Liberty Ship by Uncle T

3,519 bricks.

My take on the iconic WW2 Liberty class cargo ships. While the general dimensions are acurate it is by no means a 1:1 replica.

DISCLAIMER!

• During testing I've had some issues where the rubber-banding occurs again with any and all actuators at framerates under 90. It is for some reason not happening now but I have no idea how this ship performs on lower spec PC:s and in MP.
• I have also had the occasional issue with the ship starting to lean heavily when the cargo hatches are opened. Even though nothing is visibly clipping I think the hit boxes on some pieces are bigger than the visible piece so might be that but I don't know. It seems to work better with the new way I added floats so fingers crossed.
• The speed of the ship at framerates under 60 is about 10% of the speed at 80+ FPS since the game physics is FOOKED all to hell and there is nothing I can do about it until Fluppi optimises his game and rewrites the physics engine completely.

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Liberty ships were a class of cargo ship built in the United States during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program. Although British in concept the design was adopted by the United States for its simple, low-cost construction, and over 2,700 were built by 18 different shipyards in the US between 1941 and 1945 (an average of three ships every two days). They transported essential supplies, weapons, vehicles and occasionally men across the Atlantic and the Pacific throughout the war.

Due to the severely restricted view from the bridge navigation was done from the unprotected Flying Bridge during convoys, day and night, whatever the weather. Because convoy ships were in such tight formation this was necessary in order to avoid collisions. So the main/driver's seat on my version is the one atop the bridge in the small shed-like flying bridge.

This version is armed only with a 4 inch/102 mm deck gun like the earliest versions of the ship to save bricks. Later versions had a lot of guns but that would add several hundreds of bricks to an already brick-rich build.

Depending on version the ship had a crew of 38–62 US Merchant Marines and 21–40 US Navy Armed Guards.

CONTROLS Main/Driver's seat in the flying bridge atop the bridge W/S: Throttle up/down. The throttle has three stages forwards and backwards. Sometimes you need to use the Shift/Ctrl keys to get the engine into Reverese/Forward gear. Please note that it can take upwards of a minute or more to reach full speed just going straight ahead, and any turning will reduce speed massively. A/D: Steering. L/Headlights: Navigation lights

Seat on main bridge W/S: Throttle up/down. NOT! This will move the throttle lever but unless someone else, even a dummy, is in the main seat in the flying bridge the engine will not run since the game requires someone in the main set for the engine to run. So to control the ship from here first put a friend or other dummy in the main seat above you. :) A/D: Steering.

4 inch deck gun Alt + Arrow keys / Mouse: Elevation and traverse. Fire action 1/Num 1: Fire. Camera 1: Sight. The gun is a very simple design with no fancy stuff like recoil, delayed reload, moving breach etc, again to save bricks.

The winches are each controlled by switches on the base. I put them high up so you can see the winch while controlling it. There are no labels but the switches have descriptive names.

Cargo bay hatches and doors are opened with switches on them.

The gangways are controlled with a switches next to the railing doors. If you lower the gangway you can get on it from the water.

NOTES!

• Cargo bays are shallower than the real thing to avoid them being flooded.
• Even though the ship ways over 6,000 tons (a LOT of ballast necessary to keep it from rolling over), putting a few tanks on it slows it down to a crawl due to weird game physics. So use light cargo if you want it to move.
• The top speed in game is about three times higher than it should be (35 knots = 65 kph instead of 11 knots = 21 kph) for two reasons: it's more fun to use, and more crucially since the fluid physics in the game rob your vehicle of SO much speed when turning you wouldn't be able to steer it without almost stopping at the correct speed.
• The changes to explosions and brick cohesion mean the whole thing will fall apart violently if hit by a bomb or torpedo of any significant size.

This ship could easily be 10,000 bricks but to avoid that (and keep me somewhat sane) a lot of compromises had to be made.

• Very basic interior.
• Fewer internal doors including in cargo areas.
• Very simple railings.
• No interior lighting apart from the glowing room signs.
• Reduced details on deck.
• No launching lifeboats, and no life rafts at all.
• Very simple ladders

Feel free to edit, but if you reupload publicly in any way pleas acknowledge the original creation and creator.

Have fun!