well said, OakGroove!
To be honest- allmost all of you, gentlemen, are very experienced virtual skippers with tons of knowledge about submarine warfare.
Now if ubi want to make a game that sells good, they just can't rely on your expectations. The average ehm "simulation" player want a submarine shooter with amazing graphics and as few thinking as possible. Indirecty that has been stated by the devs and I'm not suprised about it. This sim has great potential and the modders will hopefully by able to to a second GWPacific :) out of it, but to make such a realistic and comprehensive stock sim just isn't in ubi's interest.
only my 50cent :)
greets

Thats exactly what I'm talking about. Us sub simmers know all of the tricks from playing Gato on up. We expect enemy AI to challenge us more with every new release. I'm playing in 43 know, does anyone have any indication if the 44 - 45 destroyers are any better.

If you want a challenge, play it on 100% realism and DiD (dead is dead -- no loading previous saves). The net patrol tonnage at the end may well be a little more in line with what was experienced historically. While auto TDC and auto map updates and such may be fun, you definitely end up with an arcade shooter.

I think "manual TDC" is generally over-emphasised on this forum. Please believe me I read lots of literature about U-Boat and submarine war, and I haven´t found one single passage that said: "Now the tricky thing was to estimate range and speed. Were the settings right? Damn, we just couldn´t figure how fast that ship was..."

The simple truth is: experince and the "I´m actually here" factor made it comparatively easy to estimate a target´s position, speed etc. Speed could be calculated by the sonar man counting the turn arounds of the screw. The rest could be seen. Compare it to a slowly moving car while you want to cross the street. You just know when it would hit you, and you "feel" whether it runs at 30mph or at 50mph... I guess hitting a 4000 ton ship at 1500m in real life isn´t such a challenge... if you ever have been on a ship seeing other ships you know what I mean.

On the other hand, map contacts are regarded as cheating. Well, it´s the other way round if you aks me. US commanders sometimes plotted their course and engaged their targets based on the information the MAP gave them while someone else was watching via the periscope---


Just my two cents, Cheers,

AS

i tried the dead is dead thing and i got destroyed by airplanes at night before i even got beyond the line of islands SE of japan. also..depth charges destroy you from 20m or more? i could barely see the splosions and i died