What I really miss in Cold Waters

[Skyhigh]

It is pretty much perfect (okay, apart from that it's a bit too easy to kill off Surface Groups in 1984) but what I really really miss is the following:

Looking for contacts.

I know the game is geared to be a skipper and a skipper doesn't look at the sonar data.

But in DW I really loved looking at the sonar screen, moving the cursor around until you saw some sound data popping up. In a barrier search you'd travel down the barrier, stopping every now and then, looking around... That noise spike, is that a contact? Let's head closer. No it's not. Continue down the barrier.
New noise spike! Is that it? Ah it's a merchant.

Etc. etc.

That part of the stalking I miss, really.

[-Pv-]

Yes, with a 12 mile maximum engagement range, the game is somewhat more geared to a more casual or new sub warfare player leaning toward instant gratification. Even then, players with children are mentioning the game as is, difficult to play to a wining scenario in a short time since as with most war games, bad stuff happens while time is accelerated.
DW was definitely geared toward hard core players with its detailed sensor UI and complex engagement variables.

Perhaps realistic and above difficulty settings could include forcing engagement range to random which has the possibility of maximum out to 20 miles with briefing always having last contact heading. Barreling into a blind fight which is heading away from you or strait at you has its own game balancing issues some might object to.

With KF working on adding friendly vessels to the game in a future patch might make these shorter ranges more interesting and less predictable.

As far as difficulty, the community needs to assess if the diff sliders work appropriately. Is the max setting not hard enough?

Personally, even though I have 37 years experience playing sub games, in two weeks of playing I'm still finding realistic challenging enough. Some engagements are easy and some are very hard. That seems to me to be indicative of good play balance where not every engagement should be nearly impossible so average players are encouraged to look forward to winning once in a while and the hard earned techniques they've learned so far actually reward by working while exploits for the sure win every time are at a minimum.

For me, the adventure is part of the appeal of the game while some hard core players are looking more for the sure win exploits.
-Pv-

[Hitman]

It souldn't be so difficult to increase the engagement range and drop TC further away from a potential contact if the player wants. Would make for a final approach to target with more suspense

[-Pv-]

^^^
... at the risk you'll find nothing at all despite considerable effort. If there are only subs, you'll not have periscope, radar or ECM for assistance. They'll be quiet and gone gone gone. While they are running quiet and you are using max speed to discovery range, you'll be at disadvantage while they seemingly pop out of nowhere.

One potential avenue of research would be to load one of the surface engagement missions and purposely move away to see at what point all sensor contact is lost beyond recovery and set the limit to that as an option with 24K still being the default.
-Pv-

[Skyhigh]

I was just talking about the Narrowband Display really, not about ranges.

Right now sonar contacts are handed on a platter. You dont have to do anything about it.
With Narrowband display you have to look around for them. Is more interesting.

[-Pv-]

My impression is the game designers had a goal of the sensors being simpler to operate than DW.
-Pv-