Test Server Feedback

What? We have responsible devs nowadays?

What many people seem to not realize, is that with MAXED SKILLS, the effects of strong boosters are only slightly less than what is currently in place on TQ, but with the added benefit of zero side effects. We're talking a 2-5% difference compared to what the boosters do NOW with what they do on Sisi with max skills.

That being said...

I have been a booster manufacturer for over a year now. My main is also in an ELITE PVP alliance who REQUIRES boosters for a large amount of our fleets. So now you know where I'm coming from.

Here are my concerns and comments:

• If the current Sisi changes go through, booster demand is going to SKYROCKET. This is pretty common sense since boosters will be far less risky to use for a lot of people afraid of side-effects.


• Gas cloud material supplies aren't expected to change much from what I can gather. Nor is the availability of blueprint copies. Gas cloud prices have already increased from 50%-100%, and it's hard to tell how much BPC prices have increased, because many of them are already very rare, but I have recently paid 150m for a single strong booster BPC, and often paid 100m for strong BPCs, and this was before the changes were announced. (as a side note, I can tell you that someone was manipulating the gas market before these changes were even announced, I really hope CCP looks into this, because it seems like it very well could have been some insider trading)


• What happened to smuggling? I'm not really complaining here, because I think the whole idea of making smuggling a profession might have been a bit half-baked and unrealistic from the point of view of a booster manufacturer. In the end it'll probably just be something ELSE I have to do to get my drugs to market, because I don't see how I can realistically rely on others to do this for me, or for those services to come at a reasonable price. Honestly it just sounds like wishful thinking and ANOTHER FEATURE that CCP can flaunt as reason for people to join/stay with EVE. Maybe I'm wrong and it won't be a cluster****, but knowing CCP I have my concerns about that.

Also, I'd like to add as a more anecdotal comment: Before these changes were announced, booster market demand was minimal, at best. I would often sit on billions of isk worth of stock for months because there just wasn't a lot of people using boosters. Though I was often able to make sales thorough the forums or by other means of setting up private transactions, often the effort and cost involved with delivery was more than it was worth to accomplish. Boosters DO need something to make them more appealing and increase market demand, and these changes have done WONDERS for that. Still, CCP really should consider if they are going to increase demand so substantially for boosters, that they NEED to increase the supply of the materials which the boosters are made of (gas clouds and blueprints, specifically), and may also want to look into adding more diversity to their distribution throughout the galaxy.

Last thing I'll say in this wall of text, I'll just toss some numbers out. Less than a month ago, I made a run of Strong Drop boosters for some m8s. My total production cost, including fuel for the time the POS required to complete the full cycle, was around 12 million per pill (in a run of 50 pills). Because I was selling these to m8s, I sold them all at cost for this run. However, I did another run the following week for the Jita market, and sold them for about 25m each. As you can see, the profit margin is massive, but that also doesn't take into account customs fines, which add up quite a bit. Also Strong Drops have a pretty high profit margin compared to most boosters, so aren't a very good representative sample for all boosters. After the changes went in-place on Sisi, the current Jita price is sitting at about 82 million per pill. I haven't made any since the Sisi changes, but I'd estimate the production cost might have gone up maybe 50% in total, not counting the BPC, which you can't even FIND on the market right now, except for one copy selling for 2 billion, which is pretty hilarious. Still, I think this illustrates what will happen if CCP doesn't address the production material supply chain for boosters, and goes ahead with these changes. In fact, I think booster prices are going to end up at 4-5x as much as they used to be, because everyone will be wanting them and they will just be RARE, because it's going to become very difficult, if not outright impossible to find the supplies to continue to manufacture them.

The fact of the matter is most people don't use booster's for whatever reason: either the side effects or illegality "scares them" or the cost may be prohibitive for a small boost. This is for the most part a good thing. Boosters as they are now allow pilots to trump the odds in situations they are not expected to win.

Take the recent "Clarion Call 3" video, I'm willing to bet the R&K Archon was using boosters while the AHARM Triage carriers probably were not. This kind of "upset" occurs often in small gang PVP scenarios where boosters (amongst other tactics such as overloading modules) allows an outnumbered team to prevail.

CCP should not be changing the mechanics of boosters themselves, which have been perfect fr the last seven years. They should instead look into improving the ease of extraction or profits for null-sec alliances sitting on ladar sites. At the moment Alliances simply let their gas sources rot rather than extract them. On improvement off the top of my head would be to allow Rorqual's to compress gas or to simply lower gas's volume. If gas becomes easier to transport we might eventually see a flood of gases to the trade hubs which will not only lower prices on boosters across the board but also make the higher level boosters more accessible.

e.: Losing the illegality of boosters will also diminish the role of "smuggling" in the game. The profession needs to be boosted, a good smuggler should be able to get a load of drop into Jita without incurring any fines, something the average freighter wouldn't be able to do.

Thanks for your post, it is interesting seeing the manufacturing side of the operation. I hope I can provide some insight, as I am on the supply side.

First, Gas clouds. From my point of view, it really doesn't seem like there is a lack of supply. I live in a gas constellation, and we have mb 8 active gas clouds (out of 10 systems) at any given time. Even though this gas is the MOST expensive gas on the Jita market, it almost never gets harvested, because the isk/hour is not good. To put it in perspective, harvesting gas will net you about 40mln isk/hour, NOT including transportation, etc. Compare this to normal belt ratting, or ANOMs, which net 50-60mln per hour CASH and you can see why nobody mines gas. Even with the current price spike, gas is now just about in line with belt ratting, so although there has been a slight uptick in miners (I saw one yesterday for the first time in months), we will be nowhere near saturation until prices go up another 50% or so, or gas becomes easier to harvest / transport.

Second, BPCs. BPCs come from ladar sites, which are pretty common in our region, I scan down one in every 4-5 systems. The problem here is that BPCs are also not very profitable, so running ladar site will net you maybe 20-60mil on average, even after considering that occasionally you luck out and get a nanite control book, or a strong BPC, those are pretty rare. Combat plexes on the other hand are very profitable, with the 10/10 bringing in a cool 500mil-1bil on average, so you can see why many of these ladar sites sit ignored for days and eventually disappear. Now that BPCs are up about 2-3 fold as speculators have moved in, it appears that ladars (at these prices) are actually worth running. Still not as good as normal plexes, but better than belt ratting. I think if the prices are right, we can increase the BPC supply 3-4 fold from current levels, and if gas either becomes more expensive / easier to transport, we can increase gas supply by 10-20 fold, maybe more as I am unsure of the respawn rate for gas clouds.

TLDR: we have plenty of unused supply, both on the gas and BPC front - what we really need is DEMAND, hopefully the winter expansion will bring that.

Caulk: If you need a specific BPC to be listed on the market evemail me (I have hundreds, including dozens of strong bpcs).

The problem I see with your solution is that it does not make drugs more desirable. I hope the change will create a better market for drugs and increase there use. I for one would like to get into the drug trade however the market for drugs seems to be lacking. If they became more popular, then I would assume we would see more players like myself enter the market to ensure the prices do not over inflate.

I enjoy seeing others interested in this topic like myself, and I hope this constructive discussion may lead to increased visibility of the drug trade. It upsets me that many changes like the hybrids are worthy of a sticky, but boosters get no love.

Lets keep the ideas rolling. I am sure those that are making the changes do not mind borrowing ideas off the forums. (especially now given the current climate at CCP)

I don't see how this would not increase the usage. It would allow High sec pilots to use boosters (all be it synth and standards until the new contraband enforcement system goes into place) and once the new contraband enforcement system is in place; high sec pilots will be able to carry around the improved and strong boosters as well in their cargo bays with the understanding that if caught they can be shoot at.

Personally, I see this as a perfect way to transition the booster market into the new contraband enforcement system while increasing the usage in high sec and increasing the knowledge of them.

Rangloff, could you give a reason/example as to why this proposal would not increase demand?

My biggest problem is that a skill that I trained to 5 now hinders me instead of helping me. I don't want the booster to last a long time; the sooner that booster wears out, the sooner I can decide if a different booster is in order (See triage pilot: Mindflood or Blue Pill / Exile Booster). A better change would have been to leave all else the same and change the skill that reduced bad things by 5% per level to 10% or 15% even. 5% reduction per level hardly felt like it was reducing the risk. There should still be non-empire-legality-related risk, just not necessarily so high. That said, I need to find some indy guy to make me some of this stuff...

Ahhhh an EXCELLENT point.

This is why I've never trained Afterburner to V - its actually a liability if you enjoy dual-prop fits (as I do) or 100mn AB cruiser fits.

The fact that this changes skills so drastically to implement this change, should be the number one reason CCP seeks player feedback - its really unfair to fundamentally change what a skill does, knowing that players spent time on that and can't get it back. Same with the now-useless implants people spent fortunes on.

Personally, if it were me, I would have just spent some time tweaking the side effect combos to make more boosters viable on more fits, or reducing them slightly, and maybe left in the 5% synth boost. Synth clouds are in abundance and changing just the synth boosters would have the desired effect (people would want to upgrade to the dangerous stuff once they get hooked on the "gateway" drug - right now the entry level boosters are ignored because that 3% is pretty negligible in a lot of cases.)

I totally like this idea!!

my PVP alt becomes a Miner for a while to wait till the effect rub off. Though the negatives should be a 1/5 of that is proposed here

Pretty much all the strong boosters will be snatched up by the wealthy leaving behind a very small supply are ridiculous prices. Think 30 mil for a strong is crazy? Wait till you pay 100-200 million maybe even more!