Most warships we see launch mobile suits “horizontally” (i.e., in the direction the suit would faces when standing).

I’m curious if we’ve ever seen a mobile suit launch “vertically” (i.e., 'head" or “feet” first)? Obviously this wouldn’t work for any earth-bound warships, but for spacegoing ones it’d be fine. In theory, this would allow vulnerable catapult doors to be far smaller launching “face-forward”.

  • abliarsec@ani.socialEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    Any ship that has it MS oriented the vertically would also recover them the same direction. The Musai late type for example, is like this.

    but frankly, I am not sure it has any actual benefit. The universe depends on the idea that long range target acquisition being terrible, to the point where even a giant nuclear powered robot cant be hit reliably. If reducing cross section facing the enemy is such an important factor in battle, the enemy would have good enough sensors to instakill your giant robots.

    • Zonetrooper@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      4 days ago

      Thanks! I remembered that Zeon ships were noted to store their suits in whatever orientation was most efficient (since gravity wasn’t a concern) while the Earthnoid-built Federation ships mostly stored them “upright” relative to atmospheric operation. I’d forgotten that 0083 had them launching like that as well.

      I also take your point about accuracy, but ships being attacked at very short range also seems to be a fairly common thing. Seems to be at least once a series a suit gets no more than a few hundred meters from a ship, sometimes even straight into boarding/melee range.