This reinforces my hopes to patch 1.4 as I wait to download it. I knew that before the patch, the sloops wouldn't be able to TERRORIZE the sea, they would be able to be slightly more useful than they are now. A bigger ship will still easily take them down, unless you happened to have a master admiral against you.

The chain shot is slightly puzzling, but I think it was underpowered before and half of my trade fleets in my other game were captured ships. Poor french can't build anything but indiamen, so they decided to capture a few dozen galleons from the pirates instead