[CCIP]

I agree, and certainly my own ideal wishes are also for a hardcore sim. But I also recognize both the necessity and real value in making the game appeal to non-hardcore users. I wouldn't be here today if I hadn't played Silent Service 2 with my dad as a 9-year-old. And I think it's having to negotiate that balance between different audiences + time/money constraints that have caused several compromises here that the hardcore players will never fully accept. So, mods will have to do.

I just finished a full play-through of 1939-1945 in OM with 100% realism and several realism-oriented house rules, so I know what a hardcore subsim experience is like and why it's good. I realize it'll be a bit before I can get that from SH5. On the other hand some features of SH5 already have me jumping for joy, while the game itself is already fairly enjoyable. For better or worse, the hardcore experience is something that the hardcore community has to take into its' own hands. It's just not marketable enough for ubi. But when you look far enough into the game, past the (sometimes iffy) surface presentation, what you will find is that the devs have done MANY key code changes that will serve us well in the long run and will hugely benefit realism.

Let this game prove itself and keep a reality check on your expectations. That's all I'm saying. By all means, as a die-hard's U-boat game, SHIII+GWX and SHIV+OM are still the benchmarks. But those benchmarks were achieved with probably several times the combined labour and time that it took to develop each of these games (SHIII/IV/V). So I think it's an unfair comparison for an out-of-the box title.