Enlisted: Battle of Moscow centered review/feedback part 1

Mess Room
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Hello, readers, I’ve been playing Enlisted, mostly with Battle of Moscow campaign, axis army, finally reaching level 25 (without premium account), generally a few times a week.
Previously, I played war-thunder, so I know about flying the planes…

Speaking about planes and performance, until about level 20th, I didn’t have a dedicated graphics card, so flying planes was extra challenging, as fps often stayed somewhere at 6. Bombing accuracy was low, especially with smaller bombs. Dog-fighting was near impossible. Battles on the land weren’t that much better either. So, if by any chance You’re analyzing my stats, You know the reason why.
Despite that, I played. Why? It was fun. And still is fun.
And I have to admit, there are a few niches, where even volkssturm-grade cripple could actually contribute to the team.

The most notable of them: radio operator. Just stay out of trouble - in a building or a bush and keep calling the artillery strikes in. Works especially well, when upgraded with faster artillery strikes in squad upgrades menu. Occasional peeking out of the windows/surroundings could help prevent from stragglers paying a visit.

2nd being mortar-man - similar to the radio operator, staying out of trouble is the main goal. At least at first. Ammo is limited however, so unless You’re able to coordinate with the team (at, possibly, borrowing time from the attacking (or actively defending) portion of your team) to build some ammo boxes, You’ll have to get closer…

And that brings us to the 3rd best option - engineers. Yes, while Your allies are buying time (or space, if attacking), you build an elaborate fortress (Or try to - there’s not much you can do with limited build points, engineers in squad, or generally not knowing (in invasions when defending) where the next capture point will appear…)!
For actual things that engineers can do - sandbags are useful in many situations, same with ammo boxes and rally points, while barbed wire is viable when defending. Yet it can be a friendly fire liability. Tank traps (Czech hedgehogs) are similar, though they can serve as an expensive and ineffective form of cover.
The more advanced options like AT and AA guns… bit of a mixed bag with risks - remember that the enemy can use them.
Same with static machine guns… Well, a bit to a lesser extent, as their firing arc is severely limited.

4th option is sniper. But, it may depend on the map. Remember that in squads mode, you can request ammo from squad-mates… Hm… I don’t remember trying this out with mortar-men… The actual command can be accessed with command chart (default alt button on keyboard).

5th option is tank crew. Tanks are more bulky than infantrymen, and you typically need to worry less about return fire and other hazards, but, again, it depends on map. Tank-v-tank duels are tough, but doable, at least if vehicles are comparable (don’t bother trying to fight Generally, the classic rule from Panzer General describes the intended behavior:
Infantry is king of restricted ground, while armor is king of open ground.
In this game, however, there will be more urbanized and otherwise restricted ground maps, limiting the usefulness of vehicles.

To make sure that it’s not too big wall of text, I think I’ll be posting several parts of this review/feedback.

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My first campaign was Normandy axis. I went to lvl 30 without premium account.

The 100% bonus exp is good for the end levels.

And build rally points. One engineer in every squad.

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I use mortars like a long-range grenade launcher.
I’ll get close enough to use my rifle effectively and mark targets but still stay over 50m out so I can drop mortars on any tough targets.

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About engineer, as a veteran from Moscow, Ally main, playing since open beta.

Don’t build barbed wire, sandbags or czeckhogs thinking they are doing any good. One exception is one sandbag protecting you rally point from stray bullets on wood structures, put one into the wall towards the enemy so your rally point doesn’t get destroyed by random chance when someone fire a spray at that direction.

The others may sound good but they aren’t, if there is any veteran on your team he will place landmines on doorways and windows, your sandbag covering it will protect the enemy trying to invade from being killed by the mine. Sandbags often close firing positions of your team and let the enemy approach the objective uncontested. They also are very detrimental when someone on your team decide it will rush a dangerous enemy outside like a flamethrower (as in the open is way easier to beat it than on CQC combat) and your sandbag will be a restraint to your ally return to safety inside the objective.

Barbed wire only serves to kill bots, I have won a destruction game because the enemy built a shitton of barbed wire everywhere, I sneaked in with some parkour shit and no one could get in there on time to stop me, well, my bots died, but I won the match, weight for yourself. Also, the same as sandbag, it will prove itself a restraint to anyone wishing to harass the enemy and quickly return to cover.

Czeckhogs inside buildings is almost the same as the last two, opsie, a bit difficult to move inside the objective for the enemy, but the enemy can too take cover on your obstacles, using it to harass your team and cover himself.

All those and I didn’t mentioned the geniuses that build those things towards their own spawn, making their own allies and bots stuck out of the objective having to expose themselves on a bigger route or just pilling up like the czeckhogs usually cause.

My tips are, if you want to be a good engineer, build rally point, first thing of the match, protect it appropriately from enemy fire but careful to not make difficult to your allies to move out of the spawn, run to objective, build ammo crates and last have at least one repair tool on your pocket, you never know when an allied tank will need repairs and almost never you will use all four medkits anyway so one less won’t make a difference.

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The way I set up barbed wire is just to slow down access and provide an early warning system that someone is trying to flank.

Players will have to take the extra time to avoid it, and if you put it in places like the on the corners of buildings, even if there aren’t any windows there you can hear rattling outside so you know to check it out.

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It works I guess, I could argue that landmines would be better but anyway, my teams have some pretty stupid placement of barbed wire.

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Landmines are costly, single use, and chain detonate if you don’t set them right.

Barbed wire is a good cheap psychological weapon.
Sometimes perception of an obstacle is more effective than an actual obstacle.

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Michael Jackson Zombie
Barbed wire is pain in the ass in buildings (think of them like the wire in R6S but more effective). The same goes for Czechs in small houses.
Sandbags are also heavily underrated. they are good at closing windows and giving cover against inf on plain ground (they are also good wannabe mobil-shield parodies from R6S).

Czechs are also good to block the bridge on the monastery and prevent tanks from entering the monastery.

And dont forget ammo boxes, which apparently is asked like 100 times per match.

Just don’t build them randomly but 9/10 times people who managed to switch to this godforsaken hammer, are smart enough but while you seem to meet them on a regular basis, I’ve meet one or three engineer plebs in one year.

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Oh yeah brought back good memories of the monastery and some other Moscow maps.

Put hedgehogs down and tanks are either stopped in their tracks, or the crew is dumb enough to try to ford next to the bridge and drown their tank.
Sometimes they would pop out to try demolishing the hedgehogs but they would get picked off by all the snipers on the ramparts.

But again - barriers don’t need to be creating an impenetrable seal, they just need to discourage the enemy and cost them time.

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I remember when once during CBT I deconstructed such hedgehog for a tank to pass. It felt great to see him go full steam ahead afterwards.

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So yeah, let me say it. Nah, usually I am the one building and nothing wrong with it, as long as isn’t a super hard match.

The problem lies elsewhere, usually the people doing this have all the bad habits none of the goods, they don’t build a rally point or ammo crate anywhere, but they make sure to turn the objective into a total clusterfuck, easy matches become hard because I can’t get into the objective and allies can’t either so the enemy just cap zone after zone, those are at least 1/3 or 1/2 of the matches (today of 5 those were 3) I play daily and they are specially tiring as they shouldn’t be hard matches

Also there’s the issue I saw a bit ago in first hand, played with this talkative guy on chat, called him to tbe squad next match, he was very new to the game (his second session) and he process to start building the shit out of sandbags on every window he could find. When argued he said he saw someone else doing it then he started replicating, so even if you are doing it on special cases well placed and everything, a newcomer may see that and think it is to do everywhere.

But yeah, they don’t appear every match, they just manage to be more annoying than the matches with no engineers.

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Seems I’ve got distracted when typing, and still haven’t found a way to edit my posts… so let’s fix this now:

the… T-50… or was it T-45? That highly armored soviet light tank with panzer 2 - HVAP shells are not in game yet - the only possibilities to do meaningful damage are immobilization via damaging it’s tracks, and if you can hit the rear side of the turret.)

With that done…
Reading up the replies, I wonder whether should I post a separate post, or continue on here? Well, I suppose I’ll post here, to prevent needless bloating, though, I guess I’ll address some interesting points first…

I decided to go in a chronological order, though, with how new campaigns are going to be added, it is likely that folks liking to go through chronologically, will later have to time travel… wonders when and if Japan-USSR “Battle of Khalkin gol” campaign will be added, the early war battles in France and the low countries?

I remember that experience bonus applies reaching level 25… I think it said that it helps the player to progress in other campaigns…?

Yes, engineers are basically the only ones who retain their high usefulness, even without their dedicated squad. But more on that in part 2…

They, along with rifle grenades, are basically that - long range, several use grenade launchers.

Yes, engineers with their constructions are a bit of hit-and-miss. It’s kind of no wonder that lone warriors mode has some popularity, even if it is moved in to custom-game mode only.

An interesting tactic, even if use can be quite questionable - the goal of sandbags (since the engineer gets experience when a bullet hits the sandbag instead of a teammate) is to be put in places where the most intense fire is to be expected. And some paranoid folks really like to shoot at the windows… Another side effect, is a bit longer climb time, if it’s still possible to climb it (or, downright blocking this potential access point, possibly delaying the enemy).

However, 1 big note about using sandbags to protect rally points…
Sandbags can easily be seen. Rally points are a bit harder to spot. Placing sandbags is in some cases giving away the fact that you are using engineers, and a potential location of where the rally point can be. It is less of an issue if placed inside a building, but on more open terrain, sandbags can attract unwanted attention.

I suppose second part can be posted a bit later…

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Enlisted: Battle of Moscow centered review/feedback part 2

Right, now I want to go over some in-game menu stuff, the squad management and equipment windows I hope they are called that.
Back in the old days, leveling up your troops required the use of academy - send 3 troopers of the same rank, so that 1 out of these 3 achieve a higher rank the other 2 are… um… gone back to civilian duty…?
So I can give some praise the the less questionable way to level up troops by spending bronze orders. Even though, with such high mortality rate, the concept of individual improving his (or her, with the Stalingrad campaign, Comintern faction (I don’t really consider USSR as an allies faction, I prefer to use 3 way classification used by some more nuanced strategy games, which are: Allies, Axis and Comintern) certain squads) skills… kind of withers away - it’s highly implausible for these individuals to survive the battles of enlisted (the most surviving squads of mine are aircraft, radio operators and sometimes tanks). So instead, it is more rational to see the experience of the troops increase in the regiment or division rather than squad. This would be my slight gripe with this… portrayal of experience and skill accumulation, but I’d need several posts to explain and show examples of how to improve it.

Now 3 groups of upgrades: squad personnel and equipment…
Squad improvements can offer some significant changes on what the squad in question can do.
I see a pattern of certain system - squads can be general-purpose (like riflemen, the largest squads by far) or specialized (vehicle squads, flamethrower, mortar-man and so on…)
From my battles and the way that I played, riflemen squads are basically the go-to for customization, while not changing that much in play-style - either defend the point or attack the point, biggest difference being whether you add engineer or a radio operator, that basically (in theory) gives the optimal initial course of action:
If engineer → build rally point → (optional) build ammo box → (optional) expend the build points completely on sandbags/barb wire/hedgehogs → do what you typically do (attack or defend). Interesting thing to note, engineers can dismantle fortifications faster, which is where engineer can help on the offensive. Your opponent built up tons of barbed wire? Use engineers, J button (on keyboard) to dismantle them faster One could reasonably ask - should engineers acquire build points, from dismantling enemy fortifications? This could present an interesting dynamic of war for resources - putting your fortifications carelessly could feed the enemy with useful resources.
Another interesting option is including Radio Operator…
The way I see it, Radio Operator is less useful than an engineer, at least in the short term - they are best used in their specialized squads, when you can call in artillery/smoke support quickly (and keep them alive) and considering that general-purpose squads are supposed to be in the heat of the fighting, chances of radio operator getting eliminated are quite high. ROs having only time limit, territory and overall length of battle (or, in defense case, performance of the defenders) to call in the strikes. They are the way to counter engineers fortifications and overall create a battle of attrition, best used on the invasion offensive missions (though, considering that defenders have no score limit, attrition is less important for defenders).
Machinegunners, assaulters and AT riflemen are… pretty much the same. They change little and can be regarded as general squads, their usefulness for the most part depends on situation.
As for engineer specialized squads… They do offer more destructive options of AA guns, and AT guns (and machineguns, for higher levels), but they also are quite situational - building these take time, and generally they are not really worth it, it only takes 1 lucky artillery strike from RO to potentially null all that which raises the question whether one should build stuff inside the buildings…
Flamethrowers, while specialized only (they can only be in their respective squads), operate basically the same as assaulters or general-purpose troops.
Similar is with Mortar-men, specialized only, though they may choose to use their numerous grenades at any time. Here is a bit of nuance and where attaching engineers have special use - a player can rearm mortars at ammo boxes. Engineers can build ammo boxes. Result? Perfect synergy - by maxing out engineers, you effectively allow mortar to fire 12 (16, if both engineers have the improved traits) times more, math:
10 rounds per mortar-man, 5 boxes per engineer (7 if maxed), giving us 10*7+10 (initial rounds) = 80 mortar shells total. 160, if both 2 mortar-men and 2 engineers are in the squad.
Quite a lot of shells, I don’t have the exact numbers of possible mortar’s rate of fire (1 would also need to account the building of ammo boxes and refilling the mortar from them), but you get the gist of it. Useful if you are attacking. On the defense, you might have some inconveniences, such as allies losing ground.

At this rate, I’ll probably need 4 or 5, maybe even 6 parts of this review, extra for bugfixes and answers to comments…

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Oh man, I said that HoI4 would teach a lot of nonsense to kids.

Comintern never was a political or military alliance, it stands as Communist International and it is hardly more than a general grouping of socialists, radlibs, communists with several differences and instances on its political ideology.

The Soviet Union was a integral part of the allies, operations were planned and coordinated between the three major members, the US, UK and USSR and the several minor members. Saying anything other is historical revisionism without any kind of documented support and flat out not taken seriously on any military history work.

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One could ask at this point, are we going by history re-enactment, or the more hypothetical what-if approach (custom matches do allow to use forces from different campaigns… I suppose there is also a possible feature request to tweak the uniforms, based on the environment that the troops are fighting in (such as equipping Berlin campaign troops with proper winter clothes in Moscow))?

As for integral part… Fine. I’ll assume that Your statement is correct, but only between 1941 (operation Barbarossa) and 1945~ (conclusion of 2nd world war and beginning of cold war).
If anything, the UK even considered bombing Baku oilfields before Barbarossa kicked in…

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Well, from 41 forward is pretty acceptable, that’s when the US got into the allied bloc too. Also, the UK was all about winning the war, and they sunk the french fleet to guarantee it wouldn’t fall on wrong hands, I wouldn’t call the Baku oilfields plan as some kind of evidence that they were not directly allied to each other.

In the end, what won the war is that the allies were a pretty functional and coordinated alliance that could spend their resources carefully in conjunction with the other members in contrast to the axis that to simplify were a disfuncional alliance at least with countries directly acting against each other interests or engaging on direct competition sometimes.

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True, axis alliance (especially between Germany and Japan) had little, if any, cooperation…

But anyways, I’m getting sidetracked.

Addendum to part 2
Vehicle squads… well, specialized, obviously. Though, I do have to point out a couple of oddities - in lone warriors mode, vehicle squads… come as squads, rather than lone warriors. For this reason, in lone warriors mode, I prefer to use planes (especially 1 man planes), rather than tanks - it is more… fair, that way, even if planes generally have better luck in squads mode due to higher target density.

Right… unless I remember to write more things about squads, I suppose the 3rd part will be about personnel.

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+Addendum
There is one thing that I kind of forgot to mention.

Game requires You to put at least 1/2/3/4/5 (depends on the squad type, 1 being for pilots, 2 being for the beginning tanker squad, 3 for sniper/radio operator squad, 4 for MGs, AT gunners, SMGs and other sub-specialists, 5 being for infantry squads - basically the amount of troops that the squad had at the moment of it’s unlock) amount of troops, when you put the squad back in the reserve.

This frustrates me a little - why should I put soldiers into squads that I don’t use and otherwise don’t affect me, battle, or at least earned exp? Why I can’t leave them empty?
Funnily enough, you can take the equipment out of them at least.
I would understand the point of leaving stuff there, if it actually helped me to earn some exp bonuses or similar - like, you put 5 star soldiers in a squad you unlocked earlier and put the squad itself in reserve - you get 5% exp bonus for each soldier left there, meaning less grind.
But as of now, the only possible reason to leave anything there would be to bypass the soldier in reserve requirements and a more convenient (albeit expensive in equipment) way to switch squads.

So - I prefer to either:
Allow the squads in reserve to have no troops put in them;
Or
Give players the incentive to leave some worthwhile troops there (rather than 1 - 2 star blokes) - giving, like, exp bonus reducing grind.

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Google Allies - go to Wikipedia “Allies”:
The Soviet Union, which initially had a nonaggression pact with Germany and participated in its invasion of Poland, joined the Allies in June 1941 after Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The United States, while providing some materiel support to European Allies since September 1940, remained formally neutral until the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor]in December 1941, after which it declared war and officially joined the Allies.

The USSR was literally more Allies than the US.

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Enlisted: Battle of Moscow centered review/feedback part 3

Right, with squads out of the way, we have personnel…
It’s mostly unlocks for higher levels and amount of experience earned depending on soldier type, at least it is useful across all squads.
Fairly early on the unlock tree, there is an option to get a sidearm slot. Not the most useful for submachinegunners and semi-auto riflemen (also questionable for machinegunners), but more convenient than a straight up bolt-action rifle. Since I played a while ago, I could buy random weapons for bronze orders. Figured I get everyone at least the cheapest option, after half of the more important blokes got mausers, lugers and walthers.
For some soldiers, there is an option to choose between a secondary weapon and a backpack slot.

Now here… I have questions.
What kind of secondary weapons? For riflemen, if the secondary weapon is going to be yet another choice between semi-auto and bolt-action, there is little point to go this route - might be somewhat feasible for a choice between bolt-action for medium and longer distance engagements and semi-auto for more close quarters, but this already can be alleviated by a sidearm.
While a backpack slot… offers some choices - grenade pouch for extra grenades, pouch for extra ammo and bag for an inventory item. I sometimes use bags for 2 medkits - making soldiers with relevant traits (fast usage of medkit and high amount of health healed) somewhat pseudo-medics - even if it’s not too useful. Although - the most interesting use of this backpack slot is for tankers - you give them a bag, and let them carry both a repair kit and a medkit. Pilots… heh, have a parachute in that slot… besides, it is not always convenient to land a plane in the middle of nowhere (You might need to act fast), so far, only in pacific campaign one can land on a carrier - and it does not require repair kit. Though, I didn’t bother trying to land with a moscow BF109 on it - while I successfully managed to take off of one, it was not the case for that 2-engine one.

Back to feasibility of secondary weapon versus a backpack slot - there might be a point for submachinegunner, machinegunner and sniper with a secondary weapon - giving them a bolt-action rifle (sniper would use the same ammunition) as a backup option. But overall, I’d say getting a backpack slot is better in most cases - soldiers in enlisted generally don’t live that long to allow usage of a secondary weapon. The ones who live longest are radio operators, but they don’t really need a secondary weapon… Also, a note on a higher level radio operators - some give extra health healed by medkit, due to starting trait. But, it is not really that useful, since radio operators don’t have a backpack slot (although, I’ll need to reach these radio operators to be sure).

As for more specialist folks like engineers, AT gunners, flamethrowers and mortarmen - their secondary weapon slot is already occupied by a special weapon of their class…
I have a little gripe here regarding radio operators - why not move the radio (that occupies backpack slot) to a secondary weapon slot? Radio operators would become more in-line with the other specialist folk.

As for other tidbits - I tend to choose an ammo pouch (the smaller, all the smaller ones, for bronze orders) for semi-auto rifles (G41, as of writing this), since the amount of ammo is lower than bolt-action, and potential capability to deplete it is higher than ba.
Not really needed for submachinegunner (except the soviet one, perhaps, where you get 1 extra magazine and that’s it); useful for machinegunner - the ammo for machinegun is already low, so getting this can help.

And that’s more or less it for part 3…
Might add some addendums and forgotten info, if needed.