Digging Trenches - Will it ever be useful?

Suggestions
1

I am a proud engineer and love constructing insane fortifications. The current mechanic is great and I don’t see anything else required for engineers or don’t need any tweaks. Of course, AI engineers are practically useless and commanding every AI to construct something is too time-consuming. Basically, the AI is useless and it would be great to improve this, however this isn’t what I want to discuss:

There is this great feature in Enlisted which many (new) people still don’t know; you can dig trenches using shovels and these trenches are insanely good for defense. Whether that may be against artillery or bombs, because your sand walls won’t help that much, or simply to peek & snipe. Trenches are the perfect first layer of defense and I love digging trenches when I have the time to do so. They offer a new variety and more options for the fortification and the organization of it and actually are so useful. Its satisfying to see an entire squad get stuck in a trench filled with barbed wire or AP mines. Its satisfying to see a tank getting stuck in my wide trench because I blocked the roads with mines and czech hedgedogs.

However as useful as it may sound, the reality is totally different. Most maps are basically unfit for digging trenches or fortifications in general and in most situations you don’t have the time to spend minutes digging (even if you have perks it takes a ton of time to make it deep & wide).
So unless we have enough time - by knowing where the next point we need to defend is, we need something else to fix digging. The issue with the cap points is known and I am a supporter of having the defenders know where their next point is, after all this could avoid some matches taking 5 minutes (if the team is bad). This would obviously allow us engineers to build more.

So my solution to this issue:

  • First of all I think trenches should reward points. I don’t think you get anything now and trenches are pretty useful as explained. What do I get by contributing so much that the enemy team can’t use tanks until the next spawn is available because I digged hundred meter long trenches through the forest and no main road is available? I feel like, if a tank gets stuck or people use trenches e.g. by having the damage absorbed or by building rally points the digger should be rewarded. Rewarding the digging itself isn’t really useful because then some people will just endlessly dig and they might even ruin it by doing so.

  • Second of all I think we need more spots to dig, or at least improve the current situation. If there is some leaves on the soil I can’t dig? Seriously? I understand that trenches shouldn’t be too op or break the AI pathfinding, but on some maps you practically can’t dig anywhere, to the point where I needed time to find a spot for a 1x1 hole just for the rally point.

  • Lastly, I feel like, if we won’t get to know where the next cap point is or if we don’t even get rewarded for our trenches, that we should be able to dig faster: Make the engineer AI useful for once. I assume the trench feature wasn’t added for no reason, because if nothing changes it literally was. It seems like matches get faster and fortifications decreasingly matter, because people just rush and grind. If an engineer squad of 6 could dig a wide and long trench it would make a huge difference as said. So why can’t we command AI to help dig trenches? If it’s not the regular AI, at least engineer AI please. Engineer AI sucks it’s just a regular rifleman. Or maybe allow both to dig trenches and then add another perk to the engineer perk tree, next to melee damage, making them able to dig better than regular riflemen or something.

Unfortunately I couldn’t keep it short but I think the last part is pretty visible and that’s my suggestion, the other introduction is just context and reasoning. I don’t see any downsides of being able to dig trenches faster, after all trenches have their downsides too. But we players should take the risk of digging a trench and possibly making it a nightmare for our team - like with barbed wire. If AI still continues to walk into barbed wire and get stuck until it dies I think trenches would be a nightmare for them, though I didn’t have problems of that kind yet.

13 Likes
2

As an avid Shovel user I agree! I have never found time nor space where it is appropriate to use my Shovel for it’s intended secondary purpose!

4 Likes
3

Once in a blue moon, a small slit trench can work well, especially vs really bad arty spam on one of those open points. But yeah, completely agree, it would be really nice to get a feature like in WT where you can mark out an area to dig and it will happen automatically, but in this case, all the AI in your squad with shovels will help dig it.

Otherwise if you had even 20-30 seconds to prepare defences per point, digging could be much more useful. Once you get the hang of it, it doesnt take too long.

2 Likes
4

Yeah trench + barbed wire is very satisfying especially in an open place,so enemy and their bot will get struggle to come to objektif , and i think before the merge there is a perk that increase melee attack speed up to 100% or 50% if iam not mistaken so it dig very" fast but now it just + 20% speed.

1 Like
5

i want the bots able to dig simple line trench from 1m -3m length

3 Likes
6

if you’re playing d-day as germany and defending the very steep hill map, you can dig trenches through the road where the road cuts through the big concrete walls, when the allies try to spawn any tanks for the 2nd objective, they become pretty much trapped in their own spawn

7

Even if we dont get a reward for the creation and use of the trench, everything thing else in here would be a godsend. Hell, i’d even settle for just knowing my fallback points to make defences.

4 Likes
8

Tbf if you destroy any tank on its way up while its on the road, you block allied tank reinforcements, that map is extremely broken frankly.

9

No, it will never be useful.

1 Like
10

it is usefull now to hide rally point and reduce chance rally point get destroyed by plane spammer

2 Likes
11

No, digging trenches is not useful and is a complete waste of time. But I’m glad you have fun doing it. But also, I hope you are only on the enemy team and not mine :stuck_out_tongue: :rofl: :pray:

Also I don’t get why you think commanding your AI engineers to construct your blueprints is difficult or that time consuming, its really quick to do and speeds up your building time :person_shrugging:

1 Like
12

It’s pretty buggy most of the time, I can’t construct sand walls right next to each other or barbed wire right in front of it and sometimes AI gets stuck or simply stops building. Idk if it’s just a personal problem but if other ppl don’t have the problem it seems like it is

1 Like
13

Have u tried ordering ur other engineers in ur engineer squad to build a rally point with u? Or u just building it urself without ordering ur extra engineers?

If a blueprint for a simple trench line is available right now, no tanks will be safe against a player good engineer squad.

14

thats really not the issue. speeding up definitely works fine as long as the AI isnt outside the room and struggles to enter it before i already finished. the issue with ai command system rn is that i cant really get to work telling my ai to build a sandwall and the other ai a barbed wire etc simultaniously. it seems like the squad is having problems handling several orders at the same time and it would be great to have an engineer squad with 5 engineers finally be useful (e.g. by being able to place the blueprints and telling the AI to build these blueprints afterwards, whereas the player would have time to do other things)

1 Like
15

I think for now u have to place the blueprints first and then order ur bots to finish it.

16

Also from my experience, the bots are more Reactive and shoote more against enemies when individually given a move order than the squad move order.

17

Yes, I do it all the time. Thats the point I was making, its easy to do for all the structures.

1 Like