You’ll tell by the empty, silver (expert) or gold (ace) star next to the crew skill at the bottom of the line-up.
Viggen would certainly be one that would benefit from being at least experted I reckon
For ground i expert any crew as soon as i can. Never bought ace crew but managed to get one in the german T-34(r) by playing.
For air i also expert any crew as soon as i can, but ive got several ace crews just from playing. Bought one ace crew for EFT but thats it.
IMO ace crews for ground are ridiculously expensive, be it GE or exp requirement. Ive managed to get exactly one ace crew by playing, compared to several i have on aircrafts, and im primarily ground player.
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Always expert when possible/practical
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Ahh, I’m in Montana right now, so it will be a bit till I log in to see my crew stats, I’ll check Wednesday though.
I don’t have enough SL for expert usually. bcs I paid no money
I expert any vehicle I intend to play a lot beyond spading, especially rank 7+ vehicles.
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If you play certain premiums and event vehicles, heck even some removed techtree vehicles, you need ace crew to be competitive. Vehicle like the Mig-21 Bison are so dependend on there missels, any second you don´t have them you are just prey for everyone else. Thats why you need and ace crew to lower the in-air reload to an accepable level.
Another example is the Ariete, this thing turns so hard and chews through its very limited ammo supply so fast. You need an ace crew to really be able to stick in fights. Else you just end up never doing more then one turn every 5 seconds and have to retreat from every fight for several seconds, waiting for your ammo to come back.
Don´t get me wrong, you can play them without haveing any crewskills leveld out. But you´re going to have a miserable time.
And thats by design. gaijin tryes to trape you buy selling you vehicles that ultimatly need high crew skills to be viable.
The best example, are all the Missel vehicles. Especially since the ammo box introduction, which outright replaced the automatic refill, missel vehicles had (and that refill was much better in every way). They are horribly useless in War Thunders gameplay in general, which means, you need a Max Level Aced Crew to get any playability out of them.
Normally expert but ace on vehicles that I really enjoy in my lineups
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Except for a few rare examples, I always Expert immediately. I think it’s definitely worth it.
I really only get the Ace from earning it for free. If I was to purchase one then I think I’d rather get a talisman (to earn the Ace quicker) and then I can move that vehicle to another crew and earn the Ace there as well (and get the RP benefits of leveling up those crew skills).
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I have a singular vehicle that is experted thats not a low level thing that costs dirt cheap.Its the t55m bc the reload is unbearable.Otherwise I just don’t have the sl to buy the same vehicle twice
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TLDR: Expert whenever possible.
In air its a no brainer, especially if you do not have at least lvl 45 (at which point your Pilot is maxed out + the necessary gun stuff from other skills)
In ground there are a handfull of vehicles that work without it, but due to the insane Exp requirement for getting the baseline skills for most vehicles in the mid tier and below the +3 to all is just needed to be competetive. If you play sth with a slow reload you might as well give up any dream of getting a decent K/D as you are outclassed significantly due to the percentage based nature of the skills.
On some Ace is clearly just P2W as another 20% buff to reload is often 1s or more faster reload which is significant at those BRs. But I consider the current system of crew skills to be blatantly p2W, so feel free to disagree I do not care to repaet that entire argument here (just search on the forum for the relevant old threats I wrote plenty there on the topic and nothing has changed since)
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got a free ace on italian premium sherman after like 200 matches
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Exactly the same for me, i tend to only expert them on tank 1 or 2 aicrafts since it makes then even more enjoyable. Also they are cheap.
I usually expert the crew of any vehicle I plan to play a lot and those at higher BRs. I get the ace crew only from EP earned. The plus 3 on all stats makes a world of difference.
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I’ve only aced 2 crews which required hundreds of kills the panther D at about 500 kills and the fw 190 at 600-700 kills which is INSANE because by the time you ace a vehicle you’ve long out grown it, by the time I aced them I had maxed out Germany. I only use these vehicles now to speed grind out event vehicles.
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for me it depends
for aircraft at top tier i know im going to play alot i do Ace
and for a couple top Abrams i have Ace as it makes the reload 5 seconds
i do expert for aircraft that i play less
and that about it
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Always Expert train if you are going to use a vehicle. The only time I do not Expert train a vehicle is if I do not plan on putting it into a crew slot. Expert training accounts for 30% of the vehicle’s crew skill level(s). If you never Expert train your vehicle, you are at least 30% “worse” than other players who have Expert training, and up to 50% “worse” than players who have Ace training. The difference is tremendous:
Air Crew Skill Progress:
Ground and Naval Crew Skill Progress:
Also to keep in mind: most players might not realize that crew skill points are calculated from your RP gain AFTER any RP modifiers are added in. Such as: Premium Time, Premium Vehicle, or RP boosters. SO, the more kills/score you get per mission, the more RP points you get, the more crew skill points you will gain, and thus get your crews up to max level faster.
NOTE: I think this only works for Crew Skill Points and does not increase the experience gained for the Free/Discounted Ace training. If someone knows for sure please let me know and I will edit my reply. But, expert training will still assist you in getting higher scores, and thus more rapid free/discounted Ace training.
Then, if you want to grind Crew Skill Points (possibly faster, per hour), Arcade battles give 3x the amount of crew points per 100 RP points (again, after any RP boosting). I have a much easier time getting more Crew Skill Points in AB rather than RB, but I also just prefer AB over RB, and tend to get more RP per hour in AB vs RB:
This cannot be overstated. And keep in mind that you do not start building up towards the Free/Discounted Ace Training until after you Expert train a vehicle. So, it’s just a waste of time all around to play any vehicle without Expert training. You are nerfed, you die easier, repair slower, nerfed vision range, nerfed reload, get less kills. Just everything. And to top it off you are missing out on that free Ace Training reward someday.
TL;DR: Frens don’t let frens play non expert trained vehicles
(MAYBE if you are just testing it out to see if you want to spend time in it, but even getting a vehicle spaded can get you 10-20% or more of the way to free Ace training. And having Expert training makes the spade grind so much easier anyway.)
Low to Mid tier Sure top tier… NO