CMC Powered Combat Suit

The CMC Powered Combat Suit was the armored exoskeleton worn by the infantry of the Terran Confederacy and, after the Confederacy fell, by the forces that succeeded it across the Koprulu sector, including the Terran Dominion and the Kel-Morian Combine. The name preserved the acronym for the Confederate Marine Corps even after the government that created it had collapsed, and the armor was known colloquially as "hardskin." The Umojan Protectorate fielded armor built along similar lines. The suit was the standard kit of the terran marine and the firebat, and its bulky, broad-shouldered silhouette became the defining image of the human soldier in the sector.

Suiting up and design#

The size and bulk of the heavier suits required frequent drilling to put on efficiently. Depending on a suit's condition and the wearer's experience, donning the armor could take anywhere from three to twenty minutes, though constant practice allowed early members of the Sons of Korhal to complete the task in a single minute. Later models simplified the process. Some allowed the helmet and surrounding segments to be removed so the user could climb in through the opening, while a more involved method built the suit from prefabricated parts directly around the wearer, sealing them inside.

Armor was commonly personalized with suit and visor art. Across the various models, multiple aesthetics existed for the same numbered version, and these sometimes contradicted one another, a reflection of the long service life and many manufacturers of the design.

The CMC-200 and CMC-300#

The CMC-200 Powered Combat Suit was used in the twenty-fifth century. By 2478 it was being phased out in favor of its successor, and it was considered obsolete by the time of the Guild Wars, retained only for training. It carried an air conditioning backpack that channeled heat away from the body, a visor system that kept the wearer informed of the suit's integrity, structural support that improved a gunner's aim, and a salvage system that sealed off a breached limb in a tourniquet. It was immune to most small arms fire, though a needle gun could penetrate it, and offered seven days of endurance on internal recycling alone.

The CMC-300 Powered Combat Suit was the much improved successor and the standard issue to marines during the Great War. It weighed several hundred pounds and added a foot to the wearer's height. The suit was powered by cold fusion cartridges inserted into the chest, reactors with a field failure rate below one half of one percent, a figure so reliable it was sometimes attributed to divine providence. A liquid cooling system of rubber tubes ran through the jointed areas, assisted by twin high-speed turbines known as afterburners that vented the heat of the power supply. The suit offered advanced NBC shielding, full life support, and a heads-up display built into a plexithene visor, capable of infrared vision, terrain mapping, targeting, and motion detection. Its servos increased the wearer's strength and speed and allowed long, piston-driven jumps. The same servo systems were its weakness, leaving the suit open to immobilization if disrupted, as by a hydralisk scythe driven into the chest, and its power draw was heavy enough that the helmet was usually left off outside combat. Old Confederate-era CMC-300 suits continued to be issued to some Dominion garrisons long after the Confederacy fell.

The CMC-400 and heavy variants#

The CMC-400 Powered Combat Suit was an upgraded version of the CMC-300, in service by 2491 and still considered new at the outbreak of the Great War. It integrated NBC shielding, life support, and a stimpack system, and carried a communication array that automatically connected to signal boosters aboard vehicles such as dropships. The CMC-400A variant was used by the marines of the United Earth Directorate, built by the Cirion Multinational Corporation, with an outer shell of depleted uranium and titanium and an onboard artificial intelligence designated the CMC 5000 system.

The heavier CMC-600 and CMC-660 Heavy Combat Suits were worn by firebats, built to resist the plasma and flame their wearers carried, with reinforced plasma tanks mounted on the back and thermal suppression lenses to protect the user's eyes. The 5-4 Armored Infantry Suit was a heavily remodeled CMC-660 issued to marauders, armed with paired grenade launchers and fitted with a shock dispersion weave of kinetic foam that redirected impact force away from the operator, a development that markedly improved survivability across skirmishes throughout the sector. Confederate sources held that the CMC acronym stood for the Confederate Marine Corps, while other accounts attributed it to the Cirion Multinational Corporation, a distinction that may have separated Koprulu sector armor from that of the United Earth Directorate.