Yeah, I find it to be a very chill game to waste away the hours on the words and the visuals. It's like reading a really long CYOA story, to the gentle sound of lapping waves, wrapped in a velvet cloak of darkness. What little action there is, is ok but not spectacular. (Although the new animations and sounds for combat are way better than they were even a couple months ago.)
And if you want a non-cheesy way to approach combat...just turn off your lights, keep the target at the edge of your range and reverse/advance as necessary to keep them in range of your guns or out of range of their awareness. At a certain distance guys know they're being shot in the back but they can't find you without a) your lights b) you being in a light buoy or c) you inside their automatic detection range. They turn kind of erratically without just spinning in a circle to look for you, so if you're good with the throttle you can just follow them blasting away until they're dead. It requires a little skill and finesse, things can still go wrong, they do occasionally do an about-face to look for you, and you gain terror (at a rate that's probably not advisable for new players.) It may have its inefficiencies and things can still go wrong, but I find it better than just exploiting their pathfinding, and more profitable than just taking the hits. Sunless Sea Stalking ftw.
Also, people report that your turning speed is directly tied to your FPS and I think I can verify that. On my old machine SS ran well and my ship was reasonably fleet on the water. On my new machine....I can achieve a shockingly tight turn at full throttle, something I knew I couldn't do in the old game. So exploiting the AI by just rolling up on it isn't necessarily possible for all people.