I couldnt agree with you more.
U-boat, in its present condition, is far ahead of where other sub-sims were at this
stage of development when they came onto the scene.
The beauty of U-boat is in its damage control and crew management.
these are all things we have had to do in the past
But, we have evolved...
the above method of damage control is a highly automated system where,
mostly, you just click on the damaged compartment and wait for the timer
to count down to zero; flooding never really was a super big deal. If a
destoryer holed your boat, you could have most damage repaired and
flooding contained within 3 or 4 minutes in game. As for crew management.
just move a crewman symbol from one compartment to another via drag
and drop and you will never see him in a physical 3-d environment.
I mean he is there as 0s and 1s doing his "job" but since most preceding
subsims had you confined to the command room, youd never see him
anyhow, so what difference does it make.
now we have evolved:
U-boat gives you the entire boat. And all of the crew management can be
done from First person view, or third person cut away view (which is frankly
the easier way to do it)... so now we have
this.
guys... its the same thing. only now your entire u-boat is alive, sailors have
on duty and off duty tasks they perform. the whole boat is alive.
and when a plane, or destroyer holes your boat... you have problems.
Flooding can be catastrophic. Batteries can make the air in a compartment toxic,
you have to shut down the power to various compartments when not vital so you
can prolong battery life during a lengthy depth charging session.
We have gone from this stoic sailor with a cast iron will to serve...
and we have graduated up to an entire boat of sailors and officers, with unique
and varied personalities. some will turn out to be truly brave gray wolves.. others
will panic during a depth charge attack when silence is everything and you cannot
have a man screaming for help and you have to calm him down or literally
strangle him out.
dont want that sort on your boat? when you get back to port, remove him from
your crew and replace him with another after reading his personnel file.
if you went through the history of subsim and put together a wish list of what
everyone wanted in a Subsim... U-boat has tried, with a modest amount of
success, to incorporate the entire wishlist or most of it, into a single game.
personally, i think U-boat is going to be an absolute rock star in another year.