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Could we improve it to make it a better evasive tool for scouts (and make it actually useful and worth using/buying) by adding a small negative sig component when the booster is fired? Something small like a 25-30% reduction would work pretty well, I think. Right now it's barely worth using at all, never worth buying, and that's pretty lame imo.

Evasive tool? I thought the retro booster only existed as an optional brake for scouts, which otherwise are pretty hard to stop on a dime (25% backthruster efficiency). I dunno, I think retro booster is underrated, but mainly because it has to be bought - if a team that I was on had retro booster, and I happened to notice, I might consider mounting it, and then if I happened to need to prox an aleph or nan an incoming ship in a hurry I might be able to find some use for it. All sarcasm aside, I think if it were available from the beginning (like probes and prox), it'd be another tool to set apart the skilled scout pilots from the scrubs. I can see where it could be applied to make scout jobs much easier, and I'd say it's useful enough to remain in the game...but it's never going to be worth buying, and it's going to be hard to get it to the point where people even care enough to bring it back if they happen to find it floating around. Solution? Make people not have to waste time and/or money to get it.

It takes some pretty fancy flying but yes, it can get you out of a bind. If you're in a non-belter or TF scout and have restro booster and need to accelerate quickly, flip yourself 180, thrust backwards and fire retro booster. When you're out of fuel/reloading, flip yourself back with careful use of other thrusters to maintain your velocity/direction and then continue full forward.

It should be default tech and a bit heavier, so we can choose either to fly a lighter scout or a heavier scout with improved braking.

Meh, ever since it was buffed I go out of my way to pick it up unless I'm doing something particularly important. It's not cheese tech or really worth buying (I don't think it would be no matter how you buff it) but it can be useful. SpaceJunk's idea has some merit, but no more than the current arrangement IMO.

It's a fun piece of tech, and more effective than most people realise after it was buffed up. My only small gripe with it is that it looks odd since the booster plume goes the wrong way.

(We can't even move the scout booster plume spots on the models to the front, since belter and TF scouts use normal boosters.)

I have never used this item in all my thousands of hours of playing. I'll give it a try and let you know what I think about it!

i buy retrobooster everytime i get rixian heavy scouts.

So, that would be every time you command then?

When was retro buffed?