Stealing problem in foxhole

[Heinrich]

I wrote this post like a week ago and chose not to post it. I changed my mind, since i got another BT stolen today. What's the point working endless hours for something when you get your things stolen over and over again?

First of all, i'd like to apologize to the devs for opening this thread - i know you guys probably do not like to see these kinds of postings, but at the same the issue is not going to just go away if we keep silent about it. This posting is not meant to bash the devs, but rather to discuss this issue and find possible solutions to the problem.

Currently stealing is prevelant in foxhole, because it's too easy for players to steal and too hard for players to protect their stuff. Let me give you some examples.

-Spend 30+ manhours to construct a super/battletank. You drive it to the front to fight and you survive the day. Now you chose to go offline, because you're tired. What do you do with the tank? You're not giving away a 30+ manhour vehicle to random, no one is going to do that. There is no place to store it in the game while at the same time every random can come with a wrench and drive it away. We were thinking about hanging it on a crane, hide it in bushes, put it in freighters without fuel and leave it in the ocean, put power poles around it to prevent driving away.... Do you see the discrepancy? Why is it so easy for people to steal, but at the same time so hard for normal players to protect their hard work from malicious actions?

-Players taking out your supplies out of bunker bases with keyboard macros. They probably just sit there all night with keyboard macro filling up their haulers.

-Players going to your motorpool (that you have, because you can't save your tiered tanks/BT's anywhere) and just take what they want. They just need a wrench and drive your stuff away that your clan put countless manhours into. You wake up in the morning and notice your tiered bardiche and your BT is gone. Nice.

-Locked my tank at the bunkerbase to build a watchtower at the front at night. I come back 5 minutes later and see a PVT and a SGT driving away with my tank that i locked beforehand. I just left the base for 5 minutes and my tank that i worked 2-3 hours for is just gone.

The stealing problem is always in the back of my mind and with every action i do, i have to think about how i prevent to get abused. You cannot leave your stuff out of your eyes for five minutes or someone steals it. I love this game, but this problem is really driving me to a point where it's not worth anymore to invest time in producing higher tier stuff.

Those four stories above are just some examples of things i experienced in 400 hours gameplay. I'm sure every player that plays the game for a substantial amount of time has run into similar issues i described above. I don't think anyone has the golden solution for this problem, but as of now it's too easy for players to steal stuff they don't own nor produced and to hard for honest players to protect their hard work. It should be the other way around - hard to steal, easy to prevent it.

If you know of a way to protect your stuff, let me know. Kinda starting to lose fun in the game over this issue.

[Bobucles]

I mean, all of this cries out "skill issue".
- Don't invest 30 hours into a 2 hour tank. Use the cheap tanks, that's what they're for.
- Store raw tank ingredients in private until you're ready to use them.
- Don't abandon your tank. EVER. Death before dismount. Empty tanks are public tanks, friend or foe.
- Give your (cheaper choice of) tank away at the end of the day to eager players.

There ya go. Enjoy the valuable life lessons and avoid making common mistakes in the future.

[Heinrich]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

I mean, all of this cries out "skill issue".
- Don't invest 30 hours into a 2 hour tank. Use the cheap tanks, that's what they're for.
- Store raw tank ingredients in private until you're ready to use them.
- Don't abandon your tank. EVER. Death before dismount. Empty tanks are public tanks, friend or foe.
- Give your (cheaper choice of) tank away at the end of the day to eager players.

There ya go. Enjoy the valuable life lessons and avoid making common mistakes in the future.

1. How is the BT a 2 hour tank? You already need two hours producing time just for the Amats 1 and 2. It was just a guess with 30 hours, but building a BT is not done in just two hours.
2. It takes way to long to build one BT. So if you want to have 3-4 BT's in your motor pool, you have to park them somewhere, because you can't just build them in a short amount of time.
3. Seems you don't understand the issue. When you have a BT and you wanna go to sleep, what to do with it?
4. No one is going to give away a BT, because you put way to much work into it.

[b0nehead]

To play the devils advocate:

How do you own anything in the armed forces? Everything you do is for everyone. If a tank can do good it will be assigned to an available crew. No one cares what you did or the mechanic who maintains it. It's a weapon, maybe it can have more value instead of being parked when you're offline.

Reality point of view:

No random grunt or even officer would just run around taking any vehicle they want. It's all part of a logistics systems managed by people who do JUST THAT.

In this game we have none of that. Everyone is doing their own thing or as part of their own reg.

They also complain that everyone sucks when losing even though they're part of it. There is no high command, central command or anything you can imagine.

The tooltip on the upgrade pad says any vehicle that was upgraded on the pad can be locked as long ad it's on the pad. So at least for a lot of upgraded vehicles you can build a few of these facilities and lock them on the pad. I'd wager you probably don't need to even keep it powered. So just gsupp cost.

[power man]

oh the irony, a clan member crying about something stolen, mate the game is all about teamwork, that includes the vehicles as well

[Pizzashot]

They should really add a buildable garage for your BB where you can store a small quantity of vehicles that you or your regiment members has built. Garages could have 3 tiers like bunker bases which increases the size for larger tanks.

[HEX: SOLO QUEUE]

Originally posted by rando:

To play the devils advocate:
How do you own anything in the armed forces? Everything you do is for everyone. If a tank can do good it will be assigned to an available crew. No one cares what you did or the mechanic who maintains it. It's a weapon, maybe it can have more value instead of being parked when you're offline.

That's the whole point. This is the main design decision in the game that everything is built around - it's also by far the best one, and what makes this game worth playing at all.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

1. How is the BT a 2 hour tank? You already need two hours producing time just for the Amats 1 and 2. It was just a guess with 30 hours, but building a BT is not done in just two hours.
2. It takes way to long to build one BT. So if you want to have 3-4 BT's in your motor pool, you have to park them somewhere, because you can't just build them in a short amount of time.
3. Seems you don't understand the issue. When you have a BT and you wanna go to sleep, what to do with it?
4. No one is going to give away a BT, because you put way to much work into it.

1.) You misunderstood what Bobcules said. They said you should build a lesser tank to use if you're only going to use it for 2 hours - not that a BT takes 2 hours to make.

2.) I don't know enough about production to argue with this, but it seems likely to be true.

3.) No, you don't understand the main design decision in the game is enforced communism - it's not your ♥♥♥♥, and never was, and if you can't handle that don't build it.

4.) It's not giving anything away. Don't forget an untold # of other players were defending the zones you were harvesting materials in and helped capture those areas.

The mindset you have is the reason why corporate oligarchies are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to live under like the the U.S. They're not interested in investing in the people or the infrastructure that allow them to exist either.

[b0nehead]

Originally posted by Lord Avarice:

Originally posted by rando:

To play the devils advocate:
How do you own anything in the armed forces? Everything you do is for everyone. If a tank can do good it will be assigned to an available crew. No one cares what you did or the mechanic who maintains it. It's a weapon, maybe it can have more value instead of being parked when you're offline.

That's the whole point. This is the main design decision in the game that everything is built around - it's also by far the best one, and what makes this game worth playing at all.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

1. How is the BT a 2 hour tank? You already need two hours producing time just for the Amats 1 and 2. It was just a guess with 30 hours, but building a BT is not done in just two hours.
2. It takes way to long to build one BT. So if you want to have 3-4 BT's in your motor pool, you have to park them somewhere, because you can't just build them in a short amount of time.
3. Seems you don't understand the issue. When you have a BT and you wanna go to sleep, what to do with it?
4. No one is going to give away a BT, because you put way to much work into it.

1.) You misunderstood what Bobcules said. They said you should build a lesser tank to use if you're only going to use it for 2 hours - not that a BT takes 2 hours to make.

2.) I don't know enough about production to argue with this, but it seems likely to be true.

3.) No, you don't understand the main design decision in the game is enforced communism - it's not your ♥♥♥♥, and never was, and if you can't handle that don't build it.

4.) It's not giving anything away. Don't forget an untold # of other players were defending the zones you were harvesting materials in and helped capture those areas.

The mindset you have is the reason why corporate oligarchies are so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to live under like the the U.S. They're not interested in investing in the people or the infrastructure that allow them to exist either.

I agree with your points and to represent realism is great. But you also didn't quote the rest of what i said.

Without any command structure a tank crew doesn't even have it's tank. If these are pure tank jockeys then just like in rl they would have a tank they specialize in to crew. So now they have to play infantry? Why? We should be helping them specialize and be a high powered investment as part of our "communism thing" no?

Personally, i'd rather have an experienced crew using my protection/harvesting to make. It's good for everyone right? So what happens when random inexperienced/ignorant person takes it? Completely wasted my/our time protecting the original guy making that giganto tank.

Two ways to look at it if you wanna go communism.

[Heinrich]

Thanks for your input guys, very much appreciated. The main problem i personally have is the fact that i work for hours and hours and some people just come and take my hard work without doing anything themselves. Why should i spent the nights grinding stuff when it gets stolen anyway? Might as well just take a wrench and run around the map stealing stuff instead of putting in the work. If everyone thinks like this, the game is over, because no one will build anything and only steal.

Thanks for the tip with the pad, we'll try it for sure!

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Spend 30+ manhours to construct a super/battletank. You drive it to the front to fight and you survive the day. Now you chose to go offline, because you're tired. What do you do with the tank? You're not giving away a 30+ manhour vehicle to random, no one is going to do that.

That's actually a common thing to do with tanks if you don't have a clan/group to hand it off too. It's vastly easier to just let other people on the same team put the vehicle to use rather than have it sit in a stockpile or get taken by partisans.

If you want to keep your 'special' tank, drive it to a backline hex and park it in a base you built. It'll probably still be there.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Players taking out your supplies out of bunker bases with keyboard macros. They probably just sit there all night with keyboard macro filling up their haulers.

If this has happened to you, report it.
If you're just fearmongering, quit it.

Also only clans do this because it's faster to have multiple players in trucks grab the stuff out than using a macro. It's far too much busywork for alts and partisans can't do it.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Players going to your motorpool (that you have, because you can't save your tiered tanks/BT's anywhere) and just take what they want. They just need a wrench and drive your stuff away that your clan put countless manhours into. You wake up in the morning and notice your tiered bardiche and your BT is gone. Nice.

Put a sign down asking people to leave the tanks alone, preferably with a please.
Worked for me and the various groups I've been in for 500+ hours.

If you want to keep your 'special' tank, drive it to a backline hex and park it in a base you built. It'll probably still be there.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Locked my tank at the bunkerbase to build a watchtower at the front at night. I come back 5 minutes later and see a PVT and a SGT driving away with my tank that i locked beforehand. I just left the base for 5 minutes and my tank that i worked 2-3 hours for is just gone.

Did you try to get it back or just ragequit and come onto the steam forums to whine?

Originally posted by Heinrich:

The stealing problem is always in the back of my mind and with every action i do, i have to think about how i prevent to get abused. You cannot leave your stuff out of your eyes for five minutes or someone steals it. I love this game, but this problem is really driving me to a point where it's not worth anymore to invest time in producing higher tier stuff.

Those four stories above are just some examples of things i experienced in 400 hours gameplay. I'm sure every player that plays the game for a substantial amount of time has run into similar issues i described above. I don't think anyone has the golden solution for this problem, but as of now it's too easy for players to steal stuff they don't own nor produced and to hard for honest players to protect their hard work. It should be the other way around - hard to steal, easy to prevent it.

If you know of a way to protect your stuff, let me know. Kinda starting to lose fun in the game over this issue.

Play with a group.

No really, that's it.

The game is built around playing with a group or at least with a few friends. There's no 'private property' and you can only privately store stuff before you use it. So find some people you enjoy hanging out with and build a base or produce vehicles/ammo with them to use.

Suddenly all the 'theft' issues vanish because the game is not designed for solo play for high-tier vehicles, base building, or large-scale warfare; just like in real life.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

I don't think anyone has the golden solution for this problem, but as of now it's too easy for players to steal stuff they don't own nor produced and to hard for honest players to protect their hard work. It should be the other way around - hard to steal, easy to prevent it.

If you know of a way to protect your stuff, let me know. Kinda starting to lose fun in the game over this issue.

In every scenario where people propose ideas around making stuff hard to steal, the in-game economy breaks as the proposed ideas actively encourage hoarding resources and that's already a problem with the extremely large clans.

If you operate on a system of usage rather than property, the game makes a lot more sense and you'll stop frustrating yourself by fighting against it and your faction.

Also it's entirely okay to take a break from the game and play something else.

There's a lot of QOL stuff this game needs to avoid burning it's players out because that's a common reason people simply stop playing and never come back.
Logistics and base-building are notorious for this as it's time-consuming to an extreme.

[Heinrich]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Spend 30+ manhours to construct a super/battletank. You drive it to the front to fight and you survive the day. Now you chose to go offline, because you're tired. What do you do with the tank? You're not giving away a 30+ manhour vehicle to random, no one is going to do that.

That's actually a common thing to do with tanks if you don't have a clan/group to hand it off too. It's vastly easier to just let other people on the same team put the vehicle to use rather than have it sit in a stockpile or get taken by partisans.

If you want to keep your 'special' tank, drive it to a backline hex and park it in a base you built. It'll probably still be there.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Players taking out your supplies out of bunker bases with keyboard macros. They probably just sit there all night with keyboard macro filling up their haulers.

If this has happened to you, report it.
If you're just fearmongering, quit it.

Also only clans do this because it's faster to have multiple players in trucks grab the stuff out than using a macro. It's far too much busywork for alts and partisans can't do it.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Players going to your motorpool (that you have, because you can't save your tiered tanks/BT's anywhere) and just take what they want. They just need a wrench and drive your stuff away that your clan put countless manhours into. You wake up in the morning and notice your tiered bardiche and your BT is gone. Nice.

Put a sign down asking people to leave the tanks alone, preferably with a please.
Worked for me and the various groups I've been in for 500+ hours.

If you want to keep your 'special' tank, drive it to a backline hex and park it in a base you built. It'll probably still be there.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

-Locked my tank at the bunkerbase to build a watchtower at the front at night. I come back 5 minutes later and see a PVT and a SGT driving away with my tank that i locked beforehand. I just left the base for 5 minutes and my tank that i worked 2-3 hours for is just gone.

Did you try to get it back or just ragequit and come onto the steam forums to whine?

Originally posted by Heinrich:

The stealing problem is always in the back of my mind and with every action i do, i have to think about how i prevent to get abused. You cannot leave your stuff out of your eyes for five minutes or someone steals it. I love this game, but this problem is really driving me to a point where it's not worth anymore to invest time in producing higher tier stuff.

Those four stories above are just some examples of things i experienced in 400 hours gameplay. I'm sure every player that plays the game for a substantial amount of time has run into similar issues i described above. I don't think anyone has the golden solution for this problem, but as of now it's too easy for players to steal stuff they don't own nor produced and to hard for honest players to protect their hard work. It should be the other way around - hard to steal, easy to prevent it.

If you know of a way to protect your stuff, let me know. Kinda starting to lose fun in the game over this issue.

Play with a group.

No really, that's it.

The game is built around playing with a group or at least with a few friends. There's no 'private property' and you can only privately store stuff before you use it. So find some people you enjoy hanging out with and build a base or produce vehicles/ammo with them to use.

Suddenly all the 'theft' issues vanish because the game is not designed for solo play for high-tier vehicles, base building, or large-scale warfare; just like in real life.

Originally posted by Heinrich:

I don't think anyone has the golden solution for this problem, but as of now it's too easy for players to steal stuff they don't own nor produced and to hard for honest players to protect their hard work. It should be the other way around - hard to steal, easy to prevent it.

If you know of a way to protect your stuff, let me know. Kinda starting to lose fun in the game over this issue.

In every scenario where people propose ideas around making stuff hard to steal, the in-game economy breaks as the proposed ideas actively encourage hoarding resources and that's already a problem with the extremely large clans.

If you operate on a system of usage rather than property, the game makes a lot more sense and you'll stop frustrating yourself by fighting against it and your faction.

Also it's entirely okay to take a break from the game and play something else.

There's a lot of QOL stuff this game needs to avoid burning it's players out because that's a common reason people simply stop playing and never come back.
Logistics and base-building are notorious for this as it's time-consuming to an extreme.

Thanks for your input. Some things i agree with, some things i don't. You also don't seem to quite understand the issue i have, but that's okay.

In the end it's a game i want to have fun with. I couldn't care less if the wardens or the colonials win, i just want to have a good time in a videogame. Right now it's easier to have a good time using a wrench and stealing a tank in ten minutes than spending hours building one on your own. That's like grinding entire nights to build a golden sword in a videogame just for someone to steal it from you. I know, Foxhole is not WoW, but in the end we're not fighting for land but are all here to have fun in a game. and i personally don't see the fun in grinding entire nights for other players. Might just be me though.

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Heinrich:

Thanks for your input. Some things i agree with, some things i don't. You also don't seem to quite understand the issue i have, but that's okay.

In the end it's a game i want to have fun with. I couldn't care less if the wardens or the colonials win, i just want to have a good time in a videogame. Right now it's easier to have a good time using a wrench and stealing a tank in ten minutes than spending hours building one on your own.

That's a fair opinion to have and in fact most people simply play on the frontline where tanks are often handed off when their crews are getting off or where the 'action' happens.

Securing the supplies for and building a tank can take a lot of time, especially if you're doing it solo. It's why forming/joining a group of some sort is heavily recommended.

[Heinrich]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by Heinrich:

Thanks for your input. Some things i agree with, some things i don't. You also don't seem to quite understand the issue i have, but that's okay.

In the end it's a game i want to have fun with. I couldn't care less if the wardens or the colonials win, i just want to have a good time in a videogame. Right now it's easier to have a good time using a wrench and stealing a tank in ten minutes than spending hours building one on your own.

Securing the supplies for and building a tank can take a lot of time, especially if you're doing it solo. It's why forming/joining a group of some sort is heavily recommended.

I'm not doing it solo. I'm in a regiment with 30+ active members, but we sleep at night. So our facility is basically a self-service shop for everyone at this time. We're already missing 3 battletanks and it's not really fun anymore. Also, we already did what you said in your post, hiding it in our facility in backline logi hub. I definitely won't be grinding entire nights anymore until we have the ability to lock our valuable stuff like BT's and SHT's.

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Heinrich:

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Securing the supplies for and building a tank can take a lot of time, especially if you're doing it solo. It's why forming/joining a group of some sort is heavily recommended.

I'm not doing it solo. I'm in a regiment with 30+ active members, but we sleep at night. So our facility is basically a self-service shop for everyone at this time. We're already missing 3 battletanks and it's not really fun anymore. Also, we already did what you said in your post, hiding it in our facility in backline logi hub. I definitely won't be grinding entire nights anymore until we have the ability to lock our valuable stuff like BT's and SHT's.

I'm not sure if it's different with the battletanks, but you should be able to produce them and put them into a private stockpile like other tanks until your group is ready to pull them out and use them for an operation.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

Originally posted by Heinrich:

I'm not doing it solo. I'm in a regiment with 30+ active members, but we sleep at night. So our facility is basically a self-service shop for everyone at this time. We're already missing 3 battletanks and it's not really fun anymore. Also, we already did what you said in your post, hiding it in our facility in backline logi hub. I definitely won't be grinding entire nights anymore until we have the ability to lock our valuable stuff like BT's and SHT's.

I'm not sure if it's different with the battletanks, but you should be able to produce them and put them into a private stockpile like other tanks until your group is ready to pull them out and use them for an operation.

Tanks produced at facilities are already pulled out of storage and cannot be brought back after they are modified on a facility pad.

[Heinrich]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

Originally posted by AmesNFire:

I'm not sure if it's different with the battletanks, but you should be able to produce them and put them into a private stockpile like other tanks until your group is ready to pull them out and use them for an operation.

Tanks produced at facilities are already pulled out of storage and cannot be brought back after they are modified on a facility pad.

Battletanks are not pulled out of storage, they don't require a base vehicle. You build them directly on the pad. It would already be enough if battletanks that are produced on a pad are reversable and we can put 1-2 in the seaport. Although that's already kinda low, because when we do a battletanktank op with 30+ people we already need like 4 battletanks + reserve. I'm not claiming to have the golden solution to the problem and balance issues that come along with it, but the current system really needs some work to balance public needs and the wishes of large groups. I don't want to put 20 BT's in private stockpile to gather dust, i just want to not have headache every time i plan on doing something with a BT.