[swdw]

Yep, you'd need a war of some kind. Tailing a soviet alpha ( or a chinese type 93 these days) does not hold the same tension it does in real life. Neither does playing an agressor boat with your own people or getting close enough to the coast to pick up radio traffic for your onboard spooks. Just not the same . . .

Red Storm Rising was fun because you had to fight. Not many people toaday would buy into a US / Russian confrontation considering the condition of the Russian Navy. A fictional confrontation set in the past would not draw a whole lot of users. Nowadays you'd have to call it "Dragon rising", put it 20 years in the future against a Chinese fleet much larger than they have today. (And make no mistake, unless something changes, there will be a day we will be faced with this option. The Chinese are even more patient than the desert people, and they want Taiwan back- regardless of what they say publicly. They have been quoted as saying the biggest barrier to them moving into Taiwan is the US Navy. That one sentence explains their current building program.)