Construction

Building a planet effectively is possibly the most respectable skill you could have as a DarkSpace player. Being able to do so takes time and a lot of practice, and by no means will this section spell out every last detail for you. This section will explain how the system of planetary building and economics works within DarkSpace, and will tell you how to use it. Look for "Building:" notes that will explain the function of basic and necessary buildings to you. However, this section will not tell you what exactly you should put on a planet and when to do it. That, player, is for you to discover.

Introduction to Building

The planetary interface is the centerpiece of all building in DarkSpace. While building can be done without it's aid, this marvelous tool is effective to the point where not using it is a waste of the builder's time. Time and again you should go back to the above reference to understand the intricacies of the complex yet simple screen.

The basic necessities of construction are that you have an engineering ship or a command ship, which have construction drone bays. When attempting to build, you need to be within the range of a location/tile selected on the planet. When not in range, the only interactions with planet structures available are for pausing the activity being done or scrapping.

However, when you are in range, you will see a slew of buttons at your disposal when you have selected an available tile. These buttons represent all the different buildings that can be erected upon a planet's surface by your construction drones. Some will be white, while others will be red. This indicates whether or not the building can be built on the surface.

In order to build anything, you must have sufficient resources for it, and there should be enough technology available on the planet. Buildings can be built even if there is an insufficiency of workers for running it or lack of energy for powering it.

The only true limit for building on planets is the maximum number of structures which can be built on any planet. New buildings can not be build after the limit is reached. This limit is 32 structures on all planets.

• Note : Each faction possesses a Home Planet in their respective home systems. These planets are highly colonized, and can support up to 40 structures.

However, there is much more to developing a planet than simply placing buildings. Buildings both provide and require certain utilities for functioning. Most buildings have all or some of the following requirements -

• An empty location to build a structure.
• Workers to administer and maintain the building.
• Power for functioning of the building.
• Resources to build the entire building.
• Technology to properly construct and maintain the building.

These utilities need to be properly exploited to help the planet develop to its fullest. Here onwards, it becomes tricky.

Starting Your First Planet

While you can build on most types of planets, Gas Giants and Inferno planets are utterly incapable of supporting buildings, population or troops.

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Each type of habitable planet supports a different amount of natural population, which can be found from the Planet page.

To learn the ropes of building, find yourself an empty and uninhabited planet, preferrably a Barren planet. While building on more self-sufficient planets such as Terrans is fully possible, the experience from working your way up from the grassroots is best for new players.

When near the planet, press 'O' to orbit it. With the planet selected, press F3 to open the Planetary Interface.

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If a planet is truly devoid of colonizational progress, the Interface will show zero population, habitat, food, technology and research. You must provide the necessary structures in order to support their existence. Only then can the builder make the empty planet into a flourishing civilization.

You might notice, as is normal with most untouched planets, that you've already got a small cache of resources to work with on the surface. This will allow your planet to jump-start itself to life, giving you enough room to allow some basic population and resource production to come in.

• Building: The Colony Hub is a highly multipurpose structure employed in the colonization of any planet with no natural life. When operational, it provides habitat for life to begin, food for sustenance, power supply for other structures, research facilities for technological growth and an automated mining facility for resource production.

Select an empty location on the planet, then select the 'Colony Hub' from the list to the right. You will receive a message that your construction drones acknowledge your command and have begun constructing the structure. When the Hub is built, you wll receive another message notifying you of the same.

Notice the changes to the Planetary Interface. Your planet now has 10 Habitat, 10 Power, 10 Research, 5 Mining, 1 Production and 10 Food. But it still shows 0 population and 0 technology. The effects of each are explained below.

Maintaining Population and Workers

Once your colony hub is built, your planet has some basic growing to do. Habitat is an indicator of how much population your planet can support. If Habitat is 10 and Population is zero, Population will slowly grow until it reaches 10. Food must also be provided in equivalent amounts to Habitat in order to support the Population.

As your population grows with each increment, you will notice that "workers" also goes up by 1. The number of "workers" is directly proportional to the planet's population. Simple system, yes? All it takes is understanding all the numbers, and how they work together.

Since the colony hub requires no workers, and it is still the only thing on the planet, you will notice that the second number in the "Workers" row is zero, and the third number (they are all separated by slashes) is a positive representation of whatever your population currently is (meaning that with your current structures, it will grow with population and workers until it reaches +10). Those numbers, respectively, are representations of how many total workers are needed for all the current structures, and how many extra workers are present. If you put two and two together, you will realize that the "Workers" row of numbers is a useful indicator of a worker shortage or surplus.

These workers are vital to maintain all structures on a planet, including the structures that produce other resources such as technology and food. More advanced structures can require as many as sixty workers, so it is needless to say that, no matter what kind of planet you start on, you're going to need to support more than just the colony hub's 10 Population.

You'll notice that the "Food" indicators work in the same way as the "Workers": How much is needed / How much is being used / How much is in surplus. Your population will die off to lower levels if left without adequate food for too long.

Building: The Dome is used to increase the Habitat of a planet by 10. It requires no workers, but does require power. Building: The Hydro Farm is used to increase the Food of a planet by 10. It requires workers and power to maintain its production.

As such, these two basic buildings are used in unison to support 10 more Population, and hence 10 more workers, for a planet. However, no matter how many people can live on a planet, it will never get far without producing resources to continue its construction.

Mining, Factories, and Production

A Colony Hub provides 5 Mining and 1 Production to a planet. This means that 5 resources will be added to the planet's resource cache every ten seconds. If you look around your buttons at the various costs of each building, you will quickly realize that a measly 5 resources per 10 seconds will get you nowhere fast.

• Building: The Mine is used to increase the Mining of a planet by 10. It requires 1 worker and power to maintain its resource generation.
• Building: The Factory is used to multiply the mining output of mines built on the planet. It requires 3 workers and power to process the resources.

While the Mine and its advanced variants directly increases the resource output, the Factory multiplies the resource generation by adding to the Production multiplier. So, a planet with 15 mining and 3 production will generate 15*3=45 resources every 10 seconds.

Build mines and factories until your heart is content, but be mindful of how many workers they require and be mindful of the fact that you have more to build than just mines, and you're going to need space later unless you intend to build a planet solely for mining, which is perfectly acceptable.

Also, if you build too many, you're going to quickly notice your available power dropping into oblivion, which leads us to our next point of discussion below.

Take note that mining can also be done by means of ships possessing Mining Beams to gather resources from the planet core, then unload them to the surface or starport while you are building in order to temporarily increase the resource generation. Specialised transports known as Extractors are designed to mine and haul resources between star systems using their large cargo bays and 4 mining beams.

Providing Power

The Hub's mere 10 power will not last you long for any planet. To provide extra power, we turn to another new structure.

• Building: The Fusion Generator is used to increase the power output of a planet by 30. It requires only one worker to maintain its activities.

• Building: The Solar Generator captures light from nearby stars and converts it into power. Its output depends on how much light it receives. It requires only one worker to function.

Maintaining power to all of your necessary buildings is absolutely essential. Without power, farms and research labs will not be adequately supported, causing technology failures or mass starvation. As such, it is important that you consider the order in which you build structures so that such disasters do not occur.

The structures available for being built in the beginning will not require much power, so a Fusion Generator's 30 power can cover the needs of many farms and domes. However, taking note of power used by structures such as defense bases and shipyards shows that most of the power generated will be utilized for planet defenses and utilities.

You may have noticed that these structures are shown in red, despite your planet having adequate levels of power, workers or resources. This leads us to our next discussion - Technology.

Technology

Research and technology are the cornerstones of DarkSpace's building system. Without attending to this vital statistic, your planets will never move beyond infantry or resource production planets that are totally incapable of defending themselves.

Building: The Research Lab is used to increase the Research of a Planet by 10. It requires a large amount of resources, workers, and power to maintain its function.

The Hub's 10 Research will result in very slow technological evolution for a few different reasons. First, understand that Technology and Research function identically to Population and Habitat, respectively speaking. Technology will slowly rise to whatever level at which Research is currently set. They are even displayed in identical faction at the top of the F3 window's statistics list. However, there is a fundamental difference in the comparison: Population influences Technology.

The more Population your planet possesses, the faster Technology will rise to meet the Research level. What does all this mean?

Just as more advanced buildings require higher amounts of workers, they also require higher Technology. As such, over time, more and more building options will become available to you. This is one of the many reasons DarkSpace encourages teamwork: If you are not willing to wait on a planet to develop, you can move on to another one and another player can pick up where you left off once Technology levels are sufficient to do so.

Like workers, population, food, and power, a planet's technology level must be maintained, if the technology level drops below what a structure needs, that structure will shut down.

Technology opens up an entirely new frontier for planets. With the other appropriate requirements met, planets can be set up to defend themselves against enemy invasion with Defense Bases that can both fire on enemy ships and defend against incoming bombs with point defense lasers, and more importantly, new levels of the vital buildings for each resource can be built to more efficiently support your planet while leaving you more space for extra buildings.

...but to do almost any of it, you're going to need not only power, not only workers, not only room, not only metals, and not only technology, but high levels of resources that your planet might not have. For those, you will have to turn to interplanetary trade routes via Starports.

Starports, Resources and Trade

Resources are the most vital ingredient utilised in the process of designing a planet. Resources are required for building structures, training infantry and constructing warships in shipyards. These finite and multi-purpose materials must be utilised judiciously, via trade from planets with abundance to planets with deficit.

Building: Starports are structures which can collect resources from the planet and prepare them for loading onto friendly ships. Starports send resources in shipments of 5000 units, within a short distance from the planet. They require 1 worker and 2 power for functioning. Each starport spawns a transport ship dedicated to shuttling resources between starports owned by a faction.

Starports are best used when there are planets which do not depend on resources, as they can donate their accumulated wealth of materials for helping planets being built, or for shipyard planets.

Resources is a generic term. While players need not concern themselves regarding resources beyond a bulk item, it can be classified into the following types -

• Hydrogen: Found on Gas planets, and most other planets with an atmosphere. Abundant.
• Oxygen: Found on planets with a dense atmosphere. Common.
• Metals: Found on solid planets, often Barren and Inferno planets. Common.
• Heavy Metals: Varying location. Uncommon.
• Cyro Metals: Varying location. Rare.
• Hyper Matter: Varying location. Very rare.
• Dark Matter: Varying location. Extremely rare.
• Urdanium: Varying location. Extremely rare.

The quantity of resources a planet can stockpile at any given time is dependent on the type of planet:

• Home Planet: 1,000,000
• Terran: 600,000
• Arid: 400,000
• Ocean: 300,000
• Ice: 200,000
• Barren: 100,000

To access the resources of a planet, select it's starport (shortcut - Ctrl+P) and press L to order a delivery of 5000 resources. Pressing U will unload all the resources in the cargo to the planet. If the planet does not have atleast 5000 resources, then ships cannot requisition the remaining few resources.

The AI transports tasked with resource trade will pick up resources from planets having a lot of resources, and deliver them to a planet with a low level of resources. They also aim to maintain a high resource level on shipyard planets.

Barracks and Training Infantry

Infantry are ground units which expand upon the abilities of warships high above orbit. They can sabotage key structures, initiate propaganda against enemy factions and combat enemy infantry.

Building: Barracks are structures built for the training of infantry. Once constructed, a barrack will recruit and train soldiers for inter-planetary conquest and combat missions, as well as for boarding and capturing warships. When enough technology is available, barracks can be instructed to train soldiers to become Heavy Infantry instead of regular Infantry. This structure requires 1 worker and 2 power to function.

Build barracks to train and deploy greenhorn soldiers, which will garrison themself on the planet. After some time on the planet's surface, they will be branded as veterans.
Ground infantry will convince the planet's population not to fear the presence of enemy warships in orbit, and hinder the process of capturing.

Barracks can train two types of units -

• Infantry/Drone Warrior:- Regular troops, require 2 minutes and 25 resources to train.
• Heavy Infantry/Drone Berserker:- Strong troops, require 4 minutes, 10 technology rating and 150 resources to train. Have more health than regular troops.

Heavy Infantry can outlast Infantry, but cost more to build and require 10 Technology to construct. They also take twice as long to train (four minutes as opposed to two), which can be a hindrance when a planet is under attack and needs to produce backup units quickly.

Infantry can be instructed about their objectives, and reactions when they encounter enemy troops:-

• Attack:- Unit will pursue and attack enemy infantry. Default command for all infantry. Shortcut - Alt+A.
• Hold:- Unit will not move from its current location, and defend itself against enemy units. Shortcut - Alt+D.
• Raze:- When deployed on an enemy planet, unit will travel to enemy structures and attempt to slowly damage and destroy them. This unit will not defend itself against pursuing enemy infantry. Shortcut - Alt+R.

Players can use infantry to defend their ship from enemy infantry. When an infantry boards an enemy ship it has to fight enemy infantry which are present on the ship.
To load an infantry, select it and press L, and to unload all available infantry on selected target press U. To unload only some infantry, select the target and right-click the infantry.

Upgrading Structures

Existing structures can now be upgraded in-place, eliminating the need to first scrap a building before a more advanced structure can be built. This is beneficial towards replacing structures on planets which cannot accomodate any more structures, and allows players to more easily improve upon planets built up by automated engineer ships.

To upgrade a structure, for example, a Hydro Farm with an Automated Hydro Farm:

• Select the building's icon on the planet surface or structures display on the Engineering Screen (F3)
• Click the desired upgrade structure from the building list above the target window on the right side of the screen.

The existing structure will be automatically removed, and your construction drones will start constructing the new building. Your profile window will report a deduction in prestige, as though you scrapped the structure.

The net gain or loss of prestige borne when upgrading a structure is determined by -

(Time spent for building new structure) - (Time required to construct old structure).

The loss in prestige is borne only by the engineer who initiated the upgrade of the structure.

Buildings may only be upgraded with buildings of the same type, farms can only be upgraded to higher level farms, mines can only be upgraded to higher level mines, and so on. Defense structures include all types of defense bases, interdictor bases, sensor/anti-sensor bases, planetary shields, and planetary depots, which means they're all valid upgrades for any given defense structure. You may also upgrade directly from a level 1 structure to a level 3 structure, providing all requirements for that structure are met.

Upgradable structures

• Hydro Farm -> Automated Hydro Farm -> Biosphere Condenser
• Mine -> Deep Core Mine -> Mantle Extractor
• Fusion Generator -> Quantum Generator -> Variance Generator
• Research Lab -> Subspace Network -> Cortex Nexus
  
  

• Defense Base I, Defense Base II, Anti-Ship Base I, Anti-Ship Base II, Point-Defense Base I, Point-Defense Base II, Interdictor Base, Sensor Base, Anti-Sensor Base, Shield Generator, Depot

Locking a Planet

Considering the dynamic and unexpected turns of the war, you may encounter a situation where you want to prevent junior or automated engineers from building on a key planet which can fulfill expanded or special needs. You may deem the skill of other engineers inadequate for fully bringing out the potential of the planet, and wish to take matters into your own hands.

If the circumstances warrant the need, you can Lock a planet such that engineers below your rank (and AI engineers) cannot build on the planet anymore. The planet will show the rank to which it has been locked in the Planetary Interface.
As an added bonus for the locking player, engineers without sufficient authority will not be able to pause or scrap structures or disband infantry in favour of extra population. However, they will be able to construct any structures which have not been fully built. They can also support the senior engineer by augmenting the construction rate of the lead engineer.

To lock a given planet, select it and click on the button, to the left of the Target Window, which reads 'Lock Planet'. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+L for the same. To unlock the planet, use the button again.

As of DarkSpace v1.672, a text command can also be used for locking planets to any rank according to your authority. The syntax is - /lock [name of planet] [rank number or shorthand to lock at]
If the rank is not specified, the command will unlock the planet only.

Added in /lock command. Players can now lock any planet they can govern at any rank below their own using this command. Players can specify the rank number or use the two letter shorthand (MS, EN, 2L, 1L, LC, CO, CP, 2A, 1A, VA, AD, FA, GA, MA, CM) -Fattierob, Development Team

• Note:- If an engineer junior to you locks a planet, you will have an additional option to lock the planet to your rank instead of their's. In such a scenario, the shortcut Ctrl+L will initially lock it to your rank instead of unlocking it.

Morale and Revolts

A critical aspect of governing a planet is the planet's morale. Morale is an indicator of how comfortable and confident the population is, and also indicates the trust which it invests in the controlling faction. If it is high, then it stands as a testament to the colonists' success, but if it is low then it indicates that the planet may soon revolt.

The following factors cause morale to drop -

• The recent capture of a planet will result in an uneasy population.
• The orbital bombardment of a planet will cause mass panic, causing the morale to crash.
• Lack of food with which to meet the population's needs will cause anger, riots and revolutionary campaigns.
• The over-scrapping of troops, producing more population than a planet can sustain, kills the new population. This can slowly reduce morale.

The morale of a planet can be improved by preventing enemy ships from approaching it. Presence of surplus food also comforts the population by giving them a secure future.

If the morale remains low for a long period of time, the planet may revolt and revert to Neutral control. All the infantry present on the surface will join the neutral faction.

Neutral planets are not owned by any faction. They require to be re-captured before they can be utilised again. Neutral planets will also attempt to harm or hinder nearby ships if they have operational defence bases and interdictor bases.

Advanced Controls: Pausing Production and Scrapping

Once you've gotten the hang of building, you may begin to get ahead of yourself and build things before they are needed. Lucky for you, DarkSpace allows for this. Using the "Pause" button that is visible by the Target Window when selecting a structure, you can pause any structure, hence removing its resource needs (and its effects on the planet) until it is reactivated. This is useful for starports that you don't want trading your resources yet, or for mines that are taking up workers needed more desperately for hydro farms.

Also, you will find that scrapping existing buildings to upgrade new ones will become essential. Use CTRL+X to scrap buildings when they are no longer needed. This has a wide range of uses, but be mindful of how much you scrap, as scrapping takes away from your profile's construction statistic.

In the end, how you control your planet is up to you. At this point, you should have a basic grasp of what it takes to properly build a planet. Congratulations! The next section will briefly list all the possible buildings and their basic functions.

Building List

Main page - Planetary Structures
This is a list of structures which can be built on a planet, along with a short description of their functions.

Essentials

• Colony Hub: Provides a minimal yet useful start on all necessary resources. Limited to 1 per planet.
• Dome: Provides +10 Habitat.
• Hydro Farm: Provides +10 Food.
• Fusion Generator: Provides +30 Power.
• Mine: Provides +5 Mining.
• Research Lab: Provides +10 Research

Production and Trade

• Factory: Increases Production by 1.
• Starport: Allows for trade and transportation of resources between friendly planets. Limited to 1 per planet.
• Ship Yard: Allows production and storage of ships for players. Limited to 1 per planet.

Defenses

• Point Defense - Have high PD% rating, but deal low damage to enemy ships.
• Hybrid Defense - Have some PD% rating and deal appreciable damage.
• Offense - Have very low PD% rating, but deal high damage.

Note :- Names of each structure vary between every Faction.

Passive Utilities

• Barracks: Builds infantry to defend against ground invasion.
• Interdictor Base: Prevents enemy ships from using FTL travel within a 1'000 gu range of the base.
• Depot: Repairs all friendly ships within a 500gu area. Limited to one per planet.

Building Platforms

Platforms are immobile space-based structures, similar to a very small station. Platforms can serve as a layer of defense around a planet, or can form a small outpost in deep space where ships can refuel, repair and reload.

To build a platform, you first need to be in an engineering ship, and have enough Resources in your cargo hold. You can either load Resources from any allied planet with a Starport, or mine a planet until you have the needed amount. Resources can be loaded from an allied planet by selecting the Starport (when within 250 gu) and pressing CTRL + U (or the Use button) to load 5000 resources each key-press.

When you have enough resources in the hold, hold down the Ctrl key and press the left mouse button to create a manual target at the location where you want the platform. Some buttons will appear above the Target Window, which can be clicked for building the platform. Clicking the desired button will subtract resources from your cargo hold, and the construction will begin.

A faction can, in a server, own a maximum of 30 platforms. Therefore, engineers must be decisive when choosing the type of platform, or its location. However, a platform can be moved over short distances by towing them with a Tractor Beam.

There are three types of platform -

• Weapon Platform - Armed with a core weapon turret for attacking enemy ships. Requires 4000 resources.
• Sensor Platform - Fitted with an extensive sensor array for detecting space ships and other objects. Requires 2500 resources.
• Supply Platform - Fitted with a reload drone bay for repairing nearby ships and platforms. Requires 3000 resources.

Once constructed, platforms will need to be maintained by unloading Resources onto them. By default they have enough Resources to last for about 2 hours. Fully restocking a platform will enable it to function for up to 25 hours without any resource deliveries. If a platform runs out of resources, it will self-destruct to avoid enemies from capturing them in it's disabled condition.

If a platform is damaged, both engineers and supply vessels can repair platforms using their drone bays, but engineers cannot rearm a platform.

Example Planet

Now that you have the basics down. Here is an example planet you might try building sometime in scenario. First let us recap the information above in the introduction Introduction: Population – this is the total number of ACTUAL workers your planet can sustain. Increase this by just building farms and a colony hub.

Habitat – this is the number of POSSIBLE workers the planet can sustain. Increase this number by building domes and a colony hub.

Food – This determines how much habitat you can have. 20 food = 20 habitat. Create farms to increase food. If you do not have enough food to sustain your population then they will begin to starve and your workers will drop until you solve the food shortage, ideally by creating more farms.

Workers – Arguably one of THE most important stats. Workers are given to you based on how much population a planet has. 10 population = 10 workers. 90 population = 90 workers. Without workers your structures cannot function, and without food you cannot have workers.

Technology – Technology is the total amount of…well…technology that is being given to your planet by active technology structures.

Research – This is the amount of Technology currently available to produce buildings and ships with. If you do not have research then you cannot build the structures you want on the planets or the ships. Research increases exponentially depending on how much population a planet has.

Power – another important stat on planets. Without power your structures will shut down for lack of energy to do their functions. This can result in farms turning off, causing food shortages, or in technology bases turning off, resulting in technology shortages. In short, you need power in order to prevent a whole host of bad things from happening to your planet. If you do not have enough power then your planet will have a power shortage and buildings will begin to turn off. (NOTE: you can also turn buildings off manually if you ever get a worker, food, technology shortage, or power shortage. Just hit f3 and click the planet that has the shortage. Then click on a structure in the menu and then go to the lower right and click the pause button. This will halt the function of your structure.)

This is a brief outline of how to build a defensive planet out of a barren world. This provides the basics of planet building. please note: You may ONLY have 32 structures on any planet at any given time. home planets are the exception, places like Sag Hoth, Earth and Exathra. These planets can have 40 structures but they should ONLY be built on by experienced builders.

Chapter 1: Defensive planets/Murder Sphere

A brief document on how to build up a defensive planet (NOTE: I constructed this planet on ICC but feel free to adapt it to UGTO or K'luth if you want to). Firstly, when you are building a planet you should consider the type of planet you are going to build. Is it defense planet, A shipyard planet, or a mining planet? ( Mining planets are usually only used in scenario.) If it is a defensive planet then you must consider what the terrain of the planet is: Barren, Arid, Ocean, Terran, etc. If it is a barren planet, and we shall assume it is for now. First you will construct a colony hub. Without the colony hub you cannot build anything else. It provides 10 of each resource a planet needs: Power, tech, food, and population. The domes increase the population limit of your planet. However, without food you cannot actually get any population from the planet. So next we will want to build about 4-5 farms. These farms each cost 1 person to man but they will provide 10 food. This means that your population will increase by 10 for each farm you build, as long as they are operational. So you have sacrificed 5 workers to gain about 40-50 workers (we will get those five workers we lost back later).

Now by this point you probably have a power shortage. So what you will want to do is build fusion generators along the center line of the planet. Space them 4 spaces apart. Fusion generator, 1space, 2spaces, 3spaces, now place a Fusion generator on the 4th space from your previous generator. Repeat until you have ringed the planet with fusion generators and you get back to the first generator you built. This should provide you with about 150-180 power. By this time we will need to build a star port on the planet so that we can actually transfer resources in and off of the planet as the case may need. If you are in the MV just keep importing resources from other planets if you run out. If you are in scenario then you will have to build a mining planet (details on that in another guide later).

Now your major task is to build 7 level 1 technology buildings. This will provide the technology you will need to increase your planets defenses and structures. You cannot upgrade or build structures if you do not have the prerequisite technology. Once you have those 7 structures, you wait for the technology to hit 20. Then you begin upgrading the structures in this order: Fusion generators to Solar Generators (solar generators have high health and can provide more power than even variance generators and since they only require 1 worker to stay active they can continue to operate even if the planet is bombed back to the stone age.). Level 1 Farms to level 2 Automated Hydrofarms(the automated farms require no workers and this means you essentially gain 5 workers and 10 more food for no downside. This also means that you do not have to rely on just the colony hub to help bring your population back up if the planet gets nuked or the population bombed to 0). Then upgrade the level 1 technology buildings to level 2 technology buildings. (NOTE: Your planets technology will DROP while you are replacing the level 1 labs with level 2s. DO NOT PANIC!). Once you have done this. Wait for the technology to hit 85 and then upgrade the level 2 labs to level 3. After that, scrap the technology buildings until only 3 level 3 labs remain. This will give you precisely 70 technology. Enough for an interdictor, a shield generator and your offense bases. Use the remaining number of structures to build offense bases on the planet. Do not forget to also include a depot, a shield generator (if playing on ICC)and an interdictor base.