The Armor Deck (Spartan-D042)

The Armor Deck is a running list of armor sets/components either entirely created by or at least visually imagined by myself or others in the community using Blender, much like its sister page The Armory (Spartan-D042). These armors, and the lore (be it purely fanon, or a canon expansion) attached to them, are free to be used by any and all who wish to use them, this merely a collection of my own ideas for them. This page will largely serve a catalouge of these ideas and their associated art pieces, as I don’t plan on making full pages for them.
==Armors==
===M43C Heavy Assault Body Armor===
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As the Human-Covenant War dragged on, conflict, as ever, bred innovation. The M43C set of battle armor represents such innovation, as it’s specially developed and treated armor plating was the first widely distributed set of personal protective gear that could provide marginal protection from plasma fire. The M43 series had previously been designed for use by EOD teams during the Insurrection era, but despite the weight incurred by the volume of armor, the coverage it provided saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of UNSC personnel. Though expensive and cumbersome, the set of armor is highly sought after by hundreds of third parties from individual mercenaries to insurrectionist cells. The UEG’s attempted crackdown on distribution has been largely futile.
===ODST/VAC Series 3===
The Orbital Drop Shock Troopers of the UNSC Marine Corps, despite what their name might suggest, includes a wealth of units with a wide variety of distinct specialties beyond orbital insertion. The VAC suit was special designed for use by the three dedicated Space Assault battalions of the Corps, and its most recent iteration features nearly five times the oxygen reserves of standard ODST gear along with optimized thruster pack controls. The suit has seen no major changes other than improvements in its plating to better withstand plasma since 2502, and there has been little demand for such a change, given that only one Space Assault battalion survived to the war’s end. In fact, members of the 36th Space Assault have repeatedly threatened to ‘deal with’ anyone who tries to radically alter the trusted design.
===ODST/FLD Series 2===
The armor of the ODSTs used from operation to operation depends on all manner of factors, the variant is of course intended for shorter term, contact-heavy engagements with generous amounts of combined arms support, where as the is intended for the opposite. As such it is a deal lighter, featuring less overall armor plating and differing software configurations. However, the most recent Series 3 line of the Field variant, designed and deployed during the Human-Covenant war, is not widely popular, and instead upgrades of its predecessor series remain in high demand and usage to the present day. More reliable and allegedly ‘sturdier’, , to whom development of Series 4 has been outsourced, has stated that the Series 2 is at the center of their upcoming design.
===ODST/JOP Series 1===
Initially conceived as a full set of armor, the JOP was only ever produced as a standalone helmet. Designed with interchangeability in mind the helmet’s components both internal and external could be easily replaced with parts from a vast number of armors dating back to even the Interplanetary Wars. The JOP is well loved by troopers of units who frequently found themselves bogged down in protracted battles with entrenched Covenant forces with little means of resupply. Thanks to its comparability with nearly every platform in the UNSC’s arsenal, the Navy has made numerous orders for the helmet so that it can be issued to fleet security and Extra-Vehicular Warfare units.
===BOBCAT-class MJONLIR===
Conceived before the Covenant’s appearance, originally BOBCAT was intended to defend against insurrectionist cyberwarfare capabilities and even against a hostile AI. As time went on the platform evolved into a testbed for additional systems dreamed up by Dr. Halsey, but was ultimately never taken past the prototype stage until the creation of Mark V[B]. A single unit of BOBCAT was produced and fielded to great success, though its wearer died during the Fall of Reach. Its design would be revisited during the development of the RAKSHASA platform, and the subsequent product would enter the field at the perfect moment in late 2558.
===TOMCAT-Class MJOLNIR===
Starting off where BOBCAT finished, the TOMCAT platform was all but invulnerable to most forms of electronic warfare, even at the hands of the most cutting edge artificial intelligences. Waylaid by concerns about its lack of ability to support any form of onboard AI, the Materials Group was only able to produce a few dozen units before the Created Uprising began, and the appeal of the armor was suddenly realized. TOMCAT is now the preferred armor system for hunter-killer teams tasked with the elimination of Created AI’s.
===TUPILAQ-class MJOLNIR===
The idea of rogue Spartans has been a concern since the inception of the program, and one that was rapidly realized in the years following the Human-Covenant War. TUPILAQ features a continually updated database managed by an onboard AI of weaknesses and potential exploits on every catalogued set of Spartan-grade armor, as well as, allegedly, an in depth dossier on the tactics and battle strategies of known renegade Spartans. TUPILAQ is rarely seen in use by personnel in Spartan Operations, with only one known user in the whole of the branch, thus sighting it is an almost sure sign of an ONI presence. Once it was viewed with scorn and distrust, now the armor system symbolizes an imminent comeuppance for those Spartans who have betrayed their brothers and sisters for various causes.
===CORSAIR-class MJOLNIR===
When developing RAKSHASA, Lethbridge Industrial went through various different potential designs for the baseline variant of the armor, CORSAIR, which borrowed from several of their other projects, was considered the frontrunner until concerns over cost saw it lose out to the eventual victor. Nevertheless, CORSAIR continued on as a variant of the platform designed with the boarding and seizure of Covenant vessels in mind. 
===LOCKJAW-class MJOLNIR===
Spartan casualties in the war that could be attributed to severe trauma from engagements with the likes of Jiralhanae and Mgalekgolo in closer quarters was notably high, with these alien species able to overwhelm humanity’s strongest armor with relative ease. LOCKJAW was designed along with several other platforms to try and reduce the occurrence of such casualties, but the glassing of the planet conducting the development of the armor saw it forgotten until asset recovery teams returned the relevant data to Beweglichkeitsrüstungsysteme. Since then, it has become a popular choice among augmented Delta 6 breachers and pointmen. 
===DURANDAL-class MJOLNIR===
One of the first MJOLNIR platforms designed entirely without input from Catherine Halsey, DURANDAL was developed with the use of heavy weaponry, particularly machineguns, in mind. Spartans had the capability to use weapons that required teams and emplacements to operate as though they were rifles, that potential was something the Watershed Division was eager to expand on. SPARTANs 025, 052, 093 and 137 all had favorable experiences with the platform overall, but 025 noted that the armor’s electronics were prone to failure after prolonged exposure to plasma radiation. DURANDAL would be shelved after this report, though researchers at Watershed had been looking to reintroduce it in the near future. 
===LONGBOW-class MJOLNIR===
Most MJOLNIR was designed with the idea of packing in every possible function for use independently, as one might expect. LONGBOW however, was designed to be used in tandem with a variety of satellites, drones, and a specially designed weapon system. This reliability on assets that could not be built into the MJOLNIR itself made LONGBOW’s production extremely limited, however its effectiveness when properly used is beyond question. 
===NIGHTFALL-class MJOLNIR [GEN3]===
Though Cascade had intended for the next variant of their to be fielded by 2559, the Created Uprising disrupted the majority of their operations, thus the variant intended for use by unaugmented personnel has yet to see the light of day. However, the existing models of the new MJOLNIR variant of the armor have been happily taken into use by Spartans across the UNSC. As ever, former marines show an special fondness for the platform. 
===GUERILLA-class MJOLNIR===
While humanity was determined to fight the Covenant to the bitter end, many within the UEG had accepted the reality that humanity was losing, and begun to plan accordingly. GUERILLA was developed as a prototype meant to be fielded by Spartans deployed from ‘migrant fleets’ that humanity would have resorted to in order to survive in the case of a Covenant victory, who would return to human space in order to procure valuable information and assets. Designed to be used with the upcoming Mark V platform rather than Mark IV, GUERILLA had a focus on infiltration, asymmetric warfare, and data retrieval. GUERILLA’s information scavenging software could copy data and repair damaged files for collection at an alarming rate, made even faster when paired with a Smart AI. It also featured systems which identified viable materials within a Spartan’s vicinity to create improvised munitions, as well as mapped out potential ambush points for the wearer as well as a litany of other tools focused around the same task, all of which would be further enhanced when paired with AI. Staggeringly expensive, only a single GUERILLA suit was produced as a working prototype before the war’s end, though cost-reduction efforts had been under way for some time. A variant with reduced functionality at a much cheaper cost has been produced for GEN3 MJOLNIR.
====Gallery====
===MJOLNIR Mark IV Lambada===
The first iteration of MJOLNIR deployed by Spartans in the field, MJOLNIR Mark IV had a service life longer than every other iteration of MJOLNIR combined, serving for over a quarter century as the iconic battle armor of the Spartans. Over the course of those decades, the Mark IV saw countless upgrades, the creation of numerous experimental variants, and all manner of one-off projects based around it come to pass. LAMBADA was the 9th design conceived by Catherine Halsey, and like many others it never left the prototype stage, its improvements implemented on existing suits then quickly forgotten. Or so she believed. Without Halsey, a new generation of SPARTAN-II’s had begun training, and LAMBADA was chosen as their ‘baseline’ set of MJOLNIR. The armor performed admirably, and carried its wearers to no small number of victories before being retired in favor of Mark V. Years later, at least two sets of Mark IV Lambada would be used by members of Delta Company who had performed too highly to be issued the SPI variant unique to the company, but too low to warrant their being assigned the limited number of more advanced armors.
==Credit==