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The Cargo Boat is a Civilian boat featured in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Overview[]

The Cargo Boat is a weakly armored, slow and large civilian boat. It can always be seen crewed by one civilian only. The Cargo Boat can be found in most of the large bodies of water around Venezuela, especially Lake Maracaibo. The rear of the boat is flat and large enough for two tanks side by side or to safely land all but the largest helicopters.

It is a very heavy vehicle but it can actually be lifted (very slowly) by any type of light helicopter.

Tactics[]

Cargo Boat Cargo

This picture gives a good idea about the scale of this boat.

The Cargo Boat is completely useless in all but the most desperate situations where you need to get somewhere over water without having to swim. It has very weak armor.

It is possible to place vehicles and even land medium sized helicopters on the large rear of the craft (but they must be small like the Rogue-series helicopters). Other than looking extremely cool or sneaking a vehicle through hostile non-restricted waters, these features are quite limited compared to the disadvantages:

  • the player will travel significantly slower than by helicopter
  • the boat is a very easy target and can barely evade any attacks, if it sinks, everything on it will sink almost instantly (unless it's another boat)
  • a glitch while traveling at full speed can cause the front of the boat to rise significantly and dump whatever is on the rear off the back of the boat and helicopters will explode when they pitch past 90º from the normal horizontal position
  • for a helicopter there is no point landing on the boat since the player cannot repair or re-arm the helicopter

A better and very outside-the-box way of using the Cargo Boat involving a helicopter is to destroy the boat near or on land. When destroyed, it splits into several winchable sections, the most notable are the front and rear, the front is heavy and tall but the rear section is very large and flatter than the rest yet very light. Therefore the rear is easily winchable by any helicopter but this tactic works best with small agile helicopters. This can effectively act as a 'shield' for the helicopter against any type of incoming fire from below it and even from the sides if the player is good at swinging the object. This 'shield' can greatly reduce damage and sometimes completely block explosive weapons and is impervious to non-explosive weapons. When this 'shield' is blocking the view of a SAM, the SAM will still detect the helicopter (SAM diamond will be white) but it will not lock-on and fire until it has direct line of sight. Unfortunately, this tactic reduces the effective downward radius of the helicopter's weapons.

Real Life[]

The Cargo Boat is most likely based off a deep sea fishing boat or commercial mid-sized fishing trawler.

Trivia[]

  • In the PlayStation 2 version there is a very rare glitch where a second civilian will be walking on board until falling off.
  • There is a glitch where the Mercenary can get stuck inside the bridge of the boat when exiting it; one way to overcome this is to call in a Medevac, or blow up the boat to make the ceiling detach. Another possible solution is to drive it again and then exit the boat. 
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