Someone on another forum mentioned how he needs to improve his gun accuracy. So I posted this, which has helped mine a great deal:
First - holding down the ALT key, to enable the "advanced interface" range and shell travel time to the point at your crosshair is something everyone should get familiar with. Details below.
Gunnery Pro Tip:
This is how you can calculate lead for long distance shots, using the gunsight tools (in SHIFT view), and get a decent chance of a hit from the get-go.
For those long distance shots at targets travelling perpendicularly, I use the magnified gun spotter view (the SHIFT toggle) to point at the water next to where the target is. Then hold ALT and read the number of seconds listed on the left side of the "crosshair". That is your shell's travel time to that range. If the target is travelling at a 90 degree angle to me, I then use the ruler in the gunsight to find how much lead I need to give. It's obviously linked to the travel time of your shells, for a target traveling perpendicular to your view, at some specified speed (20 or 25kts?? I dunno).
Aim the appropriately numbered mark + aim point for the amount of shell travel, then either double-click to fire a salvo (have to do it really fast in WoWS to get it to do that) or hold it down to ripple sequential fire.
For example, if I see a ship traveling broadside to me at 12km then I will place my aimpoint over the water ahead of him, at his distance. I check the number of seconds of travel time, briefly holding ALT to do so. Then use the sight rule to aim ahead that much and fire - if it says the shot will take 8.65 seconds of time then I will aim the intersection of the ruler, on the appropriate side at around the 8.5 to 9 mark at a point on his ship and fire (if it's a slower battleship or something).
Of course, if he is not traveling at a perfect 90 degree angle then you will have to trade some of the lead for more/less elevation. You can also get a bit of an assist from the Sight Ruler's long horizontal aim line by placing it on the lowest waterline point of the enemy ship and eyeballing how much the higher end is above that line. Then you can get an idea how much to adjust the lead elevation and, to some extent, how much lead you need to lose off the travel time due to the up/down angle adjustment.
Also keep in mind that faster ships, such as destroyers and cruisers, will require a lot more lead since they are generally going much faster than whatever speed the measure is calibrated for. On destroyers at full speed, I usually start with doubling the travel time value, which often puts it off the scale. You can eyeball it, still, and even use your mouse wheel to zoom the gunsight view out when needed.
Note: I didn't read up on any of this, so I'm not sure if it's official. Just learned it by using some past sim experience with gunsight tools in sims and lots of practice/testing of this theory in WoWS. Can thank my past manual torpedo attacks in the Silent Hunter series for getting familiar with this stuff. There are probably other tricks you can use but these have been enough to make my shots more accurate and a good start to your initial salvo.
