Gaiaterra: Elysea's Conflict/Shock Inquisitor

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The Shock Trooper. Planned to be voiced by.

History
"Like a Christmas tree!"

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During the later stages of the Second World War, increasingly refined Tesla Technology was deployed in a man-portable form in special "Tesla Trooper" squads. The bulky packs and forked projectors were still too heavy for all-day use; tesla troopers were issued special powered exoskeletons normally used by artillery crews to lift heavy shells, and forced to rely on stationary or vehicle-based generators for frequent recharges of both their weapon and exoskeleton. To make up for their reduced mobility and reaction times, many tesla troopers were also issued crude steel body armour that proved effective against the submachine guns popular with Allied troops at the time.

This would allow a Shock Trooper to get into position and ready a blast from his Arc Gun, which was powerful enough to mission-kill any vehicle in Allied service. As a result, during combat Shock Troopers were considered the most dangerous infantry assets in Soviet service, and many Allied advances were arrested by the presence of these infantry; most Allied commanders would rather wait for the Shock Trooper's batteries to run down than to face them directly. Fortunately for the Allies, Shock Troopers were very expensive to field, and Stalin had little patience for them, preferring to allocate resources to his bloated Black Guard divisions as the war dragged on.

After Stalin's death, a series of meetings were set up for tactical experts, Shock Trooper veterans, scientists and engineers to attempt to optimize the Shock Trooper concept for the reformed Red Army. After a series of talks and concepts for the miniaturization of Tesla weapons, a veteran of the Kvant Division instead proposed scaling up the exoskeleton rather than scaling down the technology, a solution with wide appeal. By increasing the carrying capacity of the exoskeleton, a more robust power source could be carried, which would actually increase rather than decrease combat time and allow for more powerful Tesla weapons, not to mention the inclusion of a great deal more armour, though some detractors had noted that such armour would make the troopers too expensive and instead wanted to simply upgrade the frame instead, eventually leading to the creation of the cheaper Tesla Trooper used by the Zenit Division, Gorizont Division and, before the introduction of their own Shock Troopers, the Vieran Reserves.

The eventual result was the world's first practical powered combat suit, a hunched, heavily armoured device powered by a powerful Tesla reactor. Though only capable of eight hours of combat operations, which the designers didn't see as a problem as most battles didn't last a fraction of that, and Tesla Troopers weren't supposed to be sentries, anyways. The armour also had a separate set of batteries for its Arc Guns, which also powered the suit systems, which can be swapped in the field with the assistance of an unarmoured soldier. Rather than having the soldier's feet or arms be separate portions of the suit, there are a pair of articulated robotic feet with mechanical toes (which help protect the occupant from land mines) with legs actuators strong enough that they can keep a Tesla Trooper upright even when strongly pushed, meaning any tank that tries to push them over will be pushed back, and directly integrated guns on fully mechanical arms, controlled by the occupant's arms from inside the torso. This reduces overall mechanical complexity and increases the armour protection in these areas; the lower legs and arms can be considered entirely ablative, and indeed both are separated by armour plates from the wearer.

The suit is notable for its ability to operate in extreme conditions. They can also stomp along the sea floor without consequence as the Tesla Troopers don't need air to operate (and their suit already contains an air tank that can last for twelve hours and the suit can unseal in an emergency), and they are fully capable as RBC suits. The suit is also fully grounded and electromagnetically hardened, allowing it to use its weapon safely. There are several concessions made to allow this, however, most notably highly reduced visibility. The suit has no articulated "head", instead having a simple armoured viewport on the front of the head bubble. To make up for this, the suit has a 360-degree internal sound system tuned to filter out the noise of the suit's operation, to give the wearer a full audio tapestry of the battle around it.

The suit is also equipped with a low-powered EM field that acts as a sort of directional metal detector; metal objects that are moving within a certain distance set off a directional alarm, giving the operator a chance to react as well as contributing to the balance system. During tests, it was found that pumping greater amounts of power into the EM field could be used to fire a powerful EMP blast, though it can only be used sporadically as it drains a lot of power.