Fireball SG Armored Fighting Suit

Gallery Article by Kaan Gök on Jan 4 2004

 

"...any planet, particularly those capable of supporting their own population, should not be bound to an alien government against its will."

- Earth Declaration of Independence, 2882

 

"Offenbar wird eine erhöhte militärische Anwesenheit angefordert, um annehmbare Bürger vor diesen mercenaries und Anarchisten zu schützen."
- SDR response, 2882
Clearly an increased military presence is required to protect decent citizens from these mercenaries and anarchists.

 

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World War IV ravaged the planet and made it uninhabitable.  By 2855 the planet was safe enough to begin terraforming and planning for colonization. 

What was once humanity's only home became a backwater colonial planet, and a haven for criminals, mercenaries, persecuted, migrants, farmers, laborers, and many more seeking refuge. Earth was largely ignored by the Galactic Federation until 2877, when control of the planet was given to the Strahl Demokratische Republik.

The resulting war that soon followed between the SDR and the rebel Earth forces—commonly known as the Mercenary Army—fielded an incredible array of new technology. The armored fighting suit, artificial intelligence, and antigravity propulsion all made their first mainstream military appearance.

Powered Armour
Knowing that the Germans had military orbital facilities for a while before they did, the Allies saw more use for powered armour in space than the Germans did. For a start, while powered armour was slower and less able to take damage than fighters could, they could be used to assault space facilities quite happily, and plant demolition charges where fighters couldn't. As a result, a fair amount of research went into Allied space powered armour, and three main types of suit were developed as a result.
The Fireball was the first suit, and performance wise, it was very similar to the German Fleige. Based on the SAFS, the suit didn't have any glass front plate, and was armed with a laser from the outset, making it a decent long range fighter.

 

The Mercury was an experiment in developing a long range and fast suit, potentially useful for convoy raiding. It was an interesting experiment, although never entirely successful, and spawned two additional variants. The Mk I was fast, but unarmoured and thus unliked by the pilots. Any hit would effectively destroy the suit, and powered armour was too small to mount rescue devices. So, unless a friendly ship was already in the area, the pilot was doomed to a slow death if the hit didn't kill them straight away. The Mk II attempted to correct this by mounting armour, but the only way to do this was to lose a lot of fuel, and thus the suit had to be carried into action by another ship. The Mk III was a variant of the Mk II, but removed the laser and Telsa coil and mounted a conventional weapon. While the fuel was still the same, with no laser to recharge, the fuel went a lot further.

The Fireball SG was the final powered armour suit, and attempted to learn from the lessons of the original Fireball and the Mercury. Slower than the Mercury, but more manoeuverable than the Fireball or Mercury, the SG was well liked by the pilots. The only flaw was the lack of fuel (as on all laser armed suits), and thus a Mk II was developed substituting a conventional weapon for the laser. Opinions were mixed as which was better. The Mk I had better damage and range, but the Mk II had greater staying power.

More info:

http://www.maschinenkrieger.info/

http://staff.bus.bton.ac.uk/fesg/meinpanzer/index.html

http://staff.bus.bton.ac.uk/fesg/hv/index.html

http://staff.bus.bton.ac.uk/fesg/sf3d/index_original.html

Kaan Gök

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Photos and text © by Kaan Gök