There is another way to look at this problem.
There is definitely a bit of disparity in how the construction put in place by engineers is effectively removed from the game vs the time it takes to âspawn it inâ
Now that Iâve played Enlisted for a while, I can âadjustâ my game play to match a given scenario, particularly when contrasting the engineer roles in the offensive vs defensive roles.
When on the offensive I tend to focus on rally points, sandbag walls at key points, AT guns covering key choke points and AA guns in good infantry suppression locs. The build time for these is not unreasonable within the dynamic context of the game. There are games that do turn run and gun, but by and large I was able to âshiftâ the structures forward by dismantling them.
When on the defensive side, which is the main point of the article, the rate of build is not proportionate to the allowances of the game play.
The initial work around, particularly for experienced players is to begin reinforcing the second line of defence, rather than trying to run for the immediate cap under pressure. The same can be done for the 3rd and so on, as long as players have a clue as to how the game is likely to play out.
The snag is in the build points and so you need several players with a clue to properly set up a defensive perimeter around an objective.
The issue of âspecific explosive effectsâ being able to reduce the obstacles is still unresolved. The rate of destruction due to Arty strikes, Air strikes is specifically disproportionate and I guess thatâs where the Devs need to make some assessments in how fast they want the game to progress. As it stands the contribution made by engineers is situational at best and often marginalised through the ubiquitous over issue of det packs.
Perhaps some tweaking of the damage models and partial degradation of obstacles is desired, even if its somewhat artificial. Certainly HE weapons should have a high level of degradation on sandbags and wire, but less so on anti-tank traps. AP rounds could arguably be the opposite by way of an abstraction. This might prolong some of the lifespan of obstacles, certainly the ability of the engineers to dismantle them at a quicker rate than normal troops should be implemented.
Being able to build larger structures as a trade off for time would be helpful, especially when deploying mines.
So for example if I have a 6 man engineer team with up to 5 actual engineers, and I equip them historically with a teller mine each, whichever engineer I chose should have the option of deploying just the one mine, or for a suitably longer penalty the teamâs worth of 5 mines in a historically accurate pattern of separation. This would allow me to cover an actual area with that squad, rather than manually doing this as I currently do, which takes a fair bit of time, particularly when the stupid AI runs my soldiers off in random directions and performs a bunch of actions inconsistent with what my main is doing. Same for AP mines.
This then goes into setting limits on which soldiers should technically have access to which weapons, particularly if the game calls out for specialist squads. The biggest culprit here are the detpacks, which are just cancer incarnate, bypassing the need for any team work or tactical play. They should be issued to engineers only along with AP and AT mines. You could argue that the âreconâ team could also be equipped with AP mines IOT protect themselves from being overrun whilst doing recon, but given that most ppl just snipe at range this is a bit of a moot point.
Building bigger structures will certainly go a bit of a way to alleviate their degradation rate by munitions as currently implemented.
