Ornette wrote:To clarify, I meant using Eva-01 in the hangar bay, but without a pilot.

If Yui decided to snooze in the Cage, the harpies trying to pry her out to poke "stigmata" (ZOMG DOORS OF GUF?!?) through her palms would be kind of funny. Actually, wouldn't doing any of their bizarro 3I rituals be sort of difficult?

Makes me wonder how they intended to handle Lilith... That plan didn't even involve a flock of "servants" (far as we know).

Ornette wrote:To clarify, I meant using Eva-01 in the hangar bay, but without a pilot.

Well they needed Shinji to make the decision for all human life. They didn??t need him. But since he got it their plans would have a higher success rate, but Yui ruined it for them along with Rei and Kaworu.

Or they could??ve just used Unit01 in the hanger and initiated that way. I??m assuming they were going to start it that way... This brings up more interesting quesitons about whether the pilot was actually needed.

This is my guess. The pilot isn??t needed, but the pilot helps decide whether to accept or decline instrumentality? Yay or nay?

Opteron-O3 wrote:Or they could´ve just used Unit01 in the hanger and initiated that way. I´m assuming they were going to start it that way... This brings up more interesting quesitons about whether the pilot was actually needed.

I've always been under the impression that the pilot wasn't needed (they planned on using Lilith originally, nobody pilots Lilith). As I've stated before, it's obvious the Instrumentality (note that I'm specifically talking about this part, not the whole 3I bit) that happened in EoE didn't follow Seele's formula. The hypothesis is how 3I is initiated determines the special cases in instrumentality, specifically in EoE, Shinji, Rei, Kaworu, and Yui. Seele's recipe didn't include Shinji or Kaworu, but their inclusion of Rei and Yui is debatable. Did the original plan to use Lilith involve her having a soul? Or did they simply need the biomass and Rei/Lilith's soul isn't even in the equation? Under the circumstances of using Eva-01 and the harpies, did they somehow have some way of keeping whoever's soul was in Eva-01 in check using the harpies? Another thing, Shinji being the pilot doesn't necessarily mean he is automatically given the choice. Rei gave him the choice and it seems if she didn't choose Shinji, Gendo would have been the one at the reigns.