Skills and perks

I need to understand this, so please help me

If the crew is at 100%, you start putting xp into skills, so far I'm following. Then, when the first skill reaches 100%, you can start a second, etc. But, if you want to change the first skill into a perk, and don't want to use gold, your crew will go to 90%, and the perk stay at 100%? Or is it the other way around? How many percent do you need on the second skill to keep the crew at 100% and the perk at 100%? 10%, 20%? More, less, what?

I'm sorry for being a complete noob about this, but I never bothered dealing with this before, and now I'm nearing the point where I should start worrying about it...

When you have a 100% crew and 1 skill at 100% and want to switch around the skills with the use of credits then the skill level will be put back at 90%.
If you retrain the crew of a tank to a different tank however. And you use credits. The crew will be put back at 90% with all the skill levels intact!

Confusing, I know

Behemoth is right.

And it's not really confusing...it's just badly stated by the game as it's impossible to know whether going back to 90% is the skill or the major qualification of the crew until you do it.

So, with 100% crew, and 100% first skill, and I use credits to change to a perk (on the same tank), I'll end up with a 100% crew, and a perk of 90%?

SteelToedSneakers wrote:So, with 100% crew, and 100% first skill, and I use credits to change to a perk (on the same tank), I'll end up with a 100% crew, and a perk of 90%?

Yes, so it's mostly better to train a bit more into the second skill and then change it. So you have a 100% skill when you change it.
But I'm hoping I'm not talking out of me arse, and everything I'm saying is actually correct :S

SteelToedSneakers wrote:So, with 100% crew, and 100% first skill, and I use credits to change to a perk (on the same tank), I'll end up with a 100% crew, and a perk of 90%?

Edited: Behemoth is right...I just tested it.

I believe I got confused between your scenario and changing crew to a different tank.

Edited: Read above

Here's what wiki has to say about it http://wiki.worldoftanks.com/Crew#Dropping_Skills_and_Perks

Really important to know 2 things when you drop skills.
1)It drops from the the TOTAL experience count, not the percentage of your skills. For example, you have 100% on first skill, 10% on the second one. You drop it to 90% with credits. 90% of 110 would be *takes a calculator* 99. But it drops more than that as % gain on crew is not linear. The real drop would be closer to 95-97%.
2)It resets all of your skill/perks for that crew member. For example you have 3 skills on your Commander and you want Sixth Sense. You drop the skills to 90%. You will have to select all 3 skills again.

It's all terribly complicate. I would recommend reading the wiki 2-3 times just to understand it (at least that what it took me )

Cheers guys! It made sense to me, and I think I finally understood this