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The accuracy of our Roleplay - Capsuleers mindset.

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Laerise [PIE]:
I agree wholeheartedly with you in regards to the disassociation of capsuleers towards the consequences of their actions. It's a very human flaw and actually evident in our RL's as well, we don't see those people who are slaves in anything but name who produce our cheap consumer products, or who mine minerals for our hightech gadgets. Denial or plain lack of care are self preserving instincts that help us stay sane.


On another note I'm not sure that I'd agree that Laerise, or most of the characters I know of, are really insane in the sense of the word. Yes, they have different values and differing world views, but clinically insane... I don't know, Scagga can tell us more about that stuff for sure, at least he's more of an expert in that field than I will ever be.

What stands out to me though is that there are two distinct groups of (RP'd) capsuleers.

As one extreme we have the true megalomaniacs who gets themselves completely lost in their role as pod pilots, who enjoy to openly show their power and influence for both self gratification as well as intimidation of others. They like to gloat about their deeds in public and are generally very fond of pointing out how little they still have in common with the dirtside plebs of the common people.
A, to me, very stringent theme in this group is transhumanism and a tendency to view or express comments towards the gameworld through glasses that are very much tinted in the pitch black of early 90s cyberpunk.

The other extreme I ran into is the apologetic philantropist who seeks to reconcile himself with his plebejan origins in an attempt to maintain the facade of a 'normal' life, whatever that means.
It is this group that goes to quite an extent to make sure that loss of life (especially on 'their' side) is kept to a minimum, or at least not made public in the same negative way the megalomaniac faction preferrs to do it. These pilots usually have some pet project or ideological niche they stick to, their own little perfect world that allows them to write off the atrocities they cause as either insignificant, accidental or balanced out by 'the good' they do.

Of course a variety of other stereotypes exists, the two above are just, in my experience, the most prevalent, and neither the former nor the latter is 'better' in any way, they are just two completely different sets of mind.
What interrests me the most is how a character progresses from one end of the spectrum and back again, how their attitudes change over time when they are confronted with the results of their actions, both positive and negative.

To answer the OP though, I guess it's really up to the individual spectator to decide if the more human side of capsuleerdom portrayed by many in RP is correct or not.
TBL certainly showed a good example of how a character of a player not concerned with the moralities of the RP-scene would react to outside influence. He simply forgot about all those insignificant, distant people who man his ships, crowd the stations of his alliance and generally keep things running for him. His main focus is his own, ghettoed society of capsuleers and, like so many people in RL, he couldn't care less for those who don't concern him personally.

Laerise [PIE]:

--- Quote from: Merdaneth on 22 Apr 2010, 02:23 ---
--- Quote from: Havohej on 22 Apr 2010, 01:28 ---..except that I think both of those have everything to do with being a pod pilot.  Only a pod pilot can wade into an NPC Battleship fleet plus support with just his/her own battleship and a few drones and completely annihilate them.  Only a capsuleer can "push butan kill 5 thousand people".  Yes, five thousand people die when an NPC BS kills an NPC BS, but it wasn't just "push butan" for them, it was an epic battle.  Yes, a single high ranking politician can order a planetary bombardment and kill millions, but look at how high ranking politicians in EVE are portrayed in the PF.. not many shining beacons of humanity among them, and several actually are capsuleers themselves.
--- End quote ---

I'm honestly considering to have my character assume that there is practically no crew on EvE ships, NPC and player ships. There is no verifiable evidence that there is crew, and a lot of evidence that there isn't any crew. Packaging and moving ships for example, apparently the crew is magically added again when you activate the ship. Never any crew salary that needs to be paid, I have unused all around New Eden, some even in-space, for years on end. Whenever I board them, they are all fully crewed, never have to pay anything.

Let's not even talk about the huge amount of NPC ships destroyed. If a NPC non-capsuleer battleship requires even more crew that a capsuleer ship, we are talking about millions upon millions of deaths each day. I can imagine use factories pumping out battleships by the dozen, but you can't manufacture crew that easily. It makes a lot more sense to me for ships to hardly have any crew than a lot of crew.


--- End quote ---

Reading TBL will help you a lot in that regard Merd, I'll permit myself to bring out a minor spoiler by saying that most ship crew are in stasis in rescue pods for the most part of the journey and only woken up when they are actually needed for something.

I can well imagine that quite a few people are willing to sign up for contracts for capsuleer ships. Considering that there will be quite a lot of standardisation in ship design ( redundancy and interchangability being the most valid reasons for this), I am sure that almost every major station (each housing millions of inhabitants) can very well supply the crews for your ships and modules by simply storing them in stasis until needed.
Imagine you could sign a two year contract as capsuleer ship crewman, lets say you have a degree as an engineer in electronics, and that this contract would make you enough money to live a life in luxury for at least the next couple of decades. Sure, you might be unfortunate enough to be shipped off to god-knows-where in 0.0 and killed, but then you might as well be transferred to some missioning raven / mining barge that will never see any action - meaning you will spend those two years mostly in stasis - literally making money while you sleep !

Seriphyn:
TBL's portrayal of capsuleers is taking into account the 95% of non-RPers in EVE which, for all intents and purposes, seem to be quite accurately portrayed in the book. True to the capsuleers in TBL, they don't see the consequences of their actions because they don't give a rat's ass about PF! :P

They did mention a "precious few" have contact to the outside world...well, I suppose that can mean us, the roleplayers? Hell, Seriphyn knows the nature of himself, he knows he is a capsuleer and he is thus an egomaniac (and as mentioned people have a problem with this IC/OOC/whatever). However, pay attention to the capsuleer in "Her Painted Selves".

This capsuleer is portrayed as quite human, not sociopathic, but otherwise having a very broad and wide view of the world, but most importantly he is portrayed as a Federation loyalist. In this instance, he doesn't care about just himself, he fights for the Federation, but he's not an idealist. He seems to be aware of the consequences of his actions, and has come to terms with it, hence his demeanour.

I would like to think that if there was a "correct" way to RP a capsuleer, it would be like the one in that chron. Also, skin patch over capsuleer socket! Why's that? We don't have to stick to our parts of the station at all. Slap on a skin patch, and we can be anywhere we want, and not be basked in the limelight of being a capsuleer amongst the general public.

Syylara/Yaansu:
I've been intrigued by the physical and psychological side-effects understood to be common (i.e. not unheard of, but not inevitable) and wondered what possibilities I might pursue in those regards.  Considering their path to pod life was as instruments of the State bureaucracy and the Caldari have had the most opportunity to study these conditions, a number of programs and safeguards would have been put in place for them.  For the sake of sparking new ideas and spinoffs, I'll share a few ideas surrounding side effects of informorphs as it were that I'm toying with integrating into the backstory.

Flight time regulations, fairly self explanatory and addresses both physical atrophy and extended mental stresses.

Frequent psychological testing and performance monitoring, this may only seem plausible to those who portray close association with major factions.

Physical sensory activity, this requires a lot of personalization.  I started with the idea of what it must be like to "sense" through the ship's equipment.  For Yaan, especially, this is a central aspect of character.  Her functions were to take readings, listen to broadcasts, etc and report directly on them.  

Instruments capable of detailing vast surroundings down to the molecular composition and precisely indicate the distance of objects entire AUs away down to the nanometer, sensing a massive range of transmissions across entire bands of organization and filtering every one as a separate and distinct signal (clean, cluttered, or entirely random), feeling the amperage and voltage vary as power flows through your hull (skin?), etc.

To counterbalance this certainly self-perception-bending time in the pod, the capsuleer program Syyl and Yaan completed highly encouraged as much sensory stimuli as possible while not on duty.  This serves as segue to some completely non-relevant character bits like Yaan's culinary skills and Syyl's green thumb, their love of Intaki symphony.  The last actually has a lot of meat to it, affluence that rubbed off from their proximity to political power and high society, interest in their ethnic heritage, and orchestras I think might be the most analogous to the celestial experience (2001/Blue Danube if I must be cliche' :9).  As I said, takes a lot of personalizing.

Exercise and mediation, focusing mostly on cardiovascular health (heart attack from stressful encounter not a good use of State assets).  A decent length cardio routine, minimum of light resistance work-out, and for them I'm pondering something similar to Tai-Chi as a throw to the Achura side of their heritage.

What does your capsuleer do to stay sane? :9

Casiella:
Casiella spends a lot of her time doing things other than flying. Not just as a way to explain my limited play time, but also because a great deal of my game activity revolves around trade, research, and manufacturing. I remain unclear on how much of this requires use of the pod (given that we train skills the "capsuleer way"), but definitely this results in much less loss of life.

Now, she's odd and quirky and 'insane' by some lights anyway, but those don't necessarily stem from spending hours trucking goods around the Republic.

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