With 400 olives, i would say go +12 bases and boost all your sailors (except scout and maybe BO).
AA for experts because you can't afford them.

For the crew setup:

With AA/HH :
1 or 2 BO
2 11/11 (at least) gunners
2 +?/12 guners (class them reload all the way)
5 engies/ 3 reps+12 or 4engies/4reps


Without AA/HH:
1 or 2 BO
2 11/11 (at least) gunners
5 engies/ 5 reps+12 or 6/4
Of course you can use things like 7/3 or 4/6 if you want

Elite Accuracy gunners BVE'd and classed acc-rld-rld work wonders.

cool story bro! Same here!

But have you actually read my post?

And how could he have elite gunners without paying, since it seems he hasn't got any from an event?

My point was that if you have to choose between elite sailors or +11/12 boosted, you should go for the boosted +12, because it adds more than 1 or 2 points of the ability growth.
And accuracy gunners are useless since +11 ones reach the cap already pretty fast ...

Am I wrong?

Most gunners shall reach cap I believe. If my supply of boost items are limited, then I might boost engine,
then repair, and last is gunner. I will suffer earlier with worse spread and reload but if I only have a few
boost then I'd rather have better engine.