I noticed the ships are extremely slow. This kinda defeats the purpose of having them.

Maybe add an option to change the max speeds for each? Or just making them faster?

Ships are slow in real life. Last time I used the ferry from Saßnitz (Germany) to Trelleborg (Sweden) -- about 120 km across the Baltic sea -- a one-way trip took a bit more than four hours, I think, so traveling speed is about 30 km/h. That's ridiculously slow, compared to the time a train would need for the same distance. However, the ferries used to carry not one, but several trains at once in the past, plus cars and trucks! So you exchange speed for volume. If you feel ships are too slow, just build a couple more of them and put them on the same route. That way, you could have one ship being loaded at Port A, another being unloaded at Port B, and one or two traveling from A to B and/or B to A at the same time.

Yeah I know that, but this is a video game. Having at least an option to make them faster would be great.

It's far more efficient right now to just install a bridge railway mod and use that.

i dont think the bridge railway mod is necesarrly more efficient throughput wise, only thing is resources arrive faster after the initial setup. but also, with this mod i did not want to create an exact copy of trains that go on water, but add entites that behave and feel actually different.

I love the fact that they are beastly slow and a pain to stop (the tanker, anyway).

a mod option has been added to configure the ships speed. Also the ships benefit disproportional from high energy fuels like rocket or nuclear fuel.