Vermillion Online vs EVE Frontier

At a glance

Same family tree, different branches

EVE Online has shaped every player-driven space game since 2003. Both of these games take from it, and they take different things.

EVE Frontier keeps EVE's scale and its idea of a universe run by players, and turns it into survival. In the current cycle you start with little, scavenge, refine fuel, and build somewhere safe to log off. Fuel runs ships, bases, industry and travel. Ships are modular: you start from the root of a hull and add modules to change what it does. Players also build structures in space and can program some of them, for example as automated vendors or checkpoints.

Vermillion Online keeps EVE's market and risk structure and changes the ships. Each station runs an order book with buy and sell orders, escrow, a 2% tax and price history. Space goes from Secure to Lawless. Loss is full loot. But the ships are designed block by block and flown by hand, closer to From the Depths than to EVE.

Ships: modules on a hull vs blocks you place

In Frontier, a hull is a frame for modules. Swap the modules and the same frame becomes a miner or a weapons platform. That keeps the focus on what you fit and how you use it.

In Vermillion, the ship itself is the design. You place 1 m blocks in a Ship Designer at a station: 68 armour shapes in 5 materials plus about 140 parts. Systems are assemblies. A cannon is a firing piece plus barrels, clips, autoloaders, gauge increasers and recoil absorbers, and you choose its gauge from 12 to 300 mm. Thrusters are a nozzle plus amplifiers plus coolers, and where you put them decides how the ship flies. A lopsided ship drifts. A ship with weak reverse thrust overshoots.

You can test-fly a design before spending a credit. Then you fabricate it from refined materials. If you'd rather not design at all, there are stock ships, from the free Rookie Ship up to a Corvette and the Starter Hauler.

Flying and fighting

Vermillion is flown directly: Newtonian flight on six axes, flight assist you can turn off, and no speed cap. Most ships sit around 150 to 300 m/s. Shells are simulated projectiles that dig through blocks, and ships come apart block by block into drifting fragments. You can get out of the seat, too: walk your hull with magnet boots, EVA with a jetpack, board and repair.

Information matters in both games. In Vermillion, the server only sends you what your sensors detect. Ships give off a signature from thrust, heat, guns and radar. Asteroids hide you. A radar ping reveals hidden ore fields and pirate sites, and everyone in range hears it as a bearing.

Risk and loss

Frontier's survival loop makes loss part of daily life. According to coverage of Cycle 6, a ship that runs out of fuel drifts until it's destroyed, and the world itself is hostile. Its cycles also reset the server; Cycle 6 began with a full reset.

Vermillion grades risk by place. Secure space (1 sector) allows no damage. High security (6 sectors) lets attacks land, but the attacker turns Criminal and police destroy them 20 seconds later, so suicide ganks are possible but costly. Low security (9) has no police. Lawless (3) has no rules. Titanite only spawns in Low security and Iridium only in Lawless, so the money pulls you outward.

When a ship dies, half its cargo is destroyed and the rest spills into the wreck. Others can salvage the hulk. Everyone aboard dies with it and drops a body bag. You always get a free Rookie Ship back. Our playtest can be wiped between rounds too, and we say so up front.

Economy and the ledger

Frontier puts its game data on a public ledger and uses tokens in its economy; in Cycle 6, players trade an in-game currency for a test version of the $EVE token to buy mining gear. That's a deliberate part of its design, meant to let players build tools and services on top of the game.

Vermillion has no blockchain or tokens. Credits and items live on our server. The economy is the plain kind: mine ore, refine it, craft parts, fabricate ships, sell on a station order book, and haul goods yourself because there's no global inventory. Courier contracts with collateral let someone else carry the risk for a fee.

Where EVE Frontier is better

• Experience. Fenris Creations has run EVE Online for over twenty years. Few teams know more about player economies.
• Player-built infrastructure. Structures in space, some programmable. Vermillion has six fixed stations and players can't build their own.
• Scale. Frontier's universe is far bigger than our single 19-sector map.
• Openness. If you want to mod or build tools on top of the game's data, Frontier is designed for that.
• Survival depth. Fuel, heat and scarcity as the core loop. We simulate fuel and heat on ships, but survival isn't our game.

Who should play which

Play EVE Frontier if you like survival games, want to build and run infrastructure with a group, and are fine with paying for Founder Access and a game data layer on a public ledger.

Play Vermillion Online if what you want from the EVE formula is the market, the security tiers and the stakes, but with ships you design and pilots who aim their own guns. It's free to try. Both run on Mac, which is still rare in this genre.

EVE Frontier questions

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