Gunnery terms

A gun's dispersion at 100 metres, in metres: the radius of the circle a fully aimed shot can land in, where lower is better.

The time the aiming circle takes to shrink by 60 percent of its width, not the time to become fully aimed.

The circle drawn around the crosshair showing where the next shell can land.

The damage a single penetrating shell deals, before the plus or minus 25 percent the game rolls on every shot.

The module holding a vehicle's shells, which slows reloading when damaged and destroys the vehicle outright when it detonates.

A lighter, faster shell with higher penetration than AP, less normalization and a steeper penetration loss over distance.

The standard solid shell: reliable damage, moderate penetration, five degrees of normalization and a ricochet beyond 70 degrees.

The lock that keeps the gun pointed at a target's centre of mass while both vehicles move.

A magazine gun that must empty its clip before reloading it, all at once.

A magazine gun that refills one shell at a time, so it can fire a single shot and keep loading in the background.

The widening of the aiming circle caused by moving, traversing or firing, and the reason a gun's paper accuracy is rarely what a player experiences.

The diameter of a gun's shell in millimetres, which sets what armor it can overmatch as well as roughly how hard it hits.

Damage per minute: how much a gun deals over a sustained exchange, alpha multiplied by how often it can fire.

The size of the aiming circle at any moment, which grows with movement and shrinks as the gun settles.

The horizontal span a gun can cover without turning the hull, on vehicles that have no rotating turret.

How far below horizontal a gun can point, which decides whether a vehicle can shoot over a crest without exposing its hull.

How far above horizontal a gun can point, which matters for shooting uphill and at vehicles on higher ground.

The combination of accuracy, aim time and dispersion penalties that decides whether a gun hits what it is pointed at.

A shaped-charge shell with high penetration that ignores distance entirely, but is defeated by tracks, screens and any spaced armor it detonates on.

A high explosive variant with much higher nominal penetration, which behaves like HE when it fails to penetrate.

A shell that explodes on contact, dealing reduced damage through armor it cannot penetrate and splashing everything nearby.

The short delay between two shells of the same magazine, which sets how fast a burst is delivered.

A set of shells a gun can fire in quick succession before a long reload, the mechanism behind autoloaders and autoreloaders.

The distance beyond which a shell simply disappears, 720 metres for most guns and further for artillery.

The separate damage value a shell applies to modules and crew members, which is what decides whether a hit tracks, breaks or wounds.

How much armor a shell can defeat, in millimetres, rolled plus or minus 25 percent on every shot and compared against the effective thickness it hits.

The higher-penetration round available on nearly every gun, bought with credits and named after the days when it cost gold.

How many shells a gun can fire in a minute, the reciprocal of its reload time.

The time between one shot and the next being ready, or for a magazine gun the time to refill the whole magazine.

A second crosshair showing where the server thinks the gun is pointing, which is what the shot is actually resolved against.

One round of ammunition, carrying its own damage, penetration, velocity and behaviour against armor.

How fast a shell travels, in metres per second, which decides how far ahead of a moving target you have to aim.

The zoomed view down the gun sight, as opposed to the third-person arcade view the game starts in.

The blast area of a high explosive shell, which damages everything within it whether or not the shell penetrated.

The visible trail a shell leaves in flight, which gives away the position of whoever fired it.