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[Louella Dougans]

there were some news articles one time in the alliance tournament

http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=1778
http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=1779
http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=1780
http://www.eveonline.com/mb2/news.asp?nid=1781

But that's just more things that can't be observed.

There are also some ingame items, though I think they might be non-capsule ship related.
Crew and Pilot for example

There is also one ship description
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Raven_State_Issue

But again, those can't really be observed ingame 

There's also a mission, with some LCO objects, featuring wrecked ships, and they have some corpses floating in among the wrecks too.


For pay/supplies, you could say that it is fairly abstract, and for example, when you get paid, you get paid "The Captain's Share" of any money, and the crew get paid their share, you just don't see this process happening. There's also the question of what would it add to the game experience to have to manage crew wages, supplies, and ship fuel.

It's all a bit 

[Seriphyn]

Those are pretty awesome articles Lou! But yeah, case and point right there.

[Lillith Blackheart]

The larger point, as I see it, is Lilith's contention that PF is opinion, not in-universe fact

....no, actually my contention is that it's entirely irrelevant and comes down to a layer of RP elitism. "You're doing it wrong because you say you do/don't have a crew".

If you want to say you have a crew? Congratulations, you have a crew. If you want to say it's all run by nanobots you control from the pod? Congratulations, you have nanobots. If you want to say it's run by 4 guys doing whippits? More power to you.

[Havohej]

4 guys doing whippits?

lmao

[Merdaneth]

....no, actually my contention is that it's entirely irrelevant and comes down to a layer of RP elitism. "You're doing it wrong because you say you do/don't have a crew".

If you want to say you have a crew? Congratulations, you have a crew. If you want to say it's all run by nanobots you control from the pod? Congratulations, you have nanobots. If you want to say it's run by 4 guys doing whippits? More power to you.

I agree completely. If I manage to convince other characters that my ship is run by nanobots, then it is run by nanobots.

Convincing characters of stuff that those character can see easily spot contradictory evidence of is hard. You'll have a hard time convincing people that you are cloaked when they can still see you.

My problem with PF is that it is sometimes interpreted and used by characters as immutable evidence not up for debate. When my character has a different opinion, they give me a link and tell me I cannot argue with the information behind this link, because it is PF. To my character it then would seem that those characters all worship some kind of God 'CCP' and are giving me a page to their bible. Then I try to tell them I don't believe in their God, and certainly don't believe everything their bible says. They tell me I must believe in crew because their Bible says so, and I counter: then show me your crew and explain all these crew oddities. When they come up with a good story, I might even believe them

What if you characters suddenly wakes up in the game, in a kind of Incarna like enviroment and gets a Ender's-Game like speech from some officials standing about saying: "This was all a simulation, we tricked you." And you character goes like: "ah, now I understand the frequent blackouts and the odd inconsistencies in the world!" 

I don't believe in immutable facts in our real world, and certainly won't do so in what we agree on is a makebelieve world filled with internal inconsistencies. Yesterday Jamyl was dead, today she is the Empress, tomorrow she might be clone-jacked. The opinion expressed in PF articles that Jamyl never died is just as much an opinion as a PF article talking about crew. Believe them at your own risk!

[Louella Dougans]

That's the thing though, isn't it? The chronicles say things, and yet, the things that are observable ingame do not match up.

More ingame content and evidence for things would be \o/
Even just a little note on the ship "attributes" info, forexample:
http://games.chruker.dk/eve_online/item.php?type_id=12003

there's an attribute, that (afaik) does nothing ingame, called "MaxPassengers", which is 580 for the Zealot, though the Omen has 800 and Navy Omen 880.

Having that visible ingame, might help? (though some might need clearing up first)

whole lot of things like that. Some named lasers go by the name of "Afocal Maser", but a Maser is quite a different thing to a laser.


What is observable ingame, is a subset of the information that is published. This is the problem, isn't it?

Ships supposedly require crew, fuels, maintenance, various supplies.
None of this is observable ingame. 

[Silver Night]

Well, it's the limits of the medium, really. Ships are supposed to be made of metal or some alloy, but if you zoom in far enough, you see the pixels.

It's an issue of resolution. Not just literal resolution - as in ship textures - but how much detail CCP has been able to build in and make work with game mechanics.

Crew, supplies, food, etc are things they haven't managed to put in yet, just like you can't zoom in and in on your ship and see more detail and you can't (yet) leave the pod, IG.

My feeling is, though, that that doesn't mean that in the game world your character can't leave the pod, walk through corridors in your ship you can't see IG, go to some stationside quarters that overlook the hangar that also aren't IG, etc...

Crew pay - or seeing crew at all - falls into the same category as being able to look closely enough at the hull of my Thant to see the texture created by the armor repair channels, least that's how I look at it.

[Zuzanna Alondra]

I think one of the reasons a lot of peoples' characters harp on the "all those innocent people!" bit is that some folks like to play the good guy.  If you're trying to be the good guy, disregard for human life probably doesn't mesh well with that.  It doesn't look/sound very heroic.  Of course, there are exceptions.  She may post here herself, but I'll use my corpmate Zuzanna Alondra as an example; she's having fun with Du'uma Fiisi's whole bad guy evil terrorist thing, but her character ICly clings to good guy ideals even as time and the series of cruel and inexcusable acts she participates in as a director of the corporation grows longer and slowly erodes her morality.  Of course, Havohej encourages her and it's pretty fun OOC to watch her character struggle to find rationalizations so that she can swallow what the corp does herself.  Outwardly, she appears to be clinging to a 'human' mentality, but it's not actually the player trying to play a 'human' combat-focused capsuleer.

 

Here's the clearest hint of that change.  The following is two statements she's made in RP over time that pointed out the change:

Before: "My mother says I'm dead and I'm just some twisted copy.  Why can't she understand that I'm still me?"

Now: "My mom's right - her sweet little 'anna's dead.  The Zuzanna she knew would never hurt a fly and I'm not her." and, "The Intaki are a very peaceful people... I must get it from my dad's side of the family."  (Little known fact - Zu by blood is only "half" intaki)

I enjoy the twisted game of role playing someone that thinks they are a good guy for a good reason and is really the bad guy.  No matter how just you think your cause is - how far people are willing to go is fascinating.  After all - Hitler really thought he was doing a good thing for the Germans - he likely really truly believed he was a good guy and didn't understand why all these folks thought he was wrong.

Maybe I should have Zu do the next IGS post - that would be fun.  Thanks for the chance at a shameless plug Hav - though if you still have the link - I think the link to Aria's old IGS posts would be a useful reference for this thread.  My copy of the link was on the laptop that died... *sad face*

Zu also used to keep count of how many people she had lost on her ships - not just the number of ships.  I'm debating how much longer she's going to do that.

[Zuzanna Alondra]

That's a bit daft in some ways, but hey, my alt charges me isk to carry stuff for me in her hauler...

My alt tells Zu to fuck off, closes coms and then broods until Havo tells her to be nice or she decides to do it before Hav has to talk to her.

But this thread has seemed to mildly drift toward discussion of crew - interestingly enough my sig is made from one of the "blueprints" CCP released.  While it doesn't show in the image clipped as it is, it showed as a ship that doesn't need crew.

To each their own on the crew issue - but I personally have had it be a *major* factor for what ships Zu will fly when.  (Ignoring the fact that I OOCly just like the raw speed of frigates *giggles*)  The most common ship you will find on my killmails are Incursus because Zu won't risk crew unless she's in a fleet she trusts.

But the crew isn't the only factor in how humane or not we should "be".  I choose the start normal and slowly "warp" over time approach on Zu.  I made that choice awhile back ago after reading the same post Havo did of Aria's - as it gave me an easy way to make sure Zu never leaves Du'uma.  But more then once I have chit chatted on vent with Havo going, "How the hell are you going to talk Zu into this one - I don't want her to quit the corp...?"

Another interesting idea I've adopted personally that I don't know if others have - is the mindset in and out of the pod.  Zu's pretty "gentle" out of the pod or a non-combat ship.  But I've had this image that when your character plugs into the ship - the ship becomes their body and they are literally fit to kill.  When you reach for your "hands" and find turrets and look at "others" - it's your prey and your pack to me.  I see it almost as if we hit a "predatory" mindset.  Havo's actually used this against Zu before by asking her questions while she's in combat to get her ok with doing certain things and Seriphym's been bit by it by trying to have a very emotional heart to heart with her while she was in her domonix killing dozens of battleships.

[Havohej]

Zu also used to keep count of how many people she had lost on her ships - not just the number of ships.  I'm debating how much longer she's going to do that.

We need to lose you some Myrmidons.

But this thread has seemed to mildly drift toward discussion of crew - interestingly enough my sig is made from one of the "blueprints" CCP released.  While it doesn't show in the image clipped as it is, it showed as a ship that doesn't need crew.

You know, come to think of it, ARE Those blueprint things official?  I mean, did CCP make them?  I've found quite a few of them here and there and I think I've got most, if not all, that were produced (they keep disappearing from places I've found them linked, so I started saving 'em every time I found one), but I've never seen them posted/linked to by a CCP employee.  Are they player-made?

[Silver Night]

They are CCP made. There was a site re-design way back when, and that's when the came down from the official site.

[Havohej]

Worth posting then!

[Shae Tiann]

I enjoy the twisted game of role playing someone that thinks they are a good guy for a good reason and is really the bad guy.  No matter how just you think your cause is - how far people are willing to go is fascinating.  After all - Hitler really thought he was doing a good thing for the Germans - he likely really truly believed he was a good guy and didn't understand why all these folks thought he was wrong.

This is something I try to keep in mind every time I'm writing: Nobody, no matter how horrible their actions are, ever believes themself to be evil. The coldest, cruellest, most heartless bastard in the world has intentions and motivations which are, at least in his or her mind, for the better.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

I find it very strange that people are still arguing over the existance of crew when it has been repeatedly stated that they exist. That said when did you last see an Interbus ship apart from the mission objective in Worlds Collide? The cluster's biggest stealth fleet as one of my corpies puts it.

It would also have to be said that another one of my corpies is a big fan of the Ian Banks Culture books, so tends to play with the idea that his ships are full AI's (as opposed the limited systems that most of us are supposed to be using) that are quite capable of maintaining themselves. On occasion this has been represented as the ship itself cutting into IC conversations. In one instance threatening to "shit out your pod and go home on my own." This has also led to some interesting exchanges with characters who seem to think that AI research and development is illegal. So all good grist for the RP mill.

As for capsuleers being social outcasts or physical weaklings.  If that's the way you want to play then fine. However I suspect capsuleers are like any other group of people, and that sort of thing will vary.

As far as I am concerned all my larger ships are crewed, and the character spend some of the time when I am not in game doing some of the associated management of them. The cost of employing them could easily be considered as what your insurance premium actually represents.  Why doesn't the game go into detail about this? Well it's called spreadsheets online already. That would be giving the critics even more ammo. It is, in the end, a spaceship game. It is not supposed to be a human management simulator.

The popular image of capsuleers is, to my thinking, the NPC's trying to make sense of the conduct of the majority of players who don't care to factor them into their actions. Like that Severance pilot who was trying to persuade U'K that there where no slaves in CVA run Providence, and that pilots don't care about such things anyway.  Which, of course, lends credence to the idea that you are roleplaying even if you don't think you are. It's just you are roleplaying an sociopath.

[Ciarente]

Of course, it's also open to us to decide how our characters react to other character's claims. I know several players whose characters treat other capsuleers who claim to have uncrewed ships with gentle pity, as pilots who have clearly gone insane under the pressure of losing crew, and retreated to a fantasy world where ship losses have no human consequences.