Sorry, but I don't understand you. Why you say "I have to wait for the crew". If the pushback direction is asked last, it means the crew animation has already been played, so you don't have to wait for it again.
Here's what I do and here's what happens : I call the menu and I press the pushback button. From there an animation is triggered : it makes spawn (or it's already there can't remember) the tow-truck and the ground agent, the tow-truck connects to the nose wheel and the ground agent is by that tow-truck, connecting his headset. Then it'll either wait for the user to remove GPU/ACU before they'll be ready for push.
In the meantime, indeed a menu appears for me to select my direction of push. I think that menu disappears and auto-selects after some time but I can be wrong on that, anyways, are you suggesting that I have to let this menu open ? Or maybe you're saying that I can just ignore the direction message at first and chose later on ?
Because otherwise, I have to press a direction, right ? After that, ground is ready to push.
If I want to change my pushback direction, I would need to click on abort pushback (which is quite bugged for me so I just reinitialize couatl), but both ways it would result in me requesting the push again. This action causes the animation to repeat (the tow-truck spawn, the guy connecting and so on...) because when you reinitialize couatl, obviously, GSX stops running and the crew isn't connected anymore.
Sorry if I'm not clear enough, I have been told that I'm horrible at explaining things !
Why "the other way around" ? If you ask to prepare for Pushback as soon as you can, they'll do their thing, and if they'll ask for pushback direction at the end, it would be exactly as if they are waiting for you to be ready.
In real life, the ground crew would already be ready before you ask your clearance, they don't connect themselves, the by-pass pin and so on 2mins before the push.
They'll set up everything, and when you ask for a push they would either know where /in which direction to push or they would ask you.
With GSX, you : call for push -> chose a direction -> wait for the ground crew to connect everything/remove everything -> push.
In real life : ground crew is already prepared -> you ask for a clearance -> push.
In other terms, the tow-truck is already connected and ready when you ask for the pushback. That's why I usually ask GSX for a push earlier, even if I don't know which way I'm going to push, because then the tow-truck is already in place, everything is ready and when I want to push, then I can do it straight away.
But if I pre-selected the wrong direction, then I have to start all over again.
Hopefully it's clear enough this time