My question is why do we have to judge the game from a historical perspective so far as enemy ship dispositions go? Why, when we go to investigate the Battle of Midway, for instance, does the exact reenactment of the conflict (within the limitations of the game to render it) become our yardstick for "I don't even know where to start it was so bad. The thing that really got to me was the stock campaigns historical battles."
Don't you realize that when you play like that you are so unrealistic that you have rendered Silent Hunter 4 something from Capcom Games? Not one submariner in the war left port looking for the Battle of the Coral Sea. The ones that did get deployed in fleet support, in 1944 during the Battle of the Philipines, accomplished next to nothing.
The reason for that is that they did not know what to expect, where. They didn't have an enemy timeline with course and position on their map so they could go intercept the troop landings on Guadalcanal. The fact is most of the time they had no idea what they would encounter in the patrol area assigned.
Why, THAT'S JUST LIKE THE STOCK GAME that you think stinks so bad! It stinks so bad because it doesn't allow you to cheat and take a God's eye view of the war. It stinks because you can't take a simulation and make it into Frogger.
Reality ain't predictable, any more than insanity is. By demanding rationality in a simulation we are demanding to play an arcade game. If we really want a simulator, it has to simulate the state of mind of the actual participants in WWII, not knowing.Not knowing where the enemy was
- Not knowing whether they would encounter lone merchies or heavily escorted convoys
- Not knowing where they were likely to encounter capital ships
- Not knowing the length, tonnage, armament, height or cargo of targets
- Not being able to identify the vast majority of targets encountered
- Not knowing whether they would return or not
Simulation does not consist of an exact recreation of the war as it transpired. It simulates participating in the unknown. If it were to happen again with the same assets, entirely different battles would be fought. A different list of submarines would not return. A different list of targets would be sunk at different places.
Think about it! What you expect out of the game is the exact opposite of simulation. You seek an exact reproduction of a chaotic series of events. But when you do it is not chaotic any more. You've amputated the soul of the simulation.