Making a commander 'elite'

[SpitHead]

My TII V-25 commander is now at level 17. I plan to continue using him in this DD until he gets to level 21, and then taking him through the rest of German destroyer line. I know I will need to retrain him for each new ship. 

 

Any thoughts/advice on this, please?

[Storm_Khan]

5 minutes ago, RunToTheEast said:

My TII V-25 commander is now at level 17. I plan to continue using him in this DD until he gets to level 21, and then taking him through the rest of German destroyer line. I know I will need to retrain him for each new ship. 

 

Any thoughts/advice on this, please?

Are you playing randoms? Are you also using economic and special flags and camo's that give extra CXP to help boost CXP accumulation?

Have you any T6 or T7 premiums you can use to help grind CXP without having to retrain? You can use them in scenarios/operations which can be somewhat more lucrative in grinding ships & commanders.

[S4pp3R]

On 3/26/2021 at 7:06 PM, RunToTheEast said:

My TII V-25 commander is now at level 17. I plan to continue using him in this DD until he gets to level 21, and then taking him through the rest of German destroyer line. I know I will need to retrain him for each new ship. 

 

Any thoughts/advice on this, please?

Respec him as you go up, you can go up the tiers far earlier than that, a good starting point (even for vets) is often 10 points...

PM

LS

SE

CE

is the standard DD build, then specialise from there, 13 points is almost always Adrenaline Rush.

[Farlesquew]

On 3/26/2021 at 7:36 PM, RunToTheEast said:

My TII V-25 commander is now at level 17. I plan to continue using him in this DD until he gets to level 21, and then taking him through the rest of German destroyer line. I know I will need to retrain him for each new ship. 

 

Any thoughts/advice on this, please?

Hey Run, I met you in your V-25 and reckon it was a good game. It's certainly fun having high skilled captains in the low tiers as woah does the difference show in how hard they hit! The TATM clan guys in particular are lethal (I figure all their captains are 21 pointers; my tier I-II-III fleet captains are still sub-10ers). 

S4pp3r's rule of thumb is spot on for the typical progression, but there's no harm either in playing the game at your own pace. My main account (this one) grinds for the end-game, but my alt account is equally fun just messing about in boats down low. 

[SpitHead]

Guys, thanks for the advice. I'm going to give it a try.

BTW, I have a British warrant officer in command of a cruiser, and soon I'll have a German Gross Admiral in command of a destroyer.

Farlesquew, I'll look out for you ...

 

[PbKavarovsky]

I think the OP is not asking for captain spec recommendations, but to grind the captain through 21 points first or not, and here's the thing:

The time it takes to grind through lower tier ships is relatively low, and hence it might not worth the price retraining a 21-point captain through the lower tiers. Usually 10-14 points are enough in a low tier ship, and it is way cheaper to retrain a 10-14 points captain. Even if you have a premium ship to grind through the retrain period, it takes a lot of time. It is entirely up to you how you would approach this, but to me, I'd rather save time grinding through retraining period by using commander XP/doubloons.

Quick reference:

So retraining a 10-point captain takes 12,500 Commander XP (hereafter CXP)/Free XP (FXP), and a 14-point captain takes 37,500 CXP/FXP. 21-point captain takes 300,000 CXP/FXP, 8 to 24 times of 10/14 points captains.

TL;DR: If you do not need that much captain skills in the lower tiers, progress to the next ship in the tree once you have accumulated enough (like 10 or 14), retrain cost substantially increase as the number of skill points available on a captain rises.

[Rina_Pon]

1 hour ago, PbKavarovsky said:

I think the OP is not asking for captain spec recommendations, but to grind the captain through 21 points first or not, and here's the thing:

The time it takes to grind through lower tier ships is relatively low, and hence it might not worth the price retraining a 21-point captain through the lower tiers.

This.

Retraining is resource intensive, and scales semi-exponentially with the number of skill points. You'd be looking at a 3,000,000 million cxp bill to move a 21 point captain from T1 through to T10. For that expenditure you could generate 10 point captains for each of your the tech tree ships instead.

Even if your goal is to get to T10 and never play any other ship than that T10, you'd want to level up your captain after you got to T10, not before.

Myself I did a kind of leap-frog approach. I have 14+ point captains on just about all my ships, and I keep most tech tree ships above T6 - because I don't, to be honest, play T10 very often. But when I was grinding tech tree lines, I'd put my high point captain on my T8 ship then start with a lower level one on the T7, play the T7 until the captain got up to 14-15 and play my T8 ship until I had the XP to get the T9, then put my T7 captain on my T9 ship. So the retraining fee was on a relatively low point captain.

Of course having premium ships helps this out, since you can avoid the fee entirely and pay it as games played.

 

 

[Storm_Khan]

An alternative to just retrain the commander to each new ship as you go up the tree is to get him/her to 21 pts on a T6/T7 ship and leave the commander there. You can then use this ship and commander in randoms as well as operations/scenarios so that it generates Elite CXP which you can use on the next commander you are trying to get to 21 pts.

[SpitHead]

I found all the above posts helpful.

PbKavarovsky, thank you. This is what I wanted to know. So, every time I move a 21 point commander up a tier (or to any new ship), I have to pay 300,000 XP. Ouch.

Now I see why no one does this.

[S4pp3R]

24 minutes ago, RunToTheEast said:

I found all the above posts helpful.

PbKavarovsky, thank you. This is what I wanted to know. So, every time I move a 21 point commander up a tier (or to any new ship), I have to pay 300,000 XP. Ouch.

Now I see why no one does this.

What I was trying to say in my post but didn't actually say is get to 10 points at whatever tier you are comfortable, even 13 and then go up the tiers...

Most vets will do 10-14 point as a starting point for a grind as it's the base build.

Any more than that and the others have covered the costs...