Alright, so - speaking balance wise since you asked how much trouble it would be to raise the freeboard 25% (a fair question):
How much would the freeboard have to be raised for the ship to be absolutely worthless?
The Petro's "thing" is it's tankiness. It doesn't have good DPM. It doesn't have reliable accuracy. It doesn't have good HE pen. It has a 15 second radar.
So how much freeboard does it have to have before it's balanced? How much more freeboard until it's so borked that it's not tanky anymore?
These are serious questions. High-comp players don't bring Petro for the dpm... they bring it for that tankiness.