I found the loss of the gun capacity on the starter ship to be an inconvenience, but when you consider that with all those guns attached, you can take down Lorn Flukes in the starter ship, which is still reasonably difficult, but shouldn’t be the way things are. By reducing the number of guns available on all ships except the specific combat wombat vessels, there’s some impetus to get a better ship rather than just arming up the steamer and wandering around owning things.
It’s difficult when you start again, but armed with the knowledge of things that you now have (how to do the various quests, and in turn, how to get the money from those quests), it becomes easier to get a burst of cash in the first instance, knowing that the western coast ports will always remain the same means that you can spend the first part of the game running up and down the coast hunting lifebergs, bats and crabs for the goods, and while the pirate pinnace is a bit of a sod in the first place, it really doesn’t have the firepower to drop you unless you haven’t repaired yourself for some time or you’ve taken a few lifeberg hits.
The blind bruisers offer is still a good one to take to get you going in the first place, and on the initial engine, you just don’t burn that much fuel, it’s slow, but you won’t have any problems in getting to most ports, you’ve just got to watch if you get caught on something.
As for the ships, I’ve never seen the point of the smaller ships, not enough cargo to go out running to the further ports and when you get there, not enough to bring the goods back to make them useful. Probably good for close range hunting, but nothing else. I find that the Frigate is now the ship I ignore most, going to merchant cruiser and then waiting for the funds to get the dread, nothing else makes any sense from a cargo point of view.
My latest captain start took a bit of grinding to get to the point where I was making money on it, but in the last four attempts, I’ve found that before you get to the tipping point where you can afford to refuel out in the black, things are really hard, but when you’ve got a few ports under your belt and found the Salt Lions and the mangroves, things get significantly easier.
So difficult, but not impossible, and I think that the balance there is a good one.