I'm actually playing SH-5! Questions though.

[kapuhy]

Originally Posted by Singed

How "on rails" is the campaign, for example I'm doing (I think I remember right) NW Approaches and assigned a patrol area, I tagged 3 merchants in route, I'm halfway there and down to half of my torpedoes. Is it campaign breaking to just hang out where I am (which seems kind of rich), pick up a couple more merchants then head back to port?

TWOS includes Open Horizons mod which pretty much opens the campaign. You are not going to break campaign by not following capmaign objectives, these are fully optional now. How it works is, you can complete objective within its time frame to get some more renown, but if you don't, objective will deactivate when its time runs out and you will continue your patrol.

Originally Posted by Singed

Is the whole map active? Say instead of grid AMxx I decide to head down off the Canary Islands (DB?) like I might in SH3, any chance of targets? Will BdU be upset?

Yes, whole map should be active - from looking at campaign files, they include traffic in areas outside of campaign scope, so even if you, say, break out of Mediterranean to hunt some convoys in Atlantic, traffic should still be there.

What matters for BdU is tonnage, everything else is secondary. Completing patrol in assigned area nets you additional renown, but BdU will still be pleased if you choose to sail in opposite direction and find targets there.

Originally Posted by Singed

Finally: I saw in some posts (maybe right, maybe wrong) that upgrades from the VIIA to VIIB etc. are based on Rating but if I look at my Rating score after 3 patrols in KSD Commander it's 0.

No idea about this one, sorry, other than your renown possibly being affected by sinking neutrals.

[Singed]

Thank you sir! Quite a thorough response.