In multiple trailers and sources for EVE, it states that capsuleer tech is extremely powerful. With you being able to kill entire fleets of ships just for a few isk and us being more powerful then the empires, then why are they still around?
Why do they govern us, and why is it impossible to invade Highsec (Balance probably). If we are so much powerful, the empires and factions should have died out a while ago, especially pirate factions (One carrier ratter kills hundreds of ships in a hour)
I’m no lore expert but I assume it comes down to a consideration of relative numbers & size, priorities & interests.
Numbers: Capsuleers are supposedly an elite. For every one of them there are millions of normal citizens who are born, live and die within Empire controlled space. This means that even if pod pilots are ignored, the Empires are the most densely populated area of New Eden and those people are the single most valuable resource available.
Size: These Empires have grown and progressed as a result of the labour of their numerous citizens and their combined strength is considerable, as evidenced by the efficacy and pervasiveness of CONCORD. Their individual pilots may lack the resources available to pod pilots but they have the advantage of numbers, using them to police their space every minute of every hour of every day in a way that even the largest capsuleer Empires can only dream of.
Priorities: Capsuleers are focused on building their own empires in unclaimed/disputed space but they need the resources of the four racial Empires to achieve this. They obtain new recruits from Empire space and acquire a great deal of manufactured goods, while selling their own produce at Empire market hubs. Put simply, Empire Space is good business, for citizens and capsuleers alike, so why attack and destroy something that keeps you in ships and modules and can even make you rich?
Interests: Unlike the four racial Empires, capsuleers are a divided lot, with different vested interests and changeable loyalties, hence they’re unlikely to ever unite for long enough and in sufficient force to take on and defeat even one of the racial Empires, much less all four. Instead, they’d rather fight each other over control of the richer but less easily defended nullsec space which none of the Empires lay claim to.
Ive seen it written in the lore area that one empire has thousands of titans. Allegedly the amar have a ship several times the avatar over. Allegedlly.
From what Ive read the empires can field more ships than there are capsuleers. Also, they have concord which belongs to no single empire but is its own entity that would slay many many capsuleers should there have been an insurection.
Consider the fact that we all fly empire ships. We don’t fly anything like what CONCORD’s DED fly. So that is one element of control they have over capsuleers.
There are many reasons why capsuleer classes haven’t and can’t overthrow the empries, I’ll try to explain a few:
We’re not the only capsuleers. Empires have unknown amounts of loyal capsuleers, particularly after the Alpha Clone technology became widespread, but even before that. In fact, the toughest of rats, like officer rats or the FOB rats and rats in the burner missions are widely considered to be capsuleers, though I’m not 100% certain if this is canonized anywhere. If Capsuleers somehow managed to try an uprising, the empires would have their own capsuleers pitted against us. This includes supercapital pilots, like the late Admiral Visera Yanala who piloted the CNS Shiigeru in the battle of Caldari Prime.
We are few in number. Even if we take player numbers as canon, we’re something like the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. There are some hundreds thousand of us, at best. The EVE setting has IIRC at least 70 trillion people living in it, and actually that might be a lower end estimate. Something like a trillion of those at least are employed in militaries, navies, security firms, pirates etc.
Additionally, as pointed out, Empire navies are implied to be way larger than we ever get to see in-game.
We’re on a tight leash. CONCORD manages everything we do in known space. They levy taxes on us, they enforce some rules of conduct in terms of warfare, and until recently we weren’t allowed to oppress citizens on planets without CONCORDs blessing, and so on.
Even null-sec isn’t free, because your hold on it is only recognized if you pay CONCORD a fee to do so. Only areas where we can somewhat claim true independence is wormhole space and abyssal deadspace. Even so, I don’t think there are any 100% self-supporting WH systems where you can get all the materials etc you need to build everything you want.
Related to the above, we’re not allowed to innovate. There is not a single thing in this game that is designed by capsuleers, that I know of. In-universe wise there possibly could be, but if we just go with the game itself, we can’t develop our own ships, weapons etc.
All good points above. I think also that without the empires to rule and manage the nuts and bolts of things, the cluster would fall into absolute chaos. Broadly, capsuleers are the sort that would happily burn down any empire but then CBF to administer it.
Ita like when you see all the amar ships in line during a parade in the game trailers. That unit only does that. Parades. In the US military parade units are a minute amount of the total.
because we are what we are thanks to the empires, if we were to uprise against the empires, a few things that could happen:
CONCORD revoke our licenses, rendering us unable to fly our ships.
CONCORD switch our clone center off, ok we have super ships, but without clones in store, we are like humans.
CONCORD send a autodestruction/shutdown signal to our capsules. We tend to forget that each capsule is linked to CONCORD systems, they totally can have a “kill switch” on each capsule.
CONCORD prevent us to use stargate, making us isolated and vulnerable.
But ok, let’s imagine that we manage to do like the elder fleet and disable CONCORD systems.
what the empire can do?
they still have control of their gates, so they can shut themselves.
they have specials shields for station, rendering all military action against them useless.
they have huge armies, also with capsuleer’s
But ok, let’s imagine that we manage it, we overthrow the gvt
we would then have to rule ourselves.
Remember that we are seen as half mad people, without notion of real life anymore, waging war for nothing, killing as we please and destroying on a whim things of value.
Capsuleers as governors would be facing riots, rebellions. Seen as usurpers because they overthrown governements that seemed legitimate.
And to be honest, Do you really think that the cluster wouldn’t be in a state of war if we got the power of empires’s armies?
We already do so much damage with what we have that I would not give billions of humans to command to any of us ^^"
Prior to Alphas Falcon said something about 10 Mil independent and 40 mil empire capsuleers. Believe it was an old tweet. Imagine the 10 mil was accounts created to date or something. Now obviously in game doesn’t support the empire capsuleers being visible. Because even if you give them stats eve ai isnt capable of playing them appropriately.
But assuming that was right good explanation for why.
u do understand the size of the amarr empire for example right in the eve source book it states that the amarr have a population of 30 or so trillion people. they also have the largest navy with thousands of titans.