Droid hovertanks have never been very popular in ground combat and patrolling, not because of their fighting performance, but because most have not been very effective in taking care of themselves since they often lacked self-preservation logic. Droids just don’t know when to attack or retreat at the correct moment. Often once all missiles or countermeasures were fired, droid hovertanks usually stayed in the fight, fighting with only their guns, which then led to their demise. Many returned to base only after sustaining massive damage, thus requiring costly and time-consuming repairs. No matter how “brilliant,” droid hovertanks just weren’t brilliant enough to be counted upon to return to base mission-after-mission, or to stick around and fight to the death if lives were in desperate straits.

Misofinn’s “Peracno” hovertank remedies these deficiencies by not being fully autonomous, using voice-recognition commands that allow friendly soldiers to command it, and stocking the most weapons into a hovertank as possible:

• Two twin-barrel rapid-fire laser cannons for anti-air and anti-ground defense
• Two frontal flamethrowers
• One port-mounted laser blaster
• One center-mounted six-barrel COAX laser gatling gun
• Eight fire-and-forget missiles, four on each side of turret
• Three short-ranged surface-to-air missiles on back of turret

Misofinn’s design works. Peracnos are known for their fighting tenacity, endurance, flexibility, adaptability, intelligence, and survivability. They almost always seem to have a proper weapon to deal with the situation.

Using the well-serving spare parts box sent to me by another StarshipModeler, I made the hoverbase out of an AMT/ERTL Klingon Bird of Prey and the turret from an AMT/ERTL STAP battle droid torso. The side gun barrels and engine pods are from AMT/ERTL’s “Virago” fighter. Various detail parts came from 1/100 Gundam and DML’s 1/35 ZSU-23-4M kit.

The side missile launchers are Radio Shack cable connectors, a popular design feature found on all my hovertank designs.

I painted the “snakeskin grid camouflage” by airbrushing through a small square of window screen (sometimes wrapped around the area) and overlapping the colors. I used Tamiya Medium Green and Buff and (mistakenly) Gunze Sanyo bright green, which resulted in a semi-gloss appearance. I gave the entire model a heavy black wash to dull the Gunze paint and blend the grids together before drybrushing with Tamiya buff. Decals were from Microscale’s 1/48 F-18 sheet with “VK” denoting droid hovertank squadron from the orbiting mothership.

Image: Rear view high

Image: Right side

Image: Right side low

Image: Front view

Image: Front view high

Image: Top view

Image: Close-in weapon systems

Image: The base