Ze-M5-01a Devil RAID Suit

A point of progress marked through over a year of field testing through Black Syndicate and general testing methods dating back to, the Devil came about officially sometime in YE 40 under Zen Armaments, with reports of previous sightings marking the time leading up to its commercial release. Created in various areas, the Devil's first version came about on the surface of Kennewes as a suit to fill the gap between a fighter and a power armor.

The Devil RAID Suit is possibly one of the longest running projects to come from Zen Armaments following the intimidating release many years prior of the Crooked Demon, a suit the saw to manufacturing and selling. A Rapid, Assault and Invasion, and Demolition suit, otherwise known as RAID, the Devil is a mix of engineering that lies in two-parts of an origin. Firstly, to fulfill the role of an agile and fast suit to contrast the more strong and land-focused suits of Zen Armaments to diversify their market capability. Secondly, however, was to provide a tool that their other half, the Black Syndicate, could use in their various operations and fights with other criminals for superiority. As a result, the Devil often sees any off-shelf units that get “damaged” sent into service for the organization.

Fitted with an extremely powerful set of boosters on its back, torso, and feet, the Devil's capability to move fast is often best when in an open area such as space, the sky, or across open fields and dunes. To facilitate this incredible speed, the suit can achieve a hover-like system while simultaneously locking its limbs behind thick panels of armor to increase its defensive power from attacks from the front. Because of this, the suit does have a trade off of resembling the Aggressor Heavy Assault Armor when on the ground, leaving it best either moving or supported by other suits. However, with so much thruster power and raw power of the suit, its various roles have made it quite possibly one of the best buys for a mercenary company and local militia.

A wide, massive machine, the Devil sports a body supported on rather thin legs, appearing much like a giant human rather than a traditional warsuit. A box-like head with a single eye houses a powerful mono-eye with an antennae on each side that rises back and above the suit. A rather simplistic but bulky torso forms a single part with a seam running along the massive backpack and its trio of boosters on the upper back and a smaller angled pair along the lower end. The thighs and butt of the suit also house boosters, albeit smaller and armored to make it impossible to likely sit down on anything but metal. Vent-like panels spot the suit and its limbs, obviously created to link and form a seamless look to the entire suit. The gauntlets of the armor house obvious missile systems, while the legs are clearly designed with an oddly bulky knee section to facilitate the pilot.

The advantages of the Devil are obviously spotted in the initials given to it.

• Rapid Propulsion Speed. With the amount of high-power thrusters the Devil sports, it should come as no surprise of how fast it can move. While airborne or at least hovering, the Devil becomes can maneuver much better with faster and tight maneuvers. This propulsion picks up, however, when the suit is moving forward in the direction its torso is facing, allowing it to accelerate at higher rates than most suits of its size.
• Assault and Invasion. As large as the Devil is and sporting the type of propulsion power, the Devil can actually act as a mini-transport and ferry two smaller suits of power armor to-and-from destinations. This can also allow it to pull cargo on skiffs or on wire, allowing it to also act as an impromptu bomber by ferrying an explosive cargo or even a squad of much smaller infantry and light power armor. To further help this, the suit has the ability to “lock” the armor, making it much harder to kill from the front by adjusting its lighter armor sections.
• Demolition and Raw Power. Thanks to its antennae suite and extremely powerful sensory eye, built-in missile launchers, and its capability to ferry in additional equipment, the Devil's amount of hardpoints also allows it to essentially turn into a proper war machine. Almost like an attempt to mimic the immense firepower of an Aggressor, the Devil focuses much of its power on frontal devastation in contrast to raw firepower. For this reason, one can expect to utilize a Devil's highest combat power against stationary or slow targets.

Most if its drawbacks are, without a doubt, visible from a glance. But, for obvious reasons, they will be listed here.

• Weak While Grounded. The Devil might be agile and fast while aloft, but while walking the suit is at extreme risk. This is due to its human-like legs and sheer size, made worse by the fact much of its armor capability falls away while its armor remains unlocked.
• Close-Range Challenged. Despite its immense ability to gather data and support with firepower from afar, the Devil suffers an odd blind-spot compared to the other suits produced by Zen. In particular, the suit's top-heavy weighting means that it has extreme issues fighting targets within fifty meters, with no ability to even protect certain parts of its back.
• Cockpit Operated. Size is not the only thing the Devil shares with the Aggressor, sharing a similarly cramped cockpit that the Crooked Demon utilized. The user has little hope of escaping the suit very quickly if forced to abandon it.

While landed, the mobility of the Devil is somewhat worse in terms of its actual movement, with its speed akin to that of last generation Power Armors. However, this is due to the fact it was designed for use within space, in hover-mode, or in the skies of planets.

While hovering, the suit essentially acts much like any hover vehicle, though its propulsion allows the operator to “leap” or transition immediately into flight. However, because its hovering, the Devil can maintain momentum and essentially allow the user to focus on drifting and angling versus traditional acceleration and flight.

While in the sky and space, the suit acts akin to most fighters. This means that it primarily flies forward, with its maneuvering thrust intended only to turn or roll. Emergency boost functions lie in its side-propulsion, however, allowing the suit to put extreme G's on the pilot to immediately propel the suit. This means that, should objects spring up as the pilot flies, it can fire one to maneuver without its speed adjusting much as it flies forward. After all, the suit was intended to move rapidly and give some form of answer to the more mobile armors on the market.

See Damage Rating (Version 3) for a guide to damage ratings to include.

• Body: Tier 6 Heavy Armor
• Shield System: Conformal Shielding (Tier 6 Heavy Armor)
• Armor: Majority of Body (Tier 6 Heavy Armor), with lighter sections (Tier 5 Medium Armor)

Pushing the pilot's finger against a panel along the bottom of the backpack, the massive pack will separate from the suit's torso and rise up. A ladder will drop down, allowing the pilot to climb up into the suit. Lowering down into the resting mesh of the suit interior, the pilot will reach down and secure both hands in a glove-designed controller. The backpack will automatically close, allowing them to rest their forehead against the vision sight before the suit pricks and injects relaxing agents into their hands while pressing a partial thought-assistance module against the back of their neck. This allows the pilot to act as if they were naturally moving, yet barely move within, with most of their physical senses numbed. As a result, the pilot will move very little from where they set down and speak at a whisper with their voice made loud through a speaker and the thoughts coordinated to the machine.

Once ready to exit, the pilot simply needs to clasp both fists and command the suit to open. The suit will hunch over before injecting a neutralizing agent to counteract the numbing of the pilot, allowing them to immediate control of their arms and control of their legs in the next ten seconds. This allows them to grasp the sides of the exposed suit, slowly lift themselves, and then once they can walk again they simply raise their legs out of the suit and descend the ladder to the ground. In space or zero gravity, this step can be bypassed by simply pushing themselves off and away from the suit.

A suite of sophisticated controls gained from field testing and their successful Crooked Demon, the Devil is operated with hand-based controls. The movement and direction the suit looks, however, is generally achieved through the assistance of basic thought-reading technology. This allows precise use of the suit's arms and is partially responsible for the Devil's problems with moving on the ground. All of the thrusters can be triggered through the thought module or routed to the hands, allowing the pilot a preference on how they dodge whether it be instinctively or through personal skill. All weapons and tools attached to the suit hard-points can similarly be re-assigned, allowing the pilot to simply think to turn things on or flick a finger just the right way.

While original test projects were rumored to have started long ago, the soonest idea of when proper testing began was in YE 38. This was when Zen utilized the Black Syndicate to properly examine their exoskeleton designs that would hold or be the base for the armor. Most of these tests, oddly enough, were performed on normal-sized individuals and ID-SOL, without any part of a cockpit. However, issues began to arise that the amount of armor and lack of imposing size would do little to allow weapon stability once fully built. So, for much of YE 38, these tests steadily scaled up and built on the body. The goal to create a suit capable of fulfilling small craft roles as well as a heavy power armor suit was one that saw a steady dedication and march. But in YE 39, development shifted away briefly to begin testing proper helmet designs. This meant often pairing the experimental designs in differing sizes, such as making Docile-compatible variants or Impulse-compatible variants. Complications were minimal, often chalked up to the lack of the body that would properly cover the blindspots of the helmet as it was fleshed out and fitted properly. Only when the helmet design was finalized did development resume on the body during the latter half of YE 39.

As YE 40 approached, the two separate designs were brought together and tested on Kennewes. It was at this point that many took note of the Devil's wide-range of roles. The complication of movement was spotted here as well, but the sheer versatility of the suit led them to chalk it up as a worthy trade-off. In homage to one of its inspirations, they also created the Crooked Devil variant during this stage. At last, however, the testing was complete only a few weeks into YE 40. Both the original and the Crooked Devil variants were sent to Zen's various storefronts, while many of its test models were retrofitted and brought to par before being handed off to the Syndicate. This ensured that, when it hit the shelf, that the suit had already begun to be advertised or at least seen through the elite syndicate to push a market among crimefighters and other criminals alike.

The suit comes with a few basic systems of significant note.

• Dedicated AI - Based on AI suites inspired by the performance of Nepleslian technology and other suits with half-controls in much larger craft, the Devil's large amounts of hardpoints and multiple arm capabilities are thanks to a powerful AI given to the suit. While it lacks individuality, the AI is effective for allowing the pilots to adjust commands quickly and provide the pilot core programming change capabilities. This AI is also partially responsible for coordinating and ensuring the Devil's varied load-out can be stable.
• Power-focused Engines - While the speed of the Devil comes from its many boosters allowing it to accelerate rapidly, the ability to flex into a pseudo transport role is due to the sheer power of propulsion it can give out. Without the system designed to be able to swap from light load balancing to extreme, the suit would have drastic and unpredictable flows of performance based on load. Instead, the Devil can, within reason, almost not change until it begins to fully load up its many hardpoints that interfere with the positioning of some parts in the backpack.
• Forward Focus Armor - The FFA is a system devised for the Devil, allowing segments of its lighter armor to “condense” by adjusting and locking into position to reinforce. This grants the Devil its durability increase, allowing the suit to take more hits from the front than any other direction once it gets locked in. Without it, the Devil would be only about as capable of enduring hits as any other power armor.
• Specialized Recon Suite - With the speed the Devil gains and its secondary role as a pseudo-fighter craft, it needed proper sensory equipment. The helmet of the Devil utilizes two sensor probing rods in coordination with a multi-vision high-power lens to essentially give the Devil some of the best recon range around.

While the heavy armor of the Devil is traditionally better than lighter loads for defense, one focus shows when it activates and almost squats down in its flight/hover modes. This posture will allow the armor of the suit to close and lock at traditionally thinned areas that allow better movement. As a result, the armor will increase survival rates drastically from frontal attack. However, the armor's exchange means that the suit has mobility problems and its actual left and right flanks become somewhat thinner and exposed to damage.

While its armor might be best suited to forward combat, the conformal shielding of the Devil is rather basic. The benefits of the shielding come in-hand with the various benefits it normally grants to pilots, such as significant hazard protection, with a lack of specific type of shielding intended to help keep the Devil cost-effective. The generator for the shield is actually built and spaced throughout one layer of the armor with many redundancies in place to specifically make it difficult to outright keep a Devil's shields disabled.

Although it comes without any proper module for camouflage, the Devil's backpack hardpoints are capable of allowing the connection and engagement of a stealth module. It is recommended that those who seek to give the Devil camouflage technics invest in basic systems, however, as the sheer energy output of the Devil makes it unlikely to remain off the radar without a full investment of multiple systems. In exchange for all four of its backpack hardpoints, however, one could likely push the Devil into essentially a stealth suit, if they could assemble and prepare proper stealth generators to work together.

The suit boasts a universal filter and scrubber for toxins and gases within an atmosphere, allowing it to cycle and clean the air for oxygen around it as long as it is powered. When put in a void, the suit can utilize up to 72 hours of breathable oxygen it will store while in atmosphere.

In the event of a cockpit breach, the cockpit material can extend and form seals up to three inches wide. Holes wider than that, however, are outside of the suit's expansive layering. This can be vital when punctured in space, as it can keep the pilot from near-instant death. Multiple punctures in the same area will not affect this capability.

The power systems for the Devil are fitted into the backpack of the suit, primarily around the now-refined Aether Generator utilized in the Crooked Demon. Refining this process has allowed the Devil to wield more high-grade weaponry and achieve the powerful boosters it utilizes, as well as its many supporting systems. However, this is part of its compounded issues with properly camouflaging itself due to the sheer energy output it puts out.

Along the suit's body, one can find basic sensors that often get packed to make Power Armor pilots aware of incoming dangers. The helmet also carries two cameras in the side of the head to grant the pilot proper vision, but the suit's primary sensory and communication capability comes entirely from the two rods on either side of its helmet and its mono-eye. In terms of communication, these rods can be altered to send data and effectively allow it to communicate its sight and the pilot for basic communications and information sharing.

In terms of sheer sensory data, however, the suit's monoeye is fitted with nearly every lens and vision mode one could need for combat. Coupled with the ability to adjust and focus like a magnification lens, the eye's coordination with one or both of its antennae allows the suit to accurately gauge most distances if the line of sight to its target isn't cut off or blocked.

The Devil houses two non-transferable weapons on each forearm, nicknamed the Hellraiders. Due to their nature of being tied to the suit, these weapons do not have nomenclature and are packaged as part of the suit. They can, however, be replaced or repaired instead of buying a new one.

• x2 Hellraider Missile System (Tier 5 Medium Armor)
  • x3 Tier 5 plasma-based SAPHEI missiles
    • Explosion Radius: 10 meters
    • Effective Kill Radius: 10 meters
    • Detonation Type: Instantaneous Explosion, with plasma-heated fragmentation

The following hard-points exist for the Devil:

• x2 Internal Shoulder Mounts (Tier 3 and below)
• x2 Upper Backpack/Over Shoulder Mounts (Up to Tier 7 weapons) (Additional Arm Install Point)
• x2 Side Backback Mounts (Tier 6 and below) (Additional Arm Install Point)
• x2 Hip Mounts (Tier 5 and below)

Below, one can find the pricing, various accessories, and future variants when made.

Devil - Base Price: 12,000 DA / 6,000 KS Crooked Devil Price: 16,000 DA / 8,000 KS Basic Repair Cost Range: 1,000 - 5,000 DA / 500 - 2,500 KS Additional Ammunition: 300 DA / 150 KS per missile

Robotic Arm Attachment: 1,000 DA / 500 KS

Named after the Crooked Demon, this variation is out-the-door available for purchase. With the better suite and advancements made in general AI usage from testing, a variant of the Devil was created that utilizes the two arms of the old suit as lower back-pack attached segments. An additional pair of smaller arms are also attached at the upper back.

Unlike a robotic arm-fitted variant, which often has basic strength akin to or weaker than the normal arm of the machine and roughly the same size, these two arms are much larger by comparison. When fitted with blades, this allows the Devil to become a terror in one-on-one combat, as it can carry four guns with its normal arms and the shoulder fitted ones, while allowing it to react with the far larger and stronger melee arms of the Crooked Demon.

One trade-off, to keep the Crooked Demon in the market somewhat viable, is that the Crooked Devil cannot utilize the arms with great precision, often using simple movements such as thrusting or slashing. Not only that, but only the most skilled pilots will find it feasible to use the arms as well as handle its main arms and upper arms. This means that the Crooked Devil has its use only to the oldest and most seasoned, with it being rather unfriendly and even dangerous enough to harm the pilot if incorrectly operated.

The Crooked Devil, as its additional arms and their sheer cutting power add through the addition of NRM Vibro Claws makes it ideal for CQC, extreme combat platform, and anti-fortification capabilities. As a trade-off, it loses many of its hardpoint positions, has almost minimal mobility while walking, and is dangerous to inexperienced pilots.

Legix created this article on 2018/01/07 16:26; Wes approved it on 2018/03/17 05:11.