Titans

When the Holy Empire of Man took over the island, the locals called them the "Sky Kings". One village embraced the Sky Kings and their ways while the rest clung to the old ways. One day, the Celestial Knight descended from the heavens and stood by the village. Then a mighty hurricane rose from the sea and destroyed all the enemies of the Sky Kings. The village and the Celestial Knight stood unharmed, square in the eye of the hurricane for three days. The locals called it a miracle, the commanding officer called it weather control.

Titans are enormous walking vehicles similar to battleoids, but at a larger scale.  The smallest titans are about the same size as the largest battleoids, but the largest are far larger.  Because of their size and complexity, titans are always piloted by a crew of at least two, and usually three or five pilots connected via an inter-brain network based off the early experiments of the Markovians (notably technology recovered from the Archipelago incident).  Unlike battleoids, Titans are never mass-produced. Each one is custom-built for a particular use.  Many prosperous industrial worlds prominently feature a titan in their planetary defense forces, as a status symbol.

History

The first Titans saw deployment around GSC 850 among the star-kingdoms along the Sagittarius rim.  The Planetary League never widely adopted the technology, but the Holy Empire of Man used them extensively, mainly as an intimidation tactic.  The Empire of 1,000,000 Suns gained the technology shortly before the War of the Empires, and Titans saw extensive use during that conflict.

Civil Defense Battleoid

The civil defense battleoid is a classic design in the history of the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns.  Dating back before the 1,000 Years war, it was a common sight on garrison duty, defending cities, and even on the outer hulls of space habitats and capitol ships.  While many of its systems were upgraded, the basic design of the civil defense battleoid changed very little over the history of the empire.

Capabilities

The civil defense battleoid had two arms slung below the center of its body, these could be used to wield a number of different weapons and other equipment. 

The "eye" at the front of its body housed both a searchlight and a powerful laser cannon. 

The body housed a large deflector shield to supplement the battleoid's weaker than average armor.

The feet of the battleoid contained powerful electromagnets that allowed it to operate on the outer hulls of star-ships.

The civil defense battleoid was designed to be operated by a single pilot who entered and exited through a hatch on the under-side of the body directly behind the arms.

Spinoffs and variants

The design of the Convergence scout walker was based on the civil defense battleoid, with many of its systems being directly copied.

Personal Drone Swarms

Many of the galaxy's inhabitants, especially the well-to-do and those from technologically advanced worlds, are often attended by swarms of small robots.  These drones are typically coordinated via an app on the user's personal media device, or neural interface.

Often, a group of drones with related functions will be packaged and marketed together as a swarm.  One of the more popular swarms is the "Pixie Pals" by Pegasus Cybernetics, a group of personal security devices marketed primarily to young women.

Another common application of this technology is the personal constructor swarm, a group of robots designed to rapidly fabricate a wide variety of items.

Some personal drone swarms are purely ornamental, acting as a form of automated jewelry.

Computronium

The ultimate computer, computronium has been described as "programmable matter".  In fact it is a remarkable feat of nanotechnology, the shrinking of a computer to the atomic scale.  Before Era-3, even the best nanoforges in the galaxy couldn't produce a sample of computronium above 5% in purity. 

It is said that the core of Troniac, the Computer-God was made of pure computronium. After the Battle of the Pillars, during the 1000 Years War, when Troniac its self took some substantial damage, fragments of purportedly pure computronium started circulating among Troniac Cultists that were supposed to be fragments of Troniac's core.  These shards were often kept as holy relics, and many of these formed the basis of the known Avatars of Troniac, and some of the more dubious samples formed the minds of some of the Mad Saints of Troniac.

There were also a few sources of naturally occurring computronium.  This was exceedingly rare, as the natural processes necessary to deposit the right minerals in the right configuration proved extremely complex.  Yet, given enough time, space, and matter, nature found a way.  These natural computronium deposits only ever produced a material of very low purity, generally regarded as junk by anyone on search of computer power, yet endlessly fascinating to anyone interested in geology or computer science.

Computronium above a certain critical mass, tends to be independently sentient.  Unless the computronium is formed in a certain way, so as to properly integrate it into an interactive environment with a suitable suite of inputs and outputs, it tends to be hopelessly insane.  As a result of these facts, the Planetary League heavily regulated the production of computronium within its borders.  In spite of these same facts, Gazillion, inc continued to produce computronium in many of its own facilities, often enslaving the resulting AIs to power its technological empire.

Grunkle-fly delivery drone

The Grunkle-fly delivery drone was inspired by the Bravaxian Grunkle-fly.  Manufactured late in era-1 by Pegasus Cybernetics for making light deliveries, the Grunkle-fly was not an uncommon sight on far-flung frontier worlds.

Retribution-class battleoid

The Retribution class battleoid was used extensively by the Holy Empire of Man during the War of the Empires.  Designed as a terror and siege weapon, its main armament was a heavy repeating plasma-bolt thrower mounted on its right arm. Its standard configuration also included retractable missile pods, and a large spotlight.  The Retribution also had a number of mounting points for optional equipment.  

E1MS Artillery Pod

Overview

The Artillery Pod was an important weapon in the armory of the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns.  Before the 1,000 Years War, these walking artillery pieces were, for the most part, fully robotic.  During the war; however, they defected to the Cult of Troniac in large numbers, and subsequently, were manufactured almost exclusively for operation by an organic pilot.

Heavily armed and armored, but slow and ponderous, the Artillery-pod was often used to set up fortified positions, especially in rough terrain. 

E1MS "Sapling" Rifle

The "Sapling" was the standard rifle chassis for most of the history of the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns. 

An unadorned Sapling, as might be seen in field use.

For formal inspections, parades, etc., the Sapling is often seen adorned in Imperial Green.

History

First developed during the 1,000 Years war, it saw continuous service (albeit with many variations and upgrades) until the period between the Great Reckoning and the War of the Empires.  Many later claimed that the E1MS might have won the War of the Empires if they had stuck with their traditional arms instead of upgrading to higher tech designs provided by the remnants of the Planetary League.

The E1MS also used the Sapling as a foreign policy tool, gifting it (or the designs to build it) to nearly anyone willing to fight the enemies of the Empire. 

The Cult of Troniac also made extensive use of the Sapling, (especially during the 1000 Years War), as many early conversions to the faith were robots that built the Sapling in the Empire's military machine.

Over time, this weapon was produced in such large numbers, and the designs to create it were so widely available, that most criminal enterprises, insurgencies, and warring factions throughout the galaxy had at least a few of them in their armories.

Variants

There were three main variants of the Sapling in use throughout most of its career. 

The first was the laser rifle, which was the most widely used as it required only electricity to operate, and was therefore the simplest to keep in service.  It was also the cheapest to mass-produce.  This simplicity was offset by the fact that a foe could deflect the laser by presenting an appropriately reflective surface.  Most laser rifles could be switched between "single shot" mode, which activated the laser briefly, and "continuous beam" mode which would operate until either the trigger was released or the power cell discharged.

The second main variant was the rail-gun, which used electromagnets to launch kinetic projectiles.  This necessitated carrying ammunition in addition to power cells.  The projectiles came in a variety of variants with various properties, such as armor-piercing, hollow-point, etc.

The third, and most complex of the standard variants was the plasma-bolt rifle.  This version launched a magnetic core surrounded by charged plasma.  It had the most complex ammunition, consisting of a power cell, a magazine of cores, and a cylinder of gas.  This was a logistical hassle that helped make this the least used of the main variants of the Sapling.  In addition to the damage caused by the magnetic core (its self a kinetic projectile), the plasma fired by this weapon could damage electrical circuits, super-heat armor, and burn flesh.  If the specialized ammunition was unavailable, this version could also fire the projectiles made for the rail-gun variant as well. 

Accessories

Being such a widely-produced weapon for such a long time lead to a plethora of accessories and modifications being created for the Sapling from the mundane to the exotic.

Other Notes

The Sapling rifle was designed to be used by Cielioids, and as such, the trigger is about twice the size as what a human would normally use.  (Cielioids have only two large fingers on a hand about the same width of a human hand.)  This makes operation of the rifle by humans awkward, but not by any means impossible.  During Era-2, one of the most popular modifications for the Sapling was to replace the handle and trigger with something more amenable to human hands.