Tuesday, July 17, 2007

MS-09R-2 (MS-09RII) Rick Dom II

In Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pockets, very late in the One Year War, the Principality of Zeon launched their United Maintenance Plan to upgrade and improve existing mobile suit designs and to make its own manufacturing capabilities more streamlined. Several new mobile suit designs were produced from it, and one of the production designs was the MS-09R-2 (MS-09RII) Rick Dom II.

The Rick Dom II was an upgraded design of the already exceptional MS-09R Rick Dom. Its main improvements were its overall increased thruster acceleration, along with the addition of more attitude control verniers for improved maneuverability. Because of the increased fuel consumption, the Rick Dom II's producer, Zimmand Company, added a pair of external propellant tanks to allow the Rick Dom II to operate in the field for more time.

However, it was produced so very late in the war that only a very few units were produced. Some of those units that did survive made it to the Delaz Fleet and took part in Operation Stardust. However, some of those units had slightly less thrusters, possibly due to the unavailability of replacement parts for the mobile suits.

MS-09F/trop Dom Tropen

Another Dom variation, this time part of the United Maintenance Plan, the MS-09F Dom Funf is the only Dom variant that can be reconfigured for different environments without seriously rebuilding the original design. After five different previous models( hence the "fünf"- German for five) The most striking features are its shoulders and legs. If the Dom Funf had to be reconfigured for a new environment, it would only take a few hours. Its armaments differed in that it had an 880mm raketen bazooka, 90mm assault rifle, 90mm machine gun, and a 3-tube missile launcher (in the video game Zeonic Front, the Dom-F team can also use a beam rifle, which appears to be an early Gelgoog design. This has not been cofirmed in other MSV sources). It saw very little production before the end of the war. At least two units were known to have been fielded; one was assigned to Lt. Sophie Fran of the Midnight Fenrir Corps whilst the other served as a reserve suit for Zeon ace pilot Anavel Gato (aka. the Nightmare of Solomon) in place of his custom MS-14 Gelgoog unit. The unit depicted in zenoic frount used the dom line art for 08th ms team to depict this model.

In Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory, one of the most well known configuration of the Dom Funf is the MS-09F/trop Dom Tropen. An advancement on the YMS-09D Dom Tropical Test Type, the Zeon military introduced the MS-09F/trop late in the One Year War, designed to operate exclusively in localized desert and tropical regions on Earth ("tropen" is German for "tropical").

In addition to additional sand filters to protect its equipment and powerful cooling systems to overcome the desert heat, the Dom Tropen featured special sand protection filtered intakes for its leg-mounted thermonuclear jet engines, allowing the mobile suit to retain its high ground hovering speeds without fear of sand ruining the engines.

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