Blood Raider Forward Operating Base - too weak?

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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I had scanned down a fob before. I tried to solo it in a dominix today.

never mind. I made several passes, fist killing the frigs. then got blobbed by 50+(with 7 BS and 12 frigates) rats which warped exactly on me even though I was at 3 000 km from them.

I really don’t get where is the fun in this.(I had insured my ship and only used T2 fit so no big deal).
I did them because they kept sending waves of frigs and those frigs almost blapped me in a frig when I exited a station and did not pay attention.

So now, I can’t kill the fob, only kill the frigs. I guess this is CCP’s way to make HS annoying as possible.

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I’m sure Fozzie will fix everything :wink:

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@CCP_Larrikin

That is not broken ?

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Okay so I’ve been working on experimenting with the Blood Raider FoBs and have discovered a bunch of interesting things with them including stuff on the Patrols. Some of this will apply for Blood Raiders only like fleet composition, but other information should apply to both Gurista and Blood Raider FoBs. The information is currently in no particular order so sorry in advance for any problems with finding information.

  1. Patrols are now growing in size daily it appears. Day of the patch a patrol consisting of 4 Punishers was in system and attacking anything that moved or didn’t move. Currently we’re on day 2 and that Patrol now consists of 4 Punishers and 2 Inquisitors.

  2. Patrols are engaging Structures and alerts are not always coming up. They appear to prioritize Structures only when they are vulnerable as they have not attacked or orbited one when it is not. It has been observed so far that even if the Patrols are in combat with someone they will break the conflict to warp to the Vulnerable Structure.

  3. The FoB forces spawn up to 375km from the FoB itself. If you arrive in at 400km nothing will spawn.

  4. There is a wave mechanic now with the FoBs. At first when you arrive at the FoB and its forces spawn this is the initial group of defenders. As soon as a shot is fired from either the Defenders or the Players the waves will begin and a large group will spawn. These waves arrive every minute for 30 minutes for what appears to be a total of 30 Waves. Each Wave escalates in size, by the time all 30 waves were done arriving there was 25+ Battleships, 50+ Cruisers, and 20+ Frigates. This wave test was done with a cloaked Prospect, still no information on the size of the waves with the Ship that triggers it besides for a Prospect, an Atron, and a Vexor Navy Issue and no information on the waves scales for the number of players.

  5. FoB forces will now apply every type of EWar with its waves so be ready for Scrams, Webs, Disruptors, Dampeners, Neuts, and everything else you can think of as escape is now highly unlikely if you are caught.

  6. Blood Raider FoB Apocalypses are borderline snipers and have now been able to hit an Atron moving at 4km/s at an Orbit of 350km twice in the time it took the Atron to warp off.

  7. If using a Cloaking Device for testing, MOVE FROM YOUR POSITION AFTER CLOAKING. The FoB forces will warp repeatedly to previously known locations repeatedly. This known position thing resets after the FoB forces redock and the site gets reset. The waves will continue to spawn until all 30 have arrived than they will redock if you are still cloaked.

  8. Blood Raider Patrols will respawn every hour, if the patrol is left alive however but it has lost ships those ships that were lost get replaced after 15 minutes instead.

  9. Bestowers will drop some Faction BPCs and Drone BPCs, be ready for the response fleet.

  10. The No Weapons in High Slot Method does not work anymore but there may be some scaling to it still, this needs further testing.

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25

Hey @CCP_Falcon

Any chance you could ask the relevant people to just give this thread the once over please.

The npc spawn’s seem really out of whack and we would all like to know if this is intended behaviour or not.

Cheers

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We’re always watching, and the spawns are working as expected. Also please note the above screenshot in this thread is misleading.

1 Like
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VNI with this fit:

fob_npcs_5mins_fit

Will have the following NPCs attacking it after approx 5 mins:

fob_npcs_5mins

There are more cruisers in the spawn that I couldn’t fit onto a single screenshot.

A quick check after writing this post (approx 10 mins after arriving at the FOB), has the following NPCs attacking the VNI (ordered by size with cruisers and approx 10x Cruors cropped):

fob_npcs_10mins
fob_npcs_10mins.png241×979 173 KB

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They come in waves, don’t they? So you need to try to keep up with the waves and kill them as they come. Is that possible? Also, do waves respond to fleet composition, or numbers, or both? (ie would 2 VNI spawn twice as much, or is that the “VNI response fleet” and it appears regardless of the number of VNIs?)

And how are these rats? regular “I can kill 20 of your cruisers in my one cruiser” or buffed up ones?

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@CCP_Paradox

See the above post, just how is that a misleading screenshot ?

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They are very much buffed ones, they have stats copied from player fits. These are not regular mission rats at all.

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So chances are that lone VNI has no chance to keep up with these waves then. I mean I fully support FOBs not being solo-VNI content, but then what we need are tests with a more sizable fleet to see how things scales with numbers.

If 10 VNIs spawn essentially the same thing, it might be manageable to set sentries and pop stuff as it comes out? If 10x the NPCs spawn, then yeah, HS is doomed! DOOMED! :wink:

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Looking like small incursion grade difficulty spike without the pay to make it worthwhile… or to put it another way. Some soon to be very dead content and a lot of people bitching that they just want the FOBs gone without having to mess with them because they are too much of a pain in the rear for the pittance paid out.

Also, good luck getting the usual solo or small gang high sec crowd to deal with them. I thought the original intent was to make some approachable small gang content for high security space?

1 Like
33

Pretty much this, 100%

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With this being high sec only content, I believe it should take the specificity of high sec population into consideration. From my observations highsec is very shattered with many small corps and pve is run mostly solo or multiboxed. Forming a fleet locally (I’ve tried and eventually I took down two FOB’s myself) isn’t an easy task. FOB channels don’t seem to make it any easier - usually FOB’s are so distant noone wan’ts or have time to travel so far just to take one down in a fleet. There’s also a trust issue - so far fleets that I’ve seen forming were corp only and not accepting strangers.

Since they were compared to Incursions that are fairly easy to follow and take a while till they end (that makes travelling worthwile) - FOB’s, I believe, are supposed to be more common, scattered all over high sec and more like a local one off event. I think that making them accessible to small corps/solo players (solo difficulty well above 4/10’s/lvl4’s with payouts and difficulty rising with fleet size) would make them a good, alive content.

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people did them in a 6-man gang, using vindis, machs, and RR nestors.

https://zkillboard.com/group/1924/

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Update on the Blood Raider FoBs and their Waves through experimentation, some of this should also apply to Gurista FoBs

With multiple runs of a Battleship against a Blood Raider FoB and triggering the waves I’ve got a more definitive count on the numbers that the Defenders use.

With the use of a Battleship a total of 15 “Waves” begin, these can come from either the FoB as an Undocking Force or they can warp in from Off Grid. One wave arrives every minute which brings in more Cruisers and Frigates to the fight.

At the 6th or 11th Wave though Battleships can spawn in, if they spawn in at Wave 6 they will alternate spawns but if they arrive at Wave 11 all spawns from that point on will contain Battleships.

After all Waves have spawned there should be around 7 Battleships, 45 Cruisers, and 12 Frigates assuming you get the maximum amount each time. If there are no waves appearing a set of Faction ships will warp in taking the place of some Battleships or Cruisers and will be about twice as powerful as the others. Ashimmu appear to take the place of 2 or 3 Cruisers each.

With that full force you will have to withstand

14866.4 DPS
29981 EM Alpha
18974 Thermal Alpha

The EM/Thermal Damage Ratio is 65%/35% roughly.

Best estimates on HP of their most commonly used ships are
(Shield, Armor, Structure)
Omen - 1500 SHP, 8194 AHP, 1875 HP
Apocalypse - 7500 SHP, 21563 AHP, 8750 HP
Cruor - 600 SHP, 1512 AHP, 725 HP

Finally they are most vulnerable to EM while having High Resistances to everything else.

The information on the Waves may vary from FoB to FoB or Security System so please if you are also testing share your information on these.

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37

It also looks like the FOB’s de-escalate after a period of time. Even possibly escaping into a local wormhole to spawn somewhere else.

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The FoBs themselves do not de-escalate, they are supposed to escalate over time and do other things to the system such as Gate Camps and kill off Structures. The Defense Spawns they have though de-escalate and despawn if they haven’t done anything. The Patrols keep going and going like the Energizer Bunny though.

1 Like
40

I don’t believe I suggested that, at least that is not what I intended. The screenshot does represent the forces the FOB spawned in response to one ship, ONE!

Yes that is multiple waves spawned over time but still, overkill much?

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By the way - this is one of the gates in one of the rookie systems. Second one was worse and Kestrels were warping gate to gate killing every newbro on sight. Warm welcome one might say :thinking:

eve
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