Powered Weapons

Powered weapons use driven moving components, with bodies able to change shape with mechanical joints. This sets them apart from conventional fighters, tanks and craft by allowing them to change their centre of balance, interact with their environment and reduce the number of elements (such as thrusters and weapons) used by allowing them to engage along multiple directions and vectors without redundancy.

This reduction of components often means that powered weapons (such as mecha, frames, robots and power-armor) are often more compact than their conventional platform counterparts (such as fighters and tanks), faster and more maneuverable with a better operational envelope but they are more expensive to deploy, require a high level of skill to operate and have enormous maintenance requirements. As such, many are designed to self-heal over time, repairing their linkages, connections and simpler components while things like engines, armor, power-plants and sensors have to be repaired by hand.

Generally, powered-weapons as such have their own core anatomy which they are issued as stock and often able to self-repair very slowly and supplemental elements which can be swapped out or customized by an end user though require maintenance from an experienced engineer or qualified user.

The small size of powered weapons and high performance often makes them apex and decisive weapons popular among field commanders and their self-repair capacity allows them to wage extended conflicts behind enemy lines while salvaging enemy components. As such, personal units belonging to an individual are quite common, akin to medieval knights, pirates, bounty-hunters and privateers.

• Powered suit: Sometimes nicknamed 'leather jackets', they are bodysuits around an inch thick, often doubling as space-suits, strength enhancement and body-armor.

• Contact Suit: A sub-classification of powered-suit acting as a wearable cockpit, and pilot-suit sometimes known as a plugsuit allowing the pilot to plug into a unit.
  • CS Arbiter MK VII - A contact suit used to drive the MS Adjudicator VII.

• Power Maid: Half power-armor, half cyborg with a synthetic brain and glass skin and often an entirely artificial intelligence or a construct based on a real person.

• Power-Doll: A stock power-armor with software to act as an unmanned weapon. Hollow. Older models are often suicide bombers or re purposed as missiles.

• Power Armor: The baseline of powered-weapons, power-armor are a hard suit of parts wrapped around a wearer with field generators, strength enhancement and some sort of reactor - featuring the mobility of a helicopter gunship and the strike potential of a tank - though exponentially more expensive and in inexperienced hands, less effective.
  • PA Adjudicator VII - A Lorath powered armor used by Inquisitors and Knights.

• Power Frame: - Straddling classifications between fighter and armor, powered frames are the largest general purpose humanoid robot that feature either enclosed cockpits or power-armor like wrap-arounds extending into large external limbs. They are generally more nimble than tanks and fighters and a better purpose vehicle with similar specialization though they are more expensive and require extensive training.

• Power Fighter: - A highly mobile fighter craft, a power-fighter is often able to tilt its entire engines or aim its forward weapons akin to turrets. They commonly feature VTOL performance and are quite popular.

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Sometimes nicknamed 'leather jackets', a powered-suit is a classification of suit with few few if any hard parts. They are usually around an inch thick and are optimized for concealment and portability or support other systems by acting as an interface. They often double as environmental suits, offer improved physical strength and speed.

A cousin of the powered-suit, there is no clear difference between the two. It is however, characterized by an emphasis on being used with other equipment, often as a sort of wearable cockpit or space-suit. They also commonly include some sort of neural interface, medical equipment and survival gear and are used in conjunction with other hardware.

A stock powered-armor with software to act as an unmanned weapon, often placing parts and equipment inside the body where the pilot would go. Usually hollow.

A classification of android which integrates the features of powered-armor, often built permanently into its body or requiring expansive work to remove. This classification generally includes cyborgs with synthetic skeletons featuring hardpoints designed to mount a powered-frame long term.

It is common for a powered-maid to contain little to zero organics. Their faces are usually covered by integrated helmets or in many models, they feature no face whatsoever. It is not unusual for the elements of a powered-maid to be a pick and mix of powered-armor, often producing superior weapons though they are inferior in peace-time and often cannot fill a variety of human roles.

Often used as a derogatory term for a combat robot with a humanlike form, implying it is as designed for 'stress-relief' as it is combat.

The base-tone of all powered-weapons, powered-armor are suits of armor with driven moving parts, often integrating engines and other dynamic systems such as field-generators and weapons. More than just a suit of armor, power-armor is a dramatic enhancement to a user - often offering flight, star-fighter like performance in short-range or remarkable capacity as ground-effect weapons with the mobility of a helicopter gunship and the limited strike potential of a tank.

Unfortunately, they are very difficult to conceal and as such, are often offline, carried by the weight of the wearer to hide their position until combat merits their use.

Serving as an extension of powered-armor, a power-plus is a large skeletal body often around the size of a frame which acts similarly to a mount in warfare in that it is ridden. It allows a power-armor the mobility and offensive capacity of a powered-frame, though it lacks in defense and in many cases is considered disposable.

Power Plus often act as packhorse drones, serving or accommodating a team of powered-armor to improve their ability.

Often straggling the space between full blown mecha and power-armor, powered-frames are generally the largest form of humanoid robot. They often feature a pair of personal-scale arms for manipulating conventional objects and are able to move either like a fighterplane or pack tank-like protection.

Their primary purpose is to be faster than fighters albeit less armored - and more heavy hitting than powered-armor, often hunting powered-armor.

A fighter combining the characteristics of a frame with a fighter-craft. While a powered-frame may act as a powered-fighter, typically the two differ in that a power-fighter is either much larger than a frame (having a complete cockpit) and being adapted for use primarily as a fighter and as a powered-weapon second.

• Wing Assembly