Archetype (Vivens Aetus)

The Archetype is a revolutionary piece of mobile suit design, effectively replacing traditionally assembled inner frames and rendering most mobile suits before Vivens Aetus obsolete. It is featured in Mobile Suit Gundam Agua.

Description & Characteristics
Archetypes were created as a way to simplify the cycle of mobile suit mass production, by having a base skeleton that can have the standard protective armor placed upon it rather than the standard of building it from the ground up over and over again. Corodal Carbon, or living metal, was first produced and used to cultivate simplistic humanoid bodies at the required size for the finished product. Each part of the Archetype's body is essentially grown as one giant whole, each limb being a simple shard of Corodal Carbon connected via a series of exposed ligaments and muscles. The torso and waist sections are essentially two rings connected via a spinal column.

In order to keep the Archetype alive, a LefLiva Drive would be implanted into the chest cavity to act as a heart for the living metal frame. Because of the particles produced by the Drive, the Archetype can remain alive until the point when the Drive runs out of particles.

Due to the way they're created, the Archetype can "remember" its original shape, so that if damage is taken and a particular spot is gone, it can gradually regenerate the lost section with little to no scaring. It was also found out that, by bonding the armor that would be used onto the surface of the Corodal Carbon, the Archetype would "think" that the armor was also part of its original shape, regenerating a temporary piece of the lost armor. However, because the armor would usually be stronger and durable than the Corodal Carbon, repairs and armor refitting would still need to occur.

This healing factor can be halted by applying enough of an electrical current through the Archetype's body. In order to refine the grown body, it would need to be electrically charged while changes are made to it.

To take advantage of the Archetype's unique traits, a gelatinous material is grown along preprogrammed grooves across the body. Inside the gel are thousands of color receptors, designed similarly to the ones found in the human eye. These bio-organic sensors take the place of the traditional multi-view cameras found on older mobile suits. While it is fine as is across the body, some receptors need to be take out in order to prevent sensory overload. The most particular problem point being on the head, with most of the receptors needing to be removed besides a set representing the eyes and the forehead and back sensors.

Because of the ease that came with growing an Archetype, most if not all mobile suits in the Vivens Aetus era have an Archetype base inside of them.