Alliance Marines

## Loadouts

### Fatigues

Though there are many images showing various marine loadouts, the most common is simply the marine fatigues that show little variation across units. Marine fatigues are the usual dress of marines, especially those not deployed planetside or expecting combat action in the near future.

Fatigues are made from projectile-resistant material, spider silk, and some sablite to power the wearable electronics integrated into the clothing. While the projectile resistance is more of a token effort, it has been shown to reduce the severity of flechette wounds and lead to a 10% increase in survival.

### Stellar Loadout

The stellar loadout is the one used by marines for boarding action and space combat, most often when dealing with suspected pirates and smugglers but also for hostile boarding actions with ships from enemy fleets. It is intended mainly for confrontations in rooms and corridors aboard a ship, but also protect the marine in the vacuum of space.

A stellar suit is light powered armor that includes grav plates in the feet for walking outside the ship as well as a helmet and atmospheric seals. The suit has medium armor and is self-sealing to prevent pressure leaks. Typical weapons are a mag SMG and a laser carbine, as heavier weaponry is both too bulky and unlike to be of any use.

### Stealth Loadout

The stealth loadout includes a cloak that is covered in active camouflage on the outside and sablite on the inside. The cloak is reversible, and can be left out in the sun sablite-side up during down times to hasten the charging of electronics. When sealed it can help moderate against extremes of heat and cold as well as filter out environmental toxins. The active camouflage doesn't render the marine invisible, but it does make it harder to see them and can give an opponent a split-second's pause in recognizing the marine, which is often enough to make the difference between life and death.

Stealth loadouts are ideal for combat in unsettled regions, and they typically include whatever supplies are needed to survive in that region, often for weeks at a time.

### Airborne Loadout

The airborne loadout consists of a set of grav pads that allow the marine to fly through the air as well an atmosphere-sealed bodysuit and helmet that usually contains light armor and extensive power reserves.. This loadout allows the marine to soar, hover, or drop from orbit. However, the term for marines who do any of these things in combat zones is "skeet." Airborne infantry lack the supersonic speed of fighters and other boats and thus mainly rely on stealth and cover the same as other infantry. Thus, these infantry use short, fast jumps to move around rough terrain and to new positions.

Airborne infantry usually act as scouts, assault forces, and patrol units, especially in mountainous and urban areas where their maneuverability makes them unmatched. When paired with assault shuttles they can jump in and out for quick raids and hit-and-run tactics.

Turgons make exceptional airborne infantry due to their ability to tolerate higher acceleration.

### Exoskeleton Loadout

The exoskeleton loadout blurs the line between standard marine and mechanized marine. Exoskeletons usually provide a strength assist to help the marine move faster and with less effort. The skeleton usually has built-in weapons and either allows the marine to wear heavier armor or simply has integrated armor pads within in.

The usual way to tell an exoskeleton and a mechsuit apart is grav shielding. Mechsuits always wrap their operator in thick armor, usually grav shields, while exoskeletons focus on enhancing muscular power and are lighter. They usually also require the operator to wear their own body armor and gear while mechsuits usually have the operator wearing light fabric.

## Designations

While marines have varying designations that are usually paired with a particular loadout in popular culture, but marines pride themselves on versatility. The saying "Every marine is a rifleman first" still holds true, and every marine is familiar with a standard assault rifle in addition to whatever equipment they carry. While marines may specialize in a particular area of combat, they invariably train with a variety of loadouts to be able to handle different equipment on different worlds on short notice.

### Rifleman

Usually armed with an mag rifle and an underbarrel grenade launcher paired with a mag pistol as a sidearm, the rifleman is the basic soldier of the marines. They're usually the second-best soldier for any situation which means there's nothing they can't handle and you can never have too many of them.

### Machine Gunner

The machine gunner is usually armed with a heavier mag rifle with a much larger magazine, and his primary job is laying down suppression fire.

### Marksman

The marksman is the long-range gunner of the team, responsible for precisely picking off enemies. Marksmen often go with a stealth loadout even when in areas where other loadouts are usually preferred, and they pair it with an x-ray pulse laser to eliminate targets at long range without giving away their position.

### Heavy

Outfitted with a rocket launcher, the heavy is the anti-vehicle specialist of the team. Recently the marines have been outfitting Turgon heavies with railguns which use grav plates to reduce recoil. The results have been generally encouraging.

### Roboticist

The roboticist is in charge of managing robotic drones during the mission and generally is in charge of reconnaissance and mapping. Roboticists are often unpopular, both by requiring fellow team members to haul their various drones and being the first ones blamed if during an ambush.

## Mechanized Infantry

In pre-space times the term "mechanized infantry" meant infantry in conjunction with armored transports. It has evolved to mean infantry wearing armored transports. Modern mechanized infantry or mechs are soldiers wearing powered armor.

### Human Mechsuits

Mechsuits designed for humans make the user stand about 5-30 centimeters taller than their natural height. These suits are bulkiest and slowest marine suits, but that doesn't make them easy to hit. Heavy grav shielding combined with active countermeasures mean they are practically immune to small arms fire and highly resistant to most other weaponry.

These mechsuits usually feature a variety of built-in weaponry

The standard human mechsuit:

Type II (High-tech, not available at start)

These mechsuits have the pilot curled into a ball riding in the torso, with a neural cutout that has their brain controlling the suit instead of their body.

### Gerret Mechsuits

Mechsuits for gerrets lack the raw power of larger mechsuits, but they make up for it with agility. Gerret-focused mechsuits usually have a belly-mounted grav plate that allows for flight as well as gecko-grip pads in the fingertips. Combining these two allows gerrets to cling to walls the way they are accustomed to. Gerrets in mechsuits are still more able to fit into narrow spaces than human, meaning they have no problem in urban and shipborne combat.

The downside of gerret mechsuits is their thin armor, which is usually comparable to turgon infantry wearing standard body armor. Additionally, these suits usually have an active camouflage or sablite coating rather than grav shielding. All this means that gerret mechsuits are susceptible to small arms fire, the only ones to suffer such a weakness.

### Turgon Mechsuits

Turgon mechsuits are designed to take advantage of turgons' resistance to g-forces to produce fast, powerful suits that can power through anything in their path.