Ship Battles Basic Controls and Tactics – War Thunder

I will try to make a serious guide for starters / new players to the ship battles, all you need to know!

Enjoy! Thank you for using my guide, and please give a positive rating if you liked it, so more ppl can find me.

Basic controls of your ship

To start off, it would be useful to know how to control your ship completely.

Now this might sound stupid, but not all controls are clear to everyone, and not every option has a key bound to it by default.

For example:

• Artillery strikes did not have any keys bound to it by default settings.

I put the artillery strikes under key 4 in the action bar to quickly select it without having to move your mouse.

• The same goes for Primary weapons, and secondary weapons.

I put the weaponry under keys 1, 2, 3 to quickly swap between guns and cannons.

• Selecting targets for your gunners.

This does have a default key <E> button. But its not properly explained anywhere to my knowledge. So I will.

In the bottom left corner, you have a display of your ship and its modules.

There is an icon there with a crosshair, and a ship, an airplane, both, or none. you can press the <E>button to toggle between these modes to select what the crew should be targeting with all the weapons that you are not controlling.

• Selecting a target

To select your own target, press <X> button. The enemy target will now have a lining around them, if its an air target a leading crosshair (aim assist) will appear to help you actually hit aircraft.

• Snipe mode.

You can access snipe modus by pressing <V> button by default. When looking down your scope you can press the right mouse button for another level of zoom! this allows you to shoot accurate at long distances, although it takes a lot of practice.

• Torpedo’s, mines, depth charges

By default, simply press the <space bar> to drop or launch them.

By pressing <Q> button, you can aim and launch individual torpedo’s for more regulated and more accurate results.

Tactical advice for survivability

Make yourself harder to hit!

• You can make yourself smaller, simply by pointing either your front end or your rear to the enemy instead of exposing your sides. the bigger the target, the easier it is to hit right?

Upgrade priority:

• Most important things to upgrade if you want any chance of surviving an enemy volley are the repair box and the fire extinguishers for sure. Without these its a one way trip to the bottom of the seas, so make sure you invest all your first research points in here.
• Secondly, smokescreen is also very important as it masks your ship. (especially important for retreating, and slow-moving ships that can’t evade attacks.)
• Smokescreen also helps you to survive aircraft assaults. If they can’t really see you, they won’t hit you as much.

Don’t go solo.

• Its a team based game… so yeah. Stay with teammates, preferably even specify roles!
• If someone has a ship with lots of AA guns on board, and you have none, it might be wise hanging out with them.
• Take turns dropping smoke screens.

Use ships as they are intended, and as you prefer.

• Usually the slower, heavier ships are not intended to charge. They got heavy AA, and slow, large caliber guns. These are best used to defend areas, and to snipe from long distances. Prefer camping one spot on the map.

• Small boats are fast, agile, and hard to hit when they keep moving, so hit the gas! Big ships won’t be able to turn or aim as fast as you can move around at closer distances. They usually have smaller calibers, so don’t excel at taking out air targets. 1 torpedo up close can be enough to sink a way bigger ship.

Go for assists, tag multiple targets.

If you want to rack up points, unlocking aircrafts in battle, a good tactic is to tag a lot of enemies. If there are multiple, make sure you hit all of them a couple of times before focussing on one. Even if you don’t kill them, they might be sunk later on and you still get points. Focussing on 1 target usually results in lower score so make sure you get a piece of every pie!

Bringing along aircraft

Bring along aircrafts in ship battles.

Keep in mind the same Battle Rating applies as your ships! So don’t bring along a BR 4.0 aircraft when your ships are all BR 1.7 … you will get pawned.

Personally, I prefer to use planes with extra gun pods rather than taking torpedo’s or bombs. These have way shorter reload time, and have a big effectiveness in ship battles.

Play support.

I advice to take out enemy air targets first, as the planes can change the course of the battle. aircraft can take out multiple ships with ease, so save your allies from them if you want to win!

Secondly, I strongly suggest you scout around, and pick enemy ships that are already in combat with your allied fleet. If they are too busy shooting another ship that’s in their face, they will not see you coming from above. This way you can kill multiple ships with 1 plane without getting hit.

Stay clear of AA ferries! the name says it all… 😛 ( if you don’t get it, AA = Anti Aircraft lol)

Original Link – Continuation of discussion