Source
r/joinsquad•
ItsOtisTime

Barbed Wire is a criminally underused emplacement.

Discussion

Yes, it sucks to place. Yes, it sucks worse to dig, especially if you're putting the wire and sandbag/HESCO down at the same time.

However, I've been using this shit more and more and I fucking love it.

Got a hilltop you want to hold? Place the barbed wire first and the sandbag second so you don't accidentally put the sandbag right up against the buildable area -- this could potentially mean you're building cover for the enemy as they try to assault the hill.

Really, that's the point of Barbed Wire, and I'm surprised it isn't used more: it makes cover directional. Sandbags are awesome for situational cover, but leaving a sandbag empty on both sides means that, should the tide turn, that sandbag is suddenly cover for the enemy. Don't give cover to your enemy. Put some barbed wire on their side of those sandbags and boom: only good for your team.

This shit is great for locking down HAB compounds, too: a lot of the compound walls are vaultable, which means that while they provide excellent cover and concealment for your teammates within, they're essentially omnidirectional ladders for the bad guys. C'mon, make 'em work to get into your compound: put some fucking wire up on the outside!

TL;DR: Barbed Wire isn't just for Radio Access Denial: it's for locking down cover elements to ensure that only your team can benefit from them, and for securing the perimeter of HAB compounds.

Posted Apr 8, 2019, 3:17 PM UTC

5850
gatzbyCommunity Manager•

I think you'll still have to dig some, but there should be some looser placement bounds and width adjustments (i.e., closer to sandbags) to make razor wire a bit more useful in the coming patch as well.

20
66Break_Stuff66•

Width adjustable emplacements make me a happy boy. Will it be mouse wheel scroll to adjust?

4
fuzzheadtfDeveloper•

No but you can rotate press lean left lean right

8
S3blapinI'm the rabbit of Caerbannog•

That's a really good news!!! Can't wait to have a "snap in place" system to allow faster wall building and a system to increase the length of wal with mouse wheel.

8
66Break_Stuff66•

Good stuff. Thanks for taking the time to reply to the community, I know how busy ya'all must be making this great game even better.

2
fuzzheadtfDeveloper•

Np Break stuff I usually try to respond when I can, been quite busy on a13 lately so hopefully will be able to engage more once it is out :)

4
[deleted]•

Is this the same with hesco walls? I can’t stand to leave 3 feet of space between walls, and it only seems to be much of a problem with russian emplacements

2
fuzzheadtfDeveloper•

Yes there will be easier to setup gapless hesco a13

7
brushnit•

does this mean that russians will get hapless hescos? I always wanted to know if it was an intentional decision based off of balance or real life?

1
gatzbyCommunity Manager•

Not sure, just know it to be true for razor wire explicitly atm. =)

2
gatzbyCommunity Manager•

Woops, fuzz gotcha!

2
Petellius•

Or even better, or barbed write on your side of the walls so when they jump over to attack your HAB they land in barbed wire and shot by the surprised defenders.

17
ItsOtisTimeOPOtis' Outriders•

Dude, I'm just waiting to find an invasion round where I can test out my idea for a Theodosian Wall setup -- outer ring of HESCO with no barbed wire out front, with an inner wall of HESCO with barbed wire out front. Kept Constantinople safe from invaders until the Ottoman's built the world's largest cannon to bring it down in 1453 [neverforget]

25
slappymcnutface•

problem is on even terrain they can't jump over HESCO walls. they may get a boost over but that won't happen often. a HESCO is a pretty self-contained effective wall all-around. and half the benefit of it is being able to poke your head barely over it to shoot out - putting wire on your side mostly hurts the point of the HESCO

4
catwhatcat•

It's a double layer of hescos with barbed wire in between. It would be time consuming to set up but very effective.

1
slappymcnutface•

at that point you can't shoot anything at a medium or close range away from you..

1
Oracuda•

reminds me of some fob i saw, it was, sandbag, wire, sandbag wall thing, i dont know why but it was amazing

1
ItsOtisTimeOPOtis' Outriders•

Your name looks really familiar; was this a FOB you saw yesterday? Might've been one of mine if you were on BB in the EST morning time :)

1
Oracuda•

BB?

1
VettzprWARs•

I have actually seen players die to wire I set up like this. Especially on the dry middle East maps where everyone is desperate to get out of fields and over walls.

7
Sachiel05•

Don’t you mean... Thirsty?

2
BoreSightGaming•

I like this :)

5
RomagnoloI'M DIGGING YOUR FOB!•

I wish we could deploy them without the need of digging. I think it would be used a lot more.

16
FoIes•

Even better would be the ability to build from point to point. I'm sure it's in other games, but if you've played The Forest, you'll know what I mean. Easy to build layers also.

3
Com-Intern•

My experience recently is that wire is easily destroyed by grenades. Meaning the you spend an inordinate amount of time deploying it only to see it vaporize during the initial seconds of the fight.

14
66Break_Stuff66•

It is easily destroyed with grenades, but if you make them waste their most effective way of killing your defenders (grenades and surprise)on your defenses you are still at an advantage.

8
Com-Intern•

You also have to consider the player time sink. If you are building you aren't putting pressure on the enemy. And the logistics truck use. You need ammo, you might need other buildables (ammo box, vehicle repair, emplacements, etc...).

Razor wire isn't always bad, but in my experience I would have rather had more of something else.

2
6-Gorillion•

THIS its a useless defense when it gets destroyed in 1sec during the attack

2
ItsOtisTimeOPOtis' Outriders•

But, hey, they're down a grenade now, which they could've used to blow up the people who now will shoot them back :)

2
gregfromsolutions•

Are real grenades that effective on barbed wire? I know that in WWI barbed wire was a huge issue because even the massive artillery shells couldn't blow through the stuff reliably. The razor wire is Squad may not be as thick, but the grenades also produce less explosive yields and smaller fragments.

1
slappymcnutface•

the real problem with this strategy isn't that it doesn't make sense (it does), it's that it takes too much time and manpower.

at the end of the day Squad is all about which team has more people on the relevant caps. yes this is partly killing (so flanking in order to get more kills is often worth it) but it is more importantly about spawning and transportation. this means the pace of the game is actually very fast.

if you're spending 10 minutes building barbed wire on an irrelevant cap with [x] amount of manpower, that is harming your team up front on the relevant flags and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the enemy will eventually make it to your flag.

if you can somehow find the time to build barbed wire around the relevant cap with like 1-3 guys, go for it. but super-fobbing with loads of manpower off the cap is almost never a proper calculation.

9
66Break_Stuff66•

I don't think anyone agrees that superfobing, especially off point is a useful thing to be doing generally. Otis was talking about dropping wire on the other side of key cover elements to make them unidirectional. People added on to drop wire inside vault-able walls and at doors in an effective way of defending a door while still allowing egress. The first two can be done by an SL and 1-2 shovels in a minute or two. The second is a useful activity for an SL and 2 people to take on while waiting for contact at a defense point.

3
Barbarian_Overlord•

you can sit behind cover and dig the wire after killing everyone outside the door. guy inside can't do shit or just gets shot through a window by a competent squad of shooters. sandbags and barbed wire aren't effective against people who can aim.

0
66Break_Stuff66•

Ok king marksman.

The rest of us are playing as a team on the point and trying to use our heads to have an advantage so we can win the game not just brag on a kill streak that is still fewer tickets then a flag switch.

1
Barbarian_Overlord•

I mainly play pocket medic. There's just no cover you can build that will protect you from inferior shooting and movement skills. you have to stick your head out and shoot them before they shoot you and the standard hard cover on capzones in the game does that just fine.

1
JohnWangDoe•

people are fucking stupid and use barbed war as like a fence or something. Barbed war should also be used for directing enemy moment into choke points or limiting movemnt

3
ItsOtisTimeOPOtis' Outriders•

This is where I have a glaring weakness. I use barbed wire a lot in CoH (when I played it, at least) for just this purpose, I think It's just a knowledge issue for me: I play a lot and I still don't have all the maps memorized in such a way where I can quickly ID potential enemy traffic points and redirect them to more favorable killzones. I'd like to think that some barbed wire in a goofy place would more likely than not mean that enemy element is going to just try to re-route rather than attempt to take down [given it's placed in a position where it's not immediately obvious that the wire is trying to redirect them into a killzone]. Gonna have to try this some more!

1
66Break_Stuff66•

Barbed wire is great, but getting people to dig it up and then not dig it down because they are dumb is like pulling teeth even on good servers. Dig up the barbed wire guys it will save your life.

​

In addition to Otis' ideas, I put it inside vault-able walls, now you have an enemy who is stuck and taking damage/ suppression and making a lot of noise rather than a sneaky two guys overrunning your hab.

​

Also, barbed wire is great for making kill zones at the entrances to compounds/ fobs without trapping your team inside. Ideally, you will find a place with some natural elements so you don't have to build it all but what you do is you have a non-vaultable/ crossable structure on the right (hesco with barbed wire in the front and back or a door closed off with a layer of barbed wire etc) and a crossable/ vaultable area on the left, facing that open part you have an opening in unidirectional cover (a sandbag line with no barbed wire at this end of a line of sandbags with barbed wire in front of them etc) to shoot people coming in. Between those two things, you have a wall of barbed wire with the opening on the opposite side of the crossable/ vaultable entrances. This makes the attackers run across your kill zone twice (from 1st row open area on the left tow opening in the barbed wire on the right, and back to the open area on the second line on the left). Ideally, you have about 2-3m between elements so they can't hit the guys in the back with nades over the walls too easily, or blow the whole thing up with one rocket. Two guys guarding this can hold off one or more squads.

If playing as Militia/ INS the scout should place a hidden IED in the entrance and blow it after the fob/ point is lost. As its the primary way out you should get a squad as they roll out to attack the next point. And at worst you deny the enemy your fortifications.

2
Aquila_Sagitta•

Imma need a picture to understand your killzone idea

1
66Break_Stuff66•

Ideally, you'd find some natural elements to help but this is how you would do it if you needed just cover a gap, the blue squares are you sandbag lines. https://imgur.com/gallery/2lXtRrz

1
Aquila_Sagitta•

That would take 4 guys 5mins to build and a single grenade would destroy all that barbed wire in a second

1
66Break_Stuff66•

It takes SL +2 about 3 mins to build, proper spacing would take 3-4 grenades and even if they do that then you've made them waste their nades, and you can just toss yours out and whip them off. All of which was previously stated.

Also generally you find natural elements to do part of it almost every large entry point in Squad can be set up to this trap to move people through kill zones. VCP is a prime example.

1
BeaverTerror•

Barbed wire needs to be in longer segments and should not be removable by the enemy except with explosives.

2
Aquila_Sagitta•

Razor wire's cons far out weigh the pros.

  • Posts holding up razor wire are climbable for little damage
  • Easily destroyed from grenades, knives, or even shovels
  • Small effective area and high relative build time
1
n0nMS009•

Very true, just today I was playing on Sumari, attacking the police station from the east where the little ticket booth with a ladder is set up. My favorite little rush spot to get in quick on Police, and when I hopped over the wall I was met with 6 sets of barbed wire covering the ground. I would have died if I wasn't a medic, healing while I walked through the wire but man it caught me off guard, just a really good use for the barbed wire.

1
Oracuda•

i just use barbed wire to piss the enemy off, and make them slow, like putting them everywhere in your radio room, really takes them a while

1