Hi all. Here's my 2 cents.
Just spent about 3 hrs in the game. Did all tutorial missions and a couple of single ones.
First big problem ATM is that you can't order course/depth. There's only manual control which is great for dodging torpedoes but not so good for anything else. At least I didn't had any problems with surfacing the ship by accident (you can use ballast that's slower but much more precise). Still it is annoying and hopefully the devs will add direct orders in the future.
Second thing might not even be an issue with game, but I found that enemy torpedoes behave strangely. Let me explain. I was in a scenario against one Oscar and one Victor subs. We exchanged torpedoes and mine got them both first. At the end I was left with one fish after me. It was coming at me from the west, so I fired a decoy to the north and went south. The torpedo first went after me, but I fooled it with a noisemaker, which made it go in a circle and eventually lock on my decoy. But then when it reached the decoy it immediately turned around and started moving towards me (south) in a snake pattern. It all looked like it either remembered my last position (were torpedoes even programmed to do that?) or it looked like it was wire-guided (but all enemy subs were sunk ATM). Just felt strange.
Another thing I noticed regarding torpedoes is that the wire cuts off really easily. I don't mind when it sometimes happens at launch or after some hard manoeuvring but it happens even when I was at 10 knots, firing them straight ahead without any manoeuvrers. One time I fired 3 torpedoes like that (even went up to 150ft to see if that would help) and all of them were cut off at about 3000 yards.
But that sums up my problems with the game so far. And to be honest all of those things can either be fixed or even get used to if there's no other choice. And so far I think it's worth it. The game has a very strong RSR vibe with improvements in many areas. The combat is challenging even on normal difficulty. So far I've only been playing against enemy subs and on "normal" their tactics usually involves first spamming you with pings and then spamming you with torpedoes and running away at full speed (which actually is sometimes effective) since it takes a lot of time to loose torpedo for good (basically the only way to do that is to dodge it until it looses all fuel).
Also the presentation is very good. Graphics and especially explosions look really good and the models themselves are also great. The only thing they lack IMHO are little details like there's no model for towed sonar or torpedo wire. What also surprised me is the music which is quite good.
When it comes to realism, first let's get things straight - this is not a full on simulator but to be honest it doesn't pretend to be one. Just like the original RSR it's a war game with some simulation aspects. And honestly I'm satisfied with the thing they did. As everyone else is saying, the whole sound detection system is well simulated. Obviously we can't be certain what's simulated and what's RNG but I found that it feels like those TMS solutions really come from a lot of factors. Also there are lot of things that could be easily left out in a game, like a deadzone in the towed array detection range or different cavitation speeds at different depths. Things that seem obvious to someone who regularly plays DW but aren't really that obvious in a video game. There's also small touches like whales. One time at the start of a mission I discovered 5 contacts - 4 of them turned out to be whales (the all got killed by the stray torpedoes though
). Your crew is even good enough to provide TMA solutions if they move.
All in all, it looks like a very good and fun game with only a few flaws that can (hopefully) be fixed.
PS. Forgive bad grammar - it's 3:30 AM here and I'm too lazy to read through the entire thing again
