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[Seriphyn]

Remembered this from Templar One. Quite liked it...

To protect the right of civilizations to grow and prosper;
To preserve the surviving sovereignties of the Dark Ages;
To serve justice to those immortals who abuse the privilege of everlasting life;
To safeguard the mortals of worlds from dangers which originate in space;
To prevent empyrean technology from causing the destruction of humanity.

There's a bit of an 'echo chamber' effect IC that bleeds OOC, marking CONCORD as corrupt and what have you, though it is suggested they are the opposite. No doubt there's instances of corruption and enemy faction infiltration given how large they are, but the fact they don't answer to any one empire and earn their revenue by customs, anti-smuggling etc. means they won't be bound to dubious "special interests" either. It seems suggested that, rather than being bogged down by corruption, CONCORD's primary danger is becoming too obsessed with its primary mission and its own power.

I like to see the primary argument against CONCORD as limiting capsuleer power and denying humanity the chance to 'ascend' into godhood, beyond the empires and flags etc. In counter, the primary argument for CONCORD would be (as per the mandate) this empyrean technology could very much come at the cost of great human life.

[Katrina Oniseki]

I like this view of CONCORD better. Corrupt police entities are too often used, to the point that they are boring. I'd rather play with the concept of a police entity that's so incorruptible and perfect that it becomes overzealous and obsessive.

[Horatius Caul]

I agree that the pure paladinesque CONCORD is probably more interesting than a corrupt one.

However, with the constant hints that the Jovian Empire is on the way out, aren't CONCORD failing their second mandate?

[Z.Sinraali]

For great justice! And damn you. Now I have to hurry through the rest of TEA so I can get to Templar One...(Bought a Kindle to get me through a rough patch while my computer was in for repairs, proceeded to buy way too many books.)

At any rate, my view is more that CONCORD's greatest potential for failure is actually in becoming too gunshy. I think the ramifications of the Elder attack still have the higher echelons of the organization jumping at shadows, too scared of the unknown unknowns to exercise their influence on behalf of humanity. It's also entirely possible that their command structure's gone all decentralized on us--why else wouldn't they have rebuilt their HQ yet?--to the point where there may be internal power struggles we don't know about pulling the organization's resources in too many different directions to act effectively.

[Kohiko Sun]

why else wouldn't they have rebuilt their HQ yet?

They must be using the same contractors Ishukone's hired.

No doubt there's instances of corruption and enemy faction infiltration given how large they are

One of the live actors played a Nation sleeper agent posing as a CONCORD officer during the Incursions. She got bloweded up by some players who were suspicious of her.


Natalcya's unbending letter-of-the-law-instead-of-spirit-of-the-law attitude was always interesting when she was a CONCORD loyalist. (Even if it made Ko want to pull her hair out more than once. :p)

[Lyn Farel]

Thanks for sharing this, will definitly prove useful in the future. I was bored of that fashion always blaming CONCORD for everything and pointing at a so called corruption everywhere, and having a hard time to offer counter arguments.

[Morwen Lagann]

If this mandate had been more public knowledge earlier on, I think some of the prevalent attitudes might have been different. :p

[Ghost Hunter]

If this mandate had been more public knowledge earlier on, I think some of the prevalent attitudes might have been different. :p

The Corrupt Police is the perfect archetype for CONCORD, however. I don't see where the The Law Above All Else Cops comes in play for CONCORD, because they would step on the toes of the Big Four's own police affairs. 'That is the intention', could be said, but CONCORD is fundamentally composed of members from the Big Four. There is a subset that is apart of CONCORD's unique disposition, but they are a small minority.

[Z.Sinraali]

Natalcya's unbending letter-of-the-law-instead-of-spirit-of-the-law attitude was always interesting when she was a CONCORD loyalist. (Even if it made Ko want to pull her hair out more than once. :p)

I remember when I first started playing and saw references to the Astropolitan Front, thinking "Hey cool!" Then I discovered she was Sansha now//then and sadfaec'd.

[Seriphyn]

The Corrupt Police is the perfect archetype for CONCORD, however. I don't see where the The Law Above All Else Cops comes in play for CONCORD, because they would step on the toes of the Big Four's own police affairs. 'That is the intention', could be said, but CONCORD is fundamentally composed of members from the Big Four. There is a subset that is apart of CONCORD's unique disposition, but they are a small minority.

This is what I mean. In the chronicle I linked, it says that the DED (at least) are 'incorruptible'. This FP entry says CONCORD "is doing its job very well and there have been no major cases of abused power" with a "fear that this may change one day".

The "corrupt CONCORD" seems to be a player construct more than anything, probably for the sake of RP convienience. Uncompromising paladins is how they've consistently come across so far, and certainly the Inner Circle characters in TEA/T1 weren't all Dr Evil supervillains planning to advance their own schemes.

[Lyn Farel]

Mostly a player construct that can easily be explained by the fact that CONCORD basically embodies the authority above all the capsuleer. The entity that controls everything, etc etc. The corrupt thing is the perfect strawman. And since a bit of it at least must be true... It is really easy to see it used and abused everywhere, turning it into crass hyperboles.

[Ghost Hunter]

The Corrupt Police is the perfect archetype for CONCORD, however. I don't see where the The Law Above All Else Cops comes in play for CONCORD, because they would step on the toes of the Big Four's own police affairs. 'That is the intention', could be said, but CONCORD is fundamentally composed of members from the Big Four. There is a subset that is apart of CONCORD's unique disposition, but they are a small minority.

This is what I mean. In the chronicle I linked, it says that the DED (at least) are 'incorruptible'. This FP entry says CONCORD "is doing its job very well and there have been no major cases of abused power" with a "fear that this may change one day".

The "corrupt CONCORD" seems to be a player construct more than anything, probably for the sake of RP convienience. Uncompromising paladins is how they've consistently come across so far, and certainly the Inner Circle characters in TEA/T1 weren't all Dr Evil supervillains planning to advance their own schemes.

Ultimately it comes down to choosing player perspective(s) and artist perspectives. Corrupt CONCORD fits better thematically in my mind because it leaves room for 'good cops' of the different factions in the Big Four to make their spotlight. If CONCORD is the unassailable banner of virtue, there's no point in making a good Amarr cop that might punish illegal slavery while protecting legal slavery. A good Caldari Cop might stop other Caldari from violating a contract that might hurt their contractor, regardless of nationality/race (gallenteans for example).

CONCORD is ... some mixing pot that dilutes the flavorfulness of the other factions. They're generic, in essence.

[Seriphyn]

CONCORD aren't just cops though. They're the United Nations of EVE, and seem to oversee multinational peacekeeping operations via the DED in places like Stain and so forth. It sounds like the empires still sacrifice elements of their armed forces to the DED to work alongside each other despite the state of war, or so the ISHAEKA reports suggest.

Even if they are just cops, CONCORD likely concern themselves with only the "interstellar" pirate factions listed in-game. There's hundreds and thousands of smaller threats that the empire's national law enforcements would deal with, even just 'generic pirates'.

In addition, the DED takes care of all kinds of security issues regarding meetings and conferences between the empires, they lend ships for operations by the other branches of the CONCORD, and they often support local law enforcement in dealing with large-scale criminal activity or similar matters. DED ships are equipped with the latest surveillance technology and are considered a great support for customs patrols. The DED’s jurisdiction is limited to space but in recent years they have been authorized to operate in stations and on planets.

From that, CONCORD's law enforcement and military authority is not all-encompassing, so the suggested dichotomy of "bad CONCORD" versus "good local cop" is not always necessary, since CONCORD won't be messing with local policing.

"Incorruptible" could be assumed to mean "very low corruption rate compared to the empires". Given their use of Jovian technology, anyone found to be corrupt could be weeded out extremely quickly. Again, if they're not answerable to anyone but themselves, then my imagination fails me as to why they would be corrupt in the first place. "Corruption" seems a very loosely defined term anyway. If we mean the major pirate factions penetrating CONCORD, that would be quite the feat, given the advanced technology and their monolithic, highly centralized nature (excl. Sansha). The empires themselves would be far more susceptible to corruption, especially decentralized factions like the Fed and Amarr.

[Casiella]

That seems like the sort of thing that depends greatly on a character's own IC views. In addition to the arguments against CONCORD that the OP outlines (which reflect Casi's views very closely), we have a lot of IC history about accusations from various parties - often Minmatar - about CONCORD falling too far under Amarrian influence.

Whether or not we know them to be true is irrelevant, because it's entirely plausible that a character could believe those accusations. So while some characters might see CONCORD as a force for good, or at least for noble intentions, that doesn't automatically mean that other characters might take the same information and reach a wholly different set of conclusions.

[Esna Pitoojee]

No doubt there's instances of corruption and enemy faction infiltration given how large they are

One of the live actors played a Nation sleeper agent posing as a CONCORD officer during the Incursions. She got bloweded up by some players who were suspicious of her.

I'm assuming you're referring to Sutola Endoma here - if so, that was actually the result of an accident. Originally he had simply been a CONCORD official unwilling to admit Nation was beating CONCORD so badly. At that point, however, devs were using chat commands to spawn NPCs in the live events, and somehow a chat command didn't function correctly -  instead being posted in local. All the players - already IC suspicious of his actions - promptly seized on it and called him a traitor, and CCP chose to (or had to) roll with it.