EVE Fiction

Unfortunately, the Origins trailer represents a significant disconnect from the reality of many capsuleer-bloc-vs-Big-4 engagements. Consider:

- The 'big 4' can cyno jam their systems while hiding the cyno jammers from us.
- They can deliberately prevent us from locating other support operations, such as shipyards and mining colonies, until it becomes beneficial for us to lend a hand to them (i.e., missions and complexes).
- CONCORD is capable of locking down and prevent certain capsuleer actions at will.
- Perhaps most ironically, CONCORD is capable of setting us all flashy to each other... at which point the majority of capsuleer groups will rip each other to shreds for giggles.

See where I'm going with this? Just because it isn't waved in our faces, doesn't mean CONCORD and the Big 4 don't maintain significant control over the capsuleer class.

In the Tides of Change, I think it is more or less established that capsuleer alliances (in this case, the old Curse Alliance) are more capable than the local gangs - even more capable than the Angel Cartel.

Now, whether the empires could fight the capsuleers is perhaps up to debate. The lore has historically suffered from distortion in the scope (like Heth's educational reforms implemented in an interstellar empire having results one might expect from a small real-world nation state). So we probably need to take any given numbers with a good pinch of salt.

In a scenario of "all the nullsec alliances against all the factions with hisec", things depend on exactly how much CONCORD has control over us. Probably even the empires could terminate any clone contracts on their stations. CONCORD probably could turn all TCUs off. Naturally, the market would stop working, but this can be circumvented by direct trading. There would be capsuleers in the empire navies, and most "independent capsuleers" would stay passive - some would join the empires. The nullsec alliances would probably have a very large advantage on the heavy ship types (with the exception of the very heaviest ships). The empires would have a massive advantage on support from their oldfashioned meat & bone controlled navies, probably being able to harass more or less all of nullsec, quickly taking undefended stations, leading to an epic game of station ping pong.

If we forget game mechanics and focus on the setting, I remind that even capsuleer ships have crew, and unless Sansha Kuvakei would hand over his cloning methods, crew attrition would probably be the deciding factor. This would heavily favour the established empires with large populations. The initial "sensible" action for each side would be to try to glass each other's terrestial planets. Again, due to the large amounts of relatively crappy but good enough non-pod controlled ships, the empires would have an advantage in this game, though this has a chance of becoming a mutually assured destruction scenario.

Finally, we come to a "single big nullsec alliance decides to attack one of the big four empires". First, CONCORD intervention would be likely. If CONCORD declared that it would not intervene, the opposing empire might join the fight. And then nullsec block. And then an opposing nullsec block on the empire side. And then this would be a regular PvP campaign of "whose morale breaks first", with lots of rats being thrown in for extra annoyance.

I think it is just a marketing metaphor.

Technically, we are limited by game mechanics to what we can do. Implementing new or improving upon existing game mechanics gives us more stuff to do; more stuff to control.

Self explanatory?

Perhaps you misunderstood my question...

What is preventing capsuleers simply from invading empire sovereignty?

Thanks to all else

Other capsuleers. For all the independants, there are still plenty that are fiercely loyal to their chosen side. In essence, the Empyrian war is already a war waged against empires, it's just that the capsuleers aren't united at all.