I'd have to disagree... shure, you need to have acces to information in order for the game to be playable, but I wish that they woud develope the 3D world of the inside of the sub more instead of coming up with alternate GUIs.
Let me explain what I mean: You should be the captain, and you shouldn't have to do every single little thing for yourself... rather, you should WALK AROUND INSIDE your sub talking to various sailors and/or officers and telling them what to do. A myriad of keyboard-shortcut commands should also let you "shout" orders (or have them relayed by others) so that you don't actually have to be right next to the sailor in question for you to order him to do something. Furthermore, your officers and sailors should audibly report to you on EVERYTHING that you need to know in order to command the sub. Also, an option of clicking on a sailor or officer to have him "step away and let you do things hands-on" would be nice, specially for stuff like Sonar, Radar, Damage Control, Standing watch, and such.
That to me would give the ultimate "you're right there inside the sub" experience, and not some abstract GUI interface, which, allthough very convenient and practical (and easy to program) it only serves to remind you that your just playing a game.
To further clarify mi point, let me just say this last thing: I play SHIII almost completely in Nav-map view, with the periscope or bridge view only used for firing torpedoes after all the real work of setting up the attack has been allready done. On the other hand, "Control room" view is the least used of all views, basically because there is no real incentive to use it... This totaly kills any sense of immersion for me, and seriously, I want to play differentely, but right now, game play issues and the way the game is built FORCE me to play this way.... please Ubi, fix this
