Motivating Colonial Naval Gameplay

First things first, this assumes that the Devs will fix the scout plane and torp bomber problem.

How about if the devs just decided to buff the DD to make it strictly better. Something like 50% extra health or some equivalent survivability buff. That way colonials don't feel "scared" doing naval ops, and are given more wiggle room to test out what isn't and is a good naval engagement.

To me it seems the Colonials just need to create their own naval "meta". I think it would be infinitely more fun for Wardens if we had a competent and dangerous opponent for our Naval LARP.

And then after a couple of wars of proper Colonial Naval activity, they bring the DD back to parity. I think there would be no "shame" in giving them "training wheels" to strongly encourage them to engage with one theater of the war.

What do you guys think? Do you have a better idea how to motivate colonial naval play, other than balancing the blatantly op/unfun stuff?