I've already mentioned that the mechas in Seed are rarely called gundams, it's more due to the OS. That's why we have to take the most appropriate description about being CE gundams, i.e. either shown to have GUNDAM OS or being called a gundam by bandai.

Note that I'm referring to M1 Astrays, and not the red/blue/gold/green frames which ARE referred as gundams by bandai. The M1 astray cannot be confirmed as a gundam as such, otherwise the murasame can be classified as a gundam as well. I do know that the M1 Astrays had Kira's modified OS, but since we didn't see any screen caps of GUNDAM showing up on the console screen, we'll have to use the other definition i.e. gunpla names.

That's why I'm reluctant to include M1 astrays (and murasames) into it... even if you do, we were only shown 3 specific M1 Astrays being present, but have no idea about the actual number of other M1 astrays around.

tanduk and red chicken chin is not a good criteria for being a gundam, because this would mean Calamity and Raider which don't have the red chin don't qualify.

I think the point is, "gundam" in early UC refers to the hero unit, or any specific prototype machines designed by EF. EF can call whatever unit "gundam" they want because they were the creators anyway. Late UC uses "gundam" as a symbol for psychological intimidation after realising the resemblance to the original white devil (F91 and V). W's "gundam" is any machine that uses gundanium alloy (but Vayete and Mercurius do too so maybe the face plays a role here), dunno about X, OO, or Turn A. CE is obviously the OS.

OMFG... Seed Frame Astray's new mecha (?grunt?) has clown shoes !! The guns look absolutely sexy by the way.

why did i saw ribbon and wang liu mei(sp?) met at the end of ep?

wonder where setsuna hide the exia for 4 years time without being detected and also where the setsuna hide himself?

now wang liu mei no more ribbon, it's straight, straight hair

Hmm I was hoping the CB will have their own mass-produced MS... like what AEUG had in Zeta (Nemo)

Wow.. i copy this from hobbies thread.. damn nicela this figurine they make for 2nd season of gundam for Exia

were you sleeping throughout the episode? As i remember it there were tons of shit blowing up and Exia got pwned. Not enough action for a first EP?

got 5 original solar furnace only ?? Thought the original is green colour. Then what is running their mothership as i can see at least min 4 solar furnace. lolx. And whats the difference original and ciplak. Is it Transarm mode only or issit same design but one made in japan and one made in China.. lol.

its the otherway around, the ship charges the gundams.
watch the ending episodes of S1 where the meisters spam trans-am, they have to recharge it in the ship, where the ship is basically unlimited with multiple drives/generator.

of course, IINM a limited operational time was mentioned and the ship did went to docks multiple times, so based on that, it could be just some sort of emiter etc as you said. but it still uses gn particles.

so based on that, the gn drives magically power themselves back?

during trans-am spammage the drives are always on full time drained. (the only one gettin away with it is exia/setsuna's plot drive LOL)
not sure bout the reliability of that gundam wiki, but wikipedia.org written arrows as "a-laws" lol

The GN-drive powering Ptoleimos is a weird one... Technically it should be a mothership powering the mechas, not the other way round. But 00 doesn't have in-anime physics of how GN particle works so anything can happen without needing logical explanation... Maybe later episodes will slowly reveal the secret of solar drives and GN, hopefully.

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regarding the gn drive charging though, "feeding solar energy" can take time, and in the heat of battle, you'd want a faster way to charge it back up, hence the mothership. although you can prolly argue/assume that its the gundams' gn drive's stored energy, being returned back to the gundams should the need to charge after a trans-am usage.

(referring in particular, kyrios and virtue [later on nadleeh as its outer armor was damaged] using trans-am, docked ship, few minutes later trans-am again, despite kyrios AND virtue's gn drive meter clearly showing the drive being emptied)

kyrios was unscarred wut, shouldnt need to dock. and the mothership was no where in danger of "low power" while the fight lasted fairly long, with gn fields up and evasive maneuvers. (or was it mentioned at all AFAIK)

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the last 2-3 episodes i watched like 4-7 times per episode LOL (especially last ep)
just love the BGM and action scenes XD

so much it got me burning monies and got me into gunpla'ing

if you watch menclave, ep 23  13:44

ep24  12:30, at least a form of storage system is confirmed, to resupply the gundams themselves if need be. and prolly due to that, the particle reserves got low, and they didnt even manage to put up a gn field to further minimize the dmg from alvatore's incoming beam?

im merely pointing out the fact that the mothership does have a storage for the gn particles (how else its able to move, assumingly that it doesnt have its own GN drive, when all the gundams are absent?)

the concept is simple:
they need more trans-am, the said bucket doesnt fills up as quick as they want, they draw it from the other bucket (which is the mothership) that is definitely capable of storing a fair ammount of said gn particles.

as you said, since they refill themselves, the mothership dont even need to spend that much of its stored gn particles. its only to speed up the process if anything.

=edit=
to further emphasize on this, you can think of the gn drives as just, generators. no storage capabilities while the gundam themselves store the produced particles. being a rather small unit, theres a limit of how much it is able to store. (never a problem at all before trans-am, just perma maxed LOL)

while the mothership, consider it a 'the bucket' that you were referring to, and when the gundams are docked, it just charges to it. and not really the mothership drawing from the mobilesuit's "bucket" as there is basically none.

well it also showed no solid evidence on how limited the operational time the mothership is (or you can just claim lol animu), which what im basing these postings on.
by no means it has to be a giant battery to perform any quick charges, just there to speed up the process a bit would do, especially in an emergency. more so that the whole episode didnt even made it looked 6 hours, more like under that and they had to sortie out already thanks to alejandro's new to

my wording on the previous post is rather incorrect true, maybe a cup for the mobile suits instead of "none" would be appropriate
that said "cup" also seems to be the glowy chest thingy haha, which is rather small imo, as everytime trans-am activates it glows the most lol

hope Ptoleimos mk2 got better firepower to counter any attack..