Aiming help

[Bromius]

I am wondering about aiming long range aiming, i am struggling with long range aiming and aiming in general. I have 267 hours playing this game but i am struggling bad with aiming, and i could really use the help and any help would be appreciated.

[R[e]venge®-uk*]

OK 3 quick questions ....
1. What are you aiming with
2. What are you aiming at
3. Have you turned the full hud on with travel times of Shells ?


Go for it!!!

[Blue]

I always work on the crosshairs being calibrated for 30 knots and adjust for that.

[Bromius]

USS Montana

[R[e]venge®-uk*]

Mr Monty!! OK she has Very "Lofty" Shells!! So I would suggest a "Staggered" fire to start .....

this means ...
Fire one here...

One here...

One here

and the final one here ....

They you get a "jist of the shells and she speed the enemy is going"

Once you get this you kinda feel the rest for the game and can aim for them! but the Staggered aiming early is Key for "where am i Shooting"

Also take note on ship smoke stacks! Back or Forwards!
Good Luck!

[christof]

Also mind that when you have locked onto a target, you see a line denoting their travel direction on the minimap. Which is very helpful to immediately see any turns they are making even before you notice through the binoculars.
Then you have a small circle showing the exact point on the minimap your guns are currently pointing at.

Those two things are essential help in getting your shots on target.

[rebelyell]

make sure your using dynamic crosshairs. static doesnt show travel time. i usually judge based on smoke stack smoke for speed they are moving, then figure your shell speed and your travel speed and direction. there angle to aim height you need and shorten the leed distance based the angle. it all comes natural in time. its basic geometry

[Blue]

Originally posted by rebelyell:

make sure your using dynamic crosshairs. static doesnt show travel time. i usually judge based on smoke stack smoke for speed they are moving, then figure your shell speed and your travel speed and direction. there angle to aim height you need and shorten the leed distance based the angle. it all comes natural in time. its basic geometry

Do you mean full UI? Travel time is wrote next to target distance. Static crosshair does not hide this.

[Ace42]

I've been dedicating a fair bit of my recent playtime to paying extra attention to aim in controlled situation to try and get a better sense of some of the artillery bugs in the game.

I can say that the follow guide is still accurate - what you want to be paying attention to is where the aimpoint-circle on the minimap is:

https://youtu.be/MqXbWux_QKY

You can look at ships in the tech-tree to preview them in your port, and thus use the armour-viewer to get a sense of where their citadels and citadel-protecting armour plates are, although that won't matter at long ranges where dispersion will make precise aiming impossible.

[Icevail]

I still can't aim for ♥♥♥♥ after all these years, while others can citadel me from max range of their guns from every angle imaginable, their shells hit with pinpoint accuracy while my shells barely manage to land in the ocean near their general location, and those shells that land, shatter without dealing any damage.

[Jackson]

Originally posted by Icevail:

I still can't aim for ♥♥♥♥ after all these years, while others can citadel me from max range of their guns from every angle imaginable, their shells hit with pinpoint accuracy while my shells barely manage to land in the ocean near their general location, and those shells that land, shatter without dealing any damage. :claugh:

Well a couple of things... if you're at long range, almost any BB can citadel any ship because the deck armor doesn't bounce from long range. Even the German BB's with turtle back are easy to get cits on at long range if you aim well.

The best advice I can give on aiming is don't constantly change ships until you get aiming down. The ships all have different guns with varying ballistics. If you're struggling with aiming that won't help you at all. Stick with one till you get it down.

[76561198448661337]

第发的时代

[Icevail]

I don't have that many ships to toggle in between; brandenburg, pommern, ägir, eugen and mainz from kriegsmarine, nagato, takao, kaga, yukikaze and shimakaze from ijn, and montpelier from usn,

I got their gun gimmicks pretty much figured out; unfortunately I can't say the same about the armor layout of every ship out there, I'm just a filthy casual that expect shots to pen after I pull the trigger, not to watch those shells pounce off or shatter on impact after they do a minor 5 degree turn to either way, most of the time it seems like I gently shower the enemy with confetti, but they drop precision strike nuke on my citadel 10 seconds later they've noticed my attempts to scratch their paint job.

For example, here's my fancy T8 ship, with T6-7 guns, trying to compete against the T10 super ship armor and guns, that can turn my ship into a memorial site by just looking at my general direction.

[Ace42]

Originally posted by Icevail:

I'm just a filthy casual that expect shots to pen after I pull the trigger, not to watch those shells pounce off or shatter on impact,

For battleships and super/heavy cruisers, you need to position better.

Find positions that force the enemy to choose between showing broadside to either you or your teammates - that way at least half the time you'll be the one seeing enemy broadsides, at which point ricochets will only happen if dispersion creates a weird flukey shot that grazes a plate at a weird angle. You'll also minimise the effective armour you're trying to punch through, so score more citadels.

Optimal range for battleships is "as close to the enemy as possible without showing more than 30 degrees of main armour belt to incoming AP (tighter still for SAP or improved ricochet angle AP); without pushing so far into torpedo threat that you can't slip through the gaps between them without eating more than one; without entering HE spam from ships you cannot see and thus cannot shoot back at".

Eugen you want to be booty-tanking at extreme range in a position where you can reload / traverse grief anything that might overmatch you - you use HE to farm down stuff until overmatch threats are gone, then you push in and use its great AP and tankiness to delete the broadsides of stuff that can't overmatch you - at this point in a match, heavy cruisers play a bit more like mini battleships.

Mainz you generally want to be island camping so you can use its great DPM to free farm constantly - AP vs broadsides, HE vs angled ships.
Montpelier is also an island camper.

Takao you want to be using its stealth to reload / traverse grief stuff; help support your DD early on to negate enemy vision that will break your stealth. Find safe broadsides close by where you can work in all your gimmicks.

Kaga - training room > ST Armor Test Map > Spawn a load of enemy DDs that can move but have no ammo. Set your hull to make big circles so the bots follow you, practice nailing them with HE Divebombers until you can land reliable chip damage every single strike. The practice torps and rockets against them.
In a real match > first counter enemy scouts (ideally killing DDs, but forcing them to waste smokescreens, or subs to use up dive capacity by popping a fighter consumable overhead is valuable too).
Then pop fighters somewhere that will provide vision of enemy island campers, but won't get shot down by AA or cleared by enemy depth charge airstrikes.
The farm down isolated enemies that are trapping your teammates in crossfires.
Then kill high value targets.

Yuki and Shima: Use their great stealth to perma-spot enemy DDs while teammates kill them; once you've countered them and thus have won the vision-game, you contest caps or you get as close as safely possible to enemy ships and delete their broadsides with torpedoes. If you're at about 6km or so they won't have much time to react, and the torpedo spread won't cause so many torps to go wide and miss.
Gotta pay attention to stuff like radar / planes / hydro obviously.

For example, here's my fancy T8 ship, with T6-7 guns, trying to compete against the T10 super ship armor and guns, that can turn my ship into a memorial site by just looking at my general direction.

There's not a gun in the game that can overmatch the main armour belt of even the squishiest battleships - take AP on that armour belt whilst sufficiently angled (30 degrees or tighter) and you'll get bounces irrespective of gun calibre and tier.

If your AP hits an armour plate at wider than 45 degrees, ricochets are impossible irrespective of how thick the plates are.

At T10 thickest armour plates are 430mm (Kremlin citadel plates; its middle citadel is thinner still). At 15km only 6/41 T8 battleships will fail to AP pen that at a flat broadside.
And those Kremlin plates are exceptionally thick.
409mm on a Montana and only 8/41 will fail to pen it at 18km.

Position properly to find broadsides, maintain a correct angle so you take AP on your main armour belt, and get close enough to deal meaningful damage and you'll be dealing big hits whilst bouncing their AP off your main armour belt all day and night.

[Icevail]

Those tips are nice and all, but how does positioning matter when I start to get citadel struck regardless of my position, angle or ship type once I am spotted, by something I have no counter measures against? Get better at it? How? I don't know what is a good position or bad one, at flanks I get torpedoed by dds that I can't spot, at middle I get crossfired to oblivion, if I get too close, I get burned to crisp by HE spam, if I stay too far, I can't shoot back due to inferior range on guns.

To me it seems like I am fighting against people that have gazillion mods installed, telling every little detail of my ship once I am spotted, the speed, angle, penetration chance, are my consumables on cd or not.

[Ace42]

Originally posted by Icevail:

Those tips are nice and all, but how does positioning matter when I start to get citadel struck regardless of my position, angle or ship type

Already said clearly and plainly:
There's not a gun in the game that can overmatch the main armour belt of even the squishiest battleships - take AP on that armour belt whilst sufficiently angled (30 degrees or tighter) and you'll get bounces irrespective of gun calibre and tier.

Nothing is going to be finding your citadel if their shells are autobouncing off your belt armour.

For cruisers:
Mainz you generally want to be island camping so you can use its great DPM to free farm constantly - AP vs broadsides, HE vs angled ships.
Montpelier is also an island camper.

Nothing is going to be finding your citadel if their shells are slamming into the mountain between you, whilst your shells gracefully arc clean over the top of it.

Takao you want to be using its stealth to reload / traverse grief stuff;
Nothing is going to be finding your citadel if you have gone dark again potentially 30 seconds before they have a chance to turn their guns in your direction; or 15 seconds before they get a chance to fire again.

once I am spotted,

Playing the vision game is a core part of performing well in this game. It's why countering DDs is so important. Battleships and open-water gunboats don't care so much (Battleships tank using their armour; open water gunboats use a few tricks - generally booty tanking or acceleration juking at range).

I don't know what is a good position

Already told you what a good position is:
Find positions that force the enemy to choose between showing broadside to either you or your teammates

Battleships (or ships seizing the opportunity to fulfil the role of a battleship) don't need to think about the map, etc - you just need to look at where you spawn, look where the teammates who spawn with you are going, and create enough space between you and those teammates that the enemy can't angle their armour (or traverse their guns / or launch waves of torpedoes) against all of you simultaneously.

For island-campers, a good position is one where the island blocks line-of-sight and lets you stay undetected whilst allowing you to free-farm the enemy; ideally it's one where the island's tall enough to block blindfire attempts on you too.

For open-water gunboats a good position is one that forces enemy ships to traverse their guns 180+ degrees if they want to aim at you instead of your teammates; and that is maximum distance away from stuff like battleships or superheavy cruisers that might be able to dev-strike you; whilst keeping something farmable inside your maximum range.

For stealthy traverse / reload griefers and torpedo boats, a good position is one that finds the enemy broadside, can potentially torp the enemy, but isn't going to have its detection radius hard-pushed.

For secondary brawlers, a good position (aside from being one that lets you delete broadsides like any old battleship can) is one that cuts the enemy up into a series of 1vs1s (1vs2s at the worst) where your secondaries can safely farm down the enemy over time whilst you bounce their return fire all day and night.

at flanks I get torpedoed by dds that I can't spot,

You use your detection radius to figure out where the enemy DD is, then stay angled against it whilst maintaining enough distance for his torpedoes to spread. If you're angled against him, you can slip between the gaps whilst maybe eating a single torpedo per salvo tops - which is tankable.

Ideally you support your teammates in countering the DD early whilst he IS being spotted, so that he doesn't have free reign to position against you later.

at middle I get crossfired to oblivion,

Optimal range for battleships is "as close to the enemy as possible without showing more than 30 degrees of main armour belt to incoming AP (tighter still for SAP or improved ricochet angle AP);

If you're getting crossfired meaningfully then you've pushed up so far that you're showing more than 30 degrees of main belt to incoming AP. Naturally you can use islands to protect you from one side whilst angling against threats on the other where appropriate.

if I get too close, I get burned to crisp by HE spam,

Most HE spammers prefer you stay at range - because their guns don't suffer from dispersion as much as battleship guns do. If you're positioning properly (to force them to show broadside to either you or teammates), and if you can spot them, then they'll die to your team quicker than they can farm you down.

If you can't push them (no vision; no overmatch; no way to find an angle), then yes you need to keep your range to limit the number of ships farming you until an opportunity presents itself to you.

if I stay too far, I can't shoot back due to inferior range on guns.

Battleships shouldn't be so far back that they are out of gun range.
Already explained:
Optimal range for battleships is "as close to the enemy as possible without showing more than 30 degrees of main armour belt to incoming AP (tighter still for SAP or improved ricochet angle AP); without pushing so far into torpedo threat that you can't slip through the gaps between them without eating more than one; without entering HE spam from ships you cannot see and thus cannot shoot back at".

To me it seems like I am fighting against people that have gazillion mods installed, telling every little detail of my ship once I am spotted, the speed, angle, penetration chance, are my consumables on cd or not.

DCP and Repair Party show up on your ship whilst they are active - pretty easy to see when they've expired.

It is a good idea for new players to grab a side-panel mod (WG's official Modstation includes several, I assume BestOfBaddest is one there) that provides basic information. This isn't essential - once you have an idea of how the game works, ship speeds tend to be quite intuitive; but given the sheer number of ships in the game (I'm well on my way to 600 in my port), it's unrealistic to expect new players to memorise them all.

Angle mods (Battle Assistant, or Navigator) are likewise a good idea if you can't accurately get a sense of angles using the minimap.

There is no "penetration chance" - this isn't WoT. There's a penetration formula, but you don't need to memorise it because as I already explained - if you're at a sensible normal range for a battleship (under 18km) you're going to penetrate pretty much every broadside piece of armour in the game except in specific extreme circumstances.

You don't need encyclopaedic knowledge, just a general sense. And if you haven't developed a general sense by the time you're in a T8, it's time to drop back down to T5>T7 until you at least have a feel for how armour, ballistics, and positioning work.

Read my post again, and have a think on it. The game might seem like it has a lot of complexity - but I gave you very straightforward instructions that are all you need to do well in it.

Here's me pushing a flank with a BB - see how I use the map to figure out where their DD is and thus angle against their torps?:
https://youtu.be/9BpZLyq60fc

Can watch any of the videos on my channel and see how I position relative to teammates, how close I get to the enemy, and how I manage my range to deal with DDs.