Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain FOB Guide

In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, you can have more than just Mother Base. As you progress through the story, you’ll eventually be able to build a Forward Operating Base (FOB). These increase your max staff capacity, give many benefits, and add more gameplay features.

I’ll explain how FOBs work, when you get them, and all the features that come along with them. I recommend reading my Complete Mother Base guide first if you don’t know the basics to how bases work in The Phantom Pain.

This guide will go over FOBs in The Phantom Pain including:

• Unlocking FOBs – When you get them and basic info.
• Security Team and Settings – Info on the new unit, Security Team, and setting up your FOB.
• FOB Missions – Infiltrating other bases and the rewards for doing this.

Unlocking FOBs

When you start episode 21, you’ll get a call from Miller telling you about an emergency mission. Take this mission and it will start episode 22. You have to retake a platform on Mother Base to complete it. When you do, you’ll unlock the ability to create Forward Operating Bases.

These bases increase the maximum staff capacity of all your units. The first FOB is free and you can choose from 3 locations. They each gain more of certain resources.

• North Pacific – “A” in precious metals. “B” in minor metals, “C” in everything else.
• South Pacific – “A” in minor metal, “B” in precious metal, “C” in everything else.
• North Atlantic – “B” in fuel resources, minor metal, and precious metal, ” C in everything else.

If you want more bases at any of these locations, they cost 1,000 Mother Base Coins (MBC).

FOBs work just like Mother Base. You can build platforms for each unit and expand them. The more platforms and decks you have, the more resources and GMP you’ll get. You’ll also make it harder for people to successfully invade your base, more on that later.

Each FOB also doubles the number of combat deployment missions you can do at one time. It is basically the same thing as having 2 or more Mother Bases; they are just vulnerable to attack.

Security Team and Settings

A special unit opens when you get your first FOB, the Security team. This team protects your base from invaders. Other players can invade your base to take your resources and staff, so you need to defend it.

If you auto assign your staff, you’ll have to manually select each member for the Security team because that is not one of the ranks a staff member can get.

You can choose a platform, or each platform, after selecting security settings from the mother base menu.

• Basic settings allow you to select the level of preparedness your base will have.
• This determines the default number of people in the security team.
• Advanced settings allows you to customize each deck all at once.
• You can choose weapon type, guard rank, equipment/security device grade, range type, number of guards, and what types of security devices you want to set up.

If you don’t want a staff member to die during an evasion, choose Direct Contract when you select them.

You will need to level up your R&D and Security team to unlock Base Defenses, so make sure you get a lot of people to fill up your Security team.

FOB Missions

You can infiltrate other players’ FOBs and retaliate on anyone who invaded your FOB. 

• FOB missions are located directly below combat deployment missions.
• You can select between targets to invade, rivals to invade, training, and see a list of rivals.

There is also a relationship tab that allows you to support other players. You can help another player when their base gets invaded and they can help when your base gets invaded.

By invading and defending, you’ll increase your PF grade and get PF points. you can spend these points on A++ staff members and resources.

The amount of PF you get scales to the amount of defense the base has. Also, invading as anyone other than Snake, gives a multiplier.

That wraps up my guide on FOBs in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Let me know if you have any questions and please visit my Beginner tips and tricks for more help.