Stronghold

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Foward Operating Bases (FOBs) are low-power structures spawned in space by Gurista and Blood Raider NPC pirate forces in high security space as a staging point for their NPC asteroid belt mining forces and as a host structure for updated NPCs that can cause some amount of disruption in any one system. Although these are somewhat related to the lowsec and nullsec ♦ Sotiyos, they use different mechanics and principles. Both use updated ♦ (diamond) non-player character ships which are part of CCP's Artificial Intelligence (AI) revamp for selected environments.

History

Forward Operating Bases were first deployed with the [1.0 expansion] on the 24th of October, 2017. They were further revised in the updates of [Race 1.0] release which changed some of the response and structure mechanics, and updated once again in the [2018 1.0] release which capped the response fleet in some ways.

In review, the first release (24 October 2017) of the FOBs put structures out in Gurista and Amarr high security regions. In those days players had to hunt down the FOBs in an intensive process by searching around asteroid belts from system to system looking for a clue such as ♦ Guristas Production Venture or ♦ Blood Raider Retriever: there was no other easy clue that there was an FOB in the system. Next, the hunter would launch combat probes and search for structures in deep safes, usually 40-70 AU from the main nexus of planets and star. Finally the Fleet Commander would bring in a fleet with high resists to their damage type (usually armor tanked) and attack the structure. The FOB would spawn a reinforcement fleet to counter the player fleet, roughly matching its power, and then when roughly 30% of the structure's hit points remained, a second reinforcement fleet would spawn. Finally when the structure was dead, NPC pirate miners would evacuate the system.

With the Arms Race 1.0 release (5 December 2017) an escalating reinforcement model was installed (and Forward Operating Bases can be now found via the Agency window). Then, when a player or fleet warped to the structure, four to five ships (usually cruiser hulls) would spawn. Then, roughly every sixty (60) seconds, new wave of forces would spawn. Kills for the structures plummeted to rock bottom: the solo Vexor Navy Issue with a battleship sized Microwarpdrive concept and the 500MN Cerberus doctrine was also shut down because the structure could now web a player to 300km range. More recently in the February 2018 release (13 February 2018) a limit on the reinforcement fleet response meant that solo runs are doable and more options are available again: the Remote Repair Dominix doctrine (or concept) has emerged as the prevalent choice.

Specifics

The Structure

In the Agency window, systems with FOBs currently show icons with the pirate logo when a player has chosen the Pirate Strongholds filter: it is further sub-filtered by the player's current region, although ones in neighboring regions can be shown as well.