These ideas are bit long term and would require a lot of work from the EVE devs too, but would go a long way to increasing the interaction between EVE and DUST.

Currently there is little motivation for an EVE player to get mixed up in DUST. Faction warfare is one thing that will help this move along, especially in the shorter term, but all the real action, large battles, and stories that make news happen in null sec with the large alliances and coalitions. We want to get mixed up in that.

I think first off we should start on enhancing PI from EVE side. At the moment it is mostly seen as a source of passive income, a big chunk of change, but not worth going into war over. PI should have more buffs and perks that go with having installations on the planet. Let EVE players build more meaningful facilities on the planets like jump bridges, cyno blockers, cannons that fire on capital ships within range of the planet, shield/armor generators that rep their stations and POS's, a reason for them to really want to hold the planet, and a reason for an attacking alliance to want to take them out.

The amount and size of districts could dictate what could be built on the planet. A planet with a few, but large districts would have a cannon, one with more but smaller districts could have the generators/hardeners. These are not destructible from space though, only through DUST, but are not so overpowering that a large enough fleet couldn't overcome not taking them out first.

With that in place, an alliance would send in its DUST branch into an area to wreck a planet's installations before it starts to move in its fleets. An attack from the DUST side would work like the current PC method, with mercs only able to attack within a certain range of jumps without losing too many clones to travel losses. That would mean the attacking alliance would have to work its way into a region, holding planets as a chain to move into a strategically important system. A defending alliance would want to try and break this chain and push back the DUST-side advance.

An EVE player has little motivation for assisting DUST merc's with OB's and a DUST merc has no way of assisting an EVE player, let alone a full alliance of them. There really needs to be a reason for them to interact because this is what makes the game unique and why people want to play this instead of another FPS