There are some very fascinating and exciting ideas in here.
I think the next step for the Silent Hunter franchise has to be an expansion into a wider depth of play. Over four games we've seen a pretty good coverage of the Pacific and Atlantic Theatre of operations, for a World War II sim there's not much else to go... Other than the implementation of new playable nations, the long wanted ability to take a surface command, wider range of subs, and the continuation of a varied dynamic campaign missions (such as previously mentioned retrieval of the inflitration operatives you help deploy).
It would be very exciting to be able to not only re-enact a U.S. Silent Service career in any theatre and/or sector historically availible, but to also be able to perhaps enter service into a different navy, say the Imperial Japanese Navy or Kriegsmarine sub forces. The problem I see with that is, looking at Silent Hunter IV, we have a roughly 4GB game. My guess is that in order to expand a game to such a capacity would mean bumping it up to maybe anywhere .5-2 times that amount. Granted, I'd get it anyways.
I'd like to see some innovation in the multiplayer department.
Perhaps something that would enable players to at least interact and affect each other's games on a Career scale. I think communities like Wolves at War (which I participate in) would love and benefit for such an idea. You can network with a number of other players and while maybe the connection might not neccesarily allow you to directly play with each other your actions can influence another person's campaign.
For instance Player A and Player B are playing their own respective careers, but they match up in starting dates and such. Player A comes in contact with a large convoy at position X. He puts out an ingame contact report. Since Player A and B are playing similar timelined campaigns and are networked to each other, the next time Player B logs into his campaign he recieves a contact report outling information that was reported by Player A. Player B intercepts the same convoy and comes upon a scene where several ships are damaged, etc. noting Player A's attack. Player B commences he own attack and so forth. Perhaps, the computer places a working allied subermarine in the area to represent the other player.
I don't think that's an idea that would be possible with this current game, but maybe an idea for future games.
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