Completely new to Silent Hunter

Hey guys I just bought Silent Hunter 5 on Uplay and installed it. I made sure it was patched to 1.2. I installed the Wolves of Steel megamod. I'm pretty sure I installed it correctly. Anyways, this is my first Silent Hunter game and I'm really overwhelmed. I'm not sure how to do anything really. I read the official game manual.

I was going to try and play vanilla, but I read that vanilla was horrible. I'm not currently running Real Navigation because that sounds even more complex. What difficulty should I be playing my first campaign on? Is there a way to make torpedo attacking more automated and less confusing? How do I select a mission when in the bunker at the beginning? Are there certain abilities that I should avoid because they're broken?

Also, the Wolves of Steel mod thread says something about having to start a campaign, skip the tutorial, and when in the bunker save and reload. What is that about?