It takes weeks to build a ground vehicle. It takes years to train a professional. Vehicle crews and maintenance teams are the most valuable resource in any player’s slots.

But the realities of the game dictate their own rules. Every day on the War Thunder battlefields, far more vehicles are destroyed than ever met their end in real war, and a vehicle that is very survivable in real life may fail to show its virtues so clearly when it comes under a hail of fire. This mostly concerns heated battles on the ground. We strive to recreate historical reality wherever this doesn’t oppose simple logic and exciting gameplay, and the survivability of ground vehicles in battle is an important factor that directly influences how much fun people have in battles. But how do we adapt our vehicles for far more deadly battles than those that took place in real life, without touching the tanks’ carefully recreated characteristics? The answer is simple: crews! It is people that control tanks, and the tank is considered lost only after the majority of its crew are killed. We’ve been looking into various options that would allow you to enjoy the battle for longer without losing the sense of a true conflict. These options included medkits, which would allow you to return a member of your crew to life, but many of you considered this mechanic not entirely suitable for the realities of Simulator, Realistic and even Arcade battles in War Thunder. There was a literal downpour of suggestions for an alternative. We’ve considered the most logical of your suggestions in developing this latest mechanism, and now we present a new mechanic – crew drafting. Do things look bad? The tanker is already on the way!
In a large upcoming update, tankers in all modes will become acquainted with a new mechanic with which a tank still capable of contributing to the fight mechanically can prepare for the next skirmish with the enemy by replacing a knocked-out crew member with a reserve soldier.

How does this mechanic work?

Just as you requested, we’ve changed not only the crew member revival mechanism, but also introduced variety to how the mechanic works in different modes. In Arcade mode, you can request a draft at any point on the map, and if there is only one tanker left in the tank, the draft is requested automatically and all you have to do is hope that the soldier arrives in time. It’s all quite simple, the only thing you have to consider is that the vehicle cannot move between your request for a crew member and the time the crew member arrives. It’s a little more complicated in Realistic and Simulated modes. Here, you can only draft a tanker at a safe capture point that belongs to your team, and you can only draft a crew member manually. This is in contrast to Arcade mode, only a battle-capable vehicle with a minimum of two living crew members can draft a new crew member. It will also be impossible to move while the replacement is being fulfilled. Crew drafting will become available after you research the ground vehicle modification of the same name. Each individual replacement tanker draft costs Silver Lions.
The tanker is ready to move whenever you request it. We thank all players who helped by offering suggestions for the development of this new mechanic, and we hope that ground battles in all modes will become more fun because of it. Good luck!