[Heibges]

I think to make SH3 more "realistic" you would have contacts always spawn in relationship to the player.

You would have to make the engine management and fuel conservation a lot more complex.

If there was a percentage chance for such and such a contact, every such and such day, the captain who could keep his boat at sea the longest would find the most contacts. But also have to defend against the most dd's and air attacks.

Every area of the ocean would have it's own random encounter table, accurate for every month of the year of the entire war. The ocean might have 1 dozen regions, each with a table for every month of the War.

So south of Greenland you might have a 4% chance per day of finding a target in one month, and a 5.2% chance per day in another month.

But you would have to keep all this secret from the player.

It would eliminate the way surface search radar and hyrdophones get in the way of historical looking careers.

This would also eliminate "good" hunting areas. The Battle of the Atlantic was a game of cat and mouse. Convoy routes were adjusted due to uboat activity or intel, while Doenitz moved his boats if they encountered no activity. The fact that the same areas are good for hunting at the same time every time you play through the war, may be historically correct, but fails to represent the uncertaintly a captain had to deal with in wartime.