Good news, if you think Starfield needs more ground vehicles, a modder is working on adding tanks to it

Bethesda has already teased some pretty big additions that are coming to Starfield over the course of this year, but modders have begun taking one of their promises, new ways of getting around, into their own hands. The latest vehicle being worked on is a tank, though it looks like it might not be on offer to the player.

Yup, with one modder having recently shared some progress on making the Settled Systems’ abandoned Colony War mechs into pilotable weapons of war, another is having a crack at giving its NPCs a way to fight back against a potential forthcoming mech onslaught. Hopefully you’ll think twice before assaulting New Atlantis.

Over on r/Starfieldmods, a modder going by Dylan_The_Developer has shared a look at the United Colonies tank they’ve been working on as part of an “NPC Vehicle Mod” they plan to finish off once the game’s Creation Kit arrives. Until it does, they’ve been busy putting together the models and materials mod - which they’re hoping will be able to bring some new high-level boss encounters to the game which see you battle groups of NPCs supported by battle tanks and other vehicles - will use.

“After a week of working on this bad boy, it's done model and texture wise,” they said of the UC marine tank, which they’ve designed to look like it could’ve been used to take down mechs during the aforementioned interstellar war. Though, they added that they might well have to cut down the number of different materials it uses, in order to make sure the game’s memory can handle loading the tank in without any issues.

“Next is rigging it with a skeleton - I want the tank to have some bounce when it turns and shoots - and making some test animations, followed by doing a Crimson Fleet variant and destroyed variant that replaces the model when it's blown up,” Dylan_The_Developer continued. “After that comes sounds, I want these bad boys to rumble and the main gun to make you go brown when it shoots.

“Finally is weapon FX. So what I'll have to do is recreate it in Unreal and port it over to Starfield if the [Creation Kit] isn't released by then.”

They’re also seemingly looking into the idea of revamping the model a bit further down the road in order to make its appearance fit a little better with Starfield’s NASA-Punk art style, via the addition of some tracks and futuristic cabling. One player has also suggested it might make sense from a lore perspective to give the vehicle a soundscape that implies it’s powered by some kind of fusion powerplant, rather than a traditional petrol or diesel engine.

While it’ll likely be a while before we see this mod in-game, assuming it gets that far, Bethesda has recently revealed that a huge update for Starfield is set to arrive in Steam Beta this week, ahead of a full release further down the line.