Star Trek: Main Battle Tanks

[Go-Captain]

More than a couple years ago I commissioned Shimmering Sword, over at Deviant Art, to create a couple Star Trek themed tanks for me. I spun some descriptions and here is what he created. I present the Somme-Class 'surface defense escort' and Klingon Tank Destroyer.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

What's the means of locomotion?

 

[B.J.]

^ I got these from the respective deviantArt pages:
Somme class:

The Somme Class 'surface defense escort' is equivalent to the modern main battle tank, though it comes with some added features that make it far more versatile.
It's main gun is a torpedo launcher, giving it considerable punch right out of the gate. Several phaser arrays supplement this firepower.
Most systems come with considerable redundancy. Teleporter arrays on the front sides and rear top/bottom work in defense and offense. The front top and rear bottom hull feature a tractor beam for towing. Optical systems and sensor strips surround the craft providing the crew with full 360 degree vision and detection. With a pair of warp engines it can fly as a space craft and move at a limited warp speed.
Standard issue red stripes are proven to make it go faster.​

Klingon tank destroyer:

Light, fast, and cheap. This tank destroyer is given just enough armor to withstand light phaser fire, atmospheric entry, and sufficient shielding to take a single torpedo hit from a starship. Its impulse engines offer extreme maneuverability and speed in atmospheric flight. They are also less easily detected at long range than warp based systems, while being more easily detected at shorter ranges when at full output. A cloaking device makes up half the cost of the unit, and is the primary means of defense and of attack.

Armed with five weapons: its Bird of Prey derived anti-tank disruptor cannon, a chin mounted heavy disruptor for ground attack, a photon mortar for close in defense and non-line of sight attack, four surface-to-space mid-size photon torpedoes, and a sword wielded by an articulated arm.​

That last bolded part.....

 

[sojourner]

I was going to say that the tanks look like some of the tank artwork I've seen for Battletech. Going to Shimmering Sword's Deviant Art page, now I know why.

 

[BorgMan]

Duh. When a puny Starfleet officer thinks he can recreate some almost-forgotten tactic of running towards a tank and sticking a mine to it... Well, let's just say that Kahless works in mysterious ways. slice

 

[Go-Captain]

I came up with two other ideas for tanks, a Cardassian Mobile Beam Effector for surface to space defense and a Romulan Singularity Surface Controller.

Spoiler: Cardassian Tank

The Cardassian Mobile Beam Emitter was originally intended as a theater defense vehicle which would be placed on planets and moons to attack ships as they enter systems. It was never meant to survive direct combat, instead relying on a combination of an optimized low signature silent running mode, long range sensor baffling due to surface proximity, and scoot and shoot tactics. Surprisingly it proved itself valuable in surface to surface attack in several offenses during the Federation-Cardassian Wars where it was able to pop above a horizon to use its weapon on various targets.

The vehicle looks like a sinister modernist interpretation of a temple mated with a lighthouse, at the vehicle's pinnacle is a five sided deflector disruptor based on that of the Galor class. The Series 1 versions lack additional systems such as shields, secondary weapons, transporters, replicators and advanced surface detection sensor suites. Series 2 adds a powerful shield system, pyramidal phaser emitters for close in anti-shuttle and anti-personnel fire, a dedicated sensor suit for surface combat and food replicator.

I just realized I might have unconsciously played off the idea of a Necron monolith.
Now there's an idea, a Borg tank, though the idea of Trek tanks are tenuous as it is, a Borg one would be even less likely. It would take some very special circumstances to encourage them to make something like a tank.

As for the Romulans.

Spoiler: Romulan Tank

The Romulan Tank's primary purpose is as an anti-infantry surface combatant, with a secondary role in anti-tank fighting, and orbital denial. By means of gravitotemporal subspace physics the unit is capable of arbitrarily altering local space-time for offense and defense.

Defence:
Shield Grid
Cloaking Device

Weapons:
Gravitotemporal Functions:
Increase local Gravity
Decrease local Gravity
Attract
Repel
Induce Tidal Forces
Change Local Gravitionational Vector
Induced Temporal Dilation (Slows or speeds up time for the vehicle or objects outside the vehicle)
Temporal Chaff (the vehicle "jitters" between actual past and possible future positions and states to throw off target lock)
Wormhole Leap

Sling & Blade - By releasing the cutoff point barrier of the gravitational field, it can be used to sling hypersonic kinetic drones, blades, at relativistic rotational velocities. The blades come in different sizes and can be used both offensively and as a last ditch defense in intercepting incoming fire.

Disruptors - the Tank carriers two to three type V disuptor beam blisters.

Drone Swarm - Each Romulan Tank carries a section of drones (12) possessing various armaments in the range of Type III and IV weapons and photon grenades.