Trading
Accepting a hit in order to land one, which is favourable or not depending on alpha, reload and remaining hit points.
Also known as trade, trading shots.
Every exchange in the open is a trade. It pays when your shell is worth more than theirs, when your reload is shorter, or when your armor may bounce and theirs will not.
This is where alpha damage earns its reputation: a gun that removes 750 hit points per shot trades profitably against one that removes 320 even if the second has better damage per minute on paper.
Related terms
Alpha damageThe damage a single penetrating shell deals, before the plus or minus 25 percent the game rolls on every shot.Hit pointsA vehicle's health pool, which cannot be restored in battle and is therefore a resource to be spent rather than a buffer to be refilled.Damage per minuteDamage per minute: how much a gun deals over a sustained exchange, alpha multiplied by how often it can fire.Peek-a-booRolling out of cover to fire a single aimed shot and reversing straight back before the opponent's reload finishes.