But Exhack, you have to think of the possibility that 250 heavy machine guns could do serious damage to a Sharie. The problem with the DR system is that there are several things that people don't take into account when dealing with damage:
Having 0 SP left does NOT mean you're destroyed. SP is just a representation of how much strength your armor has left. If I continually shoot at the walls of the shuttle bay until the ship gets down to 0 SP, will the ship be destroyed? No! That just means I've busted a hole in the ship.
On that note, location has a lot to do with it. If I continually shoot at the engines or the location of the aether generator, then I have the possibility of blowing up the ship. However, if I use the scenario above where I am shooting at the shuttle bay, it is impossible to take out the ship. This is because, no matter how much damage I do, they can just seal off that section of the ship.
Another thing people never realize is that DR is meant to take into account a certain time period (5 seconds, I believe). That means the DR for a machine gun is you shooting at a target for 5 seconds straight.
If you take all of these factors into account, heavy machine guns could breach a battle ship (Not destroy, but simply pierce through their armor). The problem is that people picture 250 guns vs a Sharie as those 250 machine guns surrounding the ship and firing. However, if the Damage Rating is used properly then it would really be those 250 machine guns all firing at a single point on the ship for 5 seconds, then is is plausible that they could start punching holes in that single location.
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This brings about the possibility: Would it make sense to implement some sort of sectional damage system? When I am destroying a ship, I can't take out one area and KABOOM (well, in some cases you can). What I think would work is if larger ships were split up into specific areas, only taking into account ones that are vital for ship operation (ex. Engines, Life Support, Weapons, Shield Generator, Shuttle Bay (, Bridge, etc). All areas would be at 3/4 current SP, and taking them out would hinder a certain area of the ship. So for a ship with 40SP, each area would have 30SP. Taking out something like the bridge would most likely kill most operators and hinder the ships abilities for communications and operation (AIs would still work though), or taking out something like the engines would obviously prevent any further movement from the ship and make it easier to board.
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But back to what this topic was about...Mecha. I fell like adding in a Mecha scale would be a good idea, but not in the way most people would assume. The obvious way to create a Mecha scale would be to place it between Starship and Armor scales, making ADR5=MDR1 and MDR5=SDR1. But what if an MDR scale was integrated without weakening/powering any of the current.
Currently: SDR1=ADR5
SDR2=ADR10
SDR3=ADR15, etc
My proposed MDR scale would be based off of the ADR Scale with a curve of 250%, which would thus make the MDR scale similar to the SDR scale with a curve of 50%. Also, the MDR Scale would be limited to Tier 4 (This is for SP reasons, see below). Yes, it would involve using fractions of .5 if you're going entirely off of the DR scale, but I don't feel that something like that would be too complicating.
Proposed: MDR1 = ADR2.5 = SDR.5
MDR2 = ADR5 = SDR 1
MDR3 = ADR7.5 = SDR 1.5
MDR4 = ADR10 = SDR 2
I think this would be easiest because it helps to increase the power of Mecha, without weakening Armor or strengthening Ships. Keep in mind, my idea is just a template and I don't really intend for it to to be used as-is, I meant it simply to be a concept, and a possible method of upgrading the damage of Mecha.
A similar method could also be integrated to increase the SP of Mecha.
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Wes said:
The lowest tier on the starship size guideline chart has a minimum of 30 meters, so that would be the size that a mecha would have to be to get into the SDR scale.
On the topic of Mecha having SP equivalent to fighters in the SDR Scale, I believe that requiring Mecha to meet the minimum requirements of the SDR scale in order to have higher SP is a bad idea.
If you look at the DR system, an ADR5 equivalent Mecha would have 25SP. However, an SDR1 Escort would have 10SP in the Ship Scale. As we all know, SDR1=ADR5, thus an SDR1 Escort has 50SP in the Armor Scale. But what happened to everything in between 25SP and 50SP?
I understand that this is what Wes was trying to do with his proposed, but I don't like the concept of combining the Armor and Ship Scales together for the purpose of SP. This is because if you ever have combat together between Starships you're going to deal with very large numbers, and you have to remember that everything in the SDR scale does x5 damage. I liked it a lot better where SP was split between the three different categories and each category had a set multiplier (It took 10 SDR1 hits to take out and SDR1 Vehicles, 5 ADR1 hits to take out an ADR1 Vehicle, and 1 PDR to take out 1PDR armor).
With my proposed system above, Mecha would still go in the Armor category (as they do now) and have a x5 multiplier, but that would effectively upgrade their SP. An MDR1 Mecha would have 12.5SP, an MDR2 Mecha would have 25SP, etc until and MDR4 Mecha would have 50SP (equivalent to a fighter). This would mean that an SDR4 Mecha would essentially be what Wes had earlier stated, something the size of an SDR1 vehicle that is shaped like a Mecha.