The Essential Guide to Force Exile/Battlesuit52

The Battlesuit52-A was a powered armor system developed by Kraechar Arms for the exclusive use of the Yanibar Guard, specifically the front-line infantry. The system was too sophisticated and costly for all members of the guard to be equipped with such a suit, so instead it saw limited use among infantry squads, jump troops, commandos, and Elite Guardians only. It shared many concepts and principals with the Katarn-III-class commando armor worn by Republic commandos during the Clone Wars.

The suit was comprised of three main segments: A flexible composite fabric underlayer, reinforced fibrous-metal composite plates provided protection over key areas of the body, and an overharness and equipment pack composed the third segment of the armor. The armor was fully vacuum sealed and the underlayer was equipped with material pockets and shape-memory composites that gave it limited self-repairing and full self-sealing capability. It could stop a blaster pistol bolt at twenty meters with cosmetic damage and was optimized against a number of types of damage, including projectiles, shrapnel, sonic, chemical, and incendiary weapons.

The armor took a full two year development cycle, despite being an early priority of for Kraechar Arms. The end result was nothing less than impressive. Though it was a large adjustment for the typically unarmored or lightly armored Yanibar Guard to make, the Battlesuit52-A brought with it an impressive array of capabilities. The most significant of those was the shield generator mounted in the overharness, which could stop fifty blaster shots before depleting and could run continuously for an hour at a time. However, the shield was only effective against energy weapons. The armor also could temporarily provide the user with breathable atmosphere, though it was only vacuum-rated for five minutes. Breathing filters kept air pure and clean through the suit, while a water recycling system, though unpopular with the troops, extended the supply of water for troops in the field. The battlesuit was designed to stop a wide range of threats, ranging from chemical and biological attacks to sonic weaponry, flamethrowers, cryo weapons, projectiles, shrapnel, physical impact, vibroblades, and of course, blasters. However, most of the armor’s strength came from the shield and plates. As such, the flexible underlayer was designed to deal with only glancing impacts, though, in order to afford some maneuverability to wearers. As such, this design led to certain weak points on the armor, namely the elbow joints, neck, groin, and back of the knees, which were only protected by the underlayer.

The reinforced primary plates were separated into eleven pieces: the glove/forearm pieces, two shoulder/upper arm plates, two torso plates, two thigh pieces, two knee pieces, and two shinguards/boots. Additionally, a load-bearing reinforced utility belt harness was provided with the armor, which also served to provide groin protection. These plates were composed of a high-density composite alloy and were resistant to blaster rifle fire, though a point-blank blast would have ablated penetration. The weight of these plates, along with the equipment that Yanibar Guardsmen were expected to carry, was one of the reasons why Bakuran microrepulsor technology was employed to lower the weight. This, and the sensitive electronics in the suit, caused a particular vulnerability to ion weaponry; should a full-powered blast hit the battlesuit and overload the damping systems, the wearer would lose repulsor and optics power, hampering him significantly. The damping systems were designed so that not all of the suit would lose power in the event of an ion hit, but it was possible to overload them with a concentrated barrage. The microrepulsors did afford the wearer a significant increase in agility, more than would expected for someone encumbered with such a battlesuit, and also could be manipulated to increase the arm strength, running speed, or jumping distance of the wearer.

Other integrated systems into the main body of each battlesuit were stimpack and anesthetic injectors, small power cells for each component and repulsor, a sophisticated heating and cooling system capable of dealing with temperature extremes, and internal medisensors and armor integrity diagnostics. The right wrist gauntlet contained a hidden vibroblade and dart launcher, known as a “one-shot”, while the left contained a miniaturized datapad and holoprojector. The torso plates were designed to help distribute the loads carried by infantrymen, while the knee plates and boots were reinforced against heavy wear and packed with repulsors to aid running and jumping. The helmet was another piece of precision engineering. Carefully shaped and constructed to provide maximum protection for the cranium and fitted with light, sonic, and olfactory filters to prevent sensory overload, it was a third of the suit’s entire cost. It was also packed with extensive electronics, including a communications set and scrambler, a voice-activated computer that allowed the user to implement commands to the suit-for example, to the repulsors or anesthetic injectors-and had a sophisticated heads up display. This display was linked to the optics display, which came equipped with visual, infrared, and X-ray scanning modes, as well as low-light filters and enhanced magnification capabilities. The optics display manifested itself on the surface of the helmet as a pair of glowing red ovals over the eyes of the wearer. The helmet was often linked to Yanibar Guard weapons to provide targeting data and could receive information from comlink transmissions. In summary, each helmet placed its wearer in a data-rich environment from where they could fight and provided fresh air through the breathing filters. Targeting information and other key data was provided on the HUD and weapons were linked to it as well to provide firing solutions. A microphone system allowed the speaker to communicate audibly rather than through comlink channels if that was desired. However, the crown jewel of the helmet was the link that allowed an Enhance Tactical Advisor (or ETA) to be plugged in to automate a number of functions and enhance the capability of the wearer even further.

The ETAs were miniaturized tactical AI that were programmed for tactical advice, battlesuit micromanagement, information system interface, and of course, slicing. They were initially assigned only to squad leaders and non-commissioned officers due to their complexity and cost, as well as their classification level.

The battlesuit was designed to be easily painted by a chemical process that would change the color of the armor, though the default was a dark gray urban scheme. It also came in three different sizes-small, medium, and large.

The battlesuits first saw limited use in 13 BBY, and saw significant success in training rounds. However, they fully proved their worth when a single squad of the Yanibar Guard, Cresh Squad, took down an entire force of pirates with an airstrike, their rifles, and battlesuits, with only one casualty. From then on, the battlesuit became standard issue among the Yanibar Guard and, according to their accounts, saved hundreds of lives.

In 3 BBY, however, the Intelligence service and commandos sought to create a more subtle form of armor and Kraechar Arms responded by creating a new model, the Battlesuit52-B, that swapped out the shield generator for an optical camouflage system. The power requirements were too severe to accommodate both packages, but the B-model could easily swap between shield and camouflage packages. The camouflage system also had an endurance of one continuous hour of use and completely concealed the wearer from optical, infrared, and ultraviolet systems via a light-bending technique. Sonic dampers also served to hide the noise of motion. However, it was useless against magnetic or gravimetric sensors and would be distorted by firing an energy weapon, breaking down the camouflage. Instead, camouflaged soldiers were instructed to use projectile weapons such as the S-5X sniper in order to maintain their camouflage field. As such, it was preferred by the covert ops branches of the Yanibar Guard.