Bumping this thread since RTW2 has a large expansion coming (hopefully soon) that adds a lot of neat stuff. To summarize, although I probably am missing some stuff:
-Modern naval combat in the cold-war era
-Helicopters, jets, and night flight ops
-Expansion to function of submarines, such as missile subs, and long-range attack subs
-Missiles! Although RTW2 has them in some limited amount, the expansion aims to flesh them out fully
-Ironclads and a longer pre-dreadnought era (hence the name "Ironclads to Missile Cruisers")
-AI nation alliances and wars
All in all, I've gotta say I'm pretty excited for these developments. Since the game is venturing into cold-war era it will also be interesting to see how they handle nuclear deterrence and if that's modeled in the game at all. If you're a nuclear power in the game it would probably be expected by your government that the navy put a certain amount of income into building ballistic missile submarines. Dunno about nuclear propulsion but there is going to be gas-turbine propulsion added as well.
Threads for reference:
https://nws-online.proboards.com/post/80732/threadhttps://nws-online.proboards.com/post/80645/threadAll in all I believe Shadow Empire is also supposed to have a naval DLC coming around December 2021, so this should be an exciting time for naval wargaming. If there was a game that combined the naval depth of RTW2 and the excellent land campaigns of Shadow Empire I would be a very happy but unproductive camper