Ships

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I'm thinking about the way to create a ship in an RPG. I just want feed back on my train of thought.

Ships, at their heart, have a few core actions and parts. They need a Hull, a physical body so to speak. They need an engine, or some method of propulsion, from sails to slaves with oars to internal combustion. That lets them move. The need a hold, to carry things. They need a rudder, to steer themselves. If they are warships they need weapons to deal damage with, and armor to withstand damage. So that leaves me with the following breakdown:

Hull = HP
Engine = Speed
Hold = Inventory/carry capacity
Rudder = Movement or maneuvering
Weapons = Attack
Armor = Defense

Now, with those basic stats, we can start breaking down actual mechanics. One thing I've always been kind of weirded out by is the fact that large vehicles are often considered...living, in a way. Essentially, when your characters get on their ship, the game zooms out to just look at the ship and treat it like a singular character. The characters on the ship tend not to do much. There's very little connection between the actions the ship takes and the actions the characters take. So if pirates board the ship, either the zoomed out ship to ship combat vanishes in favor of on deck character combat, or the boarding is abstracted and the ship to ship combat continues.

To get away from that, I want to have positions of a sort. So, for the ship to maneuver, it needs someone at the helm. For it to continue to move at full pace, it needs someone working the engine. To shoot, it needs someone manning the guns. And if it gets boarded, the players will have the choice between abandoning their stations to fend off the boarders or continuing their jobs to try and sink the other vessel.