SFMC Hover Tank

A friend of mine asked me to design a modular tank for his Star Fleet Marine Corps unit. He sent me a PDF that had a VERY basic design with some labels indicating where stuff was supposed to be.

When I say basic, I mean REALLY basic! The original tank design was simply a rhombus with very little detail! As you can imagine, it gave me a lot of room to improvise.

So when asked, Dan (the friend in question) said that he wanted a tank with a rail gun and a six-tube missile launcher. It took me a few tries, but I finally came up with a suitable double-barrel turret design. Instead of missiles, I took the minitorpedo launcher from my Shuttle [link] and turned it into a multilauncher.

While he originally wanted a wheeled vehicle, I felt that a four wheeled tank didn't seem Trek-ish enough. So we changed it to a hover tank. Designing the hover engine attachment (remember, this thing is supposed to be modular) also took a number of tries. I finally came up with a quad engine pod design. The reason I have 4 engines was because two, longer pods made the tank look too much like a shuttle craft.

When I put everything together, this two person vehicle seems to have channeled a GDI Mammoth Tank design. Although this thing is a LOT lighter and smaller. To finish off the design, I added a quartet of phaser strips and completed the model with a basic texture.




Model and image © Liz Gibbs
All things Star Trek © Paramount