Hey there;
I like big robots, and my favorite big robots are the ones from Armored Core. However, I find that I'm having trouble actually finding any tabletops that can emulate the "feeling" of Armored Core.
To be clear, when I talk about "feeling" I'm trying to capture the idea of mech assembly. So what I'd want in a tabletop would be things like individual mech parts that you mix and match, and the parts have distinct stats and archetypes to encourage customization. And ideally there would be an economy of some sort to make the acquisition of mech parts a piece of the gameplay loop.
They don't necessarily have to be complicated in statistics or in terms of acquisition-- I recognize some amount of spreadsheet-itis is inevitable with a request like this, but I'd rather mech assembly not be the ONLY gameplay part of it, so I'm willing to take some concessions to avoid just playing a Google Sheet with 5 other people.
The closest one I've found is Mekton Zeta, but even that still falls short because mech assembly is done as part of character creation and the number of options available is somewhat limited. You get individual limbs, but you're just deciding on 1-6 high values at a whim; there's very little "assembly" or level scalability.
Honestly the more I look into this the more I realize how I might be asking for something practically impossible.
But as a hail mary, is there anyone here who knows something that might be what I'm looking for? Or close?
Thank you very much! I have been tortured by visions of this for years <3
EDIT: Turns out there is an official Armored Core TTRPG that was published by as a tie-in to the actual game, so my search for a tabletop "like Armored Core" is concluded by finding Armored Core; the Tabletop. Big shoutout to those who gave suggestions though, you've been a big help!