Sunday, April 19, 2015

109. Octosuit

One of the best successes of the open-source design and fabrication movement, and a symbol of the ability of anarchic and open-source principles to produce results as good or better than the hypercorps, the octosuit is the work-horse of the outer system. From transportation, to maintenance, to combat, the octosuit and its variants can be found in any space-based habitat.

The octosuit is so named because it provides its wearer with eight additional limbs, in the form of synthetic-muscle tentacles. Four limbs are mounted at human center-of-gravity, on the hips. On the tips of these limbs are mounted miniaturized metallic-hydrogen rockets that provide propulsion, which, because they are mounted on the ends of strong flexible tentacles, they can be quickly re-positioned, providing great agility in addition to speed.

The four other limbs act as arms, mounted one pair each at the shoulder blades. These can be controlled by AI, taking cues from the wearer to grab handholds, hold and use tools, aim and fire weapons, and more. For those that are up to it, the arms are best controlled directly, with the most dexterity the ego is capable of.

The remainder of the suit consists of scaffolding designed to redistribute uneven and omnidirectional acceleration throughout the body, and a purpose-made, treated as a standard vacc-suit.

Prototype octosuits distinguished themselves during the Planetary Consortium attack on Locus. They are unarmored, but fast and able to maintain speed while maneuvering through complex environments. In locations offering cover, they excelled at high speed hit-and-run attacks and surprise raids.

Mechanics

Octosuits are exoskeletons [High]

Octosuits provide +20 to freefall tests, 4 extra arms, and the internal rocket enhancement with x2 or x4 duration, and 8/8 armor.

Combat variants include armored plates, bringing armor up to 12/12, and have weapons attached to their arms, typically rail machine-guns and seeker rifles for vacuum warfare.

3 comments:

  1. Hopefully you don't mind, but I made a modified version of this for my Europan game: the krakensuit! Let me know what you think.

    http://mephitjames.wikidot.com/europan-game-mechanics#krakensuit

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Good idea!

      I'm looking through your website, great stuff in there, thanks for the link!

      Delete
    2. Any time! I'm impressed by the volume of stuff here and intend to use it freely. In my Eclipse Phase games I consider this blog and Farcast as fair game as much as the sourcebooks.

      Delete