You could say this is yet another meaningless battle in a meaningless war. As usual, even per "reality" standards.
The only gripe I have is that Borcuse had a death wish from the begining. Even with a slightly inferior mech, he's so superior in weapons, weapons handling, combat that he could have finished that fight everytime Rygart charged, but he didn't.
Proof of the death wish is his last moments, WTF?!
Other battles are to come, both camps have a rough idea of the forces and trump cards the other has.
Now comes the difficult battles with little to no ground gained, waiting for your opponent to be short of men/weapons/will to fight.
With kiddies showing at the end, you could also think the issues are to be resolved by the next gen when they are in their late teen years?
I don't think I read somewhere we'd get more eps to that show, guess it depends on the ratings and sales. After all it's fairly easy to take it from where it stopped and add to the story.
Regarding the retarded weapon:
Well, it's not that retarded, I mean for a highly skilled handler.
Thing is its massive weight that needs even more skills and Rygart clearly isn't the skilled type. He's not even skilled enough to keep balance at crucial times when his machine is equiped with failsafes. So it was hard to believe he didn't kill himself with the weapon as it came back to him multiple times. After all, that weapon is very dangerous to the wielder if not mastered to perfection, yet Rygart didn't have such problems, I find it hard to swallow.