Gear
Overview
A broad term used to describe wearable technology, equipment, and even prosthetics, from sensors and mechanical components to personal compute and storage. Gear can refer to individual worn items, or fully-body, integrated suits with built-in hard-coded compute, and mechanized exoskeletons. Gear is often driven by links, however some gear can be controlled manually, kinetically, with voice commands, or by pairing with remote systems.
Most consumer gear is tailored for operators and personal convenience, and don't require sophisticated functionality or security, allowing the gear's computational components to be built with the cheaper and more modular LMNL hard code.
Conversely, the computational components in high-end gear aren't made with LMNL, as the LMNL framework prioritizes security and modularity over the size and weight constraints that are unique to wearable gear. Instead, the best gear is constructed with raw, highly optimized, hand-compiled hard code customized to the gear's required specifications.
Gear such as wearable weapons and defensive equipment veer into the territory of Combat Gear. Combat Gear is generally legal to buy across GATA but not legal for citizens to actually operate within the walls of most districts, unless authorized by the district’s government or the Local Authority as a contracted Operator.
Beyond the safety of district walls, Combat Gear is significantly more prevalent, especially in the Free Territories and URSA where order is fundamentally maintained through the threat of force.
Combat Gear
Combat Gear are armored suits or exoskeletons, wearable weapons platforms and advanced combat equipment. They range from minimal, powered bodysuits carrying light loadouts, to full-body armor suits with powered mechanical exoskeletons.
The most advanced Combat Gear in use likely belongs to Angelis, however every nation has built up their own arsenal of formidable gear with a wide range of capabilities.
The prevalence of Link Jammers on the combat field has seen combat automata widely replaced or supplemented with the more reliable, human-operated Combat Gear.
Sprint Gear
Sprint Gear is a subset of Gear purpose-built to allow humans to reach superhuman ground speed. It branches from early GATA combat gear developed during The Reconstruction. Sprint Gear uses joints powered by a kinetic dynamo that recycle kinetic energy into the gear's mechanical movements.
Sprint gear can be tailored to emphasize acceleration, top speed, or agility. While top speed may be the most effective in an open field, acceleration and agility are preferable in urban environments.
In recent decades, criminal syndicates have improved upon the basic design patterns and supplemented by additional gear and equipment for the purpose of Wallrunning.
Sprint gear typically takes the form of leg extensions, however more extreme sprint gear can extend to full leg or lower body prosthetics, boosters, and time illegal dilation bombs derived from controlled parallel collapse of parallel reactors.
Boost Gear
Boost Gear is a subset of Gear designed for propulsive movement, especially in emergency and combat scenarios. Boost gear uses propulsive jets instead of static nodes due to the latter's vulnerability to target lock.
Boost Gear's propulsive jets recycle kinetic energy into focused bursts that can propel the runner in any direction, and can even sustain flight for limited durations. Excellent for overcoming obstacles, dodging incoming projectiles, and freeing wallrunners from Gate Patrol jelly rounds.
Heavy Gear
Heavy Gear is a broad category that refers to any gear loadout so heavy that it requires a mechanized exoskeleton to carry the load. This class of gear generally incorporates more complex systems and capabilities, and requires capable operators who are adept with link use.
Past a certain size, such mechanized loadouts begin to enter the territory of frames.
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