A specialized logistics vehicle designed to build, rebuild, and upgrade large structures. The BMS - Fabricator, also known as the Advanced Construction Vehicle, is an upgraded version of the BMS - Universal Assembly Rig, distinguishable by its black chassis. It is a rare sight on the battlefield, seen only in the mid to late game as it is locked behind by the tech tree.
Advanced Construction Vehicles are the advanced variant of the ordinary Construction Vehicle, upgraded from the BMS - Universal Assembly Rig on a Field Station at the cost of 10 processed refined materials. As a result, they’re as capable of the same things and applications as the average Construction Vehicle but can also construct advanced structures that the BMS - Universal Assembly Rig is incapable of.
But where its presence is rare, its uses are many. From doing everything a regular construction vehicle but better and faster, and then some, the Advanced Construction Vehicle is a top-tier vehicle for when you need to construct something fast, quick, and complex! Advanced Construction Vehicles are important for several reasons:
It can build, rebuild, and upgrade everything that a Construction Vehicle can
Can also build Pillboxes, Watch Towers, Walls, and Dragon’s Teeth
Able to build faster than a Hammer at a rate of 2 materials per second
Can rebuild destroyed positions faster
In this guide, we’ll outline 20 tricks that’ll be sure to get you familiarized with how Advanced Construction Vehicles can be used to their utmost efficiency. This article will be a good way to know the ins and outs of building as well, both with and without the Advanced Construction Vehicle!
Tip #1 - Rebuilding Destroyed Structures
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Both Construction Vehicles and Advanced Construction Vehicles have the same rate of building, the ACV has much more leeway and flexibility in what it can interact with compared to the Construction Vehicle. That, and multiple ACVs can interact with the same blueprint at the same time while only 1 CV can interact with a blueprint, is a huge amplifier of its potential for assisting every frontline that needs a rapid reinforcement of AI defenses and structures.
When approaching a destroyed building in an Advanced Construction Vehicle, ensure that you have the required amount of materials in the ACV’s inventory as that is where the ACV will use its materials from. While the amount required depends on the upgrades, make sure to plan accordingly.
After that, press the “E” button and hover over the destroyed structure to make a blueprint which you can then hit with the Advanced Construction Vehicle’s arm by aiming with the “RMB” mouse button and holding the “LMB” mouse button until completion.
Tip #2 - Take Note of Structural Integrity
It is important, before even the act of building itself is done, that you have an understanding of the Structural Integrity (SI) mechanic that is built into Foxhole's building system. You can find structural integrity in bunker pieces by pressing "F" with a hammer and hovering your cursor over the bunker piece you wish to inspect. The structural integrity of a bunker structure is denoted by a percentage mark from 1% to 100%.
There is a delicate balance in building bunkers, which you should note when using any of the two construction vehicles. A balance between the health and durability of a bunker structure, and their structural integrity. While a single bunker piece will always have an SI of 100%, adding bunker pieces to it will increase the health pool of the said bunker piece but will yield diminishing returns as more and more bunker pieces are added.
In other words, there is a certain point where additional pieces to a bunker structure will actually begin to reduce the overall health of your bunker! So watch out for that when building with the Advanced Construction Vehicle.
Tip #3 - Scope Out Locations
Building in Foxhole requires an extreme amount of time to produce results, depending on what you want to achieve. That being said, it's also vitally important in the process of building and using the experience you'll have at this point to be able to scope out and select locations that thread a careful balance between safety for yourself and need an array of defenses or structures built along them.
While you are free to choose any open spot at the front, take special note of the changing tides of battle and the possibility that your base or defenses might be attacked by the enemy before they are even completed as the frontline waxes and wanes almost every hour.
Tip #4 - Avoid Unnecessary Risks
Advanced Construction Vehicles are expensive to field, and they are key targets for any intelligent enemy commander or conspiring enemy soldier. When using an Advanced Construction Vehicle, take special caution and frequently check your map or scan the area on foot ahead of you to ensure that no enemy partisans or enemy vehicles are nearby that aren’t occupied to target your vehicle.
Advanced Construction Vehicles, like all non-combat vehicles such as trucks, jeeps, and bikes are quite easily disabled and destroyed with even small arms fire. Try to have an escort of allied soldiers when building, or keep yourself in view of AI defenses to dissuade any enemy soldier from going up to you and just shooting you to smithereens as even a pistol can damage your Advanced Construction Vehicle!
Tip #5 - Use the Niche of the ACV
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The niche of Advanced Construction Vehicles is their ability to build additional structures that ordinary Construction Vehicles and Hammers cannot normally do. Advanced Construction Vehicles can fill in dug foxholes, craters, destroyed trenches, and ruined bunkers up to Tier 1 and Tier 2 at a faster rate, making it quicker to recover the location from the enemy and build new working defenses on top of them.
Additionally, emplacements such as Dragon’s Teeth and advanced forms of Walls are also specialties of the Advanced Construction Vehicles, allowing you to deploy them in bulk as opposed to the tedious process of building them manually on foot.
These structures are vital to any worthwhile defense as they can deny enemy flanks and repositioning that might try to take advantage of any existing weaknesses in your AI defenses, allowing your front to focus on key points such as roads and chokepoints instead of defending large open fields where they are wasted.
Tip #6 - Build Along a Road
The lifeline of any effective base or defense is quick access to a road leading both in and out of it. Always ensure that, when building with the Advanced Construction Vehicle, your structures are situated near or around a road, as without road access logistics becomes exponentially more difficult and will make logistical personnel less keen on supplying your base or location!
Tip #7 - Strategic Placement is… Strategic!
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Building with the Advanced Construction Vehicle is an errand in itself. Ideally, you want your defenses and structures to be in strategically important areas where they can be used to their fullest as they are intended to be. Keep in mind that your bunker garrisons and defenses exist not to preserve themselves, but are built to protect other important locations on the map.
These important locations and structures can be anything, from relic bases to town halls to harbors and seaports, to factories and facilities, and to choke points and key roads in between such locations.
Tip #8 - Upgrading Existing Structures
By driving close to a building and having the required amount of materials for the structure you’re trying to upgrade with a specific upgrade, you can upgrade a larger amount of structures in a faster amount of time with the use of the Advanced Construction Vehicle than you would have been able to do on-foot or with an ordinary Construction Vehicle.
Tip #9 - Think Big, Build Smart!
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In using Advanced Construction Vehicles for building, you should understand and be aware of their sheer flexibility and applicable uses in the building aspect of Foxhole. Their most common application is in the acceleration of the construction and setting of concrete structures along key strategic locations along the map, often in the hands of organized regiments and groups of people aiming to create a major chokepoint for any enemy advance.
That said, you should take note of these structures built by other players, as they yield insight into what is effective and what can be achieved by a construction vehicle and an organized player base working towards a specific objective.
Tip #10 - Know your Vehicle’s Limits!
Advanced Construction Vehicles are eeeeextremely slow utility vehicles, even more so off-road than on-road. Even soldiers carrying heavy weapons and encumbered can overtake you so know your vehicle's limits! While you can build at a faster rate than a player with a hammer and can construct more advanced and complex structures than an ordinary Construction Vehicle can, you are also extremely vulnerable to small arms fire and lack any armaments to defend yourself with.
Tip #11 - Leave your ACV Unlocked!
All Construction Vehicles should always be left unlocked when you are done using them, for other allied soldiers to be able to quickly use them to build additional structures and defenses in your absence.
As one of the few vehicles in Foxhole that cannot be captured, you can rest easy and leave your Advanced Construction Vehicle unlocked but parked safely by a player or map base without fear of it getting stolen by the enemy while you're away.
Don't expect that same reassurance to apply to thieving faction members though.
Tip #12 - Structure decay is your enemy!
When a structure is built in Foxhole, it'll have a grace period before it slowly begins to decay. This applies to any structures you built using the Advanced Construction Vehicle!
A way to prevent decay is by placing your defenses and structures within range of a base with the necessary garrison upgrades and stocked with garrison supplies. You can check if you are within range via the construction interface itself, showing you how far away you are from a nearby supply structure. Additionally, you can check the supply structure your defenses are connected to by inspecting the stockpile and seeing if they have a supply of garrison supplies or bunker supplies.
Do note that decay within 150 m of a regional border is not preventable and will also happen faster, so plan accordingly with your Advanced Construction Vehicle as it might not be worthwhile to build there! Repairing a decayed structure also partially restarts the grace period on that structure proportional to how much health you repaired, ranging from a few minutes to a few hours.
Tip #13 - Facilities are your best friends!
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Facilities in Foxhole are large player-built structures that are constructed with either a Construction Vehicle or an Advanced Construction Vehicle atop foundations. In the current atmosphere and environment of the game, facilities are the foundation of each faction's war industry as they can be built in a flexible amount of ways to refine and produce materials and products that can be shipped off to the frontline for use.
Advanced Construction Vehicles can only be constructed via facilities. Only through the Light Vehicle Assembly Station with the Field Station upgrade, can the Advanced Construction Vehicle be upgraded from a base Construction Vehicle.
As such, you can consider them as your best ally in the midlines and backlines as you can also source your building materials from them due to their ability to have different structures that can produce the necessary materials!
Tip #14 - Reserve your Bunkers!
The most common application of Advanced Construction Vehicles is their use in building bunker complexes. That said, when building near a road whether that's in the backline or frontline, you'll encounter either a genuinely uninformed new player just wanting to help or malicious players that will obstruct or tamper with your bunker designs while you're distracted or logged out.
One way to combat the possibility of this ever happening is by "reserving" your bunker structures. Reservations are a relatively new mechanic added into Foxhole as a quality-of-life addition for builders which allows them to reserve a bunker they have constructed or affiliated with via regiment, lasting for 48 hours which can be constantly refreshed in between.
By reserving your bunkers, you can prevent other players who aren't you or in your regiment from tampering with them by reversing bunker garrison placements or removing key upgrades from your bunker within those 48 hours. This should allow you enough time to do other things without worrying about any disruptive activities on your structures directly!
Tip #15 - Understand the Terrain
In a similar token to the previous tips about scoping out locations and building on strategic locations, it is important also to know the terrain itself in Foxhole while building and using the Advanced Construction Vehicle. Watch for dips and valleys in the game as your vehicle most likely cannot climb the way back it came without great effort, or even might get stuck in a pit if you're not careful!
Tip #16 - Variety in All Defenses
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The key to any effective defensive structure, especially in the case of using an Advanced Construction Vehicle, is the necessity for variety. Through a balance between resource costs, location and terrain, and accessibility, you should ensure that your buildings and structures can survive for long enough even without your presence as you can't always be in the game and responsive all the time.
Here's a tip: while constructing in any way (eg. hammer, construction vehicle), you can hold the "Shift" button while placing a structure to free-move with it and not automatically connect to an existing structure. This is especially handy for building tighter or more advanced forms of bunkers and trench lines, as well as pillboxes since it can allow for a better level of precision and accuracy while building.
Try to add variety to your defensive patterns. Mix and match both anti-infantry and anti-vehicle defensive structures in between each other and overlapping in range and coverage so that it'll keep enemy forces delayed to buy you and your frontline more time to mount a proper defense and counter-attack!
Tip #17 - When to upgrade, when to not.
This tip can be applied for both pillbox defenses and bunker defenses, as it is possible to do both quickly and effectively with the Advanced Construction Vehicle!
It is better to refrain from upgrading your bunker defenses from T2 to T3 if you’re expecting them to see action within the next day or two. The reason for this is that upgrading a bunker piece into concrete has a downtime where you’ll have to wait several days for the material to cure and harden to its maximum strength, making it particularly vulnerable while it’s still wet and drying.
Tip #18 - Border Bases and Construction Vehicles!
Construction Vehicles and Border Bases have a connective relationship that affects the use and importance of each vehicle and structure. Border bases are special world bases that spawn at fixed locations near frontier borders, which occurs when a whole region or part of the map is fully under the control of one faction. They start unbuilt, and after a grace period, can be claimed by pressing "E" which instantly builds them up with a stockpile of supplies for both construction and soldierly duties.
In this particularly vulnerable moment, as enemy forces retreat across the region and your allies move forward and travel into the next region to continue their push, the importance of both Construction Vehicles and Advanced Construction Vehicles is highlighted as they can accelerate the construction of impromptu defenses by the border base's AI range quickly to prevent any rapid enemy counter-attacks.
Be careful though, and be ready to escape back to friendly territory just in case the enemy does attack and overwhelm your location faster than you can mount any worthwhile AI defenses!
Tip #19 - Quick Pulling
The art of quick pulling is an action that can only be done through vehicles with the mechanic. By definition, quick pulling is the ability for vehicles like construction vehicles, trucks, and utility vehicles to be able to pull from stockpiles twice as fast as when compared to soldiers on foot and en masse.
Advanced Construction Vehicles, in the same manner as Construction Vehicles, can pull construction materials faster from the stockpiles of bunker bases, relic bases, town halls, safehouses, and storage depots twice as fast and three times as much as compared to a soldier on foot!
Tip #20 - The Waiting…
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Much of Foxhole, especially in the building aspect of the game, is waiting. It takes grit and a whole truckload of patience to see your efforts rewarded with good results. When using the Advanced Construction Vehicle, you might build a whole bunker complex or a whole garrison defense quickly, but you might have to wait hours or even days before they see action if you're in a low population front or in the backlines.
Even then, they might not ever see action as your faction continues to push and take enemy territory! It is important to understand that even though your base and defenses might not see action, their very presence on the map can inspire confidence in your fellow faction players and dissuade any partisans from trying to exploit vulnerable parts of your map where your defenses are holding the chokepoint.
You'll often never hear any compliments or any talk about your defenses, but rest assured that they have helped in one way or another to your faction's victory and struggle against the enemy faction! And that should be enough…
Afterthoughts
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While they are extremely slow and easy to take down, BMS - Fabricator Advanced Construction Vehicles fulfill a key role in the war effort of the factions in Foxhole as logistics and utility vehicles specially designed to build, rebuild, and upgrade structures.
Distinct with their black chassis in comparison to the lighter colored BMS- Universal Assembly Rig, the BMS - Fabricator, otherwise known as the Advanced Construction Vehicle, was introduced more than a year ago along with the Entrenched update that put Foxhole out of early access.
The industry of war in Foxhole never stops, churning day and night without rest. Look out for more articles and guides for the dozens of different vehicles and mechanics you can find while playing Foxhole!
Whether perched atop an overlook or huddled over a map like a general, Donn approaches writing with the mindset of a tactician. Over a thousand hours of gaming makes him a key voice on the RTS scene.
Gamer Since:
2010
Currently Playing:
Foxhole, Deep Rock Galactic, League of Legends
Top 3 Favorite Games:
League of Legends, This War of Mine, Wargame: Red Dragon
