Manual

Introduction

Prepare to be immersed in a universe more intricate and involving than anything you have ever seen before.

Here, your destiny is in your own hands as you struggle for total dominion over the stars.

Join the front lines as a member of the oppressive UGTO, the rebellious ICC, or the mysterious aliens known only as the K'Luth.

Fight in fast-paced, ship-to-ship battles on stunning planetary backdrops and discover distant star systems.

Ruthlessly bomb the surface of planets, leveling the enemy's structures and crippling their production and economy as you move in to expand your territory.

Control each planet under your power, from its power grid, to its population, to its defensive capabilities.

Customize your ship with weapons and equipment.

In so doing, you will gain prestige and influence, granting you rank and interstellar acclaim, as well as access to the most devastating vessels in the galaxy.

All of these possibilities and much more are at your fingertips, all for the benefit of your faction, or purely for the increase of your own profit and influence. Welcome to DarkSpace.

DarkSpace is an online game and community founded by PaleStar in early 2001. Both the game and the community are widely revered among their long-time patrons as being the greatest space game and best online gaming community ever assembled. The game is regularly updated with new content, making DarkSpace an evolving game on an epic scale. In DarkSpace, players have the choice of several different modes of play, from the fast-paced Scenario match to the persistent MetaVerse, where any battle can, at any moment, make long-lasting differences.

Players start out as a Midshipman, with access to basic ships of several classes ranging from scouts to transports. As they make use of their limited choices, either by combat, scouting, building, bombing, supplying, or capturing planets, they gain points for each activity. These contribute to a Prestige total, and as it rises, the player gains rank. Eventually, a player can attain the high honor of Chief Marshal, with access to every ship ranging from the most powerfully configured scouts to the most devastating orbital stations. Prestige is persistent server to server, so players can gain points anywhere at any time.

This Online Manual is provided to so that you can learn anything and everything there is to know about our game. Read on to discover just how immersive DarkSpace can be.

Editor's Disclaimer

Thank you for your interest in DarkSpace. If you are new to the game, it is our sincere hope that you will see, through this Manual or through our website, whatever it is you are looking for in your ideal space game. We hope that what you discover here makes you a long-lasting member of our community.

As helpful as the moderators and players are, the phrase "RTM" is just as applicable here as anywhere else, we've got a lot of detailed information on a wide variety of topics pertaining to the game from the obvious to the obscure. This document is intended as a comprehensive (some might say, exhaustive) guide to playing DarkSpace. We hope you'll read, learn from, and regularly reference the Manual, whenever you have a question about some aspect of the game.

Since DarkSpace does get updated, we do our best to keep the Manual current with the state of the game with accurate information. However, with the quantity of information, some things might slip through the cracks and be missed or even omitted. If you find something is missing, incomplete, inaccurate, or just too hard to understand, please let the staff know so that we can correct it, we do this for the benefit of you, the player.

Enjoy.

Doran Manual Editor October 11, 2008

Sections of the Manual

File:Divider1.jpg
Installation
Getting ready
Warming up
The Player's Guide to Darkspace
Inter-Stellar Navigation
Space Combat
Planet Governance and Construction
Bombing
Capturing
Supplying
Factions
Ship Layouts and Functions
Basic Ship Tactics
Perks of GameCQ

Credits

Engine/Game/Server Programming

• Richard "Faustus" Lyle
• Jack Wallace

Development Team

• Richard "Faustus" Lyle
• Jeff "Maverick" Everett
• Shawn "Nimby" Foreman
• Shawn "Selvarian" Stamps
• Leigh "Dr Evil" Reimers
• Sean "Taelron" O'Connor
• Christian "Chromix" Morgenstern
• Josh "Gideon" Smith
• Elizabeth "Coleen" Smith
• Patrick "Patrowsky" Lukowsky
• Christian "sunshine" Weyand
• Markus "TheBumble" Hummel
• Robert "Reason" Gorschels
• Kevin "tragicx" Weitkam
• Shigernafy
• Robert "Drafell" Kelford
• Jack Wallace
• Smartin
• Doran

Art

• Joseph Santori
• Mike Washburn
• Aaron "Otsunashi" Keesee
• Elizabeth "Coleen" Smith
• Josh "Gideon" Smith
• Robert Kelford
• Matt "Sanity Assassin" McClatchey
• Steve "Meko" Lee

Music/Sound

• Paul Baker
• Nenad Vugrinec
• Matt Sayre
• Robert Kelford

Lobby Programming / Tutorials

• Christian "Chromix" Morgenstern
• Jack Wallace

Web Programming

• Oliver "StarDust" Poetzelberger
• Shigernafy
• Jack Wallace

Story

• Shawn "Nimby" Foreman
• Josh "Gideon" Smith

Online Manual

• Miles "Demorian" Moffit
• Matt "Vinco" Taylor
• Christian "sunshine" Weyand
• David "Dwarden" Foltýn
• Axianda
• Rock
• Doran

Website Translation

• Eledore Massis - Dutch Translation
• Kamil LobbyZombie B - Swedish Translation

Community Administration

• Sean "Taelron" O'Connor
• Kevin "Trag" Weitkam
• Markus "TheBumble" Hummel
• Robert Kelford
• Doran
• Shigernafy
• Jack Wallace

Special Thanks

• David "Dwarden" Foltýn
• Tracy Demaret
• Kevin Sturdivant
• Thomas Hertzler
• Mark Hall
• Jeffrey Heyman
• Jason Templeman
• Todd Templeman
• Dennis Gyor
• David Klein
• Al Corey
• Troy Lowe
• Leigh "Dr Evil" Reimers
• Rodger "TheEvilGriffin" Griffin
• Patrick "Patrowsky" Lukowsky
• Christian "sunshine" Weyand
• Daniel "Samweis" Klug

Thanks to all of PaleStar's volunteer staff, too numerous to mention, who have done so much for so long to make this community so great.

Revision History Of Old Manual

o 10/14/08 - Updated Manual for 1.500 - Doran

o 03/11/06 - Added Device class descriptions in the Device List - Doran

o 07/27/05 - Added Key List. - Doran

o 07/18/05 - Updated Manual for 1.483. - Doran

o 10/21/04 - Completed rewrite of 1.481 Manual. - Demorian and Vinco

o 10/05/02 - Began major cleanup and revision of the online manual -Faustus

o 08/22/02 - Updated five manual screens to feature the new interface so as not to confuse new players. -Demorian

o 07/22/02 - Added a new Cargo screenshot to make this section a little more comprehensive/comprehensible. -Demorian

o 07/21/02 - Translated sections trough 3.2 of the manual to spanish. -Kortoz