So a question that kind of bugs me about this game is…why is everything available to everyone, from a lore perspective? Why could a Gallente pilot, for example, buy a Caldari Navy Issue Hookbill…in a Gallente station?
It doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense that these factions that are in a cold war with each other would allow their enemies to buy their most sophisiticated military technology. It’s a little like being able to walk into a business in China and buy an American-made F-22.
Because if a station forbid the sale of something that wasn’t illegal then capsuleers would just go another station that didn’t have restrictions to buy/sell. Then the station would lose out on the very profitable tax revenue capsuleers bring in.
Why would an Englishman buy an Italian Ferrari from a car dealership in America? Okay maybe military stuff is a little different, but then again, aren’t the various nations of our world constantly selling each other weapons?
We are not so at war with the other factions (standing issues / Faction War aside) that we can’t freely fly around the entire EVE universe docking at any station we like no matter what faction it belongs to, so I think it’s plausible.
The empires sell their ships as rewards/incentives to independent capsuleers to work/fight for them (player characters in the militias are essentially privateers and mercenaries). And with global free markets and open borders (for capsuleers, at least), that technology will be available wherever capsuleers choose to sell them.
The big thing to remember is that capsuleers are independent sovereign agents. We’re essentially self-contained nations, and the empires sell their tech to us in the same way that RL nations sell military tech to other RL nations (as noted above by Sindara).
And as said above by Jehoshaphat, CONCORD mandates technology sharing, ergo there’d be no hiding your tech anyway, and treaties restrict the ability for the empires to directly go to war with each other. So they might as well use it to turn a profit.
Well, you should differentiate between state actors and “freedom fighters”. If you look at the world today, you may note that NATO and ISIS use the same weapon systems. The US sells to the gulf states who sell to the moderate jihadists who sell to the evil jihadists.
And those same folks will use Russian and Chinese weapons, too, if the price is right.
I was told a good story by an ex British officer whose family made small ordinance that was sold to Argentina. He was on patrol in the Falklands, when a jet passed their position and dropped a bomb. It didn’t go off, and when he inspected it, he saw his own family name written on the casing.
Likewise, not many folks know that Winston Churchill’s mother was American, and that her family of industrialists sold truly vast amounts of weapons to the British during the war.
War is a racket, and that is one thing CCP get absolutely right in the lore.
Exactly and since one of the main factions is just a group of corporations who want to sell sell sell its not much of a stretch to see a selling free for all.
It wouldn’t be hard to imagine one Civ paying off someone with access to another’s ships to deliver them a copy to reverse engineer.
Samira’s right. I’d like to add to her point: You’ll notice Capsuleers are the highest classes of society, larger than the largest government heads. This seems preposterous when actually it reflects our own reality more than we would like to admit.
Corporations had Earth by the balls. Now they’re in New Eden, Elon Musk’s territory. You better believe corporations are in control, where capsuleers are free agents of greed and consumption.
Whenever a capsuleer dies, so does his crew. Caldari crew, Gallente, whatever. They serve and die for capsuleers without question.
Crews, likewise, are not reborn. A capsuleer, on the other hand, never dies. Our consciousnesses are merely transferred to a new clone. This used to cost money but CCP found a way to make it free for capsuleers. Wasting crew after crew, because it’s fun.
Don’t forget what capsuleers are. They are the 1%. compared to the common person in EVE. They’re filthy rich and that in itself is a super-power, as money opens many doors that remain closed to non-rich people.
Want that limit edition ferrari? Better be rich. Want to have your own private militia? Show the money.
Want to have your very own space-rocket? Yep, you know where this is going: Get the money out.
Capsuleers buy entire spaceships, even the cheap frigate is still stupidly expensive for a common person.
When debating capsuleers & their habits, don’t treat them like how common people would act, treat them like super-rich bored people & you get a much closer insight on how capsuleers act the way they are.
In many cases, they just are bored & got money to burn. And are immortal. A dangerous combination.
And people love to get rich & EVE is an open market, so you end up with people selling the EvE variant of carriers & battletanks to bored immortal super-billionaires.