There has been many metas in ship building in CCNet. There were the early n2 ships which were practically cuboids, a bit later than that they atleast had a shape but were shotgun ships without rotatable turrets (in most cases). It normalized after the naval update until as of late, when people started messing around with underwater invicibility before it was nerfed.

Ships like Gingful's ironclad (that was literally mostly submerged and the cannons were unexplodable) started popping up till a water limit got implemented to 35% or whatever and whatever the hell it has spiraled to nowadays.

Yes I'm aware that I'm no big concrete ship builder/designer. But I did like using movecraft, not as much anymore. Why's that? That is because of a newer meta thats prevalent on larger ships.
The new meta that makes all large ship have big bumps as if they're pregnant ready to give birth to a new baby shipette.

Why did that meta start popping up everywhere?
I have no direct knowledge other than my own assumptions as I did not invent the meta. But I assume that its because people store most of their redstone and concrete on a small bump in the ship below water, in a position thats almost unreachable during a ship vs ship scenario. This leads to ugly fights like one I had a while back, where enemy ship was literally disintegrated from above water, but for some reason didnt sink cuz yet again most of the important blocks were concentrated into an almost unreachable bump (mind you this was my first ever encounter with this sort of ships and my ship was almost fully above waterline).

Is it viable for combat? Does it have weaknesses? Yes it does and yes it is viable for combat. Its just ugly, both combat wise and aesthetic wise. Why should a ship have a big bump, or two, that make it look as if its pregnant. Its so stupid. It also makes ship fights very stupid, atleast thats how I see them and everyone can and has their own opinion on these ships.

Possible fixes?
Well I haven't thought of this properly. I'd think people that actually are in the naval chat or the entirety of ccnet can atleast find a way or two to make such ships unviable.
But imo the best way to deal with this disease is to make such designs simply illegal at first.

This suggestion will indeed hard to be implemented if it does, due to the fact literallt every major nation's navy uses this disease of a scheme where ships are riddled with bumps as if theyre suffering from localized bubonic plague.

Thx ^^ ))