Another question would be, how easy was it to identify specific ships back then? For example, at first Essex's carronade load worked because it was a surprise, but when one or two got away and shared the intel about "American frigate in area, all carronade armament," the cat was out of the bag... maybe we need some kind of "blind" mechanism where Egmont can either come in with regular gun or all-carronade load and the player doesn't have to reveal their choice until they fire their first gunnery attack.(AI, flip a coin or roll a die when you enter B-range.)

This would also imply to me that Egmont would be either better suited to chasing off convoy raiders, or to operations with another 74 as a "stalking horse".