Are you planning some kind of long-rage radar, or a map, or something?

I’m just trying to grasp the game mechanics from the player’s perspective. I mean, with the game mechanics as described, the player doesn’t know about a nearby ship or a plane before it arrives on the player’s screen, by which time they “see” the sub already. Being submerged so as to avoid detection wouldn’t work either because you’re basically blind and can march right into a destroyer… So there’s absolutely no incentive to get surfaced (yes, you can see further, but anybody you see sees you at the same time and the hidden alert counter is increased), submerging is only useful to avoid an imminent threat such as a torpedo or a destroyer attack, and you basically spend the whole game on the periscope depth and pray that you don’t get spotted by a plane that you don’t even see coming?