LandMates, the UC3K version of the ACPA from Cyberpunk 2020, are heavy power armor suits developed originally in 2029 by the Poseidon corporation. They did not see heavy use until the one year war when they were mass produced for the military to counter the NEO spidermech invasion. Prior to the NEO spider mechs, the LandMate was primarily a shock troop and anti-tank unit. With military applications in heavy assault and urban pacification. Combat Cyborgs turned out to be better suited to such work for their ability to perform house to house sweep and clear missions in lower-grade structures. Despite their lesser armor and weapons loadout, the combat cyborg is the king of man to man warfare. With the LandMate ruling the open battlefield due to it's maneuverability any broad capability as a weapons platform.
Rather than sitting in a cockpit the pilot "wears" the landmate, with the pilot's feet being in the knees of the landmate and their arms inside "master" powered arms. This configuration removes the need for interior space for controls and allows for the manipulation of fine objects, such as human scale guns, not possible with the larger "slave" arms.
Most civilian models are a fairly "generic" landmate, similar to the basic Guges model, but many different types are featured in Appleseed, including some top secret models which incorporate the Hermes anti-gravity material, reducing their effective weight and even allowing some models to fly.
Landmates are equipped with a wide variety of weaponry, including cannons, rockets, recoilless rifles and flame throwers, but the most commonly carried weapon is a heavy caliber machine gun.
There is a top of the line military landmate. Commercial landmates aren't armed and armored; are slower, heavier and less expensive.
Landmates work through synchronization: they "model" the movements of the operator. The pilot's movements are picked up by a skin-tight datasuit and amplified to move the arms and legs. The key issues are how clearly and precisely you can feed back synchronization data without putting excessive stress on the unit and the operator herself. Moreover, since you can't cover all functions with optical fibres alone, electron flows must remain the main nervous system transmitter. Consequently the unifying design principle is always "smaller and lighter." The larger the landmate and the longer the physical nervous system becomes, the greater the likelihood of damage, jamming, lost data, and ultimately, the lower the performance. Naturally, the "neurons" must be thin, light and strong, durable in the face of bending and friction, and with minimal transmission loss. There are also designs made with cybernetic interfaces instead of datasuits. But ultimately, Landmates are designed to let normal humans go toe to toe with full conversion borgs so they are designed for non-cyborgs.
Most civilian models are a fairly "generic" landmate, similar to the basic Guges model, but many different types are featured in Appleseed, including some top secret models which incorporate the Hermes anti-gravity material, reducing their effective weight and even allowing some models to fly.
Landmates are equipped with a wide variety of weaponry, including cannons, rockets, recoilless rifles and flame throwers, but the most commonly carried weapon is a heavy caliber machine gun.
There is a top of the line military landmate. Commercial landmates aren't armed and armored; are slower, heavier and less expensive.
Landmates work through synchronization: they "model" the movements of the operator. The pilot's movements are picked up by a skin-tight datasuit and amplified to move the arms and legs. The key issues are how clearly and precisely you can feed back synchronization data without putting excessive stress on the unit and the operator herself. Moreover, since you can't cover all functions with optical fibres alone, electron flows must remain the main nervous system transmitter. Consequently the unifying design principle is always "smaller and lighter." The larger the landmate and the longer the physical nervous system becomes, the greater the likelihood of damage, jamming, lost data, and ultimately, the lower the performance. Naturally, the "neurons" must be thin, light and strong, durable in the face of bending and friction, and with minimal transmission loss. There are also designs made with cybernetic interfaces instead of datasuits. But ultimately, Landmates are designed to let normal humans go toe to toe with full conversion borgs so they are designed for non-cyborgs.
The switches on the Guges saddle are for the operator to identify herself and open the hatch for boarding, no other controls are mounted externally. That's because you don't want your hatch opening, or your slave coupling ratios changing, or your riding modes shifting, just because someone bumped into you in fight. Even these few remaining external switches can only be activated by code once the operator is inside. Those codes are rescue codes, to be used to get the operator out when she is unable to activate the switches herself.
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