I figured that using large squads (8+ squad mates) while good on the defense may cause your team to lose when on the offensive.
Based on my experience you can “Park” your squad mates when defending at least somewhat effectively and rely on at least 1 or 2 soldiers to stay alive so you can use them. (Invasion)
But when attacking the AI soldiers are Canon fodder, that’s it. By the time you’ve crossed an open area and reached a point to fight in QQ, 80% of your squad will be gone.
When attacking, it’s very important to preserve your total manpower.
The problem is that those dead ai soldiers will be subtracted from your manpower (1000), speeding up the process of losing.
Sure ai soldiers are meatshields and draw enemy fire onto them increasing your chances of survival, but I don’t think it outweighs the “ticket” bleed.
TLDR: (Invasion) I think that a team of players who only use small squads (4-6) will have a higher chance of winning than a team using large squads, when on the offensive.
So it may actually be worth it to not max out the size of 1 (assault-) squad, to then use on the offensive and have a higher chance of winning.
Personally, I tend to use larger squads, and I have a relatively high win to loss ratio. Though admittedly, most of the squads I use are not the trooper squad, so it’s generally a 6-7 man squad.
I don’t tend to find my AI getting wiped very quickly, unless it’s in particularly difficult circumstances, or I get bombed. But that’s hardly the AI’s fault.
With that said, I do a /lot/ more spotting than most people, which accurate spotting does seem to heavily influence AI’s ability to actually do anything. In addition, I keep my AI soldiers in a wide formation, and use the attack this point command once I’m on point. Finally, quite often I’m attacking from a flank separate from most of my team.
I think that a far bigger thing to victory is if people try to put engineers in all their squads and actually put down respawn beacons. I find in maps far too often it’s just me, and /maybe/ one, rarely two other people bothering to put down respawn beacons on the map. Which is far more influential in regards to ticket bleed on the whole, given more time between your team making attempts to push = more time for defenders to reinforce the point, which means you lose more soldiers in your attempts to push.
Agreed. I used to have a lot of big squads but trimmed that down to one at the moment for the reasons you mentioned. Also smaller squads are a lot sneakier then large ones. You get spotted later and catch less bullets.
My set up is :
1 lmg squad for open terrain pushing. 3lmg, 2engi. So it can build a rally point if the cross succeeds.
2 assault squads with 4 assaulters 1lmg, 1 engi. Close combat with the last 2 having 3 smokes each.
1 sniper squad 3 snipers, 1 engi for clearing mgs and pesky enemy fire points.
1 large 9 man rifle squad all with Lee Enfields, engi, radio, lmg. I use this one for flanking moves, esp Normandy. If you place one of these on the highgrounds they get a load of kills and is hard to counter before they did the dmg. I control the lmg for fire superiority and spotting. The max Lee Enfields one tap everything.
Gives me something for every objective in the game and most squads are nice and controlable. Not a lot of guys in them so I can play balls to the wall agressive without feeling bad to kill 9 dudes every time I dont succeed. Also easy swapping between soldiers as well when you need a different angle.
ALL my squads are 4 people, no more. I keep it tight, only the best of gear, etc. It’s much easier to stay hidden, and sneak around. Because larger squads get spotted by everyone, smaller squads I can sneak around way better.
Also, you can park smaller squads better, and hide them in buildings, etc.
But yes, most importantly - you lose tickets, so you are hurting your own team. Specially so in assaults, when 7 people mass squads get wiped quickly. Drains tickets quick.
Ticket bleed is more of problem when you have 5 people on your team who died 11-15 times when everyone else is around 5-6. Big squads good for out capping defenders if there are only 1 or 2 and distracting I find.
This will work better if they ever fix AI to not ignore knife players. The skill seems to be there for them, seen them pummel people to death in a gang lol. Just needs to detect players or yell out for help.
And if you only use 4 guys to make it to a point instead of 7 or 8 then you are twice as effective and/or you can afford to make a second run to cap a point.
Note that I only play Moscow. There foiliage is very limited and quite often a teammate or I use a tank/mg and mow down dozens of enemies (mostly bots) causing significant ticket bleed.
Yep, getting caught out in the open by machine gun, tank, or air will leave your squad fucked regardless. Spotting I think has the effect of at least directing your soldiers attention to targets, they suck at identifying targets themselves, although this isn’t stated anywhere so I’m not sure on that point.
How effective is the wide formation? I disliked using it when I tried it, felt like my guys were just getting picked off. I do wish when on point soldiers would automatically take defensive positions without having to be told. And on that last point flanking attacks are devastating when deployed correctly. Usually in coordination with teammates and having a designated tank killer when playing with friends ensures enemy armor will be less of a problem.
Your last point is spot on, the closer the spawn points the more likely you are to win. The biggest game changer I’ve ever seen is how many spawns can you put down near the points.
Wide formation has the main advantage of reducing how many of your AI get picked off by a single MG nest or tank at a given time, and also reduces how quickly they get sniped down. It’s not to say I don’t lose AI teamates while crossing to a different point - I also tell them to move to close formation while defending a point, or when I’m trying to push into a specific room of a bunker now and then, but wide formation tends to leave me with at least some of my squad alive while moving in forests or from cover to cover.
I do wish that AI was smarter about using cover, crouching / going prone when taking fire if they can’t get to cover, etc. But yeah, spotting really does help AI in detecting targets. I mean they still suck, but they at least do something when you tell them where to shoot.
Another thing about going past 6 is that it feels like the squad is just filled with BS from then on. I’d honestly rather get a fresh squad then be down to the 7-9 bums.
Smaller squads are definitely smarter to conserve tickets when the AI is such garbage at the moment. If your team is any good, having to spawn in a fresh squad because you got squad wiped with a few fewer guys shouldn’t be an issue with a spawn beacon near obj. The only time having a squad larger than six, heck, even possibly four or five, is if you’re playing hard to get on point and the enemy team is doing a lot of rifle fire and not a whole lot else, or maybe a Puma or something. The German vehicle MGs do way more damage than the US ones but also only have 100 rnds so they can’t handle more than one full squad at a time.
Regardless though, most if not pretty much all your ticket bleed is going to be from lemming teammates throwing themselves at obj without contesting the enemy’s defenses in a meaningful way. So in the end, what matters most, is killing the enemies killing your team.
That’s one of the best tactics for storming point in Enlisted. Sending in large group with LMG or Bolt-action equipped rank V fully upgraded bots to take objective, especially buildings. Even if most of them die, with their auto-aim 360 skills they will always get a couple of guaranteed kills or even might start to capture and i just have to walk in after them and finish remaining survivors. For best effect combine this with grenade spam.