A longer fleet action on the Brick Sea
A fleet action used to be over about the time your destroyer had closed the range: five minutes, start to finish. And when the next round began, you were still wherever the last one left you. Both have changed.
Rounds long enough to fight
A side now needs 1,800 points to win a fleet action, not 600, and the clock's ceiling is half an hour. Most rounds now run about twelve minutes, and every one of them is still decided by points, sinkings and held waters, never by running out the clock.
That is long enough for a battle to have a middle. A Fletcher can make a torpedo run, slip away under its smoke and come back for another. A cruiser that loses the near anchorage early has time to bring the line round and take it back. An early loss no longer decides the round before you can answer it.
Every captain back to the dockyard
When a round ended, your ship used to sail straight on into the next one, wherever the bell had caught it: listing and afire under the enemy's guns, or far off on the wrong side of the map, while the enemy fleet put to sea fresh from its own waters. Now, when the next round deploys, every captain returns to the dockyard. The ship picker comes up with your last ship still selected. Hit SET SAIL straight away, with no wait, or pick a different hull for the new round.