@lanechanger: How many of those defenses were you involved in? I found that my AI guards have become far more effective once I added extra platforms to each division; whereas I would lose half of the fights I wasn't involved in before, I haven't lost since the construction was completed. That's the most telling metric to me: how effective your defenses are when you aren't around.

@brotherbran: That's not the case. You have to time your way up the stairs. They have their little routines like all other Metal Gear enemies. And when that doesn't work, a grenade launcher usually will.

@mirado: Maybe half of them? From what I see of the security settings, it seems like the other half consists of half just security and half with a supporter defender. Having that said, I could be getting lucky and getting some scrubs who don't quite know what to look out for in terms of defenses yet. But at this point with like 95% of the items developed, having my GMP capped at 5 million and resources capped at 200k, there's really no point in me building more struts for more resources or staff, it just makes my FOB more enticing for invaders.

@lanechanger: Yeah, once you've got basically everything developed, the only reason you'd want to expand your FOB is to encourage people to invade. And that's exactly what I'm doing, as bopping fools with my Hail grenade launcher never gets old.

is it odd that I unlocked fob stuff a good 24+ hours ago and haven't been attacked once yet?

I'm a mission or two away from this stuff as far as I can tell, but I'm curious if it'll even work at all on Xbox. Can anyone shed some light on the State of FOB stuff on Xbox?

It's unbelievable the state the Xbox servers have been in since launch. Just a complete no-go every single time I've tried to connect.

@devil240z: yes, but also look for unprepared people. My first invasion was on the base dev platform. Guards didn't even have armor or helmets. Fultoned them all along with all the ressources on deck. Didn't get spotted so no retaliation possible.

Anyone know how to outfit your security forces with helmets and body armor? I have researched the top end battle dress (5*) and that didn't do it. But I have invaded FOBs that guards were wearing armor and helmets so I know it is possible.

@phionoxx: Set it to maximum possible security in the automatic settings and that should do it.

@phionoxx: It might have to do with your level of base security... defense deployment might make more sense but that's not part of security team so I have no idea what that is

I'm not sure that's it. I have mine on maximum readiness and none of my guys on any of my FOB platforms have helmets. Maybe it has to do with the class of soldier? I have mine limited to a max of rank C at this point.

@Mike: It's possible that it's only A/B, but generally 5 stars means full armor. You do have to have the maximum upgrade and it's possible having a high ranking LMG helps as well.

I went to the trouble of Infiltrating my own Intel Platform with fully armored guards and the works, not dumb enough to try doing this online but this was the first try and it went quite well:

There doesn't seem to be an easier way to get to the exit.

@fredchuckdave: Well I have upgraded things pretty extensively, all of my units are in the high 40's or 50. I am paying for the highest level of readiness for my security forces so...it's clearly something other than that. I don't have enough highly skilled troops to put more skilled people in my security team yet, but that seems to be the only variable that is missing from the equation.

@polkaduke: Volunteers are determined by your heroism, just like random spawns in the world.

Depending on the platform you can definitely get to the exit without touching any guards, but usually the optimal route is 2-3. Of course if you want to extract for points then by all means get rid of all of them.

I have an xbox one and haven't been able to get online in the game once. Is there a troubleshoot for this? It throws me an error code 10008 when it tries and fails to ping the Konami server. Any help would be much appreciated.

@polkaduke: Depends on the platform, Intel it's probably not possible without taking out almost every guard. Base Development can definitely be done with 2/3, Command for sure as well though you have to wait for the right pattern, Support can be done without touching anyone, R&D you only have to take out the guys on the roof, if that. Medical is a bit on the sketchier side/it's really easy to take out everyone in a dogpile of "Hey what's wrong?" and Combat is also doable in 2-3 if you wait for the right time, hard to judge because of the verticality but not really if you're abusing the radar drug.

So in the last 4 days, I've only had two people even attempt to invade my FOB. That I know of, anyway. I wonder if attackers are just skipping my base because it's too difficult of a target compared to others that are out there? Maybe I shouldn't have built everything up so well so soon.

I don't blame them, I tried doing mock invasions of my own base and couldn't even get close to a successful infiltration. A fully defended base with all four platforms for each section can be quite difficult to take down, as it turns out.

@Mike: If you want people to invade you have to go and create wormholes intentionally, otherwise it's just random chance and there's way more people playing than there are invading. The "I don't want to invade this guy" learning curve is probably not quite there yet, but it will be in a few weeks or so; at that point even in the case of retaliation it might be unlikely to ever get touched.

As far as multiplatform all it does is make it take longer and add more risk that the defender will show up, the real challenge is just the final platform and you can definitely master most of those (maybe not intel).

@fredchuckdave: That's what I thought too, but I've done at least two dozen invasions and not one person has ever even tried retaliating. Even indirectly. It wouldn't surprise me if it's just because most people don't want anything to do with PVP.

@Mike: Well I think Infiltrating is fun (and can be fun for anyone), the actual pvp is really stupid of course but presumably people will realize the likelihood of having a defender outside of prime time or on weekends is very low and get back into it. Of course that doesn't mean people will want to take on super defended platforms; but hopefully the drive to figure out optimal infiltration routes continues.

I can frequently finish easier FOB Missions in 2 minutes or so, so it takes maybe 15 minutes to get a staff member a medal which I think is pretty efficient; even faster than S Ranking Mission 11 over and over.

@fredchuckdave: What does getting a staff member a medal even do?

@Mike: It adds 2 basic ranks to each stat that the character has, so the equivalent of an E to a C rank, with higher ranked characters the impact is less obvious since it doesn't necessarily make them rank up (it takes more "stat power" to get from A++ to S than from C to D etc.) but it definitely improves their statline. This can be done with any character so if you have an S+ R&D character who has an E in combat you can still get them a medal through FOB missions or single player and improve their R&D stat.

I feel like there are multiple tiers to medals as well but it seems like it would take a very long time to get the better ones unlocked; maybe there's a Congressional Medal of Big Boss for doing 100 Successful FOB missions with one character, who knows.

Ok I haven't been invaded once. Is my base too well prepared or something?

What does the cost of preparedness even mean? Is that something I have to pay regularly or just when someone attacks?

Regarding your first question - read the last few posts in this thread. We've been discussing exactly that.

@Mike: I'm starting to think there may be some deeper strategy in making your base looks like an easier target than it is. Anyone mess with the "key security zone" stuff. I'm thinking with less resources deployed in certain key zones could lower your defense level but your base will still be difficult to infiltrate.

@devil240z: I have but since I'm not getting invaded, I'm not sure if it's doing any good or not.

Man...I wish the FOB stuff actually utilized friends lists in some meaningful way. It's sad to see an opportunity like that just squandered.

@Mike: They must have communicated to fans in the past that friends would be your supporters/supportees cause it seems like almost everyone believed that to be the case until after the game came out.

You know the FOB you're infiltrating isn't exactly legit when every single soldier has stats like this, or better:

@Mike: Profit?

Here's a solid demonstration of Rocket Punch's usefulness:

@fredchuckdave: I grabbed one of them, but then thought better of it. I don't want a bunch of hacked soldiers in my crew, I consider that to be the same as if I had hacked them into my own game myself.

@Mike: Good stuff, I haven't been posed with this moral dilemma on consoles yet but I'm sure it's still possible to hack the game.

I guess 3 gold triangles is the maximum Espionage rank, still did some FOBs today but for once I actually made a decent amount of progress in the actual game. This second half stuff definitely doesn't have much drive to it so far, even if I very much like the idea of crackpot Miller.

@fredchuckdave: Yes, sorry. My exact menu option directions went away when my post got eaten. I still assumed that you chance of success/failure in there is somewhat related to successful attacks and defenses, but maybe not.

@Mike: More info on medals: Puppets automatically get them and they get the Service Cross which I feel like is a higher grade than the one you just get for doing 3 missions. If you do mission 28/48 without killing all of the skulls then you can get like 40 Puppets extracted during the escape from the mansion if you want to farm already ranked up S soldiers.

Is there a ps4 group? I still haven't installed that 3.0 beta.

I gutted my security and still haven't been attacked.

Okay, so I just got invaded by someone with a nuke, but they're not on my retaliation list despite me having the 150k heroism you need for that. Do revenge wormholes just not open up randomly or something? He's definitely not someone I invaded beforehand, either.

Just a quick tip: if your FOB is attacked while you are online, it seems that you get a notification instantly, whether or not the invader has been spotted, but you may not get the notification if you are a supporter until the invader is spotted.

The first part is confirmed, as people have been finding their friends and notifying them about this through other means, but the second part is harder to lock down as it has a built in layer of obfuscation.

I suggest anyone on PC hit "G" when highlighting a player's name to bring up their Steam profile before you commit to an attack, as it's hard enough on the attacker without a defender spamming their auto grenade launcher at you, and being punished by the defender alert without screwing up is a pretty annoying design choice, as it only hurts players that want to sneak in.

(The other alternative is just to go loud right out of the gate and fuck up anyone and everyone in your way, but that's up to you.)

what do you do if you are caught?

So is it confirmed that if you never attack anyone that you will never be attacked? Cause I have not been attacked once even with my defence scaled way back.

@devil240z: It's just random and there's like 20 times as many players playing as there are invading (or 50 times). The ease of defense also functions as a deterrent to newer invaders I'm sure.

@devil240z: I have to go out of my way to open up revenge wormholes just so I actually get some people trying to attack me. Otherwise, I never get attacked. I think this is partially due to what Fred was saying about FOBs being a numbers game, and partially due to the fact that I have pretty strong defenses and my FOB doesn't look like a particularly attractive target.

So, to fix your problem (if you want), start attacking a bunch of people and make sure you get identified.

@Mike: Well I don't really want to attack people, I might do it once just to see. I guess I want to see the thing in action but I didn't want to open up a can of worms I cant eat(thats not a saying...)

One thing I have been wondering about fobs is do they collect/process resources while you're offline?

Another thing. The whole FOB thing reminds me alot of a f2p ps4/phone game called battle islands or something where you build a base on a series of islands construct defenses and attack other players islands to steal their resources. I basically just described FOBs right?

@devil240z: You don't have to do any real damage when you infiltrate a base, just get seen by a security camera and then leave, and that's it. Really though, in all likelihood, you're going to get completely rekt by the Security Team during your first few infiltrations unless you are extraordinarily good at this game anyway. There are a lot more enemies in a concentrated area, security devices like cameras, mines, UAVs, and item restrictions to deal with, and the fact that you don't have a buddy to rely on to mark or tranq everything for you. Not to mention the possibility of the FOB owner or a defender showing up to try and stop you. The cards are stacked against attackers big time in FOB mode.

As far as your analogy goes, I don't know which game you're even talking about so I'm not sure I can answer that, but the comparison seems awfully reductive.

It seems to me like you are completely overthinking this whole thing and should just jump in and try a few infiltrations and defenses and see if you like it or not.

@Mike: I wasn't really thinking, it was mostly a random stream of thoughts. The similarities between that other game are coincidence but valid. What I was getting at or rather didn't get at at all because I was too lazy to actually say anything is that beyond the similarities I mentioned before there is the way the PVP actually works where it serves you up a list of similarly ranked users to attack. If you get attacked you are given protected status for a time or you can opt to seek revenge on your attacker or attack someone else from the list. And you basically attack people to get more stuff so you can become more powerful so you can attack more powerful people so you can get more stuff... and on and on, it was pay to win trash. Not that fobs are P2W but the gameplay loop seems pretty much the same. There doesn't seem to be an end goal. I don't/didn't know where I was/am going with any of this. Basically I'm looking for a reason to get involved with FOBs and I'm not finding one. Defending allies seemed like that reason but you cant even do that properly.

@devil240z: I think you've managed to think yourself out of having fun. It actually is fun. Try it. Or don't, I guess. I did two quick infiltrations and a defense last night and it was awesome.

As far as "There doesn't seem to be an end goal" - one could say the exact same thing about the multiplayer component of most games. The point isn't to reach some goal, the point is to have fun playing a video game. There just happen to be some nice rewards if you choose to participate, but these don't really make the player "more powerful." I don't know, maybe try asking yourself, "Why not?" instead of "Why should I?"

I may have to try FOB out one day, never got invaded during my playthrough of the main story but i kept upgrading my base and defenses. Security team is still only around 20 something as i don't put important dudes in there at all. Maybe when MGO drops i'll start giving this mode a whirl as well. It's crazy how much of a big deal people tried to make out of this mode when you really don't have to participate at all, and the stuff they steal is only unrefined anyway.