I would really love to be able to fire broadsides that match my cannonfire capabilities. It's perfectly fine for Phantom ships to fire broadsides of Thunderbolts at
me. On the other hand, that would make many of us darn near unstoppable, so it seems like an unlikely change.
Like others, I think brawling is an excellent idea. Many of the special moves already hint towards hand-to-hand combat anyway. They might as well go all out. However, as far as what kind of damage is done by this...I guess brawling should just be made to be a fast attack, like the dagger, since it's physical impact probably shouldn't be comparable to explosives and magic.
I had a couple of other ideas for weapons, but now I'm drawing a blank. I'll probably edit this later.