Most of the issues you have stem from the fact that since Pacific Fleet was and is a popular game, we didn't want to change the basic game too much. And there's just so much you can add to the turnbased format before the turns start taking forever. Had we allowed firing of all batteries in each turn the battles would probably have taken twice as long. And the bigger ones already take up to an hour to complete.
The ships all have radar because we decided to model them according to their late war refits (1942-43). Mainly because they just look better that way. Searchlights were left out for technical reasons.
The distances are scaled down because at realistic distances, the salvos would take up to a minute to arrive on target. In a realtime game this is not an issue but in a turnbased setting it would make combat so slow as to be unplayable.
Perhaps the smoke is too effective, but then again it has to be because in a turnbased setting you can take all the time in the world to aim a perfect shot at a target with no regard for lead angle. A more traditional game would have just used dicerolls with a negative modifier for smoke and the rest would be up to chance. However in this game you can can use the map to figure out the range so in fact you don't lose the range plot.
If you look at the tactical map after a battle the plot tends to look a lot like the real thing from WW2 in terms of movement. To me that suggests the game does pretty good at depicting reality.
I think if you're going in expecting Silent Hunter or Steel Beasts you are going to be disappointed because the game is more like an old-school 1/1250 miniatures game but with realistic ballistics and awesome explosions and a dynamic campaign engine.
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