Then I started playing this round and my trade fleet consited of about 40% captured ships and 60% merchantment, the problem was I still wasn't making a lot of money even though I had a big trading fleet, and I also noticed my naval upkeep was pretty high. So I finally started to look at the upkeep costs of individual ships and noticed that a merchantman has an upkeep cost of about 44 while a galleon is around 370. Wow, what a difference.
So I replaced all my Galleon's and captured ships with Merchantmen and
noticed a 10000 increase in profits. So my question now is what's the point of other merchant ships? I used to love capturing a galleon because of the
extra firepower, but I'm now thinking that I can afford to build 7 merchantmen for the upkeep cost of a galleon. Once in a trading port they both seem to
generate the same amount of income. So why would I choose a galleon over a merchantman? Is there somehting I'm missing here?

lol