Frak Monkey
Es and Whizz
Hedonistic Imperative
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Posted - 2010.10.26 01:04:00 -
[1]
I disagree with the initial proposal and most of the subsequent proposals as well.
As a member of New Eden's oldest and most well-known smuggling cartel, I have to say the most pressing issue with boosters right now is not production, not side-effects, and not customs.
Please, please fix contracting issues with contraband. It makes no sense that I can openly sell 100 units of Strong Blue Pill on the market in Jita, but one single unit of Standard Blue Pill cannot be contracted in a backwater 0.1 system.
As for gameplay mechanics of boosters themselves:
Boosters having delayed side-effects is not the way to go, though I can see what you are trying to accomplish. Delaying side effects until after the booster is finished will lead to long periods of waiting out penalties while bouncing from safespot to safespot, or docked in station.
A better way to combine a penalty-free period with boosters would be to have a short grace period upon injection (the rush)where the bonus is applied immediately, but not the side-effect
e.g. Standard exile injections might give 60 seconds of penalty-free time upon injection, and the remaining 29-59 minutes of time will be subject to full penalties. This gives users a distinct reason to hold off injecting until they are in combat, yet allows more risk-averse pilots to inject early, see what effects they get, and then decide if they want to engage or not.
This sort of mechanic also allows for the possible addition of skills to extend the initial rush period, or tweaking rush periods by booster strength.
Adding more boosters needs to be carefully considered and evaluated with caution. There are currently 16 booster regions, producing 8 varieties of boosters in 4 strengths. Adding additional boosters will either require adding more booster regions, and thus changing the balance of regional value, or adding new blueprints and reactions to the existing regions, thus diluting the supply of existing boosters to feed production of the new types. Neither of which is a particularly good solution.
On a more social-oriented level, I would like to note that the single biggest issue in getting more pilots to use boosters, in my experience, is not related in any way to any of the gameplay mechanics surrounding them. It is simply that many pilots do not know they exist. Boosters are the dirty secret of Eve, no one talks about them, few people know where to get them or who to contact, and fewer people know how to interpret attributes tab and the side-effects listing correctly.
Before you go about making changes to booster mechanics, you should look into changing people's knowledge of boosters.
-Frak
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