Hi Crockett,
Chain shot, Bar shot and Link Shot were used to break/shatter/dismast the spars holding the sails. If the sails went down, the enemy should could not move/maneuver and even the loss of some spars hindered movement and could set up a ship to be attacked from the stern. These were normally fired from guns on the top or second deck and not the largest guns on the below deck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain-shot
"Taking out an enemy ship's Masts" would of course severely slow down or stop the ships. The "Smashers" or Carronades on the top deck were sometimes used for that, as well as shooting into the enemy ships gun decks. However, even larger ships masts were sometimes to often, not all that easy to hit as your own ship pitched and rolled.
A "broadside" of all guns on the lower decks was intended not only to hit the enemy guns, but even more importantly to smash the wooden sides of the ships and send a shower of slivers into the enemy gun crews that killed/wounded more of them than the solid shot alone would do. If you took out their gun crews, the ships were much easier to board and take "as a prize."
"Wadding" could have meant actual wadding in earlier times, but by the 18th century, powder was normally sewn into cloth bags for use especially for the larger and lower deck guns. Some of the small "anti-personnel" guns on the top deck were also wadded for the first round and/or if they were firing down onto the tops of smaller ships. The "Ships of the Line" ran from at least 60 guns to over 100 guns in the largest ships and the latter were true behemoths like Nelson's 104 Gun HMS Victory.
I think friction primers were used in some of the U.S. Navy's Dahlgren and American Civil War period Naval Guns on both sides, but the large flintlock's used for Naval Cannon, were the largest/longest lasting improvement for many decades over a linstock.
Gus