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Welcome, to my guide about game mechanics, just to help you guys new to the game, most if not all mechanics will be mentioned here!
Number 1: Sixth Sense/spotting
This is usually the first thing a new player sees, sixth sense is a notice to tell you that you have been spotted by an enemy teammate, it appears in the forms of a light bulb and a small "ping" sound. (no, your crew doesn't have a cunning plan), this makes you visible to EVERY enemy team mate. If you are the first person spotted, this usually results in a hailstorm of shells hitting your tank, so if you do get spotted, try and dash to cover so you don't die prematurely. However, sixth sense also lets you know that there are enemy tanks that can see where you are, so you can use that to roughly know what route the enemies have taken.
Number 2: Camo
Camo is why you don't get spotted, maximum spotting distance is hindered by camo rating. if you had zero camo rating, you would be spotted instantly by everyone if you're in their maximum spotting distance (how far they can see, NOT DRAW DISTANCE (how far your game can render a tank)) Camo rating is usually affected by size, however, movement and firing your weapon removes some of your camo rating for a small while. For instance, let's take a StuG III G - a very stealthy machine - and put it next to a Maus - the biggest, heaviest tank in the game - if both tanks are right next to each other, you will ALWAYS see the Maus first, because it has a relatively poor camo rating, put the StuG in a bush and tell it not to move or fire, it is nearly invisible because of the bush combined with the excellent camo rating. You can also purchase camouflage schemes for your tanks, not only do some of these look real cool but they also provide a small buff to camo rating, for heavies, it is 2%, mediums and lights its 3% and for tank destroyers its 4%. Make use of your camo rating in conjunction with bushes in order to not be seen, not being seen means not being shot at, which means not dying immediately.
Side Note: Light Tanks have a special mechanic in which even if they move, they do not lose their camo rating
Number 3: Crew skill
Crew skill is how well your crew know how to work the tank you are currently , the more percentage of crew skill a tank has, the better it will perform, this includes reload speed, repair speed, aiming time, and view distance, these can be boosted by provisions and equipment (improved vent and nation specific food and drink) in battle, if a crew member gets knocked out, their effective crew skill gets set to 0%, , meaning if people like your loader get killed then you have a serious rate of fire loss, if the gunner gets knocked out then your accuracy will be god-awful, also you lose a lot of turret traverse speed which can seriously screw up your day if you didn't bring a med kit or a glorious multipurpose kit, if all your crew get knocked out, you can no longer control your tank as there are no combat-effective crew to take over roles and you are considered dead on the battlefield, just with less explosion
Crew skills are also important, 100% crews can train specific skills for a tank such as negating the negative effects of damaged modules, fire extinguishing speed, module repair speed, hull traverse speed, and more.
Number 4: Module Damage
Modules are what make your tank work, like your engine, tracks, fuel and ammo, if these get hit, they get damaged, or worse, destroyed, if anything gets damaged (turns yellow on the HUD below the health bar) it will work at 50% reliability, with the exception of tracks and view ports, which just tell you that it may break soon, if the engine gets damaged, you slow down to half your top speed and half traverse speed, fuel hit? more likely to be set afire by following shots, gun hit? Your accuracy is severely reduced, ammo?, twice as much reload speed.
Then those modules get destroyed, tracks? You can't move, view ports? You cannot see, gun? You can't shoot, engine? you cannot move, again, fuel? You set alight instantly, Ammo? Instant death, 1 hit kill, game over. The effects of module damage can be greatly reduced by the robustness skill, and repair speed can be increased by the repairs skill and buying a tool kit, overall modules protection can be aided by the protective kit provision.
Number 5: Penetration
Penetration is quite simple, if the penetration number exceeds the armour number, it will penetrate, however, angled and sloped armour increase the effectiveness of the armour and make shells harder to penetrate, the best example is side scraping, where you park behind a building, and reverse until you can see an enemy on the other side, they can only shoot at your very heavily angled side armour, an almost indefinite bounce, since HE and HEAT don’t get normalisation* against armour like AP and APCR/HVAP, they do pretty terribly against angled armour, but it has splash damage, so even if it doesn't penetrate, it can still do this splash damage, if a HE shell doesn't penetrate the armour, it will deal this damage, which is first mitigated by much armour there is where you shot and the area around it, if you shoot at super armoured targets, you will do minimal to no splash damage (e.g, the T95) HEAT ammo is odd, it has great penetration most of the time and doesn't lose any over distance but to counter this it does awful against armour that is spaced in anyway, this means that shooting at the track of a tank with HEAT will likely do nothing but blow the track off, HEAT also explodes on Impact with armour, as it historically heats a piece of copper which essentially melts through the armour, this means that if it hits an obstacle before it hits the target then the shell explodes unlike AP/APCR rounds and won't hit the target
Summary: Angling makes your armour more effective, HE, while more powerful, has poor penetration, but can still do damage even if it doesn't penetrate, APCR has high penetration, but loses it quicker over distance than AP, and HEAT has best penetration and doesn't lose it over distance, but cannot deal with spaced armour.
*Normalisation is essentially leeway for the shell you're firing, if a tank is angled at 60 degrees, and your shell has 5 degrees of normalisation, then the angle is essentially reduced to 55 degrees against your shell, AP has 5 degrees of normalisation, APCR has 3 degrees, and HE/HEAT doesn't have any.
Micro-Tip: Autoloaders!
Autoloaders are tanks that have multiple shots in a clip, they are very common in low tier games (as many tanks there only have 20mm cannons) and some tech tree branches have Autoloaders (Most French high tier tanks have Autoloading guns, and some American high tiers.) at high tiers these tanks have the ability to deal a very high level of damage very quickly, but in compensation their full clip reloads are incredibly long, these are the ultimate peek a boo tanks as a result, unknown to some, there is a way to reload the entire clip before it is completely expended, this is by double-tapping your current ammo selection (on tablet) or pressing the C-key (for PCs), this allows for a player to always deal maximum burst damage instead of dealing only half a clip’s worth.
This was my first guide, let me know what you think?
Now get out there, tanks won't be blown up by ghosts...
Edited by DerpyMcderp, 20 November 2017 - 02:36 AM.
