Weapons of the Solar Collective
In Space, big guns can puncture spaceship hulls pretty effectively. Most space-born weapons tend to carry a light load with minimal risk of hull puncturing. On Earth it’s not the same deal. Most explorers, researchers, colonists and CDF forces preparing to venture to one of the new Earth colonies go through a rigorous routine involving muscle development using spin gravity to acclimate the spacers to life in 1 Gee. Then they learn how to use high-energy kinetic impact weapons: slug throwers.
Advanced weapons are all fair game, but plasma weapons are highly experimental and disintegrator weapons emit lethal radiation and a shielded suit must be worn for “safe” use. Laser weapons are fairly common and actually pretty useful on PA Earth, since the only people wearing proper reflec armor designed to thwart lasers are the colonists themselves. The most common hand weapon, however, is the less lethal electrolaser stun weaponry (stun pistol and rifle) which are remarkably simple yet sophisticated tasers. Neural weaponry is also fairly common and emp rifles are usually carried in squads of zero-gee units.
The simplest and most effective weaponry remains the slug thrower, a technology that is easier to maintain in the rough natural environment of Earth than more sophisticated and energy-intensive weaponry.
Armor is less sophisticated. Although the need for protective suits in space has helped develop some armor technology, there has never been a need to mass-produce such suits. As a result, complex body armor is rare among the colonists; light and heavy armor suits are available, but power assist armor is usually only found among the spacer colonies and rarely employed on the ground. Heavy power assist armor is extremely pricey and exists in the domain of the spacer militaries only at this time.
As it turns out, warfare either for sport or necessity was still a big thing on Old Earth, and as a result an alarming percentage of extremely durable, radiation-resistant, chemically resistant hazmat-style military combat suits still exist and are even in circulation among the survivors of PA Earth as a valuable commodity. Such a suit, even a partial suit, can be nearly impervious to the hand-made archaic melee and ranged weapons of survivors, and so is extremely valuable. The only thing that keeps it from being even MORE common is the predilection for such armor to be in the presence of derelict military bases, long abandoned by humans, but still managed by insane military robots. So there you go.
The really impressive Old Earth military armor can still be found in working order. These old-world Dragoon-Class Power Suits (Heavy Powered Assault Armor) are extremely rare and working suits must be found; they can’t be purchased at the start of play. Those who do own them are usually reluctant to give them up for obvious reasons. The old Dragoon-Class suits were powered by portable nuclear cores, which if breached could go critical and release lethal level doses of radiation in their immediate vicinity. The half-life of these cores is usually two or more centuries, and there are no Earth-side production facilities in place to replace them (that anyone knows of).
CDF Standard Gear
The Colonial Defense Force of the Solar Collective arms its field troops as follows; characters in the CDF automatically get one of the following packages (choose one):
Planetside Defense:
Armor: Light Assault Armor or Adaptive Mesh and a light helmet
Weapons: heavy pistol and assault rifle or stun pistol and stun rifle.
Melee: knife or baton (or both)
Heavy Weapons Specialist:
Armor: Assault Armor or Light Power Assault Armor and a heavy helmet
Weapons: Heavy pistol and assault rifle with undercarriage grenade launcher
Melee: vibro-knife
Security Defense:
Armor: Assault Armor and heavy helmet
Weapons: stun pistol or stun rifle, heavy pistol
Melee: stun lance and baton
Space Defense:
Armor: Vacuum-Sealed light power-assault armor
Weapons: laser pistol, laser rifle or electromagnetic pulse rifle, or plasma rifle
Melee: superfine knife or zap glove.
Next: New Eden
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