Hello bajtársak and fellow forumdwellers,
Squads are Enlisted´s core game mechanic, a First Person Shooter game in a mostly World War II setting, set apart from others by making the player the commander of a squad of AI soldiers. These squads are accurate representations of real battalions and regiments that fought during the last world war.
Currently all squads were handcrafted by the developers, they picked out a historical unit, named a squad after it, gave it its historical emblem (if it had any), assigned a class to the squad and even gave it a short description of its history.
This worked really well in the old campaign system. However in the new system, units are no longer tied to certain theatres of war and thus lost their old appeal.
It has become clear that squads created by the developers alone cannot satisfy each player´s whims
- As of now, the available Italian and British squads are insufficient in number and are not available in every class possible.
- Vehicles only being available to certain squads, this can affect all factions but the Allied faction is the most notorious for this issue, the prime example is the Churchill tank which had to be added to two squads so the British tech tree tank squad can use their own British vehicle as well.
- There are too few squads for Japan and even with other factions when it comes to more recently added guerrilla or APC squads.
- squad upgrades have changed overtime, for example most US squads from the Pacific campaign have medic available to them while other US squads from previous campaigns usually have assaulters available instead and no British squad (with the exception of an event squad) have medics available.
The most fair and quickest solution to make everyone happy is introducing a mechanic that allows players to create the squads on the same schemes as the developers did.
In the squad creation mechanic, the players can choose:
- The class for the squad
- The nationality of the squad
- Name the squad
- Pick an emblem from the list
- Pick a squad upgrade scheme
The class of the squad
This is selected first because the rest of the options you can pick from will depend on this choice the most.
A player can make ONE copy of every single tech tree squad for a reasonable amount Enlisted silver cost, these squads have a small feather or other icon (that is not similar to any other in-game icon) in the top right corner to represent that its a custom made squad.
Once bought, these squads cannot be deleted, but they can be modified later should the player get bored of it or change his mind.
Though it’s true that this change will give every player access to two tanker III squads, however it will not hurt balance too much since they will still only have one of each vehicle, thus this change may only put veterans with legacy squads on the same terms as players joining after the merge.
The nationality of the squad
This mechanic does not concern all factions, at least not yet.
But it is the most straightforward way of introducing more subfactions to the game without the developers having to add and manage 30+ squads manually for every new subfaction.
Ideally I would like all squad types to be available in all nationalities of the faction, but I recognise that the current voice lines, uniforms and equipment in the game files impose limitations, so for now, add all possible squads types and expand them later if possible.
Name the squad
Kinda obvious, players can name their squads in any way they like.
Players can only see their own squads so you will never see someone else’s squads in-game so censorship shouldn’t be a huge concern.
For lazier players historically accurate base templates should be available.
Pick an emblem from the list
I originally intended to use this picture in a different topic, but it does get the point through
Another feature that does not concern all factions equally.
Japanese, Italian and Soviet squads rarely have unique emblems while German, US and British squads have many of them.
All tech tree and legacy squad emblems should be available to all players by default for players to pick any they like for the custom squad.
Players can also use the emblems of premium and event squads they own and they should also be able to purchase the emblems of premium squads they don’t own for a small price of gold. Further unique emblems could be made unlockable for a small price of gold or through events.
Using a historical template should also set the emblem at the same time with the squad name.
Pick a squad upgrade scheme
There are a number of squads that did get slightly different squad upgrades in different campaigns.
This is easier to explain with pictures, please compare two Axis Assaulter II squads, one from the Normandy campaign (top) and Stalingrad campaign (bottom).
It would be really nice if players could pick from these schemes.
- Yes
- No
Thank you for your time and attention.
