Vermillion Online vs EVE Online

The short answer

EVE Online has been running since 2003. It's a single-shard universe with thousands of star systems, huge alliances, sovereignty wars, deep industry and a market big enough that the developer publishes monthly economic reports on it. You can start free as an Alpha clone and subscribe to Omega for the full game. Since October 2026 brand-new players start in Starter Space, a region where other players can't attack them. Ships are fixed hull designs that you fit with modules, and you fly them by giving orders: approach, orbit, keep at range, warp.

Vermillion Online takes EVE's skeleton (player market, security tiers from safe to lawless, full loot, suicide ganks in high-sec) and puts block-built ships into it. You design the hull in 1 m blocks, the engines and guns are physical assemblies inside it, and you fly it with Newtonian thrusters. It's a small, early, free playtest on one server. It is not a replacement for twenty years of EVE, and we won't pretend otherwise.

What carries over from EVE

If you play EVE, a lot of Vermillion will feel familiar on purpose.

• Player market. Each station has an order book with buy and sell orders, escrow, a 2% tax and price history.
• Things exist somewhere. No global inventory. Ore mined in Lawless has to be hauled to a station that wants it.
• Graded space. Secure, High security, Low security and Lawless, with better ore the further out you go. Titanite is Low security only. Iridium is Lawless only.
• Suicide ganks. In High security, attacks land. The attacker turns Criminal and invisible police destroy their ship 20 seconds later. A tough hauler can outlast the window.
• Full loot and salvage. Wrecks hold cargo for anyone, and hulks can be salvaged.
• Couriers. Courier contracts with collateral, for when you'd rather someone else took the risk.

What's different: you build the ship

In EVE, a Rifter is a Rifter. You choose the fitting, not the hull. In Vermillion, the hull is yours. The Ship Designer at a station lets you place 1 m blocks: 68 armour shapes in Steel, Aluminium, Titanium, Iridium composite or Glass, plus about 140 functional parts.

The insides matter. An engine is a core plus cylinders plus coolers. A cannon is a firing piece plus barrels, clips, autoloaders, gauge increasers and recoil absorbers, with a gauge from 12 to 300 mm. Bigger assemblies perform better and cost mass and heat. If EVE fitting is a puzzle about slots and CPU, Vermillion fitting is a puzzle about space, mass and where things sit inside the hull, because every block can be shot off.

What's different: you fly it

EVE combat is about positioning, range control and fleet orders. You click, the ship goes. Vermillion is flown directly: Newtonian flight on six axes with flight assist on or off. Thrust comes from where you placed the thrusters, so a lopsided design flies lopsided. There's no speed cap; typical ships reach 150 to 300 m/s depending on thrust, size and mass.

Travel uses a cruise drive with spool-up, hop legs and a recharge window where you're exposed. Hauling heavy cargo makes you slower and easier to catch, which will feel familiar to anyone who has flown a freighter through Uedama.

Loss rules side by side

In EVE, about half of what was fitted and carried drops into the wreck and the rest is destroyed, rigs are always lost, insurance covers the hull only, and if your capsule dies too you lose your implants. Vermillion is simpler and a bit harsher on cargo: a destroyed ship loses half its cargo, the rest spills into the wreck, and the hulk can be salvaged by other players. A dead character drops a body bag with everything carried, half of it destroyed. Everyone aboard dies with the ship. There's no insurance. There is always a free Rookie Ship, so nobody is locked out.

Radar is a two-way thing

EVE has local chat and directional scan. Vermillion has signatures. You only see what your sensors detect; the server sends nothing else. Thrust, heat, guns and radar all raise your signature, and asteroids hide you. Firing pulse radar reveals hidden ore fields and pirate sites, and every pilot in range hears the ping as a bearing. That turns scanning into a decision.

What EVE does better (a lot)

• Scale. Tens of thousands of players on one shard and fleet fights that make the news.
• Twenty-plus years of content: sovereignty, wormholes, faction warfare, deep industry and invention.
• Alliances and politics that no new game can match on day one.
• Polish, stability and a huge knowledge base of guides and tools.

Vermillion has none of that yet. No player stations, no territory, no multiple star systems. One EU server. Real sessions so far have had a handful of pilots.

Common questions

Who should play which

Play EVE Online if you want the biggest player-driven space game there is, with politics and scale. Try Vermillion Online if you want that kind of risk and economy with ships you design and fly yourself, and you're happy to be early: setting the first prices, finding the routes and helping shape the game with feedback.

More: games like EVE Online, Vermillion vs Albion Online, or the full comparison.