Hmm, I was thinking of making a mecha varient to shadowrun where the mechs work sorta like large power armor (Stand between 8-14 feet tall, are controlled by physical movements rather then a control panel). While definatly more powerful then a person on foot, the major balancing factors is that they have a very limited power supply(usually 5 -10 minutes). They have an internal generator, but when it's on you leave a strong radar signature that allows you to say be targeted by a salvo of long range missiles.

Apologies for the delays.

Here is my logic regarding the Powered Armor Feasability Studies Group (Ares R&D study 1348-R-69X)

Standard 'security' armor has a rating of 10/8. Milspec hard armor went up from there by three steps. Power armor would use this as a framework, utilizing already extant armor technology, so we can start at a basis of 13-15 armor (taking into account changes) ballistic. Lets assume momentarily that they are, in fact, using slightly thicker and heavier armor to account for the need to 'Power' it in the first place and go with the larger number. 15/11 let's say. Then you add the milspec hardend helment (tougher than the security helmet) as standard, and assume that to 'idiotproof' the damn thing they make it so it won't work without the helmet. Call the Helmet 3/2. So we wind up with a total basic armor of 18/13.

Now, this thing is totally sealed, internal atmo with heavy duty auxillery filters on the back for when the rebreather kacks it. Micro-hydraulics don't really add much extra umph to the armor, but they do carry the weight and the thing hits like a mule (str/2+3P), and provides three points of recoil compensation.

Now: the helmet would be totally smooth, no soft lenses or other 'weak points. The pilot sees by built in AR overlay, which provides complete sensory isolation, the sensors are incredibly small 'nanodots' scattered over the entire surface of the armor, with redundancy built in. The armor itself is run by a dedicated system with no outside connectivity (no wireless) to prevent hacking while a secondary commlink is limited to 'read only' signals from the dedicated and communications with the 'battletac'. Hacking the Commlink will not cripple the soldier, but will provide/limit intel from the battlefield. If necessisary the commlink can be 'hard reset' by the soldier manually to isolate him if he suspects tampering. While this will still isolate the soldier from both the battletac and any AR signals he could previously tapped, it is a safety measure to prevent the enemy from seeing through his eyes.

The large backpack that many people notice first is an unfortunate necessity. Unfortunate because it is one of the few methods of identifying the Powered Armor as distinct from ordinary hard armor. However, this heavily armored unit carries the power supply (in high capacity batteries, useable for up to 36 hours, with built in trickle chargers that can provide another hour of use per 8 hours of expose to sunlight, piezo-electric trickle chargers have been considered for the boots, but rejected as inefficent for the return... they merely offset the additional power useage for walking/running). A canny operator can extend this battery life by some time by selectively turning off unnecessary components, or even the entire suit if need by for periods of low activity.

The backpack also contains the rebreather aparatus, cooling arrays and a resivoir of hydraulic fluid, in addition to the slave commlink, in case the soldier feels the need to manually eject it as a precaution. This does allow field changes. The Backpack unit also houses remote sensor units (bugs, microdrones, etc), dependign upon the mission, and has hardpoint attachments for spare weapons and can contain an ammunition drum for heavy machineguns or other belt fed weapons. For example, the Vindicator Minigun, which can be mounted to the armor with additional Gyro-support, can carry a 10,000 round drum easily, with 15,000 round drums available.

There is no plan to scale the armor up to troll size, or down to dwarf size. We have found that for maximum useability that Orks make ideal candidates for deployment, as ordinary humans and elves require at least minimal augmentation or very extensive training to use this armor without injury or excessive fatigue.

(STR/BOD minimums of 6)

While the armor is fully capable of utilizing all standard small arms, we have found that it's full potential has not yet been reached. See Feasabilty study on Very Large Armaments (2375-S-69X). Currently operational doctrine suggests that the standard armament for 'standard' troopers be nothing less than the MPG-7 grenade launcher, if we are expecting usage on teh modern battlefeild, where one is expected to encounter mostly hard armors. Currently plans are underway to install HV anti-personnel weaponry into fixed portions of the armor to clear soft targets.

It has been suggested that it is a weakness in the design of the armor that anything capable of breaching the armor will kill the soldier. We feel this is a testament to the strength of our design, however: keeping in mind that training to wear this armor is somewhat extensive, and the idea behind it IS to preserve the life of the soldier who wears it, we have encorperated a 'redundancy' layer into the armor. This is essentially nothing more than a layer of soft armor sheeting and specially designed blowouts to catch spalling and, in teh case of catastophic failure of the armor, to blow out the armor shell and leave the soldier 'unharmed', or nearly so.

(specially effect, if the armor is penetrated then the total DV is halved prior to the resistance check. If the penetration was significant, and from heavy explosive, the armor is 'ruined' and the pilot is 'ejected' wearing only his birthday suit or body-stocking).

To prevent theft of the Power Armor, all prototypes require use of a 'non-standard' datajack. While this datajack functions as a standard datajack, it requires an adapter to use standard plugs. The exact design of the proprietary plug and it's location is carefully controlled and fitted (double/quad prongs on teh back of the neck. Can no be circumvented by merely routing a cable to a standard datajack. A 'hack', either of the hardware itself or a aftermarket copy based on the plugs is possible but extremely difficult).

Recommendation: Continue with the development of the Power Armor project, but not of commercial use. Once third generations suits have proven feasable, regulated sale to third parties of first generation suits may be begun. These are our heavy hitters, and sould ideally be used only when Ares can control the battlefield after deployment. The prototype squad was used successful operations against bug spirit hives in (chicago?).

Nice, Spike. Very nice.

Nice work, Spike. Are you instituting any modifiers to the armour encumberence rules, to account for the in-built microservos? As it stands anyone with a body less than 9 will be encumbered, but your flavour text suggests otherwise with the line "they do carry the weight".

I also don't quite understand the mechanic for penetrating damage, but then I'm not an expert in armour.

Spike, that is very frickin' cool, now. That's basically the concept I had in mind, just hadn't put any stats to it. With the fluff text added, I am fairly certain that I will bring this into my campaign when I need to toughen some opponents up a bit.

Yeah, the idea is that the armor is 'self propelling'. In other words, it is outside the normal encumbrance rules. On the other hand, there should be some penalty to actions involving agility that I haven't taken into account to represent the sheer mass of the armor. Stealth and athletics checks, that sort of thing. You certainly won't be swimming in it.

And come to think of it, probably need to know what sort of penalties there are when the armor is no longer powered...

I would try to bring it slightly in-line with the standard armor encumbrance rules. Just say that it has an effective armor rating for purposes of determining encumbrance of 12.
Of course, I've already implemented a house rule that uses bod+str as the armor threshold, rather than bodx2.
For the stealth and athletics checks, I'd take a page from enhanced articulation and apply the penalty to physical skills that are linked to physical attributes. It's 9 skills, IIRC. Things like gymnastics, infiltration, swimming, jumping, etc. That is, if you want to penalize that sort of thing, which you seem to.

That's actually a pretty good idea. Consider it stolen.

Bonus to Knowledge: Comics, perhaps? Maybe the +2 is a specialization in Spiderman.

Anyway, rules for immobilization due to environmental effects and electrical (or EMP) attacks should probably be stolen from the vehicles section, although I don't think the vehicle section has anything to say about what happens when you dunk a drone in the water.
I'd probably say it "shorts out" and malfunctions similar to electrical attacks and requires some reasonable time to reset once dry.

Worth noting:

Computers in Shadowrun, since SR3, to say nothing of SR4, are Optics, not Electronics.

They ignore EMP. Which is kinda sad, because if you play Dystopia, you know how much fun EMPing that fat bastard and watching him stumble around half-blind and without the use of his optical implants (or any other implants) is.

But anyway, any milspec armor will be immune to this kind of stuff. They're not going to go to the trouble of building armor that could stand up to the main gun of a main battle tank, to be shorted out because some fucker came up with an EMP. As for swimming? Hell, just put an aquajet and a bouyancy contingency on it. It's certainly rustproofed.