[Hitman]

My two gripes compared to AOD are:

(1) The patrol maps are convenient, but they also mean that you cannot stay with convoy for days and days. The maps are just too small for that.

That's true, but after reading Silent Victory and O'Kane's both clear the bridge and wahoo, I must say that US boats rarely tried to stay with a convoy. It was more of an "intercept and kill" way of attacking.

(2) There was a serious over abundance of enemy traffic.

Agree completely. However, if you stay away from the map except for plotting your course you only will see what your crew spots.

The root of the problem is that SH1 version 1.0 had only a 256x time compression hence small maps and pretty overcrowded were the way to provide reasonable gameplay. When later patches kicked the game to 2048x, overabundance of targets and small patrol areas became more evident.

Two of the reasons I rate the SH1 AI not as challenging compared to the AOD AI are:

(1) You can knock out destroyers on attack runs at PD with a stern tube. This is virtually impossible in AOD. Destroyers are fast small maneuverable ships. They are not the ideal target for dumb weapons which require static solutions.

That's correct in my opinion, though you also must remember that indeed japanese destroyers were far larger and less maneuverable than british counterparts. Japanese DDs were largely authentic fleet destroyers, and not merely sub-hunters. Many US skippers frequently mistaked japanese DDs for light cruisers because of their size.

Japan didn't really bother start building true convoy escorts until it was too late; either they sent larger fleet destroyers or small gunboats to escort their merchants until 1944. When many of the first ones were sunk, they started to build smaller and cheaper destroyer-escorts.

also like how AOD gives you two critical resources to manage: battery and compressed air.

Wasn't that also in SH1? I recall having seen both the Co2/oxygen and of course the battery gauge