It is completely ridiculous and frankly it takes away all the desire to play in that mode that practically EVERY battle with coastal ships from BR 3.3 onwards you have to face basically entire teams of destroyers and even cruisers, it makes no sense and only shows a total abandonment by the developers of those game modes.
Furthermore, developing the units is almost impossible since you are only going to face and with great luck a single coastal unit of the rival team, generally a bot, with that nonsense, what sense did it make to separate the branches between blue water and coastal ships?
For me, battles with coastal ships are great fun, especially in that BR region. It is well populated and there are costals that can face early destroyers (frigates).
And if you face entire teams of destroyers at 3.3, you will win. First you take the coastal caps with a small boat, then you defend them with frigates and planes.
If you use frigates, all their destroyers are belonging to you.
The main point of dividing the trees was to generate more reasons to buy stuff like premiums and talismans. And to allow people to start with destroyers.
Just create a lineup with two boats, two frigates and a plane or two. If the enemy has boats, play your boats if you wish to develop them. If there are no red boats, cap and then use frigates.
The issue is that its a cause of compression as well. You’re crunching a lot of coastal ships in the 1.0 to 3.3 range where a 0.3 br gap will mean a huge difference in crew, gun caliber, or gun amount. I don’t want to fight DDs in a sub chaser that only has 40mms at best, and even frigates with multiple 76mms are questionable at best against a DD from 3.3, let alone 4.0 and higher.
Secondly rewards are getting demolished by having top end coastal face bottom end bluewater. the coastal grind is bad enough as it is with how hard some of these boats have their match ups but when you have DDs that take so much more punishment but give a fraction of the reward, its not really worth it.
Lastly, some of these coastal ships are definitely not coastal material. Basically all the Frigates are way too high for their BRs against bluewater, but too low for their BRs against coastal. They carry a suite of stuff that CAN be brought out into high tier coastal but should not be exclusively be located at coastal trees due to the compression of coastal trees and the gap in performance with bluewater vessels.
[Solution]
You can have frigates require reaching a certain rank with BOTH bluewater and coastal to unlock (like what helicopters require)
Split current naval game mode into bluewater and coastal game modes as well as giving separate BRs for such modes (best option)
I take the frigate over the 3.3 destroyer anytime. At equal BR, I prefer the frigate. I have taken out all DDs from my frigate lineups. Even the economy says, frigates earn better.
Stating the obvious: Not all ships are meant for the same purpose.
What? It is a party! Your rewards are low if your sub chasers toast a low BR dinky but if your 3.x frigates demolish reserve destroyers, you get full pay.
I can’t even relate to your problems. Frigates start at DD spawns. They basically find match conditions much like destroyers. If something is working out well at the moment, then it is top tier coastal.
You need to have vessels that are able to cope with different threats.
Most coastal patrol boats >BR 3.7 are not much good against blue water , but are lethal against other coastal - so mix up your lineups.
If you don’t want to use blue-water vessels then that’s your choice - another option if to use reserve or low-level PT boats so you aren’t paying so much when they die - but their torpedoes are just as lethal.
And if that doesn’t suit you then you’re just SOOL.