Combat boosters and tanking

15/02/2007

Combat boosters are another Kali introduction, injectable drugs which give pilots temporary benefits to various combat abilities. They are produced in the depths of 0.0's new COSMOS areas in the existing regions (not the new ones). Many assume that combat boosters are intended to be used only in 0.0 as they are illegal in high security space but in fact they work anywhere and are very useful in low security systems. They cannot be sold on the markets in empire but can be traded directly at any station and transporting them through highsec systems is easily achieved by using an interceptor and warp-to-zero. Ignoring the manufacturing process of combat boosters, their uses in combat are clear. Each comes with a set of possible side-effects and every time you use the drig, each side-effect has a percentage chance of occuring. These side-effects are things such as tracking speed penalties, armour amount penalties and other things. So how can they be used to tank more?

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Of all the combat boosters, only three can directly affect a tank. Those three are Blue Pill, Exile and Mindflood. Standard Exile goes for around 10mil a pop and increases your armour repair amount by 20%. Possible side-effects do include -20% armour HP so it's worth training the somewhat rare skills nanite control and neurotoxin recovery. The shield equivalent is Blue Pill, the standard version of which has a similar 20% bonus to shield booster amount. As with Exile, it has some possible side-effects which are appropriate for shield-tanking ships, such as -20% shield HP. Both drugs stack without penalty with rigs and modules which increase repair or boost amount.

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The third and final drug that can directly affect tanks is Mindflood. This drug increases your capacitor's maximum amount by 10%. Not so huge a bonus as the other drugs since capacitor has a lot more uses than just as part of a tank. The possible side-effects, however, are just as strong as with other boosters and are more likely to occur than with blue pill or exile. Despite the problems with combat boosters and their obvious side-effects, I HIGHLY reccomend getting your hands on some Blue Pill or Exile and training up the Biology skill to extend the duration of effect. For me, Exile has turned the toughest level 4 missions into a walk in the park and gives a huge edge in pvp, which is always mostly geared toward dealing damage than tanking it. -- Nyphur