Howdy all.

Ive taken a small break from my Kroot shenanigens in order to work on my normal Tau army.

Myself and a friend have organised a 6000 point apoc game for the end of this year. His Nurgal Chaos marines and Daemons VS my Tau force. One rule EVERYTHING MUST BE PAINTED! So with that in mind ive started work on some extra apoc units befor i start the crazy job of painting around 4000 points of Tau and Kroot that ive got sitting untouched in my bits boxes!

So here it is, the WIP of my Barracuda Drone figher











As you can see ive used a Piranha for the base model and just reconfigured the parts.

Since its a drone fighter i had to enclose the Cockpit, lucky I still had some Old Star Wars ep1 droid fighters around and was able to use the wings to continue the body (ive got to break it off and re-align it since the line is about 2mm off).

The 2 seeker missiles are magnetised to the missile pods and the burst cannons are from the stealth suit kits and will be fixed the drone pods once ive painted what is required.

Im thinking ill do one more and also try and work out another 3 or so of my Skyray conversion kit Remora Drone Stealth Fighters as escorts

So... Thoughts?

Turbo_MMX :
So, he can make normal Tau look good too! Seriously, this is a great conversion, one which I'll probably emulate once I decide to actually make a Barracuda.

My only question is if you tried putting the Piranha sticking out from the side of the engines instead of resting on top? It would increase the wingspan and possibly bring it more in line with the regular Barracuda silhouette. Plus, you could also use the additional under-wing space to de-clutter the Missile Pod-Seeker Missile mount. Other than that, everything looks, good, especially the Ion Cannon.

Again, great job!

I like it! Very good use of parts and something I might have to attempt myself.

My hat is off to you, good sir.

Hey, this gives me ideas for quickly making some barracudas!

Hello Mr. Thunderhawk! Ohh, you have a turbolaser destructor? I see. Well, say hello to my little friends! The Barracuda shoal! *points to hundreds of Barracudas flying at top speed to "greet" the Thunderhawk*

But seriously, that's rather inventive and I'm going to try that the next time I buy a Piranha and some more stealth suits! But I'€d like to see a good picture of the drone burst cannons as I'd like to see how you attached the drone body to the cannon itself.

If you do decide to construct another one of these, please write up a tutorial for it as well, Turbo_MMX. I like the concept of an AI flyer, and this one fits rather nicely into the existing Tau shape designs.

E.

Oh my, that is really amazing! Excellent use of parts and very inspiring!

How big is it compared to a regular Barracuda?

Very nice, Turbo. Overall, I really like the streamlined look of the top part of the model.

However, there are a couple of things I'm not the biggest fan of, and if you'll take my criticism with a grain of salt, here are the items I see as "not quite there."

-Seeker Missiles: Personally, I think they hang down way too far from the fuselage. It interferes with the image of a sleek space superiority fighter that is also capable of atmospheric engagements. I think they would look a lot better and more streamlined if you were to mount them either along the curved fuselage portion of the TradeFed fighter pieces you've used or mounted in an over-wing position.

-Ion Cannon: The barrel of the ion cannon seems almost over-sized in comparison to the rest of the fighter. Unfortunately, I'm unsure of a way to bring the main armament more into line with the rest of the ship, and I've been wracking my brain to try and figure something out.

-Engines: I'm not sure if it is intentional or not, but looking at the bottom of the fuselage, there's a signifcant angle to both engines towards the centerline of the long axis. Since both engines are very nearly identical in their angle, I think it's intentional. However, I think it would look much better if there was some type of spacer between the engines to maintain symmetry with the rest of the fuselage along the longitudinal axis.

Anyway, that's about all I've got. Overall, I really like the design and the general lines of the model. The aforementioned points are simply things that I would do were I to try and re-create your model.

Thanks for the feedback guys

SpartanTau

To be honest it didn’t really come to me at the time. I was working from a image in my head and VERY limited supplies (sitting on a couch with the Piranha kit, a Ion cannon, a Knife and Glue watching Doctor who) so much of it was done on the fly. The main reason I did it this way was so I didn’t have to detail the engine flat (since its normally glued to the hull and you don’t see it)

However Shas Sasa'ka in his recent post has got a piranha with a similar engine config and the wings stuck to the end. Can see it here viewtopic.php?f=35&t=16087 (its in the background behind the painted one )

Shadowsword

Honestly nothing really to see. All that I did was cut off the little "rivet" sized bits that hang down from the bottom of the drone in so that the burst cannon will sit flat. Then just used a small blob of Blu-Tac to get the position right (Ill just use Green stuff and glue once the painting is done up. Nothing fancy

Eiglepulper

Consider it done. I’ve also got to do one for the Stealth Drone fighters so that’s 2 I owe the site

Wolfs16

I dare say quite a bit smaller, the Barracuda is (I think) bigger than a hammer head gunship! So this is going to be about half the size. BUT since they will be mounted on the larger bases (Valk flying bases) and In games you draw measurements to the base I don’t see it being too much of an issue.

Sa'cea Mont'yr

Always happy to get criticism, helps to keep me grounded and also allows that little voice in the back of my head some vindication

Yep I do see what your saying, the over wing mounting or the Hull mount for some reason really bugged me when I was looking at it. The under mount was the least annoying position out of all the others. I would have mounted it underside of the main hull but they would have kept bumping into the flight mount.... What I might try is using Skyray seeker missiles. Since they don’t have the large "Clamp" they would sit almost flat against the missile pods and help keep the design sleek


It was intentional to an extent. Simply it required less work to have them pointed inwards than it would have if I had of tried to make them in line with the long axis. This would have meant the wings would also not have sat in line with the "cuff" of the engine in-take and required slightly more work than I was willing to put in at the time.

WOOO think thats everyone Keep it comming though guys

I like it, but I agree about the seeker missile placement. I would suggest one of two options:

1) Mount them in the slot on the Piranha engines where the wings normally go.

2) Mount them partially tucked into the hull, like on the F-4: http://img63.imageshack.us/i/f4j235004.jpg/ . Obviously you'd have to remove the normal hardpoint bit and probably sand down some of the top surface.

Something like #2 is probably closest to the standard Barracuda model, as the seeker missiles are mounted in a drop-down bay and not visible at all until they are about to be launched.

Hello Turbo_MMX,

this thing looks fantastic! I love the concept of a drone controlled fighter! I like the shape of the craft very much and doesn't give me the feeling there's a pilot in the hall. very well done and looking forward to see more of your inspirations!

cheers, Daan9tjk