A Forward Operating Base is the one thing in Wardogs that turns a firefight into a siege. It is not a class, not a perk, and not something you unlock by grinding kills. You buy a module at the vendor, haul it somewhere useful, and then spend the rest of the match swinging a hammer while three teams of players try to knock it down. The tactical shooter from Bulkhead Interactive entered Steam Early Access on September 10, and the FOB system is still the part of it that plays least like everything else in the genre.
Quick answer: Buy the FOB module and the hammer tier you need from the Equipment vendor, load a truck with build supplies, place the pad on flat ground near the Control Zone, unload pallets into its inventory, then place structures with right-click and hit the yellow X marks until each one completes.
What a FOB gives your team
Three things, mainly. It shelters a spawn vehicle, so teammates can drop straight into the fight instead of riding a helicopter in from the map edge. It stores ammo, fuel, repair parts, and build materials in one place. And with the right hammer, it hosts a Drill Rig that drags the Hot Zone toward you.
Nothing you build is permanent. Rockets, tanks, and a well-thrown block of C4 all work on player structures, and enemy squads can hack or overrun a base outright. Treat the compound as a position you rent for a few minutes, not a monument.
Where to place the FOB
Scoring runs on occupancy. The team with the most bodies inside the 2 × 2 km Control Zone earns a point every 30 seconds, and the Hot Zone makes each soldier inside it count double. A beautiful fort 400 metres from the tick is decoration.
Pick ground that the zone already touches, or the approach the other two factions have to use. Existing buildings help enormously, which is why compounds like the church make such good anchors: you get walls, a roof for anti-air, and an interior that infiltrators have to clear room by room. Leave a truck path in, and a flat patch for a helicopter if your team has pilots.
The builder kit: What to buy before you deploy
An empty pad on dirt does nothing. The module comes bundled with a Medium and a Small hammer, two wrenches for vehicle repair, signal grenades for supply requests and landing zones, and bandages — but its starting stock of materials runs dry within a few walls.
| Item | Why you need it |
|---|---|
| FOB module | Bought from the Equipment vendor under Building. Eats a large chunk of backpack space. |
| Hammer (Small / Medium / Large) | Gates which build menu you can open. Larger tools also build faster. |
| Build supplies | Pays for every wall, bunker, tower, and emplacement. |
| Ammo supplies | Reloads built guns such as the CIWS and Talon. Not rifle ammo. |
| Fuel supplies | Runs the Drill Rig and the Refuel Station. |
| Mechanical supplies | Vehicle repairs and Stingray ammunition. |
| Truck and crates | A Ural or Kodiak class vehicle to ferry pallets from headquarters. |
Ammo supplies are the most commonly wasted purchase. They feed emplacements, not your magazines, so a crate bought without a mortar to pour it into is money gone. Drop those pallets beside the gunner, not in a back room.
Hammer tiers and what each one builds
| Hammer | Opens |
|---|---|
| Small | Basic cover only — sandbags, barriers, barbed wire. Most of it works without a FOB. |
| Medium | The perimeter set: HESCO blocks and walls, Bremer walls, doors, gates. |
| Large | The heavy menu on top of that — mortars, Stingray, CIWS, Talon, Drill Rig. Fastest build speed. |
Some builds let the Large hammer place everything; others keep the menus separate, so a heavy tool cannot drop a sandbag. Open the radial and read it rather than assuming. One more thing worth knowing before you swing near a medic: hammers can team-kill.
Build order for the first ten minutes
You know a piece is done when the construction frame and its X markers disappear and the structure becomes solid — doors and gates only open for your own team after that point.
Build supply costs for every structure
Four pieces need no FOB at all: the Recon Tent at 5 supplies, which hides recon players from infrared; Barbed Wire at 5; Sandbags at 10; and the Hedgehog at 14, which blocks vehicles. Everything else has to go down inside a base radius.
| Structure | Cost | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Bremer Wall | 10 | Narrow tall wall topped with barbed wire |
| HESCO Block (Small) | 10 | Cover against bullets and grenades |
| Builder’s Radio | 13 | Plays music, nothing more |
| HESCO Block (Large) | 14 | Taller version of the same cover |
| Door | 14 | Infantry access for your team only |
| HESCO Wall | 46 | Four tall blocks, cheaper than one large block |
| Gate | 52 | Vehicle access for your team |
| Bunker | 61 | Heavy protection from fire |
| Recon Tower | 61 | Elevated firing position |
| Indirect Fire Shelter | 61 | Bunker with four doorways |
| Loudspeaker | 61 | Long-range voice comms |
| Mortar | 91 | Anti-infantry, no separate ammo purchase |
| Stingray | 91 | Anti-armour mortar, ammo costs components or cash |
| Refuel Station | 121 | Refuels vehicles from FOB fuel |
| Repair Station | 121 | Repairs vehicles from stored parts |
| Talon | 601 | Heat-seeking anti-air launcher |
| CIWS | 901 | Manual anti-air gatling gun |
| Drill Rig | 1351 | Pulls the Hot Zone to your position |
Note: these figures come from playtest builds, and prices have shifted between versions. Read the cost shown in the radial before you place anything expensive.
The cheap pieces are where the value is. A HESCO Wall at 46 gives you four blocks’ worth of height for less than a single large block, and Bremer walls are tall enough that infantry cannot vault them.
Emplacements: Mortars, anti-air, and the Drill Rig
The Mortar is the cheapest offensive piece worth owning. It works on infantry and light transport, it does not need a separate ammo purchase, and you aim it by reading map coordinates into the scope. Watching rounds arc toward a tower you called out is one of the few ways a builder gets to shape the fight from inside the walls.
Anti-air is the other priority, because helicopters are how enemy squads arrive on your roof. The Talon is a heat-seeking launcher and the CIWS is a manual gatling gun; both take a long time to build, both only progress when you hit the X markers, and both need ammo supplies stocked nearby to reload. A Talon 9K-SAM on a rooftop behind sandbags will clear transport helicopters and paratroopers all match, provided somebody keeps feeding it.
The Drill Rig is the big one at 1,351 supplies. Build it, interact with the laptop terminal to activate it, and the Hot Zone pulls toward your base as long as fuel keeps flowing. Hacking map towers by entering their code digits does the same job instantly, so use the rig when you intend to hold ground, not when you are chasing the objective across the map.
Repairing breaches and dismantling structures
Layout mistakes are fixable. Aim at a placed piece and hold the Dismantle prompt to take it back down — useful for clearing a gabion barrier blocking a Drill Rig site, or opening a firing lane you sealed by accident.
Under attack, the job changes. A damaged gate or a blown wall section needs rebuilding immediately, because enemy infantry will funnel straight through the hole and hostiles with C4 will lob charges over the parapet. Dismantling runs on a progress meter too, so do not start pulling a wall apart while a push is inbound.
Destruction cuts both ways. Flatten the wrong wall and you hand the enemy a sightline into the courtyard you were using for revives, so call any structural change to your squad before you make it.
Dying without losing the base
You will get killed inside your own compound at some point — an infiltrator through a sniper nest, or a charge over the wall. The FOB itself survives your death, and the vehicle parked behind it puts you back on site quickly.
At the vendor, Rebuy Last Loadout is the fastest way back into the fight with the same weapon, ammunition, and tools you were carrying. Top up anything that got consumed before you redeploy, since a builder who respawns without a hammer is just another rifleman.
How building pays
Construction earns Support class points, so you progress without needing a kill feed full of your own name. It also pays cash, and that wallet carries between matches.
A long defensive match stacks several income streams at once: payouts for building, zone ticks while your team holds the objective, revives, and transport runs hauling pallets back to the pad. That combination is why a builder who plants a compound on the Control Zone early and survives the full match can walk away with a six-figure total while barely leaving the courtyard.
The trap is spending like a base is forever. Every structure you place is cash and materials committed to a patch of ground the Control Zone will eventually leave, and a squad with rockets can undo an hour of walls in a couple of minutes. Build what the current fight needs, keep a driver on the supply loop, and let the palace wait for a match you are already winning.
