TL:DR The Brig needs some of it's speed back.
I have been PvPing in SoT for about three years, primarily as a Helm. I've run all three ship types, with experienced and fresh crews, in Hourglass and open world PvP. I've pitted each class against the other in every combination possible, and they each have their strengths and weaknesses.
The Galleon can be a floating fortress, using its crew size to bully anyone else with immense cannon and boarding pressure.
The Sloop has always been extremely maneuverable, and in it's current state is surprisingly durable as well; nearly always requiring it's crew to be dealt with as even a single player can recover it from almost total loss.
The Brig used to be the fastest, the Naval man's ship; able to catch and control the engagement nearly every time, put out a respectable amount of pressure, and paying for it by essentially being the most fragile of the ship choices.
With the most recent sailing speed and acceleration update; the Brig was relegated to be the median of the game's ship speeds...but in practice I dont think it is working as intended. With the speed mechanics the way they are currently; every ship in SoT is supposed to be able to catch or escape anything smaller than itself, given a long enough chase, each class having a higher top speed than the next class smaller.
In my experience though; there is an issue between the Brigantine and the Sloop. Sloops can essentially keep pace with a Brig nearly indefinitely, in some cases seeming to catch them in specific wind alignments. The new changes were supposed to do away with Sloops sailing better in a head-wind, Brigs doing best in cross-wind, and Galleons with tail-wind, but it sure feels like these old alignments still work, in addition to scaling down the Brig's top speed.
Im not trying to argue for rolling the Brig back to it's glorious, somewhat murderous old cruising speed; it was admittedly a bit over the top, but as things stand it feels like the Brig doesnt perform as it supposed to.
TL;DR2 - Brig top speed needs a bit of tuning boost.
