I know this was brought up at some point but I wanted to ask again since I can't find any other information regarding it, is there a way to simply make this work for the Cargo Ships mod? I recently started a many islands game and would like to use TSM (as I prefer it to LTN) to manage my boats since I have the intention of using both boats and trains in this play through and I don't want to have 2 managing mods installed if possible (Again I really despise LTN).

I really enjoy setting up and using the Empty Train method and wanted to do the same thing with boats. I believe boats and trains are interchangeable in terms of the mechanics I just don't know if they are reskinned trained in the mod pack or not. Would it be possible to make TSM "Port" stations easily?

Adding a new "TSM port" entity would probably be a lot of work in the main mod. But it might be possible to make a helper mod to change the collision masks of the TSM stops and lamps so that they can be placed on water (and also don't get destroyed by passing ships. That shouldn't really change how they behave on land, besides not being damaged by collisions.