Titans are the largest vessels in New Eden. As much a mobile space station as a ship, Titans are weapons of incredible power. Not only are they deadly on the battlefield, but their jump drives and ability to open jump bridges give them incredible logistical superiority. Some Titans are so massive they are capable of disrupting the tides of planets. For centuries, it was only the empires who could construct these behemoths, but the rise in power of the capsuleers has seen them fall into private corporate hands.
History
Precursors
The precursors of the modern Titan can be found in two different ships. The Jovian Motherships were the first ships constructed on the scale of Titans, each measuring over four kilometers long. However, the motherships were not originally created with combat in mind. Rather, they were world-ships designed to carry the population of the Third Jove Empire to their new home.
Though it was constructed centuries later, the Amarr Emperor Ship has a stronger claim as the progenitor of the Titans. Created during a period of rapid expansion by the Empire, the Emperor Ship was designed to carry the Emperor from one end of known space to the other in near-complete safety. Possessing enough armor and shielding to shrug off all but the most concentrated and sustained fire, the Emperor Ship remains the largest ship in all of New Eden.
First Generation Titans
The Empire manufactured another massive ship, based on the Emperor Ship, which they called the Imud Habrau. The vessel was the first true Titan, with a built-in jump drive, a massive doomsday device, and the ability to open a jump portal for its support fleet. The Amarr Emperor at the time was so pleased with the ship that he ordered a second constructed.
However, the massive cost of the vessels meant it was too costly to construct more. Between the two ships, an entire mineral-rich world had been stripped bare. Additionally, the Empire had few foes to fight that could match its conventional fleet. Thus the Empire abandoned the construction of Titans and turned their resources in other directions.
When Khanid II rebelled against the Empire, he took one of the Empire's two Titans along with him. The Empire manufactured a new vessel to replace it, but by the time it was completed, the Empire and Kingdom had already entered into an uneasy peace.
The next Titans were constructed during the later stages of the Caldari-Gallente War. Each side, faced with a continued stalemate that would result in a constant river of casualties, sought some weapon that would turn the tide.
Thanks to espionage by both sides, each empire knew what the other was working toward. A race began that saw the State winning by a few months. However, their Titan was not the killing stroke they hoped, as the Federation sought simply to avoid direct confrontation with the Titan until their own was completed. Similarly, when the Federation's Soltueur was completed, the Caldari were loathe to engage it. Indeed, it was the presence of a Titan on each side that contributed to the cooling of hostilities following the Battle of Iyen-Oursta, as neither side wished to risk an engagement that would bring the opposing Titan onto the field.
Construction and development of the Titans did not stop there, however.
Titans Race and 2nd Generation Titans
The Caldari and Gallente continued to build their Titans, while the Empire, cowed by the losses it had sustained to the combat-retrofitted Jovian Mothership, created their own Titans. And the Gallente, seeking to prevent the Empire from overrunning the fledgling Republic, gave Titan technology to the Minmatar.
The four Empires each manufactured additional Titans, but it quickly became apparent continued construction was infeasible. The Minmatar, particularly, found the drain on resources difficult to bear for their fledgling nation. As such, the empires began to research new forms of Titans.
These 2nd Generation Titans, which came to be termed Prometheans, were smaller and required less resources and time to construct. They were weaker than the 1st Generation, or Iapetan Titans, but they still possessed all the important abilities of their progenitors. The empires began manufacturing them at tremendous rates.
More recently, these designs have fallen into public hands. Capsuleers, in particular, have begun creating - and destroying - Titans at a historic rate.
Design
Titans are closer to mobile battlestations than actual ships. Indeed, someone unaware they were in a Titan might assume they are walking through a low-sec Naval station, as a Titan must provide similar facilities for its crew. They are massive in size, measuring several kilometers in length, with as much mass as some asteroids. Specialized space hangars must be constructed in order to dock the ships, which cannot dock at regular space stations.
The most terrifying feature of a Titan is its doomsday weapon, which harnesses the entirety of its enormous power output. The weapon system varies depending on the class of Titan, but it is powerful enough to wipe out lesser ships with a single blow. It can even cripple other supercapital vessels, making it a feared weapon on the battlefield. However, the ship's power grid can only manage to fire the weapon once an hour, and it takes several long minutes to recalibrate a Titan's jump drives after the doomsday is fired, making its use a risky proposition.
However, where the Titan truly invokes terror among fleet commanders is its jump portal array. Using the array, a Titan is able to temporarily rip a hole in space-time that is similar to the one created by a stargate. This portal is able to transport entire fleets from one system to another several light years away, creating logistical nightmares for enemies.
A Titan possesses many other, lesser-well-regarded capabilities as well, such as its ability to carry clone vats and have smaller ships dock in its hangar.
Crew
Titans require more crew than any other ship in New Eden. Because of the vast capabilities of Titans, crews are quite varied in skill set. A Titan requires crew members who are skilled in a variety of scientific disciplines as well as those who simply man weapons and engineering. Several crew rotations must be on constant standby for operation of the doomsday weapon, while physicists constantly must recalculate the optimal configuration of the jump portal array to account for local conditions.
While it might be thought that such a diverse crew would have problems interacting with each other, Titan crews tend to be the cream of the crop. They are selected from the most experienced and hardened crews in New Eden. Rare is the case where crew errors caused a problem on board a Titan.
Crewing a Titan is considered a great honor, but it also carried the reward of safety. Though Titans can and have been destroyed, they tend to be much safer than other ship classes. Additionally, even when a Titan is pinned down and destroyed, their crew survival rates can be much higher than other ships, reaching even 80% when assault with conventional weaponry.