[Chromatix]

I voted "Other" since my position on this is very nuanced. Bear in mind that I'm coming at this from a *primarily* single-player perspective, so I'm looking for the greatest immersion and utility in that mode and thinking less of PvP.

I'm in favour of a concept where each major function of the boat is handled by a crew, and players can take over a position from the AI crew. This implies that the AI crew should have realistically human performance in their handling of each position, so that a human player can perform better if skilled, and worse if unskilled.

A single player would necessarily take the commanding role (except perhaps for focused tutorial missions), and will be directly in charge of an attack. He should therefore have a very quick and easy way to give straightforward commands for the rest of the crew (AI or otherwise) to carry out, and for that purpose a set of UI icons similar to Silent Hunter's would make a lot of sense. These would set explicit goals for the crew to work towards, either by an explicit, realistic telegraph instrument (as for engine commands) or a virtual "bug" superimposed on the real one, backed up by a voice repeater.

Voice commands basically work for commanding players, but even this gets a bit cacophonic (without established military phraseology and discipline) and would probably prove unreliable for commanding AI crew.

When not in the attacking phase, a single player will often wish to attend to different stations himself, eg. listening to a sonar contact to verify or supplement the sonarman's analysis, or going over the charts with the navigator. Also, a multi-crewed boat may be shorthanded, requiring players to change stations regularly for maximum operational efficiency.

For this purpose, being able to walk around the sub step by step is sufficient, but potentially tedious. At the same time, adding the ability to teleport between stations instantly is a little too unrealistic. Instead, buttons which pathfind the player directly to an operating position at a normal pace for the situation (cruising, action, or silent) would probably work well, without causing a major imbalance.

But the quick command icons are the essential feature. I don't see any other way to reliably command an AI crew.