I believe that there is a general consensus in the RTW community that the series' greatest failing is the player's lack of control over the use and roles of his ships. Every turn, the battle generator presents the player with a random type of battle, with a maximum of one battle per sea zone per turn. The player is told how many ships he will be given of each type, but not which ships or ship classes; each battle therefore begins with a game of chance, as the player never knows how capable his forces will be when choosing to accept or decline an engagement. The order of battle is auto - generated for each battle, and there are no permanent units; the only decision the player gets to make about which ships will show up in which battles is where to place these ships on the strategic map.
The most obvious pitfall of this state of affairs is that, while the game offers infinite potential in the designing of ships and the construction of one's fleet, there is very little strategic depth within the wars themselves; the player's role in war is almost purely tactical, and thus a lot of potential for compelling game play is lost. :
There are numerous other related problems. Perhaps the biggest complaint of the community regarding this issue is its perverse influence on the side of the game that is most fleshed out: ship design. As the player has no control over how his ships will be used other than their type and their position on the map, there is a strong incentive to make very general - purpose designs capable of handling whatever the battle generator is liable to throw at them. More specialised designs such as dedicated torpedo boats, torpedo boat destroyers, and anti - aircraft ships are far less viable than they would otherwise be. Moreover, the implementation is shoddy: the auto - generated order of battle will often mix up ships of different speeds, when it would have been possible to group them together; older 'battlecruisers' will be assigned to the scouting force while newer 'battleships' of equal or greater speed are left behind, and so on. These problems may indeed be difficult to automate satisfactorily, but they would be avoided entirely if control was given to the player. This would certainly not be difficult to do, since RTW has already done it - players can fully customise their order of battle, but only within fleet exercises and not actual war.
The main argument I have heard in favour of this way of doing things is challenge: it is said that historically warships were often used for purposes other than those for which they were intended. The individuals who designed the ships and built the fleets were not the same people who dictated wartime strategy and doctrine. There is some truth to this, but I think it is a weak argument. First of all, the very same argument could be made to justify removing tactical control from the player. Second, I would argue that the primary reason for the divergence between theory and practice in the real world was not misunderstanding between the designers and the commanders, but the general and pervasive disorder of wartime conditions, which always dictates some level of improvisation and adaptation. The player may find that he does not have enough ships in a given region for each to exclusively perform its intended role; ships may be present but in the yard for maintenance or repairs, or there may be multiple pressing tasks which must be performed simultaneously, forcing the player to either stretch his forces thinly or accept a strategic loss through inaction. In my view, the way to represent these historical realities in game is to represent them, not to rob the player of strategic choices in order to create artificial challenges. To me, the design decision to inform the player of the type - but not the class - of the ships available for any given battle is the most egregious example of a purely artificial barrier, as there is no conceivable situation in which a real commander would have to roll the strategic dice in this manner.
I believe that the ideal solution would be to give the player full discretion over the organisation of forces both at the tactical and the strategic level, and to give the player greater operational control than the arbitrary random battle generator of RTW, planning and executing operations while the enemy does the same. However, this is the most taxing solution, both for the player and the developers.
One compromise which has been floated on the RTW forums is a task force 'editor'; the battle generator is retained, but instead of being free to organise and dispose of his forces as he sees fit, the player is presented with a list of ships available for a given battle, and is then free to organise them. This preserves the dubious advantage of arbitrarily and semi - randomly forcing difficult situations on the player.
Various other alternatives might be considered, and of course all of this depends on decisions which have presumably already been made but not yet disclosed regarding the design of the campaign. I hope the community may use this thread to debate the merits of the potential solutions, and to encourage this game's wonderfully responsive team to avoid the fatal flaw of their competition.
I've really enjoyed the game so far, although I was only able to play for one session - the second time I tried to load it up, I couldn't get it to start by any means. Oh well - that sort of thing is only to be expected, so I'll try a clean install, and file a bug report if that doesn't work. My one suggestion so far is that you add an option to toggle tracers. I, for one, believe they're an excellent gameplay tool; in RTW, I resorted to meticulously copying ship's logs into spreadsheets in order to determine the probability of belt and deck hits for various guns at various ranges, and in this game all of that information is presented to me visually. However, I think it would be nice to have the option to turn them off for a more cinematic experience, since that cinematic experience was, for me, this game's biggest selling point, and the one that makes it really stand out from the crowd.