget that GM testing variant that used a pair of Balls as funnels.
@@26th_Primarch the GM Juggler.
@@barrybend7189 yep
The Ball is a lot like the Urbanmech, it's small, it's deceptively nonthreatening at first glance, and it's all fun and games until it blows a hole through your mech and leaves you either dead or inoperable. Don't underestimate EITHER of them in battle.
@@kabob0077 perfect comparison! that's why urbies die first when i play MW5
The reason for the underwater variant existing is kind of funny from my limited understanding. Basically Zeon high command figure that because earth is mostly covered in water a good chunk of the invasion force should be amphibious, thinking that the earth federation would logically try to protect the oceans and coastlines in the event of an invasion. For a bunch of reason though (lack of resources, their navy being wiped out when zeon deorbited a colony unto Australia, the fact the air travel was so common they just didn't use traditional naval stuff, ect), the federation just ignored the oceans almost entirely until after the war. At which point most zeon hold outs were hiding in river ways, isolated beaches, or in submarine bases. So the federation just started waging a poorly run war of attrition against anyone left on earth, which kept getting side tracked by all of the other terrorist attacks happening at the same time. This also possibly part of the reason why zeon lost the war, because they put so much effort and material into building a traditional navy that was almost entirely useless. Some one correct me if I'm wrong about any of this though.
You are largely right. Something I would like to add is Zeon invasion forces captured a series of new cutting-edge submarines from Federation when they occupied North America, and decided to use them to jump start their at-this-point nonexistent navy. Combined with the fact that there aren't that many Fed surface vessels left for capture, resulted in a very underwater-focused navy. However Federation soon figured out that best way to counter submarines is to spam ASW patrol planes, that's why Fed only put in token efforts to develop amphibious MS, they don't really fight Zeon seafoods head on.
Another interesting thing is Federation Navy deteriorated so much in the following years of OYW, they have to make sure they have enemies to fight to justify their existence. To this end they formed a weird symbiotic relationship with seabourn Zeon remnants, Feds don't put that much efforts into actually track down and eradicate rogue Zeon subs, and said Zeon subs commits low intensity pirating to sustain themselves, giving Fed navy some works to do and convince Federation Congress don't just axe the navy entirely.
@@lancerhalsey4816 Gotta love screwed up incentives right?
The mine layer makes perfect sense, since they are not supposed to be close enough to the enemy to be shot at anyway.
Edit: I mean using that particular vehicle as a mine layer.
Can't forget, it has hinges on the mine racks that hide the racks behind the main chassis...in...space... oh.
Mine layer actually had the best chance of living as it never saw combat
If you ever find an MCRN Corvette-Class Destroyer in your docks, don't try and stick a railgun on it's spine.
well...it worked...
I personally think it's a wonderful design, along the lines of TIE Fighters. Yes the enemy can create a expensive platform to put their weapons system on, but these are much more efficient for the job.
I can see that analogy, and I quite like it, tie fighter of the gundam universe. However... The difference as I understand it is that the Empire chose to go that route, but the Federation was forced to take that route.
I feel the need to point out that you *can* actually have throttle control on solid-fuel rockets, including the ability to shut off and reignite the rocket. It's just that most solid-fuel rockets don't bother in the name of simplicity and cost savings. So the thrusters on this thing aren't quite as crazy as they appear at first glance.
Actually, the "here's a thing we have, bolt as many guns on as will fit" method is something of an American tradition. It shows in WW2 naval vessel anti-aircraft armament and I recall hearing of army transport trucks, tired of getting ambushed, bolting machine guns on wherever they'd fit. I think that was a Vietnam thing, but I don't remember for sure.
Sounds like an orc strategy.
@@jackochainsaw Well even orcs can't be wrong about everything, can they?
@@narrowgroundentertainment I never said it was bad 😀
Layered Solid Fuel is a better description.
Take your solid fuel, mold it to the shape of it's container. Cut it into sections that each provide one G of thrust for one second to whatever mass you're moving. In between each section of fuel put a metal chip as a separator. When you need thrust provide a current to the lowest most fuel chip. It fires off, the metal chip above it seals the next slug of fuel from igniting and provides a thrust floor. If you need more than one slug of thrust, give current to the next slug of fuel. It ignites, kicking the bottom metal chip out. When you have the thrust you need, just stop adding current to the next fuel chips and they stop firing.
its all fun and games till you get a "chain fire" malfunction
What you are describing is the "Metal Storm" gun pointing backwards. It might work, but not well. It is a version of "superposed projectiles," the best known of which is the simple roman candle. A better solution would be similar to the nuclear propulsion of Project Orion, in which a nuclear fission device is ejected behind the vehicle and explodes against a "pusher plate." Experiments were done with conventional explosives and it works, but isn't super controllable.
Wouldn't that be somewhat the idea of the pelletised solid fuel?
Same concept
@@tarmaque : What you're describing is exactly what pelletized solid rocket fuel is for.
Pizzed Ahff : Your layering concept does much the same thing as pelletizing, but with pelletizing you can more easily implement very small thrusts, making it better for maneuvering thrusters.
Which should not be taken as an endorsement of pelletizing solid rocket fuel, because it's a phenomenally horrible explosion hazard (as in, "instantaneous combustion rate easily exceeded that of the Space Shuttle's solid rocket boosters" levels of phenomenal; also, any fuel that doesn't go up immediately gets strewn all over the surroundings to burn more stuff).
“Dockmaster, please, you have to stop turning our battle frigates into cubes! It’s the third one this rotation and I’m fairly certain the Dominus is going to strangle me if we loose another one in such a way!”
(Please review the Cabal ships from Destiny if you ever get the chance! I’d love to get your insight on their designs!!)
I've actually got a few kills in a Ball in Gundam Battle Operation 2. OYW era suits don't have many long range options outside of the snipers units, and they're usually getting harassed by raid units. Sneaking in a few shots in the back while the enemy is distracted by team mates is hilarious, and pretty viable.
The top of these has a universal industrial connector: basically just a really big plug socket.
*That* is really what made militarizing these things easy! Pretty much the only work that needs to happen involves modifying the guns to use the connection.
The modularity of these seriously expands their mission profile as well.
If you look at the records, these things have literally dozens of different weapon loadouts, most of which can probably be changed in an hour by anyone experienced in spacecraft maintenance.
Anything can be a weapon… and anything else can carry those weapons.
Project V strikes again, this time with a pair. God, aside from the guntank and the GM this is the best thing that came from that (yes, the rx-78 is cool, but come on, were else can you say spray and prey other than the GMs beam sray gun?).
Project V had nothing to do with the Ball.
It's a common thing for a force that can't produce combat vehicles to repurpose civilian and industrial vehicles for combat with armour plates and guns strapped wherever it can fit.
_Points at the catch-all term of "Technicals", especially the glorious Toyota Helux pick-up truck and its modular weapon systems_ Humans are fucking weird yet somehow awesome.
@@internetzenmaster8952 The modern war chariot for when you are on a budget. If aliens ever were to invade I would expect to see many pick up trucks and jeeps with armor plates slapped on and all manners of firepower bolted down to them.
"You took a maintenance vehicle, stuck a gun on it and called it a day" And now you know why there are so many pickup trucks with 50.cals rolling around the Middle East and South America, because they are simple and they work
Wait wait wait... Ontop of no armour, bad gun, bad targeting system and hideously bad TWR... It has some sort of weird solid rocket fuel too? I mean, I know Tomino liked to kill his characters off, but this adds another dimension to that...
Also, as an add-on, the actual mole suits in Gundam were construction vehicles too. The big issue was a power source for them, on a construction site a bulky stationary generator with power cables to the unit was fine, but that wouldn't work in battle. Zeon's first mobile suits were basically up-armoured and armed construction vehicles too, with a very, _very_ unstable main reactor that made them like walking thermonuclear bombs.
v gundam and its mas produced version had 3 reactors that let them use segments as anti ship missiles by raming them witch caused reactor to blow up this is in the top 5 most advanced gundams
@@dragonjaj Yeah, almost 80 years later. I'm not sure what your point is.
It's got nothing to do with Tomino wanting to kill his characters off. The Ball is what the Federation had at the time , and they were losing the war. They had to scrape together something from the bottom of the barrel while Project V continued.
@@mechanomics2649 ok the cutting edge newer suits got totally wrecked by 80 year old suits thats like a Sherman tank taking out Abraums actually no that's not even as bad it be like a Abraums be taken out by a Nepolan horse towed muzzle loaded field gun. that make it clear?
@@mechanomics2649 I think you missed the joke there, guy. total r/woosh.
Surprised you didn't go with the salamis, the magellan, pegasus, musai, gwann, irish, ra cailum, agama, or the always bulky zaku 3.
You must have balls of steel
Hello fellow kakarot197 fan
never watched gundam but that mine layer ball makes a lot of sense to me...
After all in ZeroG what is moveing keeps moveing...
Therefore accelerate at the enemy fleet, open the wings/containers/mine modules, Release the mines and deaccelerate then transition into getting out of there...
Suddenly minefield right infront of the enemy fleet moveing in on them.
other option keep the wings close behind you while you move/spin, release the mines one after another ....bingo spreading mine field....
You can do even more shenanigans depending on if the mines and if they got a self stabialising mechanism or not...
Granted there are a few design improvments that can be made
The wing actually fold up when the machine is out of Operation area. The minelayer was use by the federation to stop Zeon from dropping for force om to Earth and harrass Zeon material transport route
So, essential explanation to these things. They were originally the meat shields for the cannon fodder Mobile Suits. They were literally construction equipment press ganged into service that somehow worked amazingly according to the expanded lore. Also, in cannon, a Ball actually was kicked by a Zaku hard enough that it hit and blew up a GM.
But the real kicker? As any UC fan know, the actual combat mecha of the series started out as repurposed construction vehicles. So the Ball makes even more sense.
I hated the disrespect the GM got in MSG. They were supposed to be top of the line.
@@mechanomics2649i mean, they where top of the line (at least during the OYW.... the GM III was used way beyond it being considerd that iirc) the GM are, at their core, Downscalled(in terms of armor, and firepower) RX78-2s, The Lunar titanium armor the gundam had all across its body was to expensive for mass production so only vital areas(aka the chest mostly) got a lunar titanium armor on the GM.
Same with the BeamSpraygun, instead of the Beam rifle of the RX78-2 which was powerfull, but not every efficent.
The problem with the GM wasnt the machines themself(as a good GM ace was a menace on the battlefield) but the pilots, The pilots had barely any time to train before being pressed into combat.
Finally getting into Gundam I see. You should check out the IMO the most American variant The Heavy Arms.
Chibodee Crockett and Gundam Maxter would like a red,white and blue word with you!
Because more dakka more better!
@@EireHammer I like that Maxter has BIG IRONs on his hips. But the BRRRRRTS on Heavyarms seal it for me.
Full Armor Unicorn Gundam. Literally everything that could fit, plus two big rocket boosters to move it.
The Heavy Arms also known as the DAKKA Gundam.
Bob Semple, space version.
It's gotta have cold gas RCS though, because otherwise you can't do the maintenance tasks it's meant to do.
Came here to mention the Bob Semple. Happy to see I’m not the only who had that thought.
The mine laying one actually makes sense as it wouldnt be a direct combat vehicle
Ok now since you've gone there...
Plz do the VF-0 & VF-1 from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.
While that'd be fun I'd think I'd rather listen to him try to grasp the concept of Basara Nekki's VF-19 Excalibur Custom from Macross 7. 😂😉
Someone took a look at the Pod from 2001, and was like: "But, what if I stuck a big gun on the top?"
Audio quality is great... On the other hand, two balls with a mega cannon on top is 100% something that would fit into the G-Thunderbolt series.
3:12 The RGM-79 was the last gunpla kit I brought. Simple, easy to put together and highly customizable. I'm going to probably buy another soon.
It's a space technical! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)
So... pelletized... solid... propellant? Giant balls that are propelled by dumping a load of balls into a can through some sort of valve/gate/thing from a larger bladder or tank or magazine full of balls, lighting the balls in the can on fire, and then watching the stuff coming out of the burning balls shoot out of a hole at high pressure :D
Terrifyingly human indeed.
The Ball was a beast in Gundam Battle Assualt. Typewriter of doom. Lol. Other than the game it had a good showing in the series the 08th MS Team.
One of the big benefits was that these were VERY cheap comparatively. Normally in the games/Anime that show these being used, it shows thousands of them being deployed. However, I suspect that the ease of construction, and its swarm capabilities allowed the deficiencies to be corrected over time
That “thing” is the space version of a hilux with a 20mm on the back
Exactly
Mobile artillery that's good for highway speeds
Who needs armor when you're a quarter of the size of other targets and can swerve as fast as RCS will let you!
@@riccardo1796 And traveling a swarm because your vehicle are so dirt cheap it actually cost more to scarp them.
plus you have a lot of civil operators redi for concription
"Any ship left on the docks for 24 hours will be compressed into a cube."
RB-79: *SPHERE INTENSIFIES*
8:01 Good sir, it's called a KILL DOZER and is amazing at it's job. Remember, nothing settles a land dispute quite like leveling the land.
I'm so happy you took a shot at the Gundam franchise!!! Plus great pick for the first vehicle to rip apart!!!
Ahh the ball, much like the type 61 main battle tank is the real hero of the one year war and gave the federation the time it needed to turn the tide. It's design was so favored that 11 years after the war, ships still used one year war refit balls in leau of a fifth GM.
Ah, yes, one of many, many improvised fighting vehicles, a harkening song to the Fords and Honda trucks of the past.
Ok, on the subject of arms. I request a video on the Outlaw Star grappler ships, spaceships..... that wrestle in space...
The Earth Federation, who else would decide that armored construction pod with a cannon strapped would be an effect tool against mobile suits. Well turns out they were right the Ball surprisingly has lower than expected death rates and higher than expecting yield of aces. The war in Mobile Suit Gundam like Battletech is entirely a human war. The Ball is also made to build Space Colonies. That Orange one is actually much weaker with only two I forgot how big machineguns
Okay, so caveat: I have no idea what the source material is, but I'm reminded here of some of the 1941-1942 early Red Army stuff when they were taking ZIS-5 and GAZ-AA/GAZ-MM trucks and bolting artillery (and eventually BM-13-16 Katyushas) onto the backs. Mind you, this is really before Lend-Lease and the Murmansk Life Line really begin to have much impact, so the Soviets are just doing this out of total desperation (if you don't believe that, then look at the early ZIS-5-mounted Katyusha, which could literally only fire sideways, or some of the "gun trucks" that had to be facing BACKWARDS to fire at the Germans), although even then, they're at least trying to install gun shielding to protect the crews on the "gun trucks".
Thing is, as soon as the Matilda and Churchill tanks start arriving, along with British artillery, you really stop needing this expedient stuff; and while the Soviets actually do keep almost all of it in service, they do so in a training role to familiarize a gunner member of a gun crew with the weapon on the truck. Now, I'm sure some defender of this universe who is familiar with the Eastern Front in WWII is probably going to say "oh, but the Soviets kept using the Stalinets-35 tractor to pull their artillery and used gun trucks as AA guns!" Well, yes, they did. BUT, the tractors were also VERY heavily escorted by supporting infantry and light armored vehicles (including light tanks like the T-70M and the Stuart, the latter of which came via Lend-Lease) and also, very importantly, the only reason the Soviets loved using tracked tractors (not wheeled tractors, please let me emphasize that) to pull their towed artillery was because they had very small target profiles and were smaller than VW Bugs, yet could pull about what a GAZ-AA/GAZ-MM could pull as far as weight (and that truck was as big as a Ford F-350, roughly). The gun trucks with AA guns, meanwhile, were stationed well behind the lines. If a German fighter-bomber or fighter was going to get them, chances are it was with a 20mm cannon that would blow away a lightly-armored vehicle anyway.
My overarching point is, once the Soviets got access to better equipment, they pulled most of their "emergency weapons" off the front lines. The Red Army already has an unfairly-terrible rep in the equipment department for WWII, but if they suddenly kept those gun trucks and side-mount Katyushas on the front lines, then created even more variations while having access to better stuff, the "unfairly-terrible" rep would suddenly turn into a "very reasonably-terrible" rep. If the people in the source material have the resources to make minelayer and submarine variants of this thing, then it's either like the Empire and the TIE Fighter in Star Wars where they just view everyone as disposable or alternately, they're not seeing what a fair midway point between a ridiculously expensive mech suit and an altered construction vehicle would be, and I--and I think most people coming from an "outsider looking in" point of view--would try for that "midway point".
As the saying goes you can't be a GM without Balls, one more thing there were ball variants decades after the OYW.
There were rumor that they even built balls with GM limbs on the outside and was the most terrify thing existed in the time.
Because the perfect thing to equip a half built TIE fighter with
Is a melee weapon
So wait, these balls are supposed to be the Hilux of space.
Can someone call the CIA and tell them I'd like cancel my purchase of Space Toyotas?
The Ball is a more heavily armored and weaponized the Space Pod.
The rcs style thrusters used pellets that are used in a directed explosion. The main thrusters were liquid fueled and loaded using quick swap tanks. It is quick bursts of speed. The idea is it was used more for long range fire supports.
They got a bad reputation due to the anime showing them. But they are actually surprisingly capable units. Hence why a large number of video games considers them on par with Mobile Armors.
It is also referenced that the directional thrusters can be used to damage an enemy.
Now do the Gundam Seed equivalents. (Mobius and Mobius Zero) Also the Iron Blooded Orphans Mobile Workers.
"Open the pod bay doors, Char."
If this gives you anger, check out Space battleship yamato (also known as star-blazers)
They took the yamato and taped rockets to it
at least they used the existing heavy manipulator arm mount for the cannon. Bet the recoil was murder on the bearings though.
I'd imagine that the recoil from that off-center gun would cause the craft to spin out of control every time it fires.
@@randlebrowne2048 only if the main body was unbalanced like say putting a heavy scrap steel Gundam mask on the front of one.
use that pelletized thruster system for counter thrust or have something mounted to the back of the cannon like they do in The Expanse with the PDCs
They put an artillery cannon on a forklift, that's why peoples love the ball
I'm imagining just what would happen to the poor forklift that actually tried to *fire* that canon (from raised forklift tines). The levereage generated by that recoil might do interesting things!
That just sounds like those russian milktruck retrofitted with weapons and to send to battles during early stage of WW2.
Up-armoring a construction/maintenance vehicle and sticking a big honking gun on it was *exactly* our first choice when we began designing tanks; we took tracked tractors, armored them and put various sizes of guns on them. The ones we eventually fielded were purpose-built, but we also stuck more guns *and* bulldozer blades on some of them, so basically the same thing.
On the other hand, tanks have contact with a planet to handle recoil forces when firing their big honking guns- the balls will just go into a dizzying backspin every time they fire their big honking guns.
I can't imagine how practical a construction unit with solid rocket motors could possibly be. Even if you considered that each thruster was something like a shotgun shell that would fire once and load the next propellant pack, that's an awfully inefficient way to do things.
Yeah, it really should be using some sort of monopropellant or other liquid propellant for fine control. The solid fuel pellets could be an auxiliary propulsion system, mainly used for increased trust when carrying a heavy load: i.e. ripping a damaged armor plate off of a combat vehicle or forcing an E-Stop.
Actually when you put it like that, this design becomes an even better retrofit. Just use the pellets to get up to combat speed or for major thrust changes with the monopropellant as a fine control. A sphere, while silly looking is incredibly structurally sound when dealing with pressure vessels and ironically, that silly viewport is the proper shape for a low-pressure environment. Most of the variants honestly feel like "semi-official" field modifications, excluding the underwater one.
@@oracleofspace3931 A sphere doesn't have structural advantages in space (aside from collision resistance) in the same way way that it does under water. In space, the pressures are coming from the *inside* .
Eggs do a reasonable job of protecting what's inside from what's outside. If they were as good at protecting from inside pressures; then, birds would be screwed!
@@oracleofspace3931 On some of their more distant craft, NASA JPL has released small quantities of fuel (just a little puff) without igniting, for fine RCS control. Really, all you need is reaction mass, and letting out a little whiff is sometimes all you need.
the ball use oxigen-aluminium trusters because they are cheap as fuck in gundam (and are not a solid but hybrid roket) since the explotation of lunar resources is masive (remember that 7 billion pepole live in onile isla 3 habitats) the movil suit also where partiali made for lunar mining
@@anuvisraa5786 That could make sense. Give a puff of powdered aluminium-oxide and oxygen gas, and supply a spark. That would be a solid-hybrid rocket. I don't know how efficient it would be, but when you're working in micro-gravity, and you're not trying to change orbit, you don't need much.
You won't get much hydrogen or carbon from the lunar regolith, but it's littered with silicon, iron, calcium, aluminium, and magnesium oxides. Silicon and calcium oxides aren't very combustible as powdered aerosol, but iron, aluminium and magnesium oxides ARE. So really, all you need to do is have a canister of lunar regloith, similar in function to the air-powered sandblasting gun you might have in your shop, a bell nozzle, and an ignition source. Give a puff of oxygen gas from your tank, and you've got a very cheap thruster. If you can refine the silicon, calcium, and other impurities out of it, it'll work better, but plain old lunar regloith, as a fine powder, ought to work in a pinch as a dry fuel.
after being compressed into a cube, how about we mount a control seat, thruster pack and a gun to it?
And sell them as Starfighters... Good idea you're hired...
if it works it aint stupid. and it worked very well. it coudl fuck over a zaku that cost like 8 times it did.
I would not expect the killdozer to be mentioned in a video with gundam
There is the D Gundam in Under the Gundam double fake. Its literally the killdozer Gundam.
i honestly was half expecting a mention of the bob stempl tank, which is a 'tank' that new zeland made during world war two that was just a tractor with armor and guns
It would be gay if the balls were touching.
The other side running short on materials made their own stop gap measure, and they looked like a canister. It was a very suicidal war for both sides, and it didn't really end after UC 0080. There was soon another series of events that lead up to the Gryps War, the OYW never really ended for some.
They were used for construction of space colonies, before mobile suits became a thing. Then when the Zakus and RX-78 Gundam started to show up, that's when the One-Year-War war took a different turn, from warships and nukes, to mobile suits like the Gundam and mobile armors like the Big Zam. Also, the GM was mass-produced in the middle of the war. There were even Gundam models like the RX-78 Ground Type that were mass-produced Gundams deployed in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
Or as I like to call it: Gundam's equivalent of the Urbanmech. Small, cheap, and memable as all hell.
No curbie the urbie.
To be fair to the rest of the "standard combat units" of that universe, if you take all the mechs back to their origin, they where also up armored and weaponized construction vehicles. Not just the ball, the zaku (the first viable combat mobile suit) was a modification of a construction suit, with a reactor, and a gun. (That first construction vehicle was powered by an umbilical cord, and didn't have a independent reactor, and thus had a very, VERY limited range)
If you want to see balls...I refer you to Heavy Object. The Baby Magnum is a tracked ball with multiple cannons. The Tri-Core is three of these bloody balls with water mobility and an ad-hoc drilling platform. Of course, in this world, ground armies are essentially obsolete due to the shear overkill and armor from these Objects.
So...Yeah, balls I say. Balls.
Im just waiting for your "face reveal" to be some 0.2 second screaming fractal space reminiscent of a DMT trip 😂
Hmmmm....
Reminds me of Gardians of the Galaxy when tehy all steal those construction skiffs and are being chased by ronans fighters and the main guy goes "these things are industrial vehicles, they are indestructable" then one of the others retorts "not against their weapons" i forget what the line was, ecto plasma or something made up. the first guy says back "thats not what i mean by indestructable" and it clicks in the other guys mind that you can just ram the attacking fighter ships and come away unscathed as they are reduced to mangled scrap.
Also during WW2 New Zealand came up with the "Bob Semple" tank which was just a tractor with some machine guns and armour plating strapped to it. The main gunner basically had to lay ontop of the hood right above the very hot heat producing engine whilst encased in steel and concrete. They did this in preperation of a japanese invasion that never came.
Funny thing with that title is that there is a machine that uses 2 balls in it's design, its called the GM juggler. Its literally just a variant of the regular GM with 2 balls stuck to its shoulders.
A space combat version of Stabby the Roomba.
Yes... Perfection...
Remember the one year war lasted ...well one year . And for 9 months of that the Ball held the line best it could against Zakus .
3:10 "a situation where you humies couldn't build your combat vehicles fast enough so you took F8cking maintenance vehicles and straps guns to them," yup that is exactly what we do may i interest you in some tactical Toyotas?
With the outro always talking about unattended ships being compressed to a cube, I really wanna see an episode on the Borg cube
would love to see your thoughts of the "monster" from Macross
9:55 how many atmospheres does it stand?
Since it is a space vehicle anything between 1 and 0.
This if you evolve it more this would make a lot of sense. Imagine a starfighter with the composite to fix your capital ships or literally use its arms to tear an enemy ship apart.
It's a skid steer... In space.
This is somewhat analogous to me bolting a 106mm recoilless to the CAT skidder in my garage.
If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid :)
The RB-79 Ball.
The Gundam Universe's counterpart to the Toyota Technical.
iserlohn station from legend of the galactic heroes.
Can your dock hold a liquid metal shielded death star?
"I am astonished that there wasn't a model w/a pair RB-79 Balls stuck together w/a megacannon on top" You missed the GM Juggler then it has two balls strapped to it's back each with twin mega partical cannons
I remember the juggler gm having one pilot and one gunner. The gunner was in charge of the two balls that separated from the gm
@@KnightManCross dead on late war design to counter newtype all range weapons like the ghost of salomon used
It's good to see that even far into the future we would still have the good old technical
I recommend you watch the MS Igloo series-shows the Balls a few time including squaring off with the Zeon equivalent of a ball.
Tank terrors were also an example of slapping armor and a gun to a vehicle intended for work, they were deployed against infantry with no tank support and were quite effective.
Someone really should throw some gunpla together to make that. You are correct. I was hoping you'd start with the Zaku and the AMBACs concept and Minovsky particles, but the Ball works.
It's all about the pilot. Case and point, "Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team - Ball vs Zaku
"
Moving into Gundam opens up a whole can of worms, the One Year War stuff starts to look down right practical compared to the Monstrosities that show up later in that particular Gundam setting (there are nearly a dozen alt universes in the franchise that operate pretty much separately except when some writer's try to merge them which is always a terrible idea).
That was not just any writer but Yoshiyuki Tomino (the creator of Gundam) who was the director for Turn A Gundam.
@@TheGoodOne1998 I know, it's still a terrible idea. Tomino also directed G Reco and Victory so that isn't always a mark of quality.
A construction vehicle refitted for combat in an ad-hoc way?
RB-79 is a technical!
So i have recently been reading some gundam manga(MSV the return of johnny ridden ) that covers a lot of obscure or minor weapons and vehicles of the one year war as an post war report of sorts, and i found out that these.. were intended to basically just act as disconnected ship guns for fleet on fleet fighting. They only later got reused for close defense after zeon curb stomped the federation in the initial fleet engagements using MSs.
My favorite story with the ball is that one guy built a gundam head front pice for his. And when the enemy seen it, they freaked out for they thought the federation built a giant gundam. I mean they did but much later with the phyco gundam
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE FORKLIFT WITH A BATTLESHIP CALIBER HOWITZER BOLTED TO IT
Uhhh.. there is a mobile suit called the “GM juggler” that has two RB-79s mounted on a backpack sooo.. yeah.
This also reminds me of the Urbanmech from the Mech Warrior franchise. Ridiculous, but everyone loves the Urbie, aka the walking trashcan.
"They filled me with trash, I filled them with Lead." - GOAT Urbanmech Pilot