Been eyeing this game for a little bit, but haven't seen much activity on the forums about it. From what I can tell its something like a faster paced EVE online with a concentrated focus on pvp. Can anyone give me the scoop on the game?

I'm mostly curious about the amount of ships and the advancement system, (skills or levels etc). Thanks guys.

HI there, well having been playing this game now for about 3 weeks I think I can give you a little bit of an idea of the amount of people etc.

On a usual night/day/time there is about 30 - 50 people on the main MetaVerse Server and there can be 15  on the other 2 servers.

This doesn't sound like many when compared to the likes of EVE or WOW but there is usually a bit of action happening and if there isn't all you have to do is go to one of the other factions systems and they are warned of your presence straight away so you usually get some action then.

The interface is not as complex as EVE's interface and learning it usually only takes a day or so at the very most, I have found that it is a game where you get more aquainted with the other players since there isn't thousands of them online at one time.

The total user base is about 72 thousand and it is made up of people of all ages and sexes, the mods are usually very helpful and can nearly always answer any questions you have about laying the game etc.

Now when you start the game you start as a Midshipman and this gets you access to the very basic small ships like Scouts, Light Transports. You gain prestige by doing certain things like fighting other players or by capturing planets and then building them. Players also need to aquire credits to do mods to their ships and this can be done in a number of ways, one of them being mining ore from planets with a Engineering ship or an extractor ship. This also gains you prestige.

Moving through the ranks is not as easy as it my seem because you can also loose prestige for being killed or shot and for loosing your shp by running into planets.

Some aspects of the game can get very boring after a while and unless you stay active you will get bored of the game very quickly, when you first sign up you receive a 14 day coupon which is a trial subscription and which allows you to build up your prestige to gain access to the bigger and better ships, the 14 days will enable just about any player to get to at least a rank of Captain. The system keeps stats of many things the player does including killing others, being killed, the amount of jumps you do, self destructs, etc etc and unfortunately unless you subscribe after the 14 day trial period you will not be able to move up through the ranks, however your stats are still kept and if at any time you do subscribe you will straight away be given the rank of the amount of prestige you have built up.

My suggestion to people is logon to the game and give it a try the download is only 50Mb and unless you are on a dial up connection downloading it will only take 30 minutes give or take depending on your speed. Give it a try if you dont like it just delete/uninstall the gam from your system and just dont go back.

Having played many games of this sort I would have to say tht it is one of the better ones I have played and I would give it a 8 - 8.5 out of 10....

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Originally posted by Smirch

Been eyeing this game for a little bit, but haven't seen much activity on the forums about it. From what I can tell its something like a faster paced EVE online with a concentrated focus on pvp. Can anyone give me the scoop on the game?

I'm mostly curious about the amount of ships and the advancement system, (skills or levels etc). Thanks guys.

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    Ok although I am only a player in the DarkSpace game I hve managed to gain the rank of admiral in the game which is about 3 ranks from the highest possible rank which is Grand Admiral.

    I will attempt to fill you in on the advancement system as best I can.

    Ok when you first join the game you will be a midshipman this rank doesn't give the player access to many of the ships and the ones you do have access to are really very basic and needless to say the smallest of the available ships. These include scouts, 1 type of frigate and transport ships.

    Also when you start off unless you use the 14 day free trial where you are given 50,000 credits you will be in the negative on credits which will stop you from being able to upgrade any of your ships defences (eg. shields, weapons etc). You can earn credits by mining the planets and selling the minerals to the nearest starport, you can also make credits by salvaging items that are left over after a ship is destroyed (eg. the minerals it is made from or the actual weapons, drives etc that were part of the ship)

     As in every game the further you go in the game the more you can do or the powerful the things you can access are, now the advancement system is based apon your prestige which you get for doing all sorts of things including building on planets, attacking other enemy ships. Your dvancement also however depends on you receiving badges which you also get for things like building, attacking other ships and doing just about eveything you can do in the game.

    Gaining these badges usually happens when you have received 50 then 500 and the last of each of the badge groups you receive when you have managed to do whatever the requirement is 1000 times. These requirements are not set at the above numbers for all the badges and if you want to find out more about what the requirements are for the others you can do this by looking through the players manual which is probably something that all new players should do anyways.

    It can take a player any amount of time to move up through the ranks depending on how active you are in the game, and there has been players that have managed to get through to Grand Admiral within a 12 month period so I am told. The requirments for moving through the ranks are as follows:

40 Prestige = Ensign

80 Pres = 2nd Lieutenant

160 Pres = 1st Lieutenant

320 Pres = Lieutenant Commander

It basically doubles each time you move up a rank until you get up to 81920 at which point you become a GRand Admiral. Once you get a rank you have to continue to work on keeping that rank because being destroyed, Running into Planets and scrapping buildings on friendly planets can all go towards having your prestige reduced.

The above is about as basic as I am able to make explaining the game advancement system to you, if you want just logon to the DarkSpace website and join the game, once you verify your email address you will be sent a 14 day free trial coupon that will allow you to get a pretty good feel for the game. DarkSpace is not as fast paced as Eve and it doesn't have half the active players that Eve has, it is also not for everyone due to the size of the player base and the nature of the game.

At this time DarkSpace is in a Full release of the game but there is currently also a new beta version in trial and hopefully a new version of the game will be released within the next 3 months or so, most of the other players in the game are helpful, and if they can will help you out with a few credits to get you going.

However as in all ther games there are other players who will go out of their way to try and cause you problems, luckly enough the main server is big enough for you to stay away from most of these people, the ones you can't stay away from you can always just ignore.

DarkSpace has the potential to be a very good game with the right sort of backing, so have a look at it if you feel you would like to try it and who knows you may decide to spend $9.95 US per month to become a subscribed player which will enable you to continue to gain ranks and get better ships.

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However as in all ther games there are other players who will go out of their way to try and cause you problems, luckly enough the main server is big enough for you to stay away from most of these people, the ones you can't stay away from you can always just ignore.

DarkSpace has the potential to be a very good game with the right sort of backing, so have a look at it if you feel you would like to try it and who knows you may decide to spend $9.95 US per month to become a subscribed player which will enable you to continue to gain ranks and get better ships.

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    Ok you are right with what you say and unfortuntely I don't have the power to do anything about wht you are talking about except by using the "ignore" option, which I use to it's fullest.

    It is sad that a game with this games potential is being let down by the way some people decide they feel they have to refer to women and to many other things but I guess the best way to show your dislike of this is to vote with your feet and not play the game.

    There is a DarkSpaceAsia which is a smaller community and which has different people playing it, maybe you could give that a look as at this time I am in the stages of now playing more on DS-Asia than I do on DS-NA.

    Just incase you would like to have a look at DSA I will include a link, oh also if you do decide you would like to play on DSA you will have to download the client for that one again, it is about 38Mb in size and only takes around 10 minutes to download.

http://www.darkspace.net.sg/

    If you decide the above one is no good for you also I hope that some time in the future you decide to give it another look in because I personally think the game could do with more people like you.

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Originally posted by SecretOpz
DSA is a better community, I went there once. The fact that you need to join a fleet to join the metaverse is ingenious and helps prevent faction-hopping. The metaverse is sized to the amount of players there are(also was good layout until recently).

Anyways, Darkspace needs to follow the path that DSA has. My suggestions to Darkspace is widely based on what I seen in DSA, but Darkspace does not seem to care. The customers are the ones that keep the game alive, but if the developers do not listen to the players, I doubt DS will survive much longer. I even seen in the forums a player-created metaverse map contest idea, and I seen one that would be perfect, but I doubt darkspace would implement it, even though it is what most of the players would like to see. Its not that hard to load a new map into the server.

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  Hi Yet again.

                  well u are right in everything you are saying. However faction jumping is not really a problem as long as the person or people doing it are not doing it to disable planet defences (which had and does happen)

                  As for the competition for th maps and the wallpaper yes it would be great if darkspace north America would run something similar as I know for a fact that there are a lot of people that would create really good maps. Why they dont run these sorts of things I have no idea.