Exoi battle armor

Exoi battle armor was a collective term used to refer to a variety of mechanized suits of armor used by the military of the Exoi Kritocracy.

History
Because of their relatively frail builds, the Exoi of Toriafas who founded the Kritocracy were ill-suited to melee combat. Their great height compared to most sentients also made them easier to knock over and to hit from a distance. The Kritocracy's first spaceborne missions to other worlds were repelled with heavy casualties by the alien denizens of those worlds. To solve their dilemma, the Exoi spent the following eleven years developing a massive war machine.

While s made up a large percentage of the Kritocracy's army, the droids, especially in their earliest incarnations, were better suited for large-scale rampant destruction than selective use of force. Rather than rely on a purely mechanized army that could not discriminate in its application of force, the Exoi opted to supplement their droids by being present on battlefields themselves. Recognizing their limitations, they built armor to compensate.

Exoi battle armor fueled many of the conquests of the Kritocracy, and was even on roughly equal footing with the ground forces of the during the Kritocracy-Ascendancy War. Most military historians (Exoi and ) felt the Kritocracy lost the war due to the Ascendancy's space superiority, not the failings of its battle armor.

In the wake of the Kritocracy's defeat, battle armor was mostly used to keep rowdy populations in line. However, loss of territory meant fewer resources (both raw and production) to create new suits of armor, and when armor was damaged, it became more difficult to repair or replace. By the time the Kritocracy submitted to the Golden Empire in 155 ABY, there were comparatively few fully functional Exoi battle armor suits left, although several of these were kept in the Temple of Incarnate Glory to defend the Exoi God-King.

Designs
The details of Exoi battle armor varied throughout the millennia of the Kritocracy's existence, but most followed a general pattern. The Exoi's head was inside a metal dome which sat atop the armor's hunched shoulders. The upper two arms controlled various systems of the armor, while the middle arms manipulated the battle suit's own two weapon-laden arms. Most designs featured cannons and rockets; variations added cutting lasers, saws, hydraulic drills, and extendable blades which could be used as arm-mounted swords.

The Exoi were sextupedal, but battle armor over the generations varied wildly in its approach to legs. The earliest designs were also sextupedal; an Exoi pilot would put one of his own legs in each of the armor's legs and move it by walking. When the seven legs presented too many tripping hazards, the Exoi opted to build battle armor with two thick legs and made it even taller, allowing pilots to stand upright inside their armor. Variations on this design included four thick legs for added stability, and even models with treads instead of legs. When battle armor was not directly manipulated by the pilot's legs, the Exoi usually controlled its movement with its lowest set of arms.

At different points in the Kritocracy's history, the military experimented with allowing non-Exoi to serve in the military, and consequently provided some trusted species with battle armor configured to their biology. Such armor was rare by comparison and there was never a broad policy authorizing battle armor variations for all species.

Strengths and weaknesses
Battle armor had thick plating which was resistant to blasterfire and physical projectiles, and could usually withstand anything but a direct hit from rocket and missile fire. After encountering aliens using s, Exoi incorporated this technology into some of their battle armor, making it even harder to damage. The armor was extremely heavy, due to its weapon systems, booster rockets (on some models), and the armor plating needed to protect two and a half meters of Exoi, and consequently a punch or kick from the armor was usually fatal.

However, the armor was not without flaws. Early models were very slow, and even as servos were upgraded to allow greater momentum, rapid attacks could take advantage of the armor's somewhat slower turning speed. Models which were even taller than the Exoi, especially those with only two legs, could also be tripped or hampered on unstable terrain. Additionally, the armor was focused on protecting its pilot, and therefore had no "open cockpit" combat mode; if the armor's sensors were disabled, the pilot would be blind and forced to repair them, await rescue, or eject and leave the armor behind. Further, unlike the relatively quick training period of teaching a sentient to shoot a blaster rifle and function in a military unit, Exoi battle armor was complex and pilots trained for much longer periods of time before they were fully competent.

Appearances

 * The Final Judgment