I sympathize with your perspective that maybe I am struggling somehow versing sandbag spam. I often have people critique a map based on their feelings after losing instead of objective terchnical information. Happily that is not the case here.
To be clear, I've been playing COH since 2006, Ive been designing competitive maps in COH for 15 years now, im watching the fabric of the game being comprimised by subpar design approaches such as the sandbag spam that is being discussed here. Its relatively easy to test and confirm or deny the claim im making and either try an approach ive outlined in post 1. It would also be desirable to test one or a combination of ideas expressed here by others, there are many good ideas in this thread to mitigate the sandbag spam overall. Your completley ignoring the rest of the map if your happy with the current state of the sandbag spam.
Its a no brainer to experiment and possibly make the game better for everyone.
But pretending its a bad idea to experiment because of a preconceived, unverified notion that "it just wont work" or "its hard to know what will happen" doesnt even begin make sense.
Best map there is: Whiteball express
Worst map: Redball
Everything else is in between (not counting winter maps, those are FPS killers in team games)
Sandbags are fine, in every scenario on every map. If the enemy is spamming sandbags, that means they should not be having a lot of map control and that some key buildings can be manned by you. Furthermore, the biggest drawback of sandbags is the fact that this game utilizes direction. Almost every player I've played against (from rank top 10 to rank infinity and beyond, 3v3 only), just mindless places MGs behind them which can be exploited.
Truth be told, some maps, due to the design, can exploit sandbags beyond their usual usefulness. Normal sandbags, not those huge monstrosities on conscripts. Some maps do favor sandbag spam as there are no avenues of flank/alternate attack.
In 1v1, sandbags will never be the problem on normal maps. In 1v1 a map does not have to be superb and well designed to eliminate sandbag problem. Population and population density takes care of that.
In 2v2, some maps are sandbag prone... those lane-y ones.
3v3 is on the doorstep to the clusterfuck that is 4v4. Basically it's 1v1 on VP lanes. Sandbags do come in handy but usually take too long to place to be effective. There you will almost certainly fight first on the frontline. And if you do win engagements and force retreats you have 2 choices: Push deeper and deny resources or place sandbags and hope for no mortars/smoke. Again, it balances itself out.
4v4: Not gonna comment. Horrible mode for sadistic people hellbent on destroying planet Earth