It can be very easily flipped around, then what you would need to do is get rid of the tail and sub circle icon, and change the nav-maps config file so that it goes into icon mode for every zoom but the highest zoom-in levels... It would work perfectly, except for two unimportant side effects: a) you would probably have to eliminate the tail from ALL the contacts. b) other sub contacts would also be invisible.
I would advise against it though... I think it's OK if you can look at your boat when zoomed realy realy far away. In my game I have it so that the sub appears on the map only when the zoom is so far out that the map is almost worldwide... I think this is good, because even the most incompetent of navigators can give you a rough guess of where you are (i.e.: "somewhere north of spain"). Even if you mark your position on the map when in such a large scale, when you zoom back in you'll find that your mark has a margin of error that can easily be a couple hundred kilometers... which is exactly the effect were looking for.
On the other hand, when you zoom in on the map, that's when the scale becomes more precise and meaningfull, and seing your sub at such scales would allow you to get a fix on your sub without any meaningfull margin of error (hence we make it invisible).
As to not seeing your boat in relation to the enemy boats when zoomed in... What enemy boats? The God's eye view should be turned off when you play hardcore
!!!
It's not such a big deal... you don't realy have to know where in the map your boat is, because the enemy's position is never given in relation to the map, but rather, it is always given to you in values relative to your subs position... It's vector mathematics: translations and rotations of your axis of reference have no impact on the firing solution. If your sub is stationary, just pick any random point in the map and mark it as your sub's position and the plot the enemy's position relative to that. If your sub is mobile... well, it get's a bit tricky, but you still don't need to know your exact position to figure out a firing solution.
If I have the time I'll post more about this later.