Commanders!
Welcome to the eighth part of our Guide series.
In one of the previous episodes, we mentioned the roles of crewmembers in your vehicle and
today, we’re going to take a look at them in detail.
Regardless of what vehicle you are driving in the game, it is always operated by the
commander and a crew.
While the commander technically is a crew member and can be wounded the same way, the
commander progression mechanics are different and in this guide, we’ll be treating him
different from the rest of the crew.
Let’s start with the basic crew.
In Armored Warfare, each vehicle has its own crew that is bound to it and cannot be transferred
elsewhere.
The name and appearance of each crewmember can be customized.
Crewmembers start on level 1 and can be improved to level 5 by earning Crew Experience in battle
with the vehicle they serve on.
Each level improves the crewmember’s performance and, additionally, on level 2 and level 4,
two skill slots are unlocked.
You may choose from a variety of skills for each crewmember, but you can only ever have
two active at the same time and changing them requires a manual reset.
There are three basic crewmember types.
The driver operates the vehicle itself.
Leveling him up improves the off-road mobility and steering.
Additionally, his skills provide extra bonuses to accuracy on the move, ramming damage, off-road
acceleration, steering and suspension repair time.
The loader, who, as the role’s name suggests, loads the vehicle’s weapon systems.
Leveling him up improves the vehicle’s rate of fire.
Additionally, his skills provide extra bonuses to rate of fire, ammo swap speed, module damage
and repair speed.
It’s worth noting that some vehicles have more than one loader while the vehicles that
have an automated loading mechanism don’t have a loader at all.
Vehicles without loaders typically have a higher rate of fire than those with level
1 loaders but their performance does not improve with experience gained.
And last but not least, the gunner operates the vehicle’s weapon and generally improves
its accuracy, turret traverse and aiming speed by leveling up.
Additionally, his skills provide extra bonuses to turret traverse, aiming speed, accuracy,
cannon hitpoints, ATGM control and reduce the accuracy penalty for firing your weapon
system.
On some vehicles, this crewmember also works as a loader, giving him the access to loader-specific
skills.
Crews are essential to your vehicle’s performance.
They can also be instantly promoted for Credits to level 3 and for gold to level 5 without
the need to train them.
With the crew basics out of the way, let’s focus on the commander role.
In Armored Warfare, commanders are special crew members.
Each commander is unique, has its own fixed name and biography and can be used on any
vehicle in the game.
You can swap them for free without any penalties – just select your vehicle and click on
the commander slot to choose which commander to use.
You start the game with two basic commanders – Sabrina Washington and Philipp Holzklau.
While Sabrina’s suitable for lighter vehicles such as the AFV class, Philipp is best used
with Main Battle Tanks.
Additional commanders are obtainable via gameplay or during special events and promotions.
Commander progression and skillsets are also very different from the regular Crews.
Each commander has 15 ranks available that they can be promoted to and a rectangular
field of skills.
You start with a basic skill that often defines the whole purpose of the commander.
This skill improves automatically with each new rank.
Additionally, each rank gives you an extra skill point that you can use to unlock different
skills on the field, starting from the basic skill.
This way, you can choose your own skill configuration for most commanders.
The already unlocked skills can be reset at any time for a small fee.
In order to promote a commander, you have to accumulate enough XP by using him or her
in battle.
Once enough XP is accumulated, as indicated on the progress bar, the commander can be
manually promoted to up to Rank 10.
At this rank, the special Chain of Command rule comes into play.
Simply put, starting with Rank 10, in order to promote a commander to a higher rank, you
have to have at least one other commander of the same rank.
In other words, if you only have two commanders, you can promote both to Rank 10 and then one
of them to Rank 11.
If you have three commanders, you need to promote all three to Rank 10, then two to
Rank 11 and then one to Rank 12 and so on.
Fortunately, Rank 10 is intended as the top rank for all commanders.
Ranks 11 to 15 are considered bonus ranks that only increase the power of your commanders
of choice beyond the regular limits.
Rank 15 commander is considered extremely powerful and will take you a long time to
obtain.
You can also purchase two Premium commanders for Gold – Olivia Bouchard and Jorge Alvarez.
These commanders start on Rank 10 but have a fixed set of skills and cannot progress
further, making them a good starting point but less useful for advanced players.
In the next part of the series, we’ll discuss specific armor and ammunition types.
But until then: See you on the battlefield!