EVE Fiction

We read of areas where capsuleers are able to conduct more operations, dominate more business areas and limit the reach of empire authority, but why do the Empires not conduct expansionary work of their own? I can see the Caldari and Amarr societies being subject to the whims of a few rulers, and to a much lesser extent, the Minmatar in respect to the desires of their tribal leadership, but much less so, the Thukkers and Gallente.

The Thukkers would seem to help with the expansion of infrastructure at least in support of their own wandering societies and the Gallente in response to their population's desires, unless the majority of that population has reached a lethargic state where further building is not supported.

But it seems that the alternative, that of allowing people to fall under the dominion of the whims of capsuleers that have no concerns about the fate of trillions of beings, would serve as a motivation for the informed portions of the Empire population to push for a stronger buffer, a greater margin of safety in the form of their respective Empire's power.

So why do the Empires seem to be weakening rather than expanding?

OP has dropped one of the questions that really confounds me in terms of where the storyline has been heading lately.

Keep in mind that capsuleers still use a system overwhelmingly designed by CONCORD.
- We do not own any of the endlessly-used highsec manufacturing and research lines; the highsec Big 4 do.
- We do not claim soveriegnty on our own; we pay CONCORD for the right to do so.
- We do not construct stations without CONCORD's okay.
- We cannot put up starbases in highsec without paying a charter to the empire that owns the space.
- We get our insurance from a CONCORD-approved business.
- We only use models of ship approved by CONCORD for capsuleer access.
- We only use weapons approved for capsuleer use by CONCORD.
- Hell, we can't even jump a stargate without CONCORD giving the go-ahead.

We get information from CONCORD, use only mechanisms and systems CONCORD approves as okay, and even have to go through a CONCORD system for the right to perform basic actions such as docking or jumping.

And yet, neither CONCORD nor the DED seem willing to issue even a slap on the wrist when capsuleers increasingly act out. One might think shutting down capsuleer gate travel to certain regions, or freezing the bank accounts of certain particularly troublesome capsuleers would be in order.

"But the capsuleers would rebel!" you say, "They'd invade and roll over CONCORD and the Big 4!"

Putting aside the wildly varying power of CONCORD warships, remember CONCORD can and does prohibit us from doing certain things. How dangerous would we be if we warped in and discovered that all of our weapons were locked from firing, or the corporate hangars we had been storing war supplies in were suddenly locked to us?

And most of all, if some capsuleers tried to invade and were crippled by CONCORD, how many other alliances would turn on them and rip them to shreds before a workaround could be found?

There is no in-game reason yet.

The meta reason it's: because CCP Seagull figure some players would like it, and those would outnumber the ones who dislike it.

I, for the sake of balance, would like that the empires defended civilization from barbarians. But this game was made by and for barbarians, to speak so...

It is arguable that initially the expansion of the empires was an effort that began with the Capsuleer. Since space faring, the Empires behaved very much in the way that nullsec alliances do today, by attacking each other and and attempting to claim one another's territory.

The Gallente-Caldari war was fought, not for the purpose of creating a stalemate, but because each of them wanted to expand, encroach, and conquer the other.

You see capsuleers helping hold the expanse of the empires in some stories. For instance and most recently, we see in the Chronicle Falling Skies, Admiral Visera Yanala of the Shiigeru, as a capsuleer with her interest in the Caldari State close to heart. The titan crashes to the planet with capsuleers fighting in the interest of the Federation and of the State.

From the same story, to address the simplicity of terminating a 'clonership' permanently, I read the chronicle with the impression that there must be a level of agreement from the capsuleer. It can be expected that capsuleers are resourceful and if the will exists in them (and more probably the ISK in their wallet), they can find people to prevent them from becoming biomassed, and sustain their 'clonership' elsewhere. We need only look to the autonomy of the nullsec corporations to see this acted out by the playerbase, and also examine features like security status.

Faction Warfare is another instance, aside from the Falling Skies chronicle, where the capsuleers of the playerbase act out the interests of the empires who are constantly moving back and forth in their own expansionary work, albeit, they do not much go anywhere with their battles.

This takes me to the next question:


It would seem that in their bickering, the empires allowed themselves to lose what potential grasp of the unconquered systems that they could have had, had they the cooperation of the capsuleers. We see that in player ambition and lack of fealty to their origins, that what support could be in the empires' control is negated by the pull that players have on each other and on the NPCs. An alliance's purchase of Territorial Claim Units could be made to the benefit of the empires, but more often than not, alliances are more interested in becoming free of their bonds to the empires, and you will commonly hear that once you have a foothold in nullsec, you can do without ever going back to empire space.

As has been pointed out, the Territorial Claim Unit is hinged in a small way to CONCORD. If you want to look at it darkly, players are effectively paying CONCORD to keep out of their hair, however, as I see it, CONCORD holds group relations at their core and do not behave as tyrants, but mediators within the cluster. Their interest can be seen in what their acronym stands for, which is Consolidated Cooperation and Relations Command, and while made at a time when only the Gallente, Caldari, Amarr, Minmatar, and Jove existed as sovereign bodies, they still acknowledge their role in service to any sovereign body, which includes entities created by capsuleers.

I also want to bring up the DED, a division of CONCORD. Their interest is solely in security and upholding the law, and you will see that their arms only stretch out as far as the security level of a system will allow them. Capsuleers tend to be very good at working for the DED and snuffing out criminals that they advertise as lucrative catches. In many ways, the capsuleers are not all bad, which is surely what some individual in every NPC group understands.

More closely to the question, why the empires seem to be weakening is because people in power are weakening, and unfortunately, all around the same time; coincidentally there is a level of interstellar upset in rulership that has come out of this. I imagine that in time, much like the promise of CCP's World of Darkness, players will eventually be able to push themselves into the spots of leadership, much like a vampire of CCP's other game in development will allow players to become a prince of a domain through politics or another kind of pull. It would not be odd that a respected Capsuleer Player fighter could assume some of the highest positions in the empire, as we need only look at Maleatu Shakor as having done the same for the Minmatar.


There is a lot of evidence in the lore that points to the nature of NPC's and how their organizations and themselves are as sensitive to being shook up, similar to how our own are. The cluster is just coming to the point where players will be provided the window of opportunity to take direct advantage of these events, now having matured in the ruthless environment of New Eden. Some capsuleers will resist in the favor of the old powers, and some will prevail, except all that will be taking place ingame, and not in the form of us complaining or praising a devblog.

Because this is a game, not a novel - so it doesn't matter that the plot holes are large enough to drive a Titan through.

New content trumps logic. Can't say I'm impressed.

The situation regarding the capsuleers is much more ambivalent, and far from being simple enough to tackle with black and white solutions. There's much good to be had and much bad from capsuleers that side with the empires and go off doing their own thing, respectively. (Mind that some capsuleers are featured NPCs, and are not just the player population.)

To look at capsuleers traditionally and from the view of the empires, all factions appreciate the capsuleers for their combat ability. A capsuleer that fights for a cause will always make significant waves.

The capsuleers are phenomenal for industry. When players are not selling to other players, they're selling to NPCs. NPCs are always in the hire of capsuleers. Financially sensitive empires, the Caldari for certain, will think twice before ridding the cluster of the capsuleer for their shear benefit to all the empire's corporations.

Purging the cluster of the capsuleer is tantamount to genocide. Looking at the Gallente traditionally, there would be an uproar and resistance to any proposal that suggests killing off an entire population.

Viewing the Minmatar, there are pilots that fight against the Amarr, pilots that fight to ensure Minmatar freedoms. All those missions that pilots do for the Minmatar (any empire really), are usually offered a mission that strikes directly at the opposing empire. No one agent would advise crippling the capsuleer for the reason that doing so would interfere with any major effort of the company and the agent's respective empire.

The Amarr would probably be the most open to the idea of reverting the cluster to the old status quo, and be the greatest proponent in purging the capsuleer, but then again, all the other detriments that the other empires see as a result of that action, will fall upon the Amarr as well, and the last thing that the Amarr need is chaos on their hands. There are already heirs vying for power. Any significant sign of weakness could break up the control of the empire and there would be a terrible case of infighting that could result in, with the most extreme circumstances, civil war.

The Jove would be the greatest voice in ensuring the place of the capsuleer. Their mysterious actions have always been supposed as resulting from an interest in balance. They have been known to interfere with cluster affairs in the interest of balance. They would undoubtedly interfere to keep capsuleers in the cluster and would not let any change occur from a top-down method.

Change therefore must begin from the bottom, and must spark from the revolts of the many baseliners that often are exposed to the neglect and the goodwill of capsuleers. Whether they feel wronged and desire change, it must come from them, and not from CONCORD, or any other cushy seat of a CEO, Empress, President or Sanmatar, because as of now, the boons affecting their wallets and peace of mind, come from the capsuleer, and outweigh any problems or misunderstandings caused by the capsuleer.

Something incredibly horrible must happen directly to their interests or themselves for them to even consider getting rid of the capsuleer, though before that happens, it could be too late.

Clones are actually the one possible place in which CONCORD does not have total control on the capsuleer, considering capsuler ability to dock in pirate faction stations.

In a realistic world the empires are all easily totalitarian enough to have installed kill-switches on all of the capsuleers they train and all the clones they store.

Maybe the pirates could find a way to get around that, and the 0.0 entities might be able to do something similar, but it should require some active circumventing of the Empire's power for a capsuleer to go rogue.

But then, CONCORD itself is lazy world-building. I have thought this for some time. It is all powerful when it comes to minor offenses between pod pilots, but yet totally ineffective at keeping the empires at peace. That doesn't mesh.

If I could go and rewrite the background, I would suggest removing CONCORD and replacing it with empire police that have the same firepower. Then replace sec status with empire standing and you have a world where a plot-line of the Empires being too caught up in their own conflicts to notice the powers growing at the fringes would actually seem possible.

The Jove effectively created CONCORD, if anyone would have the technology to override CONCORD security, it would be the Jove, or an entity that has been able to decipher the basic tenants of their technology.

The Jove have always seemed to have a fondness for the Thukker. The Jove have moved before in an apparent attempt to maintain a balance of power. Jamyl's acquisition of the superweapon, along with the Dust tech for her soldiers, represented a gross imbalance to the system they set up. It seems plausible CONCORD took a hit to maintain and redistribute that balance. Which, in turn, strengthened the position of the Empyreans.

CONCORD knows that advanced tech represents a real threat to it's continued existance, and humanity is on the cusp of a leap forward, a Rubicon.

Capsuleers will be relied on more heavily than ever to enforce the balance of power.