#8 Gunboats
HMS Badger by WaFtAk
User Friendliness:
The Badger is very easy to use. All the controls are located in the bridge. The systems are very basic. All the information the player needs is displayed and is easy to read. The guns however, are hard to aim. The player can look left and right to aim, but up and down must be done with the arrow keys. This is somewhat clunky and is hard to use.
7/10
Performance:
It's a slow moving vessel that handles well in wind when driving forward, but capsizes immediately in wind when either standing still, or moving in reverse.
It also has a meager range of around 90 kilometers, which can be achieved in a time of 45 minutes. The maximum speed this vehicle can reach is around 31 kph.
6/10
Effectiveness:
The main gun on the boat is a battle cannon, quite large for a boat of its size. It is hard to aim, as previously mentioned. The hull itself is durable. It survives multiple hits from artillery cannons without sinking. The bilge pumps effectively help reduce the rate at which the boat sinks. The interior is easy to get around in. Lots of equipment is scattered around. The machine gun ammo is far away from the guns, making it hard to use them effectively.
6/10
Design:
The boat is rather small. It features a big front facing turret and a tall superstructure. The deck plating is done very well, giving off a pretty good wood plank look. The outside detailing is alright, although it possesses a few areas which lack interesting design features. The inside is a bit cluttered, but still has some alright detailing here and there. The hulls and superstructures monotone coloring is broken up by the funnel's golden color.
7/10
Overall: 6.5/10
Feedback and Suggestions
-Gun should be able to be aimed from a gunner station as well as the bridge
-Larger engine and fuel tank
-Better ammo access for the machine guns
Ares II by Dio.
User Friendliness:
The Ares II is overall an intuitive vehicle to use and fairly easy to navigate. Most buttons are labeled properly. One exception is the engine key button. It's labeled "ENGINE KEY (WON'T WORK WITHOUT STARTER)", but acts as a starter switch itself. While this is quickly figured out and fixed, it is slightly misleading. There is an unlabeled gauge that shows the fuel level. At the helm, the Ares does not inspire confidence, as it always tips to one side, and feels as if it's going to flip. The main guns can be aimed manually with keyboard or mouse and can also be aimed with a GPS system. The GPS aiming for the main guns is easy to use and works quite well, with the targets almost always getting hit. However, the guns can hit the ship itself, giving the crew a nasty surprise. The anti-aircraft guns can be manually aimed with the mouse. The sensitivity is too high, and there's no option to use the keyboard, but they work fine enough. Almost all of the functions to effectively operate the ship can be accessed from the bridge, allowing the Ares to be effectively crewed by 1 to 3 people.
5.5/10
Performance:
The Ares is a lumbering beast, with heaps of armor, leading to a lack of speed. It has a maximum speed of about 3.75m/s and a surprisingly low range of about 100 km. Because of the low top speed, it does not do well in harsh winds, as it can't move against the waves, and the tall superstructure is a well built parachute. The boat has a miserable turning radius and struggles to do anything requiring maneuvering. Reverse is just as fast as forwards. However, when turning while reversing, the boat halfway submerges. The battery drains while not moving, and if it gets too low, the boat becomes completely useless.
2/10
Effectiveness:
The Ares can hold its own fairly well in combat. The guns are surprisingly competent, but aren't easy to aim because the sight is off center from the gun. They do significant damage to anything that passes within the sights. The Ares is fairly survivable, being able to sustain multiple hits before taking on significant amounts of water.
4/10
Design:
The design is where the Ares really shines. It's got plenty of details such as life preservers, and a well executed gold, grey, and brown paint scheme. With the exception of the main guns, most of it manages to not feel cluttered. The hull is well shaped, and the superstructure fits on top nicely. Microcontrollers and autocannon belts are used creatively as decoration blocks. In the upper decks, a kitchen, dining area, and a couple other rooms can be found. The details in the upper decks are a bit more spotty, with some areas being well detailed, and others being a bit bland. The lower decks aren't as interesting. They are mostly bland, with flat walls and no painted signs, with the only real exception being of the engine room. Overall, an excellent looking gunboat.
7/10
Overall: 4.625/10
Feedback and Suggestions
-Use larger propellers to better utilize the engine power
-Fix stability issues
-Make a low lag version for multiplayer or for anyone without a NASA supercomputer
Marten by Shimozukachi
User Friendliness:
The Marten is a quirky boat to control. The throttle axis on the helm actually controls the clutch and is a reset axis, meaning trim must be used to continue moving forwards when not at the helm. There is an RPS lever that controls how much power the engine makes. The guns control very poorly. The aiming can be done by the helm's look axes. For some reason, the heavy autocannons fire in bursts. Annoyingly, the screens only turn on when the lights are on. While the guns are pointed towards the boat, they won't fire, making it impossible to sink the boat with its own guns. Overall ok, with a few weird bits.
4/10
Performance:
The Marten has a massive flat 6 3x3 cylinder engine that is underutilized by the two tiny propellers at the back. It reaches a decent max speed of 15 m/s. The turning circle is cromulent and the boat remains stable in the water. However, in high winds, the boat will crest a wave and then catch the wind, taking off and flipping the boat. The range is about 50 km which is not great. It has refueling capability.
5/10
Effectiveness:
The marten has very good survivability because of the sheer amount of bilge pumps; 32 large pumps if we counted correctly. It stays afloat even after taking 2 battle cannon HE shells under the waterline and gives you a lot of time to repair if you do overwhelm the bilge pumps. There's some equipment on board to repair critical components in case they blow up because of enemy fire or exposed ammo boxes detonating. The boat has some serious issues however. The biggest one being bad offensive capabilities. The guns control badly leading to the operator missing most if not all of their shots until the target is very close and even then they might struggle to hit targets. The guns fire 3 round bursts which is odd. The ship is armed with 2 HAC's and 1 battle cannon with 16 rounds which isn't a lot of ammo especially with how difficult it is to actually aim. In short, good survivability but gets dragged down a lot by lack of reliable offensive weapons.
4/10
Design:
The exterior looks decent and has simple but pleasing colors. Could use a bit of detail in some places but overall it's decent. The interior lacks any decoration or coloring however and is purely functional. There is an argument to be made that this is to improve effectiveness or user friendliness but it is still relatively easy to get stuck so that doesn't really work. Major improvements could be made to the interior such as simply painting the walls and engine to look a bit more interesting.
5.5/10
overall: 4.625/10
Feedback and Suggestions
- Bigger props for more speed
- Move ammo to more protected location
- Do some simple interior work
P-1 Dripstone by B0MPS
User Friendliness:
The Dripstone is overall an easy boat to use. All of the buttons do as one would expect. Some buttons are unlabelled, but are intuitive enough to use. The gun controls well, and the radar aiming display helps with its use. The gun has an infrared mode, however the seat button to use it is unlabeled. There is enough equipment, but it would be nice to have a greater variety of it. There are no flashlights and only 1 pair of binoculars. There is also no arctic equipment or heaters.The only entrances to the boat are hatches above the control seats, making it hard to leave.
5/10
Performance:
The Boat is a medium fast boat with a well designed hull. There is a lack of active stabilization, which isn't a problem unless there are waves. The hull is very wide, so the boat is stable in low winds. The boat has a range of about 50 kilometers without the speed boost, and 40 with. The top speed of the boat is about 20 m/s without speed boost and 25 with. The turning circle is pretty bad, with the boat often feeling sluggish.
3/10
Effectiveness:
The Dripstone has one heavy autocannon. It is relatively ineffective because of the AP rounds. It has a vertical stabilization which helps when in waves. The radar aiming sight helps a lot when aiming. The sonar does not work because it is not wired up to electricity. The cannon has a clip of 20 rounds and needs to be reloaded manually. There is a total of 420 rounds of ammo for the gunner to use. All of the ammo is stored in the front meaning when the boat rams into something, it explodes. The survivability of the boat is fairly low, as there is no real protection beyond the 1 thick walls. There is also no handheld weaponry available on the boat.
3/10
Design:
The gunboat has a pretty wide and flat hull. The paint job is unique to say the least. It has some railing on top of the bridge, which sticks out from the rest of the design. There are small details on both the rear and on the deck, giving it a good look.on the inside there are a few minor details as well, including the "drip" pixelart in the sleeping quarters. Although, there are quite a few misscoloured blocks on the inside and the turret for instance.
6/10
Overall: 4.25/10
Feedback and Suggestions
-check connections, again ):<
-Add active stabilization fins
-Use HE rounds instead of AP
Marcium by RainsKaos
User Friendliness:
The Gunboat has very basic readouts in the bridge and it's missing vital information, like engine temperature, which can only be found on an unpowered dial in the engine room. Other than that the control of the boat is very straightforward and does not need much figuring out to use although it does have weird quirks like flipping over if the main turret is rotated while stationary. The controls on the Light autocannon are inverted and it is difficult to control.
4/10
Performance:
The Marcium has a good top speed of around 165km/h but is relatively unstable at those speeds. The engine cooling is insufficient and the ECU's overheat protection kicks in after a few minutes of use which limits the boats speed to 55km/h. Turning is decent but the boat tilts A LOT which can lead to flooding.
5/10
Effectiveness:
Equipped with 2 turrets, one armed with 1 battle cannon, and one armed with 2 light autocannons. Both are controlled remotely with seats and cameras. Both turrets are stabilised, which would help with aiming, if it wasn't for the fact that the controls are too sensitive. The battle cannon turret aiming sensitivity is ok for short range engagements, but the light AC turret is way too sensitive, making it borderline unable to be aimed properly. Ammunition supply is also very low, only supplying 12 rounds to the battle cannon, and 200 total to the two light AC cannons on the back turret.
Scoring hits is incredibly difficult, making the ship rather ineffective at combat. Getting hit is also not an option because there are no pumps on board meaning any water that gets in stays in. This makes the boat extremely easy to sink. There is also only 1 welder and 1 extinguisher on board which makes repairing damage near impossible.
1.5/10
Design:
The ship is designed to be a modern looking gunboat. Its Superstructure is rounded off in the front and has a weatherdeck on top. The front Gun looks like a squashed ball. The rear gun is basically the only part with decoration, while the rest of the boat is rather bland. The inside is just as bland as the exterior with equipment filling at least some of the empty space.
4.5/10
Overall: 3.75/10
Feedback and Suggestions
- more decoration and interesting shapes
- CHECK YOUR CONTROLS AND CONNECTIONS,
- Set up firing angles for the guns!
