Arcade Battles

Arcade is the most simplified game mode, but also typically the easiest to learn and the most fast-paced. Vehicle control is easier than in other modes, vehicles often have boosted mobility and weapons targeting characteristics, and each vehicle type has a special mechanisms to assist with aiming. Team composition is not restricted by vehicle nation, meaning that each team can have any combination of vehicles with suitable battle ratings, including the same vehicles as the opposing team.

Air Battles

In Arcade air battles, damage models, flight models, and physics are greatly simplified (e.g. in very high-speed dives, planes do not have their wings ripped off and are still controllable), but retain some realism (e.g. bombers are not as manoeuvrable as fighters).

Ammunition and suspended weaponry reloads after a certain period of time without players needing to return to an airfield.

To help simplify aiming, a “lead marker” appears when an enemy plane is in range. This shows where the enemy plane will be by the time your shots reach it if the plane continues its current trajectory.

Multiple views are available: third person view, cockpit view (if the aircraft has a cockpit model), gunner view (if the aircraft has a gunner), and virtual cockpit view.

There is no limit on how many aircraft a player can spawn into the battle; a player with the full complement of 10 crew slots, and with backups available for each of their aircraft, would be able to spawn up to 20 times in a single battle.

Arcade air battles can be played in a number of mission types. In all cases, the team whose “tickets” reach zero first or has no players able to spawn in aircraft loses.

• “Ground Strike” missions — ground units and bombing points are scattered around the map. Destroying enemy ground units, enemy aircraft, or bombing enemy points and airfield will cause their team to lose tickets.
  
• “Front Line” missions — similar to Ground Strike missions in that the objective is to destroy grounds units and bombing points, Front Line missions have their ground units concentrated along a “frontline” along the center of the map.
  
• “Domination” missions — capture contestable airfields by landing your aircraft on them, causing the opposing team to slowly lose tickets. Domination missions often feature mobile ground units for both sides which will also begin to capture airfields if left unchecked.
  
• “Air Domination” missions — work together with your team to capture a central point by having more aircraft within the area than your opponents. Once captured, the opposing team will begin to slowly lose tickets.
  
• “Air Conquest” missions —a mix of the Domination and Air Domination mission types, Air Conquest missions feature two contestable airfields and a central point to be captured.

Ground Battles

In Arcade ground battles, tank handling is simplified (tanks move faster, and turn faster than they would do in reality).

“Spotted” enemy vehicles are displayed on the minimap and have visible markers above them, display player nickname, vehicle name, and their distance.

There is also an “aim assistant” — a crosshair indicating where a shot would land if fired at the current elevation, together with an indication of how likely the shell would be able to penetrate the target (red — unlikely penetration, yellow — chance of penetration, green — likely penetration). Note also that, due to shell dispersion, a fired shot may strike in a different place than that indicated by the marker.

A "lead marker" will also appear for ground vehicles shooting at aircraft.

Players are able to spawn up to three groudn vehicles in one battle. During the battle, the player can collect “airstrike points” by scoring kills, assists, and taking capture points, to briefly switch to playing as a random aircraft from three different pools: fighters (costing one point), strike aircraft (two points), or bombers (three points). Each aircraft can be controlled for only one minute. Aircraft in this mode have similar mechanics to those in Arcade air battles.

Arcade ground battles have similar mission types to Realistic ground battles. In all cases, destroying enemy ground vehicles will cause the enemy team to lost tickets. The team whose “tickets” reach zero first or has no players able to spawn ground vehicles loses.

• “Domination” missions — there are three capture points on the map. The team with the most points captured will cause the opposing team to slowly lose tickets. The amount of tickets lost is proportional to the difference between the number of points each team has captured (e.g. 3-0 points captured will result in a larger loss of points per tick compared to 2-1).
  
• “Conquest” missions — there is one capture point on the map. The team that captures the point will cause the opposing team to slowly lose tickets.
• “Battle” missions — there are two capture points on the map, and each team starts with one of the points already captured. Capturing a point in this mode is considerably slower than other mission types. Once a team’s capture point has been captured by the opponent, they will begin quickly losing large numbers of tickets, and will subsequently often lose the battle.
  

Naval Battles

In Arcade naval battles, all naval vessels receive a significant boost of engine power and traverse speed to make them easier to control.

Spotted enemy vehicles are displayed on the minimap and have visible nametags on them (similar to Ground Arcade battles).

There is an “aim assistant” similar to the aircraft lead marker, and simplified ranging mechanics that will always aim where your cursor is pointed. Additionally, various secondary weapons are deployed instantaneously and can be reloaded anywhere on the map once depleted, similar to air battles.

In this mode, you can spawn as a naval vessel up to 3 times, and all reserve vessels can be respawned for free up to 3 times without the use of backups.

Similar to Ground Realistic battles, you can collect “spawn points” for aircraft by performing actions within the battle, and are able to choose aircraft from your own pre-selected line-up, provided the aircraft is not more than one BR step higher than your highest-rated vessel (for example, a BR 3.3 boat would allow up to BR 3.7 aircraft to be used). A random aircraft from game-generated pools of the same nation can also be selected instead (with a BR lower than your highest-rated vessel by up to 1.0), divided into two categories: fighters and bombers/strike aircraft. You can spawn as an aircraft up to 2 times. If you wanted to respawn the same type of aircraft again (e.g. respawning as a fighter for second time), the respawn price for said category of aircraft will be doubled.

Furthermore, there are modifiers to the speed in the game. Notably, horizontal targeting speed is doubled, and torpedo speed is multiplied as a piecewise linear dependence on the travelled distance:

• Up to 4 km, the multiplier is 3;
• From 4 to 8 km, the multiplier drops linearly from 3 to 1;
• Over 8 km, the multiplier is 1.

Arcade naval battles have similar mission types to Realistic naval battles. In all cases, destroying enemy vessels will cause the enemy team to lost tickets. The team whose “tickets” reach zero first or has no players able to spawn naval vessels or aircraft loses.

• “Domination” missions — there are three capture points on the map. The team with the most points captured will cause the opposing team to slowly lose tickets. The amount of tickets lost is proportional to the difference between the number of points each team has captured (e.g. 3-0 points captured will result in a larger loss of points per tick compared to 2-1).
• “Conquest” missions — there is one large capture area on the map. The team with more vessels inside the capture area will cause the opposing team to slowly lose tickets. The amount of tickets lost is proportional to the difference between the number of vessels of each team inside the capture area.
  
• “Battle” missions — there are two capture points on the map. Capturing both points causes a third capture point to be revealed, the capture of which will cause the team to win.
• “Encounter” missions — both teams are supplemented with a number of AI ships in convoy, including cargo ships, destroyers, and light cruisers. Destruction of the AI vessels also depletes the enemy team’s tickets.