Quick Lore Break:
In recent months the CONCORD Inner Circle has started seriously considering a new approach to the issue of New Eden’s illicit booster trade. Prohibition was successful in reducing booster addiction rates, but has had serious downsides across the cluster.
The illegal booster trade has enriched the great pirate factions (especially the Serpentis Corporation and their Angel Cartel partners), and led to an increase in underworld violence as local pirate bands compete for slices of this lucrative pie.
Escalating enforcement requirements have stretched the resources of the DED and the empire customs authorities to their breaking points.
In response to these issues, the Inner Circle is planning a complete shift in their approach to boosters. Booster possession, trade and consumption by capsuleers will be legalized, and licenses for legal booster production will be available to certain non-capsuleer corporations (X-Sense being the first authorized manufacturer). Booster production and research by pirate corporations and unlicensed capsuleers will continue to be illegal.
Some CONCORD resources will be diverted to harm reduction programs (mainly focused on treating addiction among non-capsuleer populations).
This change in approach is obviously good news for the X-Sense corporation, and experts predict that it will deal a non-trivial blow to the income of the Serpentis Corporation and Angel Cartel. Nobody yet knows how these powerful pirates will respond, but it’s a safe assumption that they won’t take it lying down.
In practical terms we are planning to legalize all raw and processed boosters in all areas of Empire space, starting in the 118.6 release at the end of June.
This change will only impact boosters (there is a similar but separate change planned that will also legalize Ectoplasm). Other illegal items will continue to have their bans enforced by empire customs officers (so if you try and carry slaves through the Republic they will continue to be cross with you).
Manufacturing and reactions for boosters aren’t changing at this time, and will continue to be restricted in highsec space. CONCORD is only providing licences for booster manufacturing to X-Sense at the moment meaning that capsuleer production will continue to be prohibited by the empires. From a design perspective, we’re happy with this section of industry being unique to lower security bands.
Beyond the storyline connection, we want to make this change because the current system of booster illegality is not serving a strong purpose in gameplay. It makes the use of boosters annoying for many pilots, and causes other frustrations such as blocking contracting of ships that have boosters in their cargoholds.
We won’t rule out potentially making more changes to the system of item legality and smuggling in the future (including but not limited to complete reworks of the system) but we believe that this change is a significant benefit to the game by itself.
This change is on SISI now so we encourage you to give it a try and let us know what you think.
Thanks and happy boosting!
– CCP Fozzie
[ Original 420blazeit ]
