How to get the most bang for my buck in naval bombardments?

I've been playing Fall of the Samurai, and the naval bombardments are awesome. Except, in traditional Total War style, there are small and important details which the official documentation provides no information about.

How do the different ship types contribute to the fleet's overall capacity to provide support to ground battles? What ships or compositions of ships should a player aim for to maximize dakka while minimizing maintenance costs?

Solution 1:

This may seem contradictory, but I always loved the cannons ships you can get from the Nanban.

They're really expensive, but they're extremely tough. Most enemy fleets can't approach one before they get obliterated. The best part is that they also double as trade ships, so you can easily convert a war fleet to a trade fleet. Or steal a trade node and start trading out of it with the same fleet :)

They're costly but in my experience they more than pay for themselves when you have enough to support a fleet of them.

Anything with cannons is good on land and sea due to the range that they have and that a good hit can kill groups of enemies. I prefer an all cannon ship setup but if you want to go for cost savings I would go for 1-3 for a fleet you intend to siege with.

All told I have not experimented with the other ships too much since I found out how great the cannon ships were.