Small ships, medium ships, large ships.

I just recently looked at the stats of fully upgraded small ships and compared them to fully upgraded medium ships I was surprised of how close they were.

I know small ships were buffed to make them more effective against medium ships. Which was definitely needed it made my bedar useful again. But I think that the strength in smaller ships should also focus on acceleration and maneuverability. So hearing about the river rat perk I thought it was perfect for small ships. But the reality is, it's kind of useless. When you're in a river, you typically going one out of two directions and if you're in a small ship, you're gonna take a huge Debuff while turning into the wind which completely negates the river rat perk because your acceleration and maneuver speed means nothing if you forced to go 9 knot. Every medium size ship in the game can outpace you without trimming.

River rat should just negate the negative into the wind debuff completely while in rivers. If my small ships literally takes damage just by being in the open sea I should at least be able to out pace medium ships in my domain. If smaller ships have better acceleration and maneuvering speed along with being an overall smaller target they wouldn't need nearly as much health and brace strength as their medium ships counterparts.

The strengths of every size ships should be

Small ships- pros- fastest acceleration and maneuverability, smaller hitbox Cons- less hull health, brace strength, less broadside cannons ports, slowest top speed.

Medium ships- pro- fastest top speed, standard health, acceleration and brace strength Cons- none jack of all trades master of none (besides top speed)

Large ships pros- should be a literal floating fortress, most gun ports, highest hull health and brace strength medium top speed cons- slowest maneuverability and acceleration, largest hitbox, inability to traverse rivers.

If they make large ships with close to the same stats as medium and small ship I don't know how large ships with bigger hitboxes will work in PvP.

things I want to see with large ships

Dhow deployment, change out the boarding grappling hook with a broadside harpoons for easier boarding. If I'm in a larger ship and I manage to catch up to you it should be easier for me to board you.

I have zero idea how they'll balance these large ships seems like an impossible task to try to appease everybody. But good luck