Server Merging

This is a question/suggestion post.
I'm not entirely sure how the server merging works, any input is appreciated.
Last night, I was on a 3 man brig with a grade 5 reaper emissary flag. Nobody was on the map, we assumed it was underpopulated. After sailing around looking for people for a while, we got the message that meant we were moving servers and we got merged into another server. Within seconds we heard an explosion as we ran into a floating gunpowder barrel (that was not on the other server), and noticed that there was another grade 5 reaper less already in firing range barreling towards us. I feel like there should be some kind of protection in the form of putting people into a server where there isn't another ship right next to them within immediate firing range. I understand the need for server merging, and it lead to a fun fight (that we quickly lost due to them having the jump on us), but it seems like there should be a way to do it better, similar to ship spawning, where you won't spawn at an outpost if another ship is extremely close. This isn't the first time either, last week we were at an outpost when there was a server merge and our boat spawned inside of another ship (the players had just logged off) and it was extremely glitchy to move until their boat finally sunk.