Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => CCP Public Library => Topic started by: Lyn Farel on 30 Jan 2015, 03:12
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I wanted to open that thread to firstly try to establish an exhaustive list of all the plot holes and issues that we, roleplayers, have to deal with, be them really insignificant details or inconsistent nightmares for which we still have no solution. Then we can maybe try to discuss about those and find elegant solutions perhaps ? I know some of those could really need one...
The idea is NOT to impose solutions and explanations but rather to propose and try to see on which cases people actually agree with, and which cases prove conflictual.
I will try to keep the list updated with every plot hole possible that we can think of and the following ideas and solutions found be the community in the hope to at least reduce conflict, drama, and community balkanization. Please keep in mind that it would be better each time to process rationaly by stating what PF says on the matter, where PF conflicts with itself if it is the case, and then what causes issues in terms of plot holes, logic holes and the likes. Once we get a clear idea of the issue and what are the causes and the hard facts, we can then start adressing them. We also have for some of them a lot of previous discussions on backstage so feel free to link them up as well.
Since i still am using a tablet because of vacations, i cant for now create a more exhaustive and formated OP, but i will do as soon as i am back.
A bit of food for thought to start with, like the main nightmares we have to face :
- the scale of destruction in pve missions.
- the unending proxy war and what it implies.
- the unending incursions and what it implies for concord as well.
- soft cloning
- jump cloning killing your previous body before jumping to the new one (how do they get the implants out ?).
- the status of freelance capsuleers and why empires and concord continue to support their emergence.
- the capsule, what are the exact powers of concord on capsule deactivation, and what explains its powers in high sec but not in null, etc.
- pirate loyalists not being punished by CONCORD ?
- there are pirate stations in nullsec which SCC has markets in. Pirate corporations sell items, sometimes illegal items, on those SCC sanctioned markets. The markets make no sense being in pirate stations where the station owners go out of their way to destroy people within SCC's parent corporation's umbrella.
And some milder issues as well :
- PLEX and how to take them ICly.
- Multiple clones and infomorphs like the case of Zainou's CEO
- Why drones on droneboats are suddenly more tough and powerful than on conventional ships ?
- capsuleer implants ? How powerful ?
- Why can't we use skillbooks for other tings than capsule skils ? I KNOW Jiujutsu !
- Why is it legal to store people in hangars indefinitely (or "Trash" them there)? Why can't people (or at least non-slaves) leave the hangar ?
- Why do Amarr NPC Corporations buy/sell slaves on SCC markets? Why are NPC dropped or mission people bought and sold on SCC markets, and what does it mean to buy/sell a non-slave in this way?
I know it is a quite intensive job but heh, we have to start somewhere anyway.
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I can't really do many of the points you raised much justice, but I'll give a quick appraisal from my POV:
Regarding the major points, the first three are 'world breakers' certainly. They fly in the face of rational economics and resource allocation. Simply put, the level of expenditure on new ships is high high, production so fast, and likely loss of life so staggering that spending the resources any other way would be more reasonable for all involved. There is a demonstrable scarcity society in all of EVE's factions (even Nation requires, indeed thrives, on its extreme underclass despite the outwards homogeneity of their society). I have no idea how to fix this within the limits of MMO PvE requirements unfortunately.
Soft cloning seems very much to be an off camera activity, at least for now. Consensual compromise works in most cases (don't throw dubious canon out into the ether willy nilly). hashing it out in debate in this or other forums and finding like-minded or open-minded individuals always helps - a larger consensus makes for a more stable experience, but personally I wouldn't label this one as game breaking unless a particular interpretation is forced as 'the gospel' of soft cloning. Personally I think CCP can fix this by ushering in the Capsuleer/Legion/Valkyrie cloning PF asap - giving us tailored clones instead of seemingly pointless stratification of immortal society. Soft clones become less of an issue when a civilian issue Legion/Dust clone is available as your shore-leave suit.
Point 5 is another tricky one. Very much dealt with on my part by sticking my head in the sand or embracing a 'client capsule' culture of drifting as my own sovereign entity, working for the bigger fish to get that money and fame. Of course them ore you want to work with or affect a given faction, the bigger the problem becomes. Another issue when balancing sensible PF against the rigours of maintaining a viable game world. No idea how to fix this.
Point 6 falls into the same category. There are demonstrable PF and client-side applications of CONCORD's power, but the PF is schizophrenic at best. Again, another hard fix - see the multi-cloning thread for my general approach to the dissonance this causes (OOC ear to the debate, IC ear to my friends).
Regarding mild issues:
First point I gave an opinion in the multi cloning thread. Highly personal and not universally applicable, so not a fix as much as a 'way of living with it'. Second point much the same.
Third point is a personal favourite of mine. Tl;Dr version, I reject the 'bigger guns and more armour because ship bonus' magic, and instead support the theory of far superior control systems allowing faster response, more sophisticated co-operation and evasive/distraction based defense of drone units. Essentially: a better collective equals more damage and less losses. For the long version: http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=6408.msg108283#new (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=6408.msg108283#new)
Point four, good question. I have not the foggiest. My in-situ RP is usually among my peers and friends, so we're either equivalent in capability or just not going to get into a cyber-brawl or game of eidetic memories and high-functioning savant-ism. I can imagine capsuleer implants on top of their apex-biology and cognitive capabilities make the implants pretty damned scary to an unauged human, but we have no benchmarking in place for this beyond 'capsuleer smart, dustie strong'.
Point five. No idea myself. I think the tech would be pretty useful for most anything - maybe it is a licensing issue, maybe it is just hard-locked to things we come across as 'capsuleers' (aka game scope limiting PF scope). Another one I consider an open problem worth discussing to at least get a feel for the varying interpretations out there.
Good topic Lyn, I look forwards to seeing more replies.
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For the mild issues from what i see :
Plex, means pilot licence. A freelance capsuleer can pay concord fees to continue to fly and not see his capsule deactivated. Which brings back to the main issue of the real power concord holds over the capsule and why suddenly shutting down for a missing payment and not for a mass murdering psychopath with max neg sec status ? The pros supporting the licence is probably to fuel up concord economy and the scc, the same way taxes probably fuel concord various organizations, be them capsuleer or baseliner. The cons is that you can also oocly pay with rl money, which has no sensitive direct value in the game world. One could argue that it could be considered the same as paying with isk and handwave it, but the truth is that there is no isk transfer. Then ofc, we have the issue of concord being made of bribery and corruption when it was actually described as incorruptible and a force for law in old chronicles. Is that just a facade ?
Multiple cloning seems possible as long as soft cloning is. If it is possible, then there is that concord la, that forbids it. It is then tied to concord omnipresence issue and whhy they are not doing anything even when knowing it. If they are not doing anything, then it has to be explained why.
On drones your bit of world building seemed sensible and definitely a viable possibility.
On capsuleer implants, old pf said that it made capsuleers super human, which contradicts what we see ingame. Is that old PF still canon ? If so, then maybe it is more focused in skill learning and specific capsule capabilities ? I personally like that explanation since our ingame implants remain purely effective for the capsule only. Then the question is, what of other, made up RP implants ? Where do we draw the limit ? Do they even exist ? What does PF states about that ?
Skillbooks then, a personal pet peeve of mine. We know it is soct technology and probably only designed for capsule interfacing skills much like capsuleer implants. It seems to be through slow learning, so it indicates that it is unable to rewrite directly at once the whole neural and innate wiring of our brains. It is thus a very slow paced tech and nothing indicates there is better like directly implanting or imprinting stuff into one's brain or capsuleers would be using it instead. Though we can think of memory implants that serve as portable hardrives in the case of sharing specific memories (cf black mirror).
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The more i look into it the more i think that the main issue we will have to fix is about concord. Almost every issue we are having stems from inconsistencies and contradictions tied to them, their real power and laws, and what sense there is behind everything they do.
It could also be interesting to ask that question on the fiction official forum.
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- the scale of destruction in pve missions.
- the unending proxy war and what it implies.
- the unending incursions and what it implies for concord as well.
- soft cloning
- the status of freelance capsuleers and why empires and concord continue to support their emergence.
- the capsule, what are the exact powers of concord on capsule deactivation, and what explains its powers in high sec but not in null, etc.
- Scale of destruction in PvE missions considering a single lvl4 mission of 20 BS x 5000 crew each which comes out to potentially 100,000 people dead not counting the cruisers and frigs does start to seem a bit ridiculous given how many missions are run each day. I just try to ignore it.
- As for FW it seems mostly profitable for the militias when I consider how the LP stores function. Considering:
- A Navy Frigate (for example) would only cost a militia a base manufacturing cost of 300,000 ISK as an estimate given mineral prices.
- That frigate is then exchanged for 1 other frigate + 2,000,000 ISK by a capsuleer in a militia.
- That frigate is then likely sold in a market hub incurring a further 1.5% transaction tax meaning anywhere from 300,000 ISK to 150,000 ISK to Fed Navy, CalNav, Emperor Family etc.
Given that model the militia and the sponsoring government in general has just made between 2.6 and 2.45 million ISK in net profit from the exchange. That's ignoring the fact that the empires might have far tighter supply chains and can operate on real economies of scale further driving initial production costs down on items they allow for transactions to militia contractors.
This discounts the NPC in plexes which much like other PvE in Eve causes issues IC because of them just being spawned as throwaway things to shoot at from a gameplay point of view while carrying certain IC consequences due to it. Discounting the need for militia npc purely as that thing to prevent afk offensive plexing it seems a nice little cash cow. You go send capsuleers on pointless missions (heh spin buttton for patriotic duty) you make profit from their LP store transactions and they make profit from it. Win/win.
- Incursions seem silly to me as any form of strategy. I mean there's got to be a point Kuvakei and the True Citizens must have realized how ineffectual and pointless it has been right? It's just one of those PvE things in Eve that ends up carrying some rather silly implications for the game world.
- Soft clones I can take or leave. To me they were always a way to resolve things like someone suicide bombing your space bar or something.
- I'd say freelance capsuleers are tolerated by the Big Four and thus to an extent CONCORD itself because they operate in an artificially constrained war economy where profits are generated through SCC taxes and where supply and demand is assured through a perpetual cycle of destruction and production. Just look at your market tab, I daresay 90%+ of the items you're allowed to purchase as a capsuleer are either weapons/armaments or related to their manufacture. Just look at what's required to build Tech2 items and guess what, it's all taxed, just as the finished product itself is taxed.
Why would CONCORD and the Empires give a damn about all the capsuleer violence when the majority of that violence is directed solely against other capsuleers and ensures that the gears are nicely oiled so that they can tax the entire manufacture process when those same capsuleers need to buy more things to violence each other with? 1.5% tax rate is a pretty nice passive income stream when you consider the hundreds of billions to potentially trillions of isk going through a market hub daily.
I don't think CONCORD or the Empire's really even care what capsuleers do or think so long as the war economy turns over and the majority of violence is contained between other freelance capsuleers. They probably don't care if you think you're an all powerful demi-god, a factional loyalist waving the flag, or truly believe you can change the cluster because you really are that important and privileged. The reasons don't mean a damn when the inescapable truth is that while freelance capsuleers might be said to have escaped death, they sure as hell haven't escaped taxes.
- Who knows what powers CONCORD has over capsule tech given their mandate. Maybe it's deliberately kept secret because, hey, if those freelance capsuleers don't believe they have all that power and freedom to do what they want as super important immortal space Gods, then they're less likely to participate in the Great Game they don't even realize they're playing.
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A bit of food for thought to start with, like the main nightmares we have to face :
- the scale of destruction in pve missions.
- the unending proxy war and what it implies.
- the unending incursions and what it implies for concord as well.
- soft cloning
- the status of freelance capsuleers and why empires and concord continue to support their emergence.
- the capsule, what are the exact powers of concord on capsule deactivation, and what explains its powers in high sec but not in null, etc.
And some milder issues as well :
- PLEX and how to take them ICly.
- Multiple clones and infomorphs like the case of Zainou's CEO
- Why drones on droneboats are suddenly more tough and powerful than on conventional ships ?
- capsuleer implants ? How powerful ?
- Why can't we use skillbooks for other tings than capsule skils ? I KNOW Jiujutsu !
- Destruction is a bit much. Less yet tougher enemies in missions would probably be a bit more palatable ICly, but really the sheer amount of missions run daily would still inflate that number pretty badly. I always looked at the missions I ran, but ignored the tone of other people that were running them too. I don't think of it as world breaking...just one of those things you kind of have to look over due to the amount of people playing the game and how the mechanics are set up.
- FW is easy to explain. Yeah it's a war....but it's fought by immortals. So yeah it's not really going to end. One could argue that maybe a truce could be reached, but again game mechanics and non RPers to consider...so we have a never ending war so that players can get pvp and have fun. Incursions pretty much fall into this category as well, but would make a bit more sense if they added the other factions too.
- Soft cloning...well if some random idiot comes into an IC bar and bombs it...GREAT...NOW WE ALL HAVE TO MAKE NEW CHARACTERS....THANKS ASSHOLE!! Yeah....no. Initially when I heard of it I didn't like it, but then after thinking about it...it made a lot of sense. If I can download my brain so that if I do die I'll come back...hell yes I'll do that before I go storm the castle of the evil slaver. It allows us to put our characters into danger outside of the ship...which is a lot of fun. So with soft clones if we get killed in order to make outside ship combat and RP more realistic and interesting...then its not really that big of a deal.
-This one bugged me for a while. With Simca I made her sign a contract with the FDU for services to be rendered after graduation. So for at least for a time she had to serv the Fed. After that she left, but not out of disloyalty...just that's how the RP went. I look at it as something that just happens at this point. The Empires don't really care, and I don't really think there is much they could do about it if they did.
- Ive never really given that much thought, but again it seems like rationalizing game mechanics into RP which I don't generally worry about unless I have to on the spot. CONCORD in high sec is explainable because they do police the spacelanes for trade and the like so it's understandable they destroy your ship for being bad. Notice they don't do shit to your pod though.
- I look at PLEX like I look at a drivers license....they just expire super fast because the powers that be are ISK hungry bastards. Just came up with that off the top of my head though, and not at all serious....Ive never actually thought about it lol.
-Implants only really have as much power as we and others are willing to give them. The learning and hardwirings have set values. Any other ones we put into our characters bodies are as powerful as we make them and others are willing to let them be.
-Sillbooks could probably be used that way. There's not an in game reason for a karate skillbook to exist, but that doesn't mean one can't exist.
- Multiple clones is another that I've changed my mind about over the years. I think that it would be possible to split between a few clones...certainly not an army mind, but maybe 1 or 2 extra depending on what they are actually doing. I really liked Saedes take on that in the cloning discussion, and am seriously thinking about doing something like that for myself.
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Literally the entire game is retarded
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Feel free to add your own wtf gripes and plot holes btw. The more precise the better. The more exhaustive the list the more we can ask ccp about in an inclusive way too.
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I don't see FW and Incursions as being anywhere near the same scale of a problem as mission and belt rat PvE. The expenditure numbers for the empires involved just aren't that high in FW.
And its pretty easy to rationalize the war act as something that the doves of EVE are using to placate the hawks so that they can avoid a real war that would be *much* bigger.
Incursions also don't strike me as so heavy in resources that they are a problem the way missions are.
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missions and pirate npcs in belts is like:
If the pirate factions have the manufacturing capability to sustain these efforts then:
Why don't they just stay at home and all live like kings ?
the only thing that would make sense, is that it is a nuisance raid. The frigates aren't expected to really pay for themselves. But, by sending some frigates into highsec areas, it compels the Navy to respond, and the ships the Navy uses are then unavailable for 'real' operations.
That's the only thing that makes sense - a nuisance raid, that will not do any real damage, but still requires to be dealt with, reducing the availability of ships for other purposes.
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I don't see FW and Incursions as being anywhere near the same scale of a problem as mission and belt rat PvE. The expenditure numbers for the empires involved just aren't that high in FW.
I'm not sure how prevalent mission running is compared to plexing now, but like every other kind of mission if you try and account for them there's still issues (i.e., every faction loosing hundreds of battleships and field commanders every single day).
And its pretty easy to rationalize the war act as something that the doves of EVE are using to placate the hawks so that they can avoid a real war that would be *much* bigger.
I think this has been hinted heavily at from the beginning, and were it stuck to then I could certainly see it being both logical and fitting the the darker themes in EVE: A little blood spilled to prevent a bloodbath. The problem is really the wildly inconsistent portrayals of what actually happens in FW; in some cases it's a backyard war where a handful of ships are expended every day, in others there are massive, unseen clashes occurring both on the planets in contested systems and in space while we aren't looking.
Incursions also don't strike me as so heavy in resources that they are a problem the way missions are.
They're not so bad in resource terms. Crew losses in particular we can rationalize that down a bit: Kuvakei has big cloning vats churning out replacement crew somewhere, new Nation ships don't require as many crew because of integration improvements, he's got a huge backyard in Stain and wormholes that are buffering his war effort, etc...
More the problem is the logic of it: Three years since they began, Incursions have utterly failed to make even a dent in capsuleer activity, which was their express purpose. Even if Kuvakei can afford to continue throwing resources at capsuleers to know effect, that he does makes him look kind of dumb.
[Calculations on militia frigate costs, profits, and why the Empires are making off like bandits]
This is genius. I can't believe I've never thought of this before, but bravo on actually going out and doing the research.
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Ok, so trying to summarize and synthesize a bit... Keep in mind I am only trying to find logical and reasonable explanations that could make sense out of something that doesn't. There isn't necessarily only ONE explanation. The idea could be to actually offer several of them to players, because it's very frustrating when someone comes ICly with "do you know how MANY baseliners die in a day of missions in empire ?" and you have nothing to answer except taking it OOCly. Even when idealistically it is better to often just ignore it and handwave it ICly, I know it still bothers me a lot OOCly because I just hate playing in an universe that doesn't make sense with plot holes big enough to swallow the entirety of Karsoth vices. It can also create issues in the reasoning of our own characters since they can base their very opinions on those important points of the lore.
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So for the scale of destruction in pve missions, recalling what we already found in various older discussions on that particular issue (feel free to add other ways to deal with it if I forget something), there was a group of players that chose the adaptation of the setting and actions, meaning that they actually went evasive each time that was brought up, telling that yes, the amount of death must still be staggering, but no, they do not kill hundred of battleships in a single hour. The idea was to instead try to circumvent it by just telling it is duty that sometimes involves a little combat and action, leading at times to a battleship engagement, or just more genuine skirmishes. Another group was in favour of completely ignoring it. In any case, it is clearly part of the classical lore inconsistencies found in pve in most MMOs. You have to either ignore it or transform it to make it fit the lore itself.
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For FW, Veik idea seems to tend to the empires using capsuleers as a way of generating money, profit and resources while using them for political/populist agendas. It is obvious that empires make colossal amounts of money through their LP stores and also make capsuleers basically fight their wars for them (but not entirely at all considering they still use conventional navy as well as ground troops besides capsuleers and dusters). This at least, explains what they have to gain out of it. The remaining issue, though, could be that they have no goal. My main gripe is that while at times Caldari Prime for example could have been at stake, there was outside of that very little incentive or goal to actually wage a war. Even if profit and purely pragmatic agendas push them to continue in that direction with that joke of proxy war, my main gripe is how the hell do they explain it to their citizens ? It is easy enough to find propaganda ideals, reasons, casus belli and so on. However they do not really tell what is the goal. Crush the enemy ? Nope, it's a limited proxy war. Bore the enemy to no end ? The issue is that as much as it is obvious OOCly, ICly it also should be for most citizens. What the hell are we fighting for ? Because the enemy are the devil ? Then why that stupid proxy war ? Makes little sense. Half of the cluster should be able to see through and double guess their empire agendas.
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Which brings us to CONCORD. CONCORD could also be doing the exact same thing actually : using capsuleers to fuel their organization and bring and uphold peace in New Eden while developing infrastructure and so on. Seen that way, it is possible to find justifications for their core policies to make them fit with their actual purpose and ideals, here, again, in a grimdark and pragmatic way. Issues arise when gameplay conflicts directly with logic though, like why CONCORD is ready to shut down someone if his plex is not payed, but unable to do so when they support a pirate entity, or when they just start to kill hundred of CONCORD stuff in nullsec, which costs them more than a lot of plex (cf Gwen post in mutliple cloning thread) ? All in all, what can be explained, like for FW, with CONCORD, is why they stand for and what is the idea and goal behind. What causes trouble, even more than for FW, is the way they do it, which makes zero sense in a lot of cases.
There is also the point of CONCORD bribery and widespread corruption whereas it is said to be incorruptible. Corps and alliance pay fees to go to war so that they can shoot each other in empire space. Some players favor to explain that by the fact that it is bribing CONCORD so that CONCORD closes their eyes. That sounds a bit silly to me personally since everyone does it to a scale where it's not corruption anymore... Here it looks more like a mechanism than anything else. It would make sense to me that considering the universe we play in, CONCORD actually allows wars to be fought over capsuleers issues where it mostly involves capsuleers and them (and their crews) only so that they can solve those issues, while CONCORD is again making profit from it (the war dec fees and the general destruction that stimulates the economy).
On CONCORD powers, the issue stems from the fact that CONCORD is almost in godmode for gameplay purposes in high sec, but like anyone in other case scenarios, like in pve nullsec. How can that be explained ? Do they have full control over capsules to begin with (where to the contrary empires probably keep full control on nation capsules rather than CONCORD) ? If so, why do they not shut down anyone that goes full pirate ? Maybe because they actually just threaten other capsuleers and nothing else ? Maybe the whole system is just made to keep the whole freelance capsuleer milieu at least a bit sane and healthy to avoid a full no mans land, especially in civilized space as well as to allow a bit of industry and development to occur to accompany the general mayhem found outside ? You did something bad ? Then work a bit more for us than usual and get your sec status and your toys back !
All in all in participates to actually make capsuleers the puppets of the empires and CONCORD that fuel their economy and take all the risks for them.
So, if they have full control over capsules (don't pay your plex ? shut down !), then why bothering to scram/web people to death with advanced weapons of doom ? They could just press the button and... I am not sure that they actually have control over capsules like that. Why would they need it anyway ? They are already tweaked not to show anything else than capsuleer world to capsuleers. But why are they so powerful technically in empire space and not in nullsec, while they still seem to control territorial control units and nullsec infrastructure development ? That in itself is a good question and probably can be explained by a technical idea, but most of the ones I have hear were rather stretched tbh... Open to suggestions or disagreement for that one.
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Incursions ? I have no clue right now how to explain Kuvakei strategy. In any case, it makes capsuleers fat and happy and CONCORD as an investment to run the economy even more I guess ? The good thing is that it isn't necessarily an inconsistency in itself, or at least not seem like it, since Kuvakei's grand plan remains a mystery for everyone, either OOCly or ICly. It leads to a lot of speculation, but it is not harmful to logic in itself as long as it is not explained... Even if it seems silly. Maybe it's actually fucking brilliant, who knows... :bash:
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Capsuleers now. We could have dealt with a possible explanation as to why the empires keep training them eagerly, either for independent ones or nation ones, all endorsed by CONCORD. But can we leave our CQs' ? Lore seems to suggest so. Can we soft clone ? Lore is evasive and contradictory. Here we seem to have a group of people that endorse them as a caution against true death outside of capsule to allow them to do dangerous things with their characters. They also support the idea that since a hardscan is possible, then any kind of brainscan and infomorph storage is possible (as for Zainou's CEO). However this doesn't tackle the fact that in PF now, the only scans that exist are lethal (even Zainou killed himself for that). We also have people that disagree with it for the simple reason that it opens a whole can of worms and difficulties, like multiple cloning (that is suggested in PF through jump clones but could also be possible in implanting the hardscan transmission into not a single one body, but multiple bodies at once).
The fact is that we do not have enough info on that to say that one of the other are right or wrong. The sent hardscan could also contain a series of imprinted unique IDs that prevent any cheating for example, but that's only one counter explanation among many. Space magic (aka advanced tech) can be used to explain anything the way we want, and so the way CCP wants it.
Would strongly advice to continue harassing CCP to get a clear answer on that important matter.
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Adding a new potential inconsistency to the bullet points :
- Why CONCORD doesn't shut down pirate loyalists or clone trespassers and the likes ? Because they actually are not part of a pirate organization but freelances like anyone else and that they actually just make a lot of noise about supporting them, but actually are irrelevant and still fit to the greater CONCORD scheme ?
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To add to the last point.
There are pirate stations in nullsec which SCC has markets in. Pirate corporations sell items, sometimes illegal items, on those SCC sanctioned markets. The markets make no sense being in pirate stations where the station owners go out of their way to destroy people within SCC's parent corporation's umbrella.
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People in Hangers (that is, Slaves, Science Graduates, Exotic Dancers, and so forth) —
- Why is it legal to store people in hangers indefinitely (or "Trash" them there)?
- How do people stored in hangers eat/drink/survive even though we pilots spend zero ISK on maintaining them?
- Why can't people (or at least non-slaves) leave the hanger?
- While there seems to be rough consensus that "hanger communities" are possible, what are the limits? (note that with Nauplius I've avoided making the cheezy move, "OK, you've destroyed my starbase Blood Winery, but I'll just set up one in my hanger". But on the other hand, some people RP entire colonies in hangers.)
People in Markets —
- Why do Amarr NPC Corporations buy/sell slaves on SCC markets?
- Why are NPC dropped or mission people bought and sold on SCC markets, and what does it mean to buy/sell a non-slave in this way?
Also: is there no way to return a person to the general population (apart from completing a courier mission)?
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I'd consider 'Trashing' an item to be whatever you want to do with it, which in the case of people would mean returning to the general population.
Consider that when you give NPCs to dev actors, for example, they similarly delete them from the database, probably also through the Trash button. In these scenarios, it is treated as returning them to the general population (or in the case of food and supplies or research components, IE Morwen's Home and Hearth or the research race, it is sending these supplies/components to baseliner entities).
In other words: If dev actors treat the trash/delete button as sending/returning people/goods to the general population, then there's no reason why players cannot do likewise.
Regarding the Amarr NPC corporations, I would really like to know. I've considered starting an IC campaign to argue to fix that, though I doubt anything would change.
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I'd consider 'Trashing' an item to be whatever you want to do with it, which in the case of people would mean returning to the general population.
This view does have implications, though — it means that people like the Disciples of Ston and Aurora Arcology could be IC-accused of being slave owners since they were or are accumulating vast numbers of people and not returning any of them to the general population. Actually, if I remember right, some people in that giant Disciples of Ston thread did make that accusation against them; apparently DSTON believed both IC and OOC that they did not have they ability to return anyone to the general population. In fact, if RPers generally accepted that returning passengers to the general population is possible, then hardly anyone outside of Nauplius would have any passengers in his hanger at all — storing people who could be released (and presumably want to be) is slavery.
Consider that when you give NPCs to dev actors, for example, they similarly delete them from the database, probably also through the Trash button. In these scenarios, it is treated as returning them to the general population (or in the case of food and supplies or research components, IE Morwen's Home and Hearth or the research race, it is sending these supplies/components to baseliner entities).
In other words: If dev actors treat the trash/delete button as sending/returning people/goods to the general population, then there's no reason why players cannot do likewise.
While I am generally in agreement with your oft-stated view that mechanics=IC, I am not convinced this applies to dev actors.
Related to both comments I thought of an additional question: is it possible to free slaves (which involves not only releasing them into the population but changing their legal status)? I think dev actors have done so, and I think some RPers behave as if this is possible, but then again some RPers behave as if it is not possible (DSTON and Aurora again) and once upon a time RPers tried to get CCP to make slave freeing an in-game mechanic, something they actually started to implement (some components made it into the database). There's a additional mechanic here that might be presented as evidence against an ability to free slaves: we have no way of changing their SCC market category to Freed Slaves or anything else.
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I think that everything that ends up on SCC markets are out of the loop of everything else. It's on capsuleer markets, and deal with it basically. What bothers me is that CONCORD and SCC allows that to happen for living beings...
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To look at it from another perspective, maybe the only thing 'wrong' with the lore is that we're trying too hard to apply all the concepts that might work in creative writing or a tabletop game to an online MMO context?
EVE's not so different from any other MMO in that sense.
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People in Hangers (that is, Slaves, Science Graduates, Exotic Dancers, and so forth) —
- Why is it legal to store people in hangers indefinitely (or "Trash" them there)?
- How do people stored in hangers eat/drink/survive even though we pilots spend zero ISK on maintaining them?
- Why can't people (or at least non-slaves) leave the hanger?
- While there seems to be rough consensus that "hanger communities" are possible, what are the limits? (note that with Nauplius I've avoided making the cheezy move, "OK, you've destroyed my starbase Blood Winery, but I'll just set up one in my hanger". But on the other hand, some people RP entire colonies in hangers.)
there was a chronicle about this if I'm not mistaken.
found it \o/ click (http://community.eveonline.com/backstory/chronicles/the-rite/)
[spoiler] The officer took the clipboard and checked the papers over. "Alright. The Deteis was one Adron Srif. Pronounced legally dead after a capsuleer raid on a station two years ago. Suspect is Frazov, Corporal in the Amarr Navy, listed as KIA a year ago during a raid by capsuleer pirates. The Empire's going to have a fun time working back into the system just to try him, I bet."
"Returning to life is never easy, for first you must die."
"Right. You know, I can make some calls, get your identities back. Bet you the capsuleer doesn't even know you're here. You don't have to live in this weird legal purgatory just because CONCORD and the empires can't get their acts straight." [/spoiler]
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In the case of things like DSTONS camps and the Aurora arcology, you should really be keeping EVERYONE that's donated and is supposedly resident in your facilities in any capacity.
You would only trash/release people when they are fully processed and released back into the general cluster on their own resources. As an example, I maintain a Brigade of Marines. In Nonni I keep 4800 marines, who represent those assets. I don't regularly trash a couple of hundred and source another couple of hundred to represent turnover.
If I deploy the Marines, I don't physically move them or trash them. If I decided to disband my Brigade I could sell the marines (to represent cashing in the investment) or I could trash them (to represent simply disbanding them).
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Ulaya actually has 20 Caldari light marines at Sortet. I need to obtain some civilians.
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I take a very relaxed attitude regarding how people deal with whatever is happening in their hangars. Since it's functionally impossible for me to see into anyone else's hangar without their consent and I can't prove or disprove what anyone is doing with their people, I'm happy to leave it up to what they say.
Personally I hang on to all my slaves ("freed" or otherwise) and other personnel as "spare props" for future events, but if someone says they're trashing them to free them I'm not really going to dispute.
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Since it's functionally impossible for me to see into anyone else's hangar without their consent
Not quite :P Does require you to be their CEO/Director though
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Being CEO/director and having an office where they keep their stuff.
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I take a very relaxed attitude regarding how people deal with whatever is happening in their hangars. Since it's functionally impossible for me to see into anyone else's hangar without their consent and I can't prove or disprove what anyone is doing with their people, I'm happy to leave it up to what they say.
Personally I hang on to all my slaves ("freed" or otherwise) and other personnel as "spare props" for future events, but if someone says they're trashing them to free them I'm not really going to dispute.
To be honest, I was approaching this more from the perspective of those who wish to have SOME sort of accounting for themselves, not really from the perspective of community enforcement of claims.
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To look at it from another perspective, maybe the only thing 'wrong' with the lore is that we're trying too hard to apply all the concepts that might work in creative writing or a tabletop game to an online MMO context?
EVE's not so different from any other MMO in that sense.
Yes of course. And like in any other MMO I have played there was a need from RPers to adapt and/or ignore things that didn't match with the lore or simple logic. Here in Eve it is even more critical since its very nature makes that everything you do ingame matters to everyone else by default, and... Well. It creates all the issues we know.
Personally I hang on to all my slaves
I keep reading "I hang all my slaves" for some reason... :P
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Have we mentioned that D-scan only shows capsuleers?
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Related to both comments I thought of an additional question: is it possible to free slaves (which involves not only releasing them into the population but changing their legal status)? I think dev actors have done so, and I think some RPers behave as if this is possible, but then again some RPers behave as if it is not possible (DSTON and Aurora again) and once upon a time RPers tried to get CCP to make slave freeing an in-game mechanic, something they actually started to implement (some components made it into the database). There's a additional mechanic here that might be presented as evidence against an ability to free slaves: we have no way of changing their SCC market category to Freed Slaves or anything else.
Tell me about it.
There was once some hints at starbase structures that would let us change the states on passenger types. Unfortunately they never got implemented. I don't know if that was down to a lack of interest at CCP or difficulties in coding it.
My preferred option would be to have LP offers that took one passenger type and turned them into something else. Possibly with some sort of item to let underground railroad types get past customs.
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Hrm. Since I'm currently undergoing my bi-yearly temptation to return, I'll weigh in.
Trashing sapient beings:
To me, there's no question-- unless you specify otherwise, you're letting them go. Similarly, there's no reason to think modules you "trash" are actually ending up incinerated or ejected from the station; probably, they're getting dropped into some station refuse area and picked over by scavengers for useful components. Trashing = relinquishing control and claim of ownership, nothing more. For your purposes, they're gone; for their own, probably not so much.
NPC kill rates in PVE:
The chronicles have made it clear that encountering a capsuleer is a nightmare scenario for a conventional fleet. Certainly, the death toll in an average encounter is catastrophic. However, that raises the question: even if every mission is "real," how much of a dent does this actually put in the population? The answer probably depends on how large the population is to start with.
My thinking is that capsuleers are also something that is much less obvious from our own point of view: rare. In highsec, a very busy solar system might have a couple hundred (we're not counting Jita, which doesn't really "do" PvE).
If you figure that, actually, these solar systems are pretty fully populated, with deadspace pockets and asteroid colonies kinda all over the place, that those complexes you probe down in Exploration not only are there when you arrive but have been for years or decades, and just slipped up and let a signal escape that gave away their position, the scenario begins to make more sense. The empires and pirate factions are not merely nation states, but interstellar empires with, to our eyes, ridiculously large populations.
Aria always maintained that capsuleers are weapons of mass destruction.
CONCORD:
Two lines of thought.
(1) It's a mechanic, not a reality. In reality, CONCORD is dedicating whatever resources are required to destroy your ship. You lose. CCP is not going to just keep adding NPC rats until that happens, however.
(2) Alternatively: your ship's been pre-rigged to roll over and play dead when so-directed by CONCORD. However, since this only functions in highsec, the implication is that the system either requires stationary CONCORD facilities in-system ...
(which would make some sense; if it were as simple as onboard sabotage, someone would have found the device responsible and disabled it, then told everybody else how to do it)
... or that CONCORD has some reason for approaching things in just the way it does.
This last is lovely for conspiracy theorizing. Aria's theory was that CONCORD (and the empires' handling of capsuleers generally) was heavily manipulated by Jovian intelligence agencies, and might have been functionally captured by those same institutions. It all makes a lot more sense if you think of capsuleers as being Jovians-in-training, with a bunch of ruthless-but-doomed transhumans pulling strings behind the scenes.
This has the handy side effect of also explaining Sansha and the endless faction war: we're being trained. It has the downside of being an unabashed conspiracy theory. Then again, despite all their interstellar awesomeness it's their intelligence network that the Jove are really famous for, so.....
My own pet peeves:
* Tony G ...
* ... is officially canon.
* Never mind that this canon frequently contradicts other canon.
* Or that it deserves to have another "n" added ...
* ... and thereby made a "cannon" ...
* ... and fired.
"Ruthless," the desc-ignoring "origin story" for the Raven (which has the Raven as the new hotness and the Scorpion as the old warhorse, in exact reversal of the in-game item descriptions of the two ships), is only the most obvious example.
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they gave some numbers in EVE Source as to the population of the cluster. Was trillions.
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Yes. Was around 80 trillion total for the main four empires.
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If I recall correctly, the calculations on the number of pve casualties per year was largely exceeding any reasonable birthrate of even those trillions, no ? Esna might have a better answer on that.
Tbh i'm pretty knackered already. It's like fighting windmills, I give up (yeah, so much for the willpower to do something in the first place), but considering that everyone has his own idea and doesn't care... And then complains that the community is fragmented and does not do things together...
Bleh. You can update the OP as much as you want, I don't feel like to format it with proper ideas and all the fluff I intended first since it's pointless anyhow.
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If I recall correctly, the calculations on the number of pve casualties per year was largely exceeding any reasonable birthrate of even those trillions, no ? Esna might have a better answer on that.
Tbh i'm pretty knackered already. It's like fighting windmills, I give up (yeah, so much for the willpower to do something in the first place), but considering that everyone has his own idea and doesn't care... And then complains that the community is fragmented and does not do things together...
Bleh. You can update the OP as much as you want, I don't feel like to format it with proper ideas and all the fluff I intended first since it's pointless anyhow.
Eh ... consensus is hard. The community's fragmentation isn't just a product of nobody having tried to bring everyone together before.
The closest you (or I) can really do is put things together as best we can, make a case, and hope it catches on, or else wait for CCP to clarify things. Sometimes they even do.
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Also, occasionally, CCP's been known to adopt a player idea, especially one that becomes widely accepted. There's reason to keep working at this stuff, but not a lot of reason to expect to get it all clarified to everybody's satisfaction-- not least because a certain CCP canon source isn't big on internal consistency.
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Added jump cloning to the list of stupid shit.
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Added jump cloning to the list of stupid shit.
Why? :s
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It supposedly is the same than cloning when your capsule gets shot, so since the hardscan is lethal, your body dies, and you wake up in the target clone.
Which makes sense until you start to wonder how they manage to keep the implants you had on the body that supposedly dies, for when you come back.
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Supposedly they "dig the implants out" and install them in an entirely new clone, free of charge.
This was even more retarded back when clones had costs, so they were supposedly replacing a clone worth several of aircraft-carrier-sized spacecraft for free.
Of course, that brings up the plot hole of why clones suddenly went from costing tens of millions of ISK to absolutely nothing at all.
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Maybe some new breakthrough in cloning tech... It's the same thing everytime they decide to redesign a ship so... We have to explain it with advance of tech or somesuch...
But the problem is that "they dig the implants out". No they don't, since we have to destroy them... ? Or yes they do, and we are not allowed to remove them ourselves without destroying them, but they can when we clone jump ? wtf ?
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Maybe some new breakthrough in cloning tech... It's the same thing everytime they decide to redesign a ship so... We have to explain it with advance of tech or somesuch...
But the problem is that "they dig the implants out". No they don't, since we have to destroy them... ? Or yes they do, and we are not allowed to remove them ourselves without destroying them, but they can when we clone jump ? wtf ?
Well, let's hope that prior to the patch, there will be a live event where they make capsuleers risk their ship killing Drifters and loot corpses out of the wrecks or something, and then donate to CONCORD (because I seriously doubt they will implement a system where we reverse-engineer the implants ourselves).
Or, you know, release Entosis Link module blueprints which requires corpses of Drifters to manufacture. And you have to get that blueprint off Sansha or something.
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Well, they could use something like sodium hydroxide + water to make soup out of clone tissue and take metal bits(or whatever implants are made of) out after, then shove them in a new clone.
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Then why can't I make that with my other clones as well ? :/
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Well, they could use something like sodium hydroxide + water to make soup out of clone tissue and take metal bits(or whatever implants are made of) out after, then shove them in a new clone.
I recall there being PF about baseliners who seek out capsuleer corpses and rip out implants to sell in the black market (black because those implants aren't 100% safe). If the baseliners can do it, why can't we?
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Then why can't I make that with my other clones as well ? :/
You mean like biomassing your clone to get the implants?
Some CONCORD bullshit policy would be my guess, they can't garantee 100% safety of implants that you unplugged "yourself" and/or want to siphon as much money from capsuleers as they can.
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Then why can't I make that with my other clones as well ? :/
You mean like biomassing your clone to get the implants?
Some CONCORD bullshit policy would be my guess, they can't garantee 100% safety of implants that you unplugged "yourself" and/or want to siphon as much money from capsuleers as they can.
Besides, capsuleer corpses you come by the other way have been subjected to all sorts of fun stuff: lethal toxins, hard vacuum, modern warhead materials (some of which are amazingly nasty), entertaining types of radiation....
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Then why can't I make that with my other clones as well ? :/
You mean like biomassing your clone to get the implants?
Some CONCORD bullshit policy would be my guess, they can't garantee 100% safety of implants that you unplugged "yourself" and/or want to siphon as much money from capsuleers as they can.
Then it would add up above the pile of already nonsensical CONCORD regulations and loopholes... But such a regulation would be so silly to begin with...
Anyway, the implants I unplug myself, well... I would do that in a lab of course. We can stop training and unplug implants by destroying them. We can also do it freely on another jump clone that is inactive.
But we can't remove them without destroying them, while everything in PFs states it is possible to do so. :psyccp: