When you hear about EVE Online ships and their power and size, you typically hear about them in DPS, EHP, their mass and their length. While these make it easier to comprehend, it is still hard to imagine and compare their size and power. There is no in game representation that shows the power and size of EVE Online’s ships and stations, but using the data given in-game, we can compare and represent the scale of EVE Online’s technology.
I will start off with DPS and EHP in terms of energy. Now EHP and DPS are the standard units we use to determine what a ship is capable of in game. These are the most important units when it comes to fitting, but there is no standard conversion for what DPS or EHP means in terms of actual energy and what it looks like in real life. In order to find out what one DPS or EHP means in terms of energy, we need to look at the energy value for weapons and convert them.
Lasers are the perfect example because there is no ammo which can hold extra energy, only crystals which act like a funnel of sorts, which takes the energy and focuses it in a beam, kinda like a magnifying glass on ants. The funnels aka crystals don’t hold or add energy into the system, and if they do its a finite amount, which makes laser or energy weapons the best conversion.
For this example, I will use the Dual Giga Pulse Laser II, which has a base value (without skills or bonuses) energy usage of 320 GigaJoules per shot and does a volley of 16393 damage. If we subtract the bonus from the ship itself (180%) then you have a volley damage of 4554 damage. If we divide volley damage by energy usage you get 14.23 damage per Gj. Without resistances, one Gj is equal to 14.23 EHP or damage. So, one shot from one capital laser weapon is close to 76.5 tons of tnt. That is a little more than ¾ the energy of this explosion from one shot. An easier conversion to understand, is that one EHP or damage is worth about 1 hand grenade in energy.
So, what about the most powerful ship weapon in the game? Doomsday devices do 1.5 million damage, so converted to Gj, from there converted to TNT, you get a little over 25 kilotons of TNT. To compare, the Hiroshima A-Bomb was around 15 kilotons, and the Nagasaki bomb was around 21 kilotons. So, if you are getting hit by a doomsday from a titan, then you are either dying too or surviving more energy than a nuclear bomb.
Now that the true power of New Eden’s weapons are realized, now we can understand how much of a beating these ships can handle. Recent titan deaths show 4-9 million damage taken before deaths, which is multiple nuclear explosions taken and survived. Even some dreadnoughts in WH space have tanked multiple millions of EHP. The technology of EVE Online’s ships allow them to take tons of damage and keep working like they are supposed to work.
When it comes to size and scale, EVE Online’s ships and stations are truly massive. Not only can they be extremely long, up to kilometers in length, but also they are tall. Since they are in space and they do not have size limitations like our real life vehicles to float or fly, they can be a infinite weight and size, and the only limitations are the materials and what the designer of the ship or station wishes to achieve. The largest ships currently in existence in the New Eden are the titans, which can be up to 18km long and several kilometers tall, and having masses of up to 2.4 billion kilograms. To help comprehend, it would take almost 4 hours to walk the length of a Ragnarok class titan, and weighs about half as much as one of the great pyramids of giza, which are the third heaviest objects ever created by mankind. Those measurements are without fittings, and these massive warships have weapons the size of buildings, and typical fits for armor titans have multiple layers of 25000mm plates, which means that if you jumped off the edge of the armor plate and fell to the hull, you would fall 25-75 meters and you would effectively fall to your death just from armor plates.
While these numbers are insane, it is not even the most impressive feats pulled off in New Eden’s history. Stations are much bigger, with the largest being the Keepstar class citadel, which is hundreds of kilometers long and tall, and hold millions of residents along with thousands of ships. These are stations the size of entire countries, and if one appeared on top of the state of New York, it would look something like this:
While the keepstar would be the heaviest and largest object ever created by humanity, there are some even more impressive ships that were created, and since destroyed, in New Edens past. The Iapetan class titans were the largest ships, and maybe even the largest things, ever created by humanity. According to some old reddit post, using the pixels in pictures and comparisons of the old ships, they were up to 516km in length and 157km in height.
These ships carried entire planet sized populations on them, they would need an entire planet to be destroyed to provide enough material to build them. These ships had enough power to destroy planets or entire solar systems according to lore. These ships were either destroyed, deconstructed out of fear of mutually assured destruction from the other empires, or in the case of the Gallente titan, stolen by the serpentis, which is supposedly still around today, hidden somewhere in space.
So, EVE Online’s ships and stations are extremely massive and powerful, and have a much larger effect then what it seems when you are controlling these massive ships in massive fleets and battles. The game does a good job at making you feel small and insignificant compared to other games, but in truth you are wielding the power of entire militaries when you control your ships. So, next time you are in space, remember what you are actually controlling, because it will surely change your outlook on the game.
