My idea is very simple.

Basic:

Build drones in to the game that are controlled by the AI, this has been planned for a while now and shouldn't be too hard.

Add a map. Make a grid of districts that connect to each other by doorways/portals. When your team goes through a portal it goes to the next district.

Create dungeons. Let people buy a certain number of clones (respawns) and see how far they can make it across the map. It could be rogue like (randomly generated and infinite). Some areas would contain bosses and loads of loot, others would be easy.

As you go deeper into the dungeon the enemies get harder, but the loot drops get greater. The skill would be keeping your team together and staying alive long enough to make it to some really good loot deeper in.

Optional Extra: Make a Jam gun, much like ECM in EVE, where you can Jam the drones and stop them from shooting, really useful for bosses but makes you vulnerable as you can't shoot.


Intermediate:

Put these dungoens in sites in EVE. Some EVE players (EP's) pick up a clonepack and scan down a site. They fly there, find the station and deposit this pack inside it.

The Dust Players (DP's) can then being their exploration of the dungeon. I'm thinking creepy old broken stations (much like the old trailers) with buzzing lights and drones awakening.

As the DP's go deeper in they find buttons and by pressing them a container is jettisoned into space for the EP's to pick up, these contain all the loot for everyone (the DP's also get bounties for each drone killed).

Meanwhile in space NPC's start spawning (much like in an anomaly) that the EP's have to shoot to protect the station. If all the EP's die it will be impossible to collect any more loot.

If all the DP's die no more loot will be jettisoned.

Over time the difficulty increases, more and more enemies spawn in both environments. So the commanders have to judge how long they can stay and loot and when they should break off and stash what they have collected.

An EP could provide orbital bombardment for the DP's in the station but this prevents them from shooting the NPC's so they are at risk.

In the end the EP's warp out with the loot and split it with the DP's.

Both sides need the other to succeed so it would help build a lot of relationships between the two games.


Advanced:

This is a long term idea.

You could use this for PVP and the conquest of planets.

On a planet you make a grid of connected districts. At the centre is the command hub. Whoever is in control of the command hub owns the planet.

If you want to attack you have to start on the edge of the map. When you drop your clones off and spawn into a district AI drones (planetary defenders) start to attack you. What you have to do is work your way towards the middle, opening up respawn points closer and closer to the centre.

If you open a respawn point the drones in that district are shut down.

The defenders can then deploy teams to stop you in specific districts. So if one attacking team is really strong and making good progress the defenders can form a team and send them to the district currently under attack and a normal Dust PVP game ensues.

This is scalable in that the biggest planets could have maps which are 100 x 100 districts.

To attack them would take weeks of continual fighting, slowly making inroads towards the command hub, needing a lot of orbital support with two mid level commanders choosing which districts to send their crack teams to.

The maps can be as big as you want as they are so simple computationally.

You would have to have a traffic control system where only one team from each side could be in a district at a time (because of the limit on the number of players on a single map).

However there would always be another route you could take to the command hub.

This also allows lots of people to contribute as if one of your planets is under attack and you don't have enough teams to contest every attacker then allowing some noobs to spawn and help out can only make it better for you. They will at least distract the attackers, slowing them down.

If the attackers run out of clones the attack is over.


I think this idea is a good one (which is why I've spent half an hour typing it out), I would love to play in a group crawling through a dungeon made up of connected districts. Playing in a joint fleet which is half EVE and half Dust would also be awesome.

The radio chatter would be really interesting, you'd always be trying to work out who would die first.

Moreover I don't think it would take a lot of programming and computer power. The maps would be really simple (just a grid of districts with connections between them) and would add a lot of meaning to playing 10-20 games in a row.


Thanks for reading and taking me seriously anyone who got this far, appreciate it. What do you think?