Plank is completely correct. Also hello, I've mostly been hanging back and observing.

But anyway, Gundam-types are the bleeding edge of mobile suit technology. With few exceptions (the RX-79[G] and Hazels spring to mind) Gundams are mobile suits that are unmatched in technological performance compared to other mobile suits of the period. The RX-178 was still in the fight against units as advanced as those in the first Neo Zeon War. Was it doing as well as it did in the Gryps Conflict? No. But it was holding its own.

And that's the problem. Early UC Gundams are a full generation ahead of everyone else, and won't actually be [i]outclassed[/i] until the generation after that comes along. The Zeong was a better mobile suit than the Gundam, but it was also a single incomplete prototype created at the very end of the OYW.

The later you go in UC, the more pronounced the difference becomes. Until Victory, but that's a whole other can of worms. 

Putting any player in a Gundam right off the bat is making that player's character several leagues above everyone else. You don't get 'flawed' or 'limited' Gundams, either. By definition a Gundam is supposed to be a top-tier mobile suit (again, with a few small exceptions). Even a flawed Gundam is still leagues above other mass production models; the Hyaku-Shiki is a Delta Gundam with the transformation system neutered because Anaheim couldn't get it to work well. And like the RX-178, it was still in operation through the entire first Neo Zeon War. And it only left service because it was mothballed, not because it stopped working.