A Complete Guide to Coastal Naval Battles

A comprehensive guide that focuses on teaching you how to not suck at coastal battles.
Going over everything from the pre-game settings to advanced tactics that'll give you an edge over the...Gaijin bots i guess. This mode is kind of lonely.
Originally made as a video tutorial, now available as a steam guide. Assumes you've played the basic in-game tutorials.
This guide is the culmination of 3 months of work, and a year of playing coastal. I mean, it's not like you have any other choice when every piece of content related to naval is either heavily outdated or bluewater-only.

Video Version

The original version of this guide. I'm just adapting the script I wrote for this.

Text version starts below, for those who don't like watching video guides. Or in case you're in class/at work, and you can't increase the volume lest you be caught. That's fine. Don't worry, you won't miss out on anything important besides some visual examples.

Settings

Only 2 essential things to do here:

• Options-->Main Parameters-->Naval Battle Settings-->Disable "Automatic Target Lock".
  Automatic targeting allows you to designate targets without using the hotkey (X or MB3): shooting at an enemy will instantly designate them as your current target. The issue: When you have multiple ships crossing your sightline, the automatic targeting will make you swap between targets, which will forcibly adjust your ranging, and mess with your aim. Not always an issue, but when it does happen, you will notice it. And possibly die as a result.
  
• Controls-->Naval-->Camera Control-->Mouse wheel (naval)-->By default, set to "Zoom axis (Naval). Swap it to "Distance correction".
  Not necessary for Arcade-only players, but Realistic players will need to do this. In Realistic Battles, the game does not automatically adjust the weapon range once a target is locked (it will stop adjusting after a few seconds). Use the hotkey (Z) to adjust zoom instead, it'll work fine.

Non-Essential setting: Options-->Sound-->Crew language-->set this to "Crew Country". This one is just an immersion setting, it'll make your crew use voicelines from whatever nation you're currently playing, instead of English for everyone. Funnily enough however, the English voicelines can give you an advantage sometimes, because the crew apparently have X-Ray vision and will call out enemies 3km away, across the map, and behind multiple islands. Or you can just mute it, they like to chatter a lot whenever you make turns or target enemies.

Starting Tree

Naval allows you to bring in your own aircraft regardless of the mode (arcade or realistic), so you can just simply play whatever nation you already main. It also allows you to "rent" aircraft during the match, but these aircraft are just drawn randomly from a BR-dependent pool of aircraft, come with no crew skills or modifications, and require you to pay repair costs if you damage them. Not great. Also the bomb timers are super long on these, like in arcade ground.
Otherwise, here are my personal recommendations:

• Germany: They have a strong start with hard-hitting early ships. They do have some technicalities however, as their powerful weaponry tends to be placed in rear positions that requires you to show your broadside to enemy ships to attack, or turn rearwards, going in reverse and losing speed, making these ships high risk - high reward. However, if you’re careful with your positioning, you can minimize that risk and make use of these ships as ambushers and flankers. Later on, some of their ships trade speed for even more firepower, allowing them to conduct area denial through sheer volume of fire.
  
  
• The Soviets: Having both the MO-4, an extremely overpowered early boat, as well as the reserve G-5, a vessel that can reliably be used at almost any battle rating, the Soviets start off strong. However, they have a weak mid-tier, with their armored ships suffering heavily from gun wobbling on wavy seas, and also having weak (though very speedy) patrol boats. Lastly, they dominate top tier with strong frigates.

Honestly, as long as you don’t start off with Britain or Italy, you should be fine.

Making a Proper Lineup

Since you only have 3 ship spawns and 2 plane spawns, might as well make the most of it.
Fill up with the maximum of ships, as they don't require spawn points.
For planes, even having 1 will do, you'll rarely get enough points to spawn both. Have different types if possible, having 2 bombers means once you spawn one bomber the spawn points required to spawn the other one will double.



Coastal and Bluewater vessels can be placed in to the same lineup (the gamemode is mixed, so you can play them both in the same match), and this is encouraged for higher coastal tiers, as it will allow you to fill out your lineups and research both trees in a balanced manner. AVOID uptiering your low tier coastal boats by putting them alongside bluewater vessels. Unless you know what you're doing, you're not going to have a good time.

So, don't do this:

Arcade vs Realistic

Matchmaking for coastal is quite bad especially in low tier realistic, where your matches (if you get one) will likely be filled with AI bots (the official ones with the generic names). Until you’re past the first tier, I would recommend sticking to Arcade battles if you want to fight actual players.
Otherwise, there is little actual difference between the two modes: In arcade, enemies get marked on sight with your weapon range being adjusted automatically for your target, and players have better torpedo detection (marks incoming torpedoes). In RB, you'll have to rely on spotting a torpedo's wake to avoid it.
At higher tiers for ships with rangefinding, the modes have different ways of marking "where to shoot", but this is again just related to the automatic range adjustment that AB gets. RB doesn't, so you'll have to wait for the rangefinder to recalculate the range if you lose your lead. Any bluewater player should already be familiar with this mechanic.

Coastal Fundamentals: Damage Models

Coastal uses an unholy mashup of ground mechanics and wargaming mechanics. For the small vessels that you'll find in coastal, they are composed of compartments, each with a different amount of HP (you heard that right).
You have two main ways to destroy enemy vessels: Either kill all of their crew, or demolish the structural integrity of their ship by "blackening" all of their compartments. Ammo detonation and hull break is possible, but neither are reliable methods to destroy coastal ships. Ammo modules are tiny on coastal ships, and hull break is unlikely to trigger unless the enemy is someone who's brought their reserve vehicle to a 3.7 match. Ramming is also possible, though about as reliable as trying to penetrate a T-34's driver port.

Taking into consideration the compartment damage models, you should aim to spread your damage over an enemy boat: Once a compartment has been “blackened” by damage, it’s considered destroyed, and will take almost no damage from further attacks. At that point, you need to move on to another compartment to inflict further damage.
Unlike bluewater, rangefinding is a rare trait in coastal ships, found only at high tier. You can't rely on indicators if they don't exist, so you need to learn to lead your shots yourself, manually. At low tier, weaponry mostly consists of machineguns and low caliber cannons, allowing you to adjust your lead easily if your first shots miss. Plus, distances between teams are also limited (due to the small maps), with engagement ranges usually below 2 km (1.2 miles), so there is not much leading needed anyway. Your priority in these battles should be to get used to leading while it's not critical for your overall success, as it will become much more important in the later tiers.

Low engagement ranges also mean engagements can begin quickly and finish just as fast. Leading your shots is important, but what is just as important is knowing what to hit: Through spreading the damage you inflict, in order to avoid hitting already blackened areas, sure, but there are many modules on a boat that can be damaged to inflict crew loss alongside other maluses. We’ll go over the most important modules:

• Bridge: This is where the captain sits. Usually, it’ll be located in the central compartment or sit in its own section above the compartments. A destroyed bridge disables steering, and will also inflict serious crew loss. This module also repairs on its own, even if you don’t call for repairs.
  
• Armament&Ammo: Cannons, machineguns, torpedoes, depth charges, mines, rockets. If destroyed, they’ll be unusable until repaired. Higher caliber cannons have a chance to detonate these on hit or destruction, but they themselves also come with large ammo storages.
  
• Engine&Propulsion: Destroying them will reduce the target's mobility, and they'll become immobile if all of their engines or propellers are destroyed. It will also cause crew loss.
  
• Other: Pumps, Rangefinder/Radar, Fire control rooms, Radio Stations, Fuel tanks, etc. Loss of these modules will not majorly impact the ship, hence they are not priority targets.

For more information on modules, you can go in to x-ray view in the hangar, and hover your mouse over ship modules: the game will give you a detailed explanation for each of them.

Coastal Fundamentals: Repairs

Not taking damage during a naval match is pretty much impossible, as one shots aren't really a thing in this gamemode so survivability is much higher than in ground battles. That makes return fire inevitable.
You have 3 different types of repair: You can set these to be done automatically, or manually, by tapping (not holding) the repair keys. I recommend setting these to manual: calling for repairs spreads your crew through the vessel, putting them at higher risk, increases reload time, and under automatic repair, you’ll likely end up trying to do multiple types of repair simultaneously, which gives repair time penalties. You can cancel ongoing repairs by holding down the assigned repair button, in case you want to avoid the penalty (note: bridge replenishment is impossible to stop, and counts as a module repair in case of penalty application).

• Module repair (7)
  
• Fire-fighting (8)
  
• Pumping (9)

Your repair priority depends on what needs repairing: if you have weapons or engines disabled, then module repair should be a priority. Next, depending on your vessels speed, those with higher speed should prioritize pumping (the faster you go, the more water goes through a breach), while those slower or otherwise less at risk of flooding can safely pick fire-fighting over pumping.
Lastly, once a module is repaired, it can be damaged again, causing crew loss (again). So it’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth running repairs, or not. Generally, if it means bringing a critical component back to life, like getting weapons working again, you should repair. Otherwise, you can intentionally avoid repairing in order to conserve your crew.

Coastal Fundamentals: Weapons&Ammo Types

We’ll start off small with machine guns, until we reach the cannons you’ll find on frigates.

With machine guns, besides the default belts, which you should get rid of ASAP, your options will be either HE or AP belts (usually, but the US for example just has 2 different AP choices, go for API on these): The theory goes like this: wood is weaker against HE, and metal is weaker against AP. Attacking a boat head on, AP rounds will penetrate through the front, and can damage other compartments as they pass through the boat. Attacking a boat from the side, HE shells can fragment and spread damage over to nearby compartments on the sides.
However, optimising like this is impractical, as machine gun reloads take around 3 to 4 seconds, while an engagement’s winner can be decided much quicker. Sticking with one belt over the other, HE can be more versatile as they can deal with planes better, though I personally prefer AP myself as I find their damage more consistent. Although they’re not machineguns, I also include 20mm cannons in this category, as they play almost exactly the same as machine guns. Note that low calibre weaponry has very high damage drop-off over range, so stick to close quarters with these. Don't forget to flush your mags when it's safe to do so!

Moving on to cannons of the 37-40mm range, you’ll find cannons like the flak and the bofors. Unlike previous smaller calibre weaponry, these weapons have instant reloads...except for the Japanese who couldn't figure this out apparently. Anyways, when swapping between different types of ammo becomes seamless, that allows you to choose between shell types with no drawbacks. Your AP shells penetrate more, your HE shells have significantly more filler (and should become your go-to shell to use, though the AP shell can still come in handy should you face armoured boats that HE shells struggle with). These cannons can shred any opposition quite rapidly, and they’re the best you’ll find in the lower tiers. Besides the supreme German butchering machine LS3's 15mm machine gun, this is where you'll normally get to experience the overheating mechanic: Fire the cannon continuously for too long, and it’ll start to overheat, becoming less and less accurate before the weapon stops functioning entirely until it can cool down. With no reload time, this state is a lot easier to reach, but it’ll still take quite a while to overheat a flak or bofors to the point they stop firing, it’s more or less only going to happen if there are air targets the gunner AI keeps continuously firing at.

Lastly, anything 60mm and up. These cannons have the highest single-shot damage you can get, though higher calibre also translates to longer reload times (with the major exception of top tier). Leading is very important here, as missing a single shot could be the difference between killing your enemy or being killed yourself. With these cannons, you'll have the choice between 3 types of shells: HE, AP, and HE-TF/HE-VT (Shrapnel is terrible and should never be taken). In general, you'll want to use your standard HE shell, though you may have modifications to unlock different variants of it that'll have different velocities and/or explosive content: it's up to you to choose between them. Personally, I prefer high velocity shells even if they do less damage, as they are far easier to aim at range. AP shells in coastal tend to have very little explosive filler, so while I recommend bringing a few just in case (you may get some lucky ammo detonations with them, or catch a bluewater vessel unaware), HE is still king. Finally, you have HE-TF and HE-VT shells: to put it simply, these shells have fuses that allow them to explode mid-air: either through a timed fuse, or a proxy fuse. They're best used against aircraft, though they'll still do just fine if you shoot them at ships.

Progression/Tiers

Reserves

The most important thing to learn here is simply situational awareness. Maps are small, engagements occur quickly. Keep up your speed, but don't get yourself beached. Go for flanks or ambushes: the ships here are all very fragile, so the first shot advantage is still important.
All reserve boats have 3 spawns, and start off with torpedoes, which are unfortunately very unreliable at this tier. Fast boats can easily dodge them, so if you're going to use them, aim for the bigger vessels and launch from the minimum arming distance to give them the least amount of time to react.
A better secondary armament is actually depth charges. Fights will very frequently devolve into close range brawls, and with the fragile boats, getting yourself ahead of the enemy and dropping a few depth charges will very likely net you a kill. Set them to the lowest time delay, as you can't damage yourself with your own depth charges regardless. Plus, unless you uptier your reserve vehicle to bluewater tier, there isn’t anything that can detonate your depth charges or torpedoes without killing you first anyway, so there’s no reason not to take them.

Tier I

The rest of the tier mostly composes of one of four things:

• Medium size ship with autocannons
  
• Reserve boat 2.0 edition
  
• Japan
  
• MO-4

None of them have any sort of protection, so they’re all just as fragile as the reserves. Besides the blatantly overpowered MO-4 (seriously why is this thing still 1.0), the autocannon vessels are by far the most powerful boats of the tier, as while torpedo boats are fun, the torpedoes they carry aren’t very useful yet, and their machine guns can’t compete damage wise. Even if they’re a bit slower, or have bad firing arcs, the damage of the autocannons more than compensates.
A few boats also have access to rockets. They are quite useful at close quarters, being able to inflict huge amounts of damage on hit. Feel free to take them if they’re available.

Tier II

Besides patrol boats still being, you know, patrol boats, you now have sub-chasers. For all intents and purposes, treat these as bigger, slower, and better armed patrol boats. They're still unarmoured, though those with many compartments can of course tank more damage overall.
I'll insist again on situational awareness: pick your fights carefully, go for ambushes or snipes if you can.
You’ll begin facing armoured ships, notably the Pr.1124 and the HMCS Brantford. Besides armoured ships, large boats tend to carry high-calibre cannons, so rushing them frontally is a quick way back to the hangar. Attack them from the rear if you can, or just stick a torpedo in them.
Lastly, you get access to mines…and they suck. They’re far too easy to dodge for coastal vessels, and they don’t last on the map more than a few minutes. Don't bother taking them.

Tier III

Armored ships become more frequent, though they have their own issues to deal with, mainly speed and weapon stability (gun wobbling). More importantly, it’s at this tier that you’ll begin to frequently see bluewater vessels in your matches. Bluewater vessels have an entirely different damage model, so you can’t deal with them the same way that you would with coastals. They also tend to have a minimum amount of armor preventing machine guns from penetrating their structure. The best way to deal with them is to either straight up avoid them, as they have different spawns than coastals, or, if you’re playing something like a patrol boat, ambush them with torpedoes. Aimed for the ammo racks (usually under the bridge or under the rear turrets), a torpedo will result in a 1-hit kill. Fast vessels can also go for depth charge runs: approach the side (NOT THE FRONT: being rammed will kill you) and dump depth charges as you move alongside the ship to destroy it. Though you’ll usually need at least 4 depth charges for this to work.

Tier IV

Very similar to the last tier, with 1 key exception: Frigates. These ships are basically built to annihilate smaller coastal vessels, but in exchange, they struggle to deal with destroyers. It is also important to note that frigates are technically bluewater vessels despite being in the coastal tree: they have destroyer spawns, rangefinders for their weaponry, and their damage model is akin to that of a bluewater vessel. Deal with them as you would bluewater vessels: unless you have powerful guns, avoid engaging them. For frigate players, avoid being in the open & in the firing arc of bluewater vessels and beeline your way to the coastal spawns.
On the other hand, you’ll also see corvettes in this tier. They’re classed under sub-chasers, but make no mistake. These guys are significantly more dangerous than what you’ve faced before. They carry frigate-level weaponry, though are much more fragile. Due to their extremely high DPS, I would recommend avoiding them if possible, unless you yourself have a way to ambush and deal with them quickly, such as with a torpedo, or high-calibre cannons of your own.
The most commonly used premium vessels are also found at this tier: Tier 5 is the maximum for the coastal tree, so it is possible to research an entire tech tree with Tier 4 premiums, like the PG 02, Sparviero, LE Orla or the M-802. These boats basically play like the previously mentioned corvettes. If you're interested in buying these, I highly recommend finding a dedicated guide (I am too poor to drop 100$ on coastal premiums lol).

Tier V

At this point, we’re well into bluewater territory. You’ll face fewer and fewer coastal vessels, with matches being composed mostly of destroyers, and sometimes even cruisers. You’re basically playing bluewater lite at this point.
Aside from a few patrol boats, this tier is entirely composed of Frigates and Corvettes. Unfortunately, most of them don’t stand much of a chance against the firepower bluewater vessels can bring. Since there are few coastal targets to hunt, it’s best to go for already distracted bluewater targets. If you have fast firing cannons, blasting the deck of bluewater vessels with HE can be an easy way to deal large amounts of damage to their crew through damaging their modules. The more traditional slow firing cannons should go for the hull directly, aiming for the ammo or the engines.
Rockets still remain quite effective at this tier, and torpedoes are better than ever. However, since you’re facing bluewater vessels with high caliber cannons, rack detonation for secondary armament is a risk, so take that into account if you want to take these.

Modifications

I'll demonstrate here with an image:
Priority order goes from: Red-->Orange-->Yellow-->Green

Reds are essential: Firstly, getting rid of default belts for your main guns is a necessity. Unless you're playing a vessel with high calibre cannons that is, in which case your standard HE shell is often the best shell. Primary armament increases your main calibre's turning speed, so get it too. Then you have rudder replacement. Manoeuvrability is important, so pick it up.

Orange is for "highly" recommended: Getting some armor piercing belts will come in useful against armoured targets, and increasing turning speed is a big plus. Smokescreen will is more useful than you would think, especially when you have time to react after being shot, instead of dying instantly. Activate smoke, full reverse, turn around and get the hell out of dodge when you need it. Also useful for concealing yourself against CAS.

Yellow is for recommended: These are performance upgrades, they'll make your boat accelerate and decelerate faster, and also increase its top speed. Enough said.

Green for optional: I personally don't care much for repair upgrades, the repair speed maluses without them are unlikely to make much of a difference during a firefight between fragile coastal boats. Still, they do come in useful for bigger vessels with high survivability. Except for new pumps. They're genuinely useless. Gaijin, please buff it or something.

Everything else is up to you: Artillery is great when it hits, but not that useful in lower tiers, while depth charges are the opposite, being more useful during the fast, close range combat at low tier.
The other firepower upgrades I left out are ship-specific. The US APIT belts are worse than the API belts, and the 20mm on this vessel isn't well-positioned. More examples would be things like shrapnel shells, or mines.

This is a general guide, so don't be too concerned about picking a different modification priority than what I've shown here, a lot depends on the vessel you're using after all.

Crew Skills

Ship commander: Leadership is the same as in ground battles, increasing the level of every other skill by a small amount. Crew interchangeability basically adds more crew to your ship. Both of these are high-priority skills. Radio communication is entirely useless in coastal.

Observers: All of these skills increase the range at which certain threats are detected. Out of them all, enemy torpedo detection is the most useful, but even then all of these skills should be considered low-priority.

Boiler room: Ship control reduces turning time, while fire prevention reduces the chances of a fire starting, either through a module like fuel or engines being damaged, or you being shot by HE. Fire prevention is the better of the two, but both skills can be considered medium-priority.

Gunners: Main calibre reload speed is the most important crew skill you need to level. Auxiliary calibre will depend on your ship (useless in low tier, where vessels only have their main gun). I would keep it medium-priority (auxiliary guns are nothing to scoff at), alongside auxiliary gunner accuracy, which increases the accuracy of the AI controller while you’re controlling your main calibre.
As for AAA, most coastal vessels don’t have any anti-air auxiliary weaponry (and they're very low calibre even when present, so generally useless), and your auxiliaries are what you’ll use to deal with aircraft. Accordingly, any skills related to AAA reload speed or accuracy are unnecessary.
Distance fuse setting only applies to time fuse shells, which very few coastal vessels have. Skip.

Damage control: These skills reduce repair times. Unwatering time for pumps, Fire extinguishing for, well, fire extinguishing, and breach repair for your module repairs. Lastly, survival leadership reduces the penalty for doing multiple types of repair at once, at maximum negating the penalty entirely.
Leveling these isn't a priority for coastal battles, though they are by no means useless. Consider them medium-low priority.

Logistics services and Qualifications are unchanged from other game modes, so we’re not going to go over them. Some people recommend you expert all of your crewed vehicles, I honestly don't find it that important, especially for a gamemode where many of your opponents just end up being bots.

Close Air Support

One key difference between CAS in ground battles and CAS in naval, is that aircraft cannons and machine guns are significantly more impactful in this gamemode. This makes fighter-bombers, as well as bombers carrying offensive armament (attackers) significantly more useful. Bombs are great too, as even small 50kg bombs can easily kill patrol boats, though obviously you’ll need bigger bombs if you’re aiming for subchasers and frigates. Rockets are kind of a mixed bag, usually you’re better off just using bombs, but if your plane doesn’t get a bomb sight (like the IL-2), rockets can be a viable alternative. They’ll usually require a direct hit to kill, due to their low explosive tonnage. Torpedoes are best avoided. I know your flying boat can carry 2 of them at once and maybe they’re fun to use, but going for torpedo runs makes you a sitting duck; forcing you to lower your speed, and limiting the possibility of evasion. Torpedoes aren’t viable against nippy coastal vessels, and bigger vessels will probably just shoot you down before you get a chance to drop one. There isn’t any reason to go for torpedoes unless you have a battle task, in which case aim for reserve bluewater vessels, as they usually have no meaningful anti-air.
Besides a bomber/attacker, you can also bring in a normal fighter or interceptor for air superiority, or a hydroplane if you have one in your tech tree, as they have the ability to land on water and capture objectives.

Tips & Tricks

Continuous rangefinding in RB

This is kind of a cheap trick, and probably a bugged interaction due to coastal vessels not having rangefinders. Normally, in RB, once you target an enemy, your guns will automatically adjust to the distance between you and your target. However, unlike in AB, the range does not get updated continuously as your positions shift. This would ordinarily force you to adjust the ranging manually, except, the ranging that happens when you lock a target, happens every time, regardless of whether it’s the same target, or not. So, you can instead just spam target the same enemy over and over again (hotkey:X), and leave all the ranging to be done automatically.
This only works for weapons without rangefinders!

Gun wobbling (Wavy seas, unstable boat)

Besides just straight up leaving the match, you can only try to mitigate the issue. Firstly, make use of your other armament if you have any: Inaccuracy matters less with higher rate of fire. In addition, the seas immediately around an island can be calmer than open areas. But if you’re desperate, you can also try intentionally beaching yourself (partially) to get out of the water. Note that this will inflict damage on your compartments. It will also start a 2 minute timer to your doom, so if you’re going to do this, try to beach yourself in a manner that’ll allow you to move and reset the counter.

Angling

The traditional armour angling you may have learned in ground battles doesn’t really apply here, as only a few ships are able to do it effectively, like the Russian armoured river boats. Since, you know, angling requires you to have armour in the first place to work. For boats that can actually pull it off, you basically want to get an angle where you can get all of your guns towards the enemy, but not going for a full 180 degrees broadside, to prevent the enemy being able to hit your armour at a full 90 degrees. This increases your armour value, and if the enemy is unable to penetrate it, it'll allow you to tank hits without taking damage.

There is a second angling method that is unique to coastal battles, however, which instead relies on exploiting the compartment-based damage model: You want to put your ship in a position/angle where only a minority of your compartments are exposed to the enemy, so even if those compartments are destroyed, you’ll still remain afloat thanks to your other compartments remaining undamaged. An example of this is “Bowtanking”. Aka, front towards enemy. Many vessels who can't use traditional angling methods can use this tactic. The intent is to sacrifice your frontal compartment to tank incoming damage while keeping your other compartments protected. It’s best done with vessels that have their armament concentrated in the front. The Type K for example, has its 40mm cannons located right in front, allowing it to keep up fire while bowtanking. Larger vessels can even tank torpedoes this way (and yes, of course that includes the Type K).
You can apply this tactic rearwards too, though it usually doesn't work anywhere near as well. For those vessels, it's better to use islands as cover, stick the rear compartment with the weapon out and hide your front compartments behind an island or any other impenetrable object. This can make you unsinkable. Basically the "hull down" of naval.

Anti-Bluewater Artillery

Naval Artillery is much more powerful than Ground Artillery, and can pose a threat to even the largest ships. However, the artillery itself isn’t very effective against small boats: shells that impact the water won’t do any damage (though the impact force might flip a small boat).
But there are only so many spaces the artillery can land in. So what if you called it against a big boat? To estimate where to call the artillery, you have 2 functions that can help you (besides your intuition).
First is radio communication: target the enemy ship, and then call out “Target this enemy” over radio by using the voice commands (yes there are others beside "ATTACK THE D POINT!"). This will mark their position on the map, and then you can call artillery on it.
The second method is quicker, but can be less accurate. Look at the enemy, mark them with the squadron ping, and then call artillery on said mark.
Estimating the lead you need to give to hit a target is the hardest part of this tactic, since it entirely relies on guesswork, and lower tier bluewater ships travel quite fast. Finally, since the artillery shell dispersion is random, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually get a kill even if you land it spot on.

Ending Notes

Thank you for reading the guide! I do hope it helps you out in coastal, regardless of if you're already a naval player or newbie. Playing naval because Gaijin forces you to is a whole different experience than actually playing it for yourself. The higher up you go, the more lethal and unforgiving everything gets. The lower tiers where coastal is purely coastal are genuinely quite fun to play in. Just wish it had more players than bots, really.

Oh, and maybe drop a like on the guide before you leave? I'd appreciate it, and it'll help this guide reach a larger amount of people.

[megladon6]

Thank you, been struggling lately with tier 3 American coastal. Gonna change my bofors ammo and try bow tanking to see if that increases my odds.