Cosmic Era Gundam

"Year 70 of the Cosmic Era. Tensions between the PLANTs and Earth were at an all time high since the conflict began. It was first assumed that the Earth forces, with their superior numbers, would be victorious, but these initial assessments proved to be false."

Cosmic Era Gundam is the first AU Gundam series of the 2000s, and the first postdating the "capstone" of the franchise in Turn A Gundam. The world of Cosmic Era Gundam uses many Gundam standards, starting out as a similar-but-distinct retelling of Universal Century Gundam's first outing, but steadily shifts further and further from that initial narrative.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

The Earth Alliance and its wayward colonies, the PLANTs, have been at war for a year; the war feeds on a combination of genuine desperation in the PLANTs a combination of racial animus between Earth's unaugmented "Natural" humans and the PLANTs' genetically-engineered Coordinators. After the destruction of a neutral colony revealed to have secretly hosted an Earth Alliance weapons development program, the colonial refugees find themselves fighting in a war they may not believe in simply to survive. The only available mobile suit pilot, a youth named Kira Yamato, is a Coordinator, now drawn into the war on the side of the Alliance and its Naturals... but is there another path, or are the two sides doomed to destroy one another?

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny

More than a year has passed since the end of hostilities between the Earth Alliance, the PLANTs, and the Three Ships Alliance. Hostilities begin again, however, as an unknown group steals ZAFT's new mobile suits and rogue ZAFT soldiers drop a space colony on the Earth. The show follows Shinn Asuka, a ZAFT elite pilot and former citizen of Orb...

Integration Notes

The following are things that had to change, be adjusted, or be removed as part of Cosmic Era Gundam's integration on SRTMOO. There's a lot here, so we've broken this into subcategories.

Political

• The supranational unions are distinct from those in Gundam SEED. The Atlantic Federation has been more or less completely subsumed by the Britannian Union. The Eurasian Federation, meanwhile, has had many of its key notes and holdings given to Front Mission's Organization of African Consolidation; the show's pitch for the Eurasian Federation didn't mesh especially well with the Anno Domini Gundam/After Colony Gundam-inspired Advanced European Union, while the OAC had little modern content due to its primary source game in Front Mission being set nearly a century earlier.
• ZAFT has fewer friends on Earth, in general, due to the differing setup. It instead has a robust alliance with Martian Successor Nadesico's Jovian Federation, and a somewhat looser alliance with the Sleeves.
• The Orb Union has existed for longer than implied in the show.
• The two member families of the Five Families of Orb that are not detailed in Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Astray, or Gundam SEED Destiny are Banpresto Originals's Centrum family and the Peacelands of Martian Successor Nadesico.
• Blue Cosmos shares space with other heavily racist organizations like Code Geass's Britannian Purist Faction and... ... whatever dark night of the collective soul is going on in Universal Century Gundam.
• Many of the politically relevant Coordinator families were previously part of After Colony Gundam's Romefeller Foundation/Organization of the Zodiac and chose the name Zodiac Alliance for their political party out of overwhelming spite.

Technological

• Due to the difference in primary civilian power generation method, many other themes needing nuclear fission, and those that don't instead having nuclear fusion, N-Jammers and N-Jammer Cancellers have been essentially totally scrapped. ZAFT has instead bombed out about half of the power generation capacity of the Orbital Ring. ZGMF-X MS use current-generation (and quite powerful) Minovsky-Ionescu compact fusion reactors, unlike most ZAFT MS, which use the same solar batteries as Knightmare Frames and Wanzers.
• In general, due to other shows' contributions, a lot of the things that are extremely unique in Cosmic Era Gundam aren't as unique. Coordinator-use MS are distinguished primarily by their OSes and their insane cost-to-performance ratio, rather than being the only game in town. The G-Project, similarly, is an effort to cross-copy most of the things that are good about Coordinator-use MS without needing Coordinator-use OS.

Miscellaneous

• Ulen Hibiki's research background is somewhat more robustly detailed than in the show. The details of this will be made available to a Kira, Rau, or Cagalli player.
• While we accept applications for Gundam SEED Astray characters (as well as those more thoroughly fleshed out in Astray, such as the Orb Union test team and Shiho Hahnenfuss), we have not used Astray in informing our worldbuilding very much if at all, other than a few token references; players interested in characters reliant on Librarian Works or Astray's take on Mars in particular should contact staff to hammer out how to make these elements work out.

Phase 2 - Political

• The PLANTs are part of the Space Assembly League, a space-based political superbloc that also serves as a check on the authority of private industry on the Orbital Ring.
• Phantom Pain is part of the Gaia Sabers organization, which serves as the New United Nations Earth's primary beatstick. Most CE73-era Earth Alliance PCs will be part of the Gaia Sabers @group.
• Uzumi Nara Athha was assassinated during Controlled Acceleration; it's very important to a lot of things that he's dead but we forgot to blow up the Mass Driver since a lot of things were up in the air at the time we did the Battle of Orb.
• The second Bloody Valentine conflict will not immediately proceed to a mass-scale shooting war between the Space Assembly League and Gaia Sabers; this is largely a case where Cosmic Era Gundam bends to Ad Stella Gundam timing.

Phase 2 - Miscellaneous

• Other than Mu and Uzumi, characters who didn't die as-canon remain appable. If you want to give Flay or Nicol a chance to run up some Destiny-era numbers, now is a great time.

Freedom-Responsive Additions

• Foundation has been rolled into Ravnui from Front Mission. As a result, it is an independent country between Europe and Russia with borders roughly matching those of modern-day Belarus; it enjoys semi-good relations with most REA nations.
  • The Accord project in turn represents the One Year War-era developments of the Imaginary Number project. Lacus is aware of her connections to the Imaginary Number project and by extension to an attempted-and-covered-up coup in Japan due to her connections to Terminal, but not that any survivors besides herself, Emma Kramskoi, and Alisa Takemura exist; the Freedom-era Accords/Imaginary Numbers are quite aware of the three of them, however.
• In turn, surviving PCs from Front Mission 3 have largely been incorporated into Terminal as well, except those who are part of the OCU's intelligence services, who -- if apped -- would fit into the Grand Glorious Guard.

Cosmic Era Gundam Jargon

• Blue Cosmos
• Coordinator-Use OS
• Deep Space Survey and Development Organization
• Evidence-01
• G-Project
• Gamma Emission By Nuclear Explosion Stimulate Inducing System
• Gamma glipheptin
• George Glenn
• Haro
• Honorary Britannian
• Knight of Honor
• Mirage Colloid
• Morgenroete Incorporated
• Phase Shift Armor
• Project Terrestrial Dream
• Ptolemaeus Lunar Base

Development Trivia

The following is some trivia regarding the development process of SRTMOO as regards Cosmic Era Gundam.

• Cosmic Era Gundam's start at TV SEED, along with Universal Century Gundam's start at Unicorn, were the first two decisions made about the project's timeline; indeed, the first draft of timeline was roughly 90% about getting these two themes to crosstalk.
• Super Robot Wars J and W informed a lot of design decisions regarding Cosmic Era Gundam, particularly the efforts to bring it and Martian Successor Nadesico closer together.