One thing I think holding up subs is the tier they will be placed at, counter play, future proofing, and relative game play. One thing subs could end up being is a way to get people to rage quit because a sub hunted them or sub players rage quitting from having there WW1 uboat curb stomped by a cold war escort boat. Future proofing will be the issue of cold war naval game play being basically air battle crossed with SAM game play but wet. Being a sub might only get you one kill per match which is not great.
Future top tier will likely be a mix of missile ships, aircraft carriers and subs but who hunts who in this trinity will be a question.
If it’s going to be by tree, I assume we’re going to have “big 3s” + Japan first, the rest after, but considering how long they’ve spent on developping it and the balancing issues they encountered, having all trees at once remains a possibility
Where having one of the on and off Devblog season so something is taking time or big is happening. Maybe Japan is getting a addition to the sub tree for ground Indonesian vehicles do love to float.
I really don’t have much hope for subs or carriers, and to be fair, they take forever to develop and might be cancelled due to certain constraints. However, I think quality of life updates for naval EC, things such as night battles and thick fogs, would make smaller boats more survivable. Heftier waves and ship roll should be introduced on the larger open-water parts of the map to throw off aiming.
This would really force battleships to move closer into calmer/shallow waters for stability, making them vulnerable to torps, limiting their devastation where PT boats, minelayers, and destroyers dominate.
Part of the reason why mines should’ve never been tweaked to despawn in EC after 15 minutes, it defeats the purpose of harbour defence. Sure, it only makes sense for this to happen in Arcade, but why ruin the rest of the modes just to fix a problem that’s only relevant in Arcade?
Why night naval EC maps? Just check this out… How cool is that?
Also horn, ship foghorns are so important in low visibility conditions!! And to incentivise players to use these features, collision damage should be set to 1000% make it like the Titanic if someone recklessly hit another ship, a shoal, a rock, or an iceberg. The larger the ship, the heftier the damage.