Core Concepts
Game format
Dark Galaxy is a turn-based strategy game - that means turns update synchronously for all players over a fixed period of time. During a turn update, all queues will progress, resources totals will be updated, ships will move and battles will be had.
- A
standardround consists of 2160 turns, with each turn lasting1 hour. This ends up with a round length of 3 months. - A
speedround is usually run over a weekend, with each turn lasting1 minute. The number of turns can vary depending on the set start/finish times.
Once the round is over, there is usually a brief cool-off period before the next round starts. The exact times above are subject to change at the discretion of the game admin. It has been known for some rounds to go on much longer than the above.
Due to the relatively slow progress of the game, you don't need to log in every hour to keep an eye on your empire, as creating ships and buildings can take anything from 2 - 48 hours, although you might want to occasionally keep an eye on your Radar, to ensure no one is approaching your planets!
The Universe
The Universe is a vast place containing many planets (shocking, eh?). The universe consists of 49 galaxies and thousands of planets. The galaxy is organised into 'rings', with Galaxy 1 being in the centre as the most dangerous and yet the most lucrative place to play. The outer ring contains planets with the lowest abundances, but because of this it will also be the least competitive area to play.
The goal of the universe is to encourage players to play where they feel comfortable, for new players it's wise to avoid going into Galaxy 1 on your first outing to avoid being overwhelmed by hyper competitive alliances, but nothing's stopping you colonising an outer planet then making tactical plays into the more central areas!
All fleets can move from and to any planet in the universe (with varying travel times), you can also retreat back to your Home Planet if needed.
See the Universe Page for more details on how the universe works.
Planets
Planets are things you'll need to expand your empire. Many of them exist in the Universe, all ripe for colonisation or invasion!
When you first login to Dark Galaxy you'll start the game on your home planet, which is a safe space and cannot be travelled to, or attacked, by any other player. This planet is here to allow you to get a feel for the game, and give you somewhere safe in the event you run into problems elsewhere in the universe.
Your Home World, as well as any planets you colonise or invade will produce resources from structures based on the planet abundances. These Resources can be spent on Structures, Ships, Soldiers or Scans.
See the Planet Resources Page for more details on how resource income works, and is calculated.
Resources
There are 5 main resource types in the game.
-
Metal - Used to build most things including structures and ships -
Mineral - Used to build most things including structures and ships -
Food - Used to train 
Soldiers and feed your 
Workers -
Energy - Users to power structures, scanning, building Holo Ships & resource conversion - Workers - Workers are needed for construction of structures and ships, they can also be trained into Soldiers
Ship Yard
Once you have all the required structures, you'll build ships to visit other planets. The four ship types are:
- Combat/war ships
- Transport ships
- Colonisation ships
- Invasion ships
See the full ship list for full details of each ship type.
Barracks
On each planet where you have constructed a Barracks, you'll have access to train soldiers. Soldiers can be used to defend your planets and invade the planets of others.
Research
Each tick your empire will produce 1 Research Point. See the Research page for more details.
Once you have accrued enough points you can choose to spend them to advance your empire. All advances are detailed into the Research tab.