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I am an old school gamer in the deepest meaning of the word, I am also a true fan of EVE Online. This blog will be where I will expound on my thoughts about EVE.

Author: Mopar63

In other MMOs you choose a race for what it will give you at the start but in EVE the reasoning falls back almost always to simple RP, choose a race that fits something you want to play.  Now the EVE site gives all the "official" race descriptions, what I am posting is my take on the backstories and a simplistic description of the BASE rap for each race.

Amarr: These are religious zealots that truly believe they are the chosen of God. Because they alone are the chosen of God other races must be brought to God and they feel the way to do this is through sacrfice of self to God's good, which means being slaves to the Amarr.  Imagine a cross between old testiment jews (yes they had slaves and did war on none beleiver, read the Bible to see) and crusader catholics.

Minmatar: A tribal society that was massively enslaved by the Amarr only over the last few centuries have broken free. A full third are still enslaved and the Minmatar want to free their brothers. The standard comparision to African tribes is classice and over used, this could also be the American Indians or even the nomadic Arabic tribes. In fact I really believe based on the sub racial descriptions and the fiction I have seen that in many ways it fits the American Indian models the best.

Gallante: It is hard to desrcibe the next two races without falling on political ideology sterotypes. The Gallante are the extreme of the socialist movement, take the US and French government, combine them and move them as far to the political left as you can. They believe in freedom for all and if you do not want to choose them then you must be forced to.

Caldari: This is the political opposite of the Gallante and in the end proves that both extremes are really the same. The Caldari are all about their economy with a military bend, imagine Japanese work ethic with an American economic model and a seious military bend, all taken to the extreme.

Now be aware that from an RP perspective there are always exceptions and I have described the most vivid and sterotypical of considerations for each race. Some of the excpetions are pretty interesting, for example there are Minmatar that have chosen to aceept their slavery and believe it has them on a path to God. There are Amarr that have decided slavery is an abomination and so work to free slaves.

The point is choosing a race in EVE is not about what you can get but what you want to RP.

Now there some consideration concerning base skills but thanks to the skill based system you can do anything you like. When it comes to base skill, ship and weapons here is my take.

Caldari: The easiest of the races to play if you stay with traditional ships. Caldari ships use missiles which are a shoot and forget weapon, they only miss if they are out ran or out of range. Caldari ships rely on shields for their primary defense, this means they have a self repairing defense system. This all means that Caldari are the least dependent on advanced skills to be effective.

Gallantte: To me these are second easiest of the races to place at base technology. Galantte ships rely on a mix of guns and missiles (Caldari also use guns but are heavily set to missiles) Gallantee also rely on drones. Drones are basically small robot fighters, send them out and they kill stuff.  Gallantte ships use armor for their primary desfense which means some skills for repair are needed. This means that from a weapons view point they need a few more skills than the Caldari to be effective but still have a lot of fire and forget no miss firepower. For defense they need more skills than Caldari and their defensive systems require effort in all cases.

Amarr: The Amarr come next in my opinion, they are a more skill intense combat race due to their relience on guns primarily, guns that require power and thus skills to be used effective. While ammo may seem to be an issue for the other races, the Amarr have to change out crystals to be effective and they are limited to only two types of damage with their primary weapons. As such higher skills have a bigger impact early on for the Amarr in gunnery. Concerning defesne the Amarr like the Gallantte use armor and so must have a bit more skills and effort to keep armor up in a long fight.

Minmatar: These are in my opinion the hardest of the races to play IF you stay with the base equipment. Minmatar ships use Ballistics weapons for attack as their primary skill. This means like the Amarr they need to learn some good gunnery skills to be efective. The good news is Minmatar weapons allow ammo shifts that change the damage type giving them an advantage over the Amarr. This is advanatge is off set by the fact they can and do run out of ammo during a fight. The defense however is where they become much harder than the other races as they use bioth shield and armor with no one standing out over the other. As such they must develop skills for both forms of defense. They also add a second type of defense, speed. Minmatar ships are very fast and use this speed to ry to dictate the battle terms, this means navigation skills are vital.

Now reading through this blog you might be confused by my statements, first I say the races do not matter for what they give and then I show each race has very different skills levels for combat. The second section is more about the ships of each race rather than the race itself. Any race can fly any ship if you do the training.

For example if you like the RP of the Minmatar but want the easy of early play from Caldari ships then train Caldari ships and enjoy. By the higher levels of the game the selection of race will amke little difference except from RP,  but we are playing an RP game right?