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| Homefront Operations |
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| Universal Sites |
Homefront operations are Cosmic Anomalies in highsec that require a group of pilots covering specific roles from standard roles like DPS and logi to less common roles in fleets such as hacking and hauling. There were 6 types of them balanced for 5 players introduced in Viridian and 3 new types balanced for 3 players introduced in Equinox, each having its own scenario and requiring its own group composition and strategy. The acceleration gate on the entrance allows only certain types of ships depending on particular type.
Goal
The goal of these sites is to bring new and experienced capsuleers together to do new activities, help to establish social connections and introduce fleet gameplay.
Sites are located in empire owned High Security systems, mostly focused around trade hubs or career agent systems.
The enemies, narrative, and specific goals of a site are dependent on which empire's space it is found within.
Some sites introduce hostiles hailing from new traitorous corporations, splintering away from their empire.
Homefront types in different Empires
There is a total of 9 different types of Homefront Operations. Some of them have 4 different versions, depending on which empire space you are in; some of them have only one version. The differences between the versions are the type of pirates you face in each site and the type of electronic warfare (EWAR) that you face.
The following table provides an overview of the encountered EWAR and the primary and secondary damage types capsuleers should resist.
Type of ships allowed
The operations take place in a deadspace pocket with an acceleration gate that has ship restrictions.
For the 5-ships sites only the following type of ships are allowed:
- Tech 1 frigates, navy and pirate frigates
- Tech 1 destroyers, navy and pirate destroyers
- Tech 1 cruisers
- Tech 1 haulers, including Squall
- Ventures
For 3-ships sites the list is:
- Tech 1 frigates, navy and pirate frigates
- Tech 1 destroyers
- Ventures
Site summary
Dread Assault
- Main article: Dread Assault
Your objective is to keep a friendly Dreadnought operational by charging its capacitor three times to 30,000 units. After each charge, the allied Dread enters Siege mode for 90 seconds, during which it cannot accept any more capacitor. Hostile fleets will be on site, attempting to drain its power and overwhelm your defenses.
A chain of T1 logistics cruisers equipped with remote capacitor transmitters is essential to sustain the Dread, while damage-dealing ships are required to break neut pressure and clear the field.
Emergency Aid
- Main article: Emergency Aid
Emergency Aid tasks you with keeping a friendly asset alive for 10 minutes. Your fleet may provide either shield boosts or armor repairs. Hostile ships will remain on grid throughout the engagement, but destroying them only summons reinforcements—making firepower secondary to survival.
This site can be completed entirely with Logistics cruisers, with T1 hulls such as the Ospreys or Augurors proving effective. Success depends on strict coordination, careful capacitor management, and the ability to maintain continuous repairs under pressure.
Metaliminal Meteoroid
- Main article: Metaliminal Meteoroid
The mission revolves around mining a single large asteroid until it is fully depleted. Hostile ships will continuously respawn, so engaging them directly is not usefuf. Survival and efficiency are the priorities.
Teams can approach the task in different ways, such as using small mining ships with support, or tougher ships capable of withstanding damage while extracting ore.
Rewards come both from completing the site itself and from selling the mined ore, which has significant value.
Some groups choose to have an additional hauler remain outside the site to collect the ore separately, maximizing profit without sharing the standard payout. Overall, the focus is on coordination, endurance, and making the most of the ore’s market value.
Raid
- Main article: Raid
The mission centers on intercepting enemy haulers as they arrive. A new one appears quickly after you land on the site, but each will attempt to escape. If one gets away, you’ll need to wait for another to show up.
The key task is to warp disrupt them, recover the cargo, and deliver it safely to the nearby freighter waiting on grid. The cargo itself is bulky, so at least one fast hauler is needed to carry 3 large packages back to the drop-off.
A balanced team works best: ships to apply damage and hold targets in place, support to keep the group alive, and a hauler to secure and deliver the loot. The challenge is maintaining steady coordination so that nothing slips through.
Suspicious Signal
- Main article: Suspicious Signal
This mission focuses on bringing down an enemy structure. At first it cannot be harmed, and only becomes vulnerable once three data containers on the site are successfully hacked. Each successful hack opens a timed window, and if all are done together, the group has a short opportunity to inflict as much damage as possible.
The structure itself is tough, demanding steady firepower and good coordination. Typical groups bring strong damage-dealing ships, with some pilots handling the hacking, while others keep the team stable and supported.
The challenge lies in timing the hacks and concentrating fire so the structure can be destroyed before the opportunity closes.
Abyssal Artifact Recovery
- Main article: Abyssal Artifact Recovery
The Abyssal Artifact Recovery site unfolds in stages, beginning with a short setup before waves of asteroids and hostile fleets appear. Each wave is a race against time: clear every asteroid before the timer runs out, while holding off enemies that grow stronger and more numerous with each tier.
The asteroids are more than just resources, their unique properties generate a powerful warp bubble field that prevents your fleet from warping off, and only by mining them out completely can the field be dispersed. Success brings steady payouts that increase with difficulty, and sometimes rare caches appear among the shattered rocks, offering additional rewards if collected quickly.
The challenge is in coordination: balancing mining, combat, and survival while the pressure escalates across nine waves. Once the final stage is complete, a short window opens to retreat. Any delay brings an overwhelming Drifter fleet, making escape impossible.
Salvage Research
- Main article: Salvage Research
Salvage Research plunges a three-pilot fleet into a tense field of wrecks scattered across Empire space. Within twenty minutes, every piece of valuable data must be recovered from thirty shattered ships, each one a silent remnant of past battles.
There are no easy shortcuts—tractor units and beams won’t work here. Pilots must move carefully, bringing their salvagers to each wreck while keeping an eye on hostile ships that patrol the site. Drones hover nearby, but enemies will target them if given the chance, forcing the fleet to adapt on the fly.
Somewhere among the wreckage sits a malfunctioning Werpost. Activate it with a Data Analyzer, and its disintegrator targets enemy ships, lending support to your fleet as you work through the wrecks.
Every wreck claimed and every piece of encrypted data recovered brings reward, but time is always slipping away. Success demands coordination, precision, and nerves of steel, with both mission payout and the extra value of recovered data waiting for those who prevail.
Stabilize Rift
- Main article: Stabilize Rift
The Stabilize Rift homefront is a three-pilot operation to prevent the Sleepers from collapsing an active abyssal rift. Their effort is anchored by five Destabilizing Arrays, which must be drained of capacitor and held below 20% simultaneously to break the destabilization cycle.
Recommended doctrine is a destroyer-class vessel equipped with one Nosferatu, four Energy Neutralizers, and combat drones. Sleeper reinforcements may attempt to neutralize your capacitor or restore power to the arrays, forcing a prolonged engagement. Deploy drones to clear hostiles quickly, then focus fire on draining the arrays in unison.
This mission demands strict coordination and precise execution. Success will stabilize the rift; failure will see it collapse.
Traffic Stop
- Main article: Traffic Stop
This three-pilot Homefront site takes place in high-security Empire space, with the same layout and enemies across all regions. Pilots need to resist EM damage, and there is no EWAR present.
The mission requires scanning incoming ships for contraband over ten minutes. Any ship carrying illicit data must be stopped with stasis webifiers and destroyed. At the same time, pilots must avoid harming civilians. Destroying more than two or allowing five contraband ships to dock will fail the mission.
Success depends on careful scanning, precise targeting, and steady coordination throughout the full timer, meeting both objectives without mistakes.
Payout
The amount of the payout depends on the number of participants who have interacted with the site. Interacting with the site might consist of dealing at least 1000 damage to any enemy, repairing at least 1000 shield or armor (it counts even if the target has full hp) or other interactions depending on the objective. The max number of people who can receive a payout is twice the ideal fleet size: 10 people for 5-person sites and 6 people for 3-person sites.
Payout amount for Emergency Aid, Dread Assault, Raid and Metaliminal Meteoroid peaks at 5 people, giving 15,486,410 ISK. The payout amount for Salvage Research, Traffic Stop and Stabilize Rift peaks at 3 people, giving 11,025,000 ISK. The graphs below show the payout based on fleet size for 5 and 3 pilot fleets.
Abyssal Artifact Recovery payout peaks at 5 people but follows a different, wave-based payout structure that is not reflected in these graphs.
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Spawn Mechanics
The anomalies can spawn anywhere in highsec, with a heavily increased probability of spawning near trade hubs (Dodixie, Jita, Amarr, Rens and Hek[1]) and Career Agents constellations. The spawns for each type are independent[2] and the total number for each type in Gallente space seems to be 18, in Caldari space 17, in Minmatar 14 (without newly added in Hek) and in Amarr 28[3].
There are some islands of high security systems behind low security systems where sites can spawn; these sites are rarely completed. Because of this, significant numbers of sites can pile up in these systems reducing the number of sites available elsewhere in the region. To fix this, enter each of the unwanted sites with any ship. The site timers will run down, the sites will fail, and the sites will respawn elsewhere in the region.
History
Homefront operations were introduced in Viridian expansion in summer 2023 (see Viridian expansion notes). All of them were tuned for 5-ship fleets (Abyssal Artifact Recovery, Dread Assault, Emergency Aid, Metaliminal Meteoroid, Raid, Suspicious Signal).
In autumn 2023 they were rebalanced, nerfing the overall payouts and bringing the outliers closer to others.
Expansion#Equinox in summer 2024 new 3-ship types (Salvage Research, Traffic Stop and Stabilize Rift) were introduced. The old types had another tuning pass.
In september 2024 Abyssal Artifact Recovery was reworked as it was one of two most complicated but the least rewarding.
See also
- Talk:Overview#June 2023 additions — new overview entities
- User:Amfion_Bravais/Homefronts — collection of fits and strategies
Notes and references
- ^ Added in patch 2024-06-26.1
- ^ They do not share a pool (CCP Rampant)
- ^ Research by Mednik Breau using Agency per region. Spreadsheet with results and methodology.