Sunday 20 February 2011

Races

The Amarr, a monotheistic theocratic empire, were the first of the playable races to rediscover faster-than-light travel.[10][11] Armed with this new technology and the strength of their faith in their god, the Amarr expanded their empire by conquering and enslaving several races, including the Minmatar race, who had only just begun colonizing other planets.[12][13] Generations later, after the intense culture shock of encountering the Gallente Federation, and in the wake of a disastrous attempted invasion of Jovian space, many Minmatar took the opportunity to rebel and successfully overthrew their enslavers, forming their own government in the Eve Online universe. However, much of their population remain enslaved by the Amarr, and some, having adopted the Amarrian religion and sided with their masters during the revolution, were released from bondage and incorporated into the Empire as commoners in the Ammatar Mandate. The free Minmatar Republic, taking as inspiration the ideals and practices of the Gallente Federation, is presently a strong military and economic power actively seeking the emancipation of their brethren and all other slaves.

The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds are situated in the same star system.[14][15] The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by descendants of the French colonists of Tau Ceti; Caldari Prime on the other hand was purchased by a multinational megacorporation that began to terraform it.[16][17] The terraforming of Caldari Prime was incomplete at the time of the wormhole's collapse, however, and the planet remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia. The Gallente restored themselves to a high-functioning technological society some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first lastingly democratic republic of the new era in the form of the Gallente Federation. Originally the Caldari were members of the Federation, though cultural animosity between the two peoples spiralled into a war during which the Caldari seceded from the Federation to found their own Caldari State. The war lasted 93 years, with neither nation able to overwhelm the other.[16][17] The planet Caldari Prime was retained by the Gallente Federation during the war, and did not become part of the new Caldari State. Much more recently, however, a new Caldari offensive managed to recapture their lost homeworld, a fact which is viewed with abhorrence by the Gallente, who see the presence of a significant Caldari fleet about the planet as a mass hostage taking.

Both the Gallente Federation and Caldari State are economical and trade oriented nations, however, the Gallente favour liberal market policies, encourage individual entrepreneurship, and maintain a democratic and progressive approach to social welfare whereas the Caldari State is founded upon statist corporatocracy, where the State itself is owned by and operated on behalf of various megaconglomerates. Due to their official policies regarding multiculturalism and encouragement for diversity, the Gallente Federation attracts many immigrants; a third of the Federation's population consists of ethnic Minmatars, while the Caldari State originally existed at a relative population deficit, which was rectified instead by a State-wide programme of artificial reproduction, producing a generation of so-called 'Tube Children' to provide larger labour pools to the controlling corporations.

The Jovians (currently a non-playable race) were colonists, too. Unlike the other races of Eve Online, they maintained use of their technology after the collapse of the wormhole and did not need to spend millennia rediscovering it, and while the other four major races were still grounded, Jovian history saw two periods of empire.[18] They expanded outward and eventually turned to genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a people more suited for deep-space life and long-range interstellar exploration. Genetic experimentation, however, eventually led to the deadly "Jovian Disease", a heritable psychiatric disorder which, despite their best efforts to reverse it, crippled their civilization. They now inhabit a region of space supposedly inaccessible to outsiders.[19]

In addition to different backgrounds and histories, each of the races have characteristic philosophies of starship design. Minmatar ships tend to be quite fast but fragile, and rely on their speed to evade the tracking systems of larger weapons, while themselves using projectile weapons such as artillery or autocannons, more sophisticated kin to today's munitions technology. Amarr ships are usually slow, heavily armored, and use laser weaponry. Gallente ships are sleek, well designed and armored, and specialize in deploying fleets of robotic drones while mounting hybrid weapons that operate using superconducting magnets to launch mass toward targets at extreme speeds. Finally, Caldari ships are typically poorly armored and not particularly fast but very well-shielded, and make extensive use of torpedo/missile launchers and hybrid railguns, favouring engagement at extreme ranges

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