EVE Fiction

It seems silly to me that the four great nations would allow their greatest weapons to go loose and start their own empires that would rival theirs in ships and resources. I mean, are there provisions taken to counter the fact that capsuleers can team up at any given time and launch an invasion with the strength of an empire itself? Is there an off-switch in our capsules or something that only they can flip?

pretty much what the last poster said. To add though... what are they going to do about it if they didn't want capsuleers to take space? Start ANOTHER war. pretty much every empire has its hands busy, a crusade out to unpopulated parts of space would not be worth it.

I think, OP, that I can satisfactorily rebut your points. Allow me to explain:

You suggest that it would be desirable to frequently raid null-space to keep enemies off-balance. I'm guessing you are aware that, as far as pirate factions are concerned, this is already happening - missioning for folks like the Syndicate, Angels or Guristas will occasionally net you missions to go kill enemies from empire space - I've personally seen DED, would be interested to hear from someone who knows whether you encounter faction navies while missioning for pirate factions. Even if faction navies never make it out there, CONCORD is composed of people and resources from all of the main empires. In a very real sense, CONCORD embodies the empires' effort to keep the pirates off balance.

Specifically referring to capsuleers, though, I have 2 points for your consideration.

1 is actually economic - yes, capsuleer alliances do a lot of resource-gathering 'on site' in their 0.0 domains, but if you've ever spent time in null (or hell, even talked to someone who has) you've probably learned that there is a lot of money to be made supplying nullsec trade hubs. Not only is this true in terms of gameplay, but there are examples in canon of null entities needing to gather resources and people from empire space to fuel their operations - quite a few, actually. There's ample evidence in the storyline that the crazy-powerful economic influence of capsuleers is worth putting up with their sociopathic shenanigans - and at least valuable enough that a given empire would be in no hurry to declare all of null sec their enemies.

The other point is one of pragmatism, that other posters have already touched on. Basically, your annoyance at the situation seems to stem from a perception that the empires are more powerful than canon really indicates them to be. Their resources are vast, but they are not limitless. More importantly, all the empires are roughly comparable in power - if the Amarr, for example, took their eyes off the Minmatar for a bit they could ravage dozens of worlds before being stopped, and the same holds true for any other combination of two empires.

What this means, functionally, is that every empire has at least one prominent enemy who a) is about as strong as they are, and could annihilate them utterly if left unchecked, and b) really, really wants to do just that. Your proposed method of dealing with capsuleer alliances involves them, in this situation, voluntarily making more enemies - many of which could prove neutral or even beneficial to the empires if left alone.

So, tl;dr:

1) the empires ARE doing something about hostile null presences, but
2) aren't willing to attack ones that aren't actively threatening them and could even prove beneficial, and
3) have enough people who want to kill them without needlessly making more enemies.

Don't get me wrong, I have no doubt at all that the empires have all planned, spied and maneuvered to try and be ready for another Sansha coming out of the black and wrecking their day. But that's where things stand right now.

Also, sorry if I rambled. I get wordy sometimes.

Not sure what your point is. Capsuleer forces might have overwhelming power in wormhole space, null- and low-security space, but all their power is blunted in high-security space by empire cynojammers and CONCORD.

We can't declare war against the empire's factions, and we can't cyno in capitals or supercapitals, nor construct them in empire space. Even if somehow provisions were added for us to even attack the empires, it would be hopeless for this fact alone. I have no idea what the up-to-date canon says about the empires' capital and subcapital fleets, but we wouldn't exactly be doing much of strategic value by suiciding Catalysts into Empire forces.

Why would there be a kill switch when they have CONCORD? CONCORD is basically godmoding the entire game to the benefit of the empires.

Something that may need to be pointed out is that capsuleers (i.e., players) started going and building empires in nullsec even before CONCORD legally recognized alliances, much less gave them the ability to claim sovereignty, build stations, or construct supercapitals.

I suspect CONCORD realized that one way or another, capsuleers simply -were- going to begin assembling into groups that would rapidly rival the Big 4. Facing this fact, they decided that the demon you know is better than the demon you don't, and began systematically feeding capsuleers increasing amounts of control to allow them to build empires that would naturally come to rival each other - but still left key points of control, such as stargates, outside of capsuleer control.

It is important to remember that, even aside from gameplay-limited factors such as CONCORD's insta-response and the inability to cyno-jump or wormhole out of highsec while they are coming for you, several key components of technology and strategic resources remain fundamentally outside of capsuleer control. Stargates, which stations we can construct, even the ability to essentially disable our ability to utilize our own markets under certain conditions (i.e., negative wallet value behavior) remain tightly under CONCORD control - and they're unlikely to give it up any time soon.a

It's highly unlikely I will get any support of this, but Sov space should be where FW is, claiming the area for their respective homeland. Many colonies in history have been taken, established, and largely defended by civilian militas.

In addition, i dont think non FW crops should be allowed to hold Sov space. Instead have them fight to control an area within a system. Gain control of the NPC station so you have control over the station, planet moon and asteroid belts directly associated with that station. anyone found mining in that belt, or PI'ing that planet or such and youre corp gets to pew pew without Concord interference. I also think that in order to even be able to try and gain control, the corp must have high standings with the station onwers NPC Corp...if at anytime your e corps standings drop below a certain point, that station becomes available to be taken over by another corp.
This would intergrate both missions runnign for high standings, and high levele of PvP to hold you're station from anyother corp with simsialr or higher standing wishing to take over youre station, plus to defedn against solo ninja miners in youre belt.

If a sovereignity switch/occupation mechanic to be ever introduced/extended to the empire spaces so capsuleers could claim it, they would most certainly do so. This would also breathe a bit of life into the lowsec regions other than FW ones.

That and Concord is probably glad that we're keeping the space out of pirate faction hands as it were.

A capsuleer loyal to the Gallente would love to attack the Caldari and vice versa.

I imagine it would be pretty short and simple conflict for the majority. CONCORD would just pull the plugs on all the clones and nuke the clone banks in High/Low security. Then there is the fact capsuleers are generally an untrustworthy bunch and when things went sour they would probably turn on each other.