I'm not sure, I haven't actually gotten to watch F91 yet but I don't remember hearing about that. I know the VSBR was designed with different modes so that it could penetrate beam shields. *shrug*
Yeah me neither. In UC I've only completed Mobile Suit Gundam and 08th MST, and I'm working on Z right now. I really, really want to watch Stardust Memory, War in the Pocket, and I'd like to finish IGLOO.
Heh, you're actually a bit ahead of me then. In UC I've seen Unicorn, 08th MS (I actually still need to watch the last two episodes of it since I co-watch it with my cousin and a friend from minnesota), and parts of 0079 I've watched to fill in some of the blanks from reading the original novel trilogy a long time ago.
I'm still kinda confused as to the size of the suits, because the part of my brain that's constantly designing stuff like this for realistic Sci-Fi worlds says that they should be just a little bigger than the people in them to be at all reasonable but then 280cm Bazookas make my brain hurt, besides the part where it hurts anyway because it's just so...inefficient. Just pile on armor to something on treads that's low to the ground, give it the bazooka, and while it can't fly, it will be a shitton tougher than a similarly massed Gundam, I would think.
Well the actual Gundams being made from Gundarium factors into that a little. There's also that beam weapons can pretty much punch though most armor resulting in everything's designs getting slimmed down come Zeta Gundam, and minovsky particles frack up the targeting sensors and precise measurements needed for long range heavy artillery to be accurate. There is stuff like the
Guntanks, the Guntank variants, and the
Hildolfr out there. But they kinda suck since other mobile suits wind up out maneuvering them and they can't handle close range combat, and in the Hildolfr's case it can keep up with mobile suits, but in exchange it wound up badly unbalanced and risked keeling itself over when in mobile suit mode whenever it fired its cannon. The
Xamel worked out pretty well as far as I know though. But in the end it is mainly up to Rule of Cool like USEC said in the past.
Though if you
really want a realism headache, look up how much the Mobile Suits from Gundam Wing weigh