War Thunder does a pretty terrible job at communicating some of the more subtle game mechanics featured at top tier. There are many features that the game doesn't even tell you about. Hopefully this guide will help shed some light on these super sekret features. Currently this guide focuses on what you'll typically see in ground battles. Generally high tier technology starts appearing at rank 6 and above however there are some exceptions found in lower tiers.

The intended audience for this guide are the kinds of players who are new to the game and drop $60 on a high tier premium and are overwhelmed. If you're experienced and already know this you can also read it and rip me apart in the comments with anything I'm wrong about so I can improve the guide.

As a general rule of thumb, all reactive armor offers significant protection against chemical rounds and lesser against kinetic rounds. However there are many different flavors of reactive armor - make sure you check and see what your tank uses. In real life there are a wide variety of different kinds of reactive armor such as electric armor, non explosive reactive armor, explosive reactive armor, self limiting explosive reactive armor and more. In War Thunder we currently only have ERA and NERA.

Explosive reactive armor (ERA) consists of an explosive wedged in between two metal plates that will explode when hit and hopefully disrupt the projectile enough to hopefully save you from being blown up. Be careful as ERA only works once, when it's blown off it's well, blown off. Most ERA only offer protection against chemical rounds but newer ERA blocks offer great protection against kinetic penetrators too. If someone for some reason uses pure HE against your tank then an entire section of your tank might be stripped of armor.

Pros

• Offers superior chemical round protection, sometimes kinetic too
  
• Gets introduced earlier where chemical rounds are more common
  
• You will make stock tanks suffer if you have ERA

Cons

• Removed after getting hit
  
• Large sections of armor can be blown off if hit by a large HE round
  
• Early ERA is useless against kinetic projectiles

Non explosive reactive armor (NERA) is a composite sandwich consisting of many different materials such metal, ceramics, polymers, air, and additional military secret herbs and spices. The way NERA works is complicated but essentially when a round hits the composite sandwich the shockwave generated will travel very fast inside the initial metal layer and when it hits a material with more elasticity the shockwave will diffract and cause the metal back plate to expand in the sandwich which will hopefully absorb the projectile. NERA performance differs wildly from tank to tank and even differs in different locations on the same tank, this is due to countries liking to keep the secrets behind the exact armor composition of their tanks classified for obvious reasons and Gaijin having to guess a lot of protection values. This also comes in the form of composite screens that can be blown off.

Pros

• Usually isn't destroyed after getting hit
  
• Some types give great protection against kinetic rounds (Such as Leopard 2 turret cheeks)

Cons

• Some types give poor protection against kinetic rounds (Such as Leopard 2 mantlet)
  
• Only starts to show up in top tier tanks
  
• Some composite screens are destroyed after hits, such as the cheek screens on Leopard 2s

This kind of armor (more like military grade chain link fence) is placed with an air gap from the main armor plate. This kind of armor was generally designed to defeat man-portable anti-tank weapons like the Panzerschreck, Bazooka, or RPG-7. In game, it offers marginal protection against chemical rounds (HE, HEAT, HESH) but it doesn't really offer any additional protection against kinetic rounds (AP, APHE, APDS, APFSDS). On rare occasions, spaced armor can be used to defeat APHE rounds due to a mix of enough thickness of armor to arm the fuse and space for the round to explode. You may have experienced this with add on track armor that Shermans and Pz4's sometimes have, where they seem invulnerable to APHE from certain angles.

Occasionally there are vehicles like the Stryker with its slatted armor which actually has decent angled protection against HEAT but at top tier, spaced armor is useless against anyone who isn't running stock ammo.

While every tank has binoculars, not every tank has the advanced commander optics module. You will probably need to set a keybind in order to access this feature.

Commander optics usually feature high magnification, which is sometimes a significant upgrade compared to the gunners sight. You can tell your gunner to aim where you're pointing, just like with the binoculars (clicking LMB by default). You can sometimes (but not always) fire directly from the commander view - that will be explained further in the next section.

While commander optics are extremely useful, they are not a universal upgrade to the binoculars. Most commander optics have a limited turn speed, so it will be difficult to swing them around quickly. I find that if I want to look with the sight in a significantly different direction from where I'm facing, I use the binoculars and tell my gunner to aim in that direction, then swap over to the commander optics. It will swing over quickly to where you pointed. Unlike binoculars some commander sights have access to night vision and thermals.

You cannot use the commander optics if your commander dies or has to move to replace a knocked out crewmember.

Don't neglect your binoculars - they give you a point of view at a higher spot above your tank. The commander optics do not. Their point of view is from the physical location of the module (be careful with bush placement, it can easily block your commander sight).


This is a feature that's very poorly documented in game. As far as I can tell, there are two distinct abilities with this piece of tech that do not always show up together.

The first is the ability for the commander to directly aim and fire while using the commanders optics view. This requires you to keybind "commander fire control" in your options. You will know its working when the text "Aim Mode" appear in your hud.

The second is the ability for your commander to quickly take over for your gunner in the event that your gunner dies. You can tell your tank has this capability if you hover over your commander in the x-ray view and they have the text "Can fire main armament". In game, when your gunner is killed several things happen in quick succession.

First, you will be immediately prevented from firing from the gunner sight. At this point, if you swap over to the commander optics and have CFC enabled, you will regain full control of your gun and will be able to fire back.

After 3 seconds, you will be able to aim and fire from the main gun sight again. This timer is represented by the inner circle for the crew replacement timer.

After the outer circle is filled, your commander has fully moved to the gunner position and you will be unable to use the commander sight. Enemies also have this capability, so if your shot kills their gunner you should retreat because their commander will be able to return fire before you're able to reload.

In real life, this capability was represented by dual independent sights and supporting fire control systems in order to allow the gunner and commander to track and acquire separate targets at the same time.


While a tank with thermals has a definite advantage over a tank without thermals, this module is not the same across all tanks. The difference in thermal quality is most notable in long range engagements, as shown below. While there is a difference in quality, only having gen 1 instead of gen 3 isn't a deal breaker as you can still effectively spot targets. I recommend binding your thermals to an easily accessible key and to frequently toggle thermals on and off as needed. They are great at target acquisition but lower quality thermals are not so great for precise aiming.

Defending against thermals can be difficult but is not impossible. If you are hiding from being spotted, being near burning wrecks will make you basically invisible on thermals. Smoke launchers also block thermal sights but the smoke from ESS does NOT block thermals.

Here is a target located at ~1200 meters during daytime in clear weather.

Generation 1 thermals seen through a 10x optic. Generation 1 thermals are common to see on early to mid cold war vehicles. Generation 1 thermals have a resolution of 500x300.






Generation 2 thermals seen through a 10x optic. Generation 2 thermals are most common on late cold war and some modern vehicles. Generation 2 thermals have a resolution of 800x600.






Generation 3 thermal seen through a 10.5x optic. Generation 3 thermals are rare in War Thunder and are usually only seen on a few modern vehicles. Generation 3 thermals have a resolution of 1200x800.





If you don't like the standard white color scheme of the thermals you can change it to green or red in the settings under "Ground Vehicle Battle Settings" > "Color Scheme Of Thermal Sight", Additionally, you can invert the colors as well - hot targets are bright vs hot targets are dark, for whatever reason this is a keybind located in "Ground vehicles" > "Weaponry" > "Change color scheme of the thermal sight". Down below all the thermal sight color schemes are compared. Hot targets are bright on the left while hot targets are dark on the right.

Up until this point, any ammo detonation was a fatal shot to your tank. Blowout panels allow the ammo to explode without a fatal buildup of pressure inside of the crew compartment. All the ammo in the blowout panels are destroyed but you survive (as long as you have FPE to put out the fire that'll start afterwards). Any ammunition that is stored in other areas of the tank (including any ammo loaded in the main gun) will remain untouched. Be aware that if the ammo compartment is penetrated from the crew compartment then the ammo will explode as normal

If you survive and get to a capture point to reload, your blowout panels will reset and your ammo will be safely stored again.

Spall liners are composed of soft materials such as aramid fibers. This layer absorbs a significant amount of fragmentation produced from a penetrating round and increases the likelihood of survival. Note that spall liners don't remove all fragmentation as shown below.

In War Thunder, spall liner sections are destroyed after a major penetration. Most tanks have several sections of spall liner so what exactly is destroyed depends on a case-by-case basis.



Active protection systems, or APS come in two different flavors. Soft kill APS that attempts to make an enemy munition miss and hard kill APS that attempts to destroy enemy munitions entirely.

Soft kill protection attempts to disrupt the missile guidance system. Currently in War Thunder we only have electro-optical disruption systems that shine a bright infrared light at the missile which makes the missile confused and makes it lose control. Some newer missiles have countermeasures in place to defeat these infrared jammers. Note that this system only works when aiming at the missile, it also glows a ton when viewed with night vision so it's a wise idea to turn them off on night maps. An example of such a system would be the Shtora-1 system equipped on the T-90.

Do note that it is still possible to get hit by ATGM's even if their guidance is disrupted, especially at point blank ranges.

Hard kill uses a systems of detectors and launchers to make the munition explode prematurely before making contact with the tank.

In War Thunder there are currently only systems capable of defeating slower munitions such as missiles and HEATFS rounds however in reality they can reduce the effectiveness of APFSDS as well. The capabilities of hard kill APS change from tank to tank, but the most important information is the zone of coverage for the APS module, and the amount of uses they have. This is located on the paper doll tank on your HUD.

The green areas are the horizontal areas each APS module can cover, and the number is the amount of times it can fire. Depleted modules will turn the cone of coverage red. You can resupply them on capture points but it can take a lot of time to do so.

Other important qualities to consider when evaluating APS modules

• Time to react
  
• Rearm time
  
• Vertical and horizontal coverage

Be familiar with these as well to maximize your effectiveness.

In the update "Seek & Destroy" Gaijin introduced a few new modules that are mostly present at higher tiers. These modules are the "Autoloader", "Fire Control System", "Power System", "Electronic Equipment" and "Driver Controls". As of writing (2024-07-27) only some vehicles, mostly IFVs and some SPAAs have these modules fully implemented, Gaijin has said they will continue to implement the modules while prioritising light vehicles. Note that none of the new components need parts to fully repair.

Easily the most important new module in my opinion. Destroying the autoloader makes it impossible to reload the main gun until it's repaired. It's not something you can really specifically aim for since if you hit the ammo rack it will probably explode anyways but it's nice for those occasional side shots on Russian MBTs that sometimes don't kill and especially for vehicles such as the 2S38 that can have their autoloader hit even when they're hull down. Keep in mind that the gun can still fire if there's a shell in the breach.

There are two types of drones currently. Scout drones and strike drones.

Before using either type of drone, you will need to bind some controls.

• Weapon Lock: Air to Air
  
• Weapon Lock: Air to Ground
  
• Sight Stabilization
  
• Switch NVD mode
  
• Fire air to ground missile
  
• Flying in orbit
  
• Designate target

All light tanks of rank 6 and above have gained a new researchable module, the scout drone. It spawns at low altitude, is fairly slow (~110 km/h top speed), but is quite small and has extremely good turning. In addition, rank 7 vehicles get thermals on their drones. You always start with one drone that can be replenished at capture points, however it takes 90 seconds to replenish it so you should ideally preserve it if you can. While flying the drone, your tank will either stay in place or will continue to move forward if you have it on cruise control.

Spawning a scout drone works similar to how arcade plane spawns work (or if you're a masochist, its exactly how the recon biplanes in naval work). If you swap out of the drone to move your tank, the drone will fly in level flight in the direction it was last pointed or you can order it to fly in a very wide circle. It will try to avoid crashing if you were pointed towards the ground when you swap back to your tank.

The name Scout Drone is misleading because the scout drone does not actually get the scouting ability. However, you can still use the squad marker (Set Squad Target) to point out targets for your teammates, and a separate ping that works for the rest of your team as well. Again, this gives you no points but does help out your team.

You need to be careful with your usage of drones and preferably be in cover with teammates covering so you aren't ambushed. It is easy to spend too much time in your drone when you should preferably be capturing points, killing enemies and actually scouting for your team. Scout drones are completely overpowered but are balanced by the fact that you will be getting zero points for your efforts.

"What about using the scout drone to kill helicopters and open top vehicles?" It's a meme. It takes like 5 drones crashing into open top vehicles to kill them, and helicopters are usually very far away from the battlefield and are also a lot faster than you. If you do go after helicopters, aim for the main rotor. Crashing into their chassis will do nothing.

It is very difficult for radar SPAA to detect and lock onto scout drones due to their small size. In my experience, VT shells do not trigger on them either. You need direct hits. However IR missiles like the Mistral are decently effective at shooting down drones.

At BR 10.7 (this may be higher now) and above you will automatically bring along a strike drone. Just like how a nuke equipped jet doesn't take up a crew slot or anything; it just exists on its own. It costs 750sp to spawn (with one exception - Russia has two loadouts for its drone, one of which is more expensive). It is quite slow and maneuvers very poorly.

It is spawned about 10km away from the battlefield at 4.5km altitude. While the firing angle for your missile are small, once you designate a target and shoot, you can resume level flying again. If your target dies before your missile reaches it, you may be able to swap targets but the missiles are pretty sluggish so it may not be able to maneuver in time.

Do not bother returning to the airfield to rearm. Just bail and spawn into something else. If you can't respawn and are playing in a squad you can do recon for them with your fantastic optics and great vantage point, random teammates are unlikely to pay attention to your recon.

750sp is a steep price for what it can do and you are usually much better off spawning in a dedicated CAS aircraft or tank, I see it as a sort of last resort vehicle when my lineup is exhausted. Keep in mind that if there are any missile SPAA up, you're basically a free kill.

1: The rectangle represents the area in which you can fire your missiles
2: This is where you are currently aiming
3: Maximum range of missile
4: Current range of target

You will find that you may need to point downward in order to get your aiming recital within the firing rectangle area. These things are extremely easy to use. You'll figure it out.

• Identify your target
  
• Lock onto target
  
• Point drone at ground
  
• Fire missile
  
• Resume level flight
  
• Continue tracking target until missile hits
  
• Repeat for second missile
  
• J out and spawn a new tank or provide recon

Radars are found on almost all high tier anti air vehicles and they greatly help in detecting and shooting down planes. Every radar is different and I heavily recommend looking at the radar specifications of your vehicle with the X-ray view.

The War Thunder Wiki[wiki.warthunder.com]has an excellent section about how to use radars.

As far as radar bands go, this is deep esoteric knowledge (like scouting) but there are a few things that I do know.



First, generally speaking, the later the alphabet designation of the band, the more advanced the radar. I'm not sure of the exact point this happens, but you won't be able to see or lock-on to recon drones until you have high enough radar band.

Second, your radar band can be higher than the Radar Warning System on aircraft can detect. In mismatches like this, your radar pings are invisible to it.


Some jets and helicopters are equipped with radar warning systems. Their individual capabilities differ, but the main thing is that they alarm the aircraft that they have been pinged by a radar source. As they become more advanced, they will indicate with more and more accuracy the direction of the radar ping and will eventually also tell the range and the the exact vehicle equipped with said radar.

Smart players will use their RWS systems for suppression of enemy air defense missions (SEAD). Your radar is basically a giant searchlight - while it is very useful for lighting up areas so you can see better you also are advertising your position to anyone who has line of sight to you. Expect Gaijin to add dedicated SEAD jets like the Wild Weasel at some point.

If things are calm and I have the mental bandwidth available, I will almost always turn off my radar as soon as it detects an enemy aircraft. Usually knowing that an enemy spawned is enough information for me to get visual and to track it as it gets closer. Once it gets within range, you can either use IRST to track your target or you will be forced to turn your radar back on to get a lock. Either way, you don't want the jet to know you're there until its most advantageous to you. You especially don't want to lock onto a jet with radar until its absolutely necessary since their RWS will warn them of said radar lock.


Optical tracking, or Infrared Searching and Tracking (IRST) is a feature found on some infantry fighting vehicles and anti air vehicles. If your vehicle features both standard radar locking and IRST then I'd heavily recommend binding a key to switch between the two as IRST is generally better for a couple of reasons. It doesn't alert whatever you're locking if it features a radar warning receiver, it has much less wiggle/slop compared to most radars, and it can lock onto very small targets (recon drones). However on some vehicles IRST doesn't show you the range or speed of what you're locking. It can also be confused by enemies using flares and early versions can only lock onto targets that are relatively close (~<3km) to you.

You can see if a radar features IRST by looking at it in the X-ray view.

Top tier sees mostly APFSDS rounds and HEATFS rounds (if you're stock or a masochist), while these rounds are scattered through some lower tier vehicles I frequently see many newer premium players unsure which one to use.


This is the round your tank will most likely start with, except rank 8 tanks where Gaijin (thankfully) made APFSDS the stock round. HEATFS is ineffective against MBTs but surpasses APFSDS when it comes to dealing with light tanks and SPAAs due to their explosive mass. If your vehicle lacks large HE rounds or missiles then it's a good idea to bring at least one or two rounds for dealing with lightly armored vehicles in cover. If you need to use this against an MBT try to disable the gun as one hit kills are pretty difficult to achieve.

This is your bread and butter ammo at top tier. Ideally it should be the first modification to go for, even before parts and FPE in my (DFLN's) opinion. [Muffalopadus: I prefer getting parts & FPE first to be honest.] Some APFSDS rounds have lower penetration values than HEATFS rounds which can be misleading for newer players since the armor that high tier tanks have is much better at defeating chemical rounds such as HEATFS and APFSDS has much better post penetration damage. Due to their insanely good angled performance and the thin side armor of MBTs you can easily kill an MBT if it's even slightly angled by just shooting the side.


Missiles such as the PARS and SPIKEs are usually fired from helicopter however there are a few ground vehicles with fire and forget missiles.

Spikes are decent against ground targets and quite good against helicopters but they aren't the wunderweapon that you might think. First of all, their damage is fairly poor for an ATGM despite generally having good penetration. It's not impossible to one shot your enemy but it is pretty unlikely. Second, you can't manually aim or shoot them. No lock? No shoot. Its not super clear to me what exactly you're locking onto but its something arbitrary.

As you can see, this is a clear side profile of this IT-1 but the Spike refuses to lock.


However if I move just a tiny bit forward it locks onto something in the front.


So basically just spam the lock on button and pray is my best advice.

There are also different locks you can get, and I'm not sure exactly how they're determined but as far as I can tell one missile attempts top attacks and one missile attempts direct attacks.

Top attack lock


Direct path lock


At close range your missile will always go directly to the target, but at certain intermediate ranges (200-300m) it may try to top attack and miss because of it. Its really hard to predict its behavior.

You will have difficulty locking on to tanks that are hiding near wrecked vehicles. Most of the time your missile will lock onto one of the wrecks and miss your target. If you are hiding from someone shooting Spikes at you, hide near wrecks! Smoke launchers also break lock so if you know you're being Spiked just pop smoke. When self-guided missiles lose lock they self-destruct after a short time.

In summary - when using the Spike its best to fire 2 missiles at your target just to make sure. Against helicopters you can get away with 1 missile if you need to engage multiple targets.

These missiles are usually fired from infantry fighting vehicles such as the M3A3 Bradley however some Russian MBTs have the ability to launch missiles out of their gun. Tandem missiles explode on contact and essentially explode twice, the first penetrator defeats any reactive armor and the second penetrator goes inside the tank. Top attack missiles, like the name implies, explode above the tank. They're unreliable in War Thunder but it does allow you to kill tanks that are in complete cover while you're mostly obscured.

There are actually two different flavors of top attack missiles. One type is the overfly top-attack (OTA/OFTA) i.e. the Spike or Javelin where the missile flies upward and then attacks the enemy tank from above with a direct impact. The second type are ATGM's that fly over the top of a tank and detonate a downward facing payload into the weaker roof armor of the tank. There are also two different payloads that we see in War Thunder - explosively formed penetrators (EFP) and shaped charge warheads (HEAT). At the time of writing this, EFP's are superior due to their better post penetration damage.

Aiming and guiding direct vs top attack missiles are slightly different. Direct are obvious, you point them at the point of impact you want. Indirect missiles are a bit weird because they are offset from the reticle a small amount. You still want to point directly at your target with your crosshairs despite your missile looking like it will miss since the point of it is to fly above your target and explode over it.

Do not try to directly hit your target with top attack missiles. You will do no damage. Wrecks in front of your target will also cause missiles to detonate early so avoid them if you can.

Thanks for reading this short guide. If you have any criticism please leave a comment so the guide can be improved.

Also yes if you're wondering, a lot of this guide is taken from my previous guide "Sweden Ground Forces, A Primer" If you want to check it out, do so here. https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2649904720

2023.12.21

• Released

2024.3.20

• General editorializing, added some stuff about radars and removed some outdated stuff

2024.8.22

• General editorializing, added some stuff about ATGM's