I just ran another test, fighting "in line"

I just ran my Battle of the Kentish Knock scenario. This time, I had the difficualty set to "Hard". The Dutch still won 65% to 0% (65% of the Dutch fleet was still in action, while all the English were sunk or surrendered).

A feature of having the difficulty set to "Hard" is that Dutch ships catch fire frequently. They also run into each other catch others on fire. If you select the ship, and have the crew fight the fire, then that is adequate. If it is one of your fireships on fire, you might either steer the fireship into an English ship or else off at a tangent, away from your ships.

Quite quickly, there were 90% of the Dutch ships and only 23% of the English ships in action. Once the percentages got to 87% to 19%, the fighting got tougher. The Sovereign (90 guns) was still in action, and I had not been agressive enough to "cross its T". All too quickly, the percentages were at 70% to 11%.

After I became more diligent about sailing back and forth, and changing the angle to maximum the Dutch being in line, and putting the line at right angles to the Sovereign and Vanguard, the balance quickly tipped. Suddenly, it was 65% to 7%, and then 65% to 4% and then 2%. The last three English ships were the Exchange (M), the Mary Flyboat, and the Little President. All are very small vessels, so you can see that when the larger ships had surrendered and then were sunk, the battle was quicly won for the Dutch.