Concept and balance:
Trenches will be dug by an e-tool or shovel and can be dug only in solid ground. To dig one you will need to be on harm intent and click the dirt. To make it balanced it’ll take some time to dig but not too much to not justify making it, and the mats will become a bit more expensive so that we don’t have FOBs that extend to half the colony.
mechanics:
Trenches will be like a double sided ledge. Trenches are meant to give you cover. Therefore they will be protecting you by reducing the chance to be hit by projectiles, be it bullets, shrapnel and even to some degree explosions. They will not protect from fire, gas and all protections will be nullified if the attack is made from within it. You can add barbed wire on either side of the trench but doing so will mean you cannot enter or exit the trench from that tile.
why it is a good thing: This I think is a good addition to the game since cades do not protect from bullets or mortar. The only serve to somewhat hide your sprite which is not really effective. Trenches will also make the round last longer since both sides will need to clear them before taking over the enemy base. Having a way to somewhat counter mortar will also solve that balance issue since as far as I remember mortar has been deciding HvH for a few rounds now. And if both sides were to get it we’d need a lil something to counter its menace.
As interesting an idea as this is, I fear if we go down this route we’ll be literally re-creating world war 1 with the “race to the sea” before we devolve into a situation where the game literally can not end as neither side can break through the enemies trench line.
I feel we’d be far better off just re-balancing the way mortars, CAS and OBs can work in HvH then letting either side make a trench line.
I think this is a good line of thinking, but rather than this we could just make cades sometimes block bullets on HvH. Give it like a percent chance to hit the cade instead of going past it, cause currently cades just block movement and grenades.
Cades do block bullets. I think it’s somewhere between a 40% - 60% chance?
The problem is that 1 bullet fucks you up and 3-4 kill you, and a 60% chance to absorb 10 bullets fired at you in the span of 2 seconds still means you’re dead.
We had a UPP vs USCM fight on a map that was just one really long hallway, and I can attest that cades do actually work, and do help - especially against long range inaccurate fire. What happens is guys without cover shoot at you, the cades absorb some of it, you shoot back, and their bodies absorb some of it. So, it’s better than nothing but still not that great overall.
The ideal cadeline in HvH (with how it works currently) is 2 cades deep with a couple walls behind the cadeline which completely block all bullets so that medics and wounded have somewhere to fix up without getting hit more.
I think cades could do with a little higher block chance, but I wouldn’t go too much higher.
I think it would not be a good mechanic in most HvH circumstances. It you want to have one dedicated map for it be my guest. It should not be a staple of most HVH.
I’d have to re-test cause I do know there was a PR that was merged to buff cades to be very good at blocking bullets, but the PR was removed because it adversely affected acid spits as well as bullets.