A disclaimer here: I'm learning this as I go from reading around the eve meta-verse. I'll update this blog post as I learn more from experience, commenters here, or other sources.
What is the Baby Booster? Eve fleet mechanics are such that if you have more than one person in a fleet then the Leadership skills can give a boost to the performance of everyone in that fleet. A single pilot with Leadership skills by themselves will not get these bonuses. This leads to the infamous "solo PVP" where the actual combat pilot is receiving boosts from off grid, something that pretty much everyone I've heard of wants to see fixed including CCP Fozzie and CCP Rise. Outside of this more controversial application, a booster is great for the kind of small gangs of lower-skilled players I see in my own corp where none of us have gotten around to training the leadership skills. Given the arms-race nature of PVP, if you're going up an opponent who is going to have a full T3 link/booster alt this will at least help out.
What kind of bonuses are we talking about?
- Leadership: 2% bonus to targeting speed per level
- Armored Warfare: 2% bonus to armor hitpoints per level
- Siege Warfare: 2% bonus to shield capacity per level
- Skirmish Warfare: 2% bonus to agility per level
- Information Warfare: 2% bonus to targeting range per level
So for having a T1 frigate in a safe somewhere in system you get bonuses in excess of what a really expensive pirate implant set in the head of every member of your fleet.
Open question: The EveUni and official wiki entries only mention being in space and in the solar system as limitations. If you can provide bonuses while cloaked I'll definitely alter this plan to include the ability to put a crude cloak on your alts T1 frigate.
Options:
- 30-day Baby Booster: 10% bonus to targeting speed, choose one other at 10%, others at 8% bonus, over four squadrons.
- 60-day Baby Booster: All bonuses at 10%, over five squadrons.
- Long term: Keep running with the above up to a full T3 with mindlinks. That's beyond the scope of this article.
Training Pattern:
Train Cybernetics 1, then plug in +3 Cha and Will implants, remap to maximize Cha first, Will second. If you're going to go for the "Long term" option, instead continue to Cybernetics 4 and plug in +4 implants.
Train Leadership 1, then each of the Warfare skills to 1. Congrats! After 80 minutes of training your alt can already give to 2% bonuses to a minimal fleet (i.e. your main).
"Solo" branch point: If this is really just to boost your "solo" main then you can skip the Leadership over 1 that we're about to cover and instead just focus on the Warfare skills. It won't let you squeeze any more level 5 warfare skills on the 30-day or 60-day plan, but you will have more time to get some ship skills in.
Train up Leadership and the Warfare skills to 4. I'd recommend mixing in a Infomorph Psychology 1 or 2 as well so you can clone into a combat position then clone out to your learning implants. You're now only 9 days into training and you can give a decent sized squadron 8% bonuses in all categories.
Train Leadership to 5 and start Wing Commander. Now you can boost multiple full-size squadrons. Choose what your priority is for Warfare skills to get to level 5. I figure this is pretty much driven by your tank style, with the agility and targeting range bonuses being less useful.
Where I am:
My own new alt is now at the point of training the level 4 warfare skills. I'm not going to prioritize Wing Command yet, since if our corp ever gets more than one squad we're pretty much guaranteed to have one of the veterans around with level 5 warfare skills. Soon it's off to Estel Arador to pick up a clone I can move into the warzone and then it's time to start experimenting!
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