Destructible cover
Defensive terrain that can be damaged and eventually destroyed by sustained fire or explosives, meaning a safe position is only temporarily safe. Battlefield: Bad Company 2's fully destructible buildings and Rainbow Six Siege's breachable walls both make static defense a losing long-term strategy — cover must be actively defended or repositioned from, not just occupied. Designers use destructible cover to prevent turtling behind permanent safe spots, to create dynamic, evolving battlefields where the map itself changes mid-match, and to reward aggressive players who can force enemies out of position by removing their shelter. Key decisions: destruction granularity (full structural simulation versus scripted breakable chunks), how visually telegraphed a cover piece's remaining durability is, whether destruction is permanent for the match or resets between rounds, and performance/networking cost at scale. Pitfall: cover that degrades invisibly (no clear damage state) makes positioning decisions feel arbitrary when it suddenly gives way — visible wear states are necessary for the mechanic to read as fair rather than random.
- Dev effort: Large
- Timing: Real-time
- Common in: shooter
Seen in
- Battlefield: Bad Company 2
- Rainbow Six Siege