First off, I'd like to say that overall, I'm absolutely loving this mod. It's VERY polished.

But I have one question (and this might be a bug): Why are Merchant ships (the 12 gun variety, not Indiamen) such behemoths in combat? They seem to have deflector shields and elite morale.

As example, I attacked four 12-gun Merchants with a 38 and a 36. We paralleled and exchanged broadsides. By the time I had killed my FIRST GUN on them, I was down 14 guns between my two ship!! Errrr....what? This is no 'you're doing wrong' situation...we were simply sailing and shooting back and forth.

The crew was similary protected and the first of the 55 on any ship did not die until WELL into the exchange.

In addition, once guns DID start dying (and after 15-20mins into the fight), the Merchants practically fought to the last gun (the 2 that surrendered before they beat me surrendered at 1 gun and 2 guns...). This quite a bit more starch than I would expect from your average French Merchant crew....

So is there some sort of bug with Merchants or some sort of fudge modifier that makes them so resiliant? My expectation is that 2 Frigates should slaughter 4 Merchants without much issue ('commerce raiding' being one of the supposed fortes of the Frigate). God forbid taking 24 gun Brigs or 18 gun Sloops against these things! They would be slaughtered out of hand!

Any help on this?

Thanks!