EVE Fiction

Not everybody flying a spaceship is a capsuleer. But yes, writing about a capsuleer without a capsule is like missing the major point.

Anyhow, I live out of a freighter which acts as a mobile base of operations. It contains ships, modules and ammunition for whatever my needs. Also construction and research materials should I ever feel the need to do that. I even have a visible crew consisting of personel that I have picked up at various locations and with the size of a freighter I believe it is very likely that I can walk around in it and interact with all these people. Though, only when docked, of course.

I figure whenever I log off in space in a ship, I leave the pod, my ship is powered down to be undetectable, and everyone just chills until I log back on. My character could hang out with the crew if she wanted to, but she probably keeps her distance, because otherwise that is just awkward when the ship blows up and she goes on with her life like it was no big deal. But, she is definitely out of pod, walking around, doing some calisthenics, probably reading a lot in some state room. And catching up on sleep in the rack.

I know the fiction doesn't fully support that, but if one was stuck in the fetal position for a month, your joints would fuse together a bit and all kinds of bad things would happen to your body and mind, pod goo or no.

The idea of the pod was created to feed game design, nothing more.

If you want my opinion on capsuleers communicating with the crew, I think you'll find in stories where this happens that there is a reason for it.

If there is no story-related reason for capsuleers having a discourse with the crew then it is not necessary and is either padding, or put in because the writer doesn't understand what their story or characters are about. It's not that we need these scenes and moments, it's that the writer does because they don't know wtf they are doing.

I can envisage a capsuleer communicating with his/her crew just fine - but would only include it if the character or story is stronger as a result.

There has to be a character or story need for the dialogue work, or they might as well be talking about cheese before we get back to 'the action'.

On the other hand - why assume that all capsuleers are the same? Human beings aren't, are they?

Not all capsuleers have a blood-lust for violence and dominance over other people and territorial control because they have a small penis - a lot of pilots mine Veldspar; reprocess the ore, then hit the casinos and bars at night. A hard day's work in a 0.8 system and what I'd like to think might be your 'average-joe' capsuleer...might even have a family...a daughter who loves and respect him...and a wife who tolerates any indiscretions because he's a good father.

Without character motivation, any story falls apart at the seams - and this whole 'Elite' & 'demi-god' crap needs to stop until someone learns how to write believable characters that people can relate to.

I guess I refuse to believe the future of the human race will only have capsuleers who want to destroy stuff, when the majority of pilots run missions, mine, live in high-sec and couldn't care about the whimsical murmurings of capsuleers who gate camp and wear an eye patch reject from Pirates of Caribbean.

No more than I look out of my window at the people below and see them all killing each other and riot vans everywhere in chaotic oblivion, like what is written too often.

The needs of people are physical and psychological. Don't be fooled with a hierarchical design on the needs of human beings, with food & water at the bottom and ∞ happiness at the top - that's not how it works.

The trick, or purpose, to existence, is the never ending balancing act between our physical needs and our psychological needs - both of which are essential to survival, although lack on physical side would end our existence, lack on psychological will not.

When humans are unhappy, it is typically an imbalance between these two needs. For example; you want to buy a new pair of shoes because you like the colour and they make you feel good wearing them - but you need to spend the money on food, or you'll die - resulting in imbalance at not being able to have both needs fulfilled.

So, all the way throughout the day you are making thousands of decisions related to this balancing act - someone might forgo delicious food and eat pasta for a month, to enable them to buy the shoes.

Some of the greatest characters and stories revolve around this concept, normally with a crucial decision to make at a pivotal moment at the stories climax, concluding the characters arc.

In other words, we normally get the learn about what influences the main characters, specifically the protagonist, in terms of how they make decisions and balance their equation. This will mean that when the character is confronted with a pivotal, climatic decision, we really really really want them not to succeed, but to be able to have both sides of their needs fulfilled, or even better.

This is story resolution, character resolution and is satisfying to read & watch because we all want to buy shiny shoes and have dominoes pizza every night.

AK

I C.

Well, you might want to give some kind of reason why they do what they do. If we can connect with the rationalization for what they do or understand its logic, we might find the character more interesting.

It'd be very hard to connect with a character who feels guilt for what they do, but could stop doing it whenever they want to. It wouldn't make much sense if all they had to do to ease their guilt would be to stop doing it.

You could say the character owns a debt to someone, or is being pressured into doing it in someway; that may make them more sympathetic as a character. Once this happens the reader would then be interested in what they have to say and will let themselves learn about the character, and what makes them tick.

This allows you to build the story and expand it into new directions, which incrementally increase the knowledge the reader has of the character, and the situations with which we learn them in. This leads the progression and pace of the story, with injections of decision making moments which define the character. With each action or inaction to a decision, their choices will define the character's psychology and give them depth.

The initial issue, problem or event that triggers a story forward can be as simple or as complex as it needs to be.

The problem you face is that the premise of a mission runner is flawed, not the character.

If you want to follow a story that deals with guilt, pent-up remorse hidden behind a fake smile, perhaps; you face the other end of the spectrum with 'why to people repeatably sign up to be on a pirate vessel that will in all likelihood get shot down by a Raven the minute they put up another drug compound?'.

The issue isn't about the millions he has slaughtered for money, it becomes about why people willingly sign up by the (taking up the entire mission running activity) billions every day.

Where are these people coming from? Who hires them? Why would they be anywhere near an employment office for ship crews? It's got to be eventual death for anyone who signs up for it. Surely there are more jobs available for 'space station janitor' or plan old 'concord regional office administrator 3rd grade' not to mention the enormous amounts of Veldspar that needs loading and unloading at the space docks on stations.

AK

This is an excellent point, and you are quite correct considering the ship loss rate to PVE being relatively low. I can't even remember the last time I lost a significant ship, it has been years.

OFF TOPIC:

I personally don't use battlenet.com, and haven't in years. I started getting phishing emails, supposedly concerning my battlenet account. As for API, I don't ask for it, nor do I give it out any longer, for the same security reasons.

"The Wetgrave" would seem to imply that it is "possible" to leave the pod in space. Though the ship would need the redundant control systems to allow ships to operate without a capsuleer. Whether these systems are present in Capsuleer production ships isn't clarified, that I know of..

As to crew, I have always imagined the crew is hired on much like 19th century sea going vessels.. Crew come and go at most ports, signing on for a stint aboard the ship and leaving when the contract is completed. There is also the replacement of dead and the hiring on of new crew to replace those finishing their contracts. For those races that don't use slaves or conscripted crew, anyway..

I would also imagine that Capsuleers maintain a large retinue of port side staff at the stations they frequent..

I get that the fiction is clear on it, but it makes zero physiological sense. Even future space goo and nanobots and future spacetech don't completely erase all the problems that would come from being stuck in a fetal position for months or (in the case of supercap pilots) years. The human body and mind just do not work that way. Your muscles would go away, your bones would brittle and collapse, your joints would fuse together, your organs would fail, and you would go insane.

There are a number of things the fiction is crystal clear on that just do not square with any aspect of reality. That's normal, it's a sci fi universe. But for immersion's sake, I ignore them, because seriously. Similarly, for my immersion's sake, I don't think there are millions of pirate crew dying in Motsu every single day in the EVE universe.

And mechanically, in Captain's Quarters, we see that a pod gangway is nothing more than a ladder. I think my battleship can manage that.

One thought: The canon and the EVE novels portray New Eden as a pretty larcenous and treacherous place. Since that's the case, a capsuleer might want to know his crew pretty well. A multi-million isk ship could be a nice prize for a larcenous crew, if it could dispose of the pod pilot or somehow coerce him/her in a hijacking. (In the case of disposing of the pilot, they wouldn't be able to fly the ship without the pod. But they could have arranged for another pod pilot to take delivery and control of it).

Whatever, it seems that for security reasons you'd need to be able to trust your crew. Which, for warships at least, could create a psychological dilemma-- know your crew, but also consider them disposable. But then again, I suppose military organizations have been dealing with the comrade casualties issue for centuries.

They sign up because they can make more aboard a ship on a short tour than they can the rest of their natural lives at regular salaries.

History has no shortage of people willing to risk life and limb just at the mere possibility of becoming wealthy.

We have to imagine capsuleer payouts to crew as substantial, not to mention insurance policies to the families of deceased crews. There's more than enough money involved for ships to be constantly crewed by willing individuals.

Or the capsuleer from just turning off life-support.

Considered writing about a case of minmatar slaves trying to take over the ship of a amarr loyalist. Its why you always take good care of you slaves kids ^_^