For recently released some of the most spectacular Mobile Armors from Mobile Suit Gundam featured in 0083: Stardust Memory with the GP03 Dendrobium Orchis and the Neue Ziel. Two iconic and bombastic Mobile Armors that are featured in the finale of the 0083 OVA.
GP03 is two units, continuing with the flower based naming scheme the GP03 Dendrobium Stamen is the Gundam while GP03 Dendrobium Orchis is the Mobile Armor that the Gundam will operate inside of. The mobile armor design is like an agile corvette style warship with very large top portion housing tons and tons of missiles. Likewise, the Neue Ziel houses an impressive amount of missiles of different varieties. Working on these two units has been an interesting challenge within our existing design guidelines in MechaStellar. We wanted to make sure you had enough firepower to create your own Itano Circus.
The Dendrobium Orchis has a large warship sized beam cannon as its primary armament, it also features an impressively large beam saber that was easily capable of slicing a warship in half, it’s other melee armament was a rocket guided chain mine which is also very effective for antiship combat.
In addition to those the Dendrobium has an impressive amount of missiles, some of its more iconic ones are the micro missile pods stored in the upper racks. The GP03 Stamen had extensible grips in its arms that allowed it to reach far across and launch these missiles that were used in incredible spectacles, even the agile Zaku II F2 and Rick Dom II.
The GP03 has an impressive 108 micro missiles stored in multi-directional pods as well as a large missile tube pod which we treat as an antiship missile. For the micromissiles we treated this as a Tier 2 Micromissiles barrage usable 6 times. Each one firing off of 10 shots in rapid fire range.
While the Dendrobium is a massively mobile warship class gun toting missile battery it does have one weakness. It is relatively fragile clocking in with only 3000 HP which can be easily chewed through by a dedicated melee opponent. Should it be destroyed it will be replaced with the GP03 Stamen.
Fortunately, both the Dendrobium and Neue Ziel come equipped with I-Fields, potent barriers that block beam weapons at the expense of Momentum. This is an extremely powerful trait, however, it can be easily circumvented if you’re not careful. The first is by overheating the generator, get hit by too many powerful beam shots and the barrier can be brought down. We are using the Momentum system as an abstract concept to model this, where your lose Momentum as the field gets hit, should Momentum hit 0 then the field turns off. Since Momentum is a precious resource you want to be careful you don’t let it get too low, otherwise your opponent may capitalize on that moment to take out your I-Field.
The second more conventional way is to simply use non-beam weapons. Since most Zeon units have machine guns or giant bazookas, most of them will bypass the I-Field regardless. For these cases it is best to wipe out those units early and often with micromissiles being a good choice to take out several at a time. The more you take out the more Momentum you will build up to protect yourself later.
While GP03 might seem like a ranged fighter don’t be afraid to get up close, especially early. Since Kou is an Ace Pilot the Momentum cost to avoid all shots from a shooting attack is very low in the early rounds so you can jet in close and cause mayhem with weapons in rapid fire range. You may even be able to cleave a battleship in half. The important thing to do is to stay on the move, don’t get caught in one area or even simple Zaku machineguns and heat hawks can bring down GP03.
GP03 and Neue Ziel are exceptionally powerful units both clocking in at 1000 points. If you’re going to use them it should be against one another, or in very large scale battles. Make sure you set up a very large debris field, no smaller than 48″x48″ and preferably 6ft by 4ft.
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