Oï !
Even if my activity on the Fiction Portal of the EVE Forums is limited, I’ve been quite interested in the Lore of the game we shared for the past fifteen years, and yet, with all that time passed, we still have ships’ descriptions repeating themselves, giving little to no souls of what we, capsuleers, throw in battles. I would like to complete those myself, with some pickings from the EVE Chronicles and cannon lore !
Disclaimer : I am NOT a professionnal or master regarding the lore, I am only doing this because I can, and to give more depth to ships that deserve a more personnal description in the Tech Tree. Of course, everyone is free to point out mistakes, so the reading can be better for everyone.
Let’s now start !
Marauders :
Golem : A highly modified version of the common Raven battleship, belonging in the Marauder-class, an advanced evolution of the common battleship, specialized in long deployement inside the enemy lines, but possessing bad sensor strenght, leaving the ship’s under the threat of being jammed.
The hull was drastically improved to house the unique technologies that make Marauder special : a Micro Jump Drive pre-spooling array reducing the period between jumps, the double hardpoints innovation allowing for a handful of highslots to be kept for utility purpose and the Bastion retrofit module, acting much like Siege interfaces on Dreadnought-class capital vessels.
Benefitting from the Caldari best minds in active shielding, this battleship hull certainly show one of the best shield boosting prowess on the subcapital level, able to take in a tremendous amount of punishement before letting damage leap in the armor. Developer : Lai Dai.
Lai Dai manufacturing plants are reputed to let out in the wild only hulls with very little tactical specialization, but an excellent mix between all on-board systems. This pattern in their design was thrown out of the window when they created what made the Marauders even more unique : the Bastion module, revealed in a live broadcast, seen accross the four empires, where a second generation Golem, equipped with this new interface, survived the assault of an entire LDPS police squadron. Alongside the impressive missile and shield systems, Lai Dai managed to integrate for the first time in a Caldari design, the powerful Minmatar Target Painting technology, drastically improving the damage of the Golem.
Vargur : Sacrificing some internal space to provide enough room for Bastion operations, the Vargur excel at long range deployement in hostile territories, like all Marauder-class battleships.
Making good use of the versatility of projectile turrets, this subcapital behemoth specialize itself in dishing out selective damage against a wide range of targets, while providing massive tanking capacities, perhaps the best to be found outside of the capital-sized vessels that lurks in lawless regions.
This ship, based on the Tempest design, profit of all the benefits of being classed among Marauders : unique Micro Jump Drives cooling systems, dual hardpoints technology dedicating a lot of high power slots for utility purposes, and the built-in systems known as “Bastion Gates”, massive vents used to safely dispose of the even more massive power output of the Bastion retrofit module. Developer : Boundless Creation
While Minmatar ships are generally the most versatiles hulls to be found drifting in space, allowing the captains to either make use of shield systems or armor platting, Boundless Creation decided to break their tradition of “firepower over eletronic and defensive prowess” by installing powerful shield boosting arrays on the Vargur, while still retaining the devastating effect of the manufacturer best projectile scopping arrays, creating a monster never seen before on the space lanes.
Kronos : The Kronos, true monster lurking within the Federation navies, is the doom of whoever might think itself strong enough to pierce its advanced plating and repairing nanobots, far enough not to get catched by the tremendous hybrid turrets fitted on its dual hard points, and fast enough to get outside of its range before the MJD propel it toward an oblivious prey. The compartiments on the bow of this vastly modified Megathron hull were completely stripped to house the famous “Bastion Gates”, entire parts of the ship moving to release the massive heat generated by the even more famous Bastion retrofit module into the void. Because of the integration of advanced dual hardpoints technology, a lot of high power slots can be used for utility modules. Combining that with improved tractor beams, this battleship can be turned into an efficient wreck Salvager while the guns chew through whoever might be suicidal enough to burn straight in. Developers : Duvolle Laboratories.
Duvolle engineers are known to have a particular interest in the devastating power of blasters, will still integrating acceptable defensive systems in their designs. However, they were the pioneers of what made the Marauder class so destructive : the dual hardpoints technology, effectively doubling the damage of a single large turret, at the cost of being able to fit only four of them on a given hull. The Kronos was released at the same time as the Deimos Heavy Assault Cruiser, making Duvolle Lab the only corporation in the Federation to furnish the navy with a frigate, a cruiser and a battleship.
Alright, I think it’s a pretty good start. Sadly, I’ve run low on ideas concerning the Paladin, and I’m still missing key informations to create some lore text concerning other ships. I’ll update this topic regularly, to keep you guys entertained, but feel free to give me some good links toward Lore bits relating to either weaponery or ships !
Thank you !
I know I haven for updated this topic for a month, but I am currently searching some infos on the Command Destroyer class. I still haven’t found a lot on those, sadly, with the exception of the Magus that had its own The Scope video, if I recall correctly.
I’ll try to get more infos and write a new paragraph for the Paladin, too
I have found an interesting official page regarding multiple advanced ships on the EVE fiction site, so I’ll be able to create something new regarding frigates and more !
Alright, let’s continue with a new text on advanced frigates !
Electronic Attack Ships :
Keres : The Keres is the Gallente take on advanced EWAR ships, under the Tech II nomenclature. This ship saw the sacrifices of important features from the Maulus hull on which it’s based, notably a reduction in thrusters power, resulting in a slower boat. Those were considered as worthwhile to implement what make this frigate so powerful in fleet tactics : long range targeted interdiction, using state of the art disruption and scrambling arrays. It is not defenseless, having enough bandwidth to use two light drones, but should rely on its allies to defend itself. Developer : Duvolle Laboratories.
Duvolle integrated the best armor plating they could on such a small frame, while still leaving room for what makes Electronic Attack Ship deadly : their enhanced disruption capabilities. With the Keres, they saw the opportunities to combine sensor dampening and warp disruption in a single hull, a nasty situation for any captain trying to use range as their main defense. In Y115, scientific breakthroughs in components manufacturing allowed the Keres to be built from lighter and more powerful components, improving both its range and survivability and getting some more speed, sadly not enough to keep up with modern frigates.
Kitsune : An improved version of the Griffin, already known by most capsuleer and fleet commanders for its horrendous effectiveness at negating both damage and remote repair capabilities by shutting down the targeting systems of an enemy ship. The Kitsune take what made its predecessor so popular and improve it vastly. This include a superior jamming capabilities, improved raw CPU strength and an higher efficiency capacitor. At first, the additional target lock forced the engineers to redirect some power allocated to shield capacity toward sensor clusters, which proved to be a tactical mistake. Developer : Lai Dai.
Lai Dai developped the Kitsune in the truest form of Caldari fashion : a support ship excelling in its role, but having very little to no use outside of it. This posed some questions in the ship’s design, notably with the presence of three launchers and one turret hard points that are rarely ever used, leaving the Caldari Electronic Attack Ship defenseless if caught off guard, since its engineers omitted the use of a drone bay. In the recent years, the Kitsune greatly benefited from improvements in its components, allowing it to keep that additional target lock and superior speed compared to the Griffin, while redirecting energy from the sensor clusters toward their original use : improving the shield capacity.
Sentinel : A strange vessel among Electronic Attack Ships, as for a class rumoured to have use only in the EWAR domain, the Sentinel raise some eyebrows with its large drone bay and somewhat average bandwidth, allowing four light drones to be sent forth in space. This little frigate also received state of the art armor plating, which could deceive someone in thinking this ship is in fact an Assault frigate. But the impressive tracking and energy disruption capabilities of this ship, often nicknamed as the mini-Curse, will surely give some nightmares to larger ships’ commanders. The Sentinel have enough neutralization power to drain completely others vessels out weighting it, while still getting away by disrupting their turrets or missiles application, and absorbing whatever could still reach its thick armor. Developer : Viziam.
For a corporation that is only a few years old, Viziam already outpaced most of its competitors because of the support from the Carthum Conglomerate linking the two entities together. The love of the constructor for sturdy ships pushed their advanced Ewar frigate on the spot of one of the most durable one and successfully locked their position as one of the best furnishers for the Imperial Navy. The improvements made in Y115 benefitted the least to the Sentinel, as it was already a decent vessel before.
Hyena : Following the Minmatar tradition of using mythical beasts’ names in the Republic designs, the Hyena got its own from a Matar creature renowned for stalking preys and predators way bigger in packs, and often succeeding. This advanced EWAR frigate possess two highly effective systems, almost used in every fleet to this day : target painting and stasis webification. While this ship see a great usage in capsuleer combat formations, the improved stasis range is often preferred above the target painters, since stoping enemy ships to a crawl is generally preferred, rather than simply augmenting their signature radius, since both methods improve turret accuracy and missile effectiveness, but slowed down targets are far easier to catch up and hold down in place with warp disrupting modules. Developer : Core Complexion Inc.
As it’s often the case with Core Complexion’s ships, the Hyena make a greater use of advanced electronics capabilities over the brute force of other Minmatar manufacturers. Core made a risky bet with the Hyena, as they decided to improve its survavibility by reducing the signature radius instead of directly improving either shield capacity or armor plating. This turned out to be quite profitable, as the researchs on lighter components of Y115 allowed the Republic Electronic Attack Frigate to be even harder to catch by high caliber turrets, while still holding down their enemies with the long range Stasis Webifier, and making them easier to hit for the main force with powerful target painters.
There ! I managed to gather enough informations concerning all four T2 EWAR frigates, unlike my attempt with Marauders where I’m still missing the Paladin. I hope you enjoy my little work, and please point out any mistakes you could see within !
