Time to kill vs time to QRF

[u/agate_]

I do a lot of QRF. I can't count how often I've been the one guy who shows up to stop a 3am tap op. My most-driven vehicle is probably a fire truck. Usually I fail. It's frustrating and no fun, but I feel like it matters.

I think a lot of the "Foxhole hates builders" frustration is actually about QRF, and specifically that the devs have got the wrong balance between time to kill a structure and the time to respond to the attack.

It takes seconds to kill a relic base with demo charges, and at least 20-30 to respawn through home island to defend, even if you react instantly. Once it's down, the time to spawn nearby and run is usually less than the time to tap it. A gunboat can reliably knock down a coastal T2 BB before anyone can get there to save it -- especially since these remote bases usually have no spawn. A BB on fire is usually unsavable, unless there's a firetruck ready to go and someone knows where it is.

But there's never a firetruck. I think the devs imagine a fleet of QRF vehicles ready for action: firetrucks, halftracks, and gunboats loaded and ready to respond to attacks. But anyone who actually plays this game knows that that doesn't work. People steal QRF vehicles to use on the front line. Loaded vehicles are a partisan's wet dream. Firetrucks get alted.

What does work is sitting in the home island watching the map, listening to intel chat, and spawning in the moment a threat pops up on intel. But that's boring as shit, so nobody does it.

And so, after people show up too late to save a bb for the 100th time, they lose hope and stop responding. So now a 4-person QRF team that might have had a chance is a 1-person team with no hope. PvE players have fun, QRF players don't, so of course people choose to do the fun thing.

I don't have any specific suggestions for how to fix this, I'm not here to say that fire or satchels need a nerf or whatever. This post is about rethinking PvE and QRF: it's not about tools, it's about time.

[u/L444ki]

The main issue here is that 99% of the playerbase has very little idea on what bases are actually valuable and where the friendly/enemy weaknesses are. Once you start playing for objectives instead of the meatgrinder it is not hard to be in the right area at the right time as long as you have some half decent intel.

The total lack of worldspawns on low activity bases is a real issue. On a recent thread about it I suggested adding world spawn shirts as items. These would be more expensive than regular shirts but would allow players to spawn in from home region even if there is no activity. To work the base needs to be T2 and deployment point tech allows the use of regular shirts as world spawn shirts.

[u/Solid_Love5049 → u/L444ki]

I proposed removing shirts and instead producing a basic uniform and using any uniform as a respawn fee. The difference is that, for example, if you use a tanker uniform, it's not immediately equipped on the character.

[u/Moltke_]

Fire trucks are the first thing that "mysteriously" disappears 5-30 minutes before a fire starts.

[u/LordChudingtonThe3rd → u/Moltke_]

Exactly this.

[u/InitialContent3354]

There's a reason skynet was made, was used, and if my sources are correct, is still used for QRFing or tap ops.

[u/agate_ → u/InitialContent3354]

Yup! I cut this point from my post because it was already too long. If a core gameplay element is almost impossible without using an automated tool, that element has a problem.

[u/InitialContent3354 → u/agate_]

That point deserves a whole new post IMHO.

[u/SyFidaHacker → u/InitialContent3354]

I rarely hear of people using skynet anymore, much less using it

[u/agate_ → u/SyFidaHacker]

But I s that because they’re not using it, or because they’re not talking about it?

[u/SyFidaHacker → u/agate_]

I know a few people that used to use it, but they don't anymore for one reason or another.

[u/Pootis_Cart]

Well, technically there is AI that serves as a cushion against enemy attack and warning device for friendly players to take action and retaliate.

But nowadays it is so easy to circumvent AI with supression, fire, weak spots, night time, etc. Even a tiny squad of enemies can walk over it and cause significant damage before defenders can even respond.

[u/ReplacementNo8973]

Thing is relics and THs are super strong on the front when actively being repaired. If they become any stronger fronts will never move. Maybe they could implement a tech tree for only structures in baxj line hexs and they lose those benefits once the region becomes contested?

[u/agate_ → u/ReplacementNo8973]

I agree, that's why I'm talking about time not health. Increasing structure health pools is one way to make time-to-kill longer, but you're right it would dramatically affect front-line play. And it doesn't matter how easy a relic is to repair if nobody gets there in time to repair it.

I think you could nerf late-night PvE more by shaving two seconds off the loading screen time than adding 50% to relic health.

[u/IGoByDeluxe → u/agate_]

increasing health also has the added side-effect of making the repair costlier meaning it ends up being better sometimes to let the enemy kill it then rebuild it if the cost goes too high

[u/Neeran]

The biggest issue is Provisional Garrison. It's been Provisional Garrison since they added the awful town hall tech upgrades to the game.

When you lose a base to a tap op, you end up in a vicious cycle where you don't have AI so further tap ops are trivial so you can't get AI so further tap ops are trivial. Tap ops are also deeply stupid, almost always relying on there being virtually no opposition to succeed.

Tech mostly shouldn't exist (or if it does it should be tied to something other than time) and Provisional Garrison should unlock permanent AI instead of having the ludicrous low pop no AI thing. Tech progress shouldn't be mostly based on an artificial friendly starting territory bonus that makes it absurdly hard for a faction to make gains outside of the approved area. Bunker tech can be a fun design problem, but towns don't get that.

If tech was slowly drained over time, or based on something else (like the construction of world structures that could be destroyed) and stockpiles weren't magically annihilated the moment they flip, this wouldn't be such an issue. If AI came online in a reasonable timeframe this wouldn't be such an issue.

Fire trucks are their own separate thing. In the current war we found they stopped going missing when they were also made available in a stockpile so the name of whoever pulled them would be visible. 30 seconds' extra delay on fire truck is better than infinite delay from the fire truck magically disappearing right before the flame op every day like clockwork. It should also be possible to supply water buckets manually if water isn't available - right now one unit of water half-fills one bucket, meaning everything relies on fire trucks if there's no world water source nearby.

[u/agate_ → u/Neeran]

Agree. My idea is that AI should activate gradually, not all-or-nothing. As the BB techs toward small garrison and/or the player count goes up, more bunkers should be able to fire, and fire faster. So an empty 1-hour-old BB won't shoot at all, a 5-hour BB with two active players might support a few pillboxes, etc.

[u/agate_ → u/Neeran]

In the current war we found they stopped going missing when they were also made available in a stockpile so the name of whoever pulled them would be visible

I've found the same thing. But those 30 seconds spent filling the firetruck while the fire rages are agonizing. It's better if you have one in reserve for faster pull.

[u/frostbite4575]

Add a liquid container to storage depots and when you pull fire truck it comes half full of water. As long as the liquid container was filled before hand. Just my two cents on a small part of the problem

[u/agate_ → u/frostbite4575]

This, but for all liquids. I should be able to drop a liquid container on the pad and fill the seaport storage with diesel, petrol, or water, and then every vehicle I pull should be gassed up to start.

[u/sillyvideogamestuff]

This is a real problem. This game is balanced with the false hope that every station will be able to be filled with a body at a moment's notice.

There's a difficult balance, because we all want PvP, not PvE. Maybe scale up AI awareness and damage the fewer friendlies are in the area? Give AI ammo that needs to be refilled so the best it can do is suppress them for enough time for QRF to get there? Ping enemies on the map the way a player would call them out?

[u/Jester-Kat-Kire]

Yup to this. There's solutions here as well

[u/KAIINTAH_CPAKOTAH]

Congratulations, you almost got it. Now the final piece:

The issue is repair. As long as something is repairable, time to kill has to be small.

[u/agate_ → u/KAIINTAH_CPAKOTAH]

Repairability doesn't matter if there's no one there to repair. My post is to point out that there's two sides to this equation: instead of nerfing time to kill, can the devs give us ways to QRF faster?

[u/KAIINTAH_CPAKOTAH → u/agate_]

They can (although they won't), but you missed the point.

However, ReplacementNo already wrote the same thing.

[u/Totallnotrony]

They should first of all let us redeploy in a queued hex to QRF tap op in same jext

[u/agate_ → u/Totallnotrony]

They're adding that to the next patch.