There is a winch, and there is an ammo drum with big blocky thing, higher than the head. Maybe it's a robotic thing to attach the drum to the cannon once the other is empty and gets dropped. It does not make much sense anyway... why have such a drum... then add a "tube" that goes from front, over half of drum side towards the rear, then into the weapon? Just to add "detail" IMO.
The Zeta is unfortunate. Basically, everything related to that gun looks terrible. The posture, the way it's mounted, the way it's ammo drum is mounted, the way it has a feed from the front of the drum to the side of the gun. It feels like they originally had a plan for the ammo to be mounted on the back and feed to the gun, which would have made the whole thing look less lopsided.
I know it's probably supposed to be some Macross-style missile spam, but I can't not parse the pic as a kid crying.
Reduction of needed manufacturing tooling at its worst. You can even see that the connector to the weapon is slightly crooked to make it happen. Im no weapons engeneer but im pretty sure that you dont want to give your ammofeeder a sharp corner close to the weapon port. Maybe w40k rules for weapon failure were planned for n4? ^^ Iguana and dragoon have prominent ammo belts and those were ez to attach. Normally cb goes with the gundam approach of placing weapon components on several parts of a tag to keep the weapon functional yet lighweight/ezcontrolled looking. With gundams this also results in those cool scenes where everything gets exploded off to go lightweight cqc. The zeta just... drops it? Meh. Additionally the new weapons for cutter and zeta are just insanly oversized/chunky for 1handed weapons. The old cutter has a big long hmg too but it sure isnt as voluminous as this new one. Dont like it at all. But atleast the cutter now looks like he has more armor(and tech) than a seraph like he should, which is its only saving grace. Zeta ecm shoulder pads are a nice idea. Dont get why they didnt reduce it to 1 shoulder so it visually acts as a counterweight to its weapon. Zeta also suffers the tiny head problem like the seraph. Feels odd for a humanoid thingy with no additional visible optics on it. Paint job made it work for me on the seraph and i think painting the shooulders differently can result in the zeta feeling less like a n64-era model. The other 2 i like a lot. Hope the sphinx weapon is single piece so it can be used in hand or as basing material for other tags.
Hmmm personally i don't dislike the Zeta, though i feel like its paintjob don't do it any favour. Not that it is bad, mind you, i wouldn't dare criticizing peoples much better at this than I.
I really like what they did with the new Szalamandra, with both main weapons mounted on stabilizers that also automatically store the weapon on the TAG's back when not in use. t('_'t)
This was one of the most glorious things I had ever seen as a kid. I still have the urge to jump on anything Macross when I see it.
I’ve been assuming the yuuge shoulder pods on the Zeta are the riotstopper? The design’s certainly open to a lot of interpretation.
I figured the pods were for launching grappling hooks/ ascension cables so it can climb up stuff like a Knightmare.
Completely forgot about that possibility. Initially thought about that as anti guided ECM. Flare launchers, micro missiles, that kind of thing. But I think you're right with the Heavy Riotstopper.
Several TAGs have some sort of unspecific “launcher” type units, guesses are frequently that it’s ECM, but it varies by model and is not always clear.
Huge miss for me. Not only a Fat Yuan, but also an uninteresting sculpt on its own, with a lot of the volume cut off, even for a bust. Meh. I guess I'm spoiled by their Mirage-5.
I’m not a huge fan of busts, but neither of those Yuan Yuan do anything for me. I enjoy their 75mm model line much more.
