I could not find a place to write it so I will write it here. Playing this mod I found that you still have old menu when you take things from chest if you dont have bodyguard assign and spyglass does not work does not show anything, number of crew, guns etc.
Yes, the open chest screen is deliberately different when there are no bodyguards, because you have nobody in your vicinity to share the items with. If you have bodyguards, you can directly place the chest item into the bodyguard's inventory, but if nobody is there, you can only take it yourself.
For the spyglass, load your saved game, go to the "esc" key game menu, select "Options" then change the first option "Realistic Spyglass" to "Off", click OK, then save your game. You should then be able to see the enemy ship elements, if your spyglass item has those capabilities.
I really appreciate quick response. The one thing that is annoying is the amount of money that you have to pay to other ships in order for them to stop fighting with the player, it should be more like 4-5 thousand not 400-500. Even better would be, when you pay you need to bribe whole convoy with nations at least, with pirates could stay the same. Just a sugestion.