[in_vino_vomitus]

It goes some way towards convincing me I don't have an overactive imagination - I mean I do, but it's nice to know it might not be fabricating this. - The first time I saw dense smoke coming from a ship in a convoy, just over the horizon, I thought it was an authentic touch. then, someone who knows, said that you can't spawn ships with damage and, to be honest, that makes sense. Then I saw the convoy in the screenshots below, and it really doesn't look like smoke from funnels. Also it turns out that ships can get damaged by other things that players don't control. So now I'm wondering if the damaged ships in convoys are there because somebody thought it would add to the realism, or if it's just an accidental feature of the way that the convoys are spawned.

Either way it's a nice touch....