Armored Core 6 Fan Got Tired of Waiting for DLC, So He Started Making His Own

It has been over three years since Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon brought FromSoftware’s long-running mech series back into the spotlight, and fans are still waiting to see what’s next for the franchise. While the game was largely well-received, longtime players might have noticed that some of the weapons and mechanics from earlier entries didn’t make the cut. And with no official expansion to bring those features back, fans have been left to wonder whether they’ll ever see them again.

One Armored Core 6 fan, however, decided he wasn’t going to keep waiting around. Known as Froton Mechanica, the modder behind Frontier F has spent his time digging through the game’s files, uncovering unused assets and bringing back features that haven’t been seen in the series for years. In an exclusive interview with GameRant, Froton talked about how a disappointing FromSoftware announcement eventually led him to create the mod, some of the discoveries he’s made along the way, and why he has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Armored Core 6’s Missing DLC Inspired a Fan to Make His Own

Froton’s history with Armored Core goes all the way back to when he was 10 years old and first played the original game at Sears. By the time he turned 13, he’d saved up enough money mowing lawns to buy Armored Core: Master of Arena, and he’d been hooked ever since. He even recalled studying the games’ strategy guides at school and occasionally buying Japanese versions of new releases just because he loved the series that much.

Armored Core is the first thing that’s ever really … it just dug into my soul. I just really liked everything about it.

Despite having some previous modding experience with the original StarCraft, Froton never actually planned on modding Armored Core 6. In fact, he was doing what plenty of other fans were doing at the time, waiting for FromSoftware to announce some sort of DLC. When Elden Ring Nightreign was first being teased, he thought that might finally be the announcement he’d been hoping for.

I was patiently waiting for the next DLC when Nightreign was announced. They managed to find the website for Nightreign, and it used the same fonts as Armored Core‘s, so a lot of people assumed it was going to be the Armored Core DLC.

Of course, Nightreign turned out to be something entirely different, and Froton admitted that he shared in the disappointment. Rather than continuing to wait, though, he decided to try his hand at modding Armored Core 6, starting with something fairly simple. All he really wanted to do was bring back the back boosters he’d enjoyed using in earlier games.

The funny thing is, once he started looking through the game’s files, he discovered that the models for those boosters were already there. He didn’t have to create them from scratch after all.

I don’t even need to make a 3D model. I could just get the ones that are already in the game. I just put that onto my Armored Core, made a video about it, and it went viral.

That was enough to convince him to keep going. His videos started gaining attention on YouTube and Reddit, and the more he searched through Armored Core 6, the more he found. Eventually, those experiments became Frontier F, a mod that was released on GGMods in April 2026 and has grown considerably since.

Frontier F Is Bringing Back More Than Just Old Armored Core Weapons

One of the more interesting things about Frontier F is how much it changes about the way Armored Core 6 can actually be played. There are plenty of weapons returning from older games, including sniper rifles and laser machine guns, but Froton has also managed to implement features that go well beyond simply adding more equipment.

For example, the mod allows players to lock onto enemies beyond the base game’s 450-meter targeting limit, something that had reportedly stumped modders for nearly two years. There’s also a zoomable scope with up to 5x magnification, which works alongside the extended lock-on range to make long-distance combat a much more viable option. Stealth mechanics have also been introduced, giving players yet another way to approach combat that wasn’t available in the original release.

Not everything Froton found was a weapon or mechanic, either. During the interview, he explained how one of his favorite discoveries was an unused Elite BAWS MT, an enemy unit equipped with a pulse blade and shield. What made the discovery so exciting to him was its connection to a tradition in the older Armored Core games, where stronger variants of mass-produced units would feature subtle design differences inspired by Gundam.

The secret MT is what blew me away because there’s this tradition that FromSoftware was trying to pull off in its earlier games … This is a homage to the UC Gundam series, where they would have the Zakus with the extra fin to show that it has superior specs to the mass production version.

Froton believes someone at FromSoftware wanted to carry that tradition into Armored Core 6, only for the unit to be left out of the finished game. He has since restored it through Frontier F, allowing players to encounter something that otherwise would have remained buried in the game’s files.

Of course, not everything in Frontier F was sitting there waiting to be discovered. Froton has also had to create and adapt content himself, using his background in 3D modeling and game development to make sure the older features work within Armored Core 6‘s systems. His goal has never been to simply make the game play exactly like one of its predecessors.

Frontier F is my vision of Armored Core, but I try to stay faithful to the older games while trying to translate the parts to the AC6 standards.

And while Frontier F already adds quite a bit to the game, Froton isn’t finished with it. He’s currently planning a separate campaign consisting of approximately eight missions, which will explore how some of the hidden MT units might have fit into Armored Core 6‘s lore. It’s not meant to be an official continuation of the story, but rather his own interpretation of what could have been.

I still have a campaign of missions, about eight of them. They’re going to be separate from the main storyline … It’s just my fan fiction, nothing too serious, but I hope FromSoftware would take inspiration from this.

Those missions are part of a larger ambition for Frontier F, which also has a PvE-focused Mission Edition in development. And even though Froton has other modding projects in mind, including work on MechWarrior 5, he doesn’t see himself abandoning Armored Core 6 anytime soon.

It might be something I’ll constantly update for years to come, even if the Armored Core DLC is released.

Whether FromSoftware ever decides to release official DLC for Armored Core 6 remains to be seen, but at least players who have been itching for more have something substantial to dig into in the meantime. Perhaps the most interesting part of Froton’s story is that none of this would have happened if he’d simply gotten the expansion he was waiting for. Instead, one disappointing announcement sent him looking through the game’s files for a set of back boosters, and now he’s building an experience that goes well beyond what he originally had in mind.