The skip shot

September 30, 2026 · feature

A tank gun fires almost flat, so a round that falls short meets the ground at a degree or two, and a round that shallow doesn't dig in. On the Brick Steppe it now skips: a spurt of earth, the whine of a round tumbling away, and a tracer bending up off the grass.

The tracer that bounces

Load a sabot dart into your Paladin, lay the sight on open ground a couple of hundred metres out, and fire. The round comes down almost level with the grass, throws up a spurt of earth where it strikes, and glances off with its tracer climbing away across the field. If you're close to it you'll hear it go: a thud in the dirt and then a falling pee-yow as the round spins off.

A skip happens when the round meets the ground flatter than about eight degrees, and on the flat steppe nearly every short miss does. Anything steeper still buries itself: a round lobbed over a crest, a shot down onto the far face of a fold, a dart fired into a slope that rises to meet it. Water stops a round dead, so there's no skipping across the lakes.

A tank round's tracer running in low over the grass, kicking up a spurt of earth where it strikes the ground, and bending up off it into the flank of a light armored vehicle beyond — Short, but not wasted: the dart strikes the dirt thirty metres out and glances up into the Warden's side.

What a skip can still do

A skipped dart has lost more than half its speed and it's tumbling end over end, so it hits like a much smaller gun. It only gets one bounce. If it meets the ground again it stays there, and its tracer burns out a second or so after the skip.

It isn't harmless, though. A round that lands a few dozen metres short of a hull can glance straight up into it:

A Jackal, a Whirlwind or a Warden gets holed all the same. Their plate was never going to stop a Paladin's dart, and it doesn't stop half of one either.
A Paladin's tail is thin enough to go through too.
A Paladin's front or side turns it away. A tumbling round shatters on that steel for barely a scratch.

So a light hull parked behind a fold isn't safe just because the round fell short. For a Paladin crew nose-on to the enemy it changes nothing: a miss is still a miss.

Reading your own fall of shot

The skip also helps you aim. A round that used to disappear into the ground now marks where it fell with a spurt of earth you can see through the sight. When your shot lands short of that Warden you'll see the dirt jump in front of it, so lift the sight and put the next one on the plate.