Is it a better choice to upgrade the ship or the crew at the beginning of the game?

[彡Johnny Utah(r) 彡]

I started playing this game last month. I would like to improve in this game. Could you please give me your opinion on what's more important for leveling up, the crew or the ship?

[SpaceBikerV]

I personally think giving more skills to your officers first is better because ship upgrades are pretty sparse. Taking more missions means more sailing experience, while waiting for upgrades leaves you idling or short-staffed especially early on. A lot of officer skills are quite useful like the one on the engineer that reduce torpedo duds and increase damage. Also the sapper skill saves munitions. The torpedo research upgrade that reduces duds comes later than the skill too, i think

[Thahat]

both at the same time really, there are some upgrades that are absolutely VITAL for the boat though (hydrophone>all) just like sensite hearing for the radio man. just because it makes you less blind and thus find more targets better.

[Tupiks]

in end it depends on when you started game and how you want to play game, personaly i get at least enough commendation for an extra officer to send to passively research upgrades for torpedoes and better batteries (since i prefer to strike from longer distances and use batteries as much as i can)
Another thing that can influence what you want to do next is how you progress your missions, if you want to go for tonnage war, i recomend focusing on officers since those missions will quickly and easily earn you cash and xp for them
if you want to go for missions like scapa flow or recover enigma or even go to mediterranean sea, you want to invest little into your ships upgrades and research to make those missions easier, especialy if you want to traverse gibaltra without being spoted.