Foxhole, the war MMO with months-long battles fought by thousands of real players, is evolving once again with planes, bombers, and paratroopers

I have around 25 hours in Foxhole, which in war terms means I'm still green as grass. My Foxhole habit began a few years ago, right before it hit 1.0. I jumped headfirst into a war that'd already been raging for weeks. That first night I didn't touch a gun or even get close to a battlefield for hours. Instead, I worked miles behind the front line learning how to pilot scrappers that turn metal trash into materials that other players could use to manufacture tanks, trucks, and munitions. It wasn't glamorous work, but someone has to do it.

To describe playing Foxhole is to illustrate why it's the most impressive war simulation ever conceived: Thousands of players duking it out MMO-style in single war, fought over several real months on one gigantic shared map. Every tank, every boat, every train, every power pole, every uniform, every bullet is manufactured and transported to the front lines by an elaborate logistics network operated by real players.

Toronto-based Siege Camp has been operating Foxhole for eight years to quiet acclaim, steadily releasing free updates that greatly expand its war simulation: train networks, resource infrastructures, naval warfare. The Foxhole battlefields of today span land, sea, and soon… air.

The first stop of my developer-led tour of Foxhole's air combat update (coming February 9) was not a runway, but the factory where players will assemble scout planes, fighters, and behemoth bombers that can singlehandedly change the landscape of a battle.

Much like boats, tanks, and trains, planes have to be manufactured in pieces before they're assembled, and those pieces have to be individually transported by trailer or train. Siege Camp demonstrated the piece-by-piece construction of a bomber with pre-prepared assets, but in a real war it could take hours of coordination to assemble a fleet of trucks or conscript the logistics train to get parts where they need to be.

Then our small squad of devs, press, and YouTubers climbed aboard a pair of bombers. As soon as our developer pilot started the engine, none of us could hear a word they were saying over Discord anymore. "Oh yeah, you might want to turn down your game volume for this part," I could just barely make out over the sky beat's roars.

Fox Die

I had the distinct honor of operating the bombs themselves—pressing F opened the bomb doors, holding left-click initiated the carpet bomb. As someone who hasn't played Foxhole since before it had trains or warships, watching a single bombing run press delete on weeks' worth of hand-placed bunkers, bases, and fortifications had me in an Oppenheimer thousand-yard stare. Holy hell.

I appreciate that, like anything else in Foxhole, it doesn't take an hour of tutorials to hop into a plane and take off. Just throttle up on the mouse wheel, pull up with WASD, and make sure to stow away the landing gear so you don't stall out. We cruised around a Colonial archipelago getting our air legs and took pot shots at some Warden devs. Getting around was no problem once I was airborne, but landing was another story. I got a little lost and decided to land on the next island I saw, which was going great until I ran out of island and dove propeller-first into the drink. KIA.

We also got to demo what's sure to become every Foxhole squad's new favorite way to surprise the enemy: paratroopers. Climb aboard a specialized transport plane, strap on a parachute (seriously don't forget that part), and jump when the pilot lowers the ramp. Watching a dozen little parachutes pop as we floated down to earth was the most Foxhole has ever felt like playing with little green army men.

There's no getting around the fact flying in a 3D overhead game is a little strange—you can't see far ahead of where you're going, and understanding where you are in relation to the ground is harder than other war games with flying. But Siege Camp clearly thought about that and included a helpful green line connecting your plane to the ground that lets you know, at a glance, if you're flying higher or lower than the planes around you.

I'm neither prepared or qualified to comment on how the wider Foxhole community will embrace air warfare. My gut says very well, but part of me also wonders how this huge upgrade in the arsenal will change how Foxhole wars are won. I expect the Wardens and Colonials will be in steep competition to produce the first bomber, but if they're as expensive to make as Siege Camp suggested, can either side afford to lose one to enemy dogfighters?

The neat part of Foxhole is that these are genuine concerns. All I know for sure is that I'll be there when the new war starts on February 9. If you wanna find me, I'll be on the Colonial side, probably dodging bombs in a logi truck.