GWX improves the damage model over the stock game so that you must sink a ship by flooding it, and that is accomplished through making holes in the hull. The orginal damage model of the game is FUBAR, using an arcadish damage model of hit points. You could sink a ship by repeatedly pounding the upper structure of the ship with your deck gun and when the magic number was reached she is destroyed. You could even hit the same exact spot repeatedly and get the same result. Very similar with torpedo damage: hit the same spot predictably and you get the snap in half thing over and over again ad nauseum. GWX requires you to sink ships by giving them negative buoyancy. Every ship can hold a certain amount of water without sinking, but flood a certain number of compartments and down she goes. Think of the Titanic and the illustration of an ice cube tray. GWX also adds a tremendous amount of uncertainty to ship sinkings. A ship can take many hours or even days to sink, or may take on a lethal seeming list but still sail on. You can never predictably calculate the number of torpedoes to sink any given ship. Last night I put two torpedoes into a 2000 ton ship and she sailed on; I assume she reached her destination as I was not going to waste any more torpedoes on it. In an earlier patrol, I had torpedoed a freighter for several hours and fired one more. As I watched the torpedo approach, the watch officer informed me she was sinking. Aaarrgghh! It happens and the uncertaintly will add what I call pucker factor to your game.
GWX also adds more ships and planes, environmental [eye candy] and sound [ear candy] effects, weapons and increases the deadliness of enemy ships and planes. [The modding community has also added a slew of mods to make GWX even better, as if that were even possible!] At the same time, the AI is not 100% deadly all the time. Depth charges do not have as large a damage radius as they did in the stock game, but at the same time the escorts have been tweaked to overcome some of the silliness of stock game. There are certain parameters that cannot be changed because of the hard coding of the game and Ubi has not released the game's source code, so that modders can only work on those aspects that are not locked, but still, they have vastly reworked the game. Some original bugs remain; you can work around these and they are not deal breakers.
Don't be intimidated by the 600+ page manual. Much of that is detailed specifications for just about everything. You can skim through it but read the pertinent parts in detail as there is much wisdom in there. And post questions; this is a great community and will help you. There really isn't a stupid question and we have all likely asked them at some point.
Wilkommen, Herr Kaleun!
