Mech design

I need a little help/evaluation on a design of a mecha that I'm building. It's a semi-orbital satellite-like mecha. Basically its main form of attack is simply bombarding the enemies from the orbit.

While I intend it to be a really powerful adversary, I have to take care to not make it too powerful. Common sense says that if an enemy has an orbital weapon, and you don't have means to shoot it down, you either surrender or be destroyed, and since they aren't options for my protagonists, I have to create options for not destroying them in the first orbital strike.

So, I was thinking first of the size; the mecha will be like 15-20 meters (30-40 feet) at best, so its standard cannon can't deliver a decisive strike on the heroes' mobile base, and, realizing this, the attack ceases and the protagonists move the mobile base for a mountainous area (a little genre blind of them) where the enemy forces had set up a trap and an important plot point is that the protagonists will have to hijack a flying mecha to fight the satellite-mecha in the orbit before it returns with a bigger stick and blow up them.

so, what do you think? Do I need to place more information?

My work is here. Current main fic: Tengen Toppa Gurren Solvernia

If it never touches ground, flight deck, moon, or anything solid, why is it a mecha instead of a space station/space colony/space battleship?

AMBAC.

(Which is BS, we have other ways to achieve the same effect, but they take up a lot of space relative to the size of the craft.)

Nous restons ici.

The mecha is a transforming mecha, it has capacity to enter in semi-orbit (max of 200 km of altitude), whose main function is high-altitude bombardment, but it can't stay forever in orbit and doesn't have the size for a space station, but it can freely circulate between the planet and its orbit.

What does AMBAC mean?

Also, the standard cannon has a lower caliber designed to destroy things more little than the protagonists' mobile base, so, even with the kinectic force of the attack, it couldn't effectively destroy it. What d

My work is here. Current main fic: Tengen Toppa Gurren Solvernia

It was part of MS Gundam's handwave of this very problem, give that its mobile suits were designed to fight in space. It means Active Mass Balance Autocontrol, and basically says that a unit with arms and legs does not require the expenditure of propellant to adjust its facing. This is true, thanks to Newton, but there are other methods of achieving the same effect.

Nous restons ici.

Ah, I see*

, though it seemed to me that AMBAC relates more to maneuverability in space. Rephrasing, my doubt was to not make an orbital bombardment a Non-Standard Game Over, if sounds a good equilibrium Rule of Cool and realisticness (is that a word? lol - English is my second language).

My work is here. Current main fic: Tengen Toppa Gurren Solvernia

Yeah, a series of rotation rings would be significantly easier to design.

Fight smart, not fair.