[quote=Zero Hex]
How come the mecha are only 12 feet tall when some of the smallest ships of the period were around 30 feet long to carry all those cannons and people and whatnot, where does the rest of that bulk go? Also, ships were manned by large crews that do the things the captain yells instead of a guy doing all the control work to get stuff done, what happens to them on the transformation, since we talked about Navirezes being handled by motion mechanisms?
[/quote]

The ships aren't exactly big vessels compared to the actual ships, since they're manned by only one person and their function is to essentially act as bodyguard. I can see what you mean, the ships needing to be big to have the cannons.

The Ramirezes are around 12 feet tall [i]because[/i] of their lack of an ability to become a ship. I may not have a sense of scale, but I do know what adds to bulk and what doesn't. Navirezes are a little more closer to your ideal size, though the largest is 35 feet. Though this is in robot size. Ship size would roughly be a foot longer than their robot counterpart.

Though I suppose if the Navirez was big enough and had crew on it, that transformation is handled like [url=http://youtu.be/I03xIk6ZwSA?t=1m40s]this[/url]. 

I'm gonna warn you all now: realism isn't really a major factor in this. Like I said, it has more to do with Super Robot genres than Real Robot genres, what with the whole religiously enhanced superhumans that can set people on fire or spew water from cannons when inside a giant robot.