Quote:
Originally Posted by CapnScurvy
Hold your horses when you want to bring up "historically accurate" game play!?
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In the words of Spock, slightly altered for the situation, "Historically accurate is a little bird which sits on your shoulder and tells lies."
No simulation will ever be historically accurate. History is the chaotic dance between adversaries with unlimited ability to act, react, innovate, stagnate, attack and defend. If we were to rewind the clock to December 7, 1941, the entire war would unfold differently. Is history "historically accurate?" No, it's just what happened to happen that time around. If we merely repeat the events, we are not historically accurate at all.
Every attempt to make any simulation "historically accurate" will result in comedy. If those in favor of historical accuracy were to have their way we would be reduced to watching a movie, not playing a simulation.
The grossest "unhistoricity" (hey I made up a word!) of the game is the way we tend to play the game. We extend cruises, reloading several times, when it was never done. We get 50,000 tons in a cruise and think we didn't do so well. Why can we rack up unhistorical tonnage when we're up against mostly escorted merchants? It's because we don't fear the enemy. The real submariners feared the Japanese ability to unleash torpedoes from just about any warship with incredible range and unknown accuracy. They spent a lot of time looking for torpedo tracks. We spend none, because we know the historical truth that Japanese warship torpedoes weren't used against individual targets very often, but against distant groups of ships in a statistical aiming fashion.
However, the real submariner behaved as though those torpedoes could at any times be accurately aimed at them from immense distances. That mindset limited their scores. It will also limit ours before our esteemed Capn is done!