Foxhole - Military logistics and manufacturing simulator with some gunplay if you're into that part I guess

[Strelok]

So, yet another Early Access game drops on the Steam storefront, but unlike many of the others, it's one of the few that are actually semi complete at the time, like PUBG and the like. This game is Foxhole.

It's set in a fantasy ww1/2 between two groups, the Wardens, who have a sorta ww1 france / ww2 german aesthetic going on, and the Colonials with their more American ww2 looking aesthetic. The basic plot is after the Great Wars, the Colonials fled their homeland to settle in the Deadlands of the Warden's empire, a sorta Verdun area that had been completely devastated by war. Fearing a repeat of the Great Wars, the Wardens preemptivly struck, and they've been stuck in a pitched war ever since.

Gameplay wise, it's akin to the Men Of War series mixed with a more traditional RTS meta. 60 players to a side (at the moment) fight in a top down perspective, attempting to take territory and resources. The kicker is everything, from the bases, to the guns and ammo themselves, are made by the players. Unlike most games with that system however, because there are two predefined sides, it's not a clusterfuck of a random group of Russians burning everything to the ground for no reason.

Currently there are 6 maps, and the meta-campaign if you don't just want to play on a one off server, is that the maps come into rotation depending on which team last lost, untill one side controls all territories. The eventual plan is for them to be stitched together into one continuous war, with the map borders serving like instanced teleporters. They have tested it in the past to some success but bugs made it not ready for paid release yet.

Overall it's pretty fun, especially when you get a good group of randoms at a front line, or if you are running logistics by yourself. Most matches last a day or two, and I've seen seiges of towns last several hours if the defenders dig in well enough.

Anyway I'll leave some screenshots here.

Anyway because the factions are largely identical at the moment (only difference right now is turret position on the light tanks), it's really easy to wind up picking a faction and staying with it, especially if you stay on the same servers. I'm a Colonial and probably will be sticking with them.

 

[Strelok]

Bumping because one of the servers, Able 2, just finished a 150 day (a day is an hour realtime) war.

The end stats was, according to War Correspondant bot on their discord: 32,157 Colonials dead, and 37,493 Wardens dead.

 

[millais]

Their concept art for the vehicle and equipment designs was pretty neat. Looks like they put a lot of thought into the historical and practical inspiration for the period design and aesthetic. Not having much interest in such an early access stage, I don't know how well that translates into the in-game models and textures.

 

[Strelok]

Their concept art for the vehicle and equipment designs was pretty neat. Looks like they put a lot of thought into the historical and practical inspiration for the period design and aesthetic. Not having much interest in such an early access stage, I don't know how well that translates into the in-game models and textures.

Here's some concept of art the "light" tanks, and what they and the player models look like ingame. Also, unlike Battlefield and Planetside style games, tanks are a 3 man operation, gunner, driver, and topside commander (you can do without a commander in a pinch, but he's the only one who can buton out, and thus use binoculars to see much farther than the normal soldiers.). The vehicles and bases also have several symbols on them that presumably denote several "branches" of these fictional armed forces.

 

[Un Platano]

This game has gotten lots of updates in the meantime. The devs are very proactive with it, I'll give them that. The old single-map campaign mode has been dropped, and the game has a full implementation of one-world mode, in an early state. The current war has been going for 6 days and it's been a huge stalemate. It's not without problems- the biggest issue is that to save on server resources, they've implemented a decay mechanic that destroys defenses over time. That means that building up huge defenses anywhere but the front lines is a huge waste of time and resources because they'll just disappear a few days later. That completely ruins the way wars play out because it means that a single guy can sneak past your front lines and run around ruining everything in the back and by the time anyone has caught him, he's already destroyed a dozen trucks full of supplies, or has brought down a town hall because he could just walk right up to it. Other than that glaring issue, the game has progressed pretty well over its development, especially for an early-access indie game that no one was expecting much out of.

I predict that the biggest issue this game will face in its development is being able to maintain players. Having tons of players is critical to this game working, but for a lot of reasons, it's hard to guarantee it. It gets a lot of players when it goes on sale, but none of them can play the game because the servers are completely full, so they just drop the game. Then you have the issue that all the veterans of the game get fatigued after several IRL days of stalemate combined with the game's exceptional decay mechanic, so they leave too. Not having enough players on either side is the main reason why the current war has been going on so long, and if this game dies one day, it'll be because of player count.

 

[Sable]

I own Foxhole, but I've not gotten round to playing yet.

 

[Un Platano]

Foxhole just got its biggest update yet; they added big scary tanks, big scary nuclear missiles, and redesigned every single town in the game. It's also on sale for $12 right now, so the servers are packed with players right now.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

Just found something interesting involving a Streamer and Foxhole. It's from plebbit though but from what I'm hearing there's a lot of drama in the communtiy.

http://archive.md/bEp6u

(btw, I have +700 hours in Foxhole)

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

Btw, the Foxhole Devs have started doing a lot of stupid shit. For one, they ban people for discovering exploits and they're going to be implementing steam's dog shit anti-cheat.

 

[Win98SE]

Unless I'm missing something, this just looks like a more realistic version of Running With Rifles. Might give it a go.

 

[NerdShamer]

Btw, the Foxhole Devs have started doing a lot of stupid shit. For one, they ban people for discovering exploits and they're going to be implementing steam's dog shit anti-cheat.

what kind of exploits?

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

what kind of exploits?

People discovered with the new Anti-Tank emplacements that people could shoot up to 300 meters away if placed on a rock. Some guys went out to test this, and got banned. The longer you're in this community, the more negative you have a perception on the game and Clapfoot in general.

Shit like this can go undetected by 99% of players in their devbranch. Also, there's an exploit in which you can shoot an RPG up to 60 meters away while in a trench. I believe it still exists, funny enough. The devs need to fix their god damn game mechanics if players find an exploit.

Unless I'm missing something, this just looks like a more realistic version of Running With Rifles. Might give it a go.

They're going to add VAC Anti-Cheat, which is notorious for being a dog shit anti-cheat among CS:GO users. The devs should've gone with Easy Anti-Cheat with the addition to the current volunteer moderator system.

 

[Un Platano]

People discovered with the new Anti-Tank emplacements that people could shoot up to 300 meters away if placed on a rock. Some guys went out to test this, and got banned. The longer you're in this community, the more negative you have a perception on the game and Clapfoot in general.

Shit like this can go undetected by 99% of players in their devbranch. Also, there's an exploit in which you can shoot an RPG up to 60 meters away while in a trench. I believe it still exists, funny enough. The devs need to fix their god damn game mechanics if players find an exploit.


They're going to add VAC Anti-Cheat, which is notorious for being a dog shit anti-cheat among CS:GO users. The devs should've gone with Easy Anti-Cheat with the addition to the current volunteer moderator system.

They've gotten a lot of flak over their moderation system too after it was discovered that one of their volunteer mods had been using mod powers to cheat by spawning in weapons and teleporting his team around. They dealt with it the same way they deal with any community issues that arise: sweep it under the rug and silence discussion as much as possible. The guy didn't even get banned for it and as far as I know is still playing to this day. The game itself is great, but Clapfoot just doesn't fucking understand how to manage an online game.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

The devs decided it was a great idea that won't go wrong at all to turn their chat into fucking reddit. I shit you guys not. This is by far the worst thing that Markfoot and the
other Clapfoot devs have come up with. Everything else looks cool though. Though I have big fucking complaints about rating communications, for one it'll get abused to hell and back, and second it could end up with people boosting each other in chat, circle jerking their message ratings (specifically the clans in particular). Third if a player who's been downvoted to the shitter and tries to point out a critical invasion and is ignored, it'll hamper the team efforts.

 

[Un Platano]

it could end up with people boosting each other in chat, circle jerking their message ratings (specifically the clans in particular).

This is absolutely what will happen with this feature. This is already how the commends system is implemented and the result of that is indeed endless circlejerking. Ranks are useless because it's a measure of how many friends you have, not how experienced you are at the game. It's just an updoot counter.

A long time ago they used to have reprimands which were the opposite of commends, so you could take away people's commends. The result of this was also that lots of people's ranks would get zeroed out because they pissed off the wrong guy, and so it got removed. The same thing is going to happen with this system. They already learned this years ago, I don't know why they think it's going to be any different now.

 

[Lieutenant Rasczak]

If the devs... No if is the wrong word to use, when the devs implement this feature I'm going to actively report on the drama that is to come with this feature. In fact, I'll go into the past to explain past events for the users of this forum. Such as the Father Lemons incident back in 2019 which is a tale for another time.

(EDIT): Update, they've implemented their new chat system and it's getting abused already. The /v/ermin (players from /v/) and others are upvoting every post to cuck the devs out of their new chat system.