EVE Fiction

My pathetically shallow understanding of this sort of thing indicates that ISK to planetary currency exchange rates are enormous. So where does CONCORD get all the ISK to pay bounties to capsuleers for killing the pirates? There may be some chronicle or other which explains it?

All those taxes and sov bills we pay.

Protip: When you buy or sell something, or when you do something related to industry, take a good look at what agency is taking your money.

Also every sov-holding alliance has to pay fees to CONCORD, so they won't get cut off from the rest of New Eden.

And about the empires, are you serious with that question? How do you think your nation gets money? Magic?

Now to be fair, not every bounty can be counted for RP-reasons. Take a look at missions, for example: Since even epic arcs are infinitely replayable for every player, a proper count would have to be limited to one run of every mission per pilot at the most. Even this count would be hilariously unreal, but would give an upper limit.

Likewise with ratting: There was some smartass which used math to prove how every citizen in New Eden had been killed multiple times over by now, thanks to capsuleers shooting rats. So obviously this is another point where the connection between gameplay and lore breaks down. So as a sensible limit, let's count every anomaly and signature exactly once per player and system. This way the slaughter should at least stay behind population growth to avoid sillyness.

With those limits in place, sov cost payments, transaction fees, industry fees and empire taxes should be enough to prop up capsuleer-economy.

About empires propping up capsuleer-economy: Since the population of the empires is ******* gigantic, this is actually possible, but it doesn't happen. What happens is, the empires give money to prop up inter-imperial organizations like CONCORD and INTERBUS, or that trade organization whose name I keep forgetting (every time you buy and sell on the market they get money from you, too). You could argue those organizations in turn support capsuleers with ressources they got from the empires, but this is just a side effect of their normal work.

Sometimes I get the feeling people don't really grasp how incredibly small the amount of capsuleers (PC and NPC) in total is, compared to the economy of several thousand star systems.

EVE Source outright states that license purchases (IE, PLEX) is one of its major sources of income.

"The only hold the empires had historically possessed over [CONCORD]--that of financial support--has in addition been almost completely erased, as revenues from customs, confiscation of illegal goods, license sales, and infrastructure management are more than enough to keep the organization in the black." - EVE Source