u/Same-Opportunity6062

Of the original Jaeger run (Marks 1-5) so far we have successors to only two of them. Gipsy Danger of course is succeeded by Gipsy Avenger and then later in Final Breach we get Gipsy Destroyer. Arguably both Striker Berserker and Saber Athena could be thought of as successors to the original Mark-5 Striker Eureka, though opinions may vary on that. Anyway my previous post about a successor to Romeo Blue got me to thinking, what about successors to other Jaegers? Presumably these would retain some design elements of the originals while incorporating lessons learned from the Kaiju War. If you were designing a replacement for Cherno Alpha or Crimson Typhoon, what would you do and why? Change, keep, add, etc, while trying to maintain a somewhat similar layout to its namesake.

Here's an example:

Kraken Elite, Mark-6

Nimble Jaeger with four arms - two small lower arms with buzz saws and two larger upper arms with plasma cannons and retractable wrist blades. Successor to Crimson Typhoon.

Anyway, the discussion is open, have at it!

Saw this photo someone posted a while back where they had essentially bodged together Romeo Blue and November Ajax. Now I've seen some people say that Ajax looks like a spiritual successor to Romeo Blue, and I suppose there's an argument to be made there. Honestly though, I feel like we can do better here. So using this photo as inspiration, I think I'm going to 3D print a Jaeger figure that retains some of the design of Romeo but is on par with newer generation Jaegers like Gipsy Avenger. After 3D-printing the Cults3D Romeo figure (what a fiasco that was) it'll help me get the most out of the files I purchased anyway. Right now I'm thinking I'll keep the chest section and conn pod, and maybe also the lower legs, but the lower and rear torso will be completely different, along with the arms. Also the chest fin is going away, and the rear fins will either go away too or get replaced by something more like Striker's T-16 Angel Wings. Maybe I'll add a rear neck shield to help protect the conn pod too, we shall see.

Weaponry is TBD, but I'm thinking of replacing the Gatling chest with launchers for Hammerhead missiles. Tesla fists, plasmacasters, and blade weapons are all on the table too (though it won't get all three). Let me know what you think, I'm open to suggestions.

Like the title says, preferably with some visible exhaust coming from the chest reactor vents.

P.S. I know the circular objects outlined in red are the gatling guns, the vents are up above them.

Hardship was rather small by Kaiju standards in spite of what had just happened to Karloff. That got me wondering how well Romeo Blue would have fared if the Precursors had responded to Karloff's defeat with a much larger and more powerful Kaiju. My thinking here is that they already had something that they knew worked (and held up better to nuclear attacks than the Category-1s did) in the form of Trespasser, so in theory the quickest way to throw a more powerful Kaiju at the problem would be to grow another Trespasser (or something similar). If the Precursors had followed that logic, would Romeo Blue have still been able to win?

We don't know much about Trespasser or Romeo Blue, but I think we can make some reasonable assumptions about Trespasser based on what we know about Knifehead - they both shared the same basic body design, though Knifehead was larger, presumably faster, and had a long pike nose instead of the axe-shaped structure on Trespasser's head. Given what Knifehead did to Gipsy Danger, I think it's safe to say it would have overwhelmed Romeo Blue if the latter had encountered it instead (for those that don't know Romeo Blue was apparently deployed to engage Knifehead before it turned north for Anchorage, resulting in Gipsy's fateful deployment).

Jumping back over to our "new" Hardship (essentially a copy of Trespasser or something similar), while its axe-shaped head probably wouldn't be as dangerous as Knifehead's pike nose, its overall size and strength compared to canon Hardship could be a real problem for Romeo Blue. At this point Romeo's crew has no combat experience and the Jaeger's chest guns would probably prove ineffective, so the likely result is a Cherno Alpha-style close combat slugfest - except Romeo Blue is a lot less resistant to damage than Cherno due to its lighter armor. I'm not prepared to say that Romeo would lose in this situation, but it is certainly a lot more likely...

This is probably another case of me reading too much into a film that clearly wasn't well-thought out to begin with, but one thing that really irritates me about Gipsy Avenger's design is the "horns" or "ears" (seriously, what do I call these things?) on its conn pod. It's almost like the designers were going for a touch of gladiator style or something. What purpose could those possibly serve? I could see them being great for catching a claw or swipe from a Kaiju that would otherwise miss or slide off with little harm done. Compare that with Gipsy Danger's conn pod (and the neck shield surrounding it), super streamlined and obviously designed to maximize the chances of incoming attacks glancing off rather than catching on something and potentially causing severe damage.

Gipsy Danger: I'm specifically reviewing the 1:250 scale files intended for FDM printers (there is a smaller scale version intended for resin printers; you get both versions in a single purchase). At 1:250, Gipsy Danger is roughly 12 inches tall at the conn pod. This model of Gipsy actually works rather well, with the caveat that you'll want to print all the ball joint components out of PETG or ABS and with 4-6 wall perimeters + 50-100% infill. The rest of the Jaeger can be printed out of PLA with 2 wall perimeters and 10-15% infill without issues. The ball joints for the hips and shoulders were a little finicky but nothing compared to the nightmare that was Romeo Blue's hip assembly. The model comes with two different options for the conn pod (one with the visor built in and one with it printed separately). The visor and the turbine can both be printed with transparent filament if you intend to add lights to the figure (interior space for this is provided and the torso is divided into front and rear sections for easy access). The level of detail is phenomenal, with all major parts of the Jaeger thoroughly modeled with a high poly count. There are two forearm options, one that allows a chain sword to friction fit in a slot on the outer side, the other does not have the slot.

I have three main complaints with this model - firstly the lack of articulation for the torso, conn pod, and elbows (the elbows can bend but cannot rotate, making the classic fist in hand move impossible to pose). I ended up partially solving the conn pod articulation issue with some hot glue and a 3D-printed snap-in ball joint. My second complaint is the lack of a powered up plasma cannon option for the forearms. I ended up solving this by creating my own that can be swapped for the regular hand. My final complaint is the shoulder shields, due to their geometry they are very likely to snap no matter what orientation they are printed in. This is not a huge issue, but it is something to be aware of.

Overall I'm giving this one a solid 7/10.

Gipsy Destroyer (Mark-7):

Height: 277 feet

Weight: 27,000 tons (assuming more realistic weights than the official PR figures).

Crew: 2 (Maglev field interface minimizes input lag in drift, manual override mode available in case of pons bridge damage - permits limb movement outside of drift at cost of pilot-to-pilot coordination).

Powerplant: 20GW electron arc reactor with vent turbine

Armor: Admantium alloy construction for all plates and major structural members (2in minimum thickness), 3ft tempered laminated glass visor.

Armament: 2x IX-27 plasma cannons (fire rate of I-19 with 10x power output of IB-22, 10 shots per cannon), GD-11 admantium alloy chain swords with plasma infusion, chest turbine, shoulder-mounted missile launchers (4x AKM-14 missiles with 4,200lb singularity warheads - 126ft influence radius).

Systems: Hypertorque drive for all limbs, 8x mobility boosters (500,000lb thrust each, two in each elbow and remaining four in two pairs on rear torso) - similar in function to Crimson Typhoon's rear jets and Gipsy Danger's elbow rockets.

Fight rules: All Kaiju one at a time until Double Event (Otachi and Leatherback), Raiju, Scunner, and Slattern all come at once, then Mega Kaiju by itself last. Essentially I'm dropping this Jaeger by itself into all of these Kaiju attacks in place of whatever Jaeger team took them on in canon (yes, that unfortunately includes Uprising).

P.S. I decided to take a step or two away from my usual "attempt at realism" philosophy here...

After Gipsy Danger's reactor meltdown in the Anteverse, we know there were no functioning Jaegers left, however, some of the Pacific Rim lore suggests that a few may have been disabled but not damaged beyond repair. Some of these are more likely to be repairable than others; here's a list of Jaegers I'm aware of that might be repairable:

1. Hydra Corinthian - Last seen in the Amara comic, standing upright but billowing smoke from its torso. This suggests a potential power core failure (Hydra is a Mark-4 and therefore not nuclear-powered, so definitely not a reactor meltdown). The smoke is likely from some kind of fire, so depending on its temperature, source, and duration it may have left Hydra in a repairable state. We know the Insurrector attack takes place in 2024, so it's entirely feasible that the necessary repair work to make Hydra functional again would have taken too long to be worth delaying Operation Pitfall over, and therefore such repair efforts were never started. Post Kaiju War the potential exists for Hydra's power core to either be repaired or outright replaced with one from another Jaeger like Crimson Typhoon (the latter assuming that Mark-4 Jaegers all used a modular power core, possible if perhaps rather unlikely). Also as far as we know, Hydra's crew (Stephanie Lamphier and Kennedy LaRue) may have survived given the lack of visible damage to the conn pod, so crewing a repaired Hydra might not be an issue.
2. Crimson Typhoon - Largely still intact (minus the conn pod) following the Battle of Hong Kong. A replacement conn pod is not out of the question, but finding three drift-compatible pilots might have been a different story. The potential exists for simplifying pilot selection by replacing Typhoon's two right arms with a single, larger arm like on the left side, but this would be expensive and require significant structural changes to the right shoulder area of the Jaeger.
3. Mammoth Apostle - This one is admittedly a little weak given what little we know about it, but it is possible that KC-24 ripped Mammoth's conn pod off without causing any other major damage. Assuming this is the case, Mammoth would likely be easier to repair than Crimson or Hydra and easier to get a new crew for (Raleigh and Mako could probably pilot it if all else fails).

Some other possibilities include Nova Hyperion (someone feel free to correct me if there is any lore I'm unaware of about this one's destruction) and Eden Assassin (conn pod supposedly melted by an acid attack, but possibly still repairable).

Let me know if there are any I missed.

Big disclaimer here, these things bother me because I have a lot of background in applied physics, if they don't bother you that's totally fine.

As I'm sure we all know, Pacific Rim depicts Slattern somehow surviving Striker Eureka's nuclear bomb going off right in its face. I'm a big fan of Pacific Rim, it's a great movie overall and at the time of me writing this post it has no equal in its genre, but this part of the final battle just makes no sense at all. Let me explain:

Anything at ground zero of a nuclear blast gets instantly vaporized, which is exactly what happened to Scunner when Stacker and Chuck detonated the bomb on Striker's back. But Slattern was just as close to the blast as Scunner if not closer, and it is obviously a fleshy creature that can be wounded by blade weapons (Striker proved that beyond all doubt). A nuclear blast makes Striker's sting blades look like a joke by comparison. If Slattern had a super hard exoskeleton or shell covering it, its survival would have been somewhat more believable, but this is clearly not the case.

I know what you're thinking, what about Trespasser? It took three nukes to kill it, right? Correct, but this is not an apples to apples comparison. The nuclear strikes carried out against Trespasser were done using tactical nuclear weapons, which have a maximum yield of around 300 or so kilotons (0.3 megatons). This is at most one quarter of the blast yield Striker's bomb was rated for (1.2 megatons, a strategic weapon by all metrics). Also, due to the highly destructive nature of nuclear weapons, most tactical nuclear weapons are not equipped with super-precise guidance systems (if they have any at all). The ones that are capable of high precision are designed for use against stationary targets (outside of some Cold War-era anti-ship weapons developed in the former Soviet Union). The first two if not all three of the warheads expended on Trespasser were likely near misses (what little we can gather from the film intro suggests that the third one got close enough or had the yield dialed up enough to gouge a huge hole in Trespasser's side and kill it - if it had been a direct hit there would have been almost nothing left).

While we don't really have a good idea of what category Trespasser was, its official size suggests it was either a Category 1 or 2, maybe 3. Obviously Slattern was a Category 5, but this doesn't necessarily mean it is harder to damage than any other Kaiju - the Serizawa (category) scale is a murky piece of lore that only took water displacement (size), toxicity, and radiation level into account - not how resistant to damage a Kaiju might be (and as mentioned above Striker already proved that Slattern could be damaged by weapons far less destructive than a nuclear bomb).

And no, Slattern being in front of Striker (and therefore having Striker between it and the blast) doesn't help anything. That blast turned Striker into thousands of tons of molten/vaporized metal, most of which would have been traveling at hypersonic speeds right into Slattern's body. Bottom line here, Slattern should have been vaporized by Striker's nuclear detonation just like Scunner was.

Now that I've established why Striker's nuke should have killed Slattern, here's a realistic way to have Slattern survive. Have Scunner tackle Striker from behind, knock it some distance away, and pin it face-down while Slattern is recovering from the thrashing it just received. As Slattern recovers and begins to advance while Striker is still struggling to get Scunner off its back, Stacker and Chuck realize that the Scunner may damage the bomb, so they are forced to detonate it without waiting for Slattern to re-enter the fight. The blast vaporizes Scunner and knocks a still distant Slattern back into the Breach pit, further wounding it in the process. Slattern recovers as Gipsy is dragging Raiju's corpse to the edge of the pit, where it confronts Gipsy and the rest of the film proceeds as we know it.

So I've seen the posts about Striker vs Slattern in a 1v1, but what about Gipsy? Lets say for a minute that Raiju and Scunner decided to play it differently and keep Striker occupied while Gipsy is forced to take on Slattern.

I'm specifically going to stick to the underwater fight because we don't fully know what Slattern might be capable of on land (though it would be a handful for any Jaeger, that much is beyond question). Personally given Gipsy's versatility and weapons fit, I'd say this one is really a matter of who gets the first good hit in. If Gipsy had to take the tail slap in the chest like Striker did, I don't know that it would do a whole lot unless it hit the turbine (the turbine is recessed far enough that it's probably safe from that, and Gipsy has no other real weak spots in its chest like Striker does). If the tail slap hits Gipsy's visor though, it's game over.

On the flip side, Gipsy's plasma cannons are presumably useless this deep underwater, so it just has its chain swords and turbine. However, its chain swords are long enough that they could potentially cut deeper into Slattern than Striker's sting blades could, and we all know how much damage those did. Gipsy might be able to fully amputate Slattern's arms instead of just crippling them like Striker did. And then of course there's the turbine. If Gipsy face-hugs the Cat-5 and fires its turbine, that would be the end of Slattern (I'm discounting the BS where Slattern survived a 1.2 megaton nuclear blast going off right in its face, that straight up should not be).

Overall I'd say it's a 50-50, and Gipsy is coming away with heavy damage if she wins.

I'm pretty sure Gipsy is walking away with this one. The Becket brothers probably could have won outright to begin with if they had taken the fight more seriously, but post-refit Gipsy was in many ways an entirely different Jaeger. Obviously it had the chain swords, and it was noticeably faster (hyper-torque drive for every limb as Tendo Choi mentioned), but its pilots also both arguably had a serious personal grudge with the Kaiju (the deaths of Mako's parents and Raleigh's brother). Not that Knifehead is to be taken lightly, it could certainly still take out Gipsy if given the chance, but I doubt it would get that chance. Thoughts?

(P.S. I had to delete the original post because one of the images wouldn't show up properly).

This is a burning question I've had for a while now. Yes Striker was extremely costly, but it was also extremely effective. If you've already spend the money on it and it's the best thing you have, why would you retire it before something like Vulcan Specter? The best I can come up with here is that maybe the operating costs were considerably higher for Striker than they were for any other Jaeger, but even that seems like a weak explanation.

As for if Striker had been kept in service and they had retired Vulcan instead, I think most of us know what probably would have happened when Mutavore attacked Sydney. Striker would have killed it with help from Echo Saber (maybe Echo gets destroyed or maybe it doesn't), but that leaves Vulcan to be hauled off to Hong Kong alongside Striker (and Echo as well if it survived). Bottom line that lowers the stakes for the rest of the film (really almost the entire film since Striker's solo deployment against Mutavore could well be considered a Hail Mary before going nuclear), so maybe this was just a convenient way to get rid of two Jaegers that were less advanced than Striker but could have served as force multipliers had they been present. More Jaegers also means more backstories to fill out to some extent, which could have interrupted the flow of the film and made it unnecessarily long.

Romeo Blue:

For anyone considering buying the Romeo Blue files on Cults3D, beware. I've printed and assembled several articulated Jaegers, and this one is by far the worst. The primary issues are the snap-together ball joints, which have a tendency to break, and the hip assembly, which is so bad I had to make up a solution for it on the fly. The two pieces of the pelvis section have cutouts for the hip ball joints, but they are far too small for the ball joints to fit properly, so I had to use hanger wire instead of the existing mounts to make it work. Also had to put a 2-inch drywall screw in from the back to hold it all together because of the gaps between the front and rear pieces of the hip assembly.

Looks pretty good now that I've got it all together, and surprisingly it stands upright better than my Cherno Alpha figure (which I'll do a separate review on), but that's no thanks to whoever made this. Also the elbow and knee joint pieces didn't have proper tolerances, and require a lot of sanding to fit properly.

On the upside, the level of detail is pretty good and the level of torso articulation is much higher than any other Jaeger I've printed. Assembly instructions were provided and were relatively clear (photos with labeled parts showing how they fit together).

It is about 1:250 scale, which works out to 11.81 inches in height when fully built, so it does fit well with the Jaeger models on Gamebody that I've printed.

Link to files on Cults3D: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/romeo-blue-danylozz

If you're a fan of Romeo Blue then this seems to be the only game in town currently when it comes to 3D-printable models. This figure can be made to work, but all the issues with the hip assembly mean you'll likely have to rig up an alternate solution for joining the parts without sacrificing leg articulation.