Commanders!
One of the most often discussed questions of Armored Warfare is that of it spotting
system and the way the spotting indicators work.
Indeed, it is one of the most complex systems of the game and can be difficult to understand.
In this guide, we’ll tell you more about how it works.
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Let’s get to it!
For starters, each vehicle has some spotting points that are used to discover the enemy.
At the same time, each vehicle has several spot check points that are used to define
whether your vehicle is spotted or not.
The way the spotting system works is at first glance relatively simple.
The game performs a spot check for your vehicle by drawing invisible spotting lines between
your spotting point and the enemy spot check points.
If all of these lines are blocked, for example by a building or a piece of terrain, the spot
check fails and your vehicle cannot spot the enemy.
But if one of these lines connects to an enemy spot check point, the enemy vehicle becomes
spotted.
Please note that the length of these spotting lines is not infinite.
It is affected by a large number of elements, including the view range of your vehicle,
your vehicle’s setup including module retrofit and skill choices, enemy vehicle camouflage
factor, terrain camouflage bonuses you or your enemies enjoy, your actions and partially
the mode you are currently playing.
If your vehicle gets spotted, a spotting indicator icon will appear in your HUD.
All vehicle classes have this indicator and it takes roughly two seconds for it to appear
from the exact moment you get spotted with the exception of the AFV class, which sees
it instantly.
It can appear in two colors.
The yellow icon means that an enemy is actively spotting you.
The grey icon is a bit more complex.
It means that even though your enemies can still see you, they are no longer spotting
you directly and you are about to disappear from their sights.
Without taking the smokescreen into account, which we’ll talk about a bit later, it takes
5 seconds for you to disappear from the moment you stop being actively spotted.
This mechanism was implemented in order to deal with the cases where vehicles vanish
into thin air in the middle of a battlefield, which is neither fun nor realistic.
As for the abovementioned parameters affecting spotting, viewrange determines how far your
vehicle can see.
It depends mostly on the class of the vehicle and its role on the battlefield.
On the other hand, camouflage is the exact opposite.
It determines by how much percent is the enemy viewrange reduced when it comes to your vehicle.
The higher the camouflage, the more difficult will your vehicle be to spot.
Its value also depends on the vehicle class and also its size.
Smaller vehicles typically have better camouflage values.
Your camouflage can be also affected by commander skills, modules, retrofits, visual customization
elements and some enemy vehicle abilities.
It is, however, the environment that has the biggest impact.
This includes the foliage.
At every moment, the game is calculating the effect of nearby trees or bushes on your camouflage
factor.
It’s all about their size.
The longer a spotting line intersection with a piece of foliage, the higher the camouflage
bonus will be.
Moving and firing your weapons also makes you considerably easier to spot.
Firing a weapon not only reduces the environmental camouflage bonus of nearby foliage, but also
your own camouflage factor for 5 seconds.
Any movement also carries a camouflage penalty, including simply turning your hull left or
right while standing on one spot.
On the other hand, traversing your turret does not affect your camouflage.
Please note that this penalty doesn’t kick in all at once.
It gradually increases with the duration of the action that causes it.
It’s also worth noting that some vehicle classes do not suffer from such penalties.
And last but not least you can always activate your smoke generators or pop smoke grenades,
which provide instant cover.
A smokescreen created this way acts as an invisible wall and will instantly interrupt
any spotting lines that pass through it.
In other words, deploying a wall of smoke between you and your enemy will make you immediately
disappear from his sight.
However, if there’s someone else spotting you and the smoke doesn’t interrupt that
line of sight as well, you’ll remain spotted.
Some very specific vehicles in the game have unique abilities that also affect spotting.
The PL-01 Light Tank has a special camouflage bonus when stationary, while the Shadow’s
Jammer ability reduces the enemy spotting abilities within a certain radius.
We hope this guide helped you to understand the basics of Armored Warfare’s spotting
system.
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See you on the battlefield!