I agree that naval battles are a bit dull and all the ship mechanics terribly unrealistic, but after reading this thread, folks, please keep in mind that sensible game mechanics take precedent over historical accuracy. Otherwise, you end up with a beautifully accurate game that is completely unplayable.
So with that in mind - heavy ships are underperforming, as freudia already pointed out. You can maintain 12 galleys for the cost of a single heavy ship, so the only situation where heavies are the preferred option is if you are a rich country with very few sea provinces, thus mostly restricted by naval FL. good examples would be persia, austria or russia. For most countries, however, naval FL is just a very large number especially once you get to the higher tier naval buildings - not to mention colonies ot trade companies. at that point, just throw a 300 galley doomstack at everything, easy pickings.
Now, I agree that naval combat could use some love, and that there are a lot of dents in the realism to make for better gameplay, some of which could be worked out in a more realistic fashion. But please do not try to use historical costs and realism as argument for balancing gameplay one way or another. Yes, it doesn't make sense that a ship built in 1445 is still happily protecting trade 300 years later, but really, would it be a fun gameplay having to rebuild your entire navy every 30y or so? 1000 horses don't fit on a single cog, but would we enjoy the game more if 85% of FL was always needed for transports?
For immersion, I usually think of ships as an abstract representation - its not a single cog, its a group of ships that moves as single unit with the capacity to transport a whole regiment. The maintenance costs for ships already include the cost for rebuilding/overhauling them every couple of decades, its just that as great leader, you have accountants to handle that. Due to the early colonization of the carribean, the captains and officers of any ship are always oversupplied with rum and can't be trusted to assist in coastal land battles, they only can be tasked with really simple stuff like "go there and let nothing through"
So with that in mind - heavy ships are underperforming, as freudia already pointed out. You can maintain 12 galleys for the cost of a single heavy ship, so the only situation where heavies are the preferred option is if you are a rich country with very few sea provinces, thus mostly restricted by naval FL. good examples would be persia, austria or russia. For most countries, however, naval FL is just a very large number especially once you get to the higher tier naval buildings - not to mention colonies ot trade companies. at that point, just throw a 300 galley doomstack at everything, easy pickings.
Now, I agree that naval combat could use some love, and that there are a lot of dents in the realism to make for better gameplay, some of which could be worked out in a more realistic fashion. But please do not try to use historical costs and realism as argument for balancing gameplay one way or another. Yes, it doesn't make sense that a ship built in 1445 is still happily protecting trade 300 years later, but really, would it be a fun gameplay having to rebuild your entire navy every 30y or so? 1000 horses don't fit on a single cog, but would we enjoy the game more if 85% of FL was always needed for transports?
For immersion, I usually think of ships as an abstract representation - its not a single cog, its a group of ships that moves as single unit with the capacity to transport a whole regiment. The maintenance costs for ships already include the cost for rebuilding/overhauling them every couple of decades, its just that as great leader, you have accountants to handle that. Due to the early colonization of the carribean, the captains and officers of any ship are always oversupplied with rum and can't be trusted to assist in coastal land battles, they only can be tasked with really simple stuff like "go there and let nothing through"
