 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
| It is requested that this article be by somebody more knowledgable about its subject. Please in any way that you see fit to make it better, and remove this notice once the article has been improved. |
The RX-78 mobile suit series is a series of fictional testbed mobile suits in the Gundam Universal Century developed by the Earth Federation. The titular mobile suit of the series, the RX-78-2 Gundam, is a member of this series.
There are two major subsets of mobile suits within this series:
The deployment of mobile suits in the One Year War by the Principality of Zeon had given the small nation a major tactical edge over the much larger Earth Federation. Capable of propellent-less manuvering thanks to their AMBAC systems, and able to be retrofitted to suit a variety of missions and environments, they easily outclassed the Federation's arsenal of fighters and ground vehicles. Realizing that the gap needed to be closed, the Federation instituted the Vinson Plan, a development program that would produce a Federation mobile suit design that would be able to be mass produced. While the ultimate result of the program was the RGM-79 GM, the engineers in the project tested several design concepts for the mass-production units in the RX-78 series. Some of the developments in the RX-78 models were later incorporated into the GM line, but many were scrapped due to cost and/or complexity.
The RX-78 series introduced Minovsky particle weaponry to mobile suits, developing and deploying the first successful beam rifle and beam saber. These would form the primary component of mobile suit weaponry for at least the next century and a half. The core block system, which allowed the RX-78's pilot to escape the destruction of his mobile suit in a functional aerospace fighter, would be dropped for expense from subsequent units but reused on occasion (most notably in the Anaheim Electronics MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam during the First Neo-Zeon War) and resurrected by the League Militaire in the UC 0150s on the LM312V04 Victory Gundam.
After the cessation of the One Year War, the Federation opened up a black-ops mobile suit development program, the Gundam Development Project, in order to develop mobile suits to fill roles that had appeared in analysis of combat operations from the One Year War. The major reason that the project was designated black-op was because of the RX-78GP02A Gundam Physalis, which was armed with an atomic bazooka in violation of the Antarctic Treaty. After the events of Gundam 0083, the records of the Gundam Development Project were stricken from the official record.
The RX-78 line was finally superseded in UC 0087 by the RX-178 Gundam Mk. II developed by the Titans.
The RX-78-1 Gundam Unit 1 was a Federation design to create a modular heavy assault mobile suit. The unit was capable of equipping a bolt-on system of armor and weapons called Gundam Full Armor. The Gundam Full Armor included a heavy cannon over the right shoulder, a 2-barrel beam gun on the right arm and several missile launchers in the shoulders and knees. The Gundam Full Armor was never a success, it was too heavy for its propulsion and its space mobility was cut back to little better than that of a Zaku.
Manufacturer: Earth Federation
User: Earth Federation
Unit type: prototype modular heavy assault MS
Head height: 18.0 m
Base weight: ??? t
Special Equipment: FA-71-1 Full Armor module
Armament: anti-air vulcan gun x 2, beam saber x 2
This entry partially taken from the BambooWeb Striker Pack entry.
The most famous of all the RX-78 models, the RX-78-2 Gundam was built primarily to test the Char Aznable attacked the colony where the RX-78-2 was developed. The resulting destruction left both the RX-78-2 and the mobile suit carrier White Base in the hands of young, inexperienced operators, most notably the young Amuro Ray, who became the RX-78-2's main pilot due to his skill at handling the machine. The RX-78-2 then saw combat in a variety of environments, including deep space, urban settings, the desert, and even the ocean, performing admirably in each.
Late in the war, the Federation installed a magnetic coating on the joints of the RX-78-2, improving the response time of the mobile suit (which was starting to lag behind the reaction time of Amuro, whose budding Newtype powers were growing exponentially). In the final battle of the One Year War, the Battle of A Baoa Qu, the RX-78-2 was severely damaged, then destroyed by Char in his Flannigan Institute for Newtype research.) However, the performance of Amuro Ray in the RX-78-2 clearly illustrated the battle effectiveness of Newtype pilots to the Federation. Realizing that such pilots would need a mobile suit optimized for them, the Federation developed the RX-78NT1 Gundam 'Alex' as their 'ace in the hole' at the end of the One Year War. The Federation planned to test the RX-78NT1 at Side 6, then ship it to the White Base for Amuro to pilot in the Battle of A Baoa Qu. However, the actions of the Zeon Cyclops covert operations unit resulted in the RX-78NT1 being severly damaged prior to the battle.
As the Federation had not researched the extent of Newtype powers (such research would not become available until the accquisition of the Flannigan Institute by the Federation), the RX-78NT1 did not have any sort of psycommu control. Instead, the RX-78NT1 was optimized at every level for the vastly superior reaction time of Newtypes. Test pilot Christina Mackenzie (an Oldtype) noted that the machine was incredibly powerful, almost to the point that it was out of control. The other major innovation was that the RX-78NT1 was the first mobile suit to feature the panoramic cockpit and linear chair, affording the pilot a wraparound view of the battlefield. The RX-78NT1 also featured an optional EXAM system and then defected to the Federation, bringing the EXAM technology with him. The Federation immediately began their own EXAM program, code named Blue Destiny, to take advantage of this technology. While the RX-79BD-1 Gundam Blue Destiny Unit 1 was built on an RGM-79[G] frame, the RX-79BD-2 Gundam Blue Destiny Unit 2 and RX-79BD-3 Gundam Blue Destiny Unit 3 were built from RX-79[G] units.
The stress that EXAM exerts on the pilot, hoever, limited any widespread adoption. EXAM lead researcher Alf Chamara went through several test pilots until he found the perfect candidate in Federation test pilot Yu Kajima. Kajima spearheaded the California Base assault in the RX-79BD-1, where he confronted the Zeon nuclear missile. It carries extensive heat- and radiation shielding to protect it from nuclear blasts, as well as the standard Federation mobile suit armaments.
In UC 0083, Zeon pilot Anavel Gato stole Unit 2 and a nuclear missile from the Federation's Torrington base, and used it to destroy or disable three-fifths of the Earth Federation space fleet. Unit 2 and Unit 1 engaged in a space battle, resulting in the destruction of both units.
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
