I don't talk about my booster making much because it is not a particularly exciting activity. It is numbers intensive, time intensive, hauling intensive, and it doesn't make me much in the way of ISK. I'm fine with all of that because I enjoy making them. I like the fiddling with the POS and the creating of a useful end product for the boys. I seem to have a thing for carving my niche into unpopular areas. It makes me popular. Maybe.
But, boosters truly do have a partially finished feeling to them. There should be more then there are. I once wrote that I felt the various clouds and booster sites should spawn in more than the small regions that they do. It would be a lovely tie in with the 'criminal' themed expansion that is pushed now and then.
All of my boys are booster users. Having someone in corp or inside the inner social circle that makes boosters has the amusing side effect if increasing booster consumption. Before I started making them, someone would contact their contact and in a few days go to pick up their boosters. This led to a mild level of hoarding or people not having them because they were inconvenient.
Enter my booster making. The original idea was that I knew a lot of people who consumed boosters. I'd make them my market and they'd buy my boosters. The end result was that happened but not in the volumes needed for boosters to become a way to support myself. Over time they started to sell and as people exhausted their supplies I stepped in. With the move to Bosena I started to list them on the market and that increased my sales. Much to my puzzlement people prefered to just buy from market instead of direct. While it was a hard concept to wrap my mind around I accept it.
Today, Diz asked me for some boosters. I moved my supply with me to the deployment but I have run out of some types already. I had a batch cooking back at my POS. That is good. I have what is needed. It is just on the wrong side of the galaxy from where it needs to be. And between where it is and where it needs to be is a whole lot of high sec, a lot of null sec, and even more low sec. It is a problem to solve and a frustrating problem to solve. Drug running isn't really a thing and it feels that it should be with customs offices and skills that let you get along better with concord.
I don't think that the booster restrictions are bad in high sec. I don't even think I want smuggling to be easier (it'd be nice and interesting if it was a complex activity). I more think that it is hard for me to have enough reason to break open the cyno chains or swoop through the massive loops of systems, dodging whatever, to get it from point A to point B.
There isn't enough carrot for all of the stick involved. The reward comes from the players. The stick comes from the game. I don't think the game needs to give more carrot, just less stick. My frustrated ranting on twitter was that I'd even take a skill that would allow me to make drug contracts. Using only the market or want to buy orders or direct trade makes it incredibly hard for me to sync with people to get them what they need when we live in the same system.
I don't mind hoops. I do mind backflips. I may be getting a bit old.
There could be more boosters. Boosters are consumable implants as far as the game sees them. That limits how many you can stack but what if we had many boosters with small percentage affects. So you can take speed and armor but not speed armor and shield since shield and armor occupy the same 'area' or something. That would mean people would develop complex lists of boosters to go with their fits and give me more things to spend all the time churning out. A random thought on the subject.
Boosters, for what they are, seem shallow. I'd not recommend the process to someone that wanted to become a drug lord. That's disappointing. A lot of people would like to try their hands at being drug kingpins. The nature of Eve causes us to need a return on some investments. My boosters keep themselves afloat but that is all that they do.
But boosters are one of a hundred small things that will, hopefully, be touched at some point. Chirality commented that there was some murmur of boosters and the new personal home module thing. Right now it is all ideas but it is not for it to crop up. It may allow boosters to be touched a little bit in the future as CCP balances between improving what they have and creating more to keep people interested.
But, boosters truly do have a partially finished feeling to them. There should be more then there are. I once wrote that I felt the various clouds and booster sites should spawn in more than the small regions that they do. It would be a lovely tie in with the 'criminal' themed expansion that is pushed now and then.
All of my boys are booster users. Having someone in corp or inside the inner social circle that makes boosters has the amusing side effect if increasing booster consumption. Before I started making them, someone would contact their contact and in a few days go to pick up their boosters. This led to a mild level of hoarding or people not having them because they were inconvenient.
Enter my booster making. The original idea was that I knew a lot of people who consumed boosters. I'd make them my market and they'd buy my boosters. The end result was that happened but not in the volumes needed for boosters to become a way to support myself. Over time they started to sell and as people exhausted their supplies I stepped in. With the move to Bosena I started to list them on the market and that increased my sales. Much to my puzzlement people prefered to just buy from market instead of direct. While it was a hard concept to wrap my mind around I accept it.
Today, Diz asked me for some boosters. I moved my supply with me to the deployment but I have run out of some types already. I had a batch cooking back at my POS. That is good. I have what is needed. It is just on the wrong side of the galaxy from where it needs to be. And between where it is and where it needs to be is a whole lot of high sec, a lot of null sec, and even more low sec. It is a problem to solve and a frustrating problem to solve. Drug running isn't really a thing and it feels that it should be with customs offices and skills that let you get along better with concord.
I don't think that the booster restrictions are bad in high sec. I don't even think I want smuggling to be easier (it'd be nice and interesting if it was a complex activity). I more think that it is hard for me to have enough reason to break open the cyno chains or swoop through the massive loops of systems, dodging whatever, to get it from point A to point B.
There isn't enough carrot for all of the stick involved. The reward comes from the players. The stick comes from the game. I don't think the game needs to give more carrot, just less stick. My frustrated ranting on twitter was that I'd even take a skill that would allow me to make drug contracts. Using only the market or want to buy orders or direct trade makes it incredibly hard for me to sync with people to get them what they need when we live in the same system.
I don't mind hoops. I do mind backflips. I may be getting a bit old.
There could be more boosters. Boosters are consumable implants as far as the game sees them. That limits how many you can stack but what if we had many boosters with small percentage affects. So you can take speed and armor but not speed armor and shield since shield and armor occupy the same 'area' or something. That would mean people would develop complex lists of boosters to go with their fits and give me more things to spend all the time churning out. A random thought on the subject.
Boosters, for what they are, seem shallow. I'd not recommend the process to someone that wanted to become a drug lord. That's disappointing. A lot of people would like to try their hands at being drug kingpins. The nature of Eve causes us to need a return on some investments. My boosters keep themselves afloat but that is all that they do.
But boosters are one of a hundred small things that will, hopefully, be touched at some point. Chirality commented that there was some murmur of boosters and the new personal home module thing. Right now it is all ideas but it is not for it to crop up. It may allow boosters to be touched a little bit in the future as CCP balances between improving what they have and creating more to keep people interested.
I actually like your booster related posts, they're the most interesting to me :)
ReplyDeleteI've given the business a rest because I've had enough of that awful POS interface and irritating bugs with modules.
However, having a reactor/drug lab "yurt" module would indeed be awesome.
To emulate the whole Breaking Bad thing of going off into the New Mexico desert / Low-sec with an RV / space-yurt to cook up crystal meth / boosters would be hugely appealing!
It would also bring the costs of boosters down (I would think less fuel would be required for the cook) and push sales up.
Make it vulnerable to being probed down and siphoned, of course ;)