First off I want to acknowledge Tarken and all the other wizzes that have put a
lot of time and effort into ships and have coded some really nice stuff that we
can enjoy. Secondly I don't profess to know everything about ships, but I do
think that I represent an average casual player who has spent a reasonable
amount of effort trying to figure out ships and how to solve some of the
problems I have faced with them.

The first and most major problem I have with ships is that there doesn't seem
to be a good means to recover ship morale after you have lost it / the things
that gain you morale seem to be largely overshadowed by the things that lose
you morale. I am a pirate largely because I enjoy ship combat and the rare PvP
aspects of this game. Being a pirate as well as a relative newcomer to ship
combat my ship has been sunk a couple times by other players ships. Because of
this my crew has become increasingly disloyal and my ship's function has taken
a huge hit. I have tried to solve this problem in the ways that have been
proposed to me by other players. Such as taking my ship out each day, sinking
NPC ships (of which I have sank 100+) among other things. From doing these
things I have yet to see my ship morale message improve.

Another problem I have with ships is the seeming lack of use for cannon's or
other ranged weapons. I have heard others complain of this same thing, to which
tarken responded that if you tested it I'm sure you'd find that cannon's are
quite useful. I decided to give it a whirl and paid to have my ship fitted with
some cannon and bought level 4 cannoneer crew. The testing of them was horribly
frustrating, of the 100 or so shots I took 70+ missed, and the rest were split
between hits and cannon explosions which killed my crew and broke my 30k worth
cannons.