EVE Fiction

I guess not. One of the Eve books covers what happens when a capsuleer blows up a colony just for the hell of it. Long story short, revenge.

The ships definitely have crew. Most of them are retrofitted from fully crewed models before pod technology and npc's (unless very specifically stated) are fully crewed and have no pod at all. When yours or an npcs ship explodes most get out alive and are scooped up by Sisters of Eve rescue teams. (we never see this represented in-game however)

The pod cuts out a lot of the need fro crew but doesn't eliminate it entirely. You can argue against this but it's just the lore...

If enough people want it! I remember the threads saying missile effects will never happen, too much lag, server load, all excuses under the sun!

I know it'll always be immersion and story vs arcadey pewpew. Hopefully both can coexist.

To be fair, there's a good chance that when a ship is on general alert that their command stations are already inside escape pods. Were a ship designed such as this, it would probably have something like the Apollo Rockets, an escape system that the crew just hit a button to activate as opposed to run to. The capsule is an example of a cheap, reusable warp drive, so I would not be shocked to hear of tiny capsule or larger sized segments of ships scattering to the four winds after a ship is destroyed.

Heck, I can even conceive of a short story based on that now I think about it, a Capsuleer hires a Gunnery crew to operate a turret on their ship, and a veteran crew in their pod/ship is built into the turret, then has to run back to high security space with Capsuleers on the prowl, or back to base.

Actually now I think about it, these ships are Naval designed hulls, and I would assume that with the possible exception of the Minmatar slaves on Ammarian vessels, that strict health and safety standards would be enforced. This forces forwards development of new systems. The chair of a fighter pilot is about 2-3% of the value of the entire craft, and this is cheaper than the investment of millions to train a pilot to calibre in the first place. I would wager that the economically conservative position would be to integrate escape pod systems like what capsuleers have, with the same escape pattern (ejected through a pre existing pipe as I understand it) before the hull fails.

Saves lives, saves on retraining costs for new Naval personnel, keeps morale higher as you aren't in a tincan going to your death.

Katrina, we're debating the merits of incorporating survival hardware into our vessels, not saying its immortal humans cloning back with us. Even in WH40K there was escape systems, armour to take incoming shots and the like. Even if it only reduces the death count to 10%, many are being killed en masse.

Silens here is an ex submariner and myself an Engineer, we make the intent to let the most people live but we can only take it so far before it becomes impractical. I don't think anything thats been proposed so far violates the economic viability of such survival additions.

We must assume that if a crew exists, this is their job and that we pay them. These are high tech pieces of equipment with corresponding expensive and specialised training, so investing in the reasonable survivability mechanisms to decrease replacement costs is just practical, not My Little Pony Online.

One or two exection seats, maybe as many as four, yeah. But on crewed aircraft with more personnel, well, no. No ejection seats at all on, say, a P-3c Orion. Expensive crew, sure - But the costs (and engineering compromises) that many multiple seats cost becomes too much. Everyone gets plain old parachutes.

Likewise, with EVE; The Capsuleer is the capital cost investment. The rest of the crew is mostly makee-learnee, and thus relatively inexpensive and thus expendable.

Truthfully, you'd do better to take a look at submarines again. Some have escape pods, but most don't - the majority have fairly rudimentary self-rescue equipment, and connections for - mostly wishful - external rescue. With EVE, some escape capacity - updated equivalents of parachutes and Steinke Hoods -would be economical. Beyond that, it quickly gets very expensive and presents serious engineering challenges to provide more.

The possibility exists of shuttle-sized escape craft would exist on capital ships, and those would be more efficient, but would also require that crew move from their duty stations to the escape shuttle on 'abandon ship' orders, making the loss of life probably greater.

Edit:
T2 frigates, interceptors, and interdictors could probably best afford full escape pod capacity, and would most need that capacity - T2 crews are likely to be very valuable assets, IMO.

Weirdly enough, thats how I see it happen. But that aside, I too find it a stretch to think that thousands / millions of crew accept almost inevitable death for some ISK.

The argument that these are desperate and untrained is not consistent either - the lower the skill level, the more likely the job they are supposed to be doing is automated. No, the crew fills the roles that can not be easily done by machines.

The most likely scenario that I see is that the crew indeed has a crude but effective escape system developed and relies on NPC tradeships, Sisters of Mercy and specialized rescue corporations to collect them once they eject. These "pods" would not have to be very sophisticated or last for a very long time - New Eden is a busy place. That and good compensation should be enough to get a crew motivated.

My 0.02 AUR.

Hey, when on the tender they issued us life vests and gas masks when going into combat zones - to be carried on our persons at all times. Plus there were life rafts designed to auto-release if the ship sank, and short-duration escape hoods were placed in strategic locations throughout the hull even when not in combat zones.

On the submarine, there were EABs and EAB manifolds all over the place, and enough Steinke hoods for better than twice the crew - half at each escape trunk (you never know when you're going to be carrying passengers, hence the excess capacity).


As for automating menial tasks - Often, a human is simply cheaper than a robot. and more flexible, too. Sad but true.