As a veteran of Enlisted who played since CBT and as a person who likes to discuss things on forums, I can suggest a couple of things to improve Squads mechanic and WT Infantry in general.
First of all, don’t shove it into throats of people, add a separate no-bots mode for those who want to play battlefield-like game. In Enlisted there were two game modes from the start - Squads with bots and Lone Fighters without bots. And while Lone Fighters were less popular as it had some problems with balance, especially, with realistic vehicles vs lone soldiers balance, it still was quite good sometimes. I would suggest making Infantry Arcade mode a mode without Squad mechanic. People who want an arcade shooter could go to Infantry arcade where there will be smaller maps, mostly CQB, only players in 16 vs 16 modes and all vehicles will be balanced by killstreak mechanic from Ground Arcade - Helicopters and BMPs should be spawned only for a minute or two, so they won’t be able to sit at the edge of the map and ruin the game for infantry for the whole battle, as they did in Enlisted’s Lone Fighters mode. And Infantry Realistic will be with Squads, as it fits better with realistic vehicles vs infantry balance. For the ones who want more than 16 vs 16 battles, I would suggest adding an Infantry Simulator mode with rooms as in Air Sim, because matchmaker won’t ever be able to gather 64 players for a 5-minute Arcade/Realistic battle in a reasonable time in queue.
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Make a better player-squad interaction (And there I will gather some Enlisted’s squads suggestions from Enlisted forums):
a) Make it simple yet useful. Just two buttons for quick commands - “Stand here” that marks a point for your bot to stand at and look at specific direction, as you already did, and “Shoot here” that marks a point for your bot to aim at and shoot at. Which can be used for marking enemy vehicles for your anti-tank/anti-air soldiers, marking windows for your machinegunner to fire a suppression fire, marking points for your mortarman (there were already mortars shown in rumors) to fire a mortar at. (because, imo, mortarman gameplay is kinda boring. You sit with your mortar and aim at azimuth and distance, thats it, better make your mortarman fire at the point you aimed at. Like, you can climb at the building’s roof and use binoculars/regular aim to mark a specific point for your mortarman, so you will be able to shoot with your rifle and use your mortarman as a support).
b) Add squad radial menu with options, such as: Shooting mode (don’t shoot, fire in response, fire at will), Give me first aid, Give me ammo (both are really useful in Enlisted).
c) Add useful voicelines from your squad via portable radio or something. Examples of such voicelines are: “I’m down!” from a “killed” soldier. “Sniper/Machinegun/Tank/Air is shooting at us!” When an enemy sniper/machinegun/tank/air is shooting at them. Can be shown with specific direction at your “compass” and/or voiceline of direction. “Get down! A grenade!” When they spot a grenade nearby. “Get cover! A mortar/artillery is working!” When an enemy mortar/artillery is working.
Generally, bots shouldn’t die in silence and without any information for the player. They should “simulate” useful turrets/combat units.
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Add an ability to cooperate with players:
a) An ability to sit on ally’s tank/inside ally’s IFV/Helicopter. It won’t be useful in Arcade or even Realistic battles, but may be a neat situational feature.
b) An ability to heal your teammate and give him some ammo.
c) An ability to mark enemies/enemy vehicles for your teammates.
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Enlisted died because devs were busy trying to remake an economy and progression for 5 years straight, without adding features and polishing already existing content such as so-called “main feature” of Enlisted - Squads which were upgraded like… once in five years when they added an ability to order your squadmate to shoot at tank with a panzerfaust/throw a grenade at it. Thats it. Constant economy and progression changes, alongside with stagnation just killed the game. WT has 4 updates per year, at least and WT devs are actually adding small QoL features, so, it won’t follow the same path as Enlisted for sure. They just have to add a mode for all communities - Arcade Battlefield-like, Simulator Squad-like and the middle ground Realistic with Squads.
I’d like to discuss everything in the comments, I doubt devs will listen to the community as… they never did (except when they listened to it while making naval and because of that it is dead now, lol), but still, its interesting to read other people’s thoughts on this.
I played 50 hours of Enlisted in 2025. And many more in war thunder. I agree with both of your points. The main complaint I had with Enlisted was the flight model of the aircraft and lack of korean era weapons.
I am very excited. As it appears that both of my complaints will be addressed.
Cool that we will start with Korean era weapons in WT. As it will leave WW2 for Enlisted to master and Korean weapons are really just the best of WW2 weapons.
Bots should pose a threat just by themselves to not be a free kills, but they should be way more effective when a player orders them something. To not reproduce naval’s “anti-air caliber” problem. When it shot enemy boats and planes without player’s interaction. From 10km away. With highest precision and instant reaction.
VOIP
Being able to communicate with my own team as well as with enemies in close proximity just enhances the fun factor of the game
IFV/APC functionality
Loading up in a friendly bradley/m113 to somewhat safely be dropped off in the middle of the battlefield or enemy lines would be really fun
Squadmate trading
Being able to send/recieve squadmates to other players. If your entire squad was killed in action and you are the only one left alive, you are just stuck like that until you also die. With this mechanic, a teammate could give you one or two squadmates as reinforcements (could make this a completely new type of squad where players get rewards for reinforcing other player squads)
And a small extra feature that will probably come regardless Simulator Battles
32v32 (or even more) players, no bots on a massive ground simulator map with chain-linked objectives where one team attacks and the other team defends
This would actively benefit tanks digging trenches for infantry, preparing defenses and setting ambushes (and could even make the game compete with larger dedicated milsim style titles like Squad, Hell Let Loose, Post Scriptum, etc (not including arma because that’s on an entirely different level))
I played a lot of enlisted and i really dont want war thunder to be very similar at all.
AI squads were always bad even after they improved the AI and i wish i could always turn them off (i often killed all of them other than an engineer and rocket guy to limit the lobotomite squad hinderences)
I also really hope that movement feels less clunky and more refined, enlisted always felt like an alpha test for a different game alltogether in how much overall polish everything had
This one is so cool. Imagine also being able to send your squadmates to cover your ally’s tank. You send them to him and he now has a button to control their behaviour as with naval aa-caliber: “don’t shoot/shoot at will” and they will defend the tank against enemy rpg units. Huh.
I would prefer the opposite: leave the bots for Arcade mode for those who want a quick battle with easy targets, and Realistic mode for players who want something more tactical and with more coordination between players.
I don’t know if they will add a Simulator mode in the future, and as for the bots, the only ones I see accepting them are the Enlisted players (who are already hardened to this, while new players are not).
Wonder will they eventually add APCs without guns/with machineguns to infantry tech trees?
I would imagine like, 3 columns of infantry squads and 1 additional column of APCs and light IFVs.
There are so many possibilities, like, regular Assault squads in M113/MT-LB or even event vehicles such as BMO-T with firethrowers squad inside. Also they could add ammo boxes inside those, like, if you sit inside - you replenish your ammo and equipment.
But since they stated that vehicles are separate from squads and you can’t exit the tank, that means there are less chances that they will add apcs and ifvs.
With all the good ideas, Gaijin could rework the “World War” mode and offer us a game mode where planes, tanks, ships, and infantry are all playable on the same map, with troop transport capabilities for certain vehicles. We even have playable helicopter carriers, not to mention aircraft carriers. Imagine a map where infantry spawns on a ship and players in helicopters transport the infantry to capture a point on land and create a new spawn point, all on a 64 or 128 square kilometer flight sim map. This is something I already mentioned in another post about infantry, but Gaijin already has transport mechanics thanks to ActiveMatter. Gaijin has the potential to create a game mode that could be similar to Arma, but all of this is still a lot of work for Gaijin
Well, I’m still waiting for World war mode that is at least similar to HnG’s World War mode. But your variant is 10x more interesting.
Ah, if only they really saw the potential in World War mode for making their game like… eternal. Because without the grind (which will eventually end when there will be no more modern stuff added) the game is pointless. 5 minute battles are not as interesting and can’t show all aspects of different vehicles.
I was thinking of Bots because Warthunder players hate bots so you can get revenge on them. Also I can somehow drag in the Senrai Maidens somehow to sell the idea. Clankers damn them!
So how op do you all think the STURMTIGER is going to be in infantry? Squishy infantry hate this one big German trick that no one knows about and the snail wants to hide from you!
