Caldari Prime

          I kind of just stumbled upon the Caldari Prime event as it was happening. I have a crippling case of not reading any of the DUST forums aside from Feedback/Requests, and am such blissfully ignorant of many of the events and happenings that may or may not be going on at any time. However, with the battles showing up in the special "Mercenaries" tab of the battle finder (a tab for open lore event battles, I guess), I began throwing myself into the fray. Unfortunately, there was no way to choose which side you wanted to fight for at the time. If I ended up on the Caldari team (allies of the Amarrians), I would fight my heart out. If I ended up on the Gallente team (allies of the Minmatar, enemy of the Amarrians), I would take the Gandhi approach of non-violent resistance and sit the battle out somewhere, taking up a team slot.

          For those who do not recall or ever learned, there was a Caldari Leviathan-class titan in orbit around Caldari Prime. Lore-wise, the Gallente and Caldari both had their home systems in the same system, Luminaire. After the schism between the two created the modern Caldari State, the Caldari home planet remained within the Gallente Federation’s borders. The Caldari were able to secure the safety of their people by keeping a titan in orbit of the planet. It protected the skies above, but also held the Gallente citizens that also lived on the planet hostage. This is how it was for a number of years before the Gallente finally attacked, shooting the Titan out of orbit and causing it to crash to the surface below as battles erupted across the planet as well, a revolution by the Gallente citizens to free themselves.

          The visuals that CCP cooked up for the event were rather spectacular. Burning debris constantly rained down from the sky (though never onto the battle map), and off in the distance you could see the smoldering remains of what appeared to be the front section of the fallen Leviathan. Knowing that the smoldering husk was burning in the background was the same Leviathan I had seen floating over Caldari Prime in EVE was pretty cool. Every match I was part of had the same gloomy-near apocalyptic atmosphere, and it was both fun and interesting to know that as I played DUST 514 on the ground, there was an EVE event going on in the sky above me.

          One match that I got into was an Ambush OMS with only 3 people in it for half of the game. There was myself and a random blueberry, and one enemy. Try as he might, he couldn't take the two of us on. I got most of the kills with my mid-level laser rifle while my teammate distracted him. At one point, the other guy called in a tank. He didn’t kill us before we got up to it, and with tanks unable to run people over in this build (for whatever reason), there was nothing he could do as we just camped out and melee’d his tank for shits n’ giggles. After a few minutes I guess he grew tired of it and attempted to launch a surprise attack by jumping out of the tank (there are no animations for entering or leaving a vehicle, you just appear beside it when you get out), but unfortunately for him he was quickly dispatched. I hacked the tank and then my buddy and I started taking a joy ride in our spoil of war. This was the first time I had ever driven a HAV in DUST and expected it to drive like a scorpion from the Halo series. Boy was I wrong. As I attempted to get the hang of the controls (not as bad as the LAVs, probably because you’re going much slower), we got a few more kills off the poor bastard using his own tank to gun him down before we was able to catch us in a bit of a stuck position because of my inexperience. I left the tank before it exploded, but I cannot remember the fate of my blueberry friend. With about half of the match’s timer left, more players began joining and it turned into a somewhat normal if not small scale game for the remainder.

          All in all I played around maybe 6-7 games during the event before I had to go to bed for work the next morning; I definitely wish I had stumbled upon it a lot sooner.  If anything, I learned to pay a little bit more attention to the forums.