Kozu

You are correct in the respect of long guns out ranging carronades by quite a considerable distance and the longer barrel makes them significantly more accurate. Carronades however were rarely used as a principle armament especially in ships the size of a frigate or above due to the shorter effective range. It is true that they were more commonly employed by the royal navy (they were invented by a scottish arms manufacturer). As to the spanish my limited experience suggests that whilst they often over gunned their ships and built perfectly monstrous vessels such as the Santissima Trinidad they were not considered in general to have a high standard of gunnery nor seamanship like that of american warships of the period. IMO there shouldn't be any single ship type available to players which is the be all and end all of fighting and so used by everyone. I'm perfectly aware that it takes time and effort to make additional ship models and I would not expect different frigates to be made at this early stage of development but certainly later on.

I shall undoubtedly be listening to the Master and commander soundtrack and more than likely dropkick murphy's Hang em' high. Seeing as how I am apparently completely foxed by trying to embed videos I'm sure you gentlemen are more than capable of finding them

Darthmod still entertains me on both Empire and Napoleon and I would heartily recommend it for both of them. I have played naval battle after naval battle waiting for naval action to slowly unveil itself.

While USS Constitution was an uncommonly heavy frigate (the heaviest I could find) with her 21 inch thick hull planking and 50 broadside guns (30 24pd great guns and 20 32pd carronades) She, like all ships, was by no means unbeatable. She unarguably had an advantage over any british ship on the station by broadside weight but she was by no means faster as a ship. Having been successfully clean just before the outbreak of war and refitted again under Bainbridge during the war she would have had a significant advantage over the blockading squadron perpetually on station or running up and down to halifax for rapid provisions and no time for a real overhaul. However time and again history has shown us that it does not always come down to broadside weight to determine an engagement the captains of engaging ships played a huge part in any out come and both Hull and William Bainbridge were notably competent seamen whereas for example Captain Dacres of Guerriere had been ashore for the 4 years prior to the command and had only one major action (and this was storming a fort) before. I'm rambling terribly from my point which is if wind, condition of ship, skill of command and luck were to favour an opponent it is far from inconceivable that the ship itself could be taken by a much lighter ship. Were it for example to be demasted by a lucky or skilled shot it would be no better off than any other ship. In regards to the game I would be quite unhappy to see everyone bumming around in constitutions because it wouldn't reflect the period well at all and as Destraex mentioned in the OP they would certainly be a match for all but the heaviest ships especially if it is capable of the same speed as a lighter frigate.