My major issue with ASW in SH4 is that I don't get attacked enough.
The leathality I agree is too high. What I want is to be attacked more, but sunk by it less.
Reading Silent Victory again, the boats were prosecuted a lot. Many were held down for really long times—yet came back to tell of the DC attack. It's usually: fire torpedos, go deep, get DCed. The DC attacks are ultimately ineffective in the large majority of cases, but none the less also result in damage a decent % of the time. Many of the attacks occur over substantial time periods. I also read of periscopes being attacked, etc. What this does is to force the player to behave in a more realistic way. If I am not concerned about my scope EVER being seen, I'm less likely to minimize my observations. Sure, I can try and play realistically anyway, but I'd perfer that the game punish me if I don't, or allow the possibility that I might do something risky and get a payoff instead of doing something that should be risky, but never is in game.
BTW, when aiming for realistic outcomes (something I agree with 100%!), there are a couple confounding factors with using historical loss rates as a benchmark.
One, I'm willing to bet that every single RFB player would have been considered "aggressive" by his bosses. Timid skippers were a continuing problem in RL. A better loss per patrol ratio might be had by comparing losses to patrols that made sinkings. Sure the average was ~1 sinking per patrol, but what tended to happen was a few boats would have multiple sinkings, and others would have none.
Two, patrol locations. In RL, many of the patrols were sent places where the enemy wasn't, and/or where the ASW assets were in force. RL skippers were probably more likely to make a hole in the water faced with concerted ASW patrols than we are.
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