EVE General Discussion

You have to remember that planetary currency is basically worthless compared to isk, so for a very small amount of isk every family on your ship can essentially be gods planetside. There are also a good deal of escape pods which are fairly effective.

My issue with it, is that it basically means there are hundreds of trillions of pirates, and even larger quantities of people in the Empire regions. Seriously, think of how many people a level four mission kills...

they could incorporate planet bombs with dust
the lower your skill the more they talk back to you and explode in the bomb bay

Hmm

Alright, I've just done The Assault on Sisi. Let's run the numbers. I destroyed...

Coreli Guardian Initiate x4
Coreli Guardian Agent x3
Coreli Guardian Spy x2
Coreli Guardian Defender x4
Corelior Cannoneer x3
Corelior Infanty x5
Corelior Sentinel x3
Corelum Chief Infantry x1
Corelum Guardian Chief Watchman x3
Corelum Guardian Chief Patroller x1
Corelum Guardian Chief Infantry x2
Corelatis Squad Leader x11
Corelatis Platoon Leader x3
Core Flotilla Admiral x5
Core High Admiral x3
Core Rear Admiral x5
Core Commodore x3
Core Vice Admiral x1
Core Admiral x1
Core Port Admiral x5

That's thirteen frigates (all of them T2), eleven destroyers, seven cruisers (including six Deimos; that's half a bil in hulls right there), fourteen battlecruisers and twenty-three battleships (including twenty admirals, so either I've just eviscerated Serpentis high command or their command structure is very top heavy).

These are all Gallente hulls, so they all have "lower-range" crew complements, and for the sake of simplicity we'll say that the Serp, as rugged veteran space farers and wanting to make the most of a (presumably) highly constrained manpower pool, can and do make these ships run at peak efficiency, using the lowest possible crew sizes.

So, assuming maximum survival rates, we're looking at

Total 5,436, Killed 2,942, Survived 2,494*.

What this says about Serpentis demographics is a bit trickier. Historically, the military has rarely exceeded 1% or 2% of the total population except in times of total war... in fact**, 1% seems to be rather extraordinary- the average seems to be closer to 0.5% (and I suspect most of those aren't field personnel).

So, potentially, these 5,436 represent something between one and five million people- a largeish modern city or small nation. On the other hand, the Serp are pirates- presumably (hopefully) the military pays for itself***- is a major earner, even. That could allow us to bump the proportions up to five, ten, twenty percent. More, perhaps, if we assume they recruit primarily externally and their demographics are heavily skewed towards unattached young adults with no dependants. So it's possible that these ships represent "only" thirty thousand people or so.

Estimating the total number of pirates killed every day... hmm. Well, there are 35,000 players on Tranq right this very second. If we say that each of them goes out and kills just one battleship, that's three and a half million people dead right there, minimum, and somewhere between thirty five and a hundred and forty million people back at base. Deaths per day is going to be several orders of magnitude above that, easily.

Either the pirates have populations measuring in billions (trillions!), or the empires have populations of many, many trillions and the pirates recruit very heavily from their dispossessed underclasses. Maybe quadrillions, though that is a very silly number even for a high epic space opera.

ALRIGHTY THEN.

*Okay, so, I'm using the "absolute bare minimum" crew numbers as if they were "fully fitted and functional" crew numbers. Unfortunately, we don't have "fully fitted and functional" crew numbers; we can make a fair assumption that they're somewhere between "minimum" and "full capacity", but that's a huge range. Factor of twenty, in some cases. I decided to play it safe and go for a solid lower bound.

**http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_troops

***For the piracy to pay for itself, the pirates are going to need to run many successful operations for every one the players blow up, so this doesn't help much. A quick estimate suggests I destroyed something in the region of 3.2 billion isk (...and was paid the princely sum of 24 million... I think I want a raise); how many ships do the Serp need to have out there to make that profitable? (And then- how large does the NPC economy have to be that the pirates can leech this much out of them easily and without crippling them? )

Anybody entering the CQ could randomly be assaulted by beachball aliens. Yeah...

On-topic, I agree completely. I always envisioned the capsuleer operating their ship in the same way as Cowboy from "Hardwired"

Autonimous Monster, that's freakin epic. nice job!

The "life insurance" you pay for the people on your ship is included in the purchase price of the ship. Like others have said, ISK currency is WAAAAAAAY more valuable than planetary currency. Thus, it takes a fraction of what we think is "a lot" for a person aboard our ships to live in luxury. Assuming of course that they made it to an escape pod in time. There is a lot of "behind the scenes things", like the person you got the ship escrow from is likely the same person that made sure it had a crew.

As to the bridge thing, I envision myself on the deck of the ship in a chair and the rest of my crew is out in my ship doing their duties. My chair is built into the floor and there is the neural socket cord extending from the floor to my head so I can command the ship while at the same time "be on the bridge" and address people in downtime. When my ship explodes, it's usually very apparent it's going to happen so from the floor surrounding the chair my pod will reach up and envelop me and the chair and fill with fluid very fast to withstand the huge explosion that's shortly to come.

Make this suggestion elsewhere.

I don't mean it in a dismissive way. on the contrary
Copy paste this and post all around. Particularly in the ideas and features and let it get some exposure. Your suggestion is one of the few that have quite a bit of merit and sounds cool as hell

I've always preferred idea that EVE ships don't have any living soul on board except the pod pilot, where everything else are highly automated systems, nanobots, drones and what not, all connected directly to human mind. Ship would be sort of huge mechanical extension of pod pilot's body. For me, this makes much more sense than actual lore.

That, or Clear Skies 'old school' setup with pilot yelling, running around and getting his hands dirty.

I'd like to point out that we have repairers that use nanites to repair armor and structure at a staggering rate. I'm sure a little metal-fatigue is well within the capabilities of the on-board systems to diagnose and repair on a regular basis. There is no need for crew on the magical starships that populate the EVE universe.

Not really. The problem lies in diagnosing like i said before.

That is the reason why normal frigates are crewed, and why pod frigates are not. The ship is small enough for the on-board systems to keep track of everything going on every cubic centimeter of the ship, and take the proper actions when necessary.

Is it possible to do it in kilometer long battleships? Yes. Is it is. Is it cheaper than using a living crew? No, it is not. Is it more cost-effective, then, to use a live crew? Obvioulsy, it is.

Read the chronicals and novels. Ships have crews.