A year or two ago, we received a reworked custom sight system with much better in-game customization. While it was a huge step forward, it overlooks one major gameplay aspect: switching between shells with vastly different ballistics.
The Problem
Right now, custom sights are bound strictly to the vehicle itself. If you switch ammunition mid-battle -for instance, going from a high-velocity APFSDS to a low-velocity HE, HESH, or Smoke shell - your sight preset stays exactly the same.
This creates a few notable issues:
- Ballistic mismatch for specialized reticles: Many custom sights rely on ballistic-dependent elements, such as the automatically calculated “Duga” (arc) rangefinders or custom stadia lines.
- Vehicle-specific gun ballistics: The same shell type can have different muzzle velocities depending on the vehicle and barrel length firing it. Because of this, tying a sight globally to a shell name wouldn’t be enough - the binding must be specific to the shell on that particular vehicle.
As an example, take the CV 90105 using APFSDS (DM33) and HESH (M393A2).
List of custom ballistic reticles:
Currently, you can only set one reticle at a time - for example, the one calculated for APFSDS DM33:
When you load another shell (HESH M393A2), your reticle stays the same, still showing the ballistic rangefinder calibrated for DM33:
Meanwhile, here is how the dedicated reticle for M393A2 actually looks:
Obviously, opening the game settings to manually swap your sight every time you load a different shell is impractical in combat, forcing you to keep playing with the reticle meant for your primary shell.
Suggested Implementation
In the “Gunner sight” customization menu, expand the preset binding options so players can link sights to individual ammunition slots for the selected vehicle:
- Keep a “Default / All shells” sight option (so players who only want one sight per tank don’t have to configure anything extra).
- Add optional dropdowns for the shells available to that vehicle, allowing the game to automatically swap the reticle/preset the moment a different shell is loaded.
This would make dynamic elements like “Duga” and specialized ballistic sights much more practical in actual combat without forcing players to open settings mid-match.
- Yes
- No
- Automatically as soon as the new shell is loaded
- Immediately when the next shell type is selected (before reload finishes)
- Make it a toggleable option in the settings
- No / I don’t think this feature is needed