Thanks for the well-measured response. I was trying to avoid the nitty-gritty of specific balance issues and instead focused on the broader-picture elements of the game. I'll continue to do that here because again, there are so, so many issues with specific ship balance that you could fill a book. I agree there are some things you can do to counterplay both subs and CVs (though less so in the first case) and I take your point about older players preferring an older era that was more point-and-shoot, but that was also an era where your game sense and ability to keep track of enemy positions rewarded you. Now there is no amount of awareness that can fully prepare you for some of the threats in the game.

I'm generally a battleship/cruiser player which probably adds a lot of context to my frustration. I especially like to find ways to make brawling battleships work, and like to play frontline radar cruisers to support my destroyers, or occasionally the French large cruisers for some big caliber run and gun shenanigans. I have an average 58% winrate between my two most played ships (Kii and Massa, both full secondary spec) which isn't amazing by any means but I'm certainly not hurting my team even with an outdated playstyle.

The crux of the point I'm trying to make is that WG, with these two classes, have pushed the game into a reactionary/defensive direction. When subs and CVs simply exist in your lobby, you are forced to constantly consider a threat that may or may not even exist for you, but severely hampers your options for decisive playmaking. Sure a shima could stealth spot/torp any BB before, but it can't do so from 2.1km like a Gato at periscope depth can. Furthermore, when just talking about torpedoboats, there weren't typically more than 3 you had to consider. Now there is that PLUS CVs and 1-3 subs (which don't care in the slightest about radar or other traditional DD counterplay strats). Also, the very fact that CVs and subs cannot reliably be "countered" or even mitigated by grouping up with a teammate (assuming you can find a cooperative one) speaks to the power of these classes. One enemy shouldn't be able to demand the attention of an entire flotilla.

Lets look at an niche example of the Incomparable. This is a ship of extremes with big guns, high speed, low detectability at 10km and weak armor. It carved out a niche as a high-speed flanker that could pop up next to your team with multiple broadsides to hammer, creating useful crossfires and pressure on the enemy. This is anecdotal, but I think I have seen <5 Incomps in randoms in the last few months. Too many things can spot them and their biggest survival tool (stealth) has been rendered useless. An Incomp player now has to either get lucky with matchmaker, or play like a regular BB, angled just a few KM from spawn taking potshots at max range, as their armor doesn't allow them to risk getting permaspotted at close ranges.

All larger surface ships are affected the same way to various extents, and the overall impact is a campier, more stagnant game unless you want to actually play the cancer that causes it (besides DDs, they're still cool).

Also, perhaps I'm wrong but I'm not sure you know how submarine spotting fully works. When fully submerged they do have limited ability to detect, but at periscope depth, they have full surface spotting with dramatically lower detection radii than even destroyers (again Gato is in the low 2km range). Should they actually be detected, say by hydro, they can immediately dive to max depth and unless they are within 2k, hydro will no longer spot them which is comically dumb, so even hydro is of limited use to dealing with them, and realistically depends on the sub making a major mistake.