What side-effects?

Alright, since I'm fighting EFT to show boosters correctly, I thought I'd do some posts on the issues that give boosters a bad name: side-effects and handling illegal goods. But I should mention that these next 2 discussions DO NOT involve synth boosters. Synth is perfectly legal and perfectly safe, no side-effects, no customs agents to dodge.

But first those pesky side-effects. I must admit the ingame info window for boosters are down-right scary. Each booster has a frightening list of negative modifiers. To the untrained eye, that list makes boosters look downright foolish to take. So let's train those eyes.

I'll use standard exile as an example, a great boost of 20% in armor repair. But that list of side-effects: 20% missile explosion penalty, -20% tracking penalty, -20% armor hitpoint penalty, and -20% capacitor capacity. Ouch .. looks horrible, right?

Not really, boosters carry a CHANCE of side-effects. Standard boosters have a 20% chance. If the fates are against you and you fail that 20% chance, you will get ONE negative modifier, randomly selected. But it goes on, if you get one side-effect, you then have a 2% chance of a second side-effect, again randomly chosen from the remaining negative modifiers (you can't get same side-effect twice). If you are the unluckiest person on earth and you get a 2nd side-effect, you get a .2% chance of a third. You can see the trend downward in side-effect probability.

Note, that if you pass that first test, you are home free .. no side-effects at all! If one (or more) occur, they last the duration of the booster, base 30 minutes.

Improved Boosters carry a base 30% chance, scaling downward exponentially. And strong works the same way, with a base 40% chance.

Not nearly as frightening as that list might lead you to believe.

One final note, you can deal with side-effects with some skill trainig. As I've mentioned before, Neurotoxin Recovery gives you a 5% reduction in the chance of a side-effect occuring per level. So taking the above example again, with Nanite Control V, you havea 15% of the first side-effect, 1.5% for a second, and so on ..

The other key skill is Nanite Control, giving you a 5% reduction in the side-effect modifier per level. So with Nanite Control V, IF you triggered a side effect, it would be less punishing, a -15% modifier instead of-20%.

So don't fear that list .. oh, and do more boosters!