Defences

Equip hammer in hand and fortify your position with the Sapper class! Construct well-placed defences, earthworks and artillery to turn the tide of battle in your favour. Carry explosives to breach the adversary’s strongholds, repair damaged artillery pieces and more.

Player-Built. Defences, Artillery & Earthworks

Palisades, gabions, explosive barrels, earthworks, sandbags and the list continues. There’s a vast selection of defences, artillery and explosives to construct. Unique to each and every player-built object a set of materials or limit is applied. Materials play a role within this new mechanic to restrict the number of constructible defences that can be present at any point in time during a match. Larger constructions such as the chateauxs deplete more resources than their smaller counterparts. Chairs now make part of the selection of constructible defences. Albeit not being as useful of a defence, it’ll certainly provide you with a neat resting place to view the ongoing onslaught as mayhem ensues.

Here’s a list to put things into perspective:

Defences

• Infantry Stakes
• Gabion
• Chaveux De Frise (L)
• Chaveux De Frise (S)
• Palisade
• Palisade Platform
• Chair

Artillery

• Explosive Barrel
• Carriable Swivel Gun
• Ammobox
• Rocketstack

Digging

• Earthworks
• Sandbags

Defences Interactions

Certain defence structures, most notably the Infantry Stakes, Chaveux De Frise (L), and Chaveux De Frise (S); can deal damage against players or outright kill them upon contact. However, the interaction varies depending if the player is playing Cavalry or infantry.

* NOTE: Any unfinished defences that deals damage will not deal any damage to the player.

Unfinished defences will deal no damage. This unfinished Chaveux De Frise (L) will do nothing against cavalry.

Infantry Stakes

A defence structure that will instantly killed any infantry should they make contact with the sharp points of the stakes, rewarding the Sapper with the kill unless said Sapper has already left the server.

* NOTE: Infantry Stakes will deal no damage to cavalry.

Chaveux De Frise (L)

A defence structure serving as anti-cavalry that will instantly kill cavalry horses upon contact, rewarding the Sapper with the kill unless said Sapper has already left the server.

* NOTE: Chaveux De Frise (L) will deal no damage to infantry.

Chaveux De Frise (S)

A defence structure that causes damage to both cavalry and infantry. For cavalry, the mounted infantry will be dismounted, forcing them to waste time and remount.

How to Construct Defences

But how to go about constructing these defences? Here are some of the steps you must go through to get things going. Be sure to spawn in with the Sappers class beforehand.

Sappers are your go-to class to freely construct a multitude of defences, carriable swivel guns, fusible explosive barrels and repair damaged artillery pieces. It’ll surely become a favourite amongst those looking to play a support role! This class comes equipped with a carbine and sword.

Constructing Defences. Fortify

Once you spawn as a Sapper, there are somethings you will need to go over in order to start constructing.

Equipping The Hammer - Stage 0

Similar to what needs to be done with the musicians, one must first press the [Q] key to equip the hammer used to construct as well as repair player-built defences.

Selecting Your Construction - Stage 1

Once you have a hammer in hand, hold your [Right Click] Mouse or [G] Button and you’ll be presented with a radial user interface allowing for quick navigation between different constructions. Constructions are split into two categories, artillery and defences.

* In this example below, we’ll be constructing a palisade which makes for the strongest of all the available defences but takes longer to build and requires more materials to construct.

Placing Your Construction - Stage 2

Proceed to [Left Click] on the palisade construction present in the radial user interface. A representation of the palisade indicating the position as to where the construction is to be placed will appear. Once you find a suitable position to start constructing your defence, [Left Click] once more.

* You can also rotate the defence by using your [Scroll Wheel] before placing it.

Building Your Construction - Stage 3

Now that your construction is in place, start hitting at the palisade with your hammer to begin its construction. In order to finalise the construction, you need to land enough hits on the palisade until the entirety of the circle UI representing the defence’s health fills up.

* Other fellows playing with the Sapper class can also assist with building your defence. Once its construction has been completed, the circle UI will turn from an orange colour, indicating that the defence is under construction and therefore more easily destructible, to green.

Reinforcing Your Construction - Stage 4

Some player-built defences can be reinforced further bolstering their defence. Sandbags, for instance, can be placed atop earthworks providing for greater cover from enemy fire. A platform can also be attached to the palisade for players to shoot from.

Deconstructing Defences. Rebuild

In a constantly changing battleground, we ought to provide players with the capabilities to move defences elsewhere even after they have already been enacted. Deconstructing a defence will retain back its material points allowing sappers to make use of those materials to build the defence once more. Contributing further to the strategic element that this update brings with it, destroying the enemy faction’s emplacements through the use of various artillery pieces, explosives or melee weapons will deplete materials from their pool and bring them into yours. Sappers can then make use of these materials to further solidify your defensive positions. They can also be pretty effective at destroying enemy defence with their sledgehammer whilst in ‘Deconstruct’ mode.

* Open up the mode selector by holding the [G] key and select either the option to ‘Deconstruct’ or ‘Undig’.

Destroying Defences. Explosives

Sappers can construct explosives and ignite them to cause massive destruction to the environment and their enemies. It’s ticking like a time bomb, the fuse is running short. There’s plenty of scenarios were the above-mentioned explosive barrels come into play. Construct, carry, set a fuse and make quick work of enemy emplacements. Don’t break your jaw in awe just yet as you better watch out for enemy fire while carrying these volatile explosives or they’ll be sure to blow you to kingdom come.

Repairing. Field Guns & Defences

Should a defence become damaged, sappers can equip their hammer and repair the emplacement back to its original state. Field guns, rocket launchers, mortars, swivel guns and long guns that have seen better light of day can similarly be repaired as well by the same class.

* Artillery pieces that remain unrepaired on the battlefield, will respawn back to base after a set amount of time.