Players take the role of clone mercenaries, who are elite soldiers made immortal using cloning technology and consciousness transfers. For much of Eve history, only capsuleers were immortal because the technology required to download consciousness was linked to a capsule that encloses them and leaves them in suspended animation. The capsule was designed specifically as an interface for pilots to control the ship that they were placed within. However, the discovery of a special implant made it possible to achieve a transfer of consciousness without the use of a capsule, so it became possible to make immortals that were not pilots. Dust 514 players take the role of immortal ground-based soldiers which were created by the military shortly after the implant was discovered.
DUST 514 uses a similar module-fitting mechanic to its predecessor, just with armored "dropsuits" instead of spaceships. Different skills are also needed to use different modules, but a player now accumulates a pool of skill points, both passively (a point every few second) and actively (based on performance during battles).
Due to mediocre player numbers and a mixed reception, the game was shut down in May 2016 but CCP plans to create a PC successor called Project Legion.
This game provides examples of:
- 24-Hour Armor: You're never out of your dropsuit. Even your choice of character portraits is nothing but dropsuits from the chest up.
- An Entrepreneur Is You: Similar to EVE Online, the economy will be entirely player-run.
- A Space Mercenary Is You: Players take on contracts on different planets to earn ISK and skill points.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Nova Knives. Twin energy blades that deal massive damage and look cool to boot, but they require a short charge up before they can be used.
- Fixed in Hotfix Charlie. Nova Knives deal massive damage and now benefit from Aim Assist and have improved range and hit detection. They still require you to run the Minmatar Scout (the lowest hp dropsuit in the game that is also strapped for fitting resources), so it's more Difficult, but Awesome now.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: You have the option to commit suicide. It counts towards your death count, but at least other players won't score points for killing you.
- BFG: Heavy Machine Guns and Forge Guns, the latter which fires charged shots. Anyone near the point of that charged shot's impact takes splash damage.
- Black Comedy: "Suicide in public areas is strictly prohibited."
- Boring, but Practical: Assault Rifles. Moderate to good range, damage and ammo capacity, equally effective against shields and armour, cheaper than most other light weapons, no real drawbacks. The definitive Jack of All Trades weapon.
- Fixed in recent patches. The gun now has the lowest range of all Light Weapons but has amazing damage and rate of fire. Still has no real drawbacks making it the simplest weapon to master.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Subverted. Players can use Aurum (the secondary currency of DUST and EVE, though Aurum used on DUST is separate from EVE) to purchase boosters for skill points and 'one-level-better' equipment from the Marketplace, but how you train your skills is more important than what you're carrying. Ask the players who've been killed by players using Militia guns. Plus, the AUR equipment isn't that great anyway: the dropsuits have fewer low and mid slots, and the weapons have higher powergrid and CPU requirements.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The icons in your minimap and HUD are always blue for your team, red for enemies, and green for your squadmates.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Tries to avert this, there are control schemes similar to other games, called "Fields of Battle" and "Duty Calls".
- The games sensitivity is also much much lower than anything Battlefield or Call of Duty offers. If you play on max sensitivity on these games, you'll be in for a rough few weeks
- Double Unlock: Some skills (like Dropsuit Command) only function is to unlock the skills that actually lets you use some items.
- Some skills even let you level them up without them having any actual use. Getting past level 3 in dropsuit command is actually a complete waste of SP (Which is a valuable asset, as you only gain SP through cold hard time.)
- Drop Ship:
- The MCC's. Skirmish involves destroying the other team's MCC while defending yours.
- Also, the erm, Dropship, a small transport vessel that can carry six people, with two gunners.
- Energy Weapon:
- The Laser Rifle, obviously. Fires a continous beam that deals more damage the longer it is fired and is effective at disabling shields, but can overheat and injure the user.
- The scrambler rifle is also a trope of this. It fires highly focused laser beams that deal high damage and have a MASSIVE headshot bonus. It also overheats if you fire too quickly, but thankfully most modded controllers are programmable these days.
- Gaiden Game: To EVE Online.
- Glass Cannon:
- Scout suits are lightweight, fast and have the best scan resolution, but they take hits about as well as garden shrubs. That being said, the flexibility in the fitting system means you can make scouts just as tanky as an Assault frame, but you have to live with the fact that you just threw most of your eWAR benefits out the window, along with your strafe speed.
- Light Assault Vehicles (LAVs). Much faster than their Heavy counterparts, but a single burst from a Swarm Launcher can take it out effortlessly. Players who use LAVs use them for either surprise attacks, quick movement across a battlefield or just to run enemies down.
- Grenade Launcher: Called a Mass Driver here, but functionally the same.
- Guide Dang It!: Some modules have a penalty on stacking the same module type, want to know what's the penalty?, you'll have to consult a EVE Online wiki (and have a calculator on hand), because the information is not shown in the game.
- Hand Cannon: Every weapon in the game is one of these, due to the fact that firing one can injure or kill the wielder unless they're wearing a suit of Powered Armor for protection.
- Hired Guns: Players take control of mercenaries, who either do this job for money, to become intergalactic conquerors, or simply because this is what they are good at.
- Inertial Dampening: All dropsuits come equipped with this as a feature, to negate fall damage over a certain height. As long as you remember to Press X to Not Die. It's surprising to say this, but when going through the Noob Cave you will see quite a few new players fall to their death, even with the large "PRESS X TO ACTIVATE INERTIAL DAMPENER" showing up on your screen during your 4 second free-fall.
- Last Chance Hit Point: If an attack leaves you at 'exactly' 0 shields and 0 armor you'll remain alive, but you'll die if an enemy looks at you before your shield recharge kicks in.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Swarm Launchers, rocket launchers shooting two or more rockets per salvo. Commonly used to take out vehicles. HAV's can also be equipped with three cycled missile launchers (one large, two small), add some balistic fire controls and you can get up to around ten missiles a second.
- As of the 1.7 vehicle re-balancing patch cycled launchers have been temporarily removed. However HAV large missile turrets now fire their whole 12 shot clip in roughly 2 seconds. And high skilled caldari assault dropships can fit three small turrets which each fire 2 shots per second.
- Magnetic Weapons: Forge Guns and Sniper Rifles use some form of magnetic induction to fire.
- Mighty Glacier/Stone Wall:
- The HAV's (Heavy Assault Vehicles)were this prior to the 1.7 patch. Now they're the ultimate Lightning Bruiser
- The Heavy class is also this. They can wield powerful weapons, such as a Heavy Machine Gun that is the epitome of Bullet Hell, and on top of that, they have a good defense and HP total. Expect them to run at a snails pace and to be quickly overwhelmed if not supported.
- More Dakka: Heavy Machine Guns can fire four hundred rounds before getting overheated. There Is No Kill Like Overkill indeed.
- Noob Cave: Unless they decide to take part in faction warfare contracts, starting players and players with low skill points and war points will be restricted to Instant Battle Academy, a quick-battle setup that matches you up with other low-tier players. This gives them a chance to get a feel for the game without closed-beta veterans perforating them without even breathing heavily.
- However, this time period is very short, and most New Players are thrown to the wolves after a handful of matches. Oh, and your Milita gear is about as helpful as a bringing a broom instead of a gun.
- Oh, Crap!: If you hear a loud electrical hum nearby, hide. Someone just called in an order to ruin your entire team's day.
- Orbital Bombardment: Squad leaders can call down strikes from orbiting ships once a squad accrues enough war points in a battle.
- Powered Armor: The dropsuits, with four different varieties. They not only function as the FPS equivalent of frigates (Scout suits), cruisers (Assault suits), logistics ships of various classes (Logistics suits, of course) and battleships (Heavy suits), their design also explains why headshots are more a showy move than a viable target.
- Random Drops: Any kills you score have a small chance of dropping Salvage. Most of these drops are at least one grade higher than level 1 equipment, and can be a good way to stockpile the good stuff before you can even use it.
- Regenerating Shield, Static Health: All Dropsuits and vehicles play this straight as standard, but modules can be equipped to make armour regenerate as well, albeit much slower than shields.
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Spiritual Successor: To MAG. there are even three BPO suits named after the three factions in MAG.
