I absolutely love the game's fire mechanics and I have seen too many ships go up in a big fireball to believe the hype about everyone's firefighting skills.
But let's debate it!
I personally think the firebomb cannon shot is the STRONGEST SHOT in the game.
Everyone should land one or two on the enemy ship before switching to your chain/regular shot depending on whatever meta you believe in.
I think the reason is pre-ignition of surrounding grid squares on a ship.
A firebomb shot does a LOT more damage than just lobbing the bomb.
The bomb starts one grid square on fire.
But a firebomb shot onto the stern of a Galleon does 25 grid squares of fully engulfed fire.
Now a bucket of water on a fire grid puts out 1 grid of fire.
That's 25 buckets of water. Which is impossible to manage.
1 bucket adjacent to a fire grid puts out all fire surrounding it. So a theoretical maximum of 8 grid squares.
Even with rapid response you need 2 buckets to put out the quarter deck of the Galleon.
And 2 for the captain's quarters.
With probably 3 to put out the balcony. I've never tested the water through the wall in which case reduce to 1 bucket.
So at a minimum 5 buckets rapidly to put out the whole fire and preignited squares before those go up in flames.
That's your entire crew out of the fight right there.
As you can see an amazing opportunity for boarding or chain shot.
I would suppose if you can chain shot the main mast then firebomb cannon it....this would be THE strongest opening 2-shot salvo.
One player takes one life to raise the main mast.
So it completely eliminates 1 crew member or partially restrains 2 crew members if they want to try and survive the flames.
It also engulfs the capstan which opens them to losing anchor control.
