I think the torpcom fixes what I believe to be an unbalanced sea.
Ok, so this is a rock-paper-scissors RTS. On land, no matter what, in early game, the enemy will make something that you don't have the correct units for. This is where your com helps because he can usually kill whatever early units are sent (including light air attacks). So even noobs, who guessed wrong and picked rock when the enemy picked paper, are able to survive because the com equalizes the difference.
Sea fucks over new players for a variety of reasons:
1)Everything is EXPENSIVE. You usually only have enough metal to build 2 units before conflict starts. If you build riots and the enemy rushed a sub, you lose. If you went subs and the enemy built a torp frigate, you lose. If you did everything right vs sea enemy and someone sends air, you lose (why is there no cheap AA unit?!?). I hate playing sea because I know against good players, even if I play well, I may just pick the wrong unit type and lose in the first 5 minutes.
One way to fix this would be to make sea units cheaper so that if you make the wrong initial choices, you can counter with the correct units more quickly. I know that everyone is pretty happy with sea balance in terms of cost though, so that will not happen.
Torpcom sort of balances this out. He allows you to compush like a landcom while also supplementing your forces in case you get caught without sub protection. He wouldn't make subs useless, but he would sort of blur the hard edge of the R-P-S system. Ideally, he would be able to take out 1 sub on his own, but 2 subs could kill him.