Homefront operation
Each homefront operation requires a group of pilots covering specific roles from hacking to hauling. Be warned; unlike most other sites, homefront operations can be lost if your team fails to meet their set objective.
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 dependant on which empire's space it is found within.
Some sites introduce hostiles hailing from new traitorous corporations, splintering away from their empire.
Availability
There is a total of six (6) different types of Homefront Operations. Each type will have 4 different versions, depending on which empire space you are in. The only difference between the versions is the type of pirates you face in each site. The base mechanics are all the same.
- Emergency Aid
- Dread Assault
- Raid
- Suspicious Data
- Metaliminal Meteoroid
- Abyssal Artifact Recovery
Site summary
Emergency Aid
Your aim is to keep a friendly target alive. You will have several rats on grid with you. Killing those rats simply results in new replacement rats to spawn.
This means the Emergency Aid site can be run solely with Logistics ships. T1 Logistic cruisers like Ospreys or Scythe work well.
Dread Assault
The aim of the Dread Assault is to cap up a friendly Dreadnaught on grid. Once again, killing enemy ships is somewhat futile, as they simply respawn. Enemy ships apply neuts, so it is recommended to bring T1 Logistic cruisers with three (3) remote cap transfers.
In our test (Hippla Tsero, 13-06-2023), having 2 medium cap transfers on the friendly dread and using 1 medium cap transfer on friendly T1 logi cruisers seemed to work just fine.
Once the Dread is capped up, the site is complete and all enemy ships will be destroyed by the Dread or warp off grid.
Raid
Your objective is to collect loot from a respawning hauler and bring it to a friendly transporter. The first hauler will be on grid when you warp onto the site. Haulers will generally try to warp off and if they successful warp away, you will have to wait for a new hauler spawn.
This means you will want to have at least one fast, long-point ship (e.g. Condor) with you and one hauler (the quicker the better) than can haul 3500 m3 from the dead hauler(s) to the transport ship. Remaining ships should be DPS + Logi.
Suspicious Data
The aim of this site is to kill a single ship. However, the ship only gets vulnerable once 3 data cans are hacked.
Metaliminal Meteoroid
The objective is to mine all asteroids. As in all other sites, killing rats is pretty futile, as they simply respawn. We had good success with 3 ventures + 2 Logi cruisers. In addition to the payout of the site, the (event) ore can be sold to NPC buy orders at 5000 ISK/unit. The site contains around 20M ISK worth of ore.
Abyssal Artifact Recovery
The objective is to mine as many asteroids as possible and find valuable artifacts that can be sold to NPC buy orders. This site is probably the most challenging, as you will have increasingly more difficult waves spawn on you and it seems near impossible to "outlast" the increasing number of increasingly difficult rats.
You will be inside a Bubble (can't warp off) when entering the site. Once you feel like you are taking too much damage, it's time to burn out of the bubble and warp off.
Hence, 3 ventures with Logi support seem like a good solution to run this site.
See also
- EVE University forum post: Homefront Operations - first insights by Hippla Tsero (15 June 2023)
- Viridian expansion notes