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.

"I hate censoring myself because I have to listen back to myself." *immediately launches into what is possibly the most profanity-laden episode yet.*

The real reason the Feddies won the one-year war? Because they had balls.

"they built an up armored version." SPACE KILLDOZER!

"The humans were being invaded by a massively superior force" Yes Humanity's greatest enemy: Themselves

The RB-79 "Ball." Because there's nothing more permanent than a temporary, stopgap solution.

Urbanmech pilots would salute Ball pilots for being ridiculously brave for just getting in the thing.

Strapping guns to things not meant to have guns is par for the course.

"I have big gun on mah balls" -The Engineer.

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.

If you ever find an MCRN Corvette-Class Destroyer in your docks, don't try and stick a railgun on it's spine.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anything can be a weapon… and anything else can carry those weapons.

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.

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.

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

“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.

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.

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.

Ironically its on paper specs make it the highest performing unit of the One Year War. It can do 1G of instant acceleration while most Machines at the time could only do 1/2 a G of acceleration. While its molbility sucked it could literally out run everything untill late war machines came around. And its cannon was comparable to the heavy weapons fielded at the time which allowing it to one shot any other mechine if it hit. The only down side was its horrible uncontrollably prevented it from hitting anything but if your like the federation and have about a hundred aiming in the same direction it will hit something eventualy.

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.

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.

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?).

"Open the pod bay doors, Char."

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.

Finally getting into Gundam I see. You should check out the IMO the most American variant The Heavy Arms.

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

"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

That “thing” is the space version of a hilux with a 20mm on the back

As the saying goes you can't be a GM without Balls, one more thing there were ball variants decades after the OYW.

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

They put an artillery cannon on a forklift, that's why peoples love the ball

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.

Ok now since you've gone there... Plz do the VF-0 & VF-1 from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.

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.

"Any ship left on the docks for 24 hours will be compressed into a cube." RB-79: *SPHERE INTENSIFIES*

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.

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.

"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

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.

Someone took a look at the Pod from 2001, and was like: "But, what if I stuck a big gun on the top?"

Because the perfect thing to equip a half built TIE fighter with Is a melee weapon

at least they used the existing heavy manipulator arm mount for the cannon. Bet the recoil was murder on the bearings though.

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.

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 .

If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid :)

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)

The mine laying one actually makes sense as it wouldnt be a direct combat vehicle

I'm so happy you took a shot at the Gundam franchise!!! Plus great pick for the first vehicle to rip apart!!!

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.

The RB-79 Ball. The Gundam Universe's counterpart to the Toyota Technical.

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.

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE FORKLIFT WITH A BATTLESHIP CALIBER HOWITZER BOLTED TO IT

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.

With the outro always talking about unattended ships being compressed to a cube, I really wanna see an episode on the Borg cube

God I love the fact that he brought up the Killdozer here... we were all thinking it, he just had the guts to say it.

A construction vehicle refitted for combat in an ad-hoc way? RB-79 is a technical!

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).

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

I'm here to make puns and chew bubblegum...and I'm all out of bubblegum. 'Thank goodness the Earth federation had the balls to fight back' 'Zeon enjoy kicking the feddies' balls' 'If it's a ball before the crushing it into a cube, are you squeezing Bandai's balls or breaking them?' Thank you, back to lurking, my job is done here.

One word. Bradley.

Uhhh.. there is a mobile suit called the “GM juggler” that has two RB-79s mounted on a backpack sooo.. yeah.

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.

Ah, yes, one of many, many improvised fighting vehicles, a harkening song to the Fords and Honda trucks of the past.

Team a pair of RB-79s with a Mobile Suit and you've got some fascinating tactics available!

Admiral Tirpitz worked for the Feddies then. "Well we already spent all this money we can't quit now."

It's good to see that even far into the future we would still have the good old technical

I'm really happy you're covering gundam stuff, I can't wait for the day you start covering spacecraft from the series. It'd be interesting to see how you cover the concept of an assault carrier.

It's like a tie fighter with worse thrusters, and tinyarms

As a Gundam fan, I LOVE this 'person reacts to the Ball' take XD

Okay, since we're going into Gundam territory, I have a request for the shipyards: take a look at the absolute madhouse (that somehow makes sense) which is the Ork Gargant from Warhammer 40k. ... Just make sure to keep an eye on the dock and make sure the Orks don't try to loot anything else parked there when you bring one in...

Wait til the dockmaster sees heavy objects from ... well heavy object

It's a skid steer... In space. This is somewhat analogous to me bolting a 106mm recoilless to the CAT skidder in my garage.

This is a typical Humon government built device. A bunch of people who think they are smart, MBA Grads, put their best thought into that project. The MBA do not consult engineers or applied physics grads, because those people make the MBA feel stupid. MBA are a special kind of stupid. In fact, a janitor will make the MBA feel stupid.

What's funnier is the implication that their are far more reusable 'guns' than 'balls' in this universe. Which totally emasculates the humanoid mechs that were all too busy playing samurai in the background

Hey, every time it's balls, it's not another box.

"... but we've got the biggest BALLS OF THEM ALL!"

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?

"as long as they get shit done" you know that's a military motto right there..

"WE NEED MORE DAKKA" - A Random human, aka a random Space ork...

If you think that's weird, just wait until the SDF-1 comes in to the Yard. You won't know wether to give it birth or quarters.

A construction vehicle in space would only need to be able to withstand an average 1 atmo of pressure, from the inside. A construction vehicle that needs to go under any significant amount of water needs to withstand... A lot more than that, from the outside.

Thanks for an awesome series.

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.

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.

When the gundam earthlings needed advice they asked the orc Who told them simply: “It puts the Dakka on its ball….”

It's all about the pilot. Case and point, "Mobile Suit Gundam: 08th MS Team - Ball vs Zaku "

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.