I get some questions about how I like to set up my crews on my light tanks so I thought I might do a short article to explain it. For the purposes of this article I'm going to use a 5-crew tank like the T21 or the Chaffee for the example - but you can tweak my ideas for other crew sizes easily enough.
Skills vs Perks
First off it's important to understand the difference between Skills and Perks. Skills take effect immediately and work incrementally. If you have a Skill trained to 20% that means you get 20% of the benefit of that Skill. Perks, on the other hand, only work when they're trained to 100%. A Perk trained to 20% does absolutely nothing. A Perk trained to 99% does absolutely nothing. When it hits 100% - suddenly you get the benefit.
This is important because you CAN reset Skills and Perks on crew members; and if you use a little bit of gold you don't lose any of the experience. In my opinion the MOST important ability any crew member can have is Sixth Sense. It's not even close for me. But Sixth Sense is a Perk which means all the battles where you're training up to 100% it won't give you any benefit at all.
Keep that in mind when we talk about the strategy for crew training; it's important.
One for All, All for One
It's important to know that for many of the Skills in Crew Training they're averaged across the entire crew. That means that if you have a 5-person crew and you have a single crewmember trained to 100% on Concealment (and the others have no Concealment Skill) you get 20% of the benefit of that Skill. 100% divided by 5 crewmembers.
If you have two crewmembers trained to 40% and nobody else with any then you get 80% divided by 5...or 16% of the total benefit. And so forth.
First Ability
In a light tank the two most important capabilities are vision and camo. You're a spotting tank and you want to be able to see things without being seen. That's why my first skill set is as follows:
- Commander: Recon - Recon adds to your view range. It's not terribly powerful, but it is helpful and it's a Skill so you get at least some benefit from the start. In a light tank every meter of view range you can get matters.
- Gunner: Concealment - Adds to your camo rating. I think this is the most valuable skill a light tank can have initially. And it is a Skill, not a Perk, so you get some benefit right away.
- Driver: Concealment - See Gunner.
- Radio Operator: Situational Awareness - This is like the Recon Skill, except it's actually a little more powerful
- Loader: Concealment - See the Gunner and Driver. With all three of them trained to 100% it means I'm getting 60% of the benefit of this skill. Might not sound like much, but it helps a lot.
When I get to 100% on the first ability that's when things get a little interesting...
Second Ability
Remember what I said above about retraining an ability to something else and how Sixth Sense is the most important thing?
- Commander: Sixth Sense - I'll use gold and reset the Commander's first ability from Recon to Sixth Sense. Then I'll start Recon again from scratch as the second ability.
- Gunner: Snap Shot - With 100% concealment I think the next most important skill is Snap Shot which speeds aiming and increases accuracy when the tank/turret isn't stationary. As a LT your gun isn't the most important thing, but it's still important to be able to shoot well in the shooting game.
- Driver: Off-Road Driving - This helps with your traverse and maneuverability on bad/soft surfaces and that can sometimes mean the difference in a tank that is dependent on its mobility.
- Radio Operator: Concealment - Now that he has Situational Awareness I'll add Concealment for him too. As he trains up our camo rating will gradually improve.
- Loader: Repairs - The Loader on a LT has pretty weak skills/perks so I just go for the generic Repairs skill to help us get back on the road quicker if we get tracked, or otherwise damaged.
Third Ability
When the second ability is trained to 100% I will reset ALL of them and change their second abilities to Brothers in Arms. That is a special perk that A) Only works at 100% and B) Only works when ALL crewmembers have it. It gives a nice skill bump to ALL crewmembers on all abilities.
Then I'll re-start the previously mentioned Second Ability skills (Recon, Snap Shot, Off-Road Driving, Conealment & Repairs) on the crew.
Taking it from there...
From there it's just a matter of picking the most useful things you can find for each on fourth, fifth, sixth things. I'll eventually add Concealment to the Commander and probably Jack of All Trades too. I'll add Repairs and maybe Firefighting to other crewmembers.
So that's how I approach it. Have a different opinion? Share it in the comments below.
GLHF!
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