EVE Fiction

If the empires are gradually losing their power, lore-wise, to the capsuleers as is said in the Origins video, then why do the empires train capsuleers? Or possibly even make them (I'm a bit fuzzy as to who actually does that)? It seems like that would be detrimental to them, if they just keep training up people to take over the universe from them... unless that's what CCP is going for?

A capsuleer cuts down on crew costs, which are often one of biggest expenses of any naval ship, even in reality. The human resources overhead for crewing a battleship is massive. Feeding, training, paying, insuring, and benefiting all those people is very very expensive. Then you have to maintain the ship and all this other nonsense. With capsuleers requiring only a fraction of the crew for a ship, this is less of a problem.

Tactically, they are also far more effective in combat. This is why we can take on entire level 4 missions alone. Those are some damn impressive odds. Imagine if you had to pay an entire fleet of normal, fully crewed, ships to take on those pirates. Operating a major fleet action like that through traditional means is horribly expensive. Why bother when you can pay a capsuleer a fraction of the cost to get it done himself?

Capsuleers sell themselves cheap. A million ISK to fight off a horde of fourty pirate ships alone? That's barely enough to buy a destroyer and fit it.

Lastly but not least... if a capsuleer dies, it costs the agent's corporation NOTHING. The capsuleer doesn't even get paid. The agent corp doesn't need to replace any ships, or retrain new crews, or pay death benefits, or anything. They just offer the mission to someone else.

Hmm, I guess that makes sense.
But this raises another question: shouldn't we be paying upkeep for the maintenance and crew on our ships?

You are. Don't forget a few thousand ISK is enough money for baseliners to pay several years of salary for them and their family.

Compared to 99.9% of the cluster each capsuleer is -fabulously- wealthy.

i read some where that 1 isk is more then the average colonist would make in there life time.

and i would love to see a all out war declared on capsuleers by empire.

oops. too late

dammit, and we don't even have awesome faster-than-light giant warships to show for it. 'MURICA.

I seem to recall somewhere that the capsuleer market is highly inflated to provide some currency-sinks for the wider cluster.. ie if you translate ISK into -planetary- currency is where things get really out of proportion. Something like a barrel of wheat is a few hundred ISK on capsuleer regulated markets but much different planetside.

CCP, has come out and said before times the players are not truly ALL of the capsuleers, there are many many more still in the service of the Empires.

Maybe one day the capsuleers working for the empires will join their free brethren and turn on their masters. Aside from the leaders, of course, that wouldn't make any sense.