I have an idea for Cerebral Accelerators that I’m sure would be a very good QOL improvement, but I have no idea how feasible it is.
As I understand it, the current mechanics mean using them without Biology 5 trained means you miss out on potential skill points, and the players, naturally, don’t like this.
My solution would be to bring back an old skill, modify it, then tie Cerebral Accelerators and any other temporary attribute boosters to that skill instead of Biology.
The skill in question would be Mnemonics, and it would be modified so that each rank in the skill would reduce the duration of a temporary attribute booster while commensurately intensifying the booster’s effect.
Here’s an example: if a character without any ranks in Mnemonics uses a 7-day Cerebral Accelerator, then over the course of those seven days they will get X amount of skill points. However, if the character uses that booster after they have trained Mnemonics to level 3, then the booster will only be in effect for 5 days and change while still giving them X amount of skill points.
The result of this is that players will still want to train Mnemonics because it shortens the amount of time they spend learning any given skill, but it won’t be seen as “mandatory” because even with the skill completely untrained you still get the full benefit of the Cerebral Accelerator.
Biology skill affects ALL boosters (keeping in mind that cerebral accelerators use booster mechanics), not just cerebral accelerators. Cerebral accelerators aren’t very common, so it would be stupid to introduce a new skill specific to cerebral accelerators instead of using the all-boosters-of-every-variety skill.
The simpler alternative would be to replace cerebral accelerators, which give you a guaranteed amount of SP at Biology L5, with a at-most-once-a-day tierless skill injector. This guarantees injector uniformity and eliminates the need for a new skill without altering the mechanics of the existing skill.
That’s a fair criticism and counterpoint. Now that I think about it, when I was writing my pitch, the idea that Cerebral Accelerators would simply be the most powerful type of attribute booster after several others were added to the game was floating around in the back of my mind.
Back when Mnemonics was still in the database, there were several unpublished drugs that were seemingly intended to temporarily boost one of a character’s attributes; Cerebrokine for Memory, Encephol for Intelligence, Fetacole for Willpower, Percephrine for Perception, and Pheromine for Charisma.
I don’t know how those would actually be introduced to the game, TBH. They might work as player-created drugs if the formulas and ingredients were extremely rare, but I’m sure there are a lot of problems with that idea which I’m just not seeing.
How about not denying players an incredibly valuable SP bonus because they haven’t trained a particular skill to 5? That’s the logic the old learning skills operated under, and when CCP got rid of those there was much rejoicing!
I am willing to debate the subject, Foambreaker; I am even willing to be convinced that my suggestion is a bad one. But that requires you and I to actually debate the topic instead of you passing summary judgement and then resorting to ad hominem when I disagree with said judgement.
I’ll admit, I should have chosen better wording for that disagreement. As it is now there’s no way to tell it’s anything more than a testy retort. I’ll be fixing that.
So, do you want to debate or just agree to disagree?
I see it as counterproductive because you’re basically adding a new skill to train who’s only benefit is to give you skill points faster. It would just become a skill point sink for impatient players, and I don’t see that as being especially beneficial.
Any time spent training that new skill would be better off spent on putting points into Biology since it impacts cerebral accelerators and all other boosters as well.
Sorry for the late response, but I’m proposing this fix because Cerebral Accelerators currently have too much in common with the old learning skills for my liking, i.e. “train Biology 5 or lose out on a big chunk of the SP this item can give you”.
By that same logic, the learning skills should have been left in because any player that doesn’t put the effort into learning those skills will earn less SP. That’s a perfectly valid argument to make if you want, but I doubt it would be very popular.
I have no objection to requiring a character to have Biology 5 to get the maximum benefit out of boosters like Exile, Drop, Frentix, etc. because they give bonuses to things like armor repair, tracking speed, optimal range, and other combat stats; but Cerebral Accelerators are attribute boosters, and any character that uses one without training Biology 5 is losing out on SP just like a character that hadn’t trained all of the learning skills to 5 before CCP removed them.
You want us to waste time and ISK training more skills that individually accomplish fewer things than one skill, which has a low time multipler, that does both sensibly given that accelerators are boosters?
Comparing the effects of a temporary booster to a group of (now removed) skills is not equivalent. Not only are many cerebral accelerators tradeable, which lets all players get the same ISK value out of them regardless of their personal Biology skill level, when they aren’t tradeable they rarely expire so fast that the user cannot get Biology up to 5 before using them - it’s a 1x multiplier skill, so maximum training time with the worst possible attributes is about 7 days as an Omega (and you have to be Omega to train levels 4 and 5; an Alpha can train to level 3 in about 10.5hours with 17/17 attributes).
If Biology wasn’t already a 1x skill you might have something worthwhile in swapping them to a different skill, but since it is a 1x skill, you are actually PENALIZING players who have already trained Biology by making them invest more SP in another skill to get the same effects they currently enjoy with Biology 5.
Arguing that they shouldn’t be based on Biology because of the Omega skill level limits mean Alphas get even less of a maximum possible benefit (reduced duration plus having a slower training speed to start with) would be a more logical approach - in which case, the argument would be that these items shouldn’t be classed as boosters at all and have a fixed benefit duration regardless of skills to provide a consistent reward.
If CCP intends maximum benefit to be an Omega benefit, however, their current design is pretty much perfect for delivering that, since there is no other way to readily gate their maximum tiers than to lock the skill levels behind the Omega clone state.
Edit to add: I had implants on the calculator. Correct values for Omega training with 17/17 skills is 7 days for Biology 5, Alpha is 10.5 hours to Biology 3. If the player happens to have 20/20-ish stats (such as default/unremapped values, or +3 implants in all slots), those times drop to the previously stated 6 days / 9 hours respectively.
Even if this second skill were 1x, you now have a second 1x skill for a 2x total training time between the two of them where each skill individually gives you half the benefits of this one skill that requires the least possible training time of any skill in the game.
Furthermore, here is something I love about the Biology skill: right now, boosters are grossly underutilized in the game by most players, even the mass-produced Synth ones that have no side effects and are cheap to make and buy. One of the (admittedly lesser) reasons CCP started Evergreen rewards was to raise the profile and awareness of boosters other than cerebral accelerators. When players learn that the Biology skill can extend the life of cerebral accelerators and “other boosters”, they inquire what those other boosters are, and that helps get them hooked onto drugs. More EVE players need to use more drugs with more regularity; having a singular Biology skill promotes drug use. Having a singular Biology skill (which again, is 1x, this cannot possibly be emphasized enough) encourages drug use via raising awareness and making them more worthwhile to acquire and use.
Welp, I’m convinced! Time to throw this idea into the trash can and start working on something new.
@Solstice_Projekt, @Archer_en_Tilavine, @Bronson_Hughes, @Mkikaden_Tiragen, thank you all for your feedback. I don’t even care that it was negative; it was constructive feedback that’s helped me learn more about the game’s mechanics and how they interact with each other, and I appreciate you all taking the time to explain things to me.
