No, scripts are not really necessary indeed, however there are ports like La Spezia (Italy) where you wish you have a good script for it because the error margin to go out manually is very small
In the meantime, I have started at other ports (also La Spezia) and the Trevally 3.1 scripts will work fine, except the Kiel 'Outbound Skagerrak' where I crash. The Kiel canal instead works great and I can even go high TC.
The 'Automation Scripts for Stock Game' in the list above come from TWoS, then I load the Trevally 3.1 harbor scripts to overwrite. Doing so I will keep all attack/evasion scripts, but I have yet to see if they work in this setup.