Crew Experience

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Crew members are the most important element of every tank. The better the crew, the easier the tank is to operate, and the more often it seems that RNG (Random Number Generator) will roll in your favor.  

 

There are a few elements to know when establishing crew members for a vehicle. Each crew member has a base qualification for their role in operating a tank: Commander, Gunner, Loader, Radio Operator or Driver. If you stuff a new crew into a tank, don’t expect much from their performance as the tank will be sluggish to drive, sluggish to turn and aiming will be horrendous as will reload time. Imagine jumping into the cockpit of an airplane and expecting to takeoff, fly and land the plane safely when you’ve never even seen the inside of a cockpit before. Tank crew members need to learn their basic role in the tank you’ve assigned them. Once that role is learned, then you can work towards skills/perks for each crew member.

 

The path to a crew’s mastery over the operation of any given tank is as follows:

 

1. Establish Major Qualification in the vehicle. Once this hits 100%, then the skills/perks options will become available. Until each crew member hits 100% in basic knowledge of the tank, the vehicle will not be operating at full capacity. Based on my experience at moving a crew into a new vehicle, it takes anywhere from 30 to 50 games before the crew will establish 100% ability in their Major Qualification for the new tank. The cheapest option for a new crew in a tank is free but will start their Major Qualification at only 50%. The most expensive option is to move a new crew (or an established crew from another tank) into a tank by spending Gold, and the crew will have their Major Qualification at 100% immediately.
2. Once each crew member’s Major Qualification is established, you can then choose the first skill/perk for each crew member. This will show as a percentage to completion. Skills will become useful immediately, even at 1% completion while Perks don’t become active until they reach 100% completion.

 

Crew members will earn experience in their Major Qualification and their Skills/Perks. These are two separate experience pools. They will never lose their earned experience in Skills/Perks regardless of moving them to a new tank. What they will lose (if you switch them to a new tank) is their Major Qualification which is their basic ability to understand/operate the tank. If you move them to a new tank without spending Gold to retrain their Major Qualification to the new tank, then they will have to learn the basics of operating the new tank. Once they reach 100% in their Major Qualification on the new tank, then their previous combined experience in Skills/Perks will become active.

 

The exception to having to retrain crews for a new tank is using Premium tanks. You can move crews to and from Premium tanks without suffering mobility/firepower issues from lack of having 100% Major Qualification in the Premium tank. However, the Premium tank must be of the same country as the origination tank, and must be the same type of tank. Example: you can move a full trained crew from a Russian medium tank to a Russian Premium medium tank and there will be no mobility/firepower penalties. The crew can operate the premium tank as if it matched their Major Qualifications.

 

You have a few options for accelerating a crew’s Major Qualifications:

 

• When you initially recruit a new crew, you can choose Tank Academy which will cost you 200 gold per crew member and their Major Qualification will be set at 100%.
• When you initially recruit a new crew, you can choose Regimental School which will cost you 20,000 credits per crew member and their Major Qualification will be set at 75%.
• Use Personal Reserves to accelerate experience earned. These are clearly designated as “crew experience” and typically last anywhere from 1 to 3 hours.
• Toggle the Accelerate Crew Training checkbox on Elite status vehicles or Premium tanks. This will send all base experience earned in battle (experience for the tank itself) to the crew instead.