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The intended design of Syncotec synthetics is, ultimately, secondary to what your group thinks is cool. There is no specific mention of physical chassis descriptions cause you can aesthetically be either Wall-E or Detroit: Become Human with no real bearing on mechanics. It's really up to what you'd prefer and what fits your game.

If you want a "canon" aesthetic, Syncotec synthetics are Star Trek, H&B are D:BH, Westeki are XCOM's ADVENT, and ALaRM are Star Wars. But again, there's nothing mechanically stopping you from going crazy with it. They all make synthetics with a range of appearances, those are just the stereotypical looks.

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Archetypes/quickstart builds could be useful, I'll look into that. Starting with gear probably wouldn't break the game, but can effectively be achieved via your Jumpstart. Plus, starting with gear is an advancement, so after your first mission you can pretty easily grab that in-built SMG

Regulations/Directives are intended to be evergreen, basically to avoid that exact sort of situation. But assuming you opt for one that has "don't X until Y," Y would just need to be something that can't be "solved."

"You cannot Crush an enemy until March 1st" isn't a good Directive, since after March 1st it stops being applicable. It's certainly possible based on the game you're playing, but I'd advise towards more defined, consistent Regulations/Directives

There's no in-built encounter-building system, as every encounter guide I've encountered in a TTRPG has been wildly off the mark. But here's a rough guideline you can use as a scaffold:

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An easy encounter should have a total Difficulty equal to the number of players. So 3 players would be three Difficulty 1 synthetic enemies, a Difficulty 2 and a Difficulty 1 synthetic enemy, or a single Difficulty 3 synthetic enemy.

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An average encounter should have 50% more Difficulty than the number of players. So 3 players would be 4.5 (rounded up to 5) Difficulty 1 synthetic enemies, or a Difficulty 3 and Difficulty 2 synthetic enemy, and so on.

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A difficult encounter should have twice the Difficulty as number of players. So 3 players would be six Difficulty 1 synthetic enemies or two Difficulty 3 synthetic enemies.

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Just keep in mind a few caveats:

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The math breaks down when you hit bigger groups due to the power of a player character vastly outperforming the power of a single point of Difficulty. If you have more than 3-4 players, you'll likely need to bump up these numbers another 25-50%.

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A single combat will rarely be deadly, but the players will rarely face a single combat between repairs. This is a skirmish game; focus on chaining multiple combats together rather than trying to set up massive setpiece battles.

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Marginal advantages add up faster than Marginal hindrances, meaning enemies will often gain +1d to their attacks. Each die is a 50% chance for a success, so even Difficulty 1 enemies will statistically get at least 1 success with a Marginal advantage.

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Organic enemies act after player characters and rarely have more than 2 Health. Sometimes, they even go down with a single success. Use 2-3 organic enemies for every synthetic enemy when accounting for Difficulty. Squads are a great way to ensure you're not dealing with too much overhead despite the numbers.

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Again, it's not playtested so this is all just theoretical. But I hope this helps as a foundation!