On the topic of staysails on a Xebec - maybe its introducing divide by zero errors or something thats causing excessive performance. Its a bit silly to have stay sail on a Xebec in the first place (but you cant avoid the issue because AI ships randomly, and quite often, get them), so maybe the solution is easy - disable the upgrade for Xebecs altogether. Matter of fact, maybe certain upgrades should be disabled on certain kinds of ships to begin with (eg how do you get a 'flush deck' frigate?)
On fast leveling; true, and thats not even mentioning one of the most important changes - much as i love them (believe me, boy do i love them!) the loot you get from dead bodies, and how much its worth, is a steadier source of income than smuggling (which is also too easy btw - what the heck happened to having to fight coastguard? Now i just kill 5 officers, for no rep loss, and thats it, im home free?). You very quickly find some pretty damn good equipment (although as a whole the equipment is quite balanced). So melee wise, you rapidly reach a point where you and your officers never lose (i am at level 14 atm with some very good officers, we steamroll everything!)
Yet when it comes to command/sail skill, it caps out at too low (cant go beyond rank 3 ships?!) and levels sooo slowly - if i didnt have items, i would have command of 2, sail 4 (despite directsailing everywhere) and luck 2 - these skills are near impossible to raise. Its a bit bizarre to see these uber and quick leveling characters which are amazing in melee yet cannot for the life of them command a warship (ok, you use those ships without much penalty anyway, but the point remains).
Because of this its also easy to capture ships (and often they surrender and dont fight back anyway, might have to disable surrender again) since you can easily beat the crew or only have to fight the captain if they surrender and then BANG BANG BANG hes dead (or BANG slash slash). He doesnt even have his crew or officers around or on deck at the time, what a fool (I know youve surrendered, but dueling captains to determine the fate of the ship, crew be damned, seems a little old timer). So generally getting any ship you get a fancy for is child's play. Course, the nation might hate you, but thats quickly and easily remedied for 50,000-200,000 (pocket change much of the time).
And even if you find boarding exceptionally difficult to pull off, a smuggling run or two (though trade runs are not feasible early on) later you enough cash for a ship which can carry 2000 or so cargo, and that ought to get you started pretty quickly on cash (smuggling), melee (fighting the coastguard officers) and commerce (selling and buying the goods to smuggle). If the coastguard ships were just left in place, this would no longer be feasible (too high a rep loss each time you want to smuggle, and possible death) and making money would be harder early on, but sooner or later youd get to the easy money stage anyway.
All in all i still love these changes and looting bodies, but frankly its easier to equip yourself and your officers and get loot up to the wazoo than stock POTC ever was.
Still a great mod though, and very enjoyable regardless. Maybe next time i just wont loot bodies
: Too bad about AI though - is it even moddable? A LOT of improvement has been made on how/when it chooses to engage you, I love the way it runs away when outmatched and attacks when it is stronger, but having it point its broadsides more often and not sail into the wind would be a godsend
EDIT: Also, on the issue of price levels, heres a few useful metrics;
The Guinea, as we know, was a gold coin minted in England between 1663 and 1813. Its price was set at 20 and later 21 shillings, which was equal to 1 pound at the time, although inflation in the price of gold at times saw it worth 30 shillings (1.5 pounds). Being that the currency ingame is gold coins, it might be useful (disregarding the variety of currencies of the time) to think of the ingame currency as being in guineas. So if we can find the cost of a ship in that period in pounds, by extrapolation we can assume that would have been its price in guineas also (or at maximum we need to times its price by 1.5 times to get price in guineas)
So how much did ships cost? Well, heres a few interesting examples;
HMS Britannia (1762) - 100 gun first rate - cost = 45,844 pounds for building and fitting. So about 45,000 gold coins.
HMS Resolution (1771) - Royal Navy sloop and Captain Cook's preferred ship - started life as Marquis of Granby (collier) but was purchased by Royal Navy for cost = 4,151 pounds. So about 4000 gold.
Cost of REFIT of HMS Resolution (1771) because Mr Joseph Banks needed an additional upper deck and raised poop deck (and refused to sail in 'adverse conditions' when these were removed due to resulting poor sea keeping) = 10,080 pounds PLUS 882 pounds to REMOVE them again (what an idiot some of these people were) - so about 10,000 gold for major extensions on a ship and 800 gold to remove superstructure.
HMS Bounty (1784) - three masted cargo ship Bethia bought by the Royal Navy and famous for mutiny - cost of purchase by Royal Navy = 2,600 pounds - so about 2500 gold.
HMS Victory (1765) - very famous 1st rate - although delayed and taking quite a long time, eventually launched for cost = 63,176 pounds - so about 63000 gold.
Extensive repair of HMS Victory in 1800 after she was being considered for conversion into a hospital ship - originally estimated at 23,500 pounds for repairs but after defects were found turned into an extensive reconstruction for 70,933 pounds. These are massive repair bills! 23000 gold for a standard repair of a 1st rate, but a whopping 70000 gold for a reconstruction. Basically, ingame, the repair costs are the only prices that are about right! To reconstruct victory cost more than it did to build her in the first place.
This is definitely one of the things ingame that most contributes to an abundance of money for the player - repairs are very cheap when compared to the cost of a ship or trading/looting income. If light repairs - say for a ship with 70% hull (NOT sail) integrity - cost 1/3 of the cost of the ship, and serious reconstructions - say for ships which went below 50% hull - cost close to the cost of a ship, many players would find that many ships they captured were not worth keeping, unless they were otherwise hard to obtain (eg corvettes, frigates, galleons of war etc) - and then they would have to pay for the privilege.
This is mainly trivia since changing nominal variables is really not important in the scheme of things. However, its obvious that when a 100 gun first rate cost 45000 guineas in reality, paying millions of gold ingame is too high (and making millions is also).
Its also interesting, however, to note that building a first rate ship of the line only cost ten times as much as it did to purchase a second hand sloop (Resolution), and just 4 times as much as was wasted by Joseph Banks in his pursuit of luxury. These ships were also bought second hand, not built new. Taken altogether, the cost of buying these two second hand ships and refitting the resolution was about 40% of the cost of the Britannia.
So there ya go!
k When I get a ship like that I dump it. 
You got an Indiaman that was only rated for 11 knots? That is a stripped down light frigate and should go faster than that. 
I totally hear you on the tacking like crazy, although i always roll up my sails before heading into the wind to prevent drifting backward. However, thats a pain im happy to accept because thats sailing, and it makes the situations you get into (especially combat) that much more interesting (or boring, depending on preference). Thats probably why im so annoyed that a Xebec is going faster than the wind INTO that wind - im playing realistic for a reason damnit!
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