[Sailor Steve]

A little of the background of Silent Hunter III: The original SH was a game about American subs in the Pacific, and was rather free-form but with some quirks that made it interesting...and frustrating. SH II was more in line with a "shooter" game. You would have a mission that never altered. Die on the mission and you had to do it over again. Fail to sink the proper ships or tonnage and you would have to do it over again. Very frustrating. When they were leaking things about SH III they hinted that the "Campaign" would be like SH II's but more advanced. At that point there was a huge hue-and-cry here and on the UBIsoft forums about how we didn't want that; what we wanted was a fully random campaign like the one in Aces Of The Deep. Finally the Developers took a poll and then announced that the were going to do as we asked, though it would delay release by six months. We were fine with that and we finally got SH III. The "Patrol the grid area for 24 hours" thing was a holdover from the earlier plan. In the stock game you receive renown for staying there the whole day, but after that you are free to go do what you want. I always stick around for a week and then roll a die to see if I move to an adjacent grid or stick around for a second week. I also sometimes have empty patrols, but that's just me. You really are free to play pretty much any way you like.

When you say you discovered that neutral ships also show up as red, do you mean that when you sank them the game took renown away from you? Because that is what happens when you sink a neutral. Try sinking a ship marked in red and then check to see if you gain or lose renown. That will tell you for sure if the game thought it was neutral or enemy. Also there are ways to adjust what the game thinks about the ships you sink. More on that later if you're interested.

No, your game isn't bugged. That's the way SH III works. Yes, you can shoot anything you like. You won't be court-martialed or even reprimanded. The game isn't that sophisticated. It awards or removes renown depending on your actions, but that's about it. There are mods that alter enemy traffic to more realistic levels, and most of the supermods change it so the traffic is more limited to the areas actually covered in real life. There are dozens of ways to change the game to it's more realistic, or less, depending on what you like. A lot of players don't even bother to go to the assigned patrol area, figuring that they'll earn more renown by going straight to their favorite hunting grounds rather than hanging out for a day.

As for language, yes, SubSim does have some rather restrictive rules. The simplest thing at any forum is to go to the FAQ and Rules section linked at the top of every page. It should tell you anything you need to know. If you have any questions you can always ask myself or Jimbuna for a quick explanation.