EVE General Discussion

So about a year ago I took a keen interest in the shadowy world of illegal combat boosters in eve. It seemed fun at first, popping a sneaky blue pill in the back rooms of jita nightclubs or shooting a little drop before my evening's NPC massacre. I thought for a while that I had spotted a gap in the eve market and decided to invest some isk into dealing boosters for myself.
It was here I started my thorough research into combat boosters but inevitably I stumbled across the dark side of drugs in eve. They're good, but by god, they're just so difficult!

First problem was the expense. It shocked me at first but later I found myself wholly sympathetic to eve's pushers. As I delved into the production side of boosters It seemed to me that the amount of capital that needed to be invested into production was staggering. You need a POS. You need to be based in one of the few ladar producing regions/constellations. You need to obtain the improved/strong blueprints from sites that are so rare I've only ever come across 2 of them. You need the gas clouds, you need the peace to be able to spend hours slowly sucking in gas (and of course, the tank to avoid the far reaching damage clouds which occur far too regularly - an unfortunate incident with my alt's cloaked transport ship still brings painful memories...) and then the entire production process itself, which consists of at least 4 separate stages. At this point I began to have doubts about whether the whole shebang was really worth the profit. But I pressed on regardless...

Secondly came the difficulty in trading. Boosters are allowed on the market. It's also possible to place WTB contracts for boosters, but it is impossible to directly sell boosters through contracts. This made for some inconvenient trading with my initial suppliers. Often my pre-arranged WTB contracts went unfilled for weeks at a time, tying up hundreds of millions of isk which could be better employed elsewhere. I understand the reasoning for not being able to trade in restricted items on contracts, but this was another big spanner in the works.

Thirdly - and much to my horror... there were the skills. The booster skills come in 3 tiers, each required to train the next skill. The first tier skill, biology, is an NPC spawned skillbook selling for roughly 90k isk. All fine there. The next skill however costs over 300 million isk. The third and final skill costs a mere 30 million. Unfortunately the second and third tier skills are vital for anyone wishing to utilize combat boosters effectively. The bizarre skill costs however limit the number of people who would potentially become customers of mine. Looking into this I found it was the extremely low drop rate of the tier 2 skill that caused this speedbump on the road to success.

Overall, I found myself disillusioned. I understand that boosters are meant to be hard to get, expensive and risky to use, but I have found from talking to my numerous shaky, wild eyed contacts in the underground that even with a comprehensive set-up, the profits from booster manufacture and sale are barely worth the effort. Surely it should be the other way around? Those with the dedication, investment and contacts built slowly over the years should reap the rewards commonly associated with drug king-pins?

I believe it's time boosters got some love... One or more of these improvements have the potential to really kick drugs up a notch and help get the cash rolling for the Mr and Mrs Big's of eve.

1. A dedicated gas mining ship - this would vastly increase the amount of raw material available to play with, driving down costs and the wormhole guys would love it too.

2. Make boosters available to WTS contracts in low and nullsec space. Increase the ease of getting your hands of some quality merchandise and increase the customer base. Hell, you could even take them off market - makes more sense in game terms.

3. Increase the number of ladar site ( i mean here the combat ladar sites) or change the drop rates of booster skills so that the costs are more intuitive. Tier 1, 90k, tier 2, 30 mil, tier 3, 300 mil. Much better. Would make boosters easier to afford to use, resulting in more customers and more sales.

4. Make boosters easier to transport. Sure, using a fast ship like an interceptor or cov ops makes it easier to slip the drugs by customs in empire, but if you're carrying a stack of strongs through the fringes of space, even one unlucky cargo scan could net you fines in the region of a billion isk.

Anyone agree that boosters need some love?
P.s excuse wall of text, drunk.

My name is Varesk, I am a booster addict.

Someone told me the best way to make a small fortune with boosters is to start with a large fortune.

legalizing drugs will solve all problems

Injecting expensive skillbooks, best drug in EVE.

If you can afford a tengu, you can afford a 300m skillbook.

Boosters were part of the WiS that never happened. Soundwave explained it (the booster changes and how they relate to WiS) at fanfest 2 years ago. Then they had their financial falling out from the player Exodus and its not even on the roadmap anymore.

In a nutshell he said what you are saying; that boosters were not being used because of all the drawbacks. He wanted to nerf the negative drawbacks of the booster, and take them off of the market altogether. The only way you could get them was by meeting some one in first person mode in the WiS establishments.

The second part to that was making players able to scan for drugs and flag you for smuggling if you refused to pay the fine, which would red flag you for combat to players. The responsibility would be removed from Concord. They go in so far as to make the Orca fully scan-able, but then never implemented any of the other changes.

You can probably google fanfest 2011 to find that video.

They really wanted to play with and change boosters. Yet incarna gate.They have to completely change their plan as WiS drug deals are likely never coming in a reasonable time frame to how broke the mechanic has been.

I have never used boosters, this month marks my 6th year in Eve.

Really do wish temp boosters were more prolific.
But the three tiers of illegal drugs have way way too many possible side effects.
Should be limited to one, that always happens, usually the opposite of what the drug your taking boosts. And then the boosted effect should become a negative when "coming down" off the booster.
Immensely difficult to transport and sell though empire when NPCs are in control of this factor.
Only 3 booster slots which could really use some more possible drug effects per slot. Like Crash is the only booster slot 3 drug and could stand to have a velocity version.