Basic information and building a proper crew
Hello there new recruit! As you probably have experienced by now, NavyField is not an easy game to completely master. A lack of a proper tutorial and a poor starting pool of sailors make the odds of new players starting off properly quite small. To help counteract this, I've put together a guide on what you will need to have a crew that can make the most of your ships and eventually be ready to use that BB6 or CV6.
What stats do I have to watch for when I create my crew?
Bridge Operators: 14 or 15 potential, coupled with 11 or 12 repair preferably.
Gunners:
Cap out fairly easy except for UK accuracy gunners, so getting super sailors is not as vital here.
Make sure you have 2 gunners with equal stats on reload and accuracy, 11/11 (acc/rld) and 12/10 are good options for your main gunners, AA gunners are usually 10/12.
Engineers: As high as possible on engineer, at least 9 in restore, preferably 10 or more.
Repairers: As high as possible on repair, at least 9 in restore, preferably 10 or more.
Restorers: Do not use these on a BB, and even on CV I'd reccommend 2 reps rather than a rest. If you really want one, 12 restore and 10+ rep.
Scout pilot: Aircraft, 11 or 12 is fine.
Fighter pilot: Fighter, do not settle for anything less than 12 base
Bomber pilot: Bomber
Seaman: Commonly used on CV crews, get a sailor with 11 or 12 fighter and 10+ on bomber and repair.
Sonarman: Potential (primary stat), with decent repair and restore
Planesman: Potential (primary stat), with decent repair and restore
Torpedo man: Torpedo (duh)
Battleship crews
Battleships are the game's big damage dealers. This ship type is primarily played by the majority of the playerbase. Initially at low lvls, it would seem you mostly need repair ability. Guns do relatively little damage and speed and range hardly matter in the average blitzkrieg. Later on during the BB stage however, this situation gets turned upside down. Many BB's can sink one another with 2 or 3 shots, so repair ability will be useless unless you can make sure you avoid most of the enemy fire. Speed and agility are key factors to playing a BB well. So you'll want more engineers than repairers in your crew.
Another choice is whether to use anti air guns on your battleship. They add more protection against bombers and give you the option to shoot down scouts in order to create an area around you that the enemy cannot see. The downside is that AA gunners take up 2 slots on your ship meaning you will have less repairers and/or engineers. The quality of AA guns differs greatly per nation and that difference will reflect on my advised crew setups for each nation following below.
Finally, especially if this is your first crew, I recommend leveling 2 bridge operators on both gunship lines. This will take longer to get to the high level BB's, but has the advantage you can train your entire BB6 crew without them starting to fall behind. Another perk is that your gunners will move ahead of the BO's, which positively affects the performance of guns naturally.
Overall you will have a better crew to operate your ship, and on your first line you will need every advantage you can get since there are already many factors that will require getting used to.
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United States Navy
The US navy is commonly crewed by 1 of 2 variants, 1 using AA and the other focusing on more repair rate and overheat. Both will be listed below.
With US gunners you will have to make some choices. At 3 moments you are given a choice to increase either accuracy growth, or reload. For main gunners, class them Acc-Rld-Acc if you will have a fairly low amount of vets (<100). If you can BVE them, class Acc-Rld-Rld.
Reload gunners for AA can simply be classed reload all the way as accuracy will eventually cap without focusing on it and small caliber AA guns don't require enormous amounts of acc ability. US AA gunners should be ignored as they are useless and broken.
Crew variant 1
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
4 repairers
6 engineers
1 rookie pilot
Crew variant 2
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
2 AA gunners
3 repairers
5 engineers
1 rookie pilot
Royal Navy (UK)
Like the US, this nation has non straightforward gun classing, requiring you to choose once at lvl 42 to focus on reload or accuracy. This choice cannot be undone, so make sure you do it right the first time.
Accuracy classing is the way to go if you want to achieve good spreads during blitzkrieg levels and at low level BB's. The downside however is that in order to reach the reload cap, you will have to either vet your gunners past 109 or accept that you will not have optimal reload until your gunners are at or very close to lvl 120.
Reload gunners have no trouble reaching both caps relatively early, but are far less fun to level with since spread of many guns will suffer at low levels.
So if you picked UK as your first line, you might want to stick with accuracy while players going UK later on can level their gunners ahead using a ship of their first line to avoid the spread problem.
UK AA gunners should be avoided for proper AA guns, although the so called pom pom's (looks like automated AA fire, only sprayed further) require actual AA gunners. These are not the most effective way to destroy planes however and are generally considered a novelty gun rather than a viable option. So unless you really want pom pom's, train reload gunners for your anti air guns. UK AA overall is rather weak though, so most UK players don't bother with it.
Crew variant 1 (recommended)
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
3 or 4 repairers (use 3 if you can vet beyond 170 vets per support)
6 or 7 engineers (depending on your # of reps)
1 rookie pilot
Crew variant 2
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
2 reload gunners
3 repairers
5 engineers
1 rookie pilot
Imperial Japanese Navy
IJN crews are fairly straightforward. The only things that require attention are the classing of AA gunners (explained below) and determining the amount of reps and engies you will train.
IJN AA gunners are the only gunners that can use the good IJN anti air solutions. However once you class them at lvl 20, they suffer a decrease in reload and accuracy, which is bad. There is a solution however. Since the crew growth of these AA gunners barely changes after classing, you can safely postpone the level at which you class the gunners to AA gunners and beyond. Meaning you can keep them as armament sailors after lvl 20 with their full growth in accuracy and reload. It is recommended to put off classing them until you have reached the appropriate level for the Yamato at lvl 89 (So aim to get your armament sailors to lvl 80 at least before you class them to AA gunners).
Recommended crew
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
2 AA gunners
3 repairers
5 engineers
1 rookie pilot
You might consider using 4 engies and 4 reps in order to increase your repairing ability, but the later IJN BB's are very hard to speedcap and IJN in general relies on speed and AA to survive in battles. So I recommend using the setup mentioned above.
Kriegsmarine
Km is even more straightforward than IJN, since the crew has no oddities or pitfalls. Simply class your enire crew whenever the possibility presents itself and choose the proper paths at lvl 12.
Recommended crew
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
2 AA gunners
3 repairers
5 engineers
1 rookie pilot
Marine Nationale
Very alike to US in its setup. The main choice is whether to use AA guns or not. I would recommend doing so as France has access to some very potent anti air weaponry. Also note there is no actual AA gunner branch, but all guns are used by normal gunners.
Crew variant 1 (reccomended)
1 or 2 BO's
4 main gunners
3 repairers
5 engineers
1 rookie pilot
Crew variant 2
1 or 2 BO's
2 main gunners
4 repairers
6 engineers
1 rookie pilot
