I came to learn pretty early that you cannot equip your ships with turrets, only fixed-direction weapons with a relatively narrow firing arc. By default all fitted weapons are forward-facing, meaning enemy ships can only be fired upon from a forward-facing position.
This got me thinking, how effective would it be to fit weapons in a broadside arrangement instead of a forward-facing arrangement? Forward-facing weapons usually involve a ship making a run on an enemy, going around and turning for another run (depending on whether you and the enemy keep on moving). With a broadside arrangement you can keep an enemy under constant fire by circling them and keeping them within the firing arc of your broadside weapons, allowing for much higher DPS. The question is: Will the AI use broadside-equipped ships effectively within the battle viewer? Will the AI know to turn ships into a line of battle to bring broadsides to bear? And will the AI be smart enough to circle a target in an effort to expose blind spots?
I am too early in the game and have not seen full-scale war yet to test such layouts, does anyone have any experience in testing alternative weapon orientations in battles larger than just taking a few shots at a pirate or two? I searched around a bit but the Google gestapo gave me no results and searching on the forums here returned results from 2015 and earlier so, I would assume broadside layouts is not a common strategy at this point.