EVE 1727: The Eden Sea – Game Concept

Setting Sail

This isn’t the first time my friends over at JustAbout.com have challenged their community to make something awesome. Last time, I even won a prize for creating the largest EVE Online tribute in real life — you can read about that adventure in “I Drew a Titan in the Sea” and Concept for EVE Vanguard new Disrupt Rounds.

But this time, the task is quite different: reimagine EVE Online as an 18th-century seafaring game.

And I have the perfect candidate for that! It’s an old dream of mine dating back to 2005 — the long-standing desire to #BringBackYulai. I’ve always wanted, almost like an itch, to see Yulai restored to its former glory as the main trade hub for all capsuleers.

Back in the early days of EVE Online (2003–2004), Yulai was the hub — a logical crossroads linking five regions. It was easy to reach for anyone wanting to buy or sell goods, thanks to the famous “highway gates” connecting the major starter zones. Then CCP nuked those gates during an event, and everything changed. The trade capital shifted to Jita 4-4, fueled by its popular Caldari Navy L4 agent and the waves of mission runners who both generated and consumed goods for their operations.

Anyway, for this challenge, I decided to put Yulai back in the spotlight and build an entire game concept around it. It’s a light game design, just enough to give you a taste of how such a world could play. At first, I wanted to include some reference pictures, but I ran into an issue: it’s nearly impossible to verify whether certain images were made by artists I could credit properly or generated by AI. So, not much media this time — except for my own hand-drawn pencil sketch of your starting location.

In my mind, the final look could take the shape of a voxelized isometric view, something between Port Royale and Anno 1800 — the classic tycoon feel, with a rotatable 3D camera. With modern tools, it’s actually feasible to make this kind of game fully three-dimensional.

Please note: this is just my own interpretation. Neither I nor this concept are affiliated with CCP Games.

Setting the Scene

A vast oceanic world connects four great island nations — each representing a distinct philosophy of commerce and power. The Eden Sea is a living economy: trade winds, seasonal currents, and political tensions constantly shift the flow of goods and opportunity. At the crossroads of these routes lies the Genesis Archipelago, home to a modest island called Sanctum, where your journey begins in a small harbor-village named Yulai.

Yulai is a humble fishing port, perfectly placed between the great powers — but cursed with no reputation, no wealth, and no infrastructure.

Your task: turn Yulai into the greatest maritime trade hub in the known world — a place where every merchant, smuggler, and imperial fleet captain eventually comes to do business.

Core Game Mechanics

The game revolves around three intertwined systems, each feeding the others and rewarding smart resource management. Together, they form the beating heart of your wise port economy and efficiency.

Port Governor

This is the city-building core, think Port Royale with a dash of bureaucratic madness. Your responsibilities include:

• Expanding harbor infrastructure: docks, warehouses, shipyards, markets, and entertainment.
• Managing the workforce: assign labor, balance fatigue, maintain morale.
• Surviving random disasters: storms, pirate raids, embargoes, and plagues.

Flavor: Every sunrise brings a new fleet – traders, smugglers, envoys, and fools. You’ll juggle their demands, calm their tempers, and pray your piers hold through the demand. Because when the tide turns against you, Governor, even the sea will collect its debts.

The Strategist

Here lies the economic and political heart of the game — EVE’s scheming spirit reborn under canvas sails. Reference game Coins, Crowns & Cabal, I even had the pleasure of chatting with its devs recently (see interview).

Your duties as the Strategist:

• Attract VIP fleets and contracts from powerful families and trading companies like the Ishukone (see my Mens Rippola bio section from EVE) or Nugoeihuvi — deals that can make or break your prosperity.
• Control supply and demand for goods: ores, small arms, spirits, exotic dancers, and fedo :).
• Maintain delicate faction relations. Favor one for bonuses, but risk losing neutrality; stay neutral for tougher politics, but unique trade privileges.
• Build your reputation. It determines who visits your harbor — and which ships you’re trusted to serve.
• Host faction envoys, sign exclusive contracts, or play them against each other for profit, why not.

Dockmaster Flurry

The third major gameplay loop — think Overcooked or Critter Café, but with seafaring taste. Each “Dockmaster Flurry” session is a fast-paced 3-minute management challenge where you must:

• Assign arriving ships to your piers.
• Unload cargo efficiently.
• Direct crews to shore activities (inns, brothels).
• Find new shipment contracts.
• Handle repairs, refits, and resupply.

Your goal is to maximize profit by serving as many ships as possible before time runs out. Besides zeitnot, beware the dockside drama as there are extra challenges like: Amarr won’t dock next to Minmatar ships (something about ‘odors of heathen rebellion), Gallente crew insists on silk sheets, Minmatar crew just wants cheap rum and a brawl, The Caldari envoy wants a ‘time-sensitive’ arms shipment to Perimeter Isle, traffic jams, and more to make your dockmaster’s life miserable. 

Other Factions and Competitors

The Eden Sea is divided among several great powers, each controlling key trade routes and resources. Their ships will visit Yulai to trade, threaten, or spy, and it’s up to you to balance diplomacy, greed, and survival to keep your port both neutral and profitable.

The Caldari Archipelago — Port Jita

Motto: Commerce and Cannon.
Personality: Bureaucratic, disciplined, profit-obsessed.
Signature goods: ship fittings, weapons, refined metals.

Caldari rule through trade law and precision. Their ports run like clockwork — efficient, rigid, and profitable. They value contracts, order, and the bottom line above all else.

The Gallente Isles — Port Dodixie

Motto: Liberty and Vice.
Personality: Flamboyant, opportunistic, charming.
Signature goods: luxury items, wine, fine fabrics, gossip.

A haven of free markets, art, indulgence, and politics. Gallente captains see every voyage as both a business deal and a party. Their ports never sleep, and neither do their accountants.

The Amarran Dominion — Port Amarr

Motto: Faith Through Gold.
Personality: Proud, divine, hypocritical.
Signature goods: gold, incense, slaves, relics.

Majestic trade empire run by religious guilds and gilded hypocrisy. Amarr merchants sell salvation, silk, and slavery in equal measure. Their ships shine like temples, and so do their egos.

The Free Isles of the Minmatar — Ports Rens & Hek

Motto: Freedom Through Fire.
Personality: Rebellious, inventive, defiant.
Signature goods: rum, scrap and salvage, exotic spices, contraband.

A scattered chain of pirate coves, rebel shipwrights, and fiercely independent sailors. The Minmatar build fast ships from salvaged hulls and sell goods of uncertain origin (definitely not stolen, nope).

The Outer Waters — The Null Sea

Beyond the reach of four empires lies the Null Sea, a lawless frontier of raiders, ghost fleets, and rogue traders. The big unknown, you need to discover. 

Naming Convention & Tone

To preserve the unique flavor of EVE Online, every item, structure, and faction in EVE 1727 carries its 18th-century identity, yet retains a recognizable link to its sci-fi origin. The result is a world that feels familiar to capsuleers but grounded in sails and salt.

A few examples:

• Kaalakiota Cranes – Precise but costly, built under exclusive Caldari patents.
• The Forge Bazaar – The largest open-air market in the archipelago; every trader swears it’s rigged.
• The Quafe Tavern – A Gallente-owned franchise serving suspiciously addictive sparkling wine.
• The Black Ops Cove – Hidden beneath Pier 7, where smugglers move contraband and illegal operations.
• Serpentis Den – A bordello, fight pit, and rumor mill all in one.

The game carries an absurd bureaucratic comedy, EVE’s corporate satire, jokes and memes, despite being an economic sim at its bones, the game is primarily about fun. To reinforce that tone, events and encounters might include things like:

• A Caldari accountant fainting after seeing Gallente price markups.
• A Minmatar raider offering to “unload” cargo with cannon fire.
• An Amarr bishop demanding to inspect your bordello for “moral compliance.”
• A Gallente tourist accidentally buying the entire dockyard.
• A mysterious lone seawolf in a diving suit paying with glowing coins engraved with unknown word PLEX.
• The Minmatar Syndicate issues piracy permits as eco-friendly taxation to everyone who deals with ores carriers. A true economy Catalyst!

EVE 1727 Game Stages

To keep a healthy pace, the game unfolds through several distinct milestones, each introducing new game mechanics, tools to control, and challenges. Advancing to the next stage requires meeting specific goals that expand your port’s influence and reaching KPIs (more on them later).

Stage 1: Rebuild the Harbor

Goal: Repair Yulai’s marina and reopen its docks.

This stage focuses on infrastructure repair missions: clearing wreckage, fixing piers, and repairing warehouse roofs. Completing these tasks unlocks the foundational mechanics: small docks, a warehouse, and the Dockmaster Office. They enable access to your first labor pool, local contracts, and a small-scale Dockmaster Flurry (handling two or three fishing boats simultaneously).

Flavor: Yulai once hummed like a hive — now the quays sit quiet, and the ropes hang soft with rot. A few old fishers linger, talking about the good years, though none can quite agree when those were. Still, there’s work to be done. All it needs is one fool stubborn enough to mend the planks and believe the sea still remembers Yulai’s name.

Stage 2: Clean the Waters (System)

Goal: Remove smugglers’ control from abandoned piers and harbor approaches to raise Yulai’s safety rating so higher-value ships could dock.

You will continue developing your port by clearing gangs from the piers and investing in security upgrades: hiring militia and building watchtowers. Each freed pier increases merchant and faction trust (though it also antagonizes the Minmatar Syndicates). This stage unlocks new building upgrades, escorted convoy missions, and legal trading permits within your island.

Flavor: For years, the harbor’s waters belonged to cutthroats and reef-rats who’d as soon gut a merchant as unload his cargo into er pockets. Now, lanterns are lit again, and watchmen pace the piers with vigilance. A newly arrived Caldari trader nods in approval as he steps ashore — new opportunities have arisen.

Stage 3: Expand to Nearby Islands (Constellation)

Goal: Turn Yulai into a node servicing the surrounding islands and providing specialized ship and trade services.

Here, you gain access to service buildings: shipyards for repair and refit, freight brokers for contract pooling, and guild halls for trade negotiations with other ports. You can now establish regular trade routes, assign cargo lanes, and manage warehousing to influence prices. Dockmaster Flurries expand to handle more ships and include new services once you build the dedicated buildings.

New challenges appear: competitors undercut prices from Dodixie, Rens, Jita, or Amarr; supply chain shortages strike; and seasonal storms disrupt routes.

Flavor: Word spreads beyond your docks. A captain from a neighboring island asks for a guaranteed berth next cycle and tosses a coin into the customs clerk’s hat with a wink. Your shipwrights charts to the first long contracts come in, repair work for a Rens frigate, a profitable Gallente gala shipment. Echoes of Yulai’s name ride the trade winds now.

Stage 4: Archipelago Influence (Region)

Goal: Siphon trade volume from Dodixie, Rens, Jita, and Amarr — intercept cargo, win exclusive contracts, and shape regional pricing.

This stage marks the beginning of true market warfare: price manipulation, exclusive deals, and stockpiling resources to cause shortages at rival ports. Diplomacy and covert operations are now essential: bribe officials, spread propaganda, and pull off all that sweet rival undercutting.

Your fleet can now intercept other merchant convoys, offering “legal” escort services or turning pirate for greater profit. Build embassies to host faction envoys and negotiate long-term treaties. But be cautious: rivals retaliate with blockades, embargoes, and sabotage.

Flavor: Your merchant flags begin appearing in manifests of ships that once stopped at Dodixie. An Ishukone courier asks if Yulai can guarantee safe passage, and pays triple for the privilege. Rens sends an envoy whose smile smells like lawsuits if not handled properly. Amarr sends priests who keep ledgers close and daggers closer (and still feel the urge for your bordello inspections, in person). The map begins to tilt toward your name.

Stage 5: Eden Sea Domination

Goal: Convert your Genesis Archipelago success into Eden-wide dominance, control trade flows, influence imperial policy, and force rivals onto the defensive.

This is the geopolitical endgame. You now manage espionage, economic sanctions, and diplomacy at scale. Host fleets, open embassies, forge and steal contracts, and even wage economic war through tribunals, trade embargoes, and legal warfare. But new threats emerge: coalition blockades, embargoes, and covert wars among factions.

Rewards: permanent Eden-wide bonuses, unique monuments (such as the Imperial Exchange), late-game ships and contracts, and multiple endings based on your moral or political alignment.

Flavor: Flags fly where once they were tattered. Caravans spool like veins from your docks into every horizon, and the great powers — Dodixie’s merchant princes, Rens’s financiers, Amarr’s high clergy — now call you ally, adversary, or nuisance. You hold the ledger. Entire fleets refit under Yulai’s lighthouse. When you speak at the Eden Economic Summit, someone finally takes notes instead of yawning.

Example Endgame Scenarios and Win Conditions

In true EVE fashion, there’s no single way to “win” – only 50 shades of domination, depending on how ruthlessly (or creatively) you’ve managed your empire.

Economic Hegemony
Yulai controls more than 51% of all cargo traffic of the Eden Sea. Rival ports unite in desperation, forming a coalition to slow down your influence. You must decide to outmaneuver them, or crush entirely.

Shadow Crown
You turn Yulai into a smuggler’s paradise, ruling from the shadows with pirate fleets, black markets, and secret taxes disguised as “tide tolls.” On paper, you’re a respectable merchant governor; in practice, you’re the sea’s most successful criminal.

Diplomatic Capital
Yulai becomes the neutral powerhouse of the Eden Sea, a harbor where empires trade instead of war. You broker peace through embargoes, negotiations, and leverage over every captain’s debt. The cannons stay silent, but only because you own the gunpowder.

Each path brings its own perks and challenges. Whether you rise as a trade monarch, a shadow cartel boss, or a puppet master in silk gloves, one truth remains: everyone trades at Yulai.

Metrics, KPIs & HUD Hints

The player’s interface is designed to feel like the captain’s logbook and harbor ledger combined, full of numbers, charts, and spreadsheets – things we all love in EVE. These indicators show how your port is performing, which fires are burning hottest, and where to throw your next investment. Here are few KPIs:

• Throughput (tonnes/day). The direct measure of your harbor’s growth and capacity.
• Harbor Security Status (HSS). Unlocks VIP visitors and affects which ships are willing to dock.
• Market Share (%). When your influence surpasses rival thresholds, new diplomatic events trigger.
• Morale & Corruption. The human side of management: it affects labor speed, event frequency, and the occasional scandal with yet another Amarrian cleric caught “auditing” your bordello.

A wise governor learns to read between the numbers. A sudden drop in throughput might mean pirates, storms, or someone at your customs “redefining” honesty.

From Concept to Keel: Could It Sail?

As someone who used to write design documents, I’m fully aware that these 7 pages aren’t enough to build a complete game. Instead, they raise more questions than provide answers. But I’m confident that anyone who reads through this can close their eyes and see the game feel, how it might look and play. Especially those who love economic simulators, tycoon games, or the hilarious madness of Overcooked.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed creating it. After all, this is not a formal design pitch, it’s a nod to EVE Online reimagined. A world where internet spaceships become iconic seafaring legends, and trade routes replace stargates.

Sail safe, Fair winds!
o7