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User:Boniface Vachon/Homefront Strategy

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Note: See the old page (User:Boniface Vachon/Homefront Strategy (2025)) for pre-March 2026 fits and info.

Many strategies work for Homefronts. Different groups and fleets will balance priorities differently: site speed, ISK/hr, SP requirement, fit cost, competition resilience, execution simplicity, themes, versatility, interoperability, and more. This page will outline a number of strategies, focusing on the ones used by the HFC[1].

The fits we recommend prioritize making the sites as easy and forgiving as possible while remaining affordable. Our loaner fleet includes the bare minimum fit for each role (targetting the lowest possible skill point requirement), as well as one or more upgraded fits requiring higher skills. If you plan to buy your own ships, tweak and upgrade the fits according to your own skills and preferences.


Fit names theoretically follow this format, trying to go from general to specific to make searching more convenient: 

HFC <site> [region] [fleet comp -] <ship role> <hull name> [skill level]
Region color codes used in fit names:
* Blue = Caldari
* Gold = Amarr
* Green = Gallente
* Red = Minmatar
* No color code = any region
Thank You 💗

These fits and strategies were put together with the help of many people, starting with the people who first tackled Homefronts on release and continuing to the people improving our understanding and mastery to this day. You are all champions. Thank you!

I cannot mention everyone by name, and I will feel bad about that. I will work on this list over time, but some is better than none so I will thank a few of you specifically:

  • Lynna Hilanen: As much the source of many of these fits as anyone else. Bouncing both genius and dumbass ideas back and forth has led to some of our most noteworthy breakthroughs. Many correcting mistakes, lots of checked math. Bastion of experience and knowledge.
  • Ellis Ofsol: The frontman, the organizer, the workhorse. The fleets you ran brought us together, the scheduled events kept us going. You bring in new people, and new people are awesome. The space paperwork behind the scenes is invisible to most but makes everything run smoothly.
  • Hondo Otsito: The calm, the experience, the willingness and ability to help. The best kind of rock.
  • barb4r1an: The insatiable warrior, the definition of flying boldly. The kind of player anyone would want on their team.
  • DeMoonKing: Quick to help and contribute as anyone else. Ran fleets when no one else stepped up. Never-give-up-er.
  • Tibix QLS: Energy. He does things, all the time. Give him a bone and he steals the rest of the T-Rex from the museum and starts an archeology club. Sometimes I worry that the fits I theorycraft will never see the light of day, then they show up the next day in a Tibix Fleettm near you.
  • Motanica Yaken: The first introduction to Homefronts (AARs especially) for many of us was by Motanica. Early mentor that gave us the tools to start this journey. Has continued to help, with the wiki and elsewhere.
  • Amonte: Ever-present in our early science fleets. Emotional support in voice. Generous. A groovier guy than he gives himself credit for.
  • Sithue Leatteci
  • Danny Kent
  • Inuki Odunen: Amarr BS connoisseur, but since those can't be brought into Homefronts he falls back on being just a great squad commander and vibe improver.
  • Corthous Sibess, Akshcorp, Redaous Thered, Kraiklyn Vuld, Gorchakov I and the rest of the US PvE SIG: Every fleet with you folks is a pleasure and an inspiration. We push limits one way, you push limits another way. I have learned from your way and it has noticeably improved how I approach things. The SIG corp is such a useful tool and resource, too.
  • SeeZur Akuma: Hype. He keeps the Homefront Operations Discord a functional place, and we can all use more functional places. Has anyone else flown a Dramiel in AAR?
  • Evon R'al: Guidance and example-setting for all the wiki work we have done. Updating the Homefront wiki was the fundamental, cornerstone effort of this community. Without Evon R'al it wouldn't be as polished and wouldn't be as good.
  • Every E-UNI member, ex-member, and non-member who continues to improve the wider EVE community despite any drama. Some of you really rise above the bullshit, I admire you.

Universal/Regional

Homefronts come in two types:

  • Universal sites are identical across all regions of space
  • Regional sites have different EWAR, damage types, and/or resist types depending on the empire you are in

The fits on this page are predominantly Universal and Minmater (Red) fits.

In most cases, adjusting for a different region is easy and does not require a change in strategy. In most cases, all you need is to change ammo damage type and a couple resist modules. In other cases, fitting for EWAR protection becomes prudent. In a few cases, changing the strategy slightly or switching between armor and shield tank makes the site much easier (eg. an Explosive/Kinetic site is much easier to shield tank and an EM/Thermal site is much easier to armor tank).

Abyssal Artifact Recovery - Universal

More in-depth AAR math, information, and rambling can be found here, if AAR asteroids get changed to 120 m3 in the future then it will be more relevant than it is currently.

Basic Strategy: Pioneer Duet

  1. DD rep the solo logi
  2. Assign drone bunny. Shoot logi and neuts first.
  3. Two Pioneers mine 6 rocks each per wave (see images for split examples)
  4. Warp out after wave 9 or die
  • An infographic showing the Inner/Outer asteroid field split split in Abyssal Artifact Recovery sites. From roughly 15km down from the beacon, one pioneer mines the furthest rocks and the other mines the closest rocks.
    Inner/Outer split
  • An infographic showing two alternative asteroid field bisections in Abyssal Artifact Recovery sites. In the first split, one miner mines the 6 rocks most SW and the other NE. In the second split, one miner mines the line of rocks most SE, and the other the NW cluster of rocks.
    Dancing Snakes and Squid Split

Logi Fits

DD Fits

Miner Fits

Info

The most important part of a AAR fleet are the miners, as the critical objective is to completely mine the rocks before time runs out. We focus on yield per cycle. The asteroids have 108 m3 of ore, the final waves have a timer of 120 seconds, and mining laser cycle times are 15 seconds. This means you can fit 8 cycles in a wave with zero margin (impossible, but perhaps feasible with abyssal miners). Each Pioneer mines 2 sets of 3 rocks, using 3 cycles for each set gives a margin of 30 seconds. Based on this, we set the minimum yield per cycle at 36 m3.

Yield breakpoints:

  • 36 m3 - 3 cycles
  • 54 m3 - 2 cycles (if you use Miner IIs, a residue proc means 1 cycle!)
  • 108 m3 - 1 cycle

You can see the rough ranges needed for different splits in the infographics above. The most common split is the Inner/Outer (aka Near/Far), being the simplest to execute and requiring one miner to have a mining range of 24km.[2]


Spider Droneboats

Three or four spider tanked drone boats, with the same duet Pioneer miners as above, can do the site without a dedicated logi. These fits have a large cap transmitter for capchain and 2 remote reps, the last high slot is swapped depending on role: Drone Link Augmentor if low control range, beam laser for the drone bunny or cache popper, and at least one with a medium cap transmitter to feed a neuted Pioneer.

Solo Venture

An infographic showing how to execute a solo Venture AAR mining strategy, starting between the northern and southwestern corners and bouncing toward the southeastern corner each wave
Solo Venture AAR guide

This is a silly, novelty strategy. Consider it a challenge mode for a AAR miner, not a normal strategy for a normal fleet.

This guide assumes no mutated modules. As usual, mutated modules can change everything, and can of course make this strategy much easier.

Ventures have lower range and fewer lasers than Pioneers. These two weaknesses lead to far more active gameplay than using a Pioneer Duet or even a solo Pioneer. The main difficulty is the lower range. Whereas a Pioneer can achieve enough range to reach every asteroid from a static position, a Venture cannot. Instead, the Venture begins each wave between two corners it can reach at the same time, then moves toward the far corner over the course of a wave.

This Venture also does not achieve the full 108 m3 cycle yield needed to guarantee mining each rock in a single cycle, it merely reaches 107.967 m3 with perfect skills. This means there is a 0.813% chance of not one-cycling a rock. As there are 108 rocks across all 9 waves, you can expect it to happen (in the inaugural science proof of concept fleet, I believe it happened twice in a single wave). It is not a disaster if it does a couple times, it just requires a tiny extra short-cycle (theoretically half of a second).

The Venture needs 90 seconds of mining to finish all the rocks, leaving 30 seconds of margin during the three final waves. Unlike a solo Pioneer, because of needing to fly around, target more rocks than normal, and the occasional 2-cycle these 30 seconds get chewed through easily. Expect to finish waves 7-9 with few seconds to spare.

Any methods of smoothing and simplifying the strategy is helpful. One big aid is dropping a Mobile Depot at the starting point. Since you are pressed for time during the wave and cannot see the rocks until the wave starts, having your starting point marked and anchored lets you position perfectly before each wave. You can do this during the first wave where your time margin is much higher. Then during each wave you can simply approach the furthest rock to get in range of it, and eventually approach the Mobile Depot to prepare for the next wave. The Depot can also be used to avoid the jettison cooldown.

The Venture cannot hold a full site of ore, be sure to empty your cargo to avoid filling up partway through a wave.

Mining drones are not needed. They are slow and tasking them may cost you time, but they can theoretically be used to mine one rock. Not counting travel time (substantial!), 2 Mining Drone IIs with max skills have enough yield on paper to mine 2 rocks in ~95 seconds. And anyway, if you use drones, did you really solo mine? You had help from two little buddies.

Auto Targeting System, as usual, should not be activated and only fit to increase target cap from 6 to 8.

The Fit

Dread Assault - Regional

  1. Logi capchain with 1 transmitter, the rest go on the ally Dread
  2. Use reppers as needed
  3. Shoot Focused prefix enemies (they neut the objective, slowing down the site). 3a. Shoot ECM (Abacinating/Boycotting/Deceiver/Hyphema) only if jams are a problem, with 3 ECCM can probably ignore them 3b. Shoot drone hate (Activist, Blood, Corruptor, Errant) only if drone damage is a problem, otherwise ignore them too
  4. Hope the third shot doesnt miss
  • 3-4 Logi
  • 1-2 DD

Shield

This is a safe and slow fit, intended for a 1 up/1 down capchain.

This fit is less forgiving, single capchain only.

Cheaper, lower skill version

Selfrep version. Seems to have enough tank to finish the site in the current iteration of Homefront rat behavior, no guarantee it will work against all enemy fleet compositions or with any further tweaks to rat behavior.

Bringing DD is not necessary, but this is a good option.

Armor

Emergency Aid - Regional

  1. Logi capchain and rep structure, fleet, and drone taunt
  2. DD kills Devastating ___
  • 4 Logi
  • 1 DD

Shield

Approach structure and drop Warden when 26km or closer, to put Ospreys in optimal rep range. Orbit Warden. Warden tanks drone aggro letting the fleet launch their Acolytes. Bellicose is drone bunny and kills Devastating (structure aggro) and maybe Corruptors (if drone hate is way too high). Ospreys rep structure, Warden, and the fleet.

Mambas, Vexors, Kikis, and other ships all work as DD, as do many other ships. Importantly, they need to be able to apply damage to frigates and destroyers. Depending on the DD ships used and skill levels of the pilots, adjusting to 2 DD and 3 Logi may work better.

Armor

Metaliminal Meteoroid - Regional

  1. Miners mine asteroid
    • Don't use mining drones if drone hate is on the field (Atgeir/Corrupted/Smuggler/Wrathful)
  2. Logi keeps miners alive
  • 4-5 Miners
  • 0-1 Logi

Raid - Regional

  1. Approach rat hauler spawn point, first hauler spawns at 19:13 on the timer
  2. Tackle rat haulers when they spawn
  3. Kill rat haulers
  4. Hauler(s) loot wrecks and deliver to drop off
  • 1 Logi
  • 1 Hauler
  • 3 DD

OR

  • 1 Logi
  • 4 Squall? 2 Squall?

OR

  • 1 Logi
  • 1 Squall with 7000 m3 cargo? 2?
  • +DD

Hauler Fits

As your Caldari Hauler skill gets higher so does your cargo capacity, so you can adjust your fit. "CH#" denotes the level needed for each fit

Salvage Research - Universal

  1. Pilot with aggro kites away, can salvage outer wrecks
  2. Pilots without aggro should salvage wrecks close to enemies
  • 3 Salvagers


HFC SR Punisher MWD is fast
HFC SR Punisher AB is very tanky
HFC SR Heron is fast and squishy

Stabilize Rift - Universal

  1. Neut all structures to below 20%
  2. Kill cap rats (Waking ___) ASAP
  3. Kill drone hate (Stirring) if you want to use squishy drones like EV-300
  4. Kill neuters (Enervating) to lower incoming damage and neut pressure
  • 3 Dragoons
  • Replace 1 or 2 with Cruors if you feel fancy

Suspicious Signal - Regional

2025 Crimson Harvest One-Cycle Fleet

Lots of overheating with far from perfect skills

2026 Gallente Election One-Cycle Fleet

No overheating, better skills than the CH fleet

Traffic Stop - Kinda Universal

  1. Cargo scan haulers
  2. Kill any haulers with Contraband
  3. Kill Phaseless Cutters so you don't die

You need at least one cargo scanner, multiple people scanning doesn't hurt. Webs give more time to kill the haulers, but aren't necessary. Don't let the escorts pile up, kill them off. It's better to let some haulers through unscathed rather than get overwhelmed. Bringing an MTU as well as a tractor beam helps collect the loot promptly.

Recommended comp:

  • 2 Thrashers to scan and kill haulers
  • 1 Support Algos/Dragoon to kill Phaseless Cutters and tractor loot

Many combinations of destroyers and frigates work

Footnotes

  1. ^ Previously the HomeFront Community: primarily EU-timezone, primarily Minmatar space, part of the E-UNI PvE SIG organization. Now the Homefront Collective [HF.C], an independent Homefront focused corp, still running events in E-UNI and cooperating with E-UNI PvE SIG command.
  2. ^ 24km (Miner IIs, Mining Destroyer 5) is technically possible, see the three images above
    • Screenshot showing the furthest 3 rocks being mined with Miner IIs having a max range of 24km
      "The 24km Proof"
    • Screenshot showing the position from a "bird's-eye" view
      Top view of position
    • Screenshot showing the position from the side, showing angle and distance from the site beacon
      Side view of position
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