>>23251529
>3. Not as easy to pilot. Zaku III had a bunch of sub-arms with guns and beam sabers (Like The O) . This required extra training and not many pilots could use the sub-arms effectively.

>4. Relied more integrated weapons like the mouth beam cannon and sub-arms.

That was the sleeves one in unicorn. The original zaku III just had the beam gun/saber built into the skirt directly with no subarm. A handle would swing out the side of the skirt so the MS's actual arms could grab and aim the skirt guns.

And the purpose of the Zaku III was to be modular and easily customizable for pilots with a bunch of optional configurations. It was expensive for what was supposed to be a mass production model (all Axis ms were) but thats not the reason it didn't see true mass production as Axis's main unit. What happened is it was directly competing with the doven wolf and Neo Zeon's leadership prioritized the doven wolf over the zaku III due to its higher firepower and so the zaku III only saw limited production and was mostly handed over to high ranking pilots like mashymre.

Zaku III feels out of place because its kind of stuck in the middle between the design philosophy of the old zaku II (basic cheap but reliable all rounder) and the newer neo zeon design philosophy (Expensive high performance with lots of integrated firepower). The two didn't mesh well and you end up with the awkwardness of the Zaku III, trying to be an expensive all rounder modular ms with lots of non-modular integrated weapons.

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WTF happened to Zeon's design language in ZZ? They all look gastly. Zaku III is an awful successor to the Zaku II. What were they thinking.