The Federation refitted about 1200 of the civilian-model worker space pods, known as SP-W03 Space Pods. The Federation reinforced it with heavier armor and mounted a 180mm low-recoil cannon on top. The Ball mobile pod also had vernier thrusters mounted all along the body.

The directional thrusters mounted on all Ball units were "directed" solid fuel explosives, the detonation giving an impulse through the thrusters to change the direction of the Ball. This configuration gave the Ball unit good reaction speed and reasonable maneuverability on each thrust but very limited use of the system compared to the liquid fueled directional thrusters on mobile suits.

The Ball units had an advantage when it came to refueling on board the Columbus-class support vessel due to the lack of beam weapons and low number of liquid fuel thrusters, making the refueling/rearming time extremely short compared to any Mobile Suit that runs on thermo-nuclear power. In fact, the thrusters and weapons were designed to be modular, allowing depleted thruster banks and empty gun magazines to literally be removed by the servicing crew to be reloaded at a later time, and fully-loaded ones to be quickly installed in their place. Because it does not have a thermonuclear reactor and is driven by a fuel cell, it can be operated even on ships that do not have MS cooling facilities.

Controls

• Pitch to move forward and backwards
• Roll for moving sideways in either direction
• Yaw for turning
• VTOL to move gun
• Trim to move arms
• AG1 for boosted controls
• VTOL + AG8 turned off to extend refueling mechanism*
  

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Notes

• Careful when going uphill, you may run into the slope
• The gun can't turn on it's own, but the pod can turn really quickly.
• When using boosted controls, It's advised you raise the arms, or you may have problems.