Wipe is best time for ship build changes

[Sheepshooter 120]

Wipe is best time for ship build changes

With the wipe coming up it would be the best time to make changes to the ship building, mainly cannon placement.
The wipe would get rid of any old ship designs out there and everyone would start design ships to the change – no old shotgun ships that cannot be removed outside a wipe.

One of the main concerns with how ships are being build with guns is, that people mount guns in front and/or back in such numbers and ugly designs it not only is unrealistic but also plain ugly.
You have made such nice ship designs with gun ports and everything. For that you definitively looked at real world ships of the era.
I for my part never saw a real world ship of those times with such one-sided gun placements. Having the same gun numbers on port and starboard is obvious, as you never know on what side the enemy will come in range.
You would be at an disadvantage being one-sided.
I am not a specialist in ship design, but I would guess that if it would be technically feasible to build a ship with all guns in the front or back some navy (more than one ship) would have done so and used it.

A tactical maneuver in the real world for gun boats is to 'cross the T' on the enemy, whereby your ships would face the enemy in a line with their broadside, while the enemy line is moving towards you with their front.
Thereby all your ships and their guns will face the enemy while only  the enemy's first ship in the line can only use it's front cannons on you.
If the current Atlas shotgun ships would be a real thing, getting ones T crossed would be not a tactical disadvantage, but desired - hence current ship meta in Atlas.

My suggestion would be for the wipe to limit cannon placements on ships to the gun ports ~ no placement without snap points.

In a next step you should add more snap points to the ship hulls/planks.
I would suggest making every blank above the water line able to be a gun port.
Also make the most upper plank (gun port or not) have a snap point at the railing above deck – same as with the dinghy and diving station already. Mainly to have the sloop able to mount guns at all, but to also have more guns to add to the other ship classes.

Finally make the most front and back gun port blanks of the ship to have different switchable designs (pressing T) – the normal gun port facing to the side and one that faces front/back to allow guns in that direction.

This would come down to:
Sloop – 12 guns (all on deck) with max 2 to the front and back.
Schooner – 28 guns (14 on deck) with max 4 to the front and back.
Brigantine – 40 guns (20 on deck) with max of 4 to the front and back.
Galleon – 76 guns ( 24 on deck) with max 6 to the front and 10 to the back.

Another thing I would suggest is to allow the mounting of the large cannons on the same snap points as the medium. Otherwise with this changes large cannons could no longer be put on ships.

As we would get rid of any gun not placed in a snap point you could reverse the weight reduction of guns in gun ports. This would help in promoting different ship designs for different uses. A gunboat with all (large) cannons mounted will not be a good cargo ship. A cargo ship will have only minimum number of cannons (maybe only in the back to shoot while fleeing). Multipurpose will be something in between.
Basically you would double the number of ship classes without adding new ships.

This would promote having multiple ships operations – warships protecting cargo ships, etc.

Not so sure about the Ballista with this idea, but I guess giving them only the deck snap points would be enough, or not?

Oh and by the way, could we get rid of building material being used as armor platting? It looks ugly, has no real world comparison – the ships planks are its armor. Maybe make a armored version of the current planks with more hit points and more weight?

I would also suggest to not make much change to the current base crew and weight numbers. You should have to customize the ship towards it's use. Having enough additional crew to use the deck guns should need leveling towards that.
If needed only adjust cannon weight, so that a full large cannon ship design is at the extreme low end of cargo capacity, or will be slowed down if it is having cargo. 

One optional suggestion to better help in the customization is (as suggested already somewhere else) to be able to put ships back into shipyards for re-design (maybe even for wrecking operation giving back the planks and or full (?) material cost) and maybe also to re-spec the levels for a gold cost?

Again - in short - please consider with the coming wipe to limit cannon placements on ships to snap points (gun ports) only. With that you have every option to 'add' more guns later to your ship designs without antagonize anyone later by taking things away from anyone or not being able to get rid of unwanted designs without a server wipe.