I agree with you that vehicles still still be quite deadly - it's why I don't run the double enemy vehicle lances rule. But the rules do make them very fragile indeed, which is less good on our side where it costs the unit quite a bit if vehicles keep getting shot out from under us.
For the record, I quite liked how Heavy Gear treated vehicles and mechas (in the first game at least, the only one I played.) Even in an Assault Gear, you don't go face to face against a Main Battle Tank and expect to live through the process. You either snipe it at range from cover, or get close with cover and take a snub cannon to it. But the mecha there are only twice-three times human size.
I'm fine with that. Roll as standard. on a roll of 2-11, you'll end up with a
Scorpion. On a roll of 12, you'll have a
Goliath. Unfortunately, the rest of the quad designs in the game are Clan or about two decades to a century down the road.
Oh, and as aside to anyone still looking to create a character for the initial company, while working on the next episode, I generated the mechwarrior templates, and after accounting for the bios of the already submitted characters, the three remaining mechwarrior slots are all Green characters. After the company is filled up, any additional characters will join through the in-game hiring process, when we happen to come across mechwarriors looking to be hired.
We ended up with two veteran templates, 3 regular templates, 5 green and two ultra-green templates. Overall, we're not exceptionally skilled yet, but a few campaigns should solve that.
That said, I'm also stoked at the interest this Let's Play has generated!