I love this idea. To be honest buying this, even though I knew that battles were separate instances, I was secretly hoping that at one point the game might offer something similar to what the silent hunter series offered for single player: a big map where you could go around exploring and doing missions and where you'd randomly encounter other ships. This would be my dream
I see that this might be not as good for pvp since newer players will just get overrun after they leave a port but in single player this would be amazing