EVE Fiction

I agree.

But, I've often said the lore was written to appease game design mechanics, not logic.

AK

After a long inspection of the available material, it becomes clear there is more to the story than just, mankind comes through portal to build a brave new world, portal closes, leaving mankind unable to retain his technological advances.

The Yan Jung maintained a space going civilization for at least fifteen hundred years after the gate closed. There is simply more to the story than we know. A cataclysmic event destroyed the planets the Yan Jungs settled on, leaving only a broken starship hull on a moon where the survivors of this cataclysm struggled to survive, apparently failing, in the end.

War, famine, plague.. Just because we don't understand the mechanics, doesn't mean there is no sense in the model. The holes are holes in our understanding, not holes in the sensibility of it all.. That's my way of looking at it.

If you had read the book on day one, and knew all there was to know, would you still be here today?

The ancient Chinese, early in their history, had one of the most powerful navies in the world. Why did they abandon this technology later in their history? To say it just doesn't make sense, says you are not really looking for the truth behind it. You are looking for a truth that fits your own truth.

With much rejoice from today's critics, walked in and saw the LoTR special features, with critics saying "JRR Tolkien would not have been able to get this book published in today's world. It's too long"

What a lot of people don't remember about the collapse of the EVE Gate when they're done reading is that it didn't just close.

It collapsed violently, and almost obliterated the entire system of New Eden with an enormous release of energy that decimated most of what was originally there, including most of the settlers. It's reasonable to assume that the sheer amount of energy released could have destroyed or fried a lot of the electronics for several systems over once they were hit with the blast wave.

Also bear in mind that based on an 80 year lifespan, 8000 year is 100 generations. That's 100 generations of attempting to rebuild society from shattered ruins.

I think it's safe to assume that they had it pretty rough for at least a couple of thousand years of that.

Nice try.

It didn't affect the jumpgates, 'mate.

AK

Who says it didn't affect jump gates? The ones we use are new jumpgates.


You're completely underestimating the infrastructure it would take to maintain an advanced civilization, not to mention our Earthly one.

If the sun has a bit of a tantrum our Satellites start ******* up, just to get started. If we lost Satellite systems, we might as well go back 80 years in communication infrastructure.

To manufacture advanced space-faring materials is another huge challenge. Are you telling me that every colony on every planet had a professional spaceship manufacturer? So, even if you could maintain those things for, 100 years, 200 years, they'd break and before you know it you'd end up having to rebuild what little you have and can do over the next thousands of years.

Not to mention the same ensuing chaos you mention on just trying to unite ONE world. If you were completely disconnected from your home world, even if you had completely functioning everything, you're saying you don't believe there'd be manic panic and self-induced destructive behavior that would tear down society to the point that you'd have to start over? Even if you were knocked down to "Earth" like living conditions.

And again, how many of those planets were under terraforming situations? They weren't truly livable and would have relied on some level of exports and imports while terraforming was underway.

You completely underestimate how much world manipulation we have done to EARTH just to maintain our current status quo - it could get undone very easily. And 100 times more easily for advanced civilization. We can barely get iPods/iPhones to not break. The universe is not very accomodating to the human condition.

2 things to keep in mind as well:

1, the old intro made it fairly clear that the colonists were, to varying degrees, dependent on technology still being imported through the gate. The Caldari, for instance, were only half-done terraforming Caldari Prime and the planet was only populated by the terraforming crews and those necessary to support them. [1] There was no fully developed civilization on Caldari Prime; it was a work outpost. Mishii IV, where the Ni-Kunni come from, was caught in a similar state - although in the inverse of the frigid Caldari Prime, Mishii IV was left a desert with little water available. [2]




The second thing to remember is that lack of spaceflight-related technological development does NOT mean that nothing was going on. The Amarr were split between squabbling warlords for a long time, as were the Gallente until both cultures were united by the first reclaiming and the reforms of Rouvenor III, respectively. The Minmatar tribes commonly warred among each other until they united into a worldwide culture - and in just over 1,000 years had begun their own interstellar civilization. In many other cases, the races of the 'big four' nations were tied up with internal conflicts for many thousands of years before they either united or were overrun by other cultures that had done so.

I was considering the fact that in 7,000+ AD, the average lifespan is probably a lot longer, but yes, I do see your point.

I believe that another main cause of the dark ages may have simply been the mass hysteria caused by the news of the gate's closure. Lets say that you lived in Hawaii, and you got news that the rest of the world had just been wiped out by a nuclear catastrophe. Your supply routes to the mainland is gone, your central government is gone. Anarchy would ensue, probably causing a lot of damage in the process. It doesn't require much to make people revert to primitive violence under the right circumstances.

What do you think is more valuable to a freezing and starving colony? A single functional spaceship, or the ample supply of heat and light and power that the ship's power core may offer the colony if the ship is stripped? Space travel is meaningless if the world is ending.

Even if two colonies in neighbouring star systems were able to slowboat ships to one another (Several days or weeks with an EVE-modern warp engine, IIRC), it still wouldn't save them. What would it give them? Trade? If neither colony has industry or agriculture, they will have nothing of value to trade that isn't also crucial to the survival of the home colony. In fact, a colony with functional agriculture with a few scout ships might not want to contact other colonies, out of fear that they have stronger military strength and will use superior ships and manpower to claim a functional colony.

So the colonies that may have been somewhat self-sustaining at the collapse would have had an interest in isolating themselves, which would have contributed to their eventual collapse.

The colonies were at the most 70 years or so. Those oldest and best-developed colonies likely went on to become the Jove. As for the rest? The Amarr didn't properly settle on Athra until the year of the collapse. The Pator and Luminaire settlers had such luxurious lushness that it was probably assumed they didn't need much expertise to survive in the beginning. The Caldari had to live underground in Fallout-style vaults for hundreds of years.

And even the best technology can't run perfectly for centuries, even if the maintenance staff is educated. Computers will fail, taking with them ever-more crucial data. Survey equipment will seize, making the precious few geologists and engineers blind as to the potential civilization-saving resources the world might contain. And when the food supply falters, people will splinter, migrate and turn on each other in struggles for supremacy.


So many systems in our world are interdependent. Imagine if all technology was wiped off the Earth today - as in all factories, all cities just vanish into thin air. Where do you start? You need electricity? Where do you get the materials and fuels for generators? Building materials in general? Miners need engineers, and engineers need tools.

Before you have a complete chain of industry in place, your first couple of generations will have died. If you're lucky you managed to produce writing materials to allow your engineers, and scientists to save their knowledge, so someone else can carry on after them, but what happens when each generation is less literate than the one before? What happens when, out of necessity, a neighbouring society raids yours for food (without functioning agricultural industry you cannot support major populations, and people will break into factions) and destroys your library to stunt the development of your people?

You end up with a cyclical loss of information, and as the situation worsens your people will re-evaluate. What knowledge will be more important to invest in? The knowledge of how to make warp engines or the knowledge of how irrigation works? One will be selected for, the other selected against - until the civilization is stable enough to support it again, and at that point the original information will be lost.


It didn't last very long for some colonies. The Jovian colonies were up and restored in a very short time, re-establishing interstellar travel and controlling much of the cluster for millennia before caving in on itself twice. The Yan Jung and the Talocan - if they weren't also a part of the Jove Empire - arose long before the currently dominant empires. Some colonies were more developed, and better suited to weather the collapse than others, and those did rise from the mud earlier. Basically, through a variety of lousy circumstances the original settlers of the Big Four colonies were left in the shittiest of positions and terrible odds of resurgence, and because of it the fight they had to fight to climb back to the stars was all the more difficult.