Tank Crew Skills?

[Raf1307 206]

This forum, ESPECIALLY Raf1307's post needs to be front page on the forums! No where (easily) can you find good helpful advice on tank crew management and how to use crew XP wisely and efficiently! I hope more see this thread  :learn:

 

Also, I have learned that with crew skills, it varies from tank slot to tank slot (That is, if you divide your tank classes by crew slots). If one crew is focused on TD's then the Artillery skill is useless. German TD's for example do not include a Radio Operator as a crew member so keep that in mind when dividing up your points.

Thanks Sonic,

 

WRT AFV's with less crew, the functions still exist but seem to be multi tasked or in other words attributed to other crew members in your vehicle. I think we can all have a pretty good guess which crew might double up with what stats, but its not officially listed anywhere like in WOT for eg, where you can see that a commander who is also the gunner and radio operator in a one man french turret has all the appropriate perks available to them.

 

My advice would be to pour points into all crew slots irrespective of the X-ray crew layout. Sometimes things get lost in translation or something, but suffice to say you are still conveying EN situational effects via your vehicle radios and dropping arty even when you don't have a dedicated radio operator - take the BT5 as an example.

[WhiskyTango15 44]

I would imagine putting repair or keen sight on all your crew remember because, if one dies, then another will take his place, so depending on their crew level, effects the ability of the position upon switch.

 

Am i wrong? because if not, then it would be wise to upgrade all crew members, but remember, some tanks only have 4 members some have 5,

 

so ether one member counts as 2 in a 4 person tank, or missing one crew member entirely, im guessing radio operator? Probably depends, on tank

 

Some thoughts about Crew.

 

 

Hi,

 

Just wanted to seek clarification on what Renamed mentioned.

 

If the tank only uses four crew member, i.e. there is no radio operator/machine gunner. Would there be a need to upgrade the fifth crew member at all? If I don't, and stats such as "vision", "field repair" are supposedly averaged over all crew, then this would mean I do need to upgrade the fifth member, even if the tank does not have space for said member.

 

TL;DR: If i have a four crew tank, do i need to upgrade the fifth crew member (radio operator/machine gunner)?

 

Thanks!

[KillerAce4 845]

Hi,

 

Just wanted to seek clarification on what Renamed mentioned.

 

If the tank only uses four crew member, i.e. there is no radio operator/machine gunner. Would there be a need to upgrade the fifth crew member at all? If I don't, and stats such as "vision", "field repair" are supposedly averaged over all crew, then this would mean I do need to upgrade the fifth member, even if the tank does not have space for said member.

 

TL;DR: If i have a four crew tank, do i need to upgrade the fifth crew member (radio operator/machine gunner)?

 

Thanks!

 

Yes, the fifth crew member needs to be upgraded.  The skills are assigned to other people on the crew.  The commander could also be the radio operator or the gunner, etc.  You will not get the full benefit of the keen vision and field repair unless all crew members are upgraded. 

 

If the person is not there, vitality does not matter, as that is applied person by person.  Agility would not matter either.

[S0NIC_B00M 35]

So basically, upgrade the skills that are averaged across the whole crew only. When considering crew members that are not in the tank.

[KillerAce4 845]

So basically, upgrade the skills that are averaged across the whole crew only. When considering crew members that are not in the tank.

 

And or specialty skills as these skills would be given to another crew member.

 

Just like some of the tanks do not have a loader/aimer(gunner), but just a commander in the turret (flakpanzer, bt5 or 7?).  He/she gets the benefit from the loading/aiming skills that the gunner or loader would have applied to them if there were more crew.

 

List of skills to upgrade, no mater the size of the crew.  These skill are applied to other people of the crew if it is less than a 5 crew tank.  (artillery is only applied to those tanks that have the ability to call in artillery strikes).

 

tank Driving

targeting

range finding

leadership

artillery targeting accuracy

artillery strike call time

radio communication

Field repair

Keen vision

 

These skills are crew dependent (3 man crew, only 3 need to be upgraded, but you need to upgrade the right 3, driver, commander(will be aimer also) and (most likely) loader).  Check which crew members in x-ray view.

vitality

agility

Edited March 16, 2016 by KillerAce4

[WhiskyTango15 44]

And or specialty skills as these skills would be given to another crew member.

 

Just like some of the tanks do not have a loader/aimer(gunner), but just a commander in the turret (flakpanzer, bt5 or 7?).  He/she gets the benefit from the loading/aiming skills that the gunner or loader would have applied to them if there were more crew.

 

List of skills to upgrade, no mater the size of the crew.  These skill are applied to other people of the crew if it is less than a 5 crew tank.  (artillery is only applied to those tanks that have the ability to call in artillery strikes).

 

tank Driving

targeting

range finding

leadership

artillery targeting accuracy

artillery strike call time

radio communication

Field repair

Keen vision

 

These skills are crew dependent (3 man crew, only 3 need to be upgraded, but you need to upgrade the right 3, driver, commander(will be aimer also) and (most likely) loader).  Check which crew members in x-ray view.

vitality

agility

 

 

Thanks, very comprehensive!

[Brumpoet 327]

I am not convinced that they actually DO anything,

Like you, I dumped most of mine into my crews' vitality and yet they are STILL unconscious every time I take a hit,

It's possible that the load times are reduced a little, but if the loader is unconscious or wounded it means naff all as yer load times increase to ridiculous levels.

Ever driven a KV-2 with a wounded loader?

or a SU-122?

i have a fully trained crew on a tank and every time one shot kill its all BS the entire game is fixed

We shouldn't have to have crew skills after all that why they go to tank school to learn they should be 100% going into battle like real tankers are not zero trained i mean look what happened to the RUSSIAN S in barbarossa they were untrained and  useless and got their backsides handed to em on a plate .its just another way of screwing us into paying gold for 100% crew skills

Edited March 21, 2016 by Brumpoet

[S0NIC_B00M 35]

its just another way of screwing us into paying gold for 100% crew skills

 

They have to make money somehow right  ;)s

[Brumpoet 327]

They have to make money somehow right  ;)s

yes but they get more than enough from premium tanks and golden eagles so the crew skills are negligible they could give them 100% at the start after all we have to upgrade the modules anyway and sometimes people use eagles for that .

Besides just because you have 100 % crew skills with out decent MM or RNG and Br ,that's no good at all because what ever advantage you think you may have to improve the game play screws you over every time.I still say each tier should fight it's own tier  that way its a 50- 50 chance ,but tier 2 vs t3 they have better armour  ,guns  speed and take more punishment than lower tiers ,its world of tanks all over again . New and average players being seal clubbed for fun 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Brumpoet

[Kung_flu 28]

Easiest way for Gaijin to fix crew skills and what to put and to avoid confusion since you have 5 crew skill slot but what in situation that you have 2,3,4 crewmen. Easiest way to fix that is to put skills for all crew like in planes. Your plane have 3,4,5 gunners, you apply skill points to all of them. Same should be in tank battles, especially since every crewman can perform every role. So skill should look like this, Keen vision, field repair, agility, vitality, tank driving, targeting, range finding, leadership, radio communication, artillery, accuracy, artillery calling time and once you apply skill points it goes to ALL crew members, from 2 member AAA to 6-7 in some tanks. 

To balance that with current system number of points, gaijin can simply merge all skills and if you need for vitality all 5 crewmen lvl 5 5X 1000 points, in new system you will need 1X 5000 points.

Edited March 25, 2016 by NotyBaby

[Raf1307 206]

Easiest way for Gaijin to fix crew skills and what to put and to avoid confusion since you have 5 crew skill slot but what in situation that you have 2,3,4 crewmen. Easiest way to fix that is to put skills for all crew like in planes. Your plane have 3,4,5 gunners, you apply skill points to all of them. Same should be in tank battles, especially since every crewman can perform every role. So skill should look like this, Keen vision, field repair, agility, vitality, tank driving, targeting, range finding, leadership, radio communication, artillery, accuracy, artillery calling time and once you apply skill points it goes to ALL crew members, from 2 member AAA to 6-7 in some tanks. 

To balance that with current system number of points, gaijin can simply merge all skills and if you need for vitality all 5 crewmen lvl 5 5X 1000 points, in new system you will need 1X 5000 points.

 

That doesn't quite work since in general crew member can only perform their specific skills. They can fulfill other crew member's roles which is reflected in which crew men can swap for the different positions.

 

What the Dev's have done is logically assign the skills to a role/crew position. All they have to do is cross-link them and tell us who has which secondary skill that's all. Arguably they are cross-linked already since you can direct an arty all arms call for fire from vehicles without a radio operator or a radio - great use of signal flag relays, but I digress.

 

What needs more work is how those skills play out across the 3 or so modes that are currently in game AB - RB - SB. From RB on, the players take more functions away from the crew and the game needs to somehow come up with "effective compensation" based on time invested in training crews, which I might add is not insignificant if you're not throwing GE at it.

 

EDIT - I've edited the first para so that its less ambiguous.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Raf1307

[Kung_flu 28]

That doesn't quite work since not all crew men can perform every role. They can perform some roles which is reflected in which crew men can swap for the different positions.

 

What the Dev's have done is logically assign the skills to a role/crew position. All they have to do is cross-link them and tell us who has which secondary skill that's all. Arguably they are cross-linked already since you can direct an arty all arms call for fire from vehicles without a radio operator or a radio - great use of signal flag relays, but I digress.

 

What needs more work is how those skills play out across the 3 or so modes that are currently in game AB - RB - SB. From RB on, the players take more functions away from the crew and the game needs to somehow come up with "effective compensation" based on time invested in training crews, which I might add is not insignificant if you're not throwing GE at it.

Every crewman can perform any role, that is how it is in RL and i noticed that in game. If gunner is dead commander automaticaly moves into gunner position, only slow movement is when you have to move 1 man from driver to gunner and that gunner is even machine gunner and loader, so yes they can perform any role, you can even call artillery with only 1 crewman in gunner or driver position

Edited March 27, 2016 by NotyBaby

[KillerAce4 845]

Every crewman can perform any role, that is how it is in RL and i noticed that in game. If gunner is dead commander automaticaly moves into gunner position, only slow movement is when you have to move 1 man from driver to gunner and that gunner is even machine gunner and loader, so yes they can perform any role, you can even call artillery with only 1 crewman in gunner or driver position

 

Every crewman can perform any role in war thunder, but you do not get the weapon reloading skill (faster reload) after the loader is killed.  It takes the base amount of time for anyone else to load a shell because they have not practiced to the same level as the loader had.  So any lose of crewman affect which skills are applied.

 

So take the T-34 1940 for example.  The crew are made up a driver, machine gunner, loader, and aimer.  But if you look at the crew skills, you will see that the commander leadership bonus is applied.  It is applied until the crewman that was given that skill is dead.  Which crewman needs to be killed for the loss of the commander leadership bonus?  If the aimer is killed in the T-34, does the tank lose the commander leadership bonus or is it the loader?  What we would like Gaijin to do is explicitly tell us which crew skills are applied to which crew man when there is a less than full crew.

Edited March 28, 2016 by KillerAce4

[Kung_flu 28]

That is exactly why i want that skills are distributed equally to all crewmen

[KillerAce4 845]

That is exactly why i want that skills are distributed equally to all crewmen

Yes, but are all crewmen equally skilled in each task.  Would the person who did the loading be faster than anyone else because that is the position he trained in?  Would the commander have leadership skills better than the rest of the crew because he has trained in being a commander?  Would the driver be a better driver than anyone else, because the others might have had 3 hours driving the tank, but he has 100+?

[Raf1307 206]

Every crewman can perform any role, that is how it is in RL and i noticed that in game. If gunner is dead commander automaticaly moves into gunner position, only slow movement is when you have to move 1 man from driver to gunner and that gunner is even machine gunner and loader, so yes they can perform any role, you can even call artillery with only 1 crewman in gunner or driver position

 

No that's incorrect. You're confusing RL with game mechanics, which I'll try to explain to you.

 

To simplify it further;

 

There are 5 crew slots: Driver, Gunner, Loader, CC, Radio Op.

 

In tanks with 5 crew the attribution of crew specific skills is self explanatory.

 

For tanks with more than 5 crew it actually buffs the tank's performance as the algorithm needs only 1 skill set to maintain optimal operating conditions. So a tank with 2 loaders can technically lose 1 and maintain ROF, as there is no indication that this is a shared skill between loaders.

 

In tanks with less than 5 crew, there is a skill overlap between crew members, which the Dev's have not outlined but, which could be assumed based on location of modules and other RL assumptions.

 

Following on;

 

Crew specific skills which I have outlined for you earlier are unique and are not reproduced meaning that you lose the skill component of that calculation. You still have the vehicle qualification values derived from the qualification tab. If you recall, when you buy a tank, you have to allocate a crew to it, which fulfills the first step of familiarisation.  You then have an option to spend some SL and later GE to further train or ace your crew.

 

All these in game modifiers boost the familiarisation of your crew with the platform they operate and its weapon systems.

 

Consequently, based on this familiarisation some crew members can replace others to operate a specific piece of equipment associated with a role of the deceased crew.

 

What they don't get is the specific skill and associated bonuses for that skill. If you go back to the crew skills I posted you can remove the skill bonus and recalculate what your tank's operating parameter will be with a crew member knocked out.

 

I hope that clarifies things - having said that I have not found an official guide as to which crew member is given which skill when there are less than 5.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Raf1307

[Kung_flu 28]

And that is why we need from gaijin to explain us or simplified skill placing system. What loaders keen vision means, is he always watching (donk know how he will watch out) or just when he replaces gunner or driver, what is with skills of 2 men crew gunner is loader, so what vitality is calculated there, especially since it tells you he is aimer, not even in skill list crewman. What if your gunner vitality is high and loader low, what vitaliti goes to aimer?

[Raf1307 206]

And that is why we need from gaijin to explain us or simplified skill placing system. What loaders keen vision means, is he always watching (donk know how he will watch out) or just when he replaces gunner or driver, what is with skills of 2 men crew gunner is loader, so what vitality is calculated there, especially since it tells you he is aimer, not even in skill list crewman. What if your gunner vitality is high and loader low, what vitaliti goes to aimer?

Well some of those are already explained, this is why I extracted the skills list out of the game GUI. You just need to read a bit.

 

So in the case of loaders keen vision, as you can read, that's stated as a shared skill. The loader has some episcopes on his side of the turret where he will monitor his given arc as part of his crew procedure. The Dev's have abstracted this within the context of the keen vision skill, whereby there is a radius of "awareness" around your tank which shrinks as you lose crew members. This is most noticeable in AB for obvious reasons, but in RB and SB also works to give you arrow based indicators of enemy tanks within LOS, which the crew have spotted for you, in case your mark 1 eyeball missed them.

 

Vitality is an individual skill, but is often confused by players because in the Vehicle / Crew Info summary window for crew it shows you a group number for the crew. Those summary views are just that its an overall snapshot of where your crew is at. You still need to reference the individual skills to establish which ones are shared and which are individual.

So in this case its an individual skill which means that those crew with less vitality will be knocked out earlier and you're much more likely to be OHK'd.

 

Similarly, the Dev's haven't put together a firm statement about crew rotation, but I'm just working off what I see in game. So the first gunner casualty sustained is generally replaced by the radio operator, the second by the loader, and then CC. Its all random depending on which crew gets knocked out first, with the notable exception of the CC and Radio operator positions which are not replaced. So as soon as you lose your CC, your tank efficiency drops by 1-10% and when you lose your Radio Op, your ability to Rx/Tx info on EN tanks from the mini map diminishes significantly as well as the speed and accuracy of your all arms call for fire - arty.

 

N.B. whilst crew are rotated, they sill perform their core skills, so a Radio Op who's now a loader can still do his other skills well, but he only performs the loading skill at the qualification level of efficiency, not the skill based one.

Edited March 31, 2016 by Raf1307

[Kung_flu 28]

Aimer in AAA

What vitality he has, vitality of gunner or loader?

Does commander skills affect 2 men crew at all?

What is with targeting skill in tank destroyer where you dont need to rotate turret?

Do you even need to put skills besides artillery and communication skills into radio officer if you are planing to drive Soviet tanks?

 

So many gray zones there. 

[Raf1307 206]

Aimer in AAA

What vitality he has, vitality of gunner or loader?

Does commander skills affect 2 men crew at all?

What is with targeting skill in tank destroyer where you dont need to rotate turret?

Do you even need to put skills besides artillery and communication skills into radio officer if you are planing to drive Soviet tanks?

 

So many gray zones there. 

 

Aimer is the gunner, this is a literal translation from Russian, hence the difference in nomenclature. The fact that the devs couldn't be bothered to research the English equivalent is amusing and speaks volumes about other aspects of attention to detail in the game...

 

The vitality of the Aimer (Gunner) is an individual number - ie as I explained above it is the same skill for all crew, and all crew have individual HP. I doesn't matter if a crew member has to do two jobs, based on specific crew skills, they only have one set of HP derived from their vitality. I would have thought this is obvious

 

Despite having no turret, the TD's have some capacity to traverse (the ability to move your gun from side to side) their main armament. That speed is not the same for all TD's and the gunner's skill also contributes to it. It's not as pronounced as for tanks, because in most cases the traverse speed of the guns is very quick, but some TD's do have slower traverse and when you load a good crew into them you can tell the difference. It also counts for elevation, which works the same way, whether you're in a tank or TD.

 

More importantly the skill is about hitting your POA consistently, which is what you want if you're trying to hit weakpoints on tanks at 300m +

 

Yes, you need to put skills into Radio Operator, even if you are driving Soviet tanks...Keen Vision is a shared skill and the Radio Operator has a frontal zone to monitor just as the driver. Keen Vision is a "shared" skill, which means that it is optimised only when all the crew have maxed it. Vitality is self explanatory, because at some point you will assign a tank to that "hangar/crew", which does have a dedicated radio operator... Vehicle Repair is a shared skill, same as Keen Vision, if you get to a point where the radio operator is a valid crew member either in a 4 or 5 man crew, then you instantly cut down your repair speed by 25% or 20% respectively. Similarly, agility is used to replace knocked out crew. Since the radio operator is the first to move from his position to replace either the driver, gunner or loader then agility does count. Again this scenario is only valid for a tank with an assigned radio operator.

 

There is nothing grey here, other than " officially confirming" which crew carry the additional specialist skills in crews below 5.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Raf1307

[Kung_flu 28]

And that is why this system atm pure BS

Shared skill really Gaijin?

I must put field repair into him because if all other are maxed and he is not, tank repair is slower, but same time i dont have that person to replace dead crewman. That is why i am saying that they should stop splitting skills on non existing crewmen and put all for whole crew. You have vitality, when you put SP there whole crew gets witality, and field repair and keen vision and evry other skill since as said earlier, even 1LMS can do all roles, so driver should get artillery calling skills. To compensate and not to have same quality like reloading time with all crew and some dead crewmen, loading time increasing with dead crew members. really lont time to reload on LMS because he has to do loading, traversing turret, aiming all by itself.

Or at least having shared skills in shared tab, like vitality, keen vision, field repair in one tab for all crewmen rest given individually

Edited April 4, 2016 by NotyBaby

[Raf1307 206]

And that is why this system atm pure BS

Shared skill really Gaijin?

I must put field repair into him because if all other are maxed and he is not, tank repair is slower, but same time i dont have that person to replace dead crewman. That is why i am saying that they should stop splitting skills on non existing crewmen and put all for whole crew. You have vitality, when you put SP there whole crew gets witality, and field repair and keen vision and evry other skill since as said earlier, even 1LMS can do all roles, so driver should get artillery calling skills. To compensate and not to have same quality like reloading time with all crew and some dead crewmen, loading time increasing with dead crew members. really lont time to reload on LMS because he has to do loading, traversing turret, aiming all by itself.

Or at least having shared skills in shared tab, like vitality, keen vision, field repair in one tab for all crewmen rest given individually

 

Its not BS, its actually a reasonable representation (abstraction) of what a crew does know and how various crew tasks are actually attributed in RL. You have to give the Devs credit where its due, and the crew skill system is entirely workable atm.

 

To clarify further since it seems to be the point of confusion for you.

 

There are individual and shared skills which are common to all crew members - the explanation of whether a skill is an individual or shared is next to the skill description in the game interface.

 

There is also a sub category of individual skills, which are position or role specific - driver, gunner, loader, CC and RO specific skills.

 

The role specific skills in tanks with 5+ crew are NOT shared - they are as per the description, and once you lose a specific skill enabled crew member his replacement can only apply the qualification bonus to yield the final performance stat. The crew qualification is an abstraction of the general crew training that they would receive such that they have an understanding of each others roles.

 

It's only when there is less than 5 crew, that you get a crew member (could be the driver with RO skills or Commander with gunner and loader skills) which is cross trained (same as in RL) in doing two/three jobs - ie NOT shared in the context used in the explanation above. This means that he actually has the crew specific skill set that would normally be assigned to that remaining crew member, and which is why you have to train all the crew skills irrespective of the number of crew members that are present in your vehicle.

 

We can try to deduce the workload placed on various crew members - ie whether the driver has the RO skill or is it the commander in that tank? Is it the Commander or Gunner that are also the loader in the 2 man turret? Some aspects can be researched historically, but that does not always guarantee that the Devs have implemented it that way.  It would be nice if it was officially made known, so that you know which elements of your tank performance degrade when those crew members are knocked out.

 

To respond specifically to your mentioned categories;

 

Repair skill is definitely a crew task (same as in RL), because you know, tank components are kind of bulky and heavy... so that makes sense to be a shared skill.

 

I've already explained vitality to you, there is nothing ambiguous about its implementation in game - not sure where you're struggling here...

 

LMS is a separate issue all together and there is a HUGE thread in the Dev forum on it so I'll leave you to go read through that. To bring it into context of the crew thread, its not even remotely tied into the crew agility skill, as the recent update has arbitrarily made up some time that it takes the last crew member to switch places. So yeah whatever... just ignore LMS its giving me Turret's.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Raf1307

[Kung_flu 28]

So the answer to all this might be to show you what duty that guy has when you click on "show x-ray" and hoover over person, for example 4 men crew, you put mouse over a guy and it tells you lader (commander) That commander is behind () so that you know vitality is from loader.

Still dont make sense why to put vitality, keen vision repair and agility in commander or RO if i dont have them in tank, waste of SP. It seems that i need to put them because 2 persons are on 1 place, if one dies both dies. Still think that plane skill tree is better implemented, 1-9 gunners planes it counts vitality to all equally, you dont have tail gunner, nose gunner that allso can use keen vision and awareness so you get confused because you dont have nose gunner etc.

It is broken system if you need to put double SP in vitality for example because commander is RO since you dont get  replacement if commander dies, just making low crew tanks even more bad.

I still didnt get answer why do i need to put vitality in RO if tank dont have 5 crew members and all tanks in future dont have 5.

Edited April 5, 2016 by NotyBaby

[KillerAce4 845]

So the answer to all this might be to show you what duty that guy has when you click on "show x-ray" and hoover over person, for example 4 men crew, you put mouse over a guy and it tells you lader (commander) That commander is behind () so that you know vitality is from loader.

Still dont make sense why to put vitality, keen vision repair and agility in commander or RO if i dont have them in tank, waste of SP. It seems that i need to put them because 2 persons are on 1 place, if one dies both dies. Still think that plane skill tree is better implemented, 1-9 gunners planes it counts vitality to all equally, you dont have tail gunner, nose gunner that allso can use keen vision and awareness so you get confused because you dont have nose gunner etc.

It is broken system if you need to put double SP in vitality for example because commander is RO since you dont get  replacement if commander dies, just making low crew tanks even more bad.

I still didnt get answer why do i need to put vitality in RO if tank dont have 5 crew members and all tanks in future dont have 5.

 

If all the tanks you drive do not have a radio operator then you do not need to put vitality into the radio operator tab, as there is no person to have this vitality assigned to.

 

As for keen vision and field repair, arty call time and area, and radio operations then yes you need to boost these skills because they are applied either to the crew group as a whole or to a specific person within the 4 crew members that you have.

 

Think of it as someone on the crew has specialized in Radio operations also along with the other skill that they have such as driver.  they have taken the specialized courses on how to fix the radio etc if it is damaged.

Edited April 5, 2016 by KillerAce4

[Kung_flu 28]

Oh thank you, finally i got an answer. No need for vitality iin russian tanks for RO and yes need for radio operating skills + field repair and keen vision. That is main reason why i am trying to avoid this confusion with shared skill tab. So, vitality let it be individual skill as role that crew member is doing (driving, loading etc) and shared skills to be in shared tab like keen vision and field repair. When you put SP to field repair, to affect all crew members no matter how many of them are there. 

Who knows how many people are still confused there wasting SP on skill for non existing crew member(s).