Community Guides/Getting Started with Facilities

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This article is timeless and should be accurate for any version of the game.

This article is about a basic starting guide to Facilities. For a complete guide to facilities, see Community Guides/Facilities Guide.

Facilities are player-built structures whose sole purpose is to aid in the production of various combat equipment, as well as various vehicles like trains. This guide will briefly introduce players to facilities to what they can do, and various tips in order to minimize the stress/burden of facilities.

In this guide, it assumes the reader is extremely familiar with the basics of Foxhole's Logistics (i.e. how to obtain, refine, and use materials to manufacture goods and vehicles, as well as constructing buildings).

Do you need to build a Facility?

While this a weird question to ask players who want to build their own facility, it's an extremely important question to ask, as new players (and some older players) do not fully understand the effort needed for facilities, especially when maintaining them for the entire duration of a war. While most base-building/factory-building games like Factorio and Satisfactory are all about automation, efficiency, and building big, this philosophy doesn't really apply to facilities.

Foxhole, at its core, is all about player cooperation, and facilities pushes this philosophy to the extreme. Often times, how much a facility can produce is dependant on manpower, with multiple players required to even get a simple Materials Factory to run for 24 hours. While this may seem irrelevant, it's important to know if your group is planning on making their facility, and using it for the entire duration of a war (current wars average about a month or more).

Questions to ask before making a facility:

1. Do I plan on playing for the entire duration of a war?
2. Am I committed to maintain this facility till the END of that war?
3. Do I know somewhere where I can get some of my required materials/vehicles?
4. Am I doing this solo or with a group of people?

Answering these questions will help determine whether or not building a facility is the right decision for you, and for all the players in your faction.

Facility Types

Facilities are a broad term that encompasses any player-made structure that aids in the logistical-side of Foxhole. Depending on what facility you are planning, the upkeep may vary (i.e. a simple facility setup on a Resource Field can just consist of three Stationary Harvesters, some Pipes, and a Liquid Transfer Station; this setup just requires Maintenance Supplies and Petrol/Heavy Oil to maintain and produce resources).

Public and Private Use Facilities

Despite all Facilities being open for Public Use, they can be constructed for Private Use (alibete in a limited fashion):

• Public Use Facilities - constructed to help the wider faction in various tasks (either in producing resources, materials, equipment, or vehicles).
  • Should be ease-of-use and have signs placed telling others how to operate the facility. In terms of facility queues, it is highly recommended to make everything for the public (AKA anyone can take them).
• Private Use Facilities - built/maintained by groups (mostly Regiments) to create their own equipment (mainly vehicles that take a long time to produce).
  • Uses squad reservation to prevent certain structures from being interacted with, preventing unauthorized people from taking things/making changes.
  • Typically has signs stating who owns it.

Categorization

When constructing facilities, it is important to know what you are producing, so you can plan around that. They can be categorized into five main types:

NOTE: Any facility can do all the following (but they shouldn't), but certain types of facilities should always be public.

Types of Production	Examples
Resource Production	Stationary Harvesters/Oil Wells Broken Components Processing Coal Processing Oil Refinement
Power Production	Diesel Power Plant Power Station
Material Production	Assembly Materials Production Concrete Materials Production Construction Materials Production Maintenance Supplies Production Processed Construction Materials Production Steel Construction Materials Production Ship Part Production Rocket Part Production
Equipment Production	Sandbag, Barbed Wire, and Metal Beam Production Large Shell Production Rocket Production Tripod Weapons Production
Vehicle/Emplacement Production	Small Assembly Station Large Assembly Station Dry Dock

Choosing a Facility Location

Similar to Bunker Bases, choosing a location for your facilities is just as important as what it contains. Due to Bunker Bases and Facilities sharing the same space, it is important you do not build facilities in strategically important positions, such as chokepoints or extremely defensible terrain (i.e. places like Mousetrap in Reaching Trail).

Resource Placements across the Map

Depending where Resources Fields, Resource Mines, and Refineries are placed during the current war, it will drastically affect how players will approach facility production, and how they want to handle logistical problems.

For example, a region with only Coal and Salvage Fields means coal and salvage products can be harvested to produce a wide variety of products. Meanwhile, a region with only Component Fields requires lots of petrol being shipped in to maximize production.

Knowing where the Frontlines are

Due to the inherent nature of Foxhole's gameplay, and how facilities have somewhat become an important part to the logistical efforts over the course of the war, it is vital knowing where the frontlines are, as some facilities benefit greatly being in close proximity to the front, compared to others.

While any type of Facility can be built anywhere, it is important that more expensive/costly facilities and equipment must be protected from all types of attacks, either by infantry, armored vehicles, or even artillery, if the situation escalates that much.

Facilities that benefit being close to the frontlines are Barbed Wire/Sandbag Facilities, and Ammo Facilities (which produce 120mm, 150mm, or rockets), as it allows for shorter transportation times, and faster access for artillery crews.

NOTE: Due to their close proximity to the front, these facilities are vulnerable to partisans, so they must be protected (this applies to all facilities, but ammo factories typically are the closest to the frontlines, where partisans can appear more frequently).

Understanding Maintenance

While building facilities can be fun, a core issue to facilities is how much they can take to maintain. Foxhole is a PERSISTENT MMO, so wars can last up to weeks at a time, with some wars even lasting longer than a month (the longest war so far, War 100, lasted for 55 days). Depending on how large the facility is and how much it contains, maintaining it will vary.

So when constructing a facility, ASSUME that you are the ONLY PERSON that is gonna maintain it (unless you know that you have a dedicated group working on it).

Maintenance Supplies

Maintenance Supplies (also known as msupps) are the only way to maintain your facility and preventing them from decaying. These are only consumed and prevent decay by placing them in nearby Bases or Maintenance Tunnels. Bases will prevent all player-built structures from decaying in an 80 meter radius, while Maintenance Tunnels can be configured (between 0-100 meters) to determine what is maintained.

Foundations

Most facility structures can only be built on foundations, making their placement vital. Additionally, they consume the most msupps out of all the facility structures, which is an intentional game design, as this discourages excessive placement. As such, it is VITAL that players only build foundations (and any other facility structures) whenever they are needed in order to reduce maintenance costs (and reduce burnout).

So, please know how big you want your facility to be and to plan around that. Unnecessary foundations should be REMOVED and/or not built at all to prevent unnecessary maintenance.

Facility Power Explained

All Facilities (excluding certain Facility Mines, all Transfer Stations, and all Pipes) require power to operate. Depending on the technological progression of the war, you have access to one or two Power Production Facilities, and their respective upgrade(s).

There are two types of Power Production Facilities:

• Diesel Power Plant
  • Petrol Power Plant (facility upgrade)
  • Coal Power Plant (facility upgrade)
• Power Station
  • Sulfuric Generator (facility upgrade)

Power will only be consumed if there is any active production, and will scale according to it. If your power usage goes over what you're generating, then the current power production will increase even more. Likewise, an under-powered facility (using less than 10% of the power production) will consume less fuel.

Adding Upgrades to your Facilities

Facilities can only have one upgrade attached to them, which gives them extra recipe(s) to produce item/vehicles (this largely depends on the type of facility, and the chosen upgrade in question).

In order to install an upgrade to a facility, you must:

1. Make sure the facility does not have an upgrade
2. Have the upgrade materials unlocked in the Tech Tree/or the certain Tier Facility unlocked
3. Have all required upgrade materials in the Inventory, not the Stockpile of the Facility (all types of Construction Materials stack in the Inventory)
4. Able to the modify the structure (i.e. the upgrade is unlocked, must in the Squad that reserved the Facility, or doesn't have Squad Reservation on it)

Technology

Similar to basic Logistics, Facilities have their own special type of tech progression, which will alter the gameplay loop. Unlike standard logi, which only unlocks easier harvesting equipment, Facility tech holds back certain materials, and their related structures.

• Tier 2 Facilities unlocks the ability to make Processed Construction Materials
  • This primarily unlocks the Metalworks Factory, and nearly all of its upgrades (allowing for the usage of component-related crafting materials)
• Tier 3 Facilities unlocks the upgrade to make Steel Construction Materials
  • Unlocks the Engineering Station, which can make the materials to create more expensive vehicles
  • In terms of the facility-gameplay, this is when coke production is highly prioritized, as they are heavily rely on to make the new materials

For a larger breakdown of all the unlocked structures and upgrades:

See: Technology

Transportation

One major aspect of Facilities is the transportation of resources and materials across various facilities, either across regions, or between individual facility structures. This is largely due to a lot of the facility materials being Large Items, as well as needing a ton of them to make anything. Due to this, it is better to use specialized vehicles/equipment to move them around, in order to ease the moving process.

Small & Large Trains

Trains are a type of logistical vehicle, specifically meant to transport large amounts of resources, materials, and equipment over various distances.

• Small Trains are primarily used in a small area, typically near facilities or within them.
  • Allows players to move large amounts of resources, materials, and equipment in large quantities with ease.
• Large Trains are primarily used for long distance transportation of resources, materials, and equipment.
  • While they can be used for facilities, this is primarily for moving equipment that needs to be modified, most of the time, they are used in moving stuff out of them.
  • These are extremely large vehicles and take up a lot of space, so they can be difficult to store/protect.
  • Although all they're expensive, the most important one is the BMS Black Bolt, as it takes the longest to produce, which makes them a valuable target for partisans.

Material Pallets

Material Pallets are a small shippable structure designed to carry large amounts of one type of material/equipment. They are not useful in transferring materials between actual structures, but they are useful for Assembly Stations where a Material Pallet can be directly deposited into them.

While they are primarily used in frontline delivery for shells, they can be used to transport materials between facilities, such as an oil facility producing Assembly Materials II (petrol amat) and exporting it to a facility with a Small Assembly Station.

Tips

• Use public facilities as much as possible to reduce burnout (aka mooching off of others).
  • Large, general facilities take up way too much space, and are massive msupp sinks (these facilities are okay for large regiments, the necessary resources to keeping it efficient is far too large for smaller clans/individuals).
• If possible, turn off production facilities if they aren't producing anything. Depending on how power is produced, and what type of facility it is, as certain facilities should be powered all the time.

See Also

• Community Guides/Logistics
• Community Guides/Facilities Guide
• Facilities
• Technology