Enough about imbalances! Yes there are plenty, yes they suck; hopefully CCP has heard enough to get off their butts and fix them. Until then what can be done to make the game more interesting to play that involves EVE? to my mind this is the corner stone of DUST and what will bring in more of a player base. Ideas please! Annnnnnnnd GO!

For my idea I would like EVE missioning and DUST to be integrated. DUST Bunnies could always use another way to make ISK as well as a more intuitive way to get rare drops. Missioning in EVE is a rarely updated experience and mostly to nerf it. It tends to be something players feel forced to do rather than a fun experience. This could be a good way to add new life to this facet of the game as well as start implementing future elements of DUST like the sky canon (ground side ship killer).

New missions with dusties could involve Sansha incurions, rogue drones or npc rats but the base element should be cooperation between DUSTies and EVE pilots.

Here is one idea. Seriously, I think this can be done at least in a more roller coaster format. It would involve large NPC ships or space facilities that need to be taken as opposed to destroyed. The EVE players would need to disable a target ship and escort a vessel representing the merc party. By defending it they allow the mercs to board the target vessel which would then start the mission DUST side, basically a corridor fire-fight through a big ship. This part would happen DUST-side but could be ended prematurely if EVE side the vessel being boarded is not properly defended (i.e. the npc's realize their assets are about to be seized and attempt to destroy their own ship or some such). The mission requires the mercs to successfully take the ship level by level and the pilots to defend it. If successful both sides get rewards in gear and money. Since the mercs don't have access to a clone bay they would be forced to use one clone per player. This is essentially DUST's answer to the mmo raid.

This could be tiered up by the usual leveling system. L1-4 would increase in difficulty with an L4 requiring at least basic logi support (in DUST and EVE) and multiple damage dealing ships and possibly a more diverse number of mercenaries. There could be leveled lockers and research areas that require good hackers to open and could grant research data or loot.

Also the mercs would get to experience a roller coaster ride in the initial parts on the barge (replacing the war barge in pub matches) and on the ship. The barge interior will of course be rendered DUST-side but could still react to big hits in EVE, pitching and rocking and reacting to damage. Like wise during the fight big hits would effect the vessel as well possibly even opening the hull to space in places before they are contained even resulting in mercs or defenders being "spaced". Enough damage would kill the ship and fail the mission.

The DUST side rendering would be independent of EVE but would be effected slightly by it. Mercs could peer out the windows and depending on what ships their friends brought different ships would be rendered fighting outside as well as what bad guys. Positioning and the like of course would have no relevance to the real action, merely a stage show.

few issues.

1 - do people in either game want their mission to fail because of something they had no control over? PVE players tend to not like that.

2 - rendering the EVE space in Dust would be awesome, I expect we'll see that in some form in the next ~5 years. The problem is, unless you zoom in on something, you just see little red icons instead of pirate ships. Or unless the Gist Saint decided to come within 5km to nail you. What I mean is, missions are boring. The only way to make them MORE boring would be to sit and be forced to watch them without doing anything.