...cause I like the idea of being deployed on a ship and all.
You want to guarantee to go to a ship? Fly helos or Ospreys. Go jets and you can get... F/A-18Ds. You'll CQ in that community, but that's about it. They do "expeditionary" deployments, no ships involved. Go Hercs? Not going to a ship. Everything else does, and 100% of the rotary wing/tilt-rotor community deploy on a boat.
Everything else goes to LHD's or LPD's.
There's never really a permanent ACE det on the LPDs. Sometimes you do split ARG ops, sometimes you don't. Example: My first deployment, we did split ARG ops during workups, and it was the most glorious week of my life underway (I was on the LPD). For the deployment? All 8 months of it? Nope. Big deck the whole time. Second deployment on the boat? ZERO split ARG ops between both the workups and the deployment. Which kinda sucked, because I could have met Anthony Bourdain after we evac'd his happy ass from Beirut...
For the OP - you're lucky that - 1. I'm sober. 2. I closed on my house over the holidays, and therefore... 3. I'm in a pretty good mood. Here's the answer you seek:
No one fucking knows. Seriously. It changes from week to week. A lot of it is timing, and the needs of the Marine Corps. The week I selected there were ZERO slots available for Marine studs to go jets. The only thing you can have an impact on is how much you study, that's about it. Some guys study their nuts off, but just don't "get it". They attrite because they can't land, or keep making errors in the plane - even though instructors recognize they are working their ass off. There are so many variables involved in getting your wings that NO ONE, not even Jesus Christ himself can tell you at this point what your chances are of getting jets. Two weeks before you select, Jesus may have a rough idea - but he still doesn't know. Seriously.
With that being said - do you want to be a Marine? That's the single most important thing you have to be able to answer before you switch, rather than whether you get jets. It's not unheard of to find out that you're not going to be a SNA after the NAMI Whammy, and find yourself being an officer that serves in some other capacity in the Marine Corps.