Parachutes
Two canopies, one slot, and a deploy prompt that only appears once you are already falling. Here is what each one does on the way down.
Deploying and cutting
A parachute lives in the Traversal slot, and it never opens on its own. Once you are airborne and falling, the prompt to Deploy Parachute appears, and the canopy opens where you ask it to. There is a second prompt while you are still under it. Cut Parachute collapses the canopy mid-air and drops you the rest of the way, which is how you get out of a slow descent that has turned you into target practice.
Both canopies are single use. Cutting one spends it exactly as landing under it does, so a cut is a decision about the rest of the fall rather than a way to save the pack for later. Each takes a 3x2 block of inventory space.
Basic against Sport
The armory sells two, ten times apart in price. The cheap one slows you down. The expensive one flies.
| Basic | Sport | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $100 | $1,000 |
| Weight | 2.5 kg | 9 kg |
| Glide | None | Yes |
| Flare on landing | None | Yes, on stamina |
| Turn rate | Faster | Slower |
The Basic canopy has no glide and no flare. It holds your heading and bleeds height, and the only real input you have is which way you are pointed. That is enough to reach the ground alive from a helicopter insert, and for a hundred dollars it is hard to argue with.
The Sport canopy is a different aircraft. It glides, which converts height into distance and turns a drop into a way of crossing ground. It also flares, pulling up against your descent to bleed off speed before you touch down, and that pull draws on a stamina pool that drains faster than it refills. Hold the flare too long and you run out with the ground still coming.
Which one to carry
The Sport canopy costs a thousand dollars and nine kilograms, and the weight is the part people underestimate. Nine kilos out of your carrying allowance is ammunition or armor you are not bringing. The question is whether the drop is transport or just a landing.
- Landing. Dropping onto ground you already meant to be on. The Basic canopy does this for a hundred dollars and two and a half kilos, and nothing about the Sport makes the landing safer.
- Transport. Jumping high and far to reach a tower or a flank the roads do not serve. Glide is the only thing that turns altitude into distance, so this is the Sport canopy's case and the only one worth the money.
One caution either way. Under the Sport canopy it is entirely possible to land too fast, and the flare exists because the descent speed it permits will hurt you. Price both against the rest of your kit in the loadout planner before you commit the weight.