EVE New Citizens Q&A

I once kissed a pretty girl, and I got to kiss her again before I ruined things, but anyway....

I don't understand boosters. I watch my youtub heroes neck a couple before a fight, but the chance of negative side affects says 40%, and the side effects seem like yep you dead now...

Anyway,.. is there a situation in which you would use boosters, and are you just rolling the dice everytime?

I addition to countering the side effects you can sometimes use boosters that have a side effect you don't care about. E.g. if you are in an armour tanked ship and the side effect is less shields it's of minor importance.

Build your ship entirely around negating booster side effects and maximizing beneficial effect, then much them like Smarties all day long.

Have fun

Or if you have time on your hands and moderate skills to let the boosters last awhile, just inject them in a station before a roam, and if the side effects are too harsh, just wait out the timer and reinject.

(Someone would have to reconfirm this, but I think if you pod yourself the timer resets as you just killed your drug junkie body :P , just dont forget your implants! O.O

It should also be noted that the dice is rolled for each possible side-effect. It's not a all-or-nothing deal.

To demonstrate (I'm a blue pill junky, so let's use that):
Possible side-effects

• Shield Capacity Penalty
• Turret Optimal Range Penalty
• Explosion Velocity Penalty
• Capacitor Capacity Penalty

Injecting a blue pill booster can give you

1. None of the side-effects
2. One or more of the side-effects (i.e. reduced shield capacity and explosion velocity, but no capacitor or turret range penalties)
3. All of them at once (statistically the unlikeliest possibility)

I fly a shield tanked Sin with drones and neuts, so the turret optimal range and explosion velocity penalties aren't anything I care about. Cap penalty doesn't have much of an effect (the moment I run out of cap boosters I'm likely dead either way), so the only semi-serious penalty is shield capacity to mitigate high alpha damage, which is situational and in most of those cases I'm likely better off with a stronger shield boost.

There is no universal rule whether to use a booster or not. It all depends on your specific situation and ship fitting and in the end comes down to your personal experience and judgement. They're usually worth the downsides, though.

I think booster affects are bound to characters instead of clones. At east the attribute boosters are.

the antipharmakon line of boosters give a nice +8% boost and no drawbacks, and are silly cheap, like 1-2mil most of the time.

I'd typically suggest using exile or blue pill for tank as the tank bonuses are much larger and the penalties don't matter so much, and an antipharm for tracking as drop has a rep penalty. Mix and match for what you want.