Hazard Suit
The Hazard suit is a pattern of powered armor in use by all branches of the Solar Union military. Lightweight in design, the suit is optimized around boosting strength and durability without compromising agility.
Fully enclosed, the suit stands at just over two and a half meters in order to operate effectively in standardized habitats. Unlike a Combat Operations Suit or other typical armor, the user does not wear the Hazard suit like clothing; instead, the user is fully contained within an armored compartment in the torso, controlling the suit by neural interface. Due to the compact nature of the control cabin- requiring only the space for a smaller human in the fetal position, sufficient life support, and armoring for the compartment- the overall suit is kept to a minimal profile. The suit is clad in thick armor plating, particularly on the front, sufficient to resist small arms fire; however, anti-vehicle weaponry is still rather effective.
Hazard weapons are either handheld or, in less common cases, mounted to the back of the chassis. Other equipment can be mounted to hardpoints on the suit as needed and employed through neural interface, as with the rest of the suit. The general body plan of the Hazard suit matches that of a human for ease of use, though certain features (such as the three-fingered hands) are not exact matches.
Hazard suits are deployed mostly by the Union Army, whose ground-based role best serves their use. In this capacity, they serve as weapons platforms, shields, support machinery, and general duties too dangerous or beyond the capabilities of soldiers. The major restriction on their deployment is that of environmental conditions; mud, sand, and many urban areas disproportionately disadvantage Hazard operators, since such materials are not meant to withstand their weight. Orbital Guard fire teams sometimes employ Hazard suits as weapons platforms or mobile bulwarks in habitat raids, but more often, they are avoided due to their relative lack of agility in microgravity, the risk of collateral damage from suit-based weapons, and their simple lack of presence within naval stocks.
In both cases, deployment of Hazard suits has its problems. Hazard suits are designed for particularly small operators, who require extensive cybernetic augmentation in order to interface with the systems. The augmentations themselves are known to have unintended side effects on the user's psyche- not entirely illogical, considering the user becomes a 2.6-meter-tall, seemingly invincible killing machine for considerable stretches of time. Suitable candidates among Union recruits are uncommon as a result, and those who do undergo the interface implantation typically are not able to serve in other combat roles.
Union Army Hazard suits are typically painted with electrochromic camouflage coatings to allow partial concealment. The system works best when stationary, but breaking up the outline of the suit alone contributes to their operators' survival rates, and if a distraction is needed the camouflage can flash bright coloration or employ other attention-grabbing methods. Orbital Guard Hazard suits are instead decorated much as the regular equipment of their users, heavily personalized to the operator's tastes so long as Union identifying marks are preserved and all Iris tags are kept clean. Camouflage offers little benefit in space, so suits fresh from the manufacturing plant are usually painted matte grey or black for protection against the elements when stored.
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