Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Excellent advice, and not something an old-timer like me would have thought of!

You're right. It's a game, and playing and failing is the best training there is, since we can't get hurt doing it. I have the advantage of having played sub sims since 1986, almost twenty years before SH3 was released. This means I had an idea of what was going on, and could jump right in.

But someone new has to learn from scratch, and the two best ways to do that are to ask questions here, and as Casey just said, try and try again until you understand what's going on.