Good news!
On a partly related note, in the last months (but I should better say in the last few years), I have been elaborating my own ideas on German - especially Ubootwaffe - engagement rules. If you check uboat.net's list of ships attacked/sunk by German U-boats during WWII, you will notice that many neutral or even Axis vessels were attacked not only by mistake, but because they had broken some of these rules. The list comprises ships of the following nations: Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Vichy France, Sweden, Brazil and USA (before Pearl Harbor), but those are just the first nations that come to my mind; the list could be longer.
As a consequence of my research, I think that SH5's nations and national rosters should be revised. For many of the neutral and for few of the German-friendly nations featured in game, we should have 'allied clones'. This is something I did in part when I first setup OH's defsides.cfg, but then I don't think that those cloned nations (in the said file I used the 'Free' prefix to distinguish them) were used the way I had thought them, and some of them weren't even given any ship in their roster.
To help the player distinguishing 'true' neutral/friendly vessels from the one belonging to the corresponding 'Free' nations (that will fly the same flag), the latter should be given one or more of the following features:
- not bringing any national identification mark (merchant ensign and/or neutrality markings);
- being armed;
- sailing at night without lights;
- sailing within an Allied convoy and/or being escorted by Allied escorts;
- being obviously bound for a British port or for British waters.
In case of doubt, the player could surface his boat, approach the suspect vessel, and judge her stance from her reaction (just like real U-boat captains did, especially at the beginning of the conflict). Zigzagging, repentine changes of speed/course, attempts to ram the surface boat or SOS messages would give away her hostile nature. Another help to the player might come from a set of campaign messages, warning him on any switch of sides by one of the featured nations, and giving him instructions and clues on the possible presence of "fake friends" and blockade runners within a certain area and/or from a certain date.
Most of the points I have listed above will require some changes in the traffic layers. If you are willing to bring them, I am ready to expand further my idea and to provide you with all the information and support you will need. I realize that the changes I am proposing involve a laborious work, but together with the increasing target variety, I think they have the potential of bringing the realism of SH5 to the next level
