Mobile Suit designs for a Gundam Iliad

Screenshots from Gundam Breaker 4 with some descriptions and pondering

Published

So as I work towards a Gundam Iliad, fusing the Homeric epic with the decades-old megafranchise, I found myself needing a reference for what the Achean mobile suits look like. The Universal Century timeline of the Mobile Suit Gundam metaseries is the one I’m most familiar with, and so it was within the UC setting that I went looking for inspiration.

I found the RMS-099 Rick Dias [Delphi Squad] and was stuck by how a simple modification made the AEUG grunt MS so much more characteristic. The Rick Dias has a pair of booster binders on its backpack; how easy to copy those onto the forearms! That modification makes the MS reminiscent of the ORX-005 Gaplant, a machine whose forearm-mounted booster binders provided so much acceleration that the MS would only be used by Cyber-Newtypes and similar enhanced people. Swift-footed Achilles could have no better mount, at least not without divine intervention.

But if Achilles pilots a modified Rick Dias, what do his Myrmidons pilot? That question led me to spend way too much time in Gundam Breaker 4: a Gunpla modeling tool that has some story and combat mechanics attached.

Caveats of these models

GB4’s tooling has limitations on your ability to mix and match parts, so I wasn’t able to exactly recreate the Delphi Squad’s design. I couldn’t put the same binders on the forearms as were on the backpack. That led me down other creative paths, with the result that Achilles’ Rick Dias has some significant departures from the stock Rick Dias.

GB4’s options for choosing which parts to color, and where to apply color, are similarly somewhat limited, so I might have touched up these screenshots some to correct colors towards what I think would be best.

These suits were also designed to acknowledge the current parts balance in GB4: builds which are heavy in missiles and funnels are well-equipped to deal damage in the game’s combat. Swords and spears and shields and beam guns are all unnecessary when your MS is a font of missiles, surrounded by a swarm of bits shooting at everything that moves.

RMS-099M Rick Dias [Myrmidon version]

The Myrmidons’ version of the Rick Dias departs little from the “stock” Rick Dias developed by Anaheim Electronics for the AEUG. The most-significant additions are the large shield and the calf-mounted missile launchers.

A light purple mobile suit with bell-bottom jeans and clown shoes, bronze armor, a big round bronze shield, a bazooka, and red details around the monoeyed head and chest. The backpack sports two tall fins which have thrusters at their bases.
The RMS-099M Rick Dias [Myrmidon Ver.]

Equipped with a beam spear, a beam saber, a beam machine gun, two beam pistols, a clay bazooka, and many missiles, the Myrmidon’s Rick Dias has a well-rounded array of attack weapons. These are equally matched by its defensive capabilities: a large shield and high acceleration.

Its color scheme may seem related to the Dom series of mobile suits, but it really isn’t. The light purple here comes from Break Dias parts used in the construction of the Achilles Special; I designed that Gunpla first.

RMS-099 Rick Dias [Achilles Special]

A light purple mobile suit with bell-bottom jeans and high-heeled clown shoes, bronze armor, big bronze shields on each forearm, a bazooka, and red details around the finned head and chest. The backpack has an array of beam guns and missiles surrounding its two thruster pods, and the base of the backpack hosts two Mother Funnels.
The RMS-099 Rick Dias [Achilles Special]

Compared to the base Myrmidon model, Achilles’ version has:

It’s a faster-accelerating machine for an enhanced pilot.

I have not yet really decided whether the Gundam Iliad will have psychoframe-driven funnels or bits, but the funnels seemed like a good thing to add for this exercise. Maybe they’re wire-guided.

RMS-099 Rick Dias [Hector Special]

Of course, Patroclus runs off with Achilles’ mobile suit, and gets killed by Hector. Hector takes Achilles’ mobile suit and pilots it himself. This would require some repairs, and major repairs and changes of allegiance are always accompanied by a repaint in the Gundam metaseries. So of course I had to put together a Hector version of Achilles’ mobile suit.

A green mobile suit with bell-bottom jeans and high-heeled clown shoes, gunmetal armor, no forearm shields at all, a bazooka, and red details around the finned head and chest. The backpack has an array of beam guns and missiles surrounding its two thruster pods, with added cruise missiles.
The RMS-099 Rick Dias [Hector Special]

Achilles destroyed the mobile suit’s forearm binders, so the arms were replaced with those from a standard Rick Dias. The Trojan engineers didn’t have missiles to fit the Achaean specifications, so they replaced the suit’s missile pods with missile pods of their own manufacture on the arms and legs. The Mother Funnels were either lost or uncontrollable by Hector, so they get replaced with two backpack-mounted cruise missiles.

This is a coward’s mobile suit: it opens with an alpha strike, and then runs away. nah that’s out of character for Hector. The Macross-worthy missile loadout is a reflection on mobile suit combat in the tenth year of the Trojan war, not a reflection on Hector’s own abilities.

Coloration inspired by the classic mint-green Zaku color schemes, keeping the red coloration as a taunt: this suit was stolen from the Acheans.

Achillles’ Gundam

Achilles laments Patroclus’ loss to his mother, Thetis, who goes to Hephaestus for aid. A kingly gift is returned:

This is clearly A Gundam. The white base is overlaid with gold armor and red accents. The shoulders are surmounted with enormous thrusters, whose size is matched by the backpack's three nozzles, the giant triangular thruster on the butt, and thrusters on each calf. The vambraces are bright red, as are the feet, the scarf-like thruster housings draped over the shoulders, and the head's V-fin. Bright green lights glow from sensors on the helmet's crest, the collarbone armor, and the bellybutton armor.

Manufactured by the God-AI Hephaestus specifically for Achilles, this mobile suit surpasses every other human-operated mobile suit in acceleration and maneuverability. It could only be piloted by an enhanced human, with the blessings of the God-AIs that rule the Earth Sphere.

Parts for this:

In addition to the beam spear and beam saber, and the shield’s missiles, this Gunpla has a pair of missile pods on the backpack (supporting the two big verniers). The hip-mounted armors are the GN Fang housings from Mobile Suit Gundam 00’s GNW-20000 Arche Gundam, here chosen more for their shape than for the decision to pull in technology from a completely different Gundam series.

Achilles' Gundam is shown in flight, holding a large round golden shield covered in circuit patterns.
Achilles' Gundam, shown in flight. The shield is covered with a circuit-like design, in reference to the historical depictions of the Shield of Achilles.

There’s no way that GB4’s painting tools would let me depict even one of the nine layers of detailed carvings that adorned Achilles’ shield, so we must instead imagine that the shield is a holographic substrate from which those images are projected. Or perhaps all that imagery is contained within the circuits that flow within the shield, hosting a simulation of the entire Earth Sphere. Perhaps…?