Start - Construction

Building is very important in Darkspace. If you build a planet well, you can defend it by yourself against a pretty impressive force. Also some shipyards are needed to spawn the large ship types.

The are many buildings, each with their own function. The basics for each planet is: workers, food to feed the workers, power for the structures and technology for better buildings and resources to build stuff.

Also you can build platforms, small bases that can either shoot (weapon platform), repair (supply platform) or scan the area (sensor platform). Nice thing about platforms is that you can place them anywhere you want, in the middle of nowhere even, by selecting a manual point in space (read earlier guides), then left click the desired platform from bottom right (just above the HUD). Platforms also cost resources to build, just like structures on a planet.

Building in the heavily populated metaverse is hard. Mostly because the planets are already build. For construction most players advice you to enter the scenario server. You enter it by clicking "launch" after selecting darkspace in GCQL client, then select the scenario server to connect to instead of the metaverse server.

In the scenario server, you spawn an engineer. It is a ship containing build drones. Then you orbit a friendly planet. Once in orbit you can start building the planet. Since you will need resources to build a planet, it is a good idea to start mining while you build. You can mine resources from a planet with a mining beam. Fire it on the planet and you slowly see your resources go up on bottom left (ship cargo). Once you or the planet have enough resources for a building, you can begin building the planet you orbit and have selected, from the construction screen with the f3 button or just from normal view. All you have to do is click an unoccupied diamond on the planet you orbit and select the desired building from bottom right. If you cant build the building check if you have enough technology or resources by holding your mouse over the desired building.

To understand building, you need to understand planets. There are different types of planets, and each has their own benefits. There's barren, terran, ocean, ice, inferno, and gas. You cant build on inferno or gas planets. Barren planets are the basic planet type. Terran, Ocean and Ice have a small bonus in population and food, so they are easier to build and can wield more power. Also they can store more resources. So if you have a choice, select the terran/ocean/ice to build on first.

After selecting the planet, you select it's purpose. Do you want to build a planet that contains a shipyard? Then aim more for lots of workers and resources, less on offensive structures. Do you want to build a planet that is very hard to capture, then build as many offensive/defensive bases as you can. So first thing to do is select a purpose for a planet.

All planets have a maximum of 32 structures to build. Placing a defensive structure will require power, the power plant requires workers, the workers require food. A basic planet layout would be 70 workers, 70 food, 70 tech. You can build towards your purpose from there. A building that is ALWAYS on EVERY planet, is the colony hub. it provides some food, habitat, technology and resources (mining) all in 1 package!

Technology is a tool that allows you to put more buildings on a planet. for instance a normal farm provides 10 food, but a biosphere condensor provides 30 food. with 70 population u can save 4 structures by turning the farms into biospheres.

Thats only a little of the theory, lets just start now with a bit of praktice:

-barren planet, i want to make a shipyard

good idea! people always like at least 1 shipyard in each starsystem. More then 3 is ridiculous though. Well lets see what the shipyard structure need: 40 workers, lotsa power and 65 technology. Since basic planet has 70 workers, this shipyard planet will need more then 70 workers, thats for sure.

Lets aim for 100 workers. Workers grow steadily if you have enough food and habitat. Build a colony hub if you havent alrdy. Now u need 90 more workers, so that would be 9 domes (provide habitat) and 9 farms (provides food). You are up to 19 structures alrdy. In time the amount of workers will grow. If u don't have enough workers for all your buildings there will be a distress call on top left saying "[planet name] has worker shortage". If the planet dont have enough workers for a long time, it might revolt and rebel to become neutral. So try to get the workers for your building first, then build the building. Also because workers grow slow, its good to start with domes and farms. The workers automatically spread around the buildings. When u got worker shortage, a building is randomly selected and shut down. If u want to select the building that shuts down yourself, you can click the structure to be shut down, then press ctrl + q (deactivate command).

You can check the status of a planet in the construction screen by hitting f3 after selecting a planet. On the top right it shows the amount of workers, food, technology, and also the amount of free workers.

Next to workers and food, you will need power. While building the farms, you may have noticed a "power shortage" message in f3 mode of the planet. So a fusion power plant will fix that. Solar panels is a different story, this guide is starter's guide, for advanced strategies go to another wiki page.

Ok now that you have power and workers, we can start on the technology. Each research lab gives 10 technology, so we need 6 more research labs (colony hub provides 10 tech also). The research labs need a little more power so build a 2nd fusion power plant. You now have 27 structures occupied.

5 structures left. A depot is generally on each planet, because it provides repairs to all nearby ships. Also 2 or 3 barracks are needed to provide the planet with troops for defense. Some mines can help you mine the resources needed for construction. Especially when upgrading structures you need a lot of resources. It is general practice to put a starport on a shipyard planet. A starport allows you and allied ships to load and unload resources on a planet.

It is impossible to build all these buildings with only 32 free space. Thats why u start with the population and tech, and work ur way up from there. Once the technology is high enough for a higher level structure (for instance biosphere condensors instead of farms) you can start upgrading and scrapping.

Right, there where 9 farms, that need to be reduced to 3 biospheres (biosphere is 30 food each instead of the farm's 10 food), giving us 6 free spaces to build more buildings. To upgrade a building, select the building on the planet u are orbiting (from normal view or construction screen > f3) and then click the desired structure like you where building an empty diamond. The old building automatically gets replaced by the new building. Once 3 farms are converted to biospheres, you can destroy the 6 other farms. Destroy a farm by clicking it, then press ctrl + x (delete command) twice.

Now you can build some more power, and finally a shipyard! You can even put some defenses on the planet if you first upgrade most of your research labs, then scrap the last one(s). First and most important defense structure is the interdictor. It prevents jumps at a 1000 gu radius near planet. Next to that you can put on a sensor base, and/or some shooting bases (anti bomb, defense, offense base). Thats it, the shipyard planet is kinda done. Some players may change 1 or 2 buildings, but overall you did a good job.

Of course you can imagine, that without a shipyard u can use the 40 workers and lotsa power pretty well for a lot of offense bases. So a heavily defended planet follows pretty much the same path, only it has 1 less dome and more power plants. and of course instead of a sy u make lotsa shooting bases.

This was the guide to get you started. Construction is something only a handfull of people actually do and if you choose to engineer, you are a valuable member of the team. Again, use this guide to learn what all the buttons mean, dont be afraid to look around a bit more in the f3 menu. Oh and if u make the wrong building just scrap it using ctrl + x. Keep in mind engineering is a bit slow, a big defensive base can take some minutes to finish.