Codex/Weapons, Armor and Equipment

Advances in technology have made individual soldiers more dangerous and survivable than ever before.

Body Armor
Combat hard-suits use a dual-layer system to protect the wearer. The inner layer consists of fabric armor with kinetic padding. Areas that don't need to be flexible, such as the chest or shins, are reinforced with sheets of lightweight ablative ceramic.

The outer layer consists of automatically-generated kinetic barriers. Objects traveling above a certain speed will trigger the barrier's reflex system and be deflected, provided there is enough energy left in the shield's power cell.

Armored hard-suits are sealable to protect the wearer from extremes of temperature and atmosphere. Standard equipment includes an onboard mini-frame and a communications, navigation, and sensing suite. The mini-frame is designed to accept and display data from a weapon's smart targeting system to make it easier to locate and eliminate enemies.

Collector Particle Beam
The Collectors' particle beam weapon is strangely crafted, possessing few moving pieces, lacking any obvious means for disassembly, and containing organics parts. The amount of energy required to create a destructive beam is several orders of magnitude more than the energy required to launch a physical projectile at high velocity via a mass effect field. Lacking any clear ammunition or fuel source, the device likely uses heat sinks or compensators to maintain firing during sustained combat. Current Cerberus efforts to understand the technology and replicate it have failed.

Kinetic Barriers ("Shields")
Kinetic barriers, colloquially called "shields", provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on a starship or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle remains the same.

Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities. This affords protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allows the user to sit down without knocking away their chair.

The shielding afforded by kinetic barriers does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation.

Mass Accelerators
A mass accelerator propels a solid metal slug using precisely-controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. The slug is designed to squash or shatter on impact, increasing the energy it transfers to the target. If this were not the case, it would simply punch a hole right through, doing minimal damage.

Accelerator design was revolutionized by element zero. A slug lightened by a mass effect field can be accelerated to greater speeds, permitting projectile velocities that were previously unattainable. If accelerated to a high enough velocity, a simple paint chip can impact with the same destructive force as a nuclear weapon. However, mass accelerators produce recoil equal to their impact energy. This is mitigated somewhat by the mass effect fields that rounds are suspended within, but weapon recoil is still the prime limiting factor on slug velocity.

M-622 Avalanche
Still in its experimental stages, the M-622 Avalanche generates a Bose-Einstein condensate within a mass effect bubble which dissipates on impact, violently spraying the condensate outward and coating the target in a near-absolute-zero superfluid.

The Avalanche is unreliable, at times merely coating its target with ice, defacing exposed skin and freezing armor joints. Such low temperatures cause great damage to electronics like kinetic barrier emitters, which sometimes leads to total systems failure. At the other extreme, the Avalanche freezes flesh and bone, causing massive trauma as blood vessels constrict and frozen blood expands. Occasionally such iced tissue shatters.

Medi-Gel
Medi-gel is a common medicinal salve used by paramedics, EMTs, and military personnel. It combines several useful applications: a local anesthetic, disinfectant and clotting agent all in one. Once applied, the gel is designed to grip tight to flesh until subjected to a frequency of ultrasound. It is sealable against liquids - most notably blood - as well as contaminants and gasses.

The gel is a genetically-engineered bioplasm created by the Sirta Foundation, a medical technology megacorp based on Earth. Technically, medi-gel violates Council laws against genetic engineering, but so far, it has proved far too useful to ban.

ML-77 Missile Launcher
Based on existing technology, the ML-77 is a rapid-fire missile launcher using settling projectiles. Each projectile features a friend-or-foe recognition system, ensuring it will find a hostile target even if the user's aim is not completely accurate.

The weapon excels at taking out snipers and other entrenched enemies in dense urban environments. This makes it popular with mercenary groups, particularly the Blue Suns. Missile launchers have been appearing with increasing frequency in the Terminus Systems, but their point of manufacture is unknown. Legal duplication of missile launchers is difficult due to Fabrication Rights Management (FRM) technology.

Small Arms
All modern infantry weapons from pistols to assault rifles use micro-scaled mass accelerator technology. Projectiles consist of tiny metal slugs suspended within a mass-reducing field, accelerated by magnetic force to speeds that inflict kinetic damage.

The ammo magazine is a simple block of metal. The gun's internal computer calculates the mass needed to reach the target based on distance, gravity, and atmospheric pressure, then shears off an appropriate sized slug from the block. A single block can supply thousands of rounds, making ammo a non-issue during any engagement.

Top-line weapons also feature smart targeting that allows them to correct for weather and environment. Firing on a target in a howling gale feels the same as it does on a calm day on a practice range. Smart targeting does not mean a bullet will automatically find the mark every time the trigger is pulled; it only makes it easier for the marksman to aim.

Body Armor
Modern combat hard-suits have a "triple canopy" of protection: shields, armor, and self-repair. The outermost layer is created through kinetic barrier emitters, which detect objects incoming at a high rate of speed and generate deflecting "shields" provided they have enough energy in their power cells.

If a bullet or other incoming object gets past the barrier, it contends with the more traditional body armor. A sealed suit of non-porous ballistic cloth provides kinetic and environmental protection, reinforced by lightweight composite ceramic plates in areas that either don't need to flex or require additional coverage, such as the chest and head. When the armor is hit by directed energy weapons, the plates boil away or ablate rather than burning the wearer.

The last level of protection is provided by the suit's microframe computers, whose input detectors are woven throughout the fabric. These manage the self-healing system, which finds rents in the fabric and, assuming any such tear would wound the flesh underneath, seals the area off with sterile, non-conductive medi-gel. This stanches minor wounds and plugs holes in the suit that could prove fatal in vacuum or toxic environments. Soldiers are not always fond of the "squish skin" that oozes gel on them at a moment's notice, but fatalities have dropped sharply since the system was implemented.

Kinetic Barriers ("Shields")
Kinetic barriers, commonly called shields, provide protection against most mass accelerator weapons. Whether on starships or a soldier's suit of armor, the basic principle remains the same.

Kinetic barriers are repulsive mass effect fields projected from tiny emitters. These shields safely deflect small objects traveling at rapid velocities. This affords protection from bullets and other dangerous projectiles, but still allows the user to sit down without knocking away their chair.

The shielding afforded by kinetic barriers does not protect against extremes of temperature, toxins, or radiation.

Mass Accelerators
A mass accelerator propels a solid metal slug using precisely-controlled electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. The slug is designed to squash or shatter on impact, increasing the energy it transfers to the target. If this were not the case, it would simply punch a hole right through, doing minimal damage.

Accelerator design was revolutionized by element zero. A slug lightened by a mass effect field can be accelerated to greater speeds, permitting projectile velocities that were previously unobtainable. If accelerated to a high enough velocity, a simple paint chip can impact with the same destructive force as a nuclear weapon.

However, mass accelerators produce recoil equal to their impact energy. This is mitigated somewhat by the mass effect fields that rounds are suspended within, but weapon recoil is still the prime limiting factor on slug velocity.

Small Arms
Modern infantry weapons are micro-scaled mass accelerators, using mass-reducing fields and magnetic force to propel miniature slugs to lethal speeds. Nearly every gun on the battlefield is laden with features, from targeting auto-assists to projectile shavers that can generate thousands of rounds of ammunition from a small, internal block of metal.

It was long thought that personal weapons had plateaued in performance, but the geth proved all theories wrong. Mathematically reviewing their combat logs, the geth found that in an age of kinetic barriers, most firefights were won by the side who could put the most rounds down-range the fastest. But combatants were forced to deliberately shoot slower to manage waste heat, or pause as their weapons vented.

To eliminate this inefficiency, the geth adopted detachable heat sinks known as thermal clips. While organic arms manufacturers were initially doubtful this would produce a net gain, a well-trained soldier can eject and swap thermal clips in under a second. Faced with superior enemy firepower, organic armies soon followed the geth's lead, and today's battlefields are littered with these thermal clips.

Upgrades
The development of practical minifacturing omni-tools allows modern militaries a great deal of flexibility in equipment load-outs. A vast number of field modification kits, or "upgrades", are available for common equipment such as weapons, armor, omni-tools, biotic amps, and even grenades.

An upgrade kit typically consists of less than a dozen unique parts and an optical storage disc. When loaded into an omni-tool, the OSD provides all technical specifications required to manufacture the tool and additional parts necessary to install the upgrade onto another piece of equipment. Assembly is typically modular, and installation can be completed in less than a minute.

Since omni-tools are designed to use common battlefield salvage materials such as plastics, ceramics, and light materials (rendered into semi-molten "omni-gel" for quick use), it is quite possible for a trained soldier carrying upgrade kits to customize gear on the battlefield to fit the current tactical situation.