After thinking about the current naval mechanics, I think most of these systems could be improved without making the game significantly more complicated.
The general idea would be:
Let the player make the important decisions, while the crew and ship systems handle the execution.
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Standing orders
Instead of manually controlling individual crew members, give the crew simple priorities:
Normal / Combat / Air Attack / Damage Control
or allow players to prioritize:
Main battery → Engines → Steering → Damage control → Secondary → AA
The crew handles the actual work.
This would also solve one of the problems with the current damage control system: sometimes you simply don’t want a minor repair to pull crew away from something more important during combat. -
Damage should degrade systems instead of simply switching them off
A damaged turret doesn’t necessarily have to become useless.
It could lose traverse speed, elevation range, reload efficiency or fire-control assistance.
The same principle could apply to propulsion, steering and FCS.
For example:
FCS damaged → manual corrections
Rangefinder damaged → estimate range manually
Steering damaged → reduced steering / differential propulsion
Turret damaged → restricted traverse/elevation
The ship remains usable, but you have to operate it differently. -
Flooding and buoyancy
I wouldn’t replace the current flooding system either.
I’d simply make flooding progressively affect the ship:
flooding → list / increased draft → reduced performance → loss of stability → sinking
A heavily damaged ship shouldn’t necessarily sink immediately. It should become progressively harder to operate.
Damage control could then have priorities such as:
Contain flooding / Protect stability / Keep propulsion running
So the player decides what the crew should save first.
The common idea behind all of this is pretty simple:
Don’t make the player operate the ship like a machine. Make them command it.
The crew should handle the boring parts.
The player should decide what systems to prioritize and how to fight with whatever is still working.
That would make naval feel much more like commanding a warship without turning game into a simulator.