Prototype
The road to the flight model was long and irritating. The prototype is a monument to the many failures and my efforts to fix them with limited knowledge of flight mechanics. I had assumed that the model would need to be lighter and sport some sort of flight system, which I added. I wanted speed, however: speed in flight, and speed in landing. Whatever it took to get it on and off the ground to create a fast, flight worthy soldier.
First off: landing was a disaster. My first try tore the legs apart. As you can see from the proto, I added junk to the legs to reinforce them for landings, and that added weight. I didn't care at the time, so long as I compensated for the weight and modified the awkward jet binders you can see on the back. Next, I added an extra eye (to the lower right of the normal monoeye) for various other flight related things that escaped me (acting as a readout and sensor for wind, altitude, speed, etc.) On the chest you can see my quick access computer panel so that I could adjust things on the fly, as I was becoming increasingly irritated with my failed efforts and wanted to get to the programming immediately.
In the end, I scraped the entire thing and moved on; away from the FSM base that the prototype was using. I created this:
Production Model
As you can see, I made many many changes and decided to simply call this a Flight Model, since it was no longer anything like the FSM. It's lighter, reinforced in all the right places (as you can see with the new light armored legs) and the booster wing system in the back is much more....intelligent. I won't go into the areas in which I lack knowledge, but I will say that this might have gone quicker with my pride in check and many trips to an aeronautics lab. With that in mind, I also got rid of the extra eye and instead covered the face with a visor that displayed the readout and used the existing monoeye.
Wrapping this up: The armor and body is completely new and lighter (similar in weight to the Close Combat Model) and I removed the use of a hand-held weapon entirely, opting instead for an arm-mounted energy cannon. The cannon can switch between short heavy bursts or light automatic fire. The decision behind this was that it was just one less thing to worry about. The FSM is made to be versatile, but the Flight Model is just that: a robot for flight. It can use the weapon it has just fine, but the other manipulator (the hand) can function normally (depending on the extra weapon's weight). So, it is as versatile as it needs to be. Finally, the robot is powered like the rest, with the red areas being the solar array (middle, and lower belly region, and the panels on the back below the boosters).
