Well, as a final curmudgeony post, I'm going to have to say some of the complaints here are a way too melodramatic.
The current system for boarding levels was in place since at least 4.0, so it is NOT unplayable. People have been playing and enjoying it, for what, a year probably?
And many people like duals with captains having more HP than them. Jeeze, a sword with a good block stat and I don't have much trouble killing a captain with 3x my HP. And I play on swashbuckler.
Once you learn how to pick a sword with good stats for your purposes, those captain fights aren't hard. Try high block swords. Also, make sure you have the sword fighting perks to up your blocking ability.
That doesn't mean fixes shouldn't come for this, but this is a recreational mod. Daily bolded posts demanding change and impassioned declarations that the game is ruined forever and no fun don't help anyone's motivation,
@Levis will get to it when he does, he is working hard, and we aren't paying him so let's go with gratitude as the proper response rather than impatience,
Especially since it has been this way since 4.0! A nice piece of info that could have been used when we went back and forth with repeated posts searching in files to try to figure out if the problem was recent...here's a way to speed up fixes in the future, report what version you are using with bugs.
Anyway, let me express my gratitude to
@Pieter Boelen and
@Levis for all their bug fixing efforts, and the hope that they take their time and don't feel any pressure to ruin their weekends by trying to rush out a fix on soemthing that has been broken since 4.0 and doesn't in any way prevent the game from fully being enjoyable.