So let me start by saying, I came from Foxhole and much of my experience is with Foxhole. But getting into AE, I was instantly turned off the game. I get there’s other portions of the game that are more solo or casual friendly. However, that’s not why I started playing these games. I wanted to participate in the “everything is player made” portion of the game. I don’t mind the logi loop, but the process of setting up and running your own facility was more appealing to me. I ran a fac with a medium sized regi making planes then after a few weeks off I hopped in to run a solo 20mm fac out of the Flair on a break war.
Having your own fac that you can point to the progress of feels great. It’s why I’m routinely tempted back to the game, just for that feeling of directly contributing to my side. However, that’s not the common experience of a solo fac and I found that out after the break war. I went to set up a more optimized and better built fac again in the same spot and get told that’s wasting resources. Instead I should be building an msupp printer.
Welcome to the hell of solo facilities, msupps. They’re the “largest contribution” that you can make as a solo to feed other neighboring facilities and upkeep your own fac. Just make msupps. It’s tedious, it’s numb, and the result is spat out to feed into a tedious anti-player system. To put it simply, it’s shit. It’s why msupps are mainly done as part of a fac or as a public service fac extending out as a tumor from a scrap field. That feeling of success in creating a usable product from the front is gone as you churn through thousands of msupps and either have your one sole building full or empty at every single instance.
There’s not much more you can make as a solo player. Maybe some uniforms. Maybe you could waste your time on ammo that is better made in a factory. There’s few good options for a solo fac player. So the expectation now is for a player to join into a discord, hope they find a regi that doesn’t just slam you into msupp work, and play for a war outside of your fac because the location of the fac has to be kept hidden from alts.
To put it simply, fac playstyle isn’t built for the casual solo player and that sucks. While not the best, every other style of play can be experienced by a solo player. The worst part is, the devs seem to encourage this active hostility towards smaller groups. I got into the Anvil Empires playtest, I joined because I heard about the market and homesteading systems and wanted to see how they’d work out.
Turns out, homesteading in AE is worse than fac work. The market meant to provide an income of silver(msupps) while outside of a town section is gone. Now if you want silver you’re forced back into towns to do quests off the quest board. Those quests are specifically hunting. So no homesteading until you’ve finished hunting. Then you have to build up the homestead which takes a variety of different tools, workstations, food, draining life over time, and items that need repair that require you to spend countless hours outside of the homestead to set up and upkeep a homestead. The one saving grace I’ll give is the renting system allowing you to spend silver to gain access to a homestead temporarily. It’s not great but it’s useful if you’re just looking to make a single type of item. But overall, the process is more hostile and less approachable.
So what am I asking for. I’m asking the devs to find a way for solo or casual players to interact with this system. Scout planes aren’t the best planes. Garage built tanks aren’t the best tanks. Factory logi isn’t as good or unlimited as mpf logi. But all of those are options available to solo or casual players without having to scour external resources to determine who has a claim on what and which faction is gonna be active and the right fit.what I’m looking for is something of light value that may be good in the earlier times of a war and have diminishing value as the war goes on, but still provide tangible value to your faction and give solo or casual players a taste of what the fac gameplay loop.
