Spatial Awareness

POSTED BY mnamestnik January 5, 2022

Individual Movement

  • You need to consider everything around you, this includes cover, concealment, terrain, other tanks, undulations in the map, swampy areas vs. firm ground, etc.
  • Awareness is important in ALL DIRECTIONS, not just in front of you
  • Look around you ALL THE TIME – Am I getting in someone’s way? Am I driving into crossfire? Is there terrain I could be using to screen myself?
    • Is there a position I can put myself in here that keeps my left, back and right behind cover or mostly behind cover with opaque concealment to obscure me from view otherwise, while I focus on shooting ahead of me?
  • When looking around your tank for situational awareness, ALWAYS lock your gun in place and move the mouse around, if you do not, your turret will rotate, bringing the gun with it, and you will no longer be ready to shoot the direction that’s important
    • Also remember, when your gun moves, even a little, you’re introducing bloom / massively increased dispersion and have to wait for it to settle again. When you lock your gun in place, this does NOT happen
  • Beware of target fixation, or focusing so hard on one enemy that you are oblivious to everything else happening around you. This can present in different ways, the most common being ‘staring down the straw’ waiting for that perfect snipy shot
  • A good habit to get into when sniping is to use the shift button (which can now be set to your desired zoom level), fire, and then hit it again to get out of that view, right click to lock the gun, and look around. I am doing this CONSTANTLY.

Team Movement

  • Do you have teammates around you, or within close proximity, that you might be blocking in?
  • Are you about to be blocked in by someone else? If so, should you reconsider moving up the ridge if you know you cannot fall back?
  • Work WITH your teammates, not against them. Teamwork is about winning, not about how much damage or how many kills YOU can get. While many pubbie players play like it’s a solo game, it’s not – don’t foment that, do your part to play right. This will help you play more as a team when it gets to competitive matches – more on this later.
  • In pubbies, when at all possible, communicate your team movements, and try to get others to help you through in-game comms, chat, etc. You’ll find some that will ‘Affirmative!’ and help you… In competitive play, ALL MOVEMENTS need to be coordinated and communicated verbally and approved by element leaders or the caller.

Arty Safe

  • A term that used to be used to define finding a location that was safe from incoming SPG rounds. Unfortunately, Wargaming has changed SPGs so much that there are no longer many (and in some cases, any) places to sit and be safe from incoming ‘arty’ fire
  • That said, there are positions you can take to attempt to not be directly hit, and instead only stunned and/or marginally damaged from near field explosions
  • With the UK 90 degree arc, it is NOT always possible to become arty safe anymore, but there are lots of terrain features, buildings, and other hard cover that can make it considerably harder for them

Positioning to Reposition 

  • Repositioning is all about timing. You should always be thinking ahead to what’s happening around you, how the game is unfolding, what support you do or do not have, and thinking about repositioning and how best to do so
  • MOVE BEFORE YOU NEED TO, or you’ll find yourself in a last stand and allowing the enemy to remove a gun from the game. Don’t be hyper aggressive without support – but don’t be a coward either when your team needs you.
  • Free tip: Point your turret in the direction of incoming fire when traversing side to side, so the enemy can’t get a free ammo racking shot on you but instead has to deal with your heaviest turret armor (frontal/mantlet), which rolls into…
  • …when you’re positioning yourself to repo, you need to consider cover hopping, concealment that can help to make your movements invisible to the enemy (concealment needs to be opaque), and terrain usage, and using the undulations in terrain to conceal the weakest parts of your tank
  • There is a LOT that goes into knowing the ‘when’ and the ‘where to go’ parts of this, and that will come under map and game reading later

Cover

  • Cover is stoppage, which means it STOPS incoming enemy rounds from getting to your tank. This can be a non-destructible building (temp cover), windmill, rock, terrain rise, etc. Foliage is NOT cover.
  • ALWAYS keep cover between yourself and enemy guns especially when you’re on the move (use the terrain), but really at all times whenever possible the entire game

Concealment

  • Concealment hides you visually from enemy tanks, but does NOT stop an incoming round. This includes bushes, trees, grass and the like.
  • Remember all such items in the game have varied camo values, which means that you might or might not be concealed as well as you think you are behind certain bushes (i.e. the bush on south spawn of cliff at the corner going up to the donut that has ZERO camo value anymore).
    • Good idea to go into a training room with a friend on each map and play around with parking behind various bushes to get a feel for the various camo values
    • Literally ALL the top clans spend time doing this every time an update comes out to validate where still works to conceal and spot, and where doesn’t. This can be validated by reading the WoT forums
  • Try to always keep OPAQUE concealment between yourself and enemy tanks when you’re moving around, repositioning and during shooting. Beware that concealment values dropping when you fire applies in ALL DIRECTIONS, so it’s best to have opaque bushes in every direction before firing and you’ll be a fucking ninja

—- COVER HELPS YOU TO NOT BE HIT BY THEM  —-

—- CONCEALMENT HELPS YOU TO NOT BE SEEN BY THEM —-