Abel

Designed 4 demolition

Arm, lvl2 panic

Buildpic: First of all, I think tha the way that the ship floats is perfect. It sinks deep in the water, but not too deep, keeping some kind of odd, cool looking balance. Now, getting back to the harsh reality, the barrels are clearly too dark, looking both demented and weird at the same time. The rest of the body on the deck is very messy as well, but the angle is beautiful [2]. The background is both odd and very odd (mark my words). To start with the water, this looks like a big open sea, but got just as many waves as an pool that has been left untouched over the night and the wave-alike pattern is more like floating petrol with all those shiny colors and odd figures than actual waves. Then the clouds... Look, I've been on the sea pretty much and I can tell you that I never, never seen the clouds go straight down into the sea and drown. With these settings, the sea looks more like a part of a shelf or a box that is suspended clearly too high. Geez, how I want to strangle someone (Steeeeve, come here) [1]. The merging is perfect... on the sides of the boat that is. The rest of the merging is moreof a joke that should be shown on public events for the masses to laugh at (or cry to). Thus look on the clouds in a mayday situation. Are they illuminated from the same direction as the boat or the water? (Please, I am sorry for being this harsh, people, but I'm in a really bad mood right now and this damn chainsaw refuses to start) [0].

Buildpic: 3

Model: The ship is (*gargle*) very (*murgle*)... grrr, where is my mental vocabulary when I need it as most? Anyway, the main hull of the boat looks pretty good, besides the fact that Arm ships never are rounded up under any circumstances. But when I come to the turrets, I start to see stars falling from above (or from beneath, I can't see so clearly these days, but I assume that they come from above). You see, the squarish pieces are made of 17 damn faces... there is a small turret-holder on the underside of both and I can assure you, many have tried to make them small and almost invisble so I wouldn't notice, but you seem to reason like "we make them too, but we make them with style". Furthermore, the rotating pieces are mainly a box with rounded up corners, yet it require support on the underside, meaning that even more faces come in the game and that even more keys on the keyboard are disabled when I repetely smash my forehead into it (mooom, look at my qwerty sign on the face). The barrels can all be reduced with one face, tipping them on a corner and removing the invisible part. The main "cockpit" part is... well... but it should clearly not be. I'd suggested redesigning the whole part from scratch and to glance at other OTA models for inspiration. The missile launcher part is on the hand lesser actrocity with an effective texture that enables the view of 25 (!) barrel holes. One for each rocket to fire. The side-slide-holders could be cut a bit, but it's otherwise fine. Despite all the flaming, the face count is actually very low and clearly acceptable, even by my own measuring system [2]. The texturing... is... (*tries desperately to start the chainsaw*) really damn awful. There is of course not even any slightest touch of Cavedog 3D vision texturing, which under the circumstances is hardly surprizing. The sides of the ship are bright all the way round, while the main deck is close to be pitch black. All the turrets are texxed in the same damn color, leaving a complete grey mess in the game with no start and no beginning (just mess, very generally), thus count in the very look-alike texturing of both the bridge section and the launcher slide doors. The barrels are brown... of all colors, why brown...? I mean, you could have neon-green colors and I would just suspect that you were smoking something clearly mind-damaging, but brown? That takes skill... [0]. I can give you half a corpse score, but no more. There is far too little actual wreckage (that count in the removing of the turrets for some reason) and far too much texture-hating [0.5]

Model: 6.5

Script: Rather advanced standard aiming that hinder the cannons to turn into each other and mess up the appearance (but does unfortunately kill the turrets sometimes, so you have to either click Stop or toggle between the fire states three times) and the semi-advanced, but very long fire script for the rockets with 25 firing points.

Script: Not counted

Balance: The Millenium, our old obsolete friend cost 4400M, about one thousand less than the Abel, while the energy cost is threee times less (20K to 58K). For that recources, the Abel packs dual artillery guns with about the same damage/second ratio than both Millennium's weapons, but THREE TIMES THE RANGE !! I mean, what's the purpose even deplying Berthas nowadays, they will have time to fire off about three shots before this guy come in range. The Berthas armor is not designed for close-combat skirmishes while the armor of this ship can sustand two direct hits without sinking. Don't tell me who's gonna win, but I know the one that got the theoretical advantage. Further comes a 25 rocket burst (0.2 sec between every missile) that every 18 seconds will completely demolish the hardest armor you have and if you don't get any direct hit, the enemy will die from splash damage anyway. This guy is so overpowerful, it's not even funny. Cut the missile damage/shot in half and reduce the damage/shot settings for the cannons from 100 to about 30.

Balance: 0

My score: This unit's description can be condenced in one single word: "Panic". You see, when you deploy the cannons on a semi-tight enemy base, he will probably get the shock of his life and send every last Skeeter out to get the ground zero of the panic-causing event because unlike other mobile artillery units, this unit really showers the enemy in shells and only people lacking important nerve ends will remain mentally undamaged when a giant spree of highly explosive small things fall down from the sky and damage everything within a screen radius. Never ever have trigger-happiness paid off in such quantities. I know, I will hate myself for this for my entire life, but I will keep this unit... purely for it's panic effect, I assure you. And to all others out there that really love the Vulcan and Buzzaw, but never have the cash and time to build ones... this is the unit for you.

My score: 10