Silent Hunter 3

Probably the most underrated stealth game that only me and 50 year old boomers play. One of the greatest naval games.

    The gameplay loop is that of a cat and mouse game where you are both the cat and mouse under different circumstances. You either stalk and sink cargo ships or are being hunted by destroyers. 

    Convoys are the juiciest targets because all ships in a convoy sail on the same heading with the same speed meaning your torpedo solution applies to all ships in a convoy so you only have to calculate it once and if you did it right you might score 4 or 5 ships. But convoys are escorted by warships that will hunt your ass for hours so launch your torpedoes and dive deep. Clench your sweet buttcheeks because this game turns into a horror as the u-boat's hull groans horrendously under the immense pressure of the deep blue ocean, deafening sonar hitting your ship and splashes in the water are heard above as depth charges are being thrown. This one time a depth charge detonated above me and it rammed my boat, nose first, right into the seabed. I'm not even going to mention all the times when depth charges caused heavy flooding and having to watch my boat slowly sink deeper until the pressure implodes it.

Hiding sides saves lives

      Historically, during the early period of WW2 the typical tactic German U-boats employed were night time surface attacks. It allows greater situational awareness and maneuverability. U-Boats are not like modern submarines, they are fairly slow while submerged which makes interceptions hard. U-Boat captains used to do the same thing I'm doing here - minimizing my visual profile.

     Now this is one of the many awesome gameplay designs that makes stealth so organic and I'm not sure if there are any other games that do this: Concealing your silhouette matters a lot. Your U-boat is much more visible from the side than from the front or back. This applies both on surface AND underwater as enemy sonar pings have a slimmer profile to bounce from if your bow or stern is directly facing the warship pinging you. There are a few other factors affecting visibility: weather, fog, the Sun lol, the phases of the moon, even the aurora up in the northern hemisphere. It also matters if the Sun/moon is behind or in front of you.

     Overcast clouds, 5:53AM. Approaching at a 40 degree angle means my bow is always facing the target, minimizing my visual profile. This is early in the war when submarine detection is at its weakest so you can sneak up really close on cargo ships.

EDIT: I don't know how to make the pics bigger on blogs so just right click > open image in new tab to see them at full resolution

My view compared to their view of my U-boat

You'll have to open the image in a new tab to see me but I'm that dot in the orange circle. I immediately submerged after taking the screenshots because I'm pretty sure I was very close to being detected.

Torpedo impact:

And she's going down

Another victory for the Kriegsmarine o7