In general the point is to make ships the best way to travel, attack, transport on water.

Explain, Asterity?

The reasoning behind these was:

• Reducing swim/boat speed to make ships more appealing and feasible (both to sail away from lone attackers and to encourage people to use them more regularly in general). Unlike fire spread, this would necessitate ships for journeys over water.
• I thought you used to be able to transport animals on ships?
• I forgot about frost walker – heck maybe remove that too, does anyone use it? I know  I never sold any in the years I ran ench book shops.
• I don’t see how removing vanilla boats makes it harder for new players, people shouldn’t be killing deckies anyway surely? If anything removing depth would level the playing field for less op players who don’t have god armour.
• The rank up requirement could easily be changed/removed.

What would removing depth ruin?

• It would barely affect building in water.
• It would just make water pvp a bit slower, not that anyway water fights with the AC atm anyway. And people can still fight on land, on decks of ships, or in ship battles.