The problem I have with this Publisher is that there has been no learning curve with the release of each new version of the game.
The Devs have done their best and worked long, long hours on this series, but with one hand tied behind their back by Ubisoft.
I find it totally amazing that as I read through bug problems posts here, that you can pull up the posts from the initial weeks after the release of Silent Hunter III and Silent Hunter IV and find very similar, and in some cases exactly the same issues.
Ubisoft's policy has been to release an unfinished, buggy mess, and then rely on patches and mods to fix it.
Why do they do this? Easy. Money. It costs a lot more to pay a full Dev Team for the necessary amount of development time than it does to pay a full Dev Team for a period of development time that is at least six to nine months shorter than necessary, and then pay a small patch team to patch the game after release knowing that the game will also be modded.
The OP is just happy to have any game at all. But this time, many people have voted with their wallets. This game is not selling in anything like the hoped for numbers. If that signals the end of the Silent Hunter franchise, then so be it.
As for the OP's argument about who here could do a better job of building a subsim; that's like buying a new car that is the newest version of your current car, and when you take it back to the shop to ask them to fix the many things that are wrong with it, the guy at the shop says "Yeah well, you try making one".
I hope that the fiasco of Silent Hunter V sees the end of the franchise. I also hope that a real Publisher with ethics produces a WWII subsim in the future, and that they spend the time and money and do it right.
