I have always thought it would be fun if the ship battles could be tuned towards the "holy rpg trinity" of tank, damage and heals so that you could specialize your ship a little more. This way, you could focus on absorbing damage, dealing damage or healing/support based on what ship items you equipped. It would obviously help if you could target and heal other ships for that last one.

However, as cool as I think this would be, it would require a significant restructuring of how ship combat works and changing just about every piece of ship equipment in the game, so it's unlikely that they'll make this specific change. I'd still like the abilities to directly help an ally, though, more than just getting to an enemy first. I'd also find it helpful if there was a way to get an enemy ship's attention on yourself and off an ally.

Actually, they did implement this, in a way. You can't put a heal or buff on a certain person, but some of the ship boss drops in Aquila give the ability to group heal or group buff. You don't target your ally however, it just sends out a sort of pulse the heals/buffs the people around you. It really makes sailing with buddies a lot more fun!