In the last weapon blog I introduced you to the three weapon classes in DUST 514: Heavy, Light and Sidearm. In this blog I thought it would be fun to pick a few weapons that really changed the way that the development team played when we added them to the game.

Sometimes people don’t realise how long it can take to get a weapon from the drawing board to being fully functional and kicking ass in the game. It needs to be concepted, built, textured, animated, weapon logic needs to be engineered, audio systems put in place, sounds created, various values set up, tested, debugged, and tweaked. As you can imagine, all this takes quite a while, which means you spend a lot of time playing your game with a limited set of gear. Over time new weapons are added to the game and they can radically alter the balance of play because they open up all new possibilities in combat. Below are some examples of this.

Heavy weapons for heavy armour…

To begin with, we have the Minmatar MH82-BCR Personal Autocannon. This is a heavy weapon and as such can only be fitted by the heavy dropsuit. As well as being simply devastating in its own right, this weapon really opened up the heavy dropsuit class once we added it to the game. For some time the heavy dropsuit wasn’t very popular on the dev team. It may have had a ton of hitpoints and access to the deadly Forge gun but it was slow and easy to outmaneuver. This saw it primarily being used in specialist anti-vehicle roles (where it excelled) but not much else.

This came abruptly to an end when the autocannon made it in to the game. Suddenly you didn’t have to fight the other dropsuit classes on their own terms with weapons ill-suited to the heavy’s slower movement. Now you could outlast any other class in a head-on firefight (though smart players can still outmaneuver the slower heavies), you had more armour and a lot more firepower; enough to destroy light vehicles as well as infantry. The introduction of this weapon unlocked the full potential of the dropsuit and gave us one of the game’s most satisfying weapons to fire. The camera shake, VFX and RoF make firing the weapon incredibly visceral. You feel unstoppable, like you could take on just about anything, and sometimes for just a few bright moments you can.
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How do you build a better warrior? Militaries have tried for centuries to answer that question, but you’ll be able to figure it out for yourself when DUST 514 launches next year. Infantry dropsuits are designed to protect and sustain the wearer in even the harshest environments. Different dropsuits offer specific bonuses to speed, mobility, defense and configurability. Like starships and planetary vehicles, dropsuits come in a variety of shapes and sizes, each with a unique slot configuration and powergrid (PG) and CPU that inform the decisions you make when customizing your chosen dropsuit.

The number and type of slots determine the modules (interchangeable hardware components that enhance or otherwise alter the functionality of the dropsuit), weapons, and equipment you can fit. The slot types available on dropsuits are as follows:

• Light
• Heavy
• Sidearm
• High
• Low
• Equipment
• Grenade

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The handheld weapons are a key part of any MMOFPS and DUST 514 is no exception. There were a few things that were very important to us.

Firstly, we wanted to avoid the feeling of “Vietnam in space” that you sometimes see in sci-fi games. The goal was to create weapons that had recognizable roles but used more advanced technologies than the equivalent weapons of today. The power of these guns would tear apart a modern day battlefield. In DUST 514 the only way your mercenary can survive the power of these weapons is due to the advanced shielding and armor of the dropsuits they wear. Without them, simply firing these weapons would severely injure or even kill you!
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Vehicle classes in DUST 514 resemble modern day battlefield armored vehicles but are more menacing, and multitudes more lethal. You can also customize the vehicles with weapons and modules to ensure a highly dynamic and constantly evolving game-play, where no single vehicle can impose absolute supremacy. The ultimate goal is to create an experience where players make meaningful choices when deploying vehicles, based on their surroundings and situations.

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DUST 514 is a PS3 MMOFPS coming to PS3 with large-scale vehicle and infantry combat taking place in – and with a real time connection to – the EVE Online universe on PC. Players are able to band up into corporations (e.g. guilds) and wage territorial conquest on thousands of planets. Following is a thematic description of Rapid Deployment Vehicles, or RDVs. The RDVs deliver vehicles to players on the battlefield, provided that they own the vehicle’s blueprint, and are skilled for its operation. The RDVs are AI driven, with a robust pathfinding system that allows them to deploy anywhere on even the largest battlefields. (We will give more insight into the game’s vehicle mechanics in a blog post soon.)

A Sky Lift-class RDV delivering a vehicle.

Shrouded in advanced optical stealth and guided by automated networked navigation systems, the J42 “Sky Lift” RDV (Rapid Deployment Vehicle) drone is able to deliver even the heaviest armor, with pinpoint accuracy, anywhere on the battlefield. The proliferation of this invaluable tech has changed the face of ground warfare in the EVE universe, giving front-line commanders the ability to strike enemy positions with little warning or reinforce vulnerable points at a moment’s notice.

Originally designed for industrial transportation by Outer Ring Excavations (ORE), the Sky Lift was repurposed for combat missions with a few key alterations. Firstly, the engines underwent a massive upgrade, from aftermarket conventional jet turbines to the latest F/4 Ionized Plasma Forges. The extra thrust they provide compensates for the increased weight of the fuselage, which is augmented with 25mm radar absorbing armor plates. Without crew, the cockpit area has been redesigned with Tech 2 drone hardware, a multi-spectrum geospatial avionics system, and a state-of-the-art Phantom-65 stealth field controller.

One key feature that was completely unchanged, however, is the “Magnetar” lift system. This retractable electromagnetic crane is powered by the Sky Lift’s main reactor but also has an integrated backup capacitor for especially heavy loads. It generates a magnetic field so powerful that most of the vehicle’s EM shielding is in place to protect against the side effects of the lift system, rather than enemy electronic attacks.

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