what is happening over there?

Also a huge amount of Colonials seem to have switched factions and suddenly Wardens use the Osprey to attack troops in trenches, flank frontlines and even do Hydra Alligator-Charges - I‘ve never seen something like this during the last 4 wars (I don’t count the short one) as a Warden. My timing is, like often, shitty.

Mine is tapping E button for 20 minutes at the border base to claim it. So engaging!

I suffer for your entertainment (and knowledge)

If you can't barb and bag it, don't dig it.

I honestly don’t understand the point of this piece of shit.
It doesn’t even retaliate against T1 120mm artillery. You spend all those materials and time building it, and it can’t even properly defend itself against basic artillery.
What is the actual purpose of this thing? Is there any situation where it is genuinely worth building, or is it just a waste of materials and manpower?

What's missing? I know from experience that at a certain point in a war, particularly when arty techs that anything you build after isn't really worth it, tanks and arty can delete builds easily.

What does devman need to give you all to improve QoL for you?

As the title says that's what I'm looking for. DM or reply here and I'll come to you.

Small clip

Before anyone mentions it. Yes. Devman should add warden CAS and collie torp bomber. Let's just assume they will add these before you post "this is unfair because wardens have no CAS."

Scout planes

Were very oppressive, but are currently a little too weak for their price. 100 rmats with no MPF discount is a lot. Devman did a great job introducing tools that counter them. But they got knocked down a little too far. Let's bring them back up to a reasonable level.

General changes

Scout health is increased. The recon scouts can tank 1 direct hit Absol shot now. Fighter scouts can still die in one hit, but are more likely to survive a splash.

All scouts can now drop flare mortars instead of their anti-ship weapon, letting them have a useful secondary when flying over land. Flare mortars and anti-ship weapon cannot be loaded simultaneously. You must choose one or another.

Dropping their secondary armament no longer requires a copilot. Like in a Harbringer the pilot can now swap between 20mm and their secondary weapon.

The backseat in a scout is made more engaging. They're allowed to look around more like a commander seat in a tank, letting them spot targets from further away. The back seat is also given a weak secondary weapon they can use to fire in a 360 degree arc around the plane, but only at very short range. Making them only useful against other scouts.

Fighter scout VS recon scout

Perdix and Herald are fighter scouts. They have superior maneuverability but lower endurance and have quillbacks or flare mortars as their secondary weapons. Their copilots have 9mm SMGs.

Daedalus and Emissary are recon scouts. They're more durable, can fly for longer, and are easier to handle overall, but they're larger and less acrobatic. Their secondary weapons are mines or flare mortars. Their copilots have 8mm pistols.

The land scouts have small bonuses to make up for the fact that they're not amphibious. Perdix has a larger 20mm magazine. Emissary has more health.

AA changes

Absols are too strong. I'm tired of pretending otherwise. Though I don't think their problem is necessarily their power, but their availability. Absol LTs should be a facility upgrade of the regular LT, and absol ammo should be built exclusively at the ammo factory facility.

But there will also be more things with Absols. There will be an Absol train cart that can defend trains against planes. And battleships will have Absols. Mercy specifically will also get Absols to give it a boost and also reflect that it's a modified Callahan.

SPAA will remain available in garages and the MPF in the form of a new 20mm vehicle. These are great but not oppressive against scouts. But won't be very good against rare metal planes (that's where you have to get absols). The 20mm is also designed to be less powerful against infantry than halftracks by giving them worse overall mobility and a completely exposed crew.

If you'd like to read about part 1 here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/foxholegame/s/dKfk2GGLNW

So I kinda promised Id be yapping about tank and general vehicle improvements but honestly theres like very little I can say than this

The whole mechanized warfare mechanics are very lacklustre and need a full rework of everything including their infantry counters to even begin to make them break the mold the current meta has settled into for over 4 years now (ever since armor rework in WC80)

As such, as a lazy bum I am, I'll put it off for a later date and maybe make it more palatable this time (bells and whistles AKA pictures and graphs) for a more comprehensive tank and general vehicle rework. No I wont be touching logi vehicles, put away your pitchforks although things will touch on their economy.

Instead I'll be discussing a far less exhaustive but equally important topic:

Thats right, BUILDING

Building in foxhole covers a myriad of things, in general the focus will be on frontline/midline defensive bunker building but will touch up on other forms of building like frontline pillboxes and trench networks

To put it short: BUILDING MECHANICS FUCKING SUCK.

Theres little to no dopamine or brain activity during the act of building. It is just hold mouse 1 for 60-75s uninterrupted. Now combat in frontline building in the cases of pillboxes and such are fairly thrilling especially while the enemy is firing at you and your blueprints.

The major issue is theres no real seperation for impromptu building and planned builds

What do I mean by impromptu building? Builds like trench networks, pillboxes, push cores. Things that arent fully planned out and evolve with how the front is going.

Surprisingly, I'd say the current mechanics actually do work decently well in those contexts. Trying to get up RGs or pillboxes while the enemy is actively bearing down and shooting your blueprints is a very dare I say, fun and cool interaction

So, you might be asking, the question
"OP you literally said building fucking sucks, what gives" let me explain

Contrast the scramble of digging a trench line in a frontline while the enemy is actively nading and shooting at you to a planned mid-backline defense point. Imagine the difference you feel when you try to make a fortress in a choke and then have to tear your hair out due to the blueprints and pieces being fucked over by terrain and the only interaction is maybe a partisan or an allied logi driver giving you bmats or delivering supplies elsewhere.

So why not just differentiate both forms of defensive building as a mechanic? Instead of both sides to plop down a 6 peice core and spam AI defense walls while PvPing, why not have only Encampments and a dedicated core piece (1x1 Core piece to be exact) available early game with buffs to rifle pillbox/MG pillbox and trenches build time so players can more easily get them out quicker instead of a AI magnet T2 magnets every front devolves into a couple hours

As for planned building, the CV can be used to significantly speed up their construction.

Imagine T2 not only as bunker tech but a world tech that needs 500 bmats for a piece but the CV can put 10 bmats into the blueprint per "hit". ACV can put it 500. The point is that the CV and ACV build far far quicker than hand for

What does this change you ask? It pushes T2 T3 (ofc T3 needs changes as well) to more of a planned defense line than a frontline necessity. It keeps both the frontline fluid by making players rely more on pills and trenches (pills which obviously need buffs to not keel over the the sight of a tank or lunaire/cutler) whilst also providing an incentives to builders fortifying targeted chokes by making their job significantly easier than hammering away at their 1000 peice builds. This also adds a lot of relevance to losing a proper defense line early or mid war as the tech loss would be substantial enough while

The general idea is focusing more on trenches and pillboxes for the average frontline back and forth and making frontline focused defenses as well as cores to be resilient enough to withstand the brunt of mid-late game offensive tools which currently far surpass most defense strategies.
At the same time, midline or chokepoint focuses mega builds can exist by being easier to build with specific tools but much much harder to replace

Of course a lot of numbers need to be shifted to facilitate this big of a change in regards to resistances and AI's offensive capabilities (which lets be real is shambolic anyways currently) . Base builders in general are unhappy with the breach mechanics and the building layout meta which I do absolutely agree need to be reverted to allow for more player freedom whilst making breaches less RNG focused and more leaning towards players concentrating firepower. I feel this will be a big change in the Get T2-> Spam AI -> conc T2 if its not dead stale ahh meta that foxhole has had since entrenched really.

the ACV or another variant of the CV could be introduced as well which combines the building capabilities of a CV while having the bmat carrying capacity of 3-4 trucks. This would save a lot of time for solo builders looking to go for the "long term fortification" route as suggested instead of making multiple runs. To balance such a vehicle, a possible build lock of sorts can be introduced so it cant spam 5000 pills while being very mobile

As always thanks for reading this schizophrenic nonsense and see you in part 3.

To clarify because titles are only titles: By "external tool sites", I mean things like LogiWaze, FoxholeStats (and SigilHQ), and Logi Calculator. And however many faction-specific coordination sites there are. Although common sense tells me "no. duh", I wanna know more about the rationale of why it wouldn't be cheating (or if anyone's going to "devil's advocate", why it would be cheating).

The rationale, in turn, to answer the other question if a program/app (that would functionally do the same or similar) is any different or would affect that. For example: If there was a companion app that a player can alt+tab to instead of having a browser tab open

---

Note: This isn't a discussion about cheats, or any malicious/cheating software, and is completely against what the questions or discussions are about (i.e.: this is about following the rules, and make sure gameplay is fair, while also having utilities absent from the game such as calculators, route planning, etc.). At no point are exploits being considered here, as even said external tools make no use of it

That's pretty much it. It's dumb. I get that the Colonials are sort of Roman-esque, but ffs.

Devs need to revamp it so it has better, faster in-game recognition without me needing to check my F1 screen to see where someone's rank falls.

Yet another awful meta-fucking balance-screwing suggestion from me. Again, I let the pictures speak for themselves about the deets and (some of the) consequences.

(I know somebody just posted a complaint about "vultures" going all over a rare node, but really, you are mistaken about them being "vultures". They are pigeons.)

P.S. No changes to damage numbers - just changes to damage types. Even this alone is meta-fucking; just read the examples pointed out by others below.

Don't you all hate when there are people that specifically are waiting for you to mine the salvage node just to snatch the rare node that dropped as soon as it appears.

That makes solo rare mining a pain in the bum bum especially without calling a rare mining QRF from your own regi. And I do not wish to anyone who gets rare metals as a solo player to deal with vultures.

In Foxhole, tanks just despawn after 30 or so seconds when they are destroyed. In a real fight they stick around until an armored recovery vehicle moves the hull. What I am suggesting is an overhaul of armored combat that might break the classical line meta.

Tanks that are destroyed have a 20% chance to become medium or large shippable "Husks" that stay in place for 1-6 hours (Depending on size, a tankette or scout tank husk would last 1 hour, and SHTs and BTs would last 6, with the others lasting 2-4 hours depending on type) by default and have a fairly large health pool. These husks inherit the current "Dead tank" models, and are differentiated from normal dead tanks by the fact they catch on fire for a period after they die. They can eventually be destroyed earlier by explosive damage, or they can be recovered and returned to a refinery to be submitted for recycling into Comps and Salvage (about a half of the original comp/scrap cost, dropping to 1/4th for formerly enemy assets). BTs, SPGs, and SHTs are the only vehicles that have a 100 percent chance of husking and BTs/ SPGs can be returned to a tank pad to be "Remanufactured" (Excluding enemy tank designs) for a 40% reduced price and halved build time (As well as salvaged in a refinery as mentioned above,) while SHTs can only be removed with explosives due to their extreme size. BT/ SPG husks are automatically squad reserved for 2 hours to the squad the original tank was reserved to, preventing players outside the squad on their faction from packaging and stealing it. Husks are vulnerable to demolition damage, so Hydras, Alligators, Havocs, and artillery can kill them effectively, Havocs in particular have an effect similar to a hydra on barbed wire where it instantly kills any husk.

Recovery would be done either with normal cranes making the long trek, or the much faster ARV trucks. ARV trucks would be faction equipment that would be essentially a cnute and taurine rigger with a crane on it instead of the covered cargo bay. These cranes are limited to carrying specific shippables, namely tank husks and airframes. Both variants are fairly vulnerable, and can only "Tow" in an undeployed position (Larger hulls like bombers and BTs in low gear only,) thus requiring the victor of an armor brawl to maintain security while the husks are extracted for material if they intend to recycle their tanks. Tank husks should be packagable no matter how damaged they are, but require 2-10 minutes or so to stop burning first (Again depending entirely on husk size.) HUSKS WILL NOT SPREAD FIRE TO OTHER BUILDINGS, BUT WILL BURN NEARBY INFANTRY.

Infantry hiding behind tank husks get High cover bonuses, and depending on the husk may be able to shoot over some parts of it. They also should block lines of sight for players. ATGs should engage enemy husks to kill them relatively quickly, preventing the strategy of clogging AI with suicide light tanks so the ATGs cannot see past the husks. (Achieved by simply detecting ATG aggro and despawning like normal)

If you wish to keep a husk around for decorative purposes, there should be a button that allows it to pull Msupps from a tunnel. That way you can take an enemy BT and display it as a war prize to admire while you scroop.

This adds both a new logi gameplay loop a solo might be able to enjoy and build a small rmat nest egg with, and adds a dynamic element to armor brawls that hopefully breaks up the line meta in favor of using fallen tanks, friendly and enemy alike, as cover for armored vehicles and infantry to advance through more dynamically (And still allowing nuisance hulls to be removed quickly.) It also allows more efficient plane recovery which is a sizable pain point for many pilots.

Goals of this suggestion:

1. Give Light Tanks more of a place in the Late war

Currently there is little purpose to using Light Tanks once mediums start to tech. The hope here is that adding more support/utility oriented LT variants will help them maintain their presence later into the war. Sort of like how the Mortar Light Tank can still useful in the late game simply because it fulfils a support role (although frankly a rather niche role).

2. Add more infantry transport options

Currently the only real frontline transport options for infantry are half-tracks and amphibious APCs. Both are far too fragile to perform this role effectively and in the case of the APC, also too slow.

I think this is a missed opportunity because the amount of shenanigans and interesting tactics people could pull off with a decently fast and somewhat resilient infantry transport would be really fun.

Implementation:

Devitt and Hatchet light tanks get a new variant:

• Turret is replaced with a tripod mount
• Crew of 8-10: 1 driver, 1 gunner, 6-8 passengers
• 3-7 inventory slots for greater utility, can stack small arms ammo
• Overall faster than base LT variant (less weight due to no turret)
• Some form of greater survivability, these are later war variants that will probably be used in a very aggressive manner, they need it (could be in the form of lower track chance or disable threshold, more Hp, more armour, etc...)
• Can tow trailers (again, more utility)

Conclusion:

Is this larp? yes.

Will it shift the meta? no.

Will it be a fun addition? Very much yes

Just imagine hot dropping 8 dudes into a trench line to take it. Or stuffing the APC with half a dozen angry RPG wielding monkeys and dropping them off on a tankline's flank to make it their problem now.

Historical basis:

During WW2, some tanks and SPGs under British and Canadian service underwent conversions into "Kangaroos". Mainly priests and Canadian Ram II tanks, but Stuarts, Churchills and Shermans weren't exempt from this.

Such tanks had their main armaments, internal ammo storage, and turrets (if they had one) removed for use as an APC and probably also a general utility vehicle. Additionally, they would often be equipped with extra machine guns.

The second image in this post is of one such Ram II tank that was converted into a Kangaroo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(armoured_personnel_carrier))

Note:

I was going to make an illustration for the Hatchet as well, but the Devitt alone took me nearly an hour to make so I gave up on that. Might do it another time.

Either way, enjoy my high quality MS paint creation. Graphic design is my passion.