Power Suit Mechanics

The Power Suit is the technology that Samus Aran utilizes to accomplish the various tactical feats that she is faced with throughout her career, usually in the forms of missions assigned by the Galactic Federation, or bounties requested by private interests. Designed by the Chozo, it grants Samus an enormous amount of power. Using this technology, she has become one of, if not the most famous bounty hunter in the known universe. Here, some basic functions of the Power Suit will be outlined.

General
The basic Power Suit provides Samus with the basic Power Beam through her Arm Cannon for offensive capabilities, life support to enable her to survive in situations with no breathable air, enhanced mobility to compliment her acrobatic skills, augmented physical strength, and protective shielding from her surroundings. Designed by the Chozo, it incorporates the most cutting-edge of this race's technology. The suit is modular in nature, allowing for modifications and enhancements when special upgrades are received. But the suit isn't limited to only Chozo upgrades; upgrades from different cultures have been incorporated, such as the Luminoth, the Galactic Federation and even the Space Pirates, but upgrades born from largely different technologies don't always integrate as smoothly as more compatible technologies tend to.

The Arm Cannon
The Arm Cannon is Samus's main offensive tool. It provides her with offensive capabilities for hostile situations, and like the Power Suit, is highly modular. Mainly, it utilizes various Beam Weapon & Missile Launcher technologies. These weapons are all contained within the device, and can be switched between should the need arise.

Beam Weapons
The Arm Cannon (Most notably in the Prime Series,) can change configurations to accomodate different weapon technologies. With the Charge Beam upgrade, a concentrated burst of a beam weapon will build outside of the Arm Cannon barrel. When launched, it causes a much higher amount of damage. The three rings just behind the forward barrel of the Arm Cannon seem to act as a shock absorber for this upgrade & the Missile Launcher. In some instances, Samus can combine different combinations of beams. They can be alone, or in any combination possible, except between Plasma and Spazer Beam combinations. For more information on Beams, see the below template.

Missile Launcher
The Arm Cannon has the capability of launching ballistic projectiles known as Missiles. The forward barrel seperates & expands into four seperate pieces, to allow room for the missiles launched. As storing 250 bulky material missiles in the insides of the Power Suit seems a little impractical, these missiles might be stored as an energy, and materialized into missiles when needed. In fact, the first two Prime games feature missiles as entirely energy-based projectiles, though the 2D other games and Corruption convert the energy into actual missiles.

The Morph Ball
The Morph Ball is one of the Power Suit's most prominent features. It allows Samus to transform her surrounding body armor into the shape of a metal sphere, allowing for movement into much smaller spaces. According to a scan in the first Metroid Prime, the Morph Ball is probably around 0.7 meter(s) in diameter. It is unknown exactly how it functions, but energy is seen seeping through the cracks in Prime, and a Space Pirate scan mentions calibrating sensors for "Morph Ball energy signatures" to help detect the hunter, suggesting that Samus's body is transformed into energy when in Morph Ball form.

This metal sphere has several offensive upgrades, such as Bombs and Power Bombs. These are used primarily for clearing environmental obstacles, but are occasionally used for combative applications.

The Morph Ball also has several advanced movement systems. With the Spider Ball upgrade, Samus could scale vertical walls, and (In the Prime missions) use specialized Spider Ball Tracks. In both cases, the Spider Ball is used for access to areas otherwise unreachable. With the Spring Ball upgrade, Samus no longer needed to rely on Bomb Jumping to scale ledges only accessible by the Morph Ball. It gives the Morph Ball the ability to jump. The Spring Ball often comes packaged with the High Jump Boots. However, in Metroid Prime Trilogy, the Morph Ball gain the ability to jump after acquiring the Morph Ball Bombs.

With the Boost Ball upgrade, the Morph Ball gained the ability to move in charged bursts of speed. It is comparable to a Speed Booster for the Morph Ball. When charged, the Boost Ball can scale large heights with the help of a Half-pipe, and can also be used for charging mechanical devices using the Spinner mechanism.

The Morph Ball seems to be the key for activating certain Chozo Statues, as observed in Super Metroid, Metroid Prime, and in Metroid Zero Mission. If Samus curls into the Morph Ball to be held by these statues, it will cause an event to happen nearby inside the chamber. This can range from opening a new area, to recharging samus's energy, or to even the statue getting up and walking Samus to a new location.

Movement
The Power Suit has several advanced movement systems. The most basic of these is Samus's aided jumping capabilities, since without any help, lugging around over a massive suit of metal would be a difficult task.

The Power Suit's jumping capabilities receive an enhancement in the form of the High Jump Boots. In most cases, this upgrade nearly doubles the jumping height of the Power Suit. But in special cases such as the Space Jump Boots, the upgrade is simply just a second jump. In both of these cases, the extra jump height is provided by the boosters mounted on the Power Suit's back.

The Speed Booster enables the Power Suit to run at supersonic speeds. Running at supersonic speeds is lethal to most targets, making this a very deadly movement system. If Samus charges the energy from running at such speeds, she can perform a Shinespark, a special ability that launches her off of the ground like a speeding bullet. The Speed booster is mainly used for clearing environmental obstacles, such as bulldozing through destructible walls, or for jumping extremely wide gorges.

The Grapple Beam, (later changed to Grapple Swing to avoid confusion between offensive beams) is a device mounted on Samus' left arm. It is a movement device that allows Samus to grapple magnetic points in order to scale sizable gaps. It also appears (more often) as an upgrade for the Arm Cannon. This device is the predecessor to more advanced movement systems such as the Space Jump, as obtaining more advanced systems as such would render the Grapple Beam as obsolete. It appeared first in Super Metroid and since has featured in all the Prime games and the Super Smash Bros. series. It failed to make an appearance in both Metroid Zero Mission & Metroid Fusion, but the upgrade's absence is more than made up for with the ability to climb special surfaces & the Power Grip upgrade.

The Grapple Lasso is a Federation-made variant of the Grapple Swing, featured only in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It enables the user to pull light objects with force from unstable positions such as debris, and can even be used to yank energy shields and body armor from the hands of opposing forces.

Another form only featured in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is the Grapple Voltage. This upgrade allows you to siphon power from and send power to power conduits that may open new areas previously inaccessable to Samus.

The Space Jump, not to be confused with the Space Jump Boots or the Screw Attack, allows for continual somersault jumps into the air, ultimately leaving no area unable to be explored. The boosters mounted on the Power Suit's back are now working overtime, as Samus somersaults so quickly with this upgrade that her very appearance is blurred. Samus can scale any height with this upgrade.

The Speed Booster is not the only lethal movement system available for the Power Suit. The Screw Attack adds a deadly electrical charge to somersault jumps, destroying nearly any target on contact. Working in tandem with the Space Jump, this is a very useful tool when faced with large swarms of small creatures. It can also chew through certain types of wall surfaces, allowing for access to areas otherwise inaccessible. In the Prime series, special Wall Jump Surfaces were used to vertically climb large shafts or structures. The armor itself radiates the electrical energy used for this upgrade. In the 2D games, this form of movement was unlimited, but in the more recent Metroid Prime series, your use is limited to around 5 jumps, depending on the game.

Body Armor
The Power Suit's armor plating is a very complicated tesselation of different pieces. The external armor is suspended onto an underlayer that is very flexible, allowing Samus no restriction to movement. The 'under armor' twists and stretches to allow Samus to aim at 90 degree angles, and the shoulder pads, even the large ones of the Gravity and Varia Suit, have the ability to spin forward and backward to allow Samus to aim upwards. The image to the right shows the detail of Samus' Varia Suit and the underlayer which allows her needed flexibility.

It is a common misconception that the armor on the Power Suit is to be removed as any regular body armor (i.e., piece-by-piece). But it is actually removed all at once using a dematerialization mechanism. Of course, it can still be manually removed to some extent, as seen in the opening events of Metroid Fusion, but the entire suit including the organic components cannot be removed without Samus's conscious cooperation.



It may not be able to be removed without Samus's cooperation, but that doesn't also apply to the suit being modified. The PED Suit was grafted onto Samus's existing Varia Suit by GF scientists and engineers during the events of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, in order to take advantage of Samus's recently obtained self-generating Phazon supply within her body. This shows that the suit can be modified or removed to some extent, but as long as it doesn't involve the organic components bonded to Samus's central nervous system.