Sim or Arcade? My too successful patrol

[AS]

Hi all, just finished my first patrol and sadly I´m under the impression that SH4 appeals to the arcade and casual gamers, so here´s why:

started mission on Dec. 1941. Once I´d arrived near Japan my 25 day patrol went like this (without exceptions):

- from 6 a.m. to 22:00 there were planes spotted three or four times a day (please note I did NOT equipp any radar, they were all visual contacts, even when dark)

- contact reports every couple of hours (LOADS of traffic out there)

- ran into ships and convoys accidently every now and then. This and all the planes at day made it difficult to travel at all

- fired all my torps, NOT A SINGLE DUD, three misses (auto TDC)

- sank 5 merchants 30,000+ tons easily, auto shot one plane. Destroyers sometimes as near as 2000ft didn´t notice me or didn´t care at all. I didn´t take them seriously after my first experiences and started being careless, e.g. waiting for ships to sink at pericsope depth while destroyers were all around. I didn´t care, they didn´t notice, no matter whther I was rigged for silent running or reloading and doing stand and singing some songs with Bernard loudly farting...

I played at about 77% (auto TDC, free camera).

Now what I´ve seen so far seems pretty arcade to me. Some features are just ridiculous and beyond belief, e.g:

- all those planes never reaching me in time although they were sometimes only spotted at "medium range" and my GAR takes 80 seconds to dive

- no DUDS in 1941? Forget it! (and yes, I DID check the "dud torpedo" setting)

- blind, deaf and dumb destroyers...

- way too much traffic and too many radio reports. Historically, US skippers were not too successful and their individual tonnage was comparatively small. 20.000 tons on one patrol was considered a huge success, not mentioning the fact that they tended too vastly over-estimate the size and tons of enemy ships (see Padfield: U-Boat war). The tonnage I sank on my first patrol is way too high, and it didn´t take any serious calculating or submarine tactics. Just periscope depth, waiting for them to come, fire torps, bingo. Even with manual targeting it wouldn´t have been a real problem.

I guess there will be some kind of GWX mod some day. Until then, SH4 really seems very arcadish too me.

I still like the game for what it may be one day. However, I think it´ll take some tweaking...

Cheers, AS

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