Basic Power Armor

One of the most impactful technologies recovered from the Dark age is a line of mass producible power armor. While the armors are no better than existing designs, indeed many are notably less protective than imperial equivalents, they are more than an order of magnitude easier to produce, making mass deployment of power armor not only possible but practical.

Examinations of basic power armors shows shockingly little in common with imperial designs, up to and including design philosophy. The key difference seems to be that imperium power armor designs were based upon Astartes armor, which while effective was designed from the ground up for elites, and to take full advantage of an Astartes physiology. This difference is most strikingly demonstrated by the contrasting the control schemes used by imperial armor and DAoT armor. Imperial armor retains the cogitators and data socket mesh used to interface with the Black carapace of Astartes, but instead connects it to a complex web of motions sensor, bio monitors and cogitators, creating an expensive inferior replacement for black carapace. Dark age armor simply rests a line of neuro readers across the spine and piggybacks upon nerve impulses, resulting in a somewhat cruder but far far cheaper control scheme.

### Power Armour Type I: Trooper

A general purpose infantry armor ment for wide scale use among line troops. The trooper armor is a marvel of optimization, costing less than a twentieth to produce than a suite of crusader armor, though provides notably less protection. Able to provide meaningful protection from full sized impaler rifles at close range, and neigh immunity to sharpnel. trooper armor provides a meaningful defensive edge, though it does not seek or manage to make those wearing it the nigh unkillable juggernauts achieved by more expensive armors. While unaugmented foes will find a trooper armored target difficult to slay, sustained fire by impaler carbines can overcome this armor, something recovered training manuals stress. However, any veteran soldier will tell you how massive a difference being able to survive a single lucky hit can be.

Trooper armor is designed to easily provide energy and to any weapon carried, with a number of points that are wired to act as power taps. This enables troopers equipped with energy weapons to directly power it from their armor, notably increasing munition capacity. It also allows its users to carry more ammunition, and use a heavy rifle without issue. The ability to use heavier weapons with greater munitions capacity greatly increases the amount of firepower power armored formation can put out and many suspect is the main advantage of trooper armor. It also provides a hermetically sealed environment, rending a non sealed suit immune to most forms of chemical attack. This is something frequently taken advantage of in the trust, and power armor formations often fight amid clouds of toxic gas. Trooper armor carries a set of standard DAoT communications and sensors, meaning by modern standards they provide excellent communications and situation awareness.

Trooper armor can fight for twelve hours before needing to recharge. Its power cells  are designed for rapid swap out, enabling an enginseer to swap empty power cells for charged ones in minutes, resulting in rapid turnaround time should the situation demand it.

#### Jotun pattern Trooper armor

Like most suites of power armor, a variant pattern intended for use by jotun exists. These larger and heavy suites offer notably more protection, and a similarly proportional strength boost to the large jotun that the basic model provides for humans. This allows Trooper armor equipped jotun to wield squad support weapons such as heavy impalers with ease. It also has an altered neural interface, and seems to be designed to take advantage of the same neurological quirk that allows jotun to more easily interface with knowledge implantation chairs, making the use of the armor notably more intuitive for jotun.

### Power Armour Type II: Shocktrooper

Designed for short high intensity combat, shocktrooper armor is far bulkier and more protective than trooper armor, it is also notably more expensive. It’s closest analog would be Astartes Centurion armor. A suite of shocktrooper armor offers protection almost on par with crusader armor for a fraction of the price.. Befitting its role, shock trooper armor has a massively overbuilt power source, allowing it to power most heavy weapons several times over. Large enough to be somewhat clumsy, and somewhat ponderous, shocktrooper armor works best when foes cannot easily flank or outmaneuver it, though its sheer durability and firepower ensures it remains lethal even in an open field battle.

Shocktrooper armor is at its most deadly in close-in assault actions, such as boarding actions or fortress fighting. Standard Shocktrooper weaponry is a pair of heavy weapons, with Multi-Melta being common as they most often fight at short ranges. Shoktrooper armors carry an enlarged and improved sensor and comm package, intended to allow them to retain situational awareness and communications from within the bowels of bunker complexes or transmit through meters of sealed bulkheads. It is fairly common for their communications to be augmented by issuing one man in each platoon a large vox unit to ensure they remain in contact during battle.

Much like trooper armor, shocktroopers can fight for twelve hours on a single charge, though unlike trooper armor they cannot easily swap out power cells, so must be recharged to maintain combat effectiveness. Due to the many power cells they carry, fully recharging a suite of shocktrooper armor can take an hour if it was totally out of power, or twice as long if using a field mobile generator.

#### Jotun pattern Shocktrooper armor

More than almost any other armor, jotun pattern shocktrooper armor benefits from the increased mass of its wearer. In addition to yet thicker armor putting Jotun power armor a hair's breadth from the protections offered by imperial armor, the extra size allows for a single suit to carry more firepower than some tanks, most often caring a pair of heavy Gatling impalers into battle, though the most fared units are equipped with a mix of flamestomr and inferno cannons, and are infamous for leaving naught but charred skeletons in their wake.

### Power Armour Type III Paratrooper

A suite of relatively light power armor, paratrooper armor places mobility over most other concerns. Less protective than trooper armor, it is nevertheless still able to protect from glancing hits from most infantry weapons. As its name suggests it is intended for drop troops, and incorporates a set of integrated jump packs. Paratrooper armor has a more sophisticated neural interface than most armors, including an optional interface for a neural jack implant, this is due to the jump jets being tied into the arms control system, and demanding more detailed control than simply mirroring the users movements. While the armor does have a machine spirit capable of allowing basic maneuvers,it is incredibly clumsy and limited compared to a truly skilled user, and is primarily intended to assist in evacuating wounded or unconscious soldiers.

Unlike most jump infantry, paratrooper armor is not intended for closing to melee, instead the intended use seems to allow for its users to keep their distance and use hit and run attacks to wear down their foes from range. As such the jump packs are designed to allow for extremely rapid and precise changes in orientation, allowing their users to snap backwards to face and fire upon their pursers before jetting away. Soldiers using Paratrooper armor are usually equipped with heavy riffles and few if any heavy weapons. As it requires expensive suspensor webs to allow them to use such equipment without fatally slowing them.

As their armor allows for insertions from near orbit, it's fairly common for soldiers in paratrooper armor to be dropped behind enemy lines. To then use their mobility to raid supply lines, ambush isolated units, strike at key targets or even flank the front lines. The armor is to a degree built to accommodate this, as it is able to fight for an entire day on a single charge, and can be recharged rapidly in the field. A standard mobile charging generator can recharge a suite of paratrooper armor from empty to full in little over an hour, something raiding units will take full advantage of to maintain an impressive tempo of operations for a prolonged period.

### Power Armour Type IV Scout

As the name implies, scout armor is not intended for direct battle, but instead reconsince and infiltration. A low profile set of power armor, it provides little more protection than carapace armor, though still provides a hermetically sealed environment and strength enough to use a heavy rifle. The scout armour's greatest protection is its camouflage system. While not able to update itself on the fly, it can rapidly swap between several dozen premade camouflage schemes, ensuring it will always be colored to blend in to its environment. This advantage can become even more pronounced when used defensively, as new patterns can be easily loaded in to allow a suit to blend in to specific environments.

The Scout armor has the most advanced sensor and communications suite of any of the basic armors, something that greatly assists in its intended purpose. Its passive sensors are notably developed, allowing it to gather significant data without risking emitting an active sensor signal. While it does not incorporate sensor baffling, when its sensors are in passive mode it has a remarkably small emissions profile. Due to its low power consumption a suite of scout armor can last a month in the field between charges. Scout units intended to lurk for longer than that can be limited to low emission solar generators or extra cap;citors to act as field chargers, greatly increasing their time in the field. Units in scout armor have been known to lurk for years in low emissions mode before clicking on their comsm and feeding an advancing army key information. In one extreme case, a platoon in scout armor spent two years behind enemy lines, before providing near perfect intel about a line of fortifications built during that time.

In open battle scout armor units typically act as snipers, or sappers. Emerging from hiding to eliminate key targets before attempting to melt away into the shadows. When used in this way casluties are often high as scout armor does not have the durability to survive being the focus on enemy fire, should their exit plan fail.

#### Jotun pattern Scout armor

While many find the idea of an eight foot tall scout somewhat incongruous, cout armored Jotun units have more than proven themselves over the years. While their sheer bulk may be a detriment to stealth, their ability to carry far more gear opens up a wide array of options. Being able to use a las cannon rather than a impaler sniper for example opens up a number of new methods of assianiton. Further, should a unit of Jotun scouts close to melee they can often prove devastatingly effective. While Jotun scout units may not be quite as stealthy as their smaller comrades, they more than compensate for it by being able to bring far more force to bear.

### Power Armour Type V: Pilot

Intended as an aide in controlling a vehicle, pilot armor incorporates the most advanced suite of neural interfaces and cogitators in any of the basic armors. Acting as a go between for the pilot and their vehicle, when properly tuned an experienced user will be able to move their vehicle as if it was an extension of their own body. Pilot armor is extremely thin, intended to fit into even the most cramped of cockpits, and is studded with neural interfaces to allow it to tie into a vehicle from any angle. Pilot armor is extremely easy to move in, something the highly sophisticated neural interface assists in, often rendering it borderline unoticaple. In fact, it is not unheard of for pilots to forget they are wearing it, something that has led to an ever growing series of stories and tall tails of pilots wearing power armor in incongruous settings.

Pilot armor provides slightly less protection than even scout armor, however this is still enough to notably increase survivability of its wearer. The shrapnel and ricochets that so often slay tankers are of far less threat when encased in pilots armors full body protection. Further, the armor can act as a second layer of hermetic protection, allowing tanks in toxic environments to survive what would otherwise be fatal breaches of the crew compartment. Should a vehicle be knocked out, the armor can greatly increase the crews odds of survival. Pilot armor is somewhat more resistant to high temperatures than one would expect, and contains a built in communication suite and locator beacon, making it easier to bail out of a burning vehicle and contact friendly forces. Further while its strength assist is relatively minor, it does allow pilots to move more quickly and while carrying greater supplies. Something many take advantage of by affixing pouches filled with survival gear to their armor along various mounting points. In addition while it offers relatively little protection from direct fire, it can somewhat reliably deflect impaler fire from long ranges, and can sometimes turn a lethal hit into a wounding one at closer ranges, notably increasing the odds that a stranded crew will survive a fighting retreat.

While intended to tap into the attached vehicle for power, due to its low power use pilot armor can maintain basic functionality for over a day if disconnected. Giving crew from downed vehicles time to attempt to reach safety, or be picked up by friendly forces. This time can be increased should a pilot affix an external battery to their armor, though this is risky as such power cells are somewhat volatile when active and may detonate if shot while the suite is drawing power from them.

### Modernised Power Armor

Power armour from the dark age of technology had been recovered centuries ago by this point and as technology has either been recovered or developed more and more features were added or available to make it even more formidable, but these were mostly added to the armour in a rushed method causing it to be more of a hassle to learn and get used to over time creating a bit of inefficiency. With the help of the World Ship and many tech priests and engineers a redesign of every type of powered armour was made with the armour being built from the ground up to incorporate and make use of new technology including those that could not be added previously into older designs. While this does not result in anywhere near an upgrade such as the difference between the basic and advanced designs this will still be a not insignificant increase in capabilities as well as improved ease of use especially with the advanced computing and miniaturisation technologies from the World Ship. (Basic idea is some improvements to all designs of power armour and some reduction in time needed to train with it for a slight increase in cost.) In terms of crunch, it provides an additional 0.5 armor over the base version.

## Crunch

 Jotun Trooper
 ShockTrooper
 Jotun ShockTrooper
 Paratrooper
 Scout
 Jotun Scout
 Pilot