I'm hooked on this game right now
A few questions though...
1) Aiming well. Does it get better with crew training? the training from 50% takes ages so I'm not sure yet. Also, any tips on long range sniping? use a normal tank, a TD?
2) Did anyone here spend $$ for ingame gold/premium account? I'm wondering if its worth it. Grinding credits and XP from the start takes ages, may be the way it is intended?
3) why do I have to suffer in the awful SU-18 so much to get the SU-26? A guy in a wheelchair can move faster that it.
Aww, new players are so cute! But really,
0) 50% crews are *terrible*. But it's a necessary evil of the low tiers. It's simply not worth it credits-wise to purchase 75% crew training until you get your first tier4 tank at the earliest. And even then I'd consider only training say the commander & driver (for a light, scout tank) depending on your credit situation.
But you know how your tank stats say view range of X, rate of fire Y, accuracy Z, etc? Those numbers are valid for a 100% crew with ventilation equipped or something like that. They basically represent nearly the best possible values, not the base values. So with a 50% crew, the performance of every single tank aspect suffers (not necessarily cut by 50% but substantial reductions). Your ROF sucks. When you turn, you lose tons of speed. Your view range is awful. Etc. This is why everyone says you can't properly evaluate how much a tank sucks until you have the appropriate equipment mounted, crew at 100%, and all the research completed.
Now your questions:
1) Yeah accuracy & aim-time (time it takes for the reticule to reach minimum size) improve with crew training. Training from 50% doesn't really take that long. By the time you get tier5 tanks, you'll train from 75%->100% probably before you even research all the module upgrades. But you spend so little time in the lower tier tanks that yeah, you won't max a crew out normally.
Different guns have different accuracies. They're all listed in the gun's stats (on the research screen, right click on the gun & choose "characteristics"). Click on the gun icon in the garage and then right click on one of the gun options shown. Say your gun has accuracy 0.4. This means that for every 100m traveled, you can expect a 0.4m variation (from your aiming point). So the smaller this number is, the more accurate the gun is. This accuracy is represented by the reticule. I *think* the reticule shows you 2 std deviations, so you should expect the shell to fall inside that circle 95% of the time. The distribution is gaussian (aka "normal").
TDs and tanks essentially mount the same guns. But the TD versions are usually like maybe 10% more accurate. German tanks are also generally known for their accuracy (moreso than the other nations). With accuracy in the 0.35-0.37 range, you kinda can hit things far away but it's not reliable beyond 300-400m or so. In the 0.33-ish range, you'll have decent performance in the 400-450ish range. In the 0.3 range of accuracy you can reliably smash shit beyond 500m. Awesome.
That said, the lower tiers don't really have any highly accurate guns so long range fire is a bit of a crap shoot. This is especially true if your crew well trained. But this is ok b/c none of the low tier tanks are built as snipers. For now, getting up close & personal (but under cover) will probably be your best bet.
Other tips: when shooting at very long range, you need to account for shell travel time. Shell-drop (due to gravity) is accounted for automatically by the game. This can actually be kind of annoying but whatever. But the shell doesn't hit the target instantly. So if your target is moving, you need to lead it. Just takes practice to figure out how much. At this point I can hit targets moving at 30kph at 550m reliably. For fast scouts in the 60kph+ range, make that more like 300m, haha.
2) I've spent real $ on gold. I use it to get a premium account now and then. Like right now since I'm home for winter vacation I got a premium. 50% xp & credit boosts is pretty sweet, esp for credits b/c it boosts your net profit by way more than 50% (i.e., income increases 50% but costs remain the same, so profit grows by more). You'll also run across promo codes now and then that give you some gold for free and/or a few days of premium for free.
Whether you get prem is really up to you. If you think it's taking too long to progress, prem will accelerate that process. But I suspect that at this point, just playing and getting better at the game will achieve the same effect Tier1/2/3 passed fairly quickly for me... tier4 is where I (and most ppl) really got bogged down... b/c most tier4 tanks suck balls (e.g., M3 Lee, A-20, oh god.) But then tier5 is awesome. After that, subsequent tiers have some tanks that are miserable & some tanks that are great.
But if you think tier 2 or 3 is too grindy, you ain't seen nothin' yet! Things will go faster if you have several tanks to work on at once. So play a game & exit the battle when you die (don't have to watch it finish). Then play another tank, rinse & repeat.
3) If you think the SU-26 will be zipping around the map, you are sorely mistaken. If the SU-18 is like a guy w/2 broken arms in a wheelchair, the SU-26 is like a guy with 2 working arms but all broken fingers. The other nations have more mobile artillery from what I've seen. (I find artillery to be boring so i've only played SU-18 & SU-26.)