DANGARM

DANGARM (originally short for "Danger Armor/Armament") is a galactic industry standard set of specifications for pilotable humanoid mechanisms. The DANGARM standard is currently maintained by the D.Consortium, a joint venture between the Galactic Federation & Runesys Systems. D.Con officially is supposed to be a neutral party, but with its heavy Federation ties, this naturally gets in the way of its nominal designation.

Due to its emphasis on system and component cross-compatibility, as well as its early establishment, the standard currently enjoys a status of being the most used in mechas across the galaxy. This popularity is to such a degree that mechas are popularly referred to as "Dangarms".

Thus, despite the Federation ties, DANGARM mechas are used by groups no matter their affiliation or lack thereof to the GF, such as the modified DANGARM mechas used by The Rebellion.

Variants
The DANGARM standard currently comes variants, each tailored for different purposes.

Universal Construction (UC)
The first, original, and still the most common version of DANGARM used in mechas. The system spec covers metal material construction of an 18-24m robot with accomodation for a 1.5-2m humanoid pilot. The standard focuses primarily on compatibility with combat-related applications such as hydraulic punch/kick strength, ranged armaments, and melee armaments.

Mini-UC (MU)
The MU spec was created as a means to expand the potential pool of DANGARM pilots as well as the option of fuel and material efficiency. The robots in this spec range 8-12m and can support a variety of different control cabin configurations for species of various shapes and sizes. However, it has in recent years been mostly supplanted by McU.

Applied Construction (AC)
The AC spec is a unique variant among the DANGARM spec in that it is the only one that is not designed with humanoid mecha robots in mind. But instead, this spec is geared towards applying DANGARM concepts and programming bases towards other things, such as vehicle manufacturing, warehouse sorting, construction robots, and more.

MicroUC (McU)
The McU spec began as a revision to the MU spec, combining improvements to MU while incorporating elements of AC. Eventually, the sheer amount of changes led to D.Con designating it a new spec altogether. Robots in this spec boast a considerably flexible size range of 2-12m, along with further improvements in possible cabin configurations for both humanoid and non-humanoid pilots. Furthermore, support for non-combat is greatly improved in this spec, with considerations for applications like heavy lifting, with support for power dampeners to get a precise amount of force without destroying cargo, as an example.

McU is currently the second most popular DANGARM variant.

Cosmic Scale (CS)
CS is essentially a fork of UC. This variant's focus is on accomodating robot designs that exceed 24m, and uniquely, is the only spec other than AC that doesn't require the resulting robot to be humanoid. Consequently, this is also the only spec that allows for more than one pilot as an option, with theoretical support for an entire ship crew as the "pilot".

The Galactic Federation is currently researching applying the DANGARM-CS spec to create a Starship-mecha battle hybrid.

Plate Load Alternative (pla)
This unusual spec focuses on support for non-metal construction materials, and even non-electric forms of power supply. It is highly experimental and thus this spec hasn't been set in stone by D.Con yet. Generally, DANGARM-pla mecha tend to be made using plastic plates snapped together, and the size usually is within the same range as McU.

Meta
The DANGARM standard is roughly based off of real life technical standards such as ATX (desktop computer motherboards), USB (computer interface ports), & MPEG (video codec), and similar manufacturing standards. And of course, the Gundams of the popular mecha franchise, Gundam. In fact, the name basically comes from switching "Gundam" around and then playing on the words: "Gun Dam" -> "Dam Gun" -> "Damn Gun" -> "Dang Armament" -> "Dang Arm"