Weapons
Weapons are divided into three categories: ballistic, beam, and explosives. These are then divided into melee and ranged. Ranged is divided into long-range, short-range, and medium-range.
Ballistic weaponry: Bullets! Weight and damage increase with range, in that long-range ballistics are the heaviest and do the most damage. Oddly enough, the closer your target is, the more damage your ballistic weaponry does (imagine getting hit with a machine gun at 100 yards compared to 10 yards--at 10 yards it HURTS). As for melee, those are your non-beam blades, and damage depends on impact force as well as movement after penetration (imagine stabbing your target then slicing upwards through the shoulder taking off an entire arm). All ballistics penetrate light and medium armor with ease. Only long-range ballistics can take out heavy armor. Effectiveness depneds on range and the target's armor.
(Examples: short-range include handguns and short-range machine guns; medium-range include machine guns or rifles; long-range include snipers and long-range rifles; melee include combat knives.)
Beam weaponry: Lasers! Weight increases with range, but they are typically lighter than ballistics weapons, and damge remains constant for the most part. The larger (in diameter) the beam is, the more damage it will cause (bigger hole). Distance is not a factor with beam weapons, and they move too quickly to avoid for the most part. As for melee, those are your beam blades, the ultimate in close-range combat. Beam weapons cut through all armor like a hot knife through butter. A larger target requires a larger beam/blade to truly damage it. Effective on all but the largest targets.
(Examples: Short-range include almost non-existant as beam technology cannot be condensed to handgun size; medium-range include beam rifles; long-range include beam cannons or long-range beam rifles; melee include beam blades.)
Explosives: anything that goes BOOM! The heaviest and arguably most destructive of all weapons (beams are too pinpoint). Weight and damage typically increase with range, but even long-range missles can be low-yield (swarm-missles for example). The closer the target is to the explosion the more damaging it is and shrapnel is dangerous as well. Some missles can even have sharpened tips to penetrate the target's armor to explode the target more effectively. Grenades also fall in this category, but are rarely used since combat has been moved, for the most part, to space. Explosives can blast through large heavy-armored targets, but are most effective on small, light-armored targets.
(Examples: short-range include low-yield scatter missles; medium-range include your standard medium to high-yield laser-guided missle; long-range include high-yield poor-tracking missles or augmented laser-guided missles; any type of missle can be altered to any range by augmenting its tracking capabilities and fuel source so its all personal preference really. If you really wanted to you could design long-range scatter missles, or short-range high-yield missles, even though that would be utterly pointless and probably get you killed.)
Armor
Armor comes in light, medium, and heavy.
Light: can't take a lot of damage and even fewer hits, but sacrifices defense for speed. Even handguns can disable targets with light armor. Missles will devestate targets with light armor and beams will take them out with a direct hit. Rifles and machine guns will rip through them like tissue paper. Expect to die if you aren't skilled or fast.
Medium: standard level armor which can take a few hits and a fair amount of damage; balanced for average speed and defense. Stray too close to an explosive with medium armor and you risk taking serious damage. This armor can withstand glancing blows from all types of fire (beam or ballistic), but direct hits will evetually disable these targets. Stray bullets won't kill you, but they will ugly up your hull. Keep your distance in this armor.
Heavy: laugh at low-yield explosives and tiny guns! This burly hide will protect you from all but the strongest ballistics and explosives, but beams are your achilles heel. Sacrifices speed for defense, and there's a lot of defense here! Rifles and machine guns will eventually tear throuh this armor, and piercing rounds are even more dangerous. Explosives will only rattle you, unless they are high-yield or actually planted on you (this is where grenades come in handy). Avoid only what you need to in this armor.
Note: balance between defense and speed is significantly improved in custom and Newtype Mobile Suits, because of an especially strong yet light alloy used only for these extraordinary machines. Even heavily armored Newtypes can keep up with the average Mobile Suit.
Shields
Shields come in beam, ballistic, and blast
Blast shields: heavy shields that offer great protection against ballistics and moderate protection against explosives. They can certainly take a beating but beams will slice through them like any other armor, and the strongest explosives will cripple them. Good for the slow; block those close-calls.
Ballistic shields: medium to heavy weight shields that offer great protection against ballistics, but are useless before beams, and are only slightly better than nothing when facing an explosive. Can take a lot of hits for you, but only from bullets. This is your umbrella of war; put this between the rain of bullets and you.
Beam shields: the only thing capable of deflecting beam weapons. Too many direct hits with a beam and this will overload, malfunction, and shut off for an indeterminate amount of time or until repaired. Using this shield to block ballistics is not recommended, and don't even think about blocking missles. Only good for one thing--saving your a**.
Note: beam blades count as beam shields in that the can block or deflect other beam blades and even beam weapons if the pilot is skilled enough. Beam blades are by far the most versatile of all weapons. The most skilled wielders have been known to cut through incoming missles, disabling them.
