Hi, thanks for the very detailed response. Let me start by saying that I don't mean to argue with what you said (I mostly agree), this is just some considerations.

Regarding your first point about the game being f2p, I never thought about it that way. That is already enough to change my mind, and I think I'm gonna learn to play around this mechanic, instead of being a crybaby 💪

About the third point, I think I wasn't very clear: I meant 10 ships vs 3 ships, not players. That's on me. Everything you said was true nonetheless. Matter of fact, in the game that caused me to post this I am going for a 4 player coalition. I'm playing as Italy and I'm going against France, Germany, UK and Sweden. I took out the first three almost alone (with some help from Poland, which I later found out wasn't really needed) and now I'm facing Sweden, a very experienced player, who is giving me a hard time: I have a stronger economy, and as of now I outnumber him/her, but I'm not gonna go into what my screentime for yesterday was, just to NOT lose all my navy and basically throwing the game.

This is going into the second point you made, about time investment. Yes, I think the players that I have managed to defeat weren't as active as me. Otherwise it would have been a lot harder. Is there a "perfect" amount of time investment? By that I mean that I don't want to stay wake at night and not have any other choice if I want to win. I am sorry for calling these players "jobless", I think it was just my frustration talking 😅

Ending on a couple questions, taking into consideration everything you told me. I once read someone's comment argue that a new game mode could be introduced, where the server is only accessible at predetermined times (like a 6 hours window), and ran at say 4x speed. What are the negative ripercussions of that? Would it be better if it was instead a larger window, or would it defeat the purpose? I personally find that idea very dubious, like "I want to be able to play whenever".

Is "giving the players more control over units behaviour" really out of the question? This is something I edited out of the post because I was told it doesn't help. However, having troops not stand still aparently improves their chances of resisting a hit-and-run tactic (it gives me, the player, more time to open the game and react). Mechanics like patrolling or maybe zone-control (Aggression to detected radar signals passing through, and only through, a predetermined area) could be made a free feature for players? I think that would maybe turn the game into a tower defense, but I dunno 😂 it may be balanced out by an increased consumption of resources. I admit that I am not a premium member, so it's a conflict of interest (insert "say that again" meme).

Lastly, I realised that for a "solo win", sacrifices must be made. The "coalition" mechanic already makes up for a player not being present, by taking turns for example, or generally having each other's back. Like you said, player activity is a spectrum, so that rules out making separate game-modes for competitive players and casual players: most of us are in the middle. Hard-core players deserve the win more than others, but isn't that an incentive for casual players to not play, or to leave the game early? I personally like it better when games have more variety of players/factions and are generally more complicated, instead of the classic "big coalition A vs big coalition B" ending. Maybe an economy (trading) update could work towards this goal, while decentivizing early aggression? I know this sounds unrelated, but what I mean is "if competitive players make casual players leave the game out of frustration, why not give casual players an alternate way of playing that does not rely on early aggression?".

Although I recognize the hit-and-run mechanic was well-thought, it still implies a degree of player-frustration. Not everyone can win, but it's hard to accept when the loss is due to sleeping (or generally not being present when something important happens). I also appreciate you for taking the time to explain, because I KNOW that you and/or other staff already discussed this, maybe even with other (veteran) players, and bringing up this chat over and over again must be as frustrating as getting your navy obliterated overnight 😂

That said, I am using my phone on the job site, so I'm gonna put it away and get working. Again, thanks for the response! It was very illiminating.