In most combat games, you get into a vehicle and you ride/drive it—often, it'll have weapons for you to fire, too—until the wheels fall off. You might be able to upgrade the guns or armor in some instances but that's generally the extent of it.
CCP's taking a different approach to the vehicles in Dust 514. The level of customization available for the transports in the upcoming massively multiplayer first-person-shooter rivals those you'd find for characters in some games. It looks like what you drive into a firefight can be a matter of style as much as utility depending on how you outfit your ride, according to this snippet:
Engineering modules enable players to enhance essential functionality of their vehicle by increasing armor strength, increasing shield resilience, or improving overall speed and handling. Weapons modules and electronic warfare modules take on another dimension of utility. Weapons modules can outwardly boost the power of a vehicle's turrets by increasing the rate of fire or damage factor per shot, while electronic warfare class modules enable players to immobilize unsuspecting targets with stasis webifiers, cripple enemy turrets with tracking disruptors, or enhance guided missile lethality on target-painted hostiles.
The designs on display also look pretty freaking impressive. We'll get a look at how they handle when Dust 514 comes out of hiding in the coming months.
Vehicle Dynamics in DUST 514 [PlayStation Blog]
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