To make battles exciting, the developers behind World of Tanks Modern Armor installed game mechanics that imitate real-life physics. This allows us to immerse ourselves in battles as if we were driving real tanks.

Each World of Tanks Modern Armor vehicle has a set of technical parameters. They shape each vehicle’s strengths and weaknesses: some tanks are faster and some are more accurate, others have better armor, etc. By increasing or decreasing certain parameters, the developers create vehicles with unique playstyles and balance gameplay.

One of the more interesting parameters for our players is aiming time. Let’s take a closer look at it.

Aiming Time

When you aim to fire, a game mechanic consisting of two dependent parts is triggered:

1. The aiming reticle, which indicates accuracy
2. The aiming time, which indicates how long it takes to maximize your chance of hitting the target

The aiming reticle is the circle with a dot in its center that you see in the middle of your screen during battle; it determines where your shots are likely to land.

The aiming reticle is essential for firing, but it is different for every vehicle! Some tanks have bigger reticles than others to start. Plus, several different factors can affect the reticle’s size, such as these:

• Your gun might be damaged.
• Your gunner might be injured.
• You might be across racing rough terrain or hiding in the bushes.

Aiming starts as soon as the tank stops and ends when the reticle reaches its minimum diameter. When you see the stats for a gun’s aiming time, what you’re actually seeing is the factor used to determine how quickly your reticle shrinks.

This is due to the fact that, like the size of the reticle, one tank’s aiming time can vary widely due to a number of factors:

• How fast the tank is moving
• What the initial shot dispersion of the gun is before aiming
• Whether the tank is rotating its hull or turret
• What equipment is installed on the tank
• What Skills the Commander has learned

In other words, a gun’s aiming time is a dynamic parameter, and it’s not feasible to give the precise values for every possible situation. The actual aiming time might be 1.5–2 times longer than indicated in the stats!

Example: Aiming Time and the Object 261

Let’s take the Object 261 as an example. Here are its stats from Tankopedia:

You go into battle in the Object 261 and rush to take the most advantageous position. There’s a scout on the map who’s transmitting data about an enemy tank. You start aiming. And you see a huge aiming reticle! How long will you have to wait? You had seen 6.5 seconds mentioned in the stats, so why did you have to wait for 10 whole seconds?

This is a perfectly normal situation. It is because aiming time doesn’t refer to the time required for the reticle to shrink from its maximum to minimum size, but the speed at which the reticle will shrink.

In other words, the bigger the initial reticle, the more time you need to aim.