Okay, a few notes about cannon and assault magi damage. They seem to work fine
for me, but you just need to know how to use the system. I'll point out a few
things I tested out when I was first a mortal -- there may be inaccuracies
here, I've not read any of the applicable code:
* The more cannons you have selected, the more times you can fire between
explosions.
* The fewer cannons you have selected, the better your aim/etc will be per
shot.
* If the target ship has shields, the shields need to be tuned to a certain
damage type. The shields work well for that type, not so well for other types.
* Each ammo type you use has a different ideal range. I'll leave it to you to
figure out what "normal" or "low" or "high" means for these.
* Assault magi, as specified in some helpfile somewhere I recall from the
distant past, are not intended to do damage. Assault magi are intended to
bring down the shields of the enemy ship, so that you can get your cannons
through. They do some damage, too...

* If you are working with smaller numbers of cannons, you might want to mix
tactics between cannons and some other combat mechanism.
* Your tactics might vary depending on the opponent. (Whether they have
shields or not).

A few things I do find frustrating with cannon/assault attacks:
* There is no way to pursue away from someone. This is hard to implement in
code, though. I have one idea, will talk to Tarken directly.
* There is no "pursue height" option, nor a "console height match <shipname>"
option. It would be handy if I could either get one of these options, or get a
message when a pursued ship's height changes in relation to my own.
* There are too few damage types from cannon ammo...

Oh, and one other thing to point out...exact combat tactics will vary from
player to player. It will depend on your ship, the crew lvl, crew morale, and
a few other factors...I have a couple ships, and use quite different tactics
between them...