Exosuit
An exosuit is a class of high-tier power armour combined with an environment suit designed to protect wearers both in combat and in hostile environments, such as space or the deep ocean. As a modular system, exosuits can be built to the spec of the threats to defend against, such as pressure, heat, radiation, or kinetic impact. Exosuits are seen anywhere where wearers might be exposed to multimodal threats - bridge laboratories, containment rooms, or combat scenarios against assailants with exophysical weaponry. Industrialised variants are also widely used in applications such as galraite, exofluid, or artificial singularity handling, cavity reactor maintenance, and antimatter factory operations. Exosuits, while protecting wearers well, also provide several disadvantages in combat; the large, bulky size of exosuits makes them cumbersome for close quarters combat, and while servo assist systems are able to provide large amounts of force, they don't similarly augment speed.
Different sized variants of exosuits exist for different situations. For example, the mech exosuit or "'mech suit" is a class of exosuit that is physically twice as large as an average human. It trades agility for resilience and firepower, and is primarily used in military applications. Mech exosuits can have back or shoulder-mounted heavy weapons, such as kinetic chainguns, nuclear railguns, and guided missile batteries; as well as flight systems. Piloting one is more akin to driving a vehicle than wearing a suit of armour. The largest modern manufacturer of exosuits is Pacific Industrial Science, while CORE Automotive dominates the mech exosuit market. Exosuits are powered by fission batteries, micro fission-based, self-contained nuclear reactors that run on highly enriched fuel.
Features
Modern exosuits can be outfitted with a variety of different features, such as magnetorheological or composite armour systems, fractal armour strike plates to defend against E-rad attacks, forcefield systems to render all conventional attacks ineffective, and phase array generators to counter hypervelocity impacts. Exosuits also integrate wearer biomonitoring or systems monitoring and can integrate with a cybernetic computer. Smart monitoring systems are able to relay armour and forcefield integrity to the user, and can alert the user if they sustain injury with the severity of the damage, automatically administering painkillers or repair nanobots.
Like power armour, exosuits offer servo assist systems that augment a user's movements. Exosuits designed for space applications may also integrate propulsion systems similar to MMUs for manoeuvrability. Exosuits may also integrate graviton emitter systems for localised gravity control, normally into the palms, which is both useful for ease in handling heavy objects and in combat. Exosuit helmets use a camera-and-display system to allow infohazards to be filtered and prevent glass from becoming a weakness in the armour; the wearer's face can also be projected on the outside of the helmet at will to allow the operator to communicate with civilians. This system also allows for unparalleled situational awareness, as external heat, radiation, or E-rad sensors can be overlayed onto the wearer's field of vision, allowing for hybridisation of all data feeds.
Notes
Examples of places where exosuits are commonly seen in use include:
- Airports and spaceports, as used by PMC soldiers