Hawwer Industries

Author's Note: this entire document is going to be presented in a meta fashion rather than a fluff/in context format.

What is Hawwer Industries?

Hawwer Industries is the Cosmic Era equivalent of sub-par manufacturing and supply, the sort that keeps low-cost outfits like dollar store chains, flea market vendors, and online discount outfitters running, except for having military equipment. It produces military vehicles, mecha, armor, weaponry, and ammo at highly reduced costs, and will sell to anyone with enough money.

The Hawwer Method

The Hawwer Method starts with reverse engineering and industrial espionage. Hawwer then takes the intellectual properties they've taken and redesigns them to use readily available materials, sub-standard production facilities, and cost-cutting measures. The end product superficially looks like a viable weapons platform, and for a short time, might even act like one, but Hawwer products are always flawed.

Small Arms are functionally similar to any other weapons being made, but on a combat fail, the weapon has jammed. If the roll is a critical failure, the weapon has broken, and cannot be used until it is serviced and repaired. Said weapons also require twice the amount of basic maintenance due to their low quality and poor manufacturing.

Hawwer combat armor functions like regular armor, but rather than being military grade, it is technically clever civil grade materials dressed up to look like the real deal. This is represented by the fact that the armor will have a barrier rating. Against small and light arms it fairs well, but once medium-level small arms are deployed, the armor will rapidly fail. Anything that deals over a specific amount of damage can automatically penetrate Hawwer armors.

Hawwer Power Armor suits are notoriously difficult, being poorly made and having very low-end software. In combat, they are highly vulnerable to cyberwarfare, anti-power armor weaponry and tactics, and armor-penetrating weaponry. If they suffer a critical hit, a second critical hit is rolled. If a mobility check is failed, the suit suffers a critical to its legs or alternate mobility system (such as jump jets or jump packs).

Hawwer's armored vehicles are most likely their best product. They use basic military-grade armor and are well enough made. If the vehicle suffers a critical hit, a second is rolled. Hawwer largely gets around this flaw by being better known for pushing their lines of support vehicles, most notably APCs, logistic trucks, IFVs, and gun carriers. When pressed into frontline combat against other vehicles and mecha, these vehicles don't last long, regardless of who manufactured them, so often the cost of increased maintenance and mechanical failure is worth the lower initial price tag.

The mecha Hawwer manufactures are often their most glaring products. These machines are made with primitive powerplants or fuel cells, primitive endoskeletons, commercial armor, low-grade electronics suites, and basic weaponry. This causes the machines to be slower, heavier, less reliable, and more prone to failure in the field. Hawwer mechs suffer the double crit flaw when suffering an armor defeating hit. They cannot equip high-end electronic equipment like ECM systems, stealth systems, or targeting computers. One of the more glaring flaws is that Hawwer mechs have to make a systems check when hit by PPCs to avoid the machine overloading and shutting down, or temporarily losing function in the part of the mech hit.

How does Hawwer stay in business?

Cost and volume.

Most of Hawwer's income is from small arms, personal armor, and ammunition sales. They sell arsenals of conventional, magnetic, and laser weaponry, including plastic lasers and throw away one-shot weapons. The groups that use Hawwer's heavier equipment lack the ability to manufacture their own gear and often have trade embargos against arming themselves with more front-line equipment.

In the context of power armor, vehicles, and mecha, this equipment is the sort that is used in military aid packages and inevitably ends up in the arsenals of third-world nations. In these situations, the Hawwer branding is removed, and often the low-end, poor grade of the material is offset by numbers, weight, and enthusiasm of the users. A rebel driving a knock-off Banshee that has 20% less armor and is prone to overheating is still driving a 95 ton mech and can step on things, knock over walls, and kick power armor troopers like footballs.