On this page, you'll find information on how to run Mother Base. Some information on the page is only useful later in the game, but none of it is anything of a real spoiler.
Mother Base
On Mother Base itself, there's not a whole lot to do. You can take a shower near the landing pad on the central platform (or elsewhere) to get a slight bonus to your health and reflex time, which lasts for five in-game days, or you could scour the base for some loose diamonds. These are few and far between, so they're not very important, especially when you start raking in the cash.
You generally want to return to Mother Base to take showers to clean yourself off/get the bonus and to raise staff morale. All you have to do to raise morale is get close to staff members walking around, but you can also perform a loud knock with your bionic arm once it's upgraded to reach a wider area.
Customization
In the customization tab, you can change your Mother Base logo, as well as its color scheme. You can also rearrange the guy's face that you made in Main Ops 00 if you really feel like it. With the emblem being the most diverse of this set, you should know that you can unlock emblem parts by earning S Ranks and finishing all Mission Tasks in the majority of the Main Ops. Words are generally unlocked by capturing outposts in Afghanistan and Africa. Some other specific emblem parts are unlocked in other ways, like saving the animals, earning codenames for the first time, and finishing Side Ops.
Development
The development tab is where you'll create new weapons and items for yourself, your buddies, and your helicopter. The vast majority of the items are weapons and items for yourself, and more information on development in general can be found on the next page in the walkthrough. DLC items and items unlocked from Ground Zeroes aren't incredibly important, but are still pretty cool for fans of the series.
Buddy items and helicopter upgrades, as well as some of the more advanced weapons and items, should be treated as luxury items in the early game until you have enough GMP and resources to afford them without it being a massive cost.
Resources
10% or so of your materials and GMP are available offline, with the vast majority being available only online. This essentially makes the game online-only as having 10% is never going to be satisfactory. This won't be much of an issue if you have a solid connection, but sometimes the servers go down for maintenance.
The standard resources are used for developing platforms, making new items, and a few other things. I personally never had enough fuel, but you may find yourself in a different situation. Don't bother looking for resources out in the field; FOB infiltrations (see bottom of page) will allow you to rake in resources like nobody's business. Plants are used for developing a few specific things as well, but the other items and vehicles may be required for some Dispatch Missions (see bottom of page) or can be used to increase FOB security.
After the end of Chapter 1, you'll be able to develop nukes to act as a deterrence against other nukes in the world. You can do this by looking at your resources. One nuke costs 75,000 Fuel and 50,000 Minor Metal, as well as 750,000 GMP. Creating one and dismantling one both give you achievements.
Note: Do not develop a nuke until you've earned 150,000 Heroism and have obtained the Hero achievement. Building the nuke will set your Heroism back.
Staff Management
Managing staff is incredibly easy. You can see everyone's skill levels and skills, some of which aren't as special as others. One skill you should generally try to get rid of is any variant of Troublemaker, as this incapacitates other soldiers and sends them to the sickbay to recover. The Boaster skill merely improves their rankings when viewed with the Int-Scope; if someone on your team has this skill, then the reading from the iDroid list is legitimate.
Staff from Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes isn't that important, but you do get to have Hideo Kojima, who is good at his job. DLC staff aren't too important either, like most Ground Zeroes staff.
Setting a staff member to Direct Contract will prevent them from leaving or being killed, save for FOB infiltrations against you from other players, which is going to be pretty unlikely these days.
Base Facilities
Waiting Room: If your existing platforms are full at the moment, excess staff are designated to wait here for you to sort through them.
Command Platform: This is usually where you land when you touch down from the ACC. A shower is close by for you to use, and posters of Paz, the Idol of Peace can be found nearby as well.
Combat Unit Platform: The Combat Unit makes regular GMP every once in a while, and teams can be sent on Dispatch Missions to earn more GMP and other resources. You can also use anyone in the Combat Unit to play almost any Main Ops mission, which you should do at least once.
R&D Platform: The R&D Team is responsible for developing new weapons, items, and equipment. You'll want to have these guys powered up so you can be powered up. A lot of important items can only be developed once your team has certain skills and blueprints, so be sure to look out for those when you can.
Base Development Platform: This is one of your most important units in the early game and continues to be very important throughout your entirety in the shoes of Big Boss. By creating new platforms, you'll be able to increase the maximum amount of staff you have in all units of Mother Base, which is always a good thing. Base development costs resources, but fortunately this very platform creates and refines its own resources, albeit at a very slow rate early on. Developing more platforms requires real time, which must be spent in-game; leaving the game with a two hour wait time to develop a platform will not result in it finishing after even a week after you leave.
Support Platform: You can receive varying types of support throughout missions. The most important and frequent support is supply drops, which you can call in to refill ammo/Fulton devices as well as entire weapons. Along with supply drops are direct helicopter intervention in a mission, most of which tampers with your maximum ranking, so don't get used to using those. The speed and effectiveness of support increases with this team.
Intel Platform: The Intel Team provides reports on things like the weather, plants, enemy fields of movement, and other information. The enemy fields of movement reports are great to have, as you'll be able to tell approximately how many enemies in an area remain unmarked if you look at your iDroid.
Medical Platform: The Medical Team is a supplement to all of Mother Base. If anyone gets sick or injured, they'll recover in the sickbay, and their recovery speed depends on the talents of the Medical Team.
Sickbay & Brig: The sickbay is where staff members who have developed PTSD or have been injured are sent so they can recover. The level of the Medical Unit affects how long they spend in the sickbay. Some newly extracted soldiers may end up in the brig if they're not immediately ready to join Diamond Dogs, and sometimes staff members will cause a ruckus, so they'll be sent in there as well.
Animal Conservation Platform: An entirely different series of platforms built by another entity to house the animals you've rescued out of Afghanistan and Africa. You can visit here whenever you feel like it after you're able to, and you'll be able to grab some plants here for Mother Base every once in a while.
Dispatch Missions
After finishing about eight Main Ops aside from the prologue, the combat unit will be created and you'll be able to send staff from this unit on dispatch missions. These are a large source of income and can provide great rewards upon completing them. Some require vehicles and other things to start, so make sure you don't sell any vehicles you extract.
Buddies
D-Horse: You start the game off with D-Horse, which is just a regular horse. You can raise your bond with D-Horse by riding it around, and that's about it. Once you've gotten a strong enough bond going, you can command it to poop literally anywhere. This can actually make vehicles swerve off the road if they run over it.
D-Dog: After Main Ops 03 or so, you'll have a good chance of coming across a small puppy in the wilds of Afghanistan. Fulton it to Mother Base and visit after each Main Ops from that point onwards to see the little pup grow up into a proper dog, which you can take with you on missions. His abilities range depending on which equipment you gear him up in, but he's incredibly useful for marking enemies and other objects.
Quiet: Quiet becomes available for deployment after a fair amount of time once you finish Main Ops 11. She can provide great sniper fire, of course, and can mark enemies like D-Dog can, but seemingly isn't as good at doing so. By raising your bond with her, you'll be able to develop more weapons for her to use, which will result in her capabilities changing.
D-Walker: A scientist will develop a Walker Gear for your own use after Main Ops 14. Being a robot, it doesn't have a bond meter to build. All of it's functions depend on what you develop for it.
FOBs & Infiltration
Building your own FOBs is the best way to increase the potential of Diamond Dogs and obtain resources. You can build several of these using MB Coins, which you can get by either daily bonus or by microtransaction. If you don't have any MB Coins, only buy a second FOB, because the price will go up after that. The first costs between 500MB-600MB, but the second is from 1000MB-12000MB. Two is plenty anyway.
Infiltrating others' FOBs provides lots of resources and high-ranking soldiers. If you don't feel like doing missions, spend some time raiding FOBs and collect as much stuff as you can.
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