As a player of both Dust and EVE i can see quite a bit of room in the PI mechanic to bring the games together more. Maybe not the communities with this but for 2 games that are supposedly in the same universe this is one mechanic where there should be more consistency in the lore in my opinion.

In Dust we play on the various districts on the worlds (currently only temperate worlds) and each district has several buildings - these might be research labs or production facilities etc.

In EVE we plonk down individual command centers, Storage and Manufacturing and mine heads.

At no point does the EVE planetary infrastructure show up in DUST. Conversely at no point are the buildings that exist in DUST referred to in EVE.

To me this makes little sense and does nothing to tie the worlds together.

I propose that the current PI mechanic of placing your own world infrastructure is scrapped in favour of one which uses the buildings that are supposedly already in each district and that are the building you would see as a dust player.

When in planetary view you would still see the world as you do now and still be able to scan the world to see quantities of material available however replace the building mode with Interaction mode. This mode would show a hologram of the existing Dust Buildings in each distruct and give an overview of their purpose when you select one.

You would send a team of clones (which eve players can manufacture and use or sell or buy on the market) down to a facilityn that caters for what you want to do and select an activity for them i.e you would place team in a Manufacturing building you would choose gather material Xfrom from the function menu, Add a second team to gather material Y. Then a third team to Manufacture Material Z. Material Z can then be selected from the building storage bays and be launched into space as it is now or sent to a POCO for collection.

This would continue to pump out what it does now with less need to continually move extraction heads etc. and reduce the clicks needed.

The mini game here would then be moved from reactivating/moving the mine heads every so often to looking after the needs of your team. You would have to send them Food packs etc maybe every so often there are random requests that must be met otherwise there moral would take a hit and they would produce less stuff (You would get a notify in the new notification system of each teams requirements which must be met).

It might not be exciting I know (hell what we have now isn't either) but it bring the 2 games into the one world a bit by being consistent about what is on the worlds below our immortal selves.

I know many EVE players don't care for DUST (ps3 kiddies or whatever) but if CCP is serious about this being in one world it needs to have consistent lore to begin with otherwise you will struggle to join the 2 together in the long-run. Other advantages of this would be that there are different types of building in DUST weapons labs, research centers and others coming up in the future. If CCP have a definitive list of what building there are they may have other functions that can be useful to EVE players as well - say as a replacement to the terrible POS mechanics. I know the interfaces for research and manufacturing where overhauled recently but people still complain about poses... why not replace them with planets?

If having mercs maintaining a planet counts for use-based SOV (screw Dominion) that would allow you to retain a foothold even if driven out otherwise?

Don't forget the Sansha Incursions. Sansha's Nation is known for swooping down on populations and gathering them up for experiments. Given that populations tend to not float in space it seems like the 4 empires would actually WANT their planet defended on the ground side too. Kill Sansha Drones groundside while they are harvesting populaces. Almost sounds like a game mode.

This discussion has been 'discouraged' by ccp before.


https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2175598#post2175598

EVE players pay to play.

Making any portion of their game DEPENDENT upon the presence of free to play game players and their cooperation is not ok.

They must have immediate tangible benefits from infantry to entice them to cooperate and invite us into the fold. They must not have their gameplay experience punished for not having us there.

Adding benefits for having infantry cooperation is excellent. Making it so PI and manufacturing automatically fails or so you can demolish their stuff without retaliation should always be a no-go.

Infantry needs to enhance the game for corps and alliances, not provide additional roadblocks.

Repelling sanshas, for instance, should provide benefits to the EVE players in the form of buffs vs sanshas or increased pay or something. Making their actions HARDER because we can't be arsed to assist creates more problems than it solves.

Let's not forget the original idea was a cross post from the eve forum. And an idea from an eve player who sees opportunities within dust. I see eve is going through some big changes at the moment, it needs to change more in some areas than others to make mercs relevent.

Also

Why would PI increase cus drones where being beaten back then return to normal once the drones were cleared?