Quote:
Originally Posted by frau kaleun
I play SH3 to enjoy the experience of playing SH3. As long as I'm enjoying myself, I *am* playing it properly. 
"100% realism" is an impossibility anyway. No matter how far I jacked up the realism options included with the stock game, no matter how many mods I added to increase it even more, I'd still be sitting in a comfy chair in my jammies staring into a computer monitor while pretending to command a u-boat. So AFAIK where anybody draws the "realism line" is a matter of personal preference. |
I'll echo this as my thoughts are pretty close to it. I am installing GWX3.0 this evening and starting my first career within in. Pretty excited actually, as I have heard nothing but good things.
I like simulations for their truth to history, or at least what we think to be history, but that is another thread!
I find myself doing things in the game that, while I know don't have any real effect on the game, a 'real' u-boat officer would probably do. Case in point, surfacing the boat. I'll go to periscope depth first, ease the scope up till it is just out of the water and have a 360 look for close contacts. After, I'll raise it the rest of the way, doing another 360, looking for distant contacts. Depending on weather or time of day, I'll do a 3rd 360 to scan the clouds for air contacts.
I know that the chance of getting ambushed on the surface because I didn't do a visual check is pretty low. The sonar operator would tell me if there were any contacts, but I play under the pre-tense that it is an imperfect machine manned my an imperfect person, both capable of mistakes; thus as a responsible officer, I will take the time to do a visual check each and every time I surface. Hell, today's modern nuclear boats do the same thing!
I am still learning manual targeting, so I let the Weapon's Office make my targeting solutions. However, I have no problems changing and tweaking them to try to put the torpedo into a different part of the ship, or to have it run shallow or deeper, etc, etc. I figure my own imperfections and lack of experience will offset the WO AI's perfect solution to give me something closer to a real life calculation.
But, there is only so far the simulation can go, only so much the AI is capable of doing. Shelling ships on the surface, for example. The target usually just keeps the same course and speed while I pump a few rounds into it. Might be different in GWX, but so far it is predictable. If I was a merchant captain and a u-boat was on the surfacing targeting me, I would zig zag all over the place, and most definitely plot a collision course to either drive him deep or sink him outright.