In deck combat on ships, prior to engaging, there is a "ship defenders" stat which I was recently trying to optimize, but I'm confused as to how it works (does't work...?). What I'm trying to do is increase my number of attacks/defenders to better my odds in ship to ship combat and be able to take on ships higher level than myself, primarily for looting purposes. However, even though my ship defenders currently says "17", when I engage in combat, I think I only have 11/12 people on deck. Because of this, I have a bunch of questions:
1. Do different ships allow different numbers of attacks/defenders? Like, will a junk let me have 20 guys, buy a sloop only handful? If so, does anybody know the stats per ship?
2. Are attackers/defenders the same, or different? In other words, the stat does specifically say "defenders". Should I not expect to have that many guys if I'm actually the one starting the battle?
3. Say I have 17 people who can fight in the ship battle according to the stat, but only 12 actually appear on the deck. How do I control which 12 show up? Of course my active party will be on deck, but what about the rest of the fighters?
4. Any other tips here?
Note: while the cannon minigame thing can be amusing sometimes, I'm not really interested in optimizing for this minigame and would rather have a boarding event, so not really looking for tips for the minigame.