Omake: A Treatise on Mobile Suit History and Tactics

Ever since their introduction by ZAFT in the opening stages of the Bloody Valentine War, mobile suits are now ubiquitous on the battlefield, more so than the venerable main battle tank, about as much as good old infantry are. This treatise analyzes the history of the mobile suit, expounding on their development in both design and tactics.

The very first mobile suit, the ZAFT Approved Mobile Suit now known as ZAMS, was an enhancement on the worker pods used by the PLANTS vacuum-oriented mining and construction, adding advanced electronics systems, light armor and weapons. On their initial forays against Earth Alliance mobile armor assault squadrons, the ZAMS teams and their pilots were remarkably effective. The reasons for this are myriad, with several different sources ranging from relative pilot capability to technological advancement. Some of the more basic reasons for the disparity in effectiveness include agility, longevity, and firepower. The first two of these, agility and longevity, stem from the same source: The Active Mass-Balancing Auto-Control system. While initially developed to enable worker pods quicker and more effective maneuvering within the dangerous environment of the Debris Field and most space construction areas, the AMBAC system allowed the ZAMS to duck and dodge around the firing lanes of the Moebius mobile armors, while allowing them to conserve reaction mass for their primary thrusters while still avoiding serious damage, unlike the mobile armors, whose reaction control systems used fuel to reorient themselves.

The firepower example is much more obvious. By using a humaniform base for the ZAMS design, they allowed the ZAMS to be far more adaptable for combat. Initially starting off with a rifle-modified autocannon, the ZAMS armory expanded quickly with special-made weapons, sniper rifles, missile launchers, and eventually more advanced weapons, the potency of the ZAMS as a combat platform expanded until eventually single mobile suits could take down entire space warships with limited support.

By the time ZAFT was making its way past the Berial pickets, the ZAFT Original Networked General-purpose Suit, or ZONGS was introduced as a more advanced unit, incorporating the ZAFT Networked Assault System to enhance unit cohesion, while still capable of wielding many of the same armaments as the ZAMS. It's more humanoid design gave it more mass to use with the AMBAC system in manipulating its inertia, actually making it more agile than the ZAMS in space combat.

While ZAFT's new mobile suits stream-lined the war for them, by no means did the mecha bring about swift victory, especially after the April Fools Attack when ZAFT landed on Earth. Here, many issues that have been brought up in the past regarding mecha combat made themselves known to the Coordinators with a vengeance. While at this point most of the terrestrial military had been brought up with a predisposition towards attrition strategies and tactics during the Resource Conflicts and the end-all Reconstruction War, the militia and garrison troops of quickly adapted when pod-dropped ZAFT forces destroyed their main bases, adopting guerrilla warfare and maneuver tactics to compensate for their relative lack of firepower.

The tanks were half-useless against the ZAMS and ZONGS, for several reasons. First off is the terrain advantage, mobile suits capable of traversing much rougher terrain without undue stress or wear. Second, while much slower in the pull of Earth's gravity than in space, mobile suits were agile and fast enough to avoid the firing arcs of tank turrets, flanking and destroying the armored vehicles with speed. Thus, the job of countering the mobile suits was left to infantry armed with heavy missile launchers.

Aiding the Anti-Mobile Suit Troopers was natural human ingenuity. They were able to off-set the mobile suits' size and power by leading entire squadrons into booby traps like pits, minefields, and the occasional trip-wire when they had the high-tension wire available. Unfortunately, as many traps failed as worked, one instance seeing a platoon rigging a large log to smash into a ZAMS chestplate, with only the effect of scratching the camo paint and spraying splinters everywhere.

And then ZAFT started manufacturing mobile suits designed for combat on Earth, including the GAHMU, the WAAM, and the infamous Isurus. The Earth Alliance was under stress, having lost much of Northern Africa and parts of Europe to ZAFT's forces. On the upside, Blue Cosmos attacks in the wider world went down, primarily because they started making raids on the ZAFT bases.

By now, the Superior Command and Assault Unit (SCAU) was developed, issued to the best pilots and most able commanders, such as Rau Le Creuset. As a high-performance suit, its design was also intended to serve as a testbed for future developments. This aspect was put to use shortly after the G-Units, now known as Gundams, were retrieved, with ZAFT reverse-engineering aspects of the Gundam's technology, mainly beam weapons and Phases-Shift Armor.

Of course, the Gundams themselves further revolutionized mobile suit warfare. All of them possessed the revolutionary Phase-Shift Armor technology, which made them virtually immune to conventional armaments, at the cost of requiring a new energy storage system to provide sufficient power for the armor to work for any sustainable length of time. Their beam weapons made each of the original five capable of routing an entire flotilla with mobile armor support when piloted in capable hands. Indeed, the original five XGAT designs managed to decimate the Fifth Orbital Fleet when they were heading towards Earth.

Each evolution in technology has in turn incurred a revolution in tactics and organization. The original ZAMS suits operated in platoon detachments of twenty-five to fifty, against small squadrons of the Alliance's Drake and Nelson-class ships, with a minimum of five Gamow-class ships supporting, the ensuing fights more like large brawls than tactically orchestrated combat. With the introduction of the improved ZAMS design and the ZONGS, ZAFT's mobile suits started fighting in small squadrons of seven to nine ZAMS led by one or two ZONGS, with the increase in cohesion provided by the ZONGS allowing for a greater deal of coordination between the mobile suits as well as their support units. By the time the SCAU premiered on the battlefield, units were often split into five or six suit teams, even in larger battles. The April Fools Attack showed how far these advancements took ZAFT, with a small force of three ZAFT MS teams led by the infamous Rau Le Creuset destroying a small part of the orbital defense network and bypassing the rest to deliver the Neutron Jammers.

As such, modern ZAFT MS tactics revolve around the five-suit team, emphasizing speed and the quick application of power to high-value targets such as ships and/or heavy weapons, often deciding a battle in minutes if not seconds. Due to the high-maneuverability of mobile suits in space, this is a very effective tactic, especially when only mobile armors with relatively light armaments were the main defense of said targets.

The tactics of Gundams are far different than that of other mobile suits, of course. With their nigh-invulnerability and offensive power, a single Gundam can win a battle against an opposing mobile suit squadron, or an entire army of conventional forces. The only real weakness of a Gundam when fighting forces armed with ballistic weapons is the time limit forced upon it by its energy supply, which if it runs out, renders the Gundam vulnerable. Thus, most Gundam pilots fight to quickly destroy enemy combatants and eliminate any threats with quick, efficient strikes and ambushes using minimal power to do so. Due to the nature of the Gundam's equipment, such ambushes also efficiently focus maximum firepower on high-threat targets, especially those armed with beam weapons.

One would think that the Alliance's OMNI Enforcer would take cues from ZAFT and the Renegade Gundams with the development of their own mobile suits. However, the Constantine has been deployed in the same way as its mobile armor predecessors: en masse. While the battles in which the Constantines are deployed have turned out better than similar battles, they have still been almost complete defeats. Admittedly though, this same combination of mobile suit and swarm tactics has resulting in greater casualties among ZAFT's forces.

The future of mobile suits seems even more turbulent than its past, with the introduction of Orb's Tetsujin mobile suit. Preliminary results seem to indicate this machine as being a sort of mass-produced Gundam, and actually advanced in excess of the Gundams themselves. Details are lacking, but Orb's use of the Tetsujin thus far indicates a tactical approach almost exactly like that of ZAFTs, with sprinklings of the Gundam's tactics. Also reported have been sightings of some sort of five-limbed mobile suit, presumably a more advanced prototype variant.

Mobile Suits are still a new weapon of war, but past and present developments indicate that they are going to be staying. The Gundams, especially, will most likely remain in one form or another, given the impact of the original five units. Their future role will likely be either as primarily morale units, or test-beds of new advanced technologies.

- The Author -

Alright, Big Battle Chapter 2, Meridies Irae, is delayed due in part to some unforeseen complications in the plot, and a slight problem in design flow. So, I wrote up this little document for the more intellectual of readers.

I've finally drawn up the Kiba, although granted it's rather horrible compared to my own mental image. I'll be uploading it to my deviantArt account (it's linked as my website on my profile) if anyone wants a look.

I've started rewriting the earlier chapters, starting with the prologue. I'm pretty happy with the starting chapters, so the main thing I did with them was switch them over to the current format. Future chapters will probably suffer quite a bit more from my vengeful editing.

Review Replies:

Jman12394: It'll be a little less lopsided once Abaddon the Elder and the BCPUs pitch in. And the Agares will be a game-changer in a big way.
That said, there'll be enough fodder deaths to fill several mass graves.

Alex Yamato: Thank you.
You know there's gonna be a counter-punch. And then a counter-counter-punch that will be oh-so entertaining.
I checked it out, but...romance isn't quite my cup of tea, I never played the Super Robot Wars games, and I quite watching the new anime the moment I saw mecha with breasts. That said, it seems rather well written.

Rc1212: Thank you.

Mathiasosx: HELL YEAH is going to be a bit more literal by the end of this arc.

Play4ever: One of the reasons for this fic is that I was a bit peeved with how easily the Gundam-headed Astrays got slaughtered. Granted, they're mooks, but still. Velshard agreed and designed the Tetsujin. And I made Orb a bit more militaristic.
Yes, albeit Velshard pitched in a bit.

Also, one last announcement: I've opened up forums for Killer's Realm and The Demon and The Dragon. There are two threads each, one for discussion of the main story and one for discussion about more technical matters. You can find them on the My Forums link on my profile

Knightmare Gundam of Ni.