A while ago, we asked you, our loyal community of DUST 514 fans if they had any questions for the developers at CCP. The response was pretty good and we received some good questions. Yesterday at fanfest Sapphrine Spoke with Hilmar Petursson (CEO) and Atli Mar Sveinsson (Lead DUST 514 dev) and put your questions to them:

It doesn’t appear that DUST 514 is using the same game engine as Incarna, what can you tell us about the underlying technology?

We haven’t announced any platform or technology details. But I can confirm that we are not using our engine for this and that is mainly because of the console aspect.

We are using a tried and tested technology which will be announced in due time.

There were a few different classes of vehicles shown in the DUST 514 trailer, can you tell us a little about vehicle classes?

We have ten vehicle classes for each race with vehicles ranging from motorbike type speeders that hover around, fighters, to heavy attack vehicles through to dropships with marines.

You mentioned just now there are four races. Are we going to see exactly the same as we see in eve or are there any other factions races involved, pirate factions maybe?

It is one universe, one war. So it involves all those that participate in eve.

What is the maximum number of players supported for a single battle?

We currently support 64 and our maps are pretty big. They are designed so we can scale that up a bit after release. Maybe 88 is the new 64.

It’s been noted EVE player base are very heavily involved the game development, mostly notably the CSM and the meetings here at fanfest. Are you looking to involve the players of DUST in the same way?

Well we are very much looking to involve them. As with eve a lot of the institutions and formats with which we interact with the player base were designed as the game progressed and we figured out the right way to do it.

We are committed to building something that makes sense for this different game with a different audience & community. The way we do it with eve won’t directly map, but our willingness to find a system that really creates the back and forth we have with the eve playerbase. That really is the virtual cycle that has built EVE for the past six years. We are very much looking towards bringing that to DUST and really, all the games that CCP Makes. That is our philosophy.

Dust is a fully fledged MMO and as such it should have all the community features and ability to interact as EVE.

EVE Online is notorious for having a “hands off” approach when it comes to things like sabotage, espionage and corporate theft. How will issues like this be dealt with in DUST 514?

Dust is very much a part of the EVE universe, so all the espionage and metagaming that you see now already spills over to dust because of the link between the games. It’s going to be important to extend your metagaming to include both worlds. But of course there will be metagaming based around dust itself.

It’s difficult to predict because these type of things as we don’t really design them before hand. We create the environment and allow people to run with it. It’s going to be a different playerbase and a different community within dust and it’s going to be difficult to predict exactly how it’s going to play out. We just know that it’s going to play out, and that we are going to run with it.

Will our eve names be reserved in DUST?

We are definitely trying to create one namespace for the whole eve universe. So whether you are a DUST soldier or an EVE space captain you will have name recognition if you rise up the echelons on both sides.

Of course the overall namespace, at this point there are probably five million reserved names in eve so we will need a creative solution to enable that. But we are actively deployed on figuring out how to provide some brand of uniqueness while not having the namespace completely taken up.

Will we be able to use all the planetary vehicles, packets of cigarettes, small firearms, spirits and Pax Amarria that we all have sitting around in our hangers to support our troops?

It is the same universe; it is the same IP. So we will see a lot of familiar items criss crossing the games. Exactly how much of the economies of the two games link up is something that we are thinking about very carefully because it can be a little bit tricky. We want it to be meaningful but not overly connected, so that you have to really play both games to be successful.

What can you tell us about the levelling / advancement system in DUST 514?

Dust does not have skills like eve does and it does not really have levels like you would find in World of Warcraft. It uses an achievement system, an “achievement matrix” where they rise through tiers that unlock the ability to buy better stuff.

So that is really the levelling, it centres on your achievements.

And it’s important to know that dust is its own MMO, aside from its connection to EVE the MMO there are MMO persistency character advancement elements to DUST.

Will there be racial weapons?

Yes, defiantly. There will be guns, lasers, missile launchers ect. It is one universe, the factions and corporations and manufacturers of stuff are the same in DUST as they are in Eve. All the specialisations will be carried over.

How are players transported from one planet to another?

There are two ways you can get from one planet to another. You can clone jump to defend, so you don’t have to spend a long time travelling. But to attack an enemy corporation your dust corporation will own a “war barge” which is a small space ship can orbit around the planets. This is how you facilitate and instigate battles, the only way to attack a planet is to have a war barge in range.

There is a travel time involved in moving a barge, but you as a mercinary can just click quick match and instantly arrive at a battle.

So for the casual player who has a spare 30-40mins to play, we have quick match. Is there something for the more serious gamer who wants to lead a corp or work with an eve alliance to co-ordinate their goals?

Yes, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be facilitated by the game system, it happens naturally. You give them the tools to communicate and it will happen.

It is very much about creating an experience where you jump in quickly and have a lot of fun. Eve has been criticised for being a commitment. It’s a style of gameplay that is very long term. Certainly a lot of people like playing like that. But the focus for Dust is to be instantly gratifying without compromising the strong elements of eve. Dust allows us to get that type of play mode into the eve universe without compromising the experience that three hundred thousand people love to have.

There will always be battles to be had, so even if things are kind of quiet in eve there will be a faction warfare with NPC battles.

Is there going to be a way of interacting with the DUST planets & beyond New Eden (COSMOS)? Will we be able to blow things up with our giant eve spaceships or get conversly blown up by planetary defences?

As we have I hope shown at CCP, we want to enable what people dream about and what you mention is defiantly something we have talked about. But it doesn’t have to start there. We have goals doing some pretty interesting things with cross platform gameplay but we are also making sure that we start with something concrete and solid because these are non-trivial things to solve. To try and solve everything all in one go isn’t the way that we do these kind of things.

When will we see a release date, as well as final release formats?

We are not ready to talk about any concrete dates or any concrete information on platform at this time.

Interview is from dust514.org