Situational Awareness Guide

1. So, what is Situational Awareness? 2. How do I get “Situational Awareness”? 3. First point: vision is paramount! (sound less so, but still)

3.1 Settings 3.2 Hardware 3.3 Get Mods 3.4 Sound and oral prompts

4. Processing information 4.1 Spatial Awareness 4.2 Tactical awareness

4.2.1 Evaluate your immediate surroundings 4.2.2 Overhead Vehicle markers

4.3 Using your minimap

4.3.1 Enhance your minimap 4.3.2 When to look at your minimap 4.3.3 Unspotted Vehicles. 4.3.4 Quickcounts

5. Relay, Relay, Relay! 5.1 Relaying information to your team (works mostly one way) 5.2 Relaying information to your platoon mates (works two ways)

6. Strategic awareness

1. So, what is Situational Awareness?

Situational awareness” (SA) is a BIG subject in WoT. Everyone pretty much talks about it as one of the decisive factors separating good from average players, but funnily enough, no one has been able to pinpoint an exact definition of what situational awareness actually is. Therefore, if you do a quick search on the forums or through the web resources for the game you might find various different definitions of the term, none of which is completely right or completely wrong.

So what is situational awareness? We will attempt to give our own definition. As we see it in SGTA, it’s a broad term roughly describing the following ability of a player to, “Know what is happening around them during the course of the battle and react accordingly”. Therefore, there are two notions involved in this definition. Knowing what is happening around you (awareness) as well as properly reacting to it; there is no point of being aware that something is happening when you do not react to it. Since there are so many things actually happening around you during the course of the battle, people tend to define situational awareness according to what they think is the most important. Some say SA is looking and interpreting the minimap on the fly, others say it is knowing what you should expect to face and when, others say it is being aware of what your team and the enemy team is doing at any given time. Well, SA is a broader concept encompassing ALL of these aspects.“

2. How do I get “Situational Awareness”? Now here is the trick, you cannot “get” situational awareness and it cannot be taught in the same way as a technique like sidescraping. We have had a LOT of trouble here as to how to organize a class for situational awareness and after several attempts and experiments we have reached the following conclusion: You can’t teach SA. It is the only aspect of the game that needs to be self-taught for each individual player. You therefore have to “teach” SA to yourself. Additionally, we all inherently have SA to a certain extent. When you think about it, even the most novice player can react more or less to what is happening around him. Nevertheless, with experience, one can assimilate more and more information in a shorter space of time, therefore becoming aware of and reacting to unfolding situations and often even anticipating them. Therefore SA is not something that you learn; it is more something that you develop. Nevertheless, even if we cannot “teach” you SA, we can provide you with the necessary tools so as to further develop it for yourself. What we can do is setup the foundations for you, give you the blueprints and you can slowly build on this skill. To use a sports analogy, we can teach you how you can adopt a “heads up” style of play, and instead of focusing on the ball, help you focus on what is happening on the field as a whole. “Heads up” is the key word here and tunnel vision is the number one enemy. Once these foundations are laid up for you, you can then start gradually building your SA skill by EXPERIENCE. SA is an ever developing skill and even the most experienced players cannot develop it 100%. It is human nature. One will always make mistakes and one can multitask and be aware of his environment to a certain extent. After some point it is also a question of talent. Some people will just develop naturally a more advanced SA skill than others. Nevertheless, there is no way that a player with an underdeveloped SA can become better than a player that has basic SA notions and is making an effort to apply them in practice. Another thing that you should also bear in mind, is that your SA directly depends on how focused you are while playing the game. Receiving and processing all this information requires a minimum level of concentration. For this reason you should consider taking short breaks every 2-3 battles, or just play a couple of battles from time to time in a more

“relaxed” mood in order to “blow off some steam”. Finally, you should be aware, that all the tactics and techniques you will be taught here will only bring you up to a certain point. When you will achieve a better skill level overall in these fields, you will quickly become aware that, in the end, what distinguishes good players from very good players is SA. So, shall we go for it?

3. First point: vision is paramount! (sound less so, but still) Before you can even begin to process and analyze any bit of information you must first be able to see it. In the following section we will therefore learn how to better see things, and better perceive information available to us in the game.

3.1 Settings It might sound basic, but you will be surprised as to how many people play the game with the wrong settings, depriving themselves from vital information. First thing you must do is press “Ctrl and +” to zoom in your minimap. A zoomed out minimap is near useless. You should at least also change the over-tank markers ingame, both for your own and the enemy team. In particular, it is especially useful to know exactly how many hitpoints your enemies have left, rather than just a percentage. Other settings will be explained more in detail in the relative basics course, the “settings class” available to you is therefore a MUST before even starting with SA. Good vision and good PC performance are your eyes and ears in the game. You can always play the game half-blind and half deaf, but you will never be good at it. Which brings us to:

3.2 Hardware Before we even start going into this aspect of SA we feel like we need to make a disclaimer, so here it is:

Disclaimer: We are not telling you to buy any of the hardware mentioned below; we are merely telling you that with some piece of hardware you may see more information on your screen than with another. It does by no means mean that if you do not own this hardware you will not become good at the game. What we are basically saying here is that some things in the game related to vision become easier when you have the appropriate hardware for it. The information below could prove useful if you wished to upgrade your hardware at some point, since you will

know which upgrade is more important in some aspects of the game. Use what is said below only as a reference, not as a suggestion to buy better hardware. Better hardware helps, but hardware alone never made good players.

You will also notice how the large minimap is hiding the last enemy tank, and how the

You obviously own a computer if you are playing World of Tanks. The specs of the game are not that demanding either, and we are aware that spending money on hardware is not possible for everyone. Of course you do not need an alienware BUT: Those of you who know me (Sapaki) a bit in the clan might know that I have actually quit the game for a while, because I realized that it was no longer possible for me to play properly due to hardware limitations. But why? Because vision is paramount. We will probably include a hardware 101 in our “Settings course” but as a rule of thumb it is good if you had a) a computer that runs WoT smoothly (40+fps) in minimum settings except drawing distance (you don’t need eye-candy to play well, quite the contrary), b) a precise mouse (one of your two inputs in the game, the other being the keyboard), c) a monitor as large as you can get your hands on. The last one is the most vital in SA. I have been playing WoT in a 15.6” laptop with a 1280x768 resolution myself for a long time. 2/3 of the screen where covered by the player names and the minimap, while the bottom middle third was covered by the silhouette of my tank. This left me with approximately 1/6th of the screen as a vision of the battlefield. Pretty narrow, no? Look at the screenshot below and you will get the picture.

wrong display settings and not using mods makes that half the screen is occupied by the teams, nicknames etc… Zooming out would be an option to broaden the field of view, but it is not recommended as the further away you are from your tank, the more you lose the “feel” of it while driving it. As a counter-example, in a 23” full HD (1080) monitor (Vallu’s setup), your field of vision would amount to 1/2 of the screen at least. Yep that is three times more! As a result, in a smaller monitor it is nearly impossible to have adequate situational awareness, since most of the things happening around you will not even be displayed on the screen.

3.3 Get Mods A bit like in the hardware section, we are not recommending any mods here. You can play the game in Vanilla if that suits you better. However, we have the obligation to point out to you that there are mods available that could provide you with some vital visual and memory aids. There are many minimap mods that can do wonders with SA! A vastly misunderstood mod is XVM. People tend to think that XVM is all about showing your opponents and allies stats. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. XVM is as its name says is an Extended Visualization Mod. Things in The features of XVM that terribly dramatically enhance SA (you can also find those in other standalone mods) are:

● Minimap mod. This is a must! XVM Minimap size is fully customizable. You will also see a view range indicator, which is always helpful when used correctly.

Most importantly, you will not only see the dots you are familiar with from the vanilla minimap, but you will also see the Tank types above the dots. This is EXTREMELY useful for SA, as you know which tank is where in a blink of an eye. Another extremely useful feature is the last known position indicator. This indicates where a no longer spotted tank was last seen. Hugely helpful as well!

● Modified Base Cap indicator. Again this is a huge must! Capping is no longer displayed only by a timer filling up in variable speeds. It will also show you how many cappers are in the base as well as how much capping time remains until the base is captured. You know if you will be outcapped or not in the blink of an eye. Makes the decision of moving back to de-cap a whole lot easier doesn’t it?

● In some XVM or other mods, there is also an enhanced “Fire” indicator, since the vanilla one is seriously lacking.

● Finally, you have got other tools as well in XVM, some of which are very useful,

but are only semi-related to SA. The most relevant I can think of is the enhanced damage indicator, which precisely shows the direction a hit came from (bounce or pen alike), so that you know where the enemy shooting you is relative to your tank, which may allow you to angle better for the next shot.

Again, all this is in no case prompting you to use mods, and especially not XVM. On the other hand, you should be aware that there are legitimate tools out there, which give your opponents many advantages, especially in a tactical level, directly related to SA, and from some point onward you might also want to use these tools in order to stand a chance against them. Choosing not to use a particular mod is one thing, being unaware they exist at all and playing with a clear disadvantage compared to your opponents is another.

3.4 Sound and oral prompts Sound prompts are not as important as visual ones in general, but there are cases when they are crucial for SA. Counting the shots of an autoloader? Sound prompts can be your only way to do that. A monster with a super-heavy gun is around the corner? You better hear its gun before you see it in front of you. A million things happening around you and you just got shot? Sometimes hearing the shot bouncing or ricocheting can make a difference.

Therefore, as a rule of thumb, make sure you can hear everything clearly, turn down or off the music and all parasitic background computer sounds and focus on the game. A good working mic is also good for SA, as it facilitates the communication with your platoon mates, which can provide you with loads of information that can be very useful to you. This also brings us to the question of platooning! The short answer is: Do it! Always! Even if your teammates are worse players than you and you feel like you are “carrying” them, they are a vital source of information. Take all the information you can from them. How is the other flank doing? A team mate there can give me all the SA I need in this case. Is an enemy trying to flank me? A ‘toonmate stationed a bit further back will not only protect me from that, but also warn me that it is happening. Situational awareness again! Even a dead team-mate is useful, as he can follow any of the remaining tanks in the game and provide you with information in any part of the battlefield. You can read more on this on a later section of the guide that concerns communication and SA. All these factors pretty much sum up how you can get hold of the maximum information you can get during a game. But, as we suggested earlier, getting information is one thing, processing it and reacting accordingly is another, especially in the heat of battle, where inevitably tunnel vision takes over for most people. Which brings us to the next part of SA awareness, which is processing information.

4. Processing information As we have said before, while you are in battle, there is a lot of information that you need to assimilate, process, and react accordingly to. In order to make things clearer for you, you can sort this information into three distinct categories. Once you read through these categories, you will realize that they are quite independent from one another, and you can “train” each one of them separately, thus facilitating your learning process.

4.1 Spatial Awareness This information concerns you, your tank and your immediate surroundings. Spatial Awareness can loosely be described as the extent to which you “feel” the tank you are driving as an extension of yourself. The first kind of “awareness” that you need to have is what parts of your tank you are showing to the enemy. This is valid from both spotted and unspotted vehicles since in most cases the general direction from where the enemy is coming is known. Ideally, you should take advantage of your tank’s strengths and

take a look at what is happening around them. Don’t do it! It’s wrong! In 99% of the cases, your turret should be pointing only where you want your gun to be pointing and nowhere else! Use your turret to aim at some place and use the right mouse button to look around. Despite the fact that it seems obvious, we will still point out the reasons why you should do this. Your turret has limited traverse speed while the free camera is, well, free, and turret rotation also greatly affects your accuracy as well as increases your aiming time (not to mention it exposes your weaker side/rear turret armour). Therefore, if you use your turret to look around instead of the right mouse button, you are bound to lose time when a threat appears in front of you in order for your turret to align with the target and adjust your aim properly. This extra time you will need often counts in seconds, which in this game makes all the difference between staying alive or not, hence its importance.

terrain features in order to bounce incoming shells or to avoid getting shot altogether, while posing a threat to the advancing enemy. Even if your positioning is not perfect and you do get shot at, look at the direction the shot came from using your damage indicator, as well as the penetration or ricochet mark on your tank and adjust accordingly. Perhaps you are showing too much of your side, perhaps your lower plate, perhaps you have your front wheel axle exposed etc. This kind of awareness also requires you to know the weakspots of your tank, hence the necessity to follow the basics course on weakspots prior to working on this skill. Another aspect of this skill is driving and terrain usage. If you really feel like the tank is an extension of yourself, you should be able to reverse around an obstacle behind you without looking back. Has it ever happened to you while retreating from a tough situation to get stuck in a rock or a building that was behind you while reversing and just die there like a soggy sandwich (to borrow the expression of a Hairy friend of mine…)? It happens to me every second game. This is due to our lack of spatial awareness. We have just driven past this rock, but somehow, during the panic of our retreat we forget it is there and just reverse in to it. If we had better spatial awareness in such a situation, we would be more “aware” of our immediate surroundings, both inside and outside of our field of view. Three things are you allies in your effort to improve your spatial awareness. The first one is of course practice and experience. You improve this skill with time, provided you are constantly trying to improve it. The second one is free camera view using the right mouse button. Use it... A lot! It strikes me as to how many players turn their turrets in order to

Finally, together with the right mouse button, your third friend for Spatial Awareness is your maximum zoom out. Place your tank behind an obstacle or a hull-down position, right click in order to enable the free camera mode, zoom out as much as you can, and go place the camera on ground level where you think your enemy will be shooting you from. That way you see things from his perspective. You can also do this while confronting an enemy, but only do it if you absolutely have to, as reload times are often shorter than this maneuver and you don’t want to be wasting any time while facing a foe. Once you put yourself into your opponents shoes, correct your tanks position so as not to show any weakspots and make yourself as much of a hard target as you can. The more you do that the more you will become aware of what image your tank projects to the enemy. Practice it long enough and you will no longer need to zoom out to see which parts of your tank are exposed; you will do the exercise mentally and know already by experience. Congratulations, you have just mastered spatial awareness!

4.2 Tactical awareness This is where we get in the “core” of Situational Awareness, and for this kind of awareness you have two tools available at your disposal. Your minor tool is your free camera view (right mouse button) with max zoom out (mouse wheel). You MAJOR tool is your minimap: One of THE most important tools available to you in the game. It is available to you so USE it and use it a lot: As much as you possibly can. Here is why and how you should use both these tools:

4.2.1 Evaluate your immediate surroundings For this you will need to use your minimap in conjunction with your freecam view. The trick here is to avoid getting “tunnel” vision. Do not just watch what is happening directly in front of you. You also need to look at your flanks and/or at your rear. And remember this: the position of the allied tanks are is as important as the positions of the enemy tanks. If you have allies nearby, knowing how they are facing and where their focus lies can make all the difference, for instance in deciding whether to push an advance, or to instead cover your own flanks. The difference between this type of awareness and the “Spatial awareness” described earlier (this also concerned your immediate surrounding) is that in this case the focus is on the action unfolding in your immediate surroundings, as well as the changing dynamic of the battlefield around you in general, and not only as it relates to your tank.

4.2.2 Overhead Vehicle markers Another very useful tool for this is the vehicle markers available in the game. Whereas there are many mods available for the vehicle markers, the default vehicle markers are quite sufficient. The only catch is that for some obscure reason WG has set as the default configuration the worst possible markers available to give the least useful information available. Change that. Go to your options->settings, and the last two tabs concern the configuration of the overhead markers. For the enemy vehicles, you will want to use the remaining hp/total hp, instead of the default percentile marker. You should also choose the vehicle type of the enemy to be shown. In my opinion showing the tier is superfluous information as it is not very useful. You might want to also activate the name of the enemy player above his tank, but this I also find it confusing. Some people use it so that they know that they face a more experienced player and be extra cautious. In most cases you can tell if who you are facing is experienced by the way he positions his tank and reacts to you, I therefore have not activated this option on the main view at least. I mentioned the main view, as there is an alt view, available to you by pressing the alt key while in battle. Many players ignore that. Don’t be one of them. Just put all the less important information on the alt view and use it from time to time in order to get all information available to you via the overhead markers without constantly saturating your screen with more information that than you can process. For your allies, you might want to switch the tank type info off (most allied tanks in your vicinity are probably easy to recognize) and maybe you would want their name appearing above their tank so that it is easier for you to interact with them during battle. There will be more on this when we will talk about relaying later.

4.3 Using your minimap This is THE NUMBER ONE TOOL of Situational Awareness! You minimap gives you tons of valuable information, most in real time, and can give you even more when enhanced with some of the mods available. Make your minimap as big as you can (use the + button to do that) without it impeding on your gameplay. Once you have done this LOOK at it, as much as you possibly can.

4.3.1 Enhance your minimap There are mods available for your minimap (see the paragraph on mods) that will enhance your view of the battlefield. As we all know the Vanilla map shows the tank

types spotted, while they remain spotted, and this is pretty much it. The mods available will additionally show you the exact tank model spotted, while it is spotted, as well as its last known position when it is no longer spotted. This is VERY useful as you get a full view of the battlefield. The view range circle as well as the direction of your turret and your hull as are also useful tools but not that much though that information is much less important. Some also rely on mods that show your projected shell trajectory on the minimap and rely to this in order to take blindshots. I (Sapaki) tend to rely more on keen observation, rather than on the trajectory shown on the minimap.

4.3.2 When to look at your minimap The correct answer to this is as much as you can. However, looking at it is only one part of the deal; you must also interpret what you are looking at and react according to it. You should also remember at all times that the position of your allies on the map is as important as the position of your enemies. Do not focus on the enemies alone, you need to make tactical decisions based not only on what you are facing, but also based on how many allies you have got around you to face it with you. As a rule of thumb, you should check your minimap every 5 secs when you are not engaging the enemy and every 10 secs when you are engaging enemies. While reloading - when by definition you should be behind cover most of the time -it is a good time idea to also check at the minimap. However, checking and closely looking and interpreting are two different things. You should closely look at the minimap in three instances. Early game so that you see how your team is taking positions within the map. This is where you decide where you should go. Help defend the weakest flank or help pushing on the strongest? The answer to this is situational and tank dependent. While there are positions in every map that favor one or the other type of tank, do not decide where to go before the battle starts, only because of the tank you are driving, or because you feel more “comfortable” on one particular flank. Base your decision on what your team is doing and on what you think that the enemy team will do (and to help make that decision, take note of the enemy team composition whilst the countdown is still going). The second instance is midgame. Once committed into a flank, two things can happen. You will either wipe out the opposition and clear out the flank, either the opposition will be stronger than you, in which case you must try to preserve yourself as much as you can and fall back if possible. In either case, once you are no longer engaging the enemy, take a little time to thoroughly examine the situation unfolding on the minimap. How are the other flanks doing? Am I more useful there? Should I move further or should I go back?

Usually, when people clear out the enemies in their flank they tend to go only one way: forward. This is often wrong. Take a close look at your minimap at this time and you will find out that there are times to go forwards as well as times as you will have to fall back to help your team, that which might be struggling on the other flanks. What is the point of you pushing towards the enemy base while the other flank is overrun and the enemy will most likely outcap you 3 to 1 easily? Go back and help your allies before their flank collapses. Sometimes interventions like these literally swing the game around. The third instance is late to end game, when you can better assess the situation in hand. This will be more thoroughly discussed later (quickcounts), but late in the game, many tanks are already dead and most or not all tanks are spotted, therefore you have a full view of the battlefield. Use your minimap to spot the breach and move in through there. From there, you can either push forward to cap or kill enemy artillery, or turn around and go behind the remainder of the enemy force. You can inflict a LOT of damage in the late-game, provided you spot and exploit a breach in enemy lines. Similarly, you should also beware of breaches in your team and be weary that an opponent might exploit them.

4.3.3 Unspotted Vehicles. Unspotted enemy vehicles pose as much threat as spotted vehicles, if not more, since they will hit you where you are not expecting them you hit you from. One of the mods included in XVM shows the unspotted vehicles of the enemy on the list with asterisks. This is VERY useful as you can see in a glance what vehicles you might encounter. As a rule of thumb, if there are still unspotted enemy vehicles, you must always take the conservative approach and suppose that you will face them when you move deeper into enemy lines. Assess their “threat” potential in group and if you think your tank can take it then you can move on. If the scout on your team is experienced and a teamplayer you can always call for a scouting run if you want to clear things out. Mid to late game scouting runs are easier because there are less enemy tanks around, and usually only the most experienced scouts make it that late into the game. Use them!

4.3.4 Quickcounts Just like counting the deck at blackjack, he who is able to do quickcounts on the fly, has more chances of winning the game. Why is that? Because he is always more or less aware of the odds for or against him in any given situation. How do you do Quickcounts? First of all, from the beginning of the game at the top of your HUD you will see all the enemy tank types you are facing. As the enemy is being wiped out (as well as your team)

the markers you will see on top will start decreasing. At any given moment, count the enemy (and/or allied) tanks visible on the map. If they are all accounted for, you have an exact picture of how every flank is doing at any given moment. If some are no longer spotted you can deduct from that what enemy tanks you are likely to face that are still unspotted or no longer spotted. If you have the mod that shows you the most recent enemy positions, then you can further deduct that an enemy tank will most likely not be facing you. For example, you are on a top tier heavy tank, the enemy has three enemy heavy tanks of the same tier available and they are engaged on the opposite flank. The rest of the enemy team comprises of arties, light tanks, arty and some weak mediums. This means that you can push down your flank as you will most probably encounter weak opposition. The opposite applies as well. If the strongest tanks of the enemy are unaccounted for, whereas the weakest ones are engaged on the opposite flank, you are most likely to encounter them further down the flank you are committed in. In that case you should proceed with caution or even turn back and help your allies wipe out first the weakest enemies and after moving deeper into the enemy lines and face them as a group. Like everything else, doing quickcounts is a skill. The more you practice it, the quicker and the more efficiently you will do it. It may take an inexperienced player 10-15 secs to make a quickcount and draw conclusions out of it, whereas a more experienced player might be able to do it on the fly several times in the game. Pick up the good habit early on, and you will see increasingly more benefits from it.

5. Relay, Relay, Relay! The emphasis of the previous section mostly concerned your own tank and your individual contribution to your team. Situational awareness is more than that. Gathering and interpreting information on your own behalf is one thing, but if you also relay it to your team mates, the effects can be cumulative. Moreover, when you are in a platoon and using voicecomms, your SA actually adds up with your platoon-mates SA, as they will be able to give and receive information in real time as well. The potential here is obvious, we will therefore look into both ways of relaying more in detail

5.1 Relaying information to your team (works mostly one way) This mostly works one way as, under normal circumstances you cannot really expect to be helped by your teammates during a Random battle. However, when an obviously experienced player of your team offers what you consider to be reliable information, then by all means take it and use it!

While in the game, do try to provide information which might come useful to your team, thus providing SA from your viewpoint to the whole team. This will benefit the team, but in some instances it will also prompt some members of the team to build up from your initiative, thus resulting in some coordinated team actions, something quite rare in Random battles as we all know by experience. However, if you adopt this “information sharing” habit, you will notice that coordination in Random Battles will occur more often than you would expect. Sometimes all people need is a prompt in order to begin relaying information themselves. That been said, there is a proper and improper way to do this. The proper way of doing this is the following: Ping the map once or twice AT MOST at the location you want your team to notice AND follow up by a short text prompt. For example: “Ping @E7”, “Ping @E7”, Text message: “E-75 last spotted there”. Be short and to the point! Information you should relay to your team would be the last known position of enemy tanks, positions from which you were shot from by an unspotted tank with an estimation of what tank that might be. You can estimate the unspotted tank that hit you, either by the damage you received (for instance if you get hit for much hp, chances are that you where hit by a TD or a higher tier heavy tank or arty). More importantly, when one of your modules is damaged when you get hit by an unspotted tank, the tank type will be displayed on your screen as a damage report. You will see a message saying “Module <X> damaged by <Y>”. All this happens quite quickly so be alert so you don’t miss the prompt! In most cases you should ping for unspotted tanks, as for the spotted ones the team will tend to ignore you. However you can ping on spotted enemy tanks on the following cases: - When a scout is about to break through one of the flanks and go for your arty; and when there is a blatant imbalance between flanks and the team seems to ignore it. Another kind of Pinging is “Path Pinging”. This is repeatedly Pinging the map in a different location so as to “draw” a path for your team. You can use this if after a quick count you realize that one flank is completely open. Ping your path and then use some text prompt like: “Flank open”. Three to four Pings should be enough to “draw” a path to your team. As a rule of thumb, when you relay information be brief and to the point as much as you can. Things NOT to do are: Spam the minimap with Pings. People will ignore you. Write too much. People will not read long text prompts while in battle. Provide too much information. People will be overwhelmed and ignore you. Begin a dialogue about “what is

best to do”. It leads nowhere. Even worse, begin a sterile argument and begin noobcalling! Limit yourself to relaying information and you will be positively surprised with the results. It is recommended that you also do that after you die in battle. Do not exit to garage immediately. When you are dead, you have all the time in the world to observe the minimap unlike your teammates. It is also easier to practice your quickcounts at that point as there are no distractions. However keep in mind that your team might ignore you, as “dead” teammates tend to be labeled as “armchair generals” by most of the players. If you see that the information you are providing is completely ignored and not put into any use whatsoever or if you see that the battle has already been decided beyond any doubt (be careful with that, as an experienced player, under the right circumstances, can turn the tables even with 6:1 odds against him), then you can exit to garage, but not before. Finally, you can also relay information using the keyboard shortcut prompts (F2 to F9), but do not expect too much from this since people tend to spam them a lot (especially the F7 shortcut) and people tend to ignore them now. Use the “Reloading” shortcut if you are an autoloader or an arty and of course mark your targets. What you will realize is that in random battles people tend to react a lot more when you use the radial menu (“aim” at the friendly tank and press Z, then select an option from the radial menu that will appear). Unlike the keyboard shortcuts, with which most are familiar, many WoT players ignore the existence of the minimap, hence its effectiveness.

5.2 Relaying information to your platoon mates (works two ways) In this case, the flow of information is two way! For one use voice comms as much as you can as the amount of information you can exchange is considerably higher that simple pinging and texting. If the flow of information is correct, then you and your toonmates double or triple your SA, since there are six three pairs of eyes, and each pair has its own perspective of the battle. Even when dead you are still useful to your platoon mates. For example, you can go and shadow a tank in the opposite flank and inform your mates of what is happening there. This is priceless information to them. You should expect the same level of feedback from your toonmates as well. If they do not provide it spontaneously (not all of your toonmates will be used in to properly relaying information), just ask them to do so. The enhanced SA that occurs from platooning with voice comms is one of the main

reason you should do both as they offer a considerable advantage in battle. Finally, just because you are relaying information to your toonmates, it does not mean that you should neglect relaying information to your team as well. You should always try and do both to the best of your ability. You will learn more on the subject of SA and platooning in the “advanced SA” course of the curriculum, which mainly involves SA and its applications while platooning.

6. Strategic awareness Strategic awareness applies only in specific cases, when strategy can be a factor. As randoms are, well, random, and no real team coordination or commanding is possible, there is only a small scale tactical level in these battles, but no global strategic element whatsoever. Therefore, Strategic awareness is a skill mainly used by Field Commanders in team games. It is again an interpretation of what is going on in the battlefield, but on a strategic level. This kind of awareness will be taught to students when they are experienced enough to command, and therefore does not really apply to this guide. You should only be aware that it exists. One point to remember though, is that it is not possible for one to develop any strategic awareness whatsoever, without proper tactical and spatial awareness. The former are therefore a prerequisite to the later. This notwithstanding, there are also other skills involved in Strategic awareness such as advanced map knowledge, as well as various team tactics and techniques.