Steering Oars & Other Functional Decorations

Ancient vessels are steered using a special set of oars - most references simply refer to them as steering oars.You can make one for your rowboat by placing a simple spinblock near the stern of the vessel and placing a vertical shaft overboard into the water, then add some 2m slopes to the side so it looks like an oar.Place 2 ACBs beside the spinblock, one triggered on "command received to yaw left" and the other "command received to yaw right", with the resulting action being rotating the spinblock +/- 20 degrees. Hit the Test command on the ACB menu, or simply try out the rudder to see if the ACBs move the steering oar properly.Note for practical gameplay reasons, actual steering of the boat will still be a rudder object - you just have to hide it on the hull so it looks like the steering oars are working. You can embed it in the stern, or place the actual rudder(s) at the waterline inboard of the steering oars so they are hard to notice.Place a vertical wooden mast in the center of the boat, setup a square or lateen rig - combined oar and sail propulsion will give you good mobility both down and upwind.Next, try making a ballista out of a CRAM cannon. All you have to do is stick a set of sloped blocks beside the barrel and you have something like this. Note the full AP loadout of the weapon system - explosive shells only came along in the 18th Century, after all. For best results, place the ballista on a Two Axis Turret block, so the barrel does not elevate.The effective range of a CRAM ballista would be about 500 meters, and the rate of fire, 1 round every 7 seconds (to build AP density between shots).You could try making a Greek automatic ballista - the Polybolos, but that would require APS rates of fire and APS tends to be a bit more expensive and requires ammo customizers, ammo clips and other complex equipment to function.If you want to see how this tutorial boat looks like when completed, this is the blueprint: