Engineers Trapping Themselves

[EpicDerpyHooves]

Hello, I guess this is my first post here on the FAF forums. Been playing SupCom for a couple years on Xbox, and I just discovered how much better the PC version is. Anyway, I have a question that I hope someone can help me with, because it's driving me insane.

As I'm sure a lot of you know, the AI pathfinding isn't the greatest in this game. It can usually be resolved with move commands strewn throughout a build order, and that's just what I used to do on Xbox vanilla SupCom. Now, however, we have the wonderful template feature, and it saves tons of time, as I'm sure you all know. But, you can't record move commands in templates. Most of the time, the only drawback is some extra time spent on moving around the construction site. But if you try to make a structure surrounded with walls, the engineers usually trap themselves. I've tried every order of construction I could think of, I even tried making the walls in sections, but I can't for the life of me get the building finished with the engineer outside the walls! Here's a screenshot:



As you can see, all the structures have been built nicely, but the engineer has gone and trapped himself in the middle. This is the smallest version of this little defensive fortification I could make to protect early mass points. Later in game, you can upgrade the PD and AA if you'd like, but the idea is to provide a good protection from harassment early on at mass points far from your main base.

I've only found one workaround, which is to build three of the walls first, then make the engineer construct something else outside, like a radar installation or another turret, and then have it seal the last open area behind it. While this does work, it has to be out of the build range, which is pretty large. This puts it considerably far from the main building, and every mass point is different, so it could leave the extra building exposed. Plus, it wastes precious resources and I'd prefer to construct the building without any unnecessary additions. After all, I can just build anything else I need with another template or command exactly where I want it. It's kind of a specific scenario, but if you don't need to have units of your own coming and going from an area like this, that extra wall could provide just enough protection to let the PD deal with a small attack.

So, does anyone know of a way to fix this? Help would be appreciated!

[ZLO_RD]

So you need engineer not be trapped after he build it?

1)make this structure
2)reclime one wall (so engineer can go out)
3)build 1 wall outside, so engineer leaves
4)rebuild reclimed wall
5)select all that and make a template
6)try place it, should work

but i have to say wall there is kinda pointless

[EpicDerpyHooves]

So, the only way to ever get an engineer out of this, or any similar structure, is to make it build something outside to move it? While your suggestion does work, you basically described the method I tried with the radar, and the whole reason I made this post was to see if there was a way around that. I guess I could try to make a separate wall template. It could be handy to have that anyway... I'll post back if I find a working solution.

[ZLO_RD]

Make whole structure smaller so it all will be in build range and engineer will stay where he stand, and just place it that way engineer is not inside.

if all buildings are same size (looks like if you have only t1 pd and walls) you can fill empty space methodicaly so engineer will not be trapped, may not work if there is something with not wall size

[Phthyngoeiac]

Enemy units can still hit the mex over walls, since it's quite tall. You'd be better off just putting the walls around the PDs. If you're set on using that pattern though, you could make a template with one wall block missing. That way you can place the template with an engie, queue up a move order outside the walls, and queue up the last wall block.

[Eukanuba]

You could make the template so that the engineer makes all but one wall section, the has to travel to build a single wall section off to the east (for example), meaning that the engy has to leave the enclosure to make it. Then just build the final missing piece. That's the least micro-intensive way I can think to do it.

Although tbh walls won't do much good in that arrangement. There is a bug/feature that means that T1 PD with an adjacent wall can't be hit by most units, so that's the best use of them. That or walling off an entire passageway.