Looks like it has made a difference!
Has anyone got a screenshot of the new controls that they could post?
Note : With the reduced draft vessels, if you approach an AI version closely, they will probably rise in the water. There's no way around that. Although we've tried to reduce that effect, it can't be eliminated entirely.
It is caused by the fact that the AI vessel uses a simplified set of hard-coded dynamics so that your PC can handle all of the complex calculations for all the vessels in the environment.
The simplified dynamics make it displace the original volume of water. When you come close, the ship switches to the new dynamics and suddenly sheds 35,000 tons of cargo (invisibly). So it rises.