EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

CCP has released a new technical dev blog for their upcoming FPS tie-in to the EVE Online universe, DUST 514. CCP Lin lays out some of the plans to handle latency and performance between the PC-based EVE Online and the Playstation 3-based DUST 514. The blog also offers some insight into how the battle contracts will be handled for DUST 514 mercenaries fighting for EVE Online corporations and how the server will handle the battle formation for a conflict.

An EVE corporation issues a battle contract to seize a territory on a given planet that is currently owned by another corporation; a group of DUST mercenaries comes to accept the contract as the attacker for the bounty the contract offers; another group of DUST mercenaries comes to accept the contract as the defender, so they also get a reward if the territory is protected. When the number of each team has reached a pre-determined minimum, the EVE server logic would instruct an appropriate DUST battle cluster to spawn a battle in it. This provides the battle server with all the necessary information regarding the prospective battle upon launching, and the DUST mercenary clients will then be forwarded to join the battle accordingly. After the battle is finished with everyone getting (or losing) their share of the benefits, the battle server process will then be terminated by the EVE universe.

Source: DUST 514 Dev Blog – Scaling the Universe