[Sailor Steve]

I hope I can explain this properly. In stock SH3 'Map Contact Updates' does cost a large chunk of 'Realism', but it also gives a huge amount of information that no real captain could ever have.

NYGM (I know GWX was mentioned but this is important)...NYGM intentionally changed the 'Realism' loss to zero because it included the Assisted Plotting Mod. This mod removed all automatic updates anyway, and replaced them with a believable amount of information. It gave you a blank map which would reveal all the ships you could see, but only one at a time when you passed the cursor over them. Even then you would only see a circle with the tag 'Unknown', unless you had specifically targetted that ship with the periscope or UZO, then the information would appear with the targetted circle. Also, hydrophone contacts no longer had a solid line that ended at the exact distance of the target; they now were dotted lines that went all the way to the edge of the map. The NYGM devs felt that this was the truly realistic way to go, so they made 'Map Contact Updates' cost zero 'Realism'. I agree.

I have no idea what method is used in GWX, since I can't currently play. If it includes 'Assisted Plotting Mod' as described here then it really shouldn't cost anything. If not, then you're right, it should cost something.