Principle of calculated risk comes to mind. Some people like to play "DID", meaning Dead Is Dead, restoring a save game after you get killed is cheating. I don't do that, but I usually play careers as realistic as possible - how would I do this in real life? He who chickens and runs away lives to chicken another day. In addition to my own precious heinie I got this expensive sub and all these other guys, recklessness is bad tactics. Got too few targets with too many escorts, let them pass, avoid contact, wait for an easier convoy with fewer escorts. In fact SOP at first contact report was to turn the stern to the contact and open the range until you figured out exactly what you were dealing with, then make the decision based on calculated risk before turning toward the intercept course.
Good tactics someplace like the Java Sea would be start a plot, drag out the course line as far as possible - then look for where his course line crosses deeper water. Choose your attack starting point according to depth, if it takes him a week to reach deep water then parallel his course until they reach the deeper water.
Of course with the SH4 game none of the necessity is simulated - the objective for a career mission is actually very minor, you get very little renown for completing a mission. The objectives are simplified too;
Patrol Java Sea mans go to the star and:
1. Stay for 48 hours OR
2. On reaching the star you get another message "sink enemy merchant shipping in Java Sea".
First one just requires reaching the star and waiting for the mission complete message, after that you can go anywhere, don't have to stay in that area.
Second one just requires sinking enough marus to add up to 10,000 tons, a single large tanker will do that, and the LOCATION, unlike real life, is actually irrelevant - it says sink merchies in Tokyo Bay and you motor off to sink them in the Sulu Sea instead, the game doesn't even notice that.
Actually doing any kind of attack in shallow water is completely unnecessary in this game.
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