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Not sure if serious.

Sweet assumption bro.

I used to produce quite heavily, out of wormhole space. I built a clientele as well. I made contacts in various regions for gas harvesting.

It was still barely profitable and sales often had huge quiet times. I did it because it was fun as hell.



Grath may not know (or maybe he does) but I remember quite well and I'm well aware of the current prices that boosters are traded for.

When you factor in POS fuel/time/risk overhead, they are simply nowhere near as profitable as other industrial ventures. You are justifying your trade to yourself right now.

This debate however is pointless, as its pretty clear that you have no intention of producing hard numbers to support your claims that its as profitable as you have deluded yourself into thinking.

While I respect everyone has an opinion:
This thread was started to discuss the options for balancing the Bosters, and while I realise this will have an effect on production, a debate on profitability is irrelevant here.

As has been stated, boosters could use a revamp, but these proposed, and rushed changes, would have made boosters a ''must have'' for pvp, supply would not match a serious increase in demand if boosters became a common feature of pvp as they are because production is time consuming and convoluted.

The skill changes as I have stated several times were poor. You cant defend the proposed changes on the basis of it ''it would have made 0.0 better'' because they would not have changed 0.0 at all, they simply would have driven up the price of the exisisting boosters. Sure, a few more people may have tried to manufacture the drugs, but essentially all it would have done is increase the profit margin.

As CCP have already stated in this thread, entry level pvp already has several hurdles such as faction ammo, t2, etc. Boosters do not need to be another layer of this, they need to remain a niche use, with difficult production and delivery.

tldr; please stop derailing the thread with arguments about profitability, its not importand here.

I sense scared super-cap pilots wanting to keep boosters out of the hands of possible dread fleets that might pop them...

Does anyone have a serious proposal to the booster issue that i can debate with instead of this e-peen contest over profitability?

We need some focus here. CCP has given us some time to debate this issue and come to a consensus on a viable fix. I have a solution up for debate but only one person has shown support for it which leads me to believe that most of you in here have some issues with it.

They would be, if supply was vastly increased, and I think supply would go up a bit but, because of new people making them, because-



The price would skyrocket, you even admit as much later in this post



Exactly, not adding more sites keeps them super rare, theres no way they ever get to be MUST HAVEs because the system doesn't support MUST HAVES as is, they become extreme emergency use items, like, oh crap big fight time to pop this half billion isk strong blue pill, I NEED this boost.



Yes, I can. The current condition of half the things wrong in game is CCP over nerfs or just straight gimps a ship or item out of the box then says they'll review if it needs fixing. EAF's have been waiting for that review for YEARS.

It just never comes.

This change would have made areas that produce drug materials in 0.0 worth a fortune, and it would have fixed some of whats taken people out of 0.0, the High Sec Incursions are worth so much more than anything else in game, and ratting as a source of alliance level income so utterly destroyed because of the huge expanses of crap space.

If you're unhappy about the skills thats fine, but denying that a change like this was anything but amazing for the potential player draw is ********.

So yes, in a game like EVE where all of 0.0 is empty unless there is a timer involved then you can infact argue to keep this change if it improves that system.

I don't care if they become must have items or not, but having them give such huge bonuses without any downsides in their use seems like a huge mistake to me. I'm ok with having the downides tweaked in some form to make drug use more appealing to a larger segment of players, but if the downsides are just plain removed, the benefits need to be nerfed hard. We all know that cost alone isn't a good balancing mechanic and every time CCP has tried that it has brought huge problems to the game, so the better drugs need a real downside to them to keep things balanced.

Actually it would makes sense to tier up drugs so there are easy entry level ones with small boost and no side effects. As you increase the bonus you gain, CCP should increase the side effects and even bring addiction mechanics to the game. Basicly make it so, that low level boosters are easily available and widely used buffs with low entry barrier and cost(few percentage point bonuses at max). While the strong drugs are expensive, have nasty side effects and cause addiction(negative bonuses, that can be removed permanently by not using drugs during a certain period of time or temporarily by using more drugs of that type.) Something like this would achieve a wide demand for drugs, while at the same time keeping the game changing ones in the niche even for the people who can afford them on a constant basis.

Well myself, I tried the boosters with no side effects & actually thought that maybe I might start using them after the patch.

Then logged on today to find the penalties are all back!!!

Chances of using them if it goes live with the penalties? zero

Chances of using them minus the penalties but with reduced effect? Very high

I see your point and yes the boosters were diluted as a trade off to no side effects. However, there in lies the problem. With the boosters diluted, they lose their current niche. Boosters would move from being an item that you use when **** starts to get sideways so you can GTFO to an item that you take while in a station and lasts all day long. One of these game mechanics we already have, it's called implants. I believe booster were designed and should remain as a high risk risky game mechanic that people choose to use in desperate situations not another implant mechanic by another name.

As for the must have issue. If you cant see that once boosters are main stream w/out side effects and supply over takes demand (and it will given enough time) than you are blind. Even the devs have acknowledge this fact.

I invite you to take a read of my booster balancing proposal.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=398280#post398280

Minus the addiction mechanics, this is exactly how drugs already work on tranquility. This is nothing new, its been this way for years.

Synth boosters are widely available - if not on the market, they're easy as cake to produce. Mykoserocin clouds are everywhere, even in higsec, and the sites that drop reactions and blueprints for Synth's can be run in an assault ship. They have no side effects, and minimal boosts. Young, low skill pilots, can get involved in this, just as many others have.

Each class of drugs, standard, improved, and strong, have increased bonuses and increased side effects, just like you are proposing. They also jump radically in production difficulty as you go up in size, but it is worth it because the profit margin off strong boosters is much higher than the profit margin off standard boosters.

The game changing ones, especially the Strongs, are indeed affordable on a constant basis. Some are more popular than others, but I'm able to move strongs at a nice clip because I've established relationships with PvP pilots who enjoy them and have trained enough skills to mitigate the side effects quite nicely, and know when to use them in what ships.

The idea that booster side effects currently make them unusable is just silly. If they were so bad that they crippled ships all the time, I wouldn't have people sending me a steady stream of orders for just about every flavor in just about every strength. I still get referrals from people all the time where I learn about a new use for a drug on a new fit. There is plenty of creative, skilled pilots out there making good use of these. Whining because people aren't using them properly and dying isn't a good reason to overhaul the system.

Boosters, due to their illegality, are a black market item. Most trading leaves no record on the market, and the prices that are there are usually pretty borked. The people selling boosters on the market often are mostly the market speculators, not booster producers selling directly to booster users.

Smuggling isn't an issue for me because if I was shuttling strong boosters to Jita, they wouldn't sell very fast, and I'd rack up a huge penalty in terms of fines that would erode my profit margin. Thus, it saves time, isk, and promotes faster sales to simply seek out regular bulk buyers already in lowsec / nullsec and bypass all the hazards of the mainstream market.

I understand those that want the "3p33n" battle over profitability to simply go away, but its completely relevant to this discussion. Many have been crying that the hassle over booster manufacturing is simply too much for them to bother with, and want it dumbed down so they can get involved (and make an obscene profit for minimal work, due to spike in demand). This is unnecessary, since there already exists entry-level drug manufacturing that is really easy to get into, with gas clouds in abudance everywhere.

CCP Ytterbium wanted a system that's easy to get into, but difficult to master and profit from. That's exactly what we have today. A few individuals have thrown out some straw man arguments that arrogantly state that "I did this, I couldn't profit, therefore no one else can't either." If we're going to keep this discussion rooted in facts, lets stop basing assumptions about a black market profession on mainstream market data , historical scenarios from years past, or their a couple of testimonies from failed attempts at success.

And no, the burden is not on me as a booster salesman to reveal my numbers. I have everything to lose by explaining to everyone else how I run my business (even though I've shared most of it already in the name of education and healthy debate) but they have nothing to lose by proving me wrong if they actually have the numbers to back up their claim that booster production is conducted at a net loss, which it isn't.