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[Lyn Farel]

They have been at war since TEA, and a limited war. I can understand the point behind it to a certain degree, but before it was a cold war, at best.

And I don't see America and Soviet Russia shrugging off an incursion of a naval or aerial fleet of unidentified military assets over their territory. They already almost got into nuclear war several time for almost trivial matters (a covops submarine lost in enemy territorial waters, a wrong blip on a borked missile strike radar, etc) compared to such dramatic incursions we are talking about.

So, a whole enemy incursion like that ? Completely silly in my book.

I always assumed that slave raids in Republic space (or its equivalents in other empires) were conducted through very small private groups paid by their respective governments (or more evidently, private interested parties). You know, the little slaver gang with a few frigates and a bestower scooping slaves here and there...

[Louella Dougans]

the whole idea of slave raids is fundamentally ludicrous to begin with.

and when you add in the expense of deep space facilities, transport ships, sentry guns, warships and so on, it becomes turboludicrous.

[Havohej]

You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.

This I could see, yeah. The idea that regular massive incursions just happen regularly just doesn't jive with a reasonable universe to me.

>reasonable

In MY Eve????

[Esna Pitoojee]

They have been at war since TEA, and a limited war. I can understand the point behind it to a certain degree, but before it was a cold war, at best.

And I don't see America and Soviet Russia shrugging off an incursion of a naval or aerial fleet of unidentified military assets over their territory. They already almost got into nuclear war several time for almost trivial matters (a covops submarine lost in enemy territorial waters, a wrong blip on a borked missile strike radar, etc) compared to such dramatic incursions we are talking about.

So, a whole enemy incursion like that ? Completely silly in my book.

I always assumed that slave raids in Republic space (or its equivalents in other empires) were conducted through very small private groups paid by their respective governments (or more evidently, private interested parties). You know, the little slaver gang with a few frigates and a bestower scooping slaves here and there...

Mmm-hmm. What's being suggested here is the equivalent of there being some kind of naval agreement that allows Soviet ships to dock up in American ports, except they keep deciding to shoot up everything in range until someone blows them up and nobody says anything because it might disrupt some trade treaties.

[Morwen Lagann]

I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:

If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.

[Karynn]

I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:

If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.

Yeah, this.
I don't see any point in even trying to represent missions IC. If I'm asked, I'm simply "doing work" for the Thukker Tribe and I leave it as that.

For me, missions provide RP content by scanning down a runner and informing them that Katanga is enforcing salvage and reclaimation ops in their area. MTU's are smashed and loots are swiped. Much fun is had!

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

I'm going to make someone mad by saying it, but I honestly don't care:

If you are taking missions - especially L4 missions - at face value as a representation of daily goings-on in the EVE universe, you are fucking doing it wrong, just as you would be if you did the same for any other similar, endlessly repeatable PVE content in any other MMO.

Taking them at face value does seem a little bit much. But the anti-faction missions do have the eventual effect of making a pilot KOS in the target faction's space. That does tend to puncture the "not officially approved" line.

Most of the Imperials in the Republic missions tend to follow a pattern of Caldari raiding for slaves, and then dropping them off at Imperial guarded depots. I am currently running a series that has Imperials working with the Angels. There is also a Caldari version of the building-an-invasion-stargate-in-enemy-space job.

Getting these missions inside the faction's own space gets a bit odd though. I've had Imperial slave raider jobs from the SoE level four in the State.

It's just all very odd. I don't take them too literally (unless I invite an Imperial pilot to come see their navy being naughty. Which I did once.). But I do take them as evidence for large scale covert aggression by the opposition. And I figure I have the tags to prove it.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Getting these missions inside the faction's own space gets a bit odd though. I've had Imperial slave raider jobs from the SoE level four in the State.

It gets even weirder: Under the correct circumstances, you can get a mission to defend slave pens in "Amarr territory"... in the Republic.

If you believe L5 missions, the navies are regularly misplacing entire capital fleets in hostile territory.

[Havohej]

While I definitely see all of the valid points against the taking seriously of anything PvE in this game, and while my 90% serious attempt at playing devil's advocate for CCP was soundly defeated by Esna (gg m8 o7), I still prefer to think of it as illustrating the absurdly large scale of the Empires and their Navies.

As in, for them, 10 battleships, 10 BCs, 15 cruisers and 20 frigates (typical L4 mission NPC makeup), is small potatoes.  L5 you say?  Regularly misplacing capital ship fleets in enemy territory, you say?  Why the hell not?  Supposedly the Caldari Navy is the smallest of the 4 Empires in terms of number of ships, and yet they're supposed to eclipse the largest fleet any player alliance/coalition could ever assemble, aren't they?

"Admiral, we've lost contact with the 7th Fleet."
"The 7th... isn't that the Carrier battlegroup we had in Sinq Laison?"
"Yes, Admiral."
"Damnit...  oh, well."

[Mizhara]

Obviously every L4 isn't reasonable to assume is real, but these events in those missions quite clearly happened, at a minimum once. Now add all those invading fleets across L1s, L2s, L3s, L4s even if they only ever happened once and you have a metric fuckton of invasions with a metric fuckton of ships and slave raids, and that's just what was caught redhanded. How many operations from the other side was never caught and dealt with by player characters?

Again, it's ridiculously unreasonable to assume these things don't happen in a quite significant number, especially when you consider the ginormous sizes of these Empires.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

I can't agree. These missions are clearly rump gameplay left over from the early years of Eve. They haven't been updated, they're clearly suffering from precisely the same problems that beset missions in every single MMO. They're filler. Fluff.

They might well contain interesting and useful lore - but the idea that every empire is massively infiltrated by huge battlefleets from every other empire PLUS every pirate organisation in clear contravention of established lore is ridiculous. It is no harder to stretch credibility to believe that these represent sample crimes than it is to believe that missioners are simply delusional.

[Samira Kernher]

I do want to say that there needs to be a stop to this game mechanics wrangling. Like everything in EVE, the missions are IC. While one can assume they don't happen as often or perhaps as large as they are in-game, no one can or should deny that they happen at all. "It's just game mechanics" is an argument that goes on in other MMOs, I for one would prefer that it doesn't happen in EVE.

The things happen. What is left up in the air is how sanctioned they are. To which I again go to what lore says, "they happen, they are illegal, and authorities often but not always turn a blind eye to it."

EVE as a game is full-time IC. When people start picking and choosing what does and does not happen based on how they personally prefer to regard individual mechanics, that can only lead to messy RP.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

But we're stuck with that anyway, Sami. Either the missions are useful samples of things that actually happened ONCE (which involves retconning) or they never happened (which involves slightly more retconning, but not much).

Either that or we have to tot up every scragged NPC ship in every mission forever and accept that the Empires have been involved in Total War levels of casualties every day since Eve started.

[Samira Kernher]

Or they're an example of a general grouping of similar events that happens semi-regularly that capsuleers are hired to put a stop to.

What should be avoided is -specifics- of the missions. Exact ship counts and so on. But the generalities absolutely should be considered true and proper. "A mission involving X happened", rather than "Angel Extravaganza with # deadspace rooms and Y number of ships divided into A B and C types".

[Gottii]

I'm another who always kinda assumed missions were something that happened once or twice, an example of the kind of missions that capsuleers are hired to preform...just...not 20 a day or so.

Maybe we should just retcon it that all the supposed fleets killed are just capsuleer over-exaggeration to earn more ISK on bounties, or simply drinking stories embellished over time.

"Oh yeah?!?  Well I shot down....20 Angel battleships....and a capital ship...a carrier!  Yeah...in low sec!  Thats it!"