Crocodile Gunboat

The Crocodile Gunboat is a Venezuelan Army gunboat featured in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Overview
The Crocodile is uncommon, but not rare around Venezuela. One is at the VZ outpost North of the UP supply depot during the contract to deliver listening posts and rescue the UP hostage, several can be found patrolling Fortress Island, one is found un-crewed on the river near a PLAV wanted VZ HVT, one is docked at the Port of Caracas during the Allied Nations Outpost capture contract.

It is mainly used for defense of VZ positions near water and blockading. This gunboat is meant to attack boats but can also do severe damage on buildings, the cannon isn't always very effective and the fact that a single player would need to switch positions to fire the rockets, the boat itself it found crewed by 4 VZ soldiers. It is slow to accelerate but it moves at a moderate speed and its armor is light for a ship of its size.

During the contract to get Blanco on the oil rig, Crocodile Gunboats patrolling the oil rig are all labeled with the AA diamond; even if they have no truly effective or specialized anti-air armament it will still prevent the player from calling in support that is usually unavailable in range of an AA diamond.

This vehicle cannot be purchased at any of the factions' shops.

Tactics
The Crocodile Gunboat is good at destroying buildings close to the water and it is also quite effective at destroying patrol boats even from different angles of attack. This is because the Crocodile's auto cannon has coverage of about 300º, making it superior the fixed and forward facing weapons of other early game patrol boats such as the Piranha Patrol Boat or Warhorse Patrol Boat.

The rockets are exactly the same as RPG rockets; they are neither particularly powerful nor accurate so the boat needs to be quite close to the target to have a high probability of hitting the intended target. One thing to be aware of is that the boat is easy to destroy, being vulnerable to .50 caliber machine guns and particularly to miniguns and any weapon more powerful, thus making it a relatively easy target for nearly anything other than infantry, unless moving at speed.

It has slow acceleration but fairly good speed for its size, and can be used to escape should the player find themselves in trouble.

Real Life
It can be assumed that the Crocodile Gunboat is a far adaptation of the Soviet-build Project 205P Tarantul Patrol Craft, as it features design elements of hull and superstructure. In reality, the aft-mounted rocket launcher can be found on Chinese ships, using Naval HQ-7 air-defense missiles.

Related Pages

 * Bladesong Missile Boat
 * Piranha Patrol Boat