Someone is a true born racer.
Someone is a gifted sniper.
Someone soaks up damage like Chuck Norris.
And someone is just… A WINNER IN LIFE!
But you don’t need to be that cool to play tanks well.
It’s enough to understand the game mechanics,
know how they work, and use this knowledge in battle.
I’ll talk about the mechanics, and the rest is up to you.
THE VISIBILITY SYSTEM.
A keystone.
The giant turtle that holds up the Earth.
You may not believe in it,
you may be surprised by it,
you may argue about it.
But whether you like it or not, it works.
And smart tankers have used its features
for their benefit for a long time.
Roughly speaking,
the visibility system in World of Tanks
can be divided into two, though inseparable, components:
concealment and view range.
Today we’ll talk about view range.
A little bit of theory to begin.
Our confidential informant will tell you about it.
Every tank in the game
has seven visibility checkpoints and two view range ports.
The latter are needed to spot enemy vehicles.
These ports emit virtual vision rays.
If these rays cross
the visibility checkpoints on the enemy vehicles,
then an enemy is spotted.
To understand the location of these points better,
imagine your favorite vehicle…
And now we’ll cover it with a box!
Turret location, gun length,
machine guns, and antennas don’t affect the box size.
Only the overall size of the vehicle’s physics model
is taken into account.
So, there’s a checkpoint right at the center of the box roof.
Two more checkpoints
are located at the front and at the back of the vehicle.
Another two are at the sides.
So that’s five.
The sixth point is on the gun mantlet,
and it’s aligned with the seventh.
As soon as the turret position changes, one of these points
moves together with the mantlet, and the other stays in place.
The upper checkpoint and the point on the gun mantlet
also function as view range ports.
Hey-hey-hey!
Easy!
Theory is good, but how do you use it in the battle?
Let’s see some specific examples.
You’re standing behind cover.
Allies are behind you, the enemy is ahead.
Some are asking you to light them up,
others are waiting for free damage.
In a situation like this, don’t try to spot the enemy this way
You’re exposing your checkpoint,
but your view ports are still behind cover.
You’ve got yourself spotted, but haven’t spotted the enemy.
And you’ve also taken a lot of damage.
This is how you should do it:
turn your turret and carefully try to spot the enemy
with your view port on the gun mantlet.
Your allies fire off, you save your HP, and receive a bonus for spotting.
Everyone is happy!
Another example: You don’t need to rush in
and spot the enemy first, it’s pretty risky.
Sure, you’ll see them, but you won’t last long.
To be a good scout and keep yourself safe,
you can stay on your side of the hill.
You just need to roll up the hill
and point your turret in the right direction.
The view range port in the gun base
will give you all the information, and you almost don’t risk anything.
Let’s move forward:
Two scouts are hiding in the bushes.
The first is spotting, and the other is…
The other is being spotted!
But, not for long.
That’s because it didn’t hide its checkpoint.
The first tank exposes its gun, machine gun, antenna,
and even the corners of the hull itself,
but it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that all checkpoints are covered.
It provides good spotting and is still intact.
See, that’s what knowing the game mechanics can do.
By the way, about the mechanics!
Vision rays are not endless.
The maximum view or spotting range is 445 meters,
and the maximum draw distance is 565 meters.
You need to understand the difference between these terms.
View range is the maximum distance at which you can spot the enemy,
and the draw distance is the maximum distance
at which you can see the vehicles in general.
Both allied vehicles,
and enemy vehicles spotted by your team.
Depending on the distance between vehicles,
the vision rays have different frequencies.
The highest frequency is at a distance of 120 meters.
The greater the distance between vehicles is,
the lower the frequency of rays will be.
And now let’s get some practice in!
There are three circles on your minimap.
The big circle shows the draw area,
the middle circle shows the maximum view range area,
and the small circle shows the current view range of your vehicle.
These are not JUST circles.
These are important game tools, and you need to use them!
Every time you shoot at the enemy
within the maximum view range circle,
you risk being spotted.
With all enraging consequences.
To shoot with impunity,
roll back out of the maximum view range circle.
The enemy won’t be able to spot you even theoretically.
But you can do some damage and save your HP.
But that’s not all.
If the enemy vehicle is so far away
that you can see it only on the minimap,
it doesn’t mean you’re out of play.
You can guestimate the direction of fire on the minimap.
To do so, use the pointer.
When the sector is defined,
you look through your sight at the most probable enemy location.
Fire… And bingo!
Isn’t that beautiful?
Of course, you won’t land a hit with every shot,
but I love Tanks for the moments like this one.
Also, remember one simple thing.
No tank in the game has a maxed out view range to begin with.
To be a really cool scout, you need to upgrade your ride.
This is down to you alone.
You choose for yourself
what to equip your vehicle with and how to train your crew.
DON’T SCREW IT UP!
Documentation shows the initial vehicle characteristics,
assuming that it’s manned
with a 100% trained crew without any additional skills and perks,
and there’s no equipment or consumables on the vehicle.
To improve your view range fully, you first need to equip your vehicle
with Coated Optics or Binocular Telescope.
In some cases, you can mount both.
But keep in mind,
bonuses from these pieces of equipment are not totaled.
When stationary, you get an additional 25% to your view range,
in motion—10%.
Secondly, you need to train your crew,
Especially, your Commander.
Every additional 1 percent
of the Commander’s major qualification
improves the vehicle view range by 0.43%.
To enhance the main qualification,
you need to equip your vehicle with Ventilation,
the national food or drink consumable,
and train your crew with the Brothers-in-Arms perk.
Also, it would be good
to train the Commander with the Recon skill,
and the Radio Operator with the Situational Awareness skill.
And don’t forget about Sixth Sense.
This is one of your main allies in the battle.
If the enemy spots your vehicle,
you’ll receive the alert about it in 3 seconds.
Ignoring it will make your trip to the Garage arrive sooner.
This is all well and good,
but sometimes three seconds is too long!
And you also have your brain, not just the light bulb!
So use it!
If you feel you might have been spotted,
don’t wait for the light bulb,
roll back to a safe place beforehand!
Your crew won’t exactly say “thank you”,
but their gratitude will certainly show itself later on.
Remember that if your Commander is injured,
their Sixth Sense doesn’t work,
and your vision range drops by half.
In this case, any enemy will “out-scout” you,
so don’t even try to spot them, the result is pretty obvious.
When the tank is equipped
with all the necessary equipment and consumables,
when the crew is trained, the numbers say
that the vehicle view range can exceed 500 meters!
But the maximum view range in the game is…445.
So why do you need all those skills, equipment, and consumables?
It seems that you can just raise it to the maximum and stop.
But things aren’t that simple.
Let’s do a small experiment:
Let’s take two scouts, identical at first glance.
But the view range of the first one is 445 meters,
and the second scout has a view range of 507 m.
There are several enemy vehicles behind the hill.
The first scout rolls out and shows us four tanks.
Well, not bad.
Now let’s see how many vehicles the second scout will spot?
Wow, it’s just amazing!
It lit them up like a Christmas tree!
Ten!
TEN VEHICLES!
And it’s not a bug or an accident!
That’s the tank’s improved view range!
Every extra meter of the view range is very useful.
It sees straight through the enemy’s camouflage.
To reinforce its importance, let’s do another experiment.
Let’s take the same scouts and put them on the Airfield map.
The crew isn’t trained with Camouflage,
and there’s no camo on the tank either.
So, neither have any advantage in concealment,
everything depends purely on their view range.
Now let the tanks move towards each other,
and we’ll see what distance they get each other in their sights.
The RU 251, with a view range of 507 meters,
spots the enemy at 427 meters.
And its opponent hasn’t seen anyone yet.
And only now, after the precious seconds are gone,
it’s finally spotted.
The rangefinder shows 375 meters.
But why is that?
Shouldn’t it be 445?
That’s because every vehicle in the game
also has concealment parameters, not just a view range.
The vehicle’s concealment is affected by the vehicle type,
size, and presence of special equipment and consumables.
Vehicle concealment gets worse when firing and on the move.
But we’ll tell you about that in the next episode.
And that’s all for today.
Use these mechanics and win more!