[BigWalleye]

Hey, it's your game. You can play it any way you want, as long as you have fun. THAT is the most important thing.

But your choice is not the only one. And, for anyone who wants to learn how to make accurate observations, it is not impossible, it is done by many players, and there are tools to help do it.

As for realism, after a point the question is not "What is realistic?" but "What you do want to simulate?" Is it more realistic to have a God-like omniscient plotting party or to have the Approach Officer do all the plotting? The correct answer is "No." That's why I did not use the word "realism" in my post. But it is possible to play it either way, and many players enjoy each alternative.

There are posters on this site who like to play at 50% difficulty, and have a ball doing it. It would be wrong to suggest that they are not playing the game the way it is supposed to be played. But it would be equally wrong to suggest that playing a 100% difficulty is either impossibly challenging or less historically accurate than playing at 50%.

I wouldn't want a new player, who has read accounts of careful, cold-blooded stalking approaches, to become turned off because he read on SubSim that the game only allows hip-shots and that the way he wants to play is impossible.