Tips for Gunning and Aiming
By Yurra
When you’re first learning a ship’s ballistics (or you’re already experienced but are unsure how the target is moving), fire a single turret in order to get a general idea of the flight time at that particular range and enemy ship’s speed, and adjust the rest of your volley accordingly.
Ballistics usually consistently change throughout a branch, going from floatier to faster shells – what this means is you can usually carry your muscle memory over to the next ship in the branch with little adjustment.
Predicting enemy movements is one of the basic skills you have to master when it comes to aiming – some basic rules of thumb are that the enemy is most likely to dodge volleys from BBs or ships with otherwise high alpha damage by turning away from you, or into you in case they are moving towards you at any angle.
When shooting targets that are likely to dodge, take into account both their direction in a turn as well as slowing down (turning lowers a ship’s current speed by some 15-20%) – give less lead and adjust your elevation higher when shooting targets that are likely to turn away, and adjust your elevation lower when shooting targets that are likely to turn in.
Some better players may also accelerate or decelerate based on their speed and course, which you will have to take into account when leading – if a player appears to dodge your first volley by using acceleration or deceleration, expect them to do it again.
In order to counteract this, shoot 1 turret or half of your volley, then shoot the rest when the enemy commits to a manoeuvre.
Aiming behind islands is a bit trickier because you can’t see where exactly you’re aiming on the enemy ship which may reduce your damage or make you completely whiff your shot – in order to help yourself with this, enlarge your minimap and pay attention to the aim point circle on the minimap – you want your aim point to be a tiny bit on the opposite side of the enemy ship’s icon if you want to hit their upper belt and deck armour.
With AP shells, you aim at the parts of the armour that you can penetrate, but are at the same time not too thin (and would, as such, yield overpenetrations) – this depends on your ship type and shell penetration.
With BBs, fire AP at enemy BB upper belts or, if they’re close enough to citadel, main belts (slightly above the waterline); if an enemy BB is bow-in, look for parts of armour that you can overmatch (prioritise bow and stern plating over superstructures if you can overmatch these parts).
With cruisers, you need to know what kind of armour your particular cruiser can penetrate – usually, against BBs, shoot the upper side armour because you will not penetrate their lower sides, and you will have to learn the ranges your AP is effective at by experience (usually 15 km and less for CA, 10 km and less for CL, exceptions apply). Against most CAs and CLs, you will be able to penetrate main belts under 15 km, sometimes even at higher ranges.
With DDs, aim at upper belts you can penetrate (this usually does not include Italian, German BBs, SOyuz and Kremlin who have too thick upper belts for DD AP).
With HE shells, aim at upper belts, decks and superstructures that you can penetrate (you will have to learn which ship sections you can penetrate with HE shells of different calibres; some branches like all the German ones, British CAs and IJN 100 mm armed DDs have improved HE penetration).
With SAP shells, similar principles apply as HE shells except you also have to mind the enemy ship’s angling – if they are too angled to penetrate, aim at their superstructure or swap to HE if you have it available.
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