Hyalopterous Mobility Suit

Purpose:

The Hyalopterous Mobility Suit was created for advanced mobility in zero g, and low g environments like space stations and low gravity moons. A soldier wearing the vulnerable and ridiculous looking suit has the ability to fly easily, and more importantly, without disturbing the environment. Thust and jet packs are loud and produce significant heat and downdrafts. A-pod equipped suits create substantial EM fields, and can interfere with some arcanotech devices, and are gluttonous for power. The Hyalopterous suit uses a combination of a low capacity A-pod generator, something that can cancel out the mass of a single person, but not generate lift or flight capability. The suit's actuators and wings give the person the ability to fly. In space, this is even more economical as the A-pod doesn't even have to be activated for them to fly through corridors or open domes.

Unexpected Use:

Hyalopterous Mobility suits became intensely popular among arcology security and maintenance departments. The vertical nature of these habitats can prove difficult to manage, and flutterboys as they are disparagingly known, can easily moved through the vertical space without serious concern about their surroundings. Flight capable craft can find such places confining. Jump packs have to mind their jet wash, and more than once a falling jet pack has caused serious damage or injury. With the new mobility suits they can move quickly, fluidly, and with ease.

Variants:

The A model suit is equipped with a secondary set of manipulator arms. This allows for the suit wearer to control the robot arms with a smart helmet. This 'assault' variant can carry a pair of small weapons or a single medium one, typically favoring energy weapons or short barrel conventional weapons. Most such models tend to have aggressive insect names, such as hornet, stinger, yellowjack, wasp.

The B model also has manipulator arms, but has a secondary power pack and is geared towards construction, repair, and maintenance. The most famous version is the New Hanseatic League's Hummel suit.

The C model trades the wings for a pair of impellers and an integral rebreather for working underwater.

The D model is search and rescue, and has medical equipment, and the extra arms are fully suited to carrying an injured person. They can also be used for moving debris that is beyond the normal strength capacity of the suit wearer.

Hyalopterous Infantry

Various factions started buying up these mobility suits, equipping security and paramilitary platoons with them. These flying infanty are equipped with submachine guns, laser pistols, grenades, and other similar weaponry, light body armor, and SmartGun systems. They can sweep across a congested battleground and chew through it with ease. They are small enough to evade anti-aircraft weapon systems, fast enough to evade ground fire, and the otherwise slide between the cracks in defenses.