I hope I can explain this properly. In stock SH3 'Map Contact Updates' does cost a large chunk of 'Realism', but it also gives a huge amount of information that no real captain could ever have.

NYGM (I know GWX was mentioned but this is important)...NYGM intentionally changed the 'Realism' loss to zero because it included the Assisted Plotting Mod. This mod removed all automatic updates anyway, and replaced them with a believable amount of information. It gave you a blank map which would reveal all the ships you could see, but only one at a time when you passed the cursor over them. Even then you would only see a circle with the tag 'Unknown', unless you had specifically targetted that ship with the periscope or UZO, then the information would appear with the targetted circle. Also, hydrophone contacts no longer had a solid line that ended at the exact distance of the target; they now were dotted lines that went all the way to the edge of the map. The NYGM devs felt that this was the truly realistic way to go, so they made 'Map Contact Updates' cost zero 'Realism'. I agree.

I have no idea what method is used in GWX, since I can't currently play. If it includes 'Assisted Plotting Mod' as described here then it really shouldn't cost anything. If not, then you're right, it should cost something.

Like Sailor Steve said:
I think the assisted plotting mod is the best answer to this problem of too much info. I hope somebody makes it GWX friendly by the time I try GWX at the end of the month.

The other option I may try is turning map updates off and just estimating everything from my eyeball and firing spreads. This would certainly cut down on the high tonnages we are seeing.

I don't know about anyone else, but I play with external camera on (for screenshots and eye candy; the graphics are amazing and a delight to watch at times) and manual torpedo off. All my intercepts and calculations I do myself. Granted, it was still early years for my one patrol (SEP40 -JUL41) but I still managed to sink just under 361,000 tonnes before being transferred to train.

I'm sure running with map updates off will cut down on high tonnage, but that's also not needed to have decent patrols either. If you really want to trim down the 'fat' :p go to full manual targeting. Now that's a challenge!

I always do full manual targeting. I never miss.

I never miss because I setup my solutions with the data that I plot using the assisted plotting mod.

with the no map contact update thing checked do you still get ship updates on the map with no information or do you get nothing and are just lucky if a ship or convoy shows up?

i play on 100% realism, manual targeting and all that crap but ive never had the "cajones" to do the no map update thing. :-?

Schkpf :-j

To Scheisskopf:
I already wrote this somewhere else but I have to ask again: what the heck is Tzyczkchevczyhevi??:o

a ridiculously long name that i came up with for a hometown in slovakia

im acutally from the US, but im only a 3rd generation american and my family is strongly slovakian. that town/village name actually is a close spelling of the town/village where my ancestors lived before they came here, but i just added a bunch of c's and z's to make it look funny and really long, plus i wanted to see if anyone really noticed it

but now that everyone knows, im changing it to my real hometown, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

take mesto nepoznam.
I dont know such town.

Well, as stated you can always change the realism values to what you feel is approrpiate.

Why did GWX not penalize more on no map contact updates? I can only guess, but i beleive the general theme was to make the game accessiable to everyone. To strike a balance between realism and gameplay, always a precarious proposition as there are many definitions for those terms.

Not necessarily. I've never used the contact updates and I still manage to sink as much as 175k, 104k and current 104k + 9 torps left with my IXB. :) But that needs tons of patience, caution and precise plotting.

Yes, you still get the radio reports from time to time, about ships, convoys and task forces.

Bo nie ma takiego miasta. :)
Cause there is not such a city.