Capturing

The main goal of DarkSpace is to capture planets and eliminate or exploit enemy ships. This section of the Manual explains the steps involved in your quest for dominance.

Planet Capturing

Planet Control

Each planet's loyalty to a faction is determined by it's Control value. A planet with a high Control indicates a strong governmental faith in the Faction which controls it. Conversely, a low control shows that the ruling government does not believe in their parent faction, and will not hesitate to change sides.

Control is affected by the presence of friendly and enemy military. A large garrison of allied warships, space platforms and Infantry will improve control, but the presence of a larger insurgent fleet will cause it to fall.

In determining the change to control, each ship is given a uniform weight for both capturing and fortifying. The weight of bomber ships is greater than normal while capturing, and the weight of engineering vessels is greater for fortifying.
The weight of infantry is determined by their rank. A small group of elite infantry is worth more than an entire deployment of green infantry. The weight of 3 ships is worth nearly an entire planet full of green infantry.

Ships affect the control value of planets when they are within 600 gu range of it. If a planet cannot detect the ship then it will not acknowledge the threat presented by it. Infantry affect the control if they are present on the surface, thereby actively presenting a threat to planetary structures and infantry.

Planet Capture Requirement

For a successful capture, the planet's control value must be brought down to zero. There are a variety of ways to achieve this :-

• Solo capture:- If the player encounters a neutral or hostile planet which does not have any defending infantry or ships, then the player can slowly capture it simply by staying near it. This is highly prevalent in scenario servers where neutral and undefended planets are found.
  
• Infantry drop:- If the player needs to capture multiple planets together, then the method of deploying infantry on all the planets can be used. The infantry will slowly shift the control in their faction's favour. This proves useful when the player has to perform other tasks while slowly gaining control of subsidiary planets.
  
• Fleet invasion:- If a fleet needs to capture a planet but does not have any infantry or bomber vessels for killing ground troops, then it can capture the planet by swarming the planet with ships and platforms. This is a very time-expensive method, used when other methods are not sufficient.

Reward for Planet Capture

When a planet is successfully captured, all players of the victorious faction within the control range of the planet receive a point for Planet Capture, and prestige.

• Players receive points in Planet Damage, for deploying troops on an enemy planet. The longer the troops survive, the more the points received.
• Infantry set to raze structures earn more prestige for damaging structures than for fighting enemy infantry.
• If a planet is captured by a player's infantry, the infantry do not earn the player any additional points. If the concerned player is not within the capture range, then he will not earn a point for Planet Capture.

Ship Capturing

Every ship hull has a hardcoded percentage of being captured per infantry unit. For a Scout is 11%, which is one of the highest numbers. The same for a station is 1%. The other ship hulls fit between these numbers.

Let's assume a Cruiser has been boarded by 4 infantry. These infantry are fresh off a planet (At maximum trainable experience: 30%).

Now, if you have any infantry onboard your ship, these groups of infantry would battle it out. If there are any enemy infantry alive, they proceed to the capture phase.

The capture phase happens after 60 seconds have passed with no infantry combat onboard your ship. For sake of consistency, we assume that our 4 infantry from earlier at 30% experience have entered this phase. They now perform a dice roll from 0 to 100 to get a number. Let's say their rolls are :-

Infantry1: 90

Infantry2: 35

Infantry3: 5

Infantry4: 67

Now, these rolls are then subtracted by (experience * 10), or in our case (.3 * 10 = 3). So the rolls are now:-

Infantry1: 87

Infantry2: 32

Infantry3: 2

Infantry4: 64

Finally, these numbers are then added by 100 * the enhancement modifier for capture defense. As of v1.67, there are no enhancements that provide capture defense, so we can ignore this step and proceed.

Now that the rolls have been calculated, the game then checks whether these individual rolls are less than the capture number for the ship, which for a Cruiser is 3%.

Infantry1 fails to capture the ship (87 > 3). It damages a random subsystem and dies. The second infantry also fails to capture the ship (32 > 3). It damages a random subsystem as well and dies. Infantry3 captures the ship (2 < 3)! It stays alive without damaging a subsystem. And Infantry4, who would not have had a chance of capturing (64 > 3), stays alive without damaging a subsystem because the ship was captured before it could attempt.

This is how it works for regular infantry. For infantry that are specialized in ship capturing (currently only the pirate infantry do this) the game rolls twice for them and picks the lower number. They also destroy two subsystems instead of one if they fail to capture the ship.

Infantry Ranks

Each infantry has a rank which depends on it's experience.

• Conscript (starting rank) - 0% onwards
• Recruit
• Rookie
• Trained (maximum rank infantry can be trained to by planetary barracks)
• Skilled
• Experienced
• Hardened
• Elite
• Heroic
• Legendary (maximum infantry rank)- upto 100%