I use it a lot in Pacific but the actual mortar is something I only use in certain situations. I mainly use the squad for its Anti Everything Rifleman and the mortarman double as shock troops with molotovs and pistols
Every match.
ammo/rallies.
AT field guns: When enemy is greyzone camping and I don’t have hand held at weapon powerful enough to pen them.
AA: rare.
rare.
rare.
offense
It is situational, it is effective of open cap.
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How often do you use Engineer squads?
Every match. I often have two Engineer squads in my lineup. -
How do you use Engineer squads? (Setting up large defenses or just ammo/rallies)
Many ways. Attack or defense. Rallies, ammo, sandbags, etc. They can be well armed and pretty dominant offensively too.
2.5. Do you find the DEFENSIVE structures (Sandbag walls, barbwire, Czech Hedgehogs) built by engineers to be adequate in the roles they are SUPPOSED to be used in? (Using Czech Hedehogs to block doorways is not included as its more of an exploit.)
Sandbags could stand up to more damage. I probably underuse hedgehogs so have no comment. Wire needs to be used carefully as you can mess up your own team badly.
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How often do you use the AT field guns and AAs?
AT from time to time. AA’s very rarely since the change. Probably every other match prior to that. -
How often do you use the Mortar squads?
Almost never -
How often do you see other people using the mortar squads?
Occasionally -
Do you find that mortar squads are used more on offense or defense?
I’ve never had consistent success with them. I think if I played in a stack they could be good as a part of a coordinated strategy. I think they are most effective on some maps on offense (caves map for example). -
Do you find mortar squads to be very effective?
Not at my hands. Not as effective as other squads and, more importantly, not in a way that I find to be any fun.
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How often do you use Engineer squads?
very often in most campaign. -
How do you use Engineer squads? (Setting up large defenses or just ammo/rallies)
depending on my mood. though usually i went full minecraft and just built as much as i can.
2.5. Do you find the DEFENSIVE structures (Sandbag walls, barbwire, Czech Hedgehogs) built by engineers to be adequate in the roles they are SUPPOSED to be used in? (Using Czech Hedehogs to block doorways is not included as its more of an exploit.)
sandbag are very versatile and IMO is in good place. barbed wire is trickier to use but also in good place.
the hedgehog however i never used for its intended purpose of blocking vehicle. -
How often do you use the AT field guns and AAs?
AT gun rarely, AA gun often (with admitedly little success) -
How often do you use the Mortar squads?
i regret ever trying them. -
How often do you see other people using the mortar squads?
once in a full moon. -
Do you find that mortar squads are used more on offense or defense?
usually offense. but since it’s very rare to see either way, i don’t think it matters. -
Do you find mortar squads to be very effective?
as question 4 answer implies, i regret ever using them. they’re for the most part useless and are only great at making the enemy feel dumb from being killed by it. i know i feel dumb when killed by a mortar.
I always start my matches with engineer squads to make rally points
all matches NEED engineers for the rally points
and mortar squad can be really fun if u have an engineer in the squad to make ammo boxes, u can get a lot of kills if u get accurate coordinates
- only use them until they are maxed
- setting up defenses is for %98 of the time point less as it takes 1/4 of the effort to destroy what ever i build
2.5 no they are all rubbish - at guns are awkward to use and i avoid them/ aa guns are ok
- use them as much as i can in completed army’s
- rarely
6.offense - not really
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Engineer only squads usually only while levelling up a campaign, they don’t usually make it to my final roster once other squads become available, but will always have individual engineers in all my squads
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Just rallies and ammo and the odd emplacement, sometimes if I just feel like being lazy and winding down a session or don’t feel like doing intense fighting might do some extra placements just for the fun of it, but that’s not as common, it’s just to mess around for fun as it’s mostly useless. I used to always get the perks for more building materials and faster building, now I skip over it and always make my engies into combat troops as the first priority
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Never use AA even pre nerfs when it was abused vs infantry, sometimes use AT gun if the enemy is using low end tanks and there is flat clear ground to place it, otherwise it’s a nightmare to play with those things as they are all buggy and broken on uneven ground
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Never. Ever since they destroyed the accuracy and nerfed them into oblivion, they destroyed the mortar squads. I used to look forward to levelling up the mortar squads before the nerfs because it was such a cool unique mechanic and something different from the usual stuff, now I just avoid them completely as they are no fun to play with anymore
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Rarely, must be the odd noob that is curious and doesn’t yet know what rubbish it was nerfed into
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They used to be more effective in certain objectives on defense or offense, but now they are so inaccurate that they are equally bad no matter what you do with them
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Virtually Zero Effect after the nerfs (unless you enjoy bad odd gambling mechanics in your gaming). Pre nerfs when they were accurate and they came with plenty of ammunition they were actually good to have one on your team because it made an objective more challenging for the other team and could also be used with team work for excellent precision targeting as it should have remained. Not anymore.
What a great thing to do a survey on. Glad to see you’re looking into some of the lesser used options! Here’s my take.
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I have between one and two engineers in every infantry squad I keep. However, on one of the two campaigns I play I use the dedicated engineer squad in addition to this. The primary purpose of the dedicated engineer squad is ammo, rallies, setting up the machine gun in a place another player is likely to use it, and depending on the map wire & sandbags.
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Talking about engineer use more generally, depending on the map and situation I will do different things. On enclosed maps or in buildings if there is time I will setup a shit ton of wire and mines as this will often completely deter people from using that approach, it tends to funnel people instead of them clearing the wire.
2 Continued). Depending on the prowess of my teammates and what role I need to adapt to to try and win, if there is time I sometimes setup a little sandbag base for either my machine gun squads or riflemen and use personal orders to place them. A mounted MG with a covered squad w/ good marking can be effective. In addition, sandbagging up windows (which I don’t think is an exploit???) is wonderful for lessening grenade spam on the point.
2 Continued). As far as tank traps, I don’t use these because it doesn’t feel like I can build enough for them to be effective—limited to 6. Aside from the D-Day entrances I almost never see people consistently building them. They could be great and would still probably be rare to see due to playstyles, but I think increasing it to 10 would make them more viable. Then you could safely make a maze, reliably block off an entrance by making them 2 deep, or at least slow down tankers since you could block off 2 small streets and they’d need to go around or destroy them.
2 Suggestion). There is one significant improvement they could make that I think would get a lot more people to build sandbags, because it would make them more effective. At one point I was able to figure out how to double stack sandbags, or in other words, I would build a sandbag and under perfect conditions could build another sandbag on top of the first one. This was like magic because when it worked, it was amazing. I’d use this to setup cover against snipers hiding on the other side of the map, just block his line-of-sight from the machine gun. Or I’d build a machine gun so it could shoot in-between two of these double stacked sandbags. Effectively allowing you a good range of fire but offering significant cover against a chokepoint.
^-> TLDR—Allow engineers to build sandbags 2 tall on top of each other. Idk how easy it would be to implement but I can already do it under the perfect conditions.
- Since they nerfed AA gun’s ability to attack infantry, which is really unfortunate as AA was historically used against infantry, I rarely use this at all—maybe 1 in 20 matches if that. My go-to is hopping in a plane and shooting the other planes down. Essentially it is a last resort and I only opt for having that resort on 1 of 2 campaigns.
3 Continued). As far as AT, I do use this if I can take advantage of both HE and AP with a single build. Probably 1 in 10-15 matches depending on the map and needs of the team. But I also have max tanks so that negates this quite a bit. Prior to unlocking tanks that could compete, I’d use it 1 in 4 matches probably.
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I use mortar squads in 1 out of every 3 matches on Berlin.
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Maybe 1 in 7? It’s pretty rare. Hard to say.
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Probably most use them more on offense though I typically use them on defense. Especially if the point just changes and they are trying to rush. If I know it’s nigh-impossible for me to get there I’ll swap to mortar and blast the shit out of it. Usable on both.
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Sometimes. If the person using it has good map knowledge and is able to fish / predict fairly well, they can be quite effective. Even as a deterrent I’m sure they make an impact. Just like if you continuously lay a ton of mines in a certain space people become more wary or take a different route, mortars can have the same effect. If they are setup with 2 engineers with extra resources and the +2 rounds per fill, that’s a lot of hellfire. Maybe you won’t get as many kills as you could right at the front, but done properly its a royal pain in the ass. If you have someone who is good at marking or know the map well enough, I’m sure they could be devastating. It’s effective enough I’m trying to improve my ability to use them.
7 Suggestion). The first 3 rounds of a mortar’s smoke rounds should have a bigger smoke coverage area. Maybe I’m just not that good, but playing with it in practice it really seemed like I had to launch 6-8 shells to get reasonable coverage. Especially since there is some RNG to where they land even if you change nothing about the angle. So it almost seems to reliably do it for your team you need to use all 10.
Final thought on building defenses, since there is practically no time to safely build them unless you’re building at a future point not currently contested, you have to triage what you choose. For example, tank traps are only effective if you know they have tanks. Some people play without them, so assuming the rally and ammo is up, it is safer to build guns and wire since sandbags can be used against you if poorly placed. If they increased the first wave attacker distance and had the point change to how it is now after the first wave spawned in, that would give some time. Against a good team I seldom have time to lay down a single squad of riflemen worth of mines, let alone build a bunch of defenses. All depends on how well my team is doing holding them off for the first minute or two.
Hope this was helpful! Its great to see someone looking at these things!
Cheers
I switch squads, when they have been fully upgraded, so I suppose occasionally. I always try to integrate engineers into existing squads though - they are pretty much vital.
If You include the engineers integrated into other squads, it depends on how intense the match is - If I have time to build/prepare, I try to build a rally point and ammo box, a sandbag or 2 to prevent rallied up comrades from getting instantly blasted after leaving the building/spawning. If the objective point is contested, I skip the ammo box with sandbags and go to the point ASAP.
If it’s a relaxed one, after completing the fortifications at the rally point, I go to the objective, and build a few sandbags and an ammo box, depending on available resources.
I guess sandbags are adequate. Barbed wire… occasionally.
And Czech Hedgehogs rarely.
Tends to be on the rare side.
AA gun has less utility than AT gun, owing to the depression angle nerf. Overall, both are a bit cumbersome to use.
Same as 1.
The relatively brief experience with them was mostly positive for me, but their actual effectiveness depends on map. if capture points are inside an enclosed structure, the effectiveness is often limited. But with smoke shell addition, this may be a bit different case now.
Very rarely.
I tend to think that they are more useful when on the offensive - invasions, especially.
As said in 4th, depends on map.
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