MG crews are leaving trenches in favor of light cover.

[Captain Butthurt]

I'm playing Army General as Axis, so I'm almost always on the defense and thus, almost always have access to trenches.

For whatever reason if you place your trenches in light cover (light forests), MG 34 crews just refuse to stay in them - they bail out of trenches and hang around in Light cover, provided by light forests.

Is this a bug? I'm playing vanilla, no mods.

[Magnus Aurelius, Bright Lord]

MG positions do not go in trenches, they go in gun placements.

[Rabidnid]

Originally posted by Hobotango:

MG positions do not go in trenches, they go in gun placements.

Nope, that is only guns, and gun pits are useless so don't take them.

Make sure you have all the MG bunkers and AT gun bunkers and maybe 1 trench. The bunkers are far more useful than wire or trenches and especially gun pits.

[Magnus Aurelius, Bright Lord]

No matter what you prefer, MG teams will NOT go into trenches. You can make them position into a trench, but its just for looks as it will act the same as if you position it anywhere else.

You need to use the gun emplacement fortification for MG team and guns. Thats where MG team are supposed to go in terms of defensive placement.

[sandman2575]

You can indeed get MGs to sit in trenches. It gives them Green cover, so I don't think it's useless. But it's true that MGs will sometimes randomly leave the trench in favor of the "Yellow" cover of light woods. Fiddling with the automation controls for the unit does not seem to solve it -- it does seem to be a bug, and one of longstanding at that.

[Captain Butthurt]

I vividly remember having exactly 0 problems with placing HMGs (MG 34 \ MG 42 on tripods) in trenches a few (a single? I'm pretty sure I played just before Burning Baltics) patches ago.
They would stay in trenches and receive green cover icon, and everything was fine.

Sure, it didn't look quite right - there is simply not enough space in a simple trench to place a bulky MG on a tripod - but it did the job just fine, and I could live with such non-immersion breaking generalization without issues.

And while it makes more sense to be only able to place HMGs in the gun pits, it's pretty punishing gameplay-wise - considering that you only have access to negligible amount of them (what is it, 4?).

I wouldn't mind this change if it was implemented better (if we had more gun pits to deploy).

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by Captain Butthurt:

MG crews are leaving trenches in favor of light cover

Have you tried turning off the "Auto-Cover" unit behavior in Gameplay Options? Units will stay put if you do so.

[Magnus Aurelius, Bright Lord]

Originally posted by Captain Butthurt:

And while it makes more sense to be only able to place HMGs in the gun pits, it's pretty punishing gameplay-wise - considering that you only have access to negligible amount of them (what is it, 4?).

Yeah same, I always thought it was odd we couldnt officially put our MG teams in trenches.

[Rabidnid]

Originally posted by Hobotango:

Originally posted by Captain Butthurt:

And while it makes more sense to be only able to place HMGs in the gun pits, it's pretty punishing gameplay-wise - considering that you only have access to negligible amount of them (what is it, 4?).

Yeah same, I always thought it was odd we couldnt officially put our MG teams in trenches.

That is so weird. I've not played breakthrough in forever but I never had trouble with maxims staying put in trenches.

Edit:

Ah, I never put trenches in cover because they don't need it. Carry on.

[sandman2575]

Originally posted by DasaKamov:

Originally posted by Captain Butthurt:

MG crews are leaving trenches in favor of light cover

Have you tried turning off the "Auto-Cover" unit behavior in Gameplay Options? Units will stay put if you do so.

In my experience, turning off "Auto-Cover" does not solve the problem.

It's very random. Sometimes MGs in light forested trenches will stay put in the trench (Green), other times, they just get out in favor of "Yellow" cover, even though it's worse. But the automation fine-tuning seems to make no difference.

I assume it's a bug... but have no confidence it will ever get addressed.