Does what it tells, even if I wish there was modded support for illager boating

What is it ?

Illager Ships (or just Ships on modrinth) is a datapack/mod aiming to add shipwreck-inspired Ship and Fleet structures as small challenges to fill the sea;
It also allows non-modded illagers to sail on the ocean with a custom patrolling AI.

What does it offer ?

Two new structures to find and conquer, found on oceans or stuck in icebergs, which contain loot tables which are a bit shipwreck-like and often illagers boating around them too (as long as a vanilla illager falls in water they will now automatically pull a boat and start moving).

The Ship structure features one ship with vindicators and pillagers, and is defended by pillagers navigating around it; within this structure a chest containing a pillager outpost location map can be found, which sort of connects this structure with the other one.

The Fleet structure has more than one ship (about four) and has vindicators and pillagers both in water and on the ships as they constantly spawn in a certain radius around the structure. This acts as a form of sea pillager outpost which can be set off, as killing all evokers prevents more illagers from naturally spawning (which is a kind of feature I wish we had in vanilla pillager outposts to be completely honest); all of them contain a woodland explorer map , giving another more explory alternative for players to get their hands on those.

The feature of illagers being able to sail on water is quite good even if imperfect, as it will prevent the issue of mobs from an above water structure getting "stuck" in water in an attempt to follow the player (thus becoming easy targets).

The main issue I have noticed with the mod is mentioned by the author himself : having too many illagers in boats makes the game run less smoothly, which is especially an issue with the Fleet structure constantly spawning pillagers and vindicators until you complete it.
For now this is the only mod I know to even add such a complex boating AI for illagers (even if it only includes vanilla ones, there may be ways to fork this feature to include modded illagers but I honestly don't know).

In conclusion

This datapack is very much decent, and reminds me a lot of another older datapack with a similar purpose called Ships out on the oceans by Ercerus, which makes it so random ships appear above some ocean ruins with different loot, looks and foes (meaning you never really know what you will stumble upon).
Both using the Shipwreck model as a base is probably the reason why they feel close enough to me.
For other mods which feature boating AI for mobs I can recommend Boat Mobs, even if it may conflict with some other mods and is mostly meant to prevent mobs from getting stuck in boats/having a way to pursue the player on water, not actually make them guard the seas.
This mod doesn't have any config file, which means no easy way for a modpack maker to directly add more illagers to the boating AI nor ways to make the structure more common or rarer.
Still, this is a mod I would recommend.