Hello,
apart from the speed with which you conduct your attack, your situation awareness is much better, as soon as you dive you only have a quickly degrading mental picture.
What is wrong in the sim - in my opinion - is that you are spotted too early by merchants and warships. They really did not see you without radar, destroyers were passed at 200 m without being spotted - later in the war the warships detected you on radar, but not if you were within 1200 m, the radar was not able to see anything below this distance. You had a good chance of manoeuvering away, destroyers were spotted long before they saw you. It is how Mr. Oesten wrote: the simulations (even AOD) are more difficult than it really was.
In calm seas and full moon a surface attack would be impossible until a cloud shielded the moon and you would instantly go in, but in any other condition no one would see the small barrel of your conning tower.
Additionally later in the war when the merchants were fitted with guns, there is no evidence that a merchant's gun EVER hit a U-boat. OK, U-boats would not take the risk to attack an armed merchant surfaced later in the war, but i have heard of no incident that those guns ever hit anything. In the game merchant's guns hit my boat after the first three shots
Realism does not mean making a simulator more difficult than it really was - at least for me.
Greetings,
Catfish