Alright, I know how hypocritical this must sound coming from a guy who went on a rampage in one as a Traitor. But please hear me out, because I do feel that this is way too extreme.
The main argument I hear for the removal of the Gygax's lethal weaponry options is that it prevents grief. Well, while I know now that my rampage was grief even as an antag, I honestly haven't come across any other rampages occurring in one. But let's put that aside for a moment, since I'm not on the server 24/7 and there's bound to be things that I missed: I don't see why the Gygax specifically needs to be nerfed. Far too many items on this station can be used for grief, you can flood the station with plasma, set fires using welding tank bombs, release a nasty virus, make chloral hydrate syringe guns or let the singularity loose to name a few. As irritating as these are, I place the blame more on the people who use them this way rather than the tools themselves, and one cannot argue that these are more common occurrences than mech rampages. And yes, I know that the Gygax is specifically a combat mech, and only exists for that purpose, but so does the Durand, which isn't any harder to build, hell I'd argue that it's easier since Silver is more plentiful than Diamond. If someone was really dead set on griefing, they would just build a Durand, and then by this logic we'd have to remove the lethal weaponry on that.
Finally, I can actually name an instance when I was able to use a Gygax for good: Friday July 11th of this year (Hour forgotten), when we had 3 Alien Empresses running loose, and Henderson built a Gygax named Big Tau to combat them (He had to call in about a million favors for the parts, but it was worth it) and went toe to toe with an Empress in a Gygax, killing her by blasting her with the scattershot repeatedly. My only complaint was that I didn't have the time to yell "Get away from her you bitch!". He also fought one on the shuttle, but Sec was there too so it wasn't as awesome. Before you say anything, I COULD have used a Durand, but I much prefer the speed the Gygax offers.
To sum it all up, I don't think this restriction needs to exist, since it wouldn't prevent that much grief, removes a huge part of the rewards of playing a roboticist well, and actively prevents them from pulling off some of the most awesome acts. If you really want to prevent Gygax/Mech suit related grief, may I suggest spawning the lethal weapons in lockboxes or something? That way you can reduce the sinister applications without having to utterly cripple the Mech.