Building a ruleset; where to start?!

Hi,

First let me start by stating I am a total Noob when it comes to designing rules and such, so I hope you bare with me! ;)

Me and my brother are going to make some miniatures/kits of mecha suits and want to have a game to go along with them so people cannot only buy and paint them but also have some fun time playing a game with them. We have the theme and background pretty much settled but now the tricky part comes and that is designing the rules for the game!

I have some early ideas on how movement, shooting, etc could go but am lost on how to build up the mechs. I think of armour values, weapon systems, shields and all but how would I go about what values to assign where and how much points would the finished mechs be in the end? There are lets say three basic types of mecha (and many sub-levels!) for example; light, medium and heavy and there is a pool of points to be distributed to the different areas to establish what class a mech should be placed in each with his own limitations. Each pool would be of the same value but it depends on where you place them.

For example; a lightclass mech has a maximum of 10 (just saying something!) armour value and can have 2/3 weapon systems and a maximum of 15 inch/cm movement. While a heavy class mech would have a maximum of 15 armour value and can have up to 5/6 weapon systems and a maximum of 5 inch/cm movement.

For movement and shooting and all other actions I am thinking about using an energy pool. Say each mecha has 20 (?) energy points which he can use to move, shoot, fight and any other actions that might be available. Again with each system having its limitations. For example a player can use up to ... points on movement, so many points on shooting/weapons systems etc..

It might be wise to explain that the mecha we are going to make are intended for 28-32mm scale wargaming and that the mecha will be varying from 8 to 12 cm in height, give or take. For now the mechanics will focus on the mecha fighting each other but at a later stage other things will be added like Monster Machines, mutants and mech-zombies and such! ;)

Hope my first post makes a bit of sense (?) and that there are some people here who can maybe guide me in the right direction!

Thanks up front!!!

Odd.