Metal Gear Solid V [official site] latest update focuses on additions to FOB missions, in which players can invade and steal from specially-constructed bases maintained by other players. One of the updates is the ability to pay real money to insure the contents of your base. Find more details below.

Before now, the decision to invade another player’s FOB (Forward Operating Base) in MGSV: The Phantom Pain was one not taken lightly. Sure, all of those goodies, that material, those S-ranked staff members, would look far better if housed at your headquarters rather than at others’, but what about retaliation? Jenny Bloggs ain’t likely to take your thievery lightly and you couldn’t really blame her for wanting to settle the score. Enter “Event FOBs,” FOB infiltration missions designed by the game’s developers that render revenge attacks null and void. In essence: steal and swipe to your heart’s content without worrying about the repercussions. Now we’re talking.

Should you have a penchant for player-plundering performance, though, the update now allows you to infiltrate rival player’s FOBs without leaving a trace. Assuming you’ve got the cunning and sneaking prowess to avoid detection – and refrain from killing or extracting staff and/or damaging or extracting containers and equipment – you can now see out FOB missions without rival players being notified at all.

Other notable highlights the update adds are: new weapons and items, the specifics of which are yet to be confirmed, which can be upgraded to Grade 7, a new maximum level; night vision equipment for your security team staff; a broader, more varied range of Combat Deployment missions; and detailed breakdowns within the results screens of FOB missions.

If paying for progress is your thing, “MB coins” could previously be purchased for real money and can be used to buy things for your base, including the new FOB insurance service that’ll cover you for anything Jenny Bloggs manages to get her hands on. Also, if you feel FOB-building is taking too long you can use MBs to reduce construction times. Given the nature of FOB leaderboards, this sounds like it might stretch a little too far into pay-to-win territory.

We’ll have plenty of time to find out while console folk move on to Metal Gear Online, which is released today for XBone/PS4 but which won’t arrive on PC until January.

Check out the MGSV update page for more details of the above, or Alec’s recent forays into FOB invasion.