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[Casiella]

That's because you're nowhere near a capsuleer equivalent. Imagine if Tony Hayward or Erik Prince did that.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

That's because you're nowhere near a capsuleer equivalent. Imagine if Tony Hayward or Erik Prince did that.

Pretty sure even if Bill Gates came to Tolono and started doing that the FBI would still want to talk to him.  Not to mention that it would be the biggest media circus and public meltdown since like...ever.

[Mizhara]

And I'm fairly sure if I wanted to masturbate at the top of the churchspire while yelling profanities, heresy and blasphemy, I'd be dealt with.

That has about as much to do with Eve as your example did. Real life comparisons are moot, and quite frankly insulting the intelligence of Eve players in general. There's nothing common between real life humans, society and a capsuleer reality.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

And I'm fairly sure if I wanted to masturbate at the top of the churchspire while yelling profanities, heresy and blasphemy, I'd be dealt with.

That has about as much to do with Eve as your example did. Real life comparisons are moot, and quite frankly insulting the intelligence of Eve players in general. There's nothing common between real life humans, society and a capsuleer reality.

In what way?  Governments can't stand when they have no authority -- that's the whole idea of a government.  Just because capsuleers are supposedly some transhumanist miracle (which I think is a little farfetched, considering that "freelance" capsuleers have supposedly only been around a grand total of seven years) does not change that fact.

[Mizhara]

Who says they don't have authority? They're choosing not to exercise their authority, because they know the consequences. Fuck with capsuleers, and they'll lose the massive benefits that they bring to the table, even compared to the headaches they cause. Sure, they'd get rid of the headaches, but they'd be back to square one, barely hopping along.

As far as I understood the PF, capsuleers have brought massive change to the 'larger picture' of the cluster. It only stands to reason capsuleers get some 'leeway'.

Concord and the various governments are fully capable of standing against the capsuleers. But why the hell would you shoot the goose that lay golden eggs, just because it has a habit of smacking the other geese upside the head sometimes?

And the same holds true for capsuleers, I'd imagine. It'd be downright stupid to pick a direct fight with the various factions in the game that are Concord supported, because they know that no matter what happens, everyone loses.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

What, exactly, is the giant benefit of capsuleers when they start threatening to kill thousands of people on a whim and pushing governments around?  They can be replaced -- maybe by something that won't be quite as good, but something that doesn't turn you into a political laughingstock is going to be a better alternative.  If we could replace the US military with a giant robot that would protect us but randomly kill 500 people every other day, how long, exactly, do you think people would let the US keep the giant robot around?  If this is "normal" behavior for a capsuleer, there's no way in hell it's sustainable, especially for a democratic regime.

Is the benefit that the capsuleers can kill swaths of Guristas all day?  Guess what, if CONCORD can slaughter capsuleers left and right when it wants to for the slightest offense (like accidentally smartbombing a gate), I am guessing they can do a pretty good job on the Guristas if they put their mind to it.

[Casiella]

I made the Tony Hayward and Erik Prince (former CEO of Blackwater) comparison intentionally, though the latter is probably far closer to what I have in mind.

Someone with direct connections to governments, providing significant paramilitary expertise and resources, and a history of openly defying mid-level governmental officials with occasions in which that's worked out for him.

Perhaps not the technical benefits, unless he's actually Tony Stark but there's at least an analogy to be drawn.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

You'll notice that Tony hayward hasn't exactly done wonders for his image just by appearing insensitive and douchebaggy.  I don't think actually threatening people with a gun would really be better.  And yes, Blackwater can get away with acting like cowboys in Iraq, but notice that they have trouble getting away with anything close to that shit here (and they are currently under investigation for some..."shady" practices involving weapons here).  No government can stand if you have thousands of people running around openly threatening the people supposedly under its "protection" -- that's the whole idea of an insurgency.

[Casiella]

Please don't interpret my statements as defending Hayward or Prince. Lord knows that wasn't my intent (nor would it have been on-topic for this thread even were I to feel that way).

My point is that, at least on a given day, those things can occur without calling in a massive and immediate law enforcement response. At least, they can when undertaken by particularly powerful and connected individuals, rather than "normal" folks like you and I. That can of course lead to more serious consequences in the medium and long term, and the chronicle's scope simply doesn't indicate whether that occurs with Omvistus.

[Alain Colcer]

The chron challenged the reader to find explanation to such a setting. As Yoshito points, the fact the character exists ingame, it is part of the NPC school and does seem to have acquired capsuleer license just recently shows he is just "bluffing".

Kayleigh's comment on how CONCORD will just take action after the aggresion has been done with, also adds a very specific and important detail. CONCORD will not stop Capsuleers, CONCORD is a "deterrant" and will only act on confirmed aggresion.

So the final two variables here to take into account are, why a gallente world and why one on a frontier?

To straigthen things a bit, Chesiette is not at the frontier with the Amarr empire, it is the frontier with the Intaki Syndicate, which makes it a sort of "tortuga" hub for shady deals.

Yvesk is a representative (not a boss as someone implied) appointed by Federal Administration to help the locals in dealing with Capsuleers. Up until now he just used a chair as there was little if any at all interaction between planets and capsuleers.

The Federation is a democracy, local governments, senators, etc. Pursuing any kind of bureacracy here will take months. Any Federal prosecution by the people will take years.


Omvistus knows this, and have chosen Chesiette because his bluff could not be countered by any experienced officer, nor any real threat from the government would materialize in the short term.

Therefore, perfect execution of planetary domination, with a massive exchange of isk in favor of the planetary economy.

It could have been written better, yes, more polished, yes......but it is nonetheless one chron interesting to dissect.

[Svetlana Scarlet]

Well, the problem is that again, the chronicle doesn't make it clear if this is an aberration or trend -- something I hate about a lot of the chronicles and news articles.  If this is an aberration, I can sort of understand why the hammer of god did not immediately come down on him (though I can't see there being a six hour conversation afterward if the governor is stabbing the "NAVY COME HELP ASAP" button), but it also relatively useless from a world building point of view.  If this is the kind of thing capsuleers can do every day, then it makes no sense whatsoever.  The government can't simply stand back while it's authority is undermined at every turn.

And Bruno, stories shouldn't challenge the reader to do mental gymnastics to come up with weird reasoning to justify things that make no sense on the face of it (unless, I suppose, that's the entire point of the story -- but there is NO indication here, other than the fact that it makes no sense, that was the intent).  If I'm writing a historical novel about 1500s Italy and halfway through someone whips out an AK47 and guns down the Pope, that's going to be a little jarring to say the least.  I do not want Eve canon to descend to the depths of Star Wars fanboy wankery, thanks.

[Natalcya Katla]

The chron explicitly states that Yvesk holds the highest position of authority on the entire planet. That does make him boss. If he weren't boss, then he couldn't be ordering large-scale evacuations at the drop of a hat. If he weren't boss, he couldn't make decisions regarding the development of the economy of the entire planet. In fact, if he weren't boss, he would be utterly useless to Omvistus in this particular scenario.

As regards killing (or pissing off) the goose that lays the golden egg: If you're sitting on top of a heap of resources, and there are potentially thousands of "geese" who'll be quarreling over who gets to roost there and exploit said resources, then you're not dependent on that one single flock of golden geese with the particularly shitty attitude. The "capsuleers are gods" meme is all well and good, but there's absolutely no reason to kowtow to the tantrums and demands of Ares if you can instead petition Athena to tell him to go fuck himself, and to set up shop in your town instead of him. There's a reason why gods like Ares never got anything sacrificed to them. People could get much better deals elsewhere.

The capsuleer "caste" is not unionized, in fact there's close to zero solidarity within it. It's nothing like "piss off one, piss off everyone". You snub one capsuleer, the rest of them are going to laugh in his face and take advantage of his misfortune. They're not going to shun you.

[Wanoah]

I tend to think that in general, we're in dangerous territory with capsuleers and their relative power/importance. This chron, and more specifically the reaction to it, serves to highlight the obvious dangers.

When Eve started, we were just pilots of spaceships. We had a certain edge over the normals in space, sure, but that was about it. We were captains of spaceships just trying to make our way in life. We couldn't make that much impact, and our place in the world made sense. If we got too uppity, CONCORD would smack us down.

OK, so CONCORD has always been a bit of an immersion-breaker, but we could deal with that as long as it wasn't dwelt on too much. Wave your hand, shrug and carry on.

Now, with the pod-pilot being consistently portrayed as near-godlike in terms of power and influence, I think we have a potential problem. I think it's a mistake conceptually to let pilots dick around with planets that are owned by the Empire factions. It doesn't make sense.

Once you start to say that people have all this power, then all the other ways that we can't actually exercise that supposed power start to become really noticeable. All those cracks that were papered over are suddenly gaping wide. Why can't we just blow up stations and gates with our cap ships?  Why are CONCORD able to instantly spawn in numbers next to us when we can't do the same? Why can't we declare war on CONCORD and take them down? Why can't we simply overthrow whichever faction we please? Why can't we destroy gate guns? Why doesn't the security status change when a "safe" system is clearly dangerous? Why do thousands of enemies appear hourly in "safe" systems? Why can't I take ownership of Jita and everything in it? Why can't I bombard Dam Torsad from orbit and consequences be damned?

The biggest crack of all? Pod pilots themselves. They make no sense. Why would anyone create schools and fund the training of capsuleers at great expense and simply turn them loose? Who would hand over almost unlimited power to people with no return on that investment at all? Why would you set out to create a group of people that could threaten your planets?

The original game was essentially an Elite clone, and its design choices reflect that. I'm sure that the Empire-building options will please a lot of people, but because this is being bolted on piece-by-piece as an afterthought, it means that a lot of things no longer make much sense. If Eve had been built from the ground up as a territorial strategic sort of game, then mechanics and supporting backstory would have been very different from the outset. The worry for me is that the original vision for Eve, which was a strong one, is steadily being diluted by the enthusiastic newcomers who are all trying to make their own mark on the game.

[Isobel Mitar]

Despite CCP Fallout's introduction, I would prefer to interpret the chronicle as Omvistus' power-trip daydream. It has many of the qualities of such.

If the story was "true", the implications to world consistency would indeed be somewhat problematic. That said, Eve canon is not always consistent with itself. And I believe most players familiar with Eve fiction have their "favourite" piece(s?) they would like to remove from canon.

[Silver Night]

I have to say that from a story perspective, I would find capsuleers having to negotiate or having challenges to deal with more interesting - and incidentally, chock full of potential - than being able to just plop down the structures etc.

Obviously in either case there is going to be some abstraction. I think most of us can accept that game-world reality being different than what is actually on our screen, because concessions have to be made to it being a videogame.

I don't this we need an explanation of how PI works that fits in neatly with being able to drop structures everywhere, and I think contorting the fiction to fit the literal reality of playing the game makes for a much poorer backstory.