The hyperventilating over equipment was mostly for nothing. Here's what I did:
Using the garage filters, went through tier by tier, low to high.
Tiers II-III – only 1 equipment slot on 2's, 2 on 3's, and all of the equipment was already removed. Put vents on most, improved hardening on some, optics on a few. This is the cheap equipment.
Tiers IV-VII – 3 equipment slots, Tiers 4-5, no specialized slots, 6-7, first slot is specialized. This is the mid-tier cost equipment.
This is where the credits start to come in. Some of the equipment is supposed to be for higher tier tanks, but was left on the mid-tier tanks. Higher tier, higher price. If you see an arrow on a piece of equipment (vstab, rammer, optics, might be others), you can demount that piece of equipment for free (but you can't re-mount, which is OK). If you sell one of those pieces from your depot, you get 300k credits. Buying a replacement for mid-tier will only cost you 200k credits. So, profit. But wait until you've gone through all 10 tiers to sell.
Starting with tier 6, the first equipment slot is categorize based upon the tank class. Light tanks = vision, mediums = maneuverability, and so on. There will be a little icon under that equipment slot in your garage; if it's "glowing", you have the correct category of equipment mounted, otherwise you don't. You can also put your mouse over that equipment slot and the popup window will tell you if your equipment and slot categories match or not. IF THEY DON'T MATCH (or if that first slot is empty), click on the equipment slot and it will take you to the equipment panel. You can re-order equipment, so swap that piece for one of the correct category, and voila, now that piece of equipment gets an additional bonus (looks like 10%).
From tiers 8 on up, this is the expensive equipment. However, all of that high tier equipment that you removed from mid-tier tanks can now be mounted on those high tier tanks. Same deal as before with the first equipment slot being specific for a certain type. Fill up all of your equipment slots, sell any extra stuff (I had something like 43 GLD's), and you've got credits to spend on any empty slots for your mid-tier tanks.
I'm sure there's a tun of nuanced stuff that I'm missing, but I think I've got the basics down. I haven't played with any of the new equipment yet (i.e. commander's vision system), but I'm hoping that at some point there will be an equipment sale that will allow me to get some of that stuff at a discount.
