Crew skills and how to get the most out of them

A concise guide about everything you need to know about crew skills and how to get them (quickly). Shown on air and ground vehicle crews (sorry naval). A contribution to #WTGuide1

The Basics

For every crew you own, you gather crew points by playing the game, to be exact by getting research points (RP).


Every crew gathers skill points individually, which means playing a vehicle in crew 1 will only result in crew points for crew 1. Those points are not connected to the vehicle you use. Technically that is not quite true but we will get to that later. For now it's just important to remember that every vehicle can earn skill points and those can be distributed to either air, ground or naval vehicles. Keep in mind that not all nations have a navy, yet.

Differences Between Gamemodes

Accumulation of Points

As you might know there are different gamemodes in War Thunder: Arcade Battles (AB), Realistic Battles (RB) and Simulator Battles (SB). The mode you choose dictates how many crew points you get for your performed actions.


Click on the designated area! to change gamemode.

AB (regardless of air, ground or naval battles)
For every 100 RP you earn with a vehicle you get 3 crew points.

RB and SB (regardless of air, ground or naval battles)
For every 100 RP you earn with a vehicle you get 1 crew point.

As you can see AB is more profitable for earning crew points in general. However, since you get more RP in Air RB it might be easier to level a certain crew in that mode. It all comes down to the amount of RP made by a vehicle sitting on a certain crew slot.

To conclude: The more RP you get in a match, the more crew points you will receive. Therefore a combination of premium account + RP boosters and a premium vehicle (used in the mode you are best at) will result in the most crew points.

An Example

Imagine that during a match you earned 1000 RP with a vehicle on the first crew slot (no other bonuses). If that match was an arcade battle (doesn't matter whether it was air, ground or naval) you would get 30 crew skill points. If it was a battle in any of the realistic gamemodes you would get 10 points. So far so good.

Let's say you were using a premium vehicle (+200%), a premium account (+200%) and a RP booster (+100% for example). That means you would get 5000 RP and therefore 150 crew skill points if that was an arcade match or 50 crew skill points if it was a realistic battle.

Two ways of skilling your vehicles

Obviously there are more than two ways, but I'll just talk about those two. I would say the first method is more oriented towards new or broke players while the other one is geared towards veteran players and those with a deep wallet.

For Beginners

To get the most out of your vehicles I'd suggest creating certain roles for your crews in your mind. For example if you play mainly air you should have one or two slots for bombers and attackers. Why? Because then you won't have to put points into "Defensive Armament" for your fighters. The same applies vice versa: Your bomber pilot probably won't need a high G-Tolerance. You should be warned though, if you mainly want to play bombers in air RB; your gunners are very unlikely to score a kill even when maxed out. Get a lotto ticket the same day if that should ever be the case. In AB it makes a huge difference.

As you can see I spent only very few points on the "Defensive Armament" department, because I want to use this slot primarily for fighters.

The same goes for ground vehicles. In the beginning I'd suggest that you leave out the "Machine Gunner/Radio Operator". Except for the skills that are affected by your crews average value (Keen Vision, Field Repair and Agility) they don't offer you much. Therefore concentrate on the unique skills of each crew member like Leadership for your commander, Targeting for your gunner and Weapon Reloading for your loader.

The above mentioned skills improve your reload rate, precision and overall vehicle performance. Since I want to keep this guide short I advise you to visit the official WT Wiki for the details and the exact numbers on all the skills: https://wiki.warthunder.com/Crew_skills

The real challenge is keeping to your set rules. If you play ground RB for example you can use air and ground vehicles in your lineups. It would be a waste to skill a crew for ground vehicles just for you to put an aircraft or helicopter in that slot later on.

For Veterans

Some of you might have the privilege to swim in Silver Lions (SL). That's great! Now give me some of those! A lot of SL will be needed for the second method and honestly the recommended one.

Let's say you have just started researching a new tech tree. You want to look at this number:


This number shows the overall crew level for the choosen vehicle type (air, ground naval). You basically want to increase this number as fast as possible. Why? If the crew level is high enough you can upgrade the crew from "recruit" to "expert", which grants you a flat +3 on every skill of your crew for this vehicle. NOTE: This upgrade only works for that one specific vehicle and DOES NOT transfer to any other crews. The further down you go in a tech tree the higher is the crew skill level needed in order to upgrade to "expert" (as shown in the picture above). The price for upgrading to expert is the same you had to pay for the vehicle after researching it.

But there is more to it. After you have upgraded to "expert" you earn RP for the next qualification called "ace". Hovering with your mouse over the expert status will reveal this infocard:

As shown I would have to upgrade this crew to level 60 in order to get the ace qualification. Additionally the more RP are earned the closer I get to receiving a discount for the ace qualification. If I hit 710.000 RP I'll get the qualification for free.

The ace qualification gives you another flat +2 bonus for all skills (yeah, yeah except for Leadership, Repair Rank and Experienced Gunners). Keeping in mind the distribution of crew points over the different gamemodes that also means that premium vehicles earn those points much faster than their tech tree equivalents.

In order to increase your crew level fast you have to put all the free points in the cheapest skills. That can be a bit annoying since you have to scan your crews for the cheapest available skills like this:

HOWEVER, you have to do that for every single crew member, thus the order shown could be wrong if there is a skill under "Gunner" which costs only 75 or 100 points as well.

Tips and Tricks

This part will be edited further down the line. Feel free to leave your tips and tricks in the comments. Since I don't play SB, I don't know much about any tricks there.

If you really want to "grind" crew points I'd suggest not doing so in ground RB since the amount of points per RP is the lowest and doesn't give you much RP anyway. It's a different story for air RB, but to be honest the best mode for crew points is probably AB. Combining premium account, premium vehicles and boosters will result in a lot of RP and therefore crew points.

If you play for free there is also a different mode: Air or Ground Assault. Here boosters and premium vehicles won't give you more RP, but a premium account will net you the expected rewards. If you play only one vehicle from beginning to end (and win) you get around 3000 - 4000 RP. Do the math and you'll be surprised how fast you can accumulate points.

Crew points can be shared between all vehicles. Hence it can be a valid strategy to put a vehicle you perform well with in a certain crew slot in order to boost the crew points there.

Don't put aircraft and tanks in the same crew slot if you can avoid it. (Ground RB)

Conclusion

In this guide I have only shown the two "hardcore" ways of skilling your crew. However, there is a third option: a balanced distribution. Focus on the aforementioned crew skill points, but also include cheap skills, that help your playstyle. Do you enjoy light and mediums tanks more than heavy tanks and tank destroyers? Go for the artillery skills! That way you get a higher overall crew level for less points invested.

Aircraft

Have roles in your mind for your crews. (Air AB and RB)

Avoid putting points in useless skills. Do you only want bombers on that slot? Go for "Logistical Services" regardless of gamemode or invest in Vitality for your pilot. Do you want to dogfight? Skill G-Tolerance and Stamina as well as other pilot skills.
EXCEPT you are doing the second method. Then you can go ahead and waste those points to your hearts content to increase the overall crew level.

Depending on the role your crew should fulfill, a balanced way of distributing your points would be:

Fighters

1. Pilot skills, especially G-Tolerance, Stamina and maybe Vitality.

2. "Logistical Services" such as Weapon Maintenance, Repair Rank and Repair Speed for a faster repair on the airfield and Reload Speed (for AB).

Bombers

AB: "Logistical Services" and "Defensive Armament" - try to always have the right Number of Experienced Gunners otherwise the other skills won't apply. Try to boost your pilots vitality as well. The rest is up to you.

RB: Doesn't matter. Not quite true, but I think Weapon Maintenance and Vitality for your pilot would work best. Unless you have a fast bomber I don't see any of the other skills making a striking difference.

Ground Forces

In general the order in which you should skill your crews is the following:

1. Unique skills first while prioritising your commander, gunner and loader.

1.5 Put a few points in Vitality and Field Repair.

2. Skills that are shared throughout the crew e.g. Agility.

3. All the funny "Radio Operator/Machine Gunner" skills as well as "Logistical Services"

EXCEPT your are doing the second method. Then you can go ahead and waste those points to your hearts content to increase the overall crew level.

A more balanced alternative would be:

1. Unique skills first while prioritising your commander, loader and the Field Repair skill.

2. Unique skills for your driver (light tanks), gunner (AA) and the artillery skills from your radio operator (for light and medium tansk as well as AA). A vitality point here and there won't hurt either.

3. Skills that are shared throughout the crew e.g. Agility and Keen Vision.

Conclusion 2.0

At the end of the day it all depends on the mode and the way you play. Suiciding with your bomb load is generelly not advised, but you definetly won't have to worry about getting back to base and therefore having a short repair time.

I'm well aware that this specialization for crew slots will not always work, especially when you play multiple gamemodes, but it is an efficient way to skill your crews for the first hours of War Thunder. A bonus is that it is also cost efficient since you don't have to rearrange your vehicles that much meaning that you save a bit of those "crew train costs".

Other guides

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2870823659

[you have to be good]

thank you

[Haefele]

Thank you for answering and answering my question. ♥ ♥

[Eriksson VIII]

Thanks all :) @Haefele Yes that is correct because the amount of crew skill points you get depends on the amount of RP you receive. I might add an example later on.

[Coppre]

Very helpful! Thank you!

[matthew.constant06]

thanks, very helpfull guide

[Haefele]

Hey, sorry I read the post above so I don't know if it's written there. but I have a question.

Do experience boosters affect crew experience? . I feel that it happens, but I'm not sure and I never checked

P.S: congratulations on winning the war thunder event

[FaTje]

you won in war thunder event :D