I would love for maps to have more cover, for all the reasons you’ve said.
But also because when I want to make a torpedo attack against a larger ship, I usually have to cross a big swath of open sea to get into a good range and they either see me or their AI guns kill me lol.
One other thing I would like to see with maps is a reworking of the spawn points. Like large boats like Drache (btw Drache is larger than some destroyers) spawn in the same place as a PT-boat, and are able to easily oneshot them while the PT-boat needs to plan it attack or carefully aim to disable its weapons.
Adding more Ships isn’t gonna bring more people. It’s the way the maps were designed. As well as the GUI and generally how everything was done that gave people 1st reaction of “meh”.
Modern ones maybe. WW2 and earlier, probably isn’t going to net many new players. Even the “famous” ones like Iowa, Bismarck and Yamato won’t, when people realise what a pain it is to grind.
Improvements to maps and the BR system for Naval would be a start, but I just think it’s more the pace of gameplay. It’s pretty hard to compare it to Air and Ground because they’re inherently much faster. Or have smaller maps. That are actually playable.
Honestly I’m hoping with the Split BRs they do something about Naval. It really just is not fun playing EC when there’s a Bravy or a Douglas spamming missiles at you and Jing out when they’ve expended them all.
Honestly I’ve given up on different ship types not being a… shipwreck… years ago.
Took them 3 years to finally add a ship with guns larger than 14-inches, and they did the bare minimum with implementation. Hell, they’ve had battleships for more than 3 years and the gameplay is still not good. Go even farter than that if you want and say we’ve had ships for 5(?) years and coastal things for longer and the gameplay is still overly basic, the maps are still terrible, and the UI is borderline unusable.
That and Gaijin has absolutely refuses to make any real changes in favor of adding useless fluff that makes 0 difference to anyone.
Missile ships, submarines (which would never be good), and aircraft carriers are just going to be a disaster because everything needed to make them work is beyond what Gaijin is willing to even attempt.
gonna dispute that, or at least partially
if you mean WW2 subs then outside of a specific mode like the Battle of the Atlantic mode, yeah they’d be useless. They have no speed submerged, and no ability to really run away.
But cold war diesel electric boats with dumb torpedoes/early wire guided/wake homing? Perhaps?
Nuclear Powered Boats? again, perhaps?
It’d need a significant rework of the UI, and stuff like Depth Charge Throwers/Mortars would need an actual implementation.
I mean they’re already a horrendous mess. Any match of EC shows that. It generally consists of Bravys and Douglases tossing missiles everywhere. If there’s none of those around, fine, it’s all good for the most part.
But as you say, Gaijin has thus far not been willing to demonstrate the will or ability to significantly rework naval for the better. Look at the HE rework. There’s plenty of ships still with armour gaps. Shot a Glorious with a Moffett the other day, near enough instant kill.
But Gaijin needs to rework the maps badly. Having any map where you’re within 10kms and have direct line of sight to an enemy is daft. I get its realistic that you’re going to have engagements with no cover, but you’d detect an enemy from much further away.
None of that stuff matters since there would be no counterplay.
“What about frigates with sonar and depth charges?” I hear you ask, to that I say, go ahead and take a frigate or destroyer into the center of any map at mid-to-top tiers.
Submerged submarines become an unkillable class of boat that, if lucky, could get upwards of a dozen kills with no way of anyone damaging it back. That doesn’t sound fun or fair.
That being said pre-Cold War submarines are literally not fast enough to go from spawn to the halfway point on a map before the match ends. Rendering them null and void as a feasible boat type.
Remember, Wargaming made them go 30 knots underwater and gave BBs ASW airstrikes for a reason. Submarines are not a viable naval combatant the way battleships, and destroyers are, they don’t belong in a game like this. And aren’t used as traditional warships, for a reason.
Modern and famous ones won’t make a difference. They will grind for those famous ships and never play the gamemode. Cause I’ll say it here, no matter what gamemode it is, War Thunder is extremely flawed. Due to many of these game modes not being beta-tested by the mass majority they writing their paragraph of issues.
To put it simply->Fixing the Gamemodes and Maps by asking for constructive criticism and beta the gamemode improved for the better. But until then the gamemode is gonna sadly remain as a mode that forces vehicles into roles they were not designed for. Rather than being a game mode that should have relied on teamwork. That is what Naval was. A massive board of chess.
I mean more like modern destroyes and cruisers, some could have helis on their helipad, it would be like late ww2 battleships that have small proppeler aircraft.