I was looking back at the "Ratbeard Q & A" from last year and saw Ratbeard mention they were looking for ways make ship combat more interesting.

An idea I had was that when sailing up to an enemy, only AFTER clicking on the enemy ship, the camera will focus on the enemy ship with a dramatic zooming on the edges of the screen for half a second. In other games such as in Zelda, when you select an enemy the camera focuses on them and you can move around the enemy, and the camera keeps your focus on the enemy as you move.

From that point, you can circle the enemy ship and look for "weak spots" that do extra damage, with your ship having weak spots as well. It would make ship turning and other sailing stats more useful in combat. Your cursor would be your cannon's aim where to hit the enemy's ship. Since your ship would stay engaged with the enemy it wouldn't sail away (unless you pressed "z" to escape, making fuel important to escape combat)

To reiterate this would only happen IF you click on an enemy ship, otherwise your camera won't zoom in on the enemy and you can still sail away normally if trying to pass through.

That's the whole idea! I think this (small) change could make a huge impact on ship combat!