Demasting is a necessary evil at the moment, due in a large part to the sailing model.
Snow or other such small ship riding the stern of a larger ship, able to regain lost speed at a moment’s notice and thus maintain relative positioning despite turning into the eye of the wind repeatedly? Unless they let you board them or hand you the battle in some other way, dismasting is frequently the only answer left. Making sternway can shake some ships, but any good snow captain has dealt with that trick before.
And most people don’t understand how demasting works anyway. Plenty of people can aim, but most don’t fully grasp, or seem to, the full impact of range on penetration, nor just how hard you can make your own masts to hit if you fall back to the boom and zoom tactics of ancient 2016.
Fix sailing and demasting will become both more difficult and less necessary.