Devblog: World Conquest & Environment Concepts news

As mentioned on our last Devstream, we're gonna be talking about nothing but One World this month so this entire post will be mostly dedicated to that. Remember that One World consists of three main parts: World Conquest, Home Regions, and Skirmish. We will be focusing heavily on first of these today.

Disclaimer: Any feature or piece of content shown here is a work in progress and subject to change in the future.

World Conquest Details

We're finally ready to reveal the full details of several big World Conquest features. Keep in mind that a lot of the design decisions were made to satisfy the high level goals of One World and at the same time work in harmony with the current Foxhole gameplay. It may take awhile until the full picture becomes clear so having an open mind will be helpful here.

Technology Tree

The Tech Tree will be the main progression system in World Conquest wars. It will be accessible from the Tech Center and will be shared among the entire faction. Players will be able to unlock new items, vehicles, and structures here by submitting Tech Parts to various branches in the tree. Once a technology is unlocked, the corresponding content will become available. In the case of a structure, it will become available in the build menu. In the case of items and vehicles an extra step is involved (See Blueprint System below).

The first draft of the Tech Tree layout can be seen below. The tree was designed to meet a lot of constraints from the current content and meta of the game. Hundreds of players will be participating in the decision making so the room for mistakes had to be pretty small early on to prevent snowballing as the war progresses. The initial version of this tree has to allow for a stable game until we all have a better idea of how World Conquest will play out. In future iterations there will be more room for experimentation.

Blueprint System

When we first talked about how the Tech Tree would work, we said that only 1 Blueprint would be needed to permanently unlock an item at a factory for example. We scrapped this idea after we realized how easily the system could be griefed (it would only take 1 spy to give a Blueprint to the other faction and then they'd permanently have that technology).

Late in the planning process for version 1 of World Conquest, the Blueprint idea resurfaced again and this time it was in part inspired by this suggestion thread from the community. A mandatory part of World Conquest was to introduce a long term progression activity and at the time the plan was to have resource refinement satisfy this goal. However, we identified some issues with using refinement for long term progression. It would add too much of a sense of personal ownership over resources, which works against the cooperative nature of the game. Instead, a new Blueprint system was developed to fulfill this goal instead.

After a technology is unlocked for items and vehicles, Blueprints must be printed from a Tech Center and stockpiled at a Factory before the corresponding items or vehicles can be produced. Every player can order up to 3 Blueprint bundles at a time and the printing process for an order can take anywhere from a few hours to days. The order is private, so players can be assured that their orders will be ready for pickup in a subsequent play session. Once Blueprints are brought to a Factory, they are stockpiled and available to the entire team so there is no sense of personal ownership. Currently, this only affects certain items and vehicles so essential content will always be available. It's a possibility that the Blueprint system will be integrated with structures in the future.

With the Blueprint system, any major operation involving high end equipment or vehicles will require planning ahead of time. This

will significantly affect the pacing of wars so be prepared for some shakedown before this system becomes balanced and fun.

Edit: To provide further clarity on the Blueprint system. Orders will be private and will happen in parallel with other orders.

Bases

On our last Devstream we talked about the new tiered base system, but we left out some details. Bases are basically the evolution of Town Halls and Outposts from Foxhole Classic. The big difference is that Bases will now start off weak and evolve over time if held and defended. We hope this will reduce the advantages of early "town rushing" as there will be a more meaningful trade-off between focusing on fewer towns (but making sure they evolve) and trying to grab many towns (but leaving them vulnerable).

Each Base will have a Garrison Size that determines the radius around it where defenses will be maned by AI. The Garrison must also reach a certain size before the base can be upgraded to the next tier structure. For example, an Encampment (Tier 1 forward base) can't be upgraded to a Field Base (Tier 2 forward base) until it's Garrison has grown to a certain size. Garrison growth is a process that takes hours which means that to fully capture a town for win condition purposes, a base needs to be defended for a long period of time. Again, this is designed to balance out rush vs defensive tactics.

Keep in mind that Tunnel Networks are still available, but they will be very high up in the Tech Tree. This means that the early to mid game may feel much like the Town Fortress modifier from War Games, except that forwarded bases will also be able to power AI defenses as well.

We will have one more thing to say about Bases on Tuesday's Devstream. Stay tuned!

Resource Changes

The Manufacturing Plant will be repurposed as the Refinery moving forward and there will be couple of changes to it's functionality.

• Resource refinement will no longer be instant and will take time depending on the resource type

• Resource nodes will now respawn faster than before (especially Sulfur)

• Resources are now taken directly from the player's inventory instead of the shared storage space of the old Manufacturing Plant, which should alleviate the issue of players accidentally refining someone else's resources

These changes were made to fix the long standing issue of resources (especially Explosive Material) being rewarded to players that were in the "right place at the right time" (i.e. being around when a sulfur node respawn) instead of those who work for it. In addition, there is now room to add more depth to resource types in the future if the need arises.

We also expect to change the resource system up even more in the future iterations so our work here is far from over.

Garrison Barn

Alongside World Conquest, we are starting to slowly add more variety and interest to the world. While we intend to do a more comprehensive revamp of towns and the environment several few months down the road, we are adding a few new things into the mix in the mean time.

One building we are introducing is the Garrisoned Barn, which functions very similarly to Garrisoned Houses. The difference is that the AI are positioned on the second floor and players are able to walk into the first floor and have firefights there.

Environment Research & Concept Art

We've been working on conceptualizing new environments and strategic structures to be included in the world. Here's some visuals from the work being done.

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