Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Are drug boosters fine as they are? If not, how would you improve them?

Drugs can provide a boost for small skirmish gangs and solo players. This will become more important with links going on grid Soon. Current booster mechanics are bad since many people simply do not undock if they get a side-effect. Players in station instead of spaceships = bad.

So, how could booster mechanics be improved while still maintaining strong consequences?

Penalty mechanics: Version 1
- Penalties levels are unchanged but do not last the entire boosting period (eg ten minutes).
- The ‘penalty window’ appears at a random time during the boosting period. You are not notified immediately of any penalty when you take the booster.
- The penalty severity fades in and out so you don’t get hit immediately during a fight. This could operate in a similar way to the heat mechanic (i.e. damage over time) but go both ways. Alternatively, there is a warning prior to the penalty kicking in. Timer at top left.
- Consider clone death as a low chance penalty for the strongest boosters.

This would not give people a reason to stay docked when they take a booster. When the penalty appears the incentive to dock would be highly situational. Maybe you are just roaming about looking for a fight. Maybe your penalty is reduced enough for you to be comfortable with taking a fight. “5% tracking reduction with Ions? Should be OK…”

Penalty mechanics: Version 2
- As above but penalties are reduced and stack in the case of multiple boosters being used at the same time.

Learning boosters
- Learning implants are anti-PvP for noobs. They are terrible.
- Add learning boosters (different strengths) and remove learning implants. If your clone dies you lose the boost but this would not be as expensive as implants. This might also work from a ‘psychology of loss’ angle since boosters are temporary by nature whereas implants are permanent. I don’t know, I’m not that sort of doctor...
- Learning booster implant duration is affected by the Biology skill as per usual but with longer time periods (e.g. a one week increment per skill level).
- Learning boosters (and only learning boosters) are not contraband. Think of them as the equivalent of alcohol or nicotine.

Control
- Allow all boosters to be contracted despite being contraband. You can sell them on the market so this is a daft restriction.
- Consider a system where players scan and flag smugglers as suspect rather than using NPC customs.

Production
- I have little knowledge about production but from what I hear it should probably be easier.
- Consider limiting production to lowsec. Why? Because I like lowsec.

Ha, I should have expected that one.

who said links are going on grid?stop spreading lies

I think they're fine tbh. Generally not that common and super powerful for a few edge cases and the people who use them.

Do people do this? I use boosters situationally, rather than pre-emptively. I don't take them before a fight starts, I take them during a fight if needed.

Drugs always seemed to me to be more of a hassle than a help. The least they could do is put a timer on the screen for them, make them easier to produce/move around, and make them contractable.

And I would only consider those things "a good start" toward fixing them.

Likewise hence having neurotoxin recovery/control trained up. But then living in w-space does kind of change that aspect of it a bit.

That is why there are skills that reduce the chance of side effect, and reduce the severity of the side effect. Drugs are fine in their current state. They offer the whole risk vs reward thing this game is supposedly balanced off of.

Would I like to see more drugs/easier way to obtain the materials to make drugs? Yes, but no changes are actually needed to the current set of drugs we have.

Introduce the antidote!
removes all booster effects good or bad and adds a 10-30min effect to taking another booster to prevent "booster swapping" < although this might not even be an issue but rather a nice game mechanic to be able to swap boosters at will

could come in different strengths like current boosters but idk if that wouldn't be just adding complexity for the sake of it

I don't know if you knew it but combat boosters that give you a "side effect" will not break your boat and those effects only last 10 minutes..

So all you need to do is take a pill and -ooops side effect now wait 10 minutes and undock.