Targeting and Rangefinding, how much do they help?

[Rainsford15 18]

IDK what rangefinding does, really but I got both maxed out in one of my crew slots.

[Oldewarrhogg 3]

Doesn't the skill "Keen Vision" play an important part in all of this too?

[sirdreadnought 0]

what other skills are the most important for other crew members?  and what are useless for them as well

 

thx

 

[Shuri_96 1,297]

Hi @sirdreadnought

 

From my own experiences the first sections i put crew points towards are the Driver, Gunner and Tank Loader.

 

For Gunner: I go straight for Agility, Targeting and Rangefinding.

For Driver: I go straight for Tank Driving, Agility and Field Repair

For Tank Loader: I go straight for Weapon Reloading and Agility.

 

You can also go and read this wiki page about Crew skills along with this one that go very much into depth and will prove very useful for you.

 

Cheers

Edited January 18, 2018 by xShurikeNx

[Rustovick 22]

I have found Range-finding quite useless. when you get used to the range of your gun via practice, ranging becomes a thing of the past unless you you are trying to snipe with one of those low range rounds and your sight doesn't have enough Ticks to mark range accurately. Again this really isn't an issue during higher tiers though.

 

[TempestRiser 525]

Rangefinder at lower ranks is useful at realistic game mode for large caliber tanks with painful reload (KV-2, IS-2, Brumbar, Sturmpanzer etc) because you want to hit with the first shot !

At higher ranks it's useful for modern MBTs since you will be facing the enemy in larger and larger maps, sniping a target at distances over 1.5 ~ 2.5 km is not easy and the rangefinder may help you... if you have a good tank with rangefinder modification already installed and a good crew.

Targeting is useful at ANY rank... you will be mad many times if you die because you didn't have enough time to level the gun to your target.

Edited March 27, 2018 by TempestRiser

[Jex_TE 126]

On 17/01/2016 at 22:20, Raf1307 said:

 

Rangefinding? No

 

Targeting? Yes

This crude MSPaint sketch tells you how your gunner will move gun with increased skill

 

tl;dr - Moves gun vertically and Horizontally

 

This is actually incorrect, what you've illustrated here is rangefinding.

 

 

 

No, it is correct - the gunner moves horizontally and then vertically (or vice versa) for an inexperienced crew. The experienced gunner moves in a diagonal as the diagram shows.

[Jex_TE 126]

On 17/01/2016 at 22:20, Raf1307 said:

 

Rangefinding? No

 

Targeting? Yes

This crude MSPaint sketch tells you how your gunner will move gun with increased skill

 

tl;dr - Moves gun vertically and Horizontally

 

This is actually incorrect, what you've illustrated here is rangefinding.

 

 

 

No, it is correct - the gunner moves horizontally and then vertically (or vice versa) for an inexperienced crew. The experienced gunner moves in a diagonal as the diagram shows.

[Jex_TE 126]

On 18/12/2016 at 17:48, Tetsui_Ja said:

 

So its an unfair game-play as long as we dont pay for golden eagles to get 100% crew skills instead of 80%, otherwise we must play the same tank for a loooong time.
But answer to me plz, do qualifications (+30%) a big difference?

 

Yes there does seem to be some pay-to-win in this game - to skill my xm-1 for example would cost 2000 gold to get it to ace - sorry, that's a con in every respect.

 

But don't worry, I did get 75 SL's for "tank rescuer" last night which will go a long way towards the 1,600,000 SL's needed to expert said tank LMAO.

[Jex_TE 126]

On 26/12/2016 at 22:56, Tetsui_Ja said:

I play 2 years now and now i realize that is another "pay to win" bussines model. Another think im thiking is why Gaijin put me almost always with the looser team. How it is possible to loose all fights again and again, all day every day for 2 years, even if i kill 8 or 10 enemies alone.
My teamates plays not smarter than AI's, they running directly at the point and be killed 3 times. The enemy team act most of the time as a team. They attack together, they fly together, they intercept together, the same time in my team there is no air cover. NEVER.  It is so strange.
Do i have to pay for a premium account also to be with the right team? Is this plays any role? Or it is just bad luck?

 

This one's difficult to answer because I'm running a premium and also using premium tanks at 5.3. Before this my friend and I were losing 80% games at this level but he was premium with premium vehicles. Now we both are but we also changed our tactics and we seem to be winning most games now.

 

So we take our fastest tank, the M18 GMC (which btw actually does 53mph in RL not the 45 crap in WT) and we just drive straight to the cap point. If you get a cap by yourself in a premium tank you get 10 SL's (Probably 6k non premium). From there if we can get a kill then that's great and if you die, you can exit right there and you come away with SL's.

 

However, I've been contnuing to play. I cap, get a kill maybe, get another cap - it's all about the caps - I die, bring in my T20, get more kills and caps - I made around 120,000SL's in 3 games. Some game you'll make nothing but so far it seems to be working. Just keep going for caps - domination is your friend :)

On 29/04/2017 at 03:55, Arbella said:

 

Base to max is 100% increase, not 30%

And for the original topic, rangefinding is absolutely useless unless you regularly use the rangefinder feature (of dubious value in the first place).  Targeting is actually useful in my experience, not because of accuracy, but because the traverse is smoother, the gunner actually learns how to do both up and down and side to side at the same time instead of one after the other.

Edit:  Formatting

 

Doesn't the range finder only go up to 1000m or something, anyway?

[ArmourWorm 54]

When you take range to something that is farther than max range finding range, it will show something like '>800', where the 800 is max rangefinding distance.

 

Now, here are two pictures. Both Panther F with rangefinder, both are targeting a far away hill (at test drive).

Difference is in crew, one is rangefinding skill 3, Leadership 4, other is 5/5 (neither crew is qualified as ace for Panther F).

 

 

 

And that's what rangefinding skill does.

[Solipsisto 88]

Does rangefinding affect the aircraft aim lead in arcade mode?

[JackRob 179]

No, the arcade lead marker for tanks appears at a set 2.5km.

[marks_gtx11 145]

AB wise:

Targetting affects AIM speed (how fast the gunner turns the turret, higher skill level also makes the gunner better at doing DIAGONAL aiming, without enough levels in it it's basically a chore), also enhances the "accuracy" of the gunner's aim (less mistakes because his aim was ONE pixel above your indicated point and range);

rangefinding does nothing very impressive, rangefinding IS automatic, but rangefinding ALLOWS you to see the range with more leeway (a maxed rangefind skill gives the range up to the size of most AB maps);

Keen Vision in AB affects the RANGE the support crosshair is still active, plus it EXPANDS the range you will spot an enemy (make enemy markers pop out in the map and screen when visible), this is invaluable in light tanks with scouting (this is also near abusive as light tanks have EVEN MORE range for the crosshair to remain up with improved optics);

 

RB:

Targetting remains the same;

Rangefinding: this is where this skill gets it's value worth in gold, in RB and SB, rangefinding IS MANUAL, you need to bind a key, once you start, the GUNNER will use the GUNNER SIGHT to make the estimation, it takes a while, a low skill level reduces the range where the margin of error increases (a 0 on it makes the estimation have an error leeway of 100m as short as 600-700m away, while a top crew with ace level ony get it at 1Km range), the rangefinder modification SLIGHTLY SPEEDS up the procedure (as it's basically using the old Optical Coincidence rangefinder system some old tanks have equiped) as well as gives a very small boost for the error margin; Laser rangefinder is basically an ONE second zap that uses the skill to determine the error margin the rangefinder will give;

Keen vison: this is a skill for SCOUT only, Keen vision just expands the range the NOW NERFED scouting feature of RB will ping the enemy (aka, succeed on the task).

[HSTV_L 0]

i think targeting skill is too spend

[DragonSoulkin@live 139]

I've been playing for a year and never bothered with the rangefinder.....yeah I've been shot guessing that long. I finally started using the rangefinder and am glad I was upgrading my range finding skill because I am reliably hitting my targets now first shot.

[Pz_KpfW 110]

The rangefinder is especially important in RB for low velocity high trajectory shells like HEAT or HE for derp guns.  When you park your derp gun in a sniper location, spend your free time range finding the likely spots enemies will appear it. Then you can hit them more reliably with the first shot.  The slow reload rate means you won't get a second chance to correct your aim.

[Nickzar_tg@psn 12]

Rangefinder helps the most on mid to top tier rank tanks, till you get to laser rangefinder and as low the tier the close combat increase, also low tier have terrible long range accuracy.

 

what it does is simple:

- increase the distance a crew is capable of range a target 

- it lower the +- error according to the distance you are aiming 

 

for example (not real data)

 Ho-Ro, Tier I Japan stock crew 

 only able to range up to 700 mts and 50 mts of error at 500 mts so you might miss the target. For this combat situations is better to get close or range the target several times.

 

For mid tier you cannot range over 1K mts as the in tank instruments are incapable to do it. so u can range a square of the map and then calculate the distance estimating the position of the target.

Other technique is to double shoot. One guessing and the other correcting the aim.

And the last one is to memorize ranges, as on certain maps the battle is similar on the players behavior.

[Maj_Fox@psn 522]

Does the Rangefinder module effect what you see in AB?

 

Cheers

[Nickzar_tg@psn 12]

hello @*Maj_Fox, no it doesnt it only its effective on RB and SB

[paweeleek 0]

.

[V1K1NG_ 0]

Targeting is good to have. but in my opinion reload speed is first ting you should go for

[the_pro32714 5]

If you are new to war thunder or just started playing, using a rangefinder is important, but as you progress, you will have the tendency to not range find, as it is too slow, so with practice in real-battle situations, then you can eye-ball it.

[T0NKA 95]

On 24/05/2022 at 22:23, the_pro32714 said:

If you are new to war thunder or just started playing, using a rangefinder is important, but as you progress, you will have the tendency to not range find, as it is too slow, so with practice in real-battle situations, then you can eye-ball it.

People make several mistakes with the rangefinder. Sadly most people are only good at estimating up to 400m

 

1) Not putting any crew skill points into it.

2) Not understanding that you don't have to range find a tank, you can technically range find a building, car, hilltop, tree etc so that when a tank comes into that area you already know the distance

3) Not understanding that you dont need to maintain your aim while range finding, it will range the point at the time you hit the hotkey

4) Not knowing you can range find with binoculars.