Game Manual

1. Overview

Darkling is an asynchronous multiplayer survival game set in a dark galaxy where civilizations must hide to survive. Players nurture orbital colonies, harvesting energy from their star while remaining invisible to others.

You have achieved spaceflight and begun exploring the cosmos. Your first scans revealed faint signals: you are not alone. In that moment, your civilization understood the terrible truth: survival demands invisibility. Any civilization that can detect you might destroy you. Preemptive elimination is the only rational choice.

You are now both hunter and prey.

Core Tension

You never know:

• How many civilizations exist in the galaxy
• Who has discovered your star
• Whether shared coordinates are real or decoys
• Who is watching you right now

2. The Core Loop

1. Silence (Continuous)

Your colonies orbit your star, harvesting energy — but maintaining them costs energy too. Your net income depends on how many colonies you support and how much veil you sustain. Your Dark Veil regenerates. This happens automatically as long as you check in at least every 24 hours.

2. Research (Player Initiated)

Invest resources into Astronomy, Espionage, Counter-Espionage, Dark Veil, or Weapons research. Each branch unlocks new capabilities, and as you advance, you must choose a specialization path that defines your late-game identity. Research takes time and only progresses as long as you check in at least every 24 hours.

3. Explore (Player Initiated)

Use Astronomy to chart nearby stars. Send probes to scan for signs of life. Deploy scouts to map entire regions. Every scan risks detection.

4. Decide (Player Initiated)

Broadcast a contact's coordinates to paint a target? Deploy a decoy to mislead enemies? Launch a photoid strike from the shadows? Migrate to a safer star? Wait in silence?

5. Act (Player Initiated)

Migrate your fleet to claim new territory. Broadcast coordinates to expose an enemy. Deploy decoys to create phantom civilizations. Every action erodes your veil and raises your signal.

Then return to silence.

3. Colonies & Stars

Your civilization exists as orbital colonies circling your home star, harvesting its energy for survival and growth. Each colony strengthens you, but increases your visibility — and your costs.

Building Colonies

Colonies do not grow on their own. Expanding your fleet is a deliberate decision — you construct new colonies by spending energy. The cost escalates sharply with each colony you already have: early expansion is cheap, but building a large empire becomes exponentially expensive.

You can build a new colony at any time while orbiting your star, as long as you have sufficient energy.

Income & Maintenance

Each colony harvests energy from your star every minute, scaled by the star's harvest rate. But colonies also cost energy to maintain. A small fleet runs cheaply — the first several colonies require no upkeep at all. Beyond that threshold, maintenance costs grow with your fleet size. Sustaining the Dark Veil also drains energy, scaling with both your colony count and veil level.

Your net income is what remains after deducting colony and veil upkeep from your gross harvest. A large fleet on a cold star with high veil can easily cost more to maintain than it earns.

Tap on your energy display in the header to open the economy panel — a compact breakdown showing your gross income, colony upkeep, veil upkeep, net income, and your star's current depletion stage.

Production Cap

You can throttle your colony output by setting a production cap. Tap the colony count in the header to open the production panel and adjust the slider. At reduced output, your colonies extract less energy from your star — but they also emit a weaker electromagnetic signature, lowering your signal proportionally.

This is a survival tool: if you need to go dark, reducing production lets you shrink your signal footprint without dismantling your fleet. Your colonies still exist and still cost maintenance, but their energy output — and the signal it produces — scales with the cap you set. Set it back to maximum to resume full extraction.

Star Classes

Your star is your blessing and your curse. You cannot change it. You can only adapt, or migrate.

Star Depletion

Stars have finite energy reserves that diminish as civilizations harvest them. Over time, yields decline through several stages — from fresh and bountiful to strained and eventually exhausted. A depleted star never recovers; what is taken is gone forever.

Depletion is self-regulating: as yields decline, extraction slows, which in turn slows further depletion. Even an exhausted star still produces a fraction of its original output — enough to survive on, but never to thrive.

Depletion is global. If one civilization drains a star and abandons it, the next arrival inherits the diminished reserves. The star map shows each star's current depletion stage, letting you weigh the true yield of potential destinations before committing to a migration.

4. Signal & Visibility

Every civilization emits an electromagnetic signal based on their size, activity, and star. This signal determines how easily probes can detect you.

Signal Scale

Signal strength ranges from 0 (invisible) to 100 (blazing beacon). Your signal is the primary factor in whether enemy probes detect you.

Signal Factors

• Colony count — More colonies, higher signal
• Star class — Hot stars amplify, cold stars suppress
• Dark Veil — Higher veil reduces signal
• Migration state — Signal reduced to 80% while traveling
• Offensive actions — Launching a photoid temporarily spikes your signal for several hours
• Uptime — Longer-running civilizations accumulate presence

5. Threat Level

Your command interface maintains a continuous threat assessment — a composite reading of how much danger your civilization currently faces. This is not a single measurement but a synthesis of three factors, each telling a different part of the story.

Exposure

How visible you are to the galaxy. Exposure reflects your electromagnetic signal — the same signal that probes, passive sensors, and photoid targeting systems use to find you. A civilization burning bright on a hot star with dozens of colonies radiates like a beacon. A small fleet hidden behind a deep veil on a cold dwarf is nearly invisible. Exposure is the most persistent component of your threat level: it changes only when your signal changes.

Hostility

How actively the galaxy is threatening you. Hostility rises when alarming events occur in your vicinity — intercepted probes, received warnings, dimensional anomalies, destroyed decoys, foreign devices detected at your star, detected transit signatures near your star. Each incident pushes the reading higher. Over time, if nothing further happens, hostility gradually subsides as the immediate danger fades from memory. A sudden spike means someone is actively probing your defenses or worse.

Readiness

How prepared you are to face threats. Readiness reflects your active defensive posture — deployed surveillance, active countermeasures, and the depth of your counter-espionage research. A civilization with sensors watching approach corridors, decoys muddying the picture, and a sophon monitoring a known threat is far more prepared than one sitting blind. Readiness is the only pillar that works in your favor: higher readiness lowers your overall threat assessment.

Overall Assessment

The three pillars combine into an overall threat level displayed on your Intelligence screen:

Exposure and hostility raise your threat level. Readiness lowers it. A civilization with high exposure but equally high readiness may sit at a lower overall level than one with moderate exposure and no defenses at all.

6. Research

Research unlocks new capabilities across several branches. Only one research can be active at a time. Research only progresses while your device is online.

Research Branches

Research Tree

Early research is universal — every civilization follows the same tree. As you advance and choose a specialization, additional research becomes available depending on your path. Some advanced research is shared between two paths; others are exclusive to one.

7. Astronomy

Research in Astronomy reveals the stars around you. At first, only your immediate neighbors. As your knowledge grows, you see farther: stars at 2 hops, then 3.

Your catalog shows potential destinations and migration routes. But remember: it shows only stars, not civilizations. A distant giant might harbor a hidden empire. A nearby dwarf could be lifeless.

Astronomy Levels

8. Passive Detection

Before you send probes into the void, your sensors are already listening. Once you complete Signal Array research (which requires Astronomy I), your civilization deploys a network of passive electromagnetic receivers tuned to the faint hum of distant civilizations.

How It Works

Your signal array periodically sweeps nearby stars, picking up faint electromagnetic signatures that betray the presence of intelligent life. This is not active scanning — no probes are sent, no signals emitted. You are merely listening to what the cosmos already whispers.

When a detection occurs, you receive a journal alert with the star name and an approximate signal strength reading. Stronger civilizations radiate louder and are detected sooner. Distance also matters: stars closer to your own are swept more frequently, while those at the edge of your range may take considerably longer to register.

Detection Range

The reach of your passive sensors scales with your Astronomy research level. Higher Astronomy allows your array to listen farther into the dark, extending the same range that governs your star chart visibility.

Temporary Intelligence

When your signal array detects a signature, a temporary entry appears in your Intelligence screen. These entries last 24 hours before fading, giving you a window to act — send a probe, deploy a sophon, or launch a strike. The signal reading is approximate, reflecting the inherent noise of passive sensors. If the same star is detected again, the timer resets.

Limitations

• Approximate readings — The signal strength shown is a noisy estimate, not an exact measurement. Use it as a hint, not a certainty.
• Decoys fool sensors — A decoy's electromagnetic signature is indistinguishable from a real civilization. Your array cannot tell the difference.
• No interception possible — Passive detection cannot be blocked, jammed, or intercepted. It leaves no trace. The target never knows they were heard.
• Distance matters — Nearby stars are swept more frequently and more easily detected. Stars at the edge of your range are much harder to pick up.

9. Listening Posts

Passive detection tells you someone is out there. Probes tell you who. But what about the spaces in between — the stars you have already scanned and dismissed, the corridors you cannot watch every hour of every day? Listening posts fill that gap: silent sentinels deployed to remote stars, watching for anything that passes through.

How They Work

Deploy a listening post to any star within your probe range. The post travels to the target and activates, passively monitoring for transit activity. Every object that travels through the galaxy — probes, scouts, decoys, listening posts, migrations, and photoids — leaves a temporary wake signature at each star along its path. When a wake becomes detectable at a star where you have an active listening post, the post reads it and reports back.

Each wake detection tells you the type of object that passed through, which direction it came from and where it was heading, and how fresh the wake is. This is far more than a simple alert — it gives you a vector. From a single detection you can often determine where the sender lives and where they are going.

Wake Signatures

Objects leave wake traces at every star along their path, not just at their destination. A probe traveling three hops leaves three wakes — one at each intermediate star. The wakes appear progressively as the object passes through each star, and persist for several hours before fading.

Each wake carries directional data: which neighboring star the object arrived from, and which star it departed toward. At the origin star, there is no arrival direction; at the destination, there is no departure direction. At intermediate stars, both directions are present, revealing the full transit vector.

Track Correlation

When two or more of your listening posts detect wakes from the same transit event, the detections are automatically correlated into a track — a reconstructed partial path showing the object's trajectory across multiple stars. Tracks appear in your Sensors screen and as journal entries, and persist for a limited time.

A single listening post gives you a point. Two listening posts on the same route give you a line. The more coverage you have, the clearer the picture becomes.

Star Scan

Listening posts detect wakes as they happen. But what about wakes that were left before you deployed? A star scan is an active, one-shot sensor sweep of a single star that reads all current wake signatures present there. It reveals the same information a listening post would — object types, directions, and ages — but as a snapshot rather than a live feed.

Star scans require Signal Array research, cost energy, cause a temporary spike in your signal strength, and have a cooldown between uses. Use them when a listening post alert points you to a star and you want to see the full picture of what has passed through.

Limitations

• No source identification — Wakes reveal the type and trajectory of an object, but not the identity of whoever sent it. Determining who lives at the origin star requires further investigation.
• Timed lifespan — Listening posts do not last forever. After a few days of operation, they exhaust their power supply and go offline permanently. A photoid impact at the star will also destroy any active listening posts.
• Limited deployment slots — You can only maintain a handful of active listening posts at any given time. Choose your positions carefully.
• Blind to your own activity — A listening post does not report your own wakes. It only watches for foreign activity.
• Wake decay — Wakes do not persist indefinitely. Each object type leaves wakes of different durations. By the time you scan a star, some wakes may have already faded.
• Wake attenuation — Civilizations with high Dark Veil leave shorter-lived wakes. A well-cloaked civilization's transits fade faster, making them harder to track.
• Classification gating — Your counter-espionage level determines how precisely you can identify wake types. Without counter-espionage research, some detections may appear as unidentified objects. Higher levels reveal the exact type of object that passed through.

Deployment

Listening posts cost a modest amount of resources and travel at probe speed. Once deployed, they require no further input — they watch, they report, and eventually they fade. The investment is small, but the intelligence can be invaluable.

10. Espionage (Probes)

Knowing stars exist is not enough. You must know if they are inhabited. Espionage research creates detection probes that slip into distant systems, listening for signs of intelligent life. But probes are not passive. Every scan risks detection. Advanced civilizations may sense your intrusion and learn someone is watching.

Probe Capabilities

Higher espionage tiers improve detection odds and extract deeper intelligence from occupied stars. Enriched data is only included when the probe detects a real occupant.

Probe Travel

Probes travel at 6.6x the speed of a migrating fleet.

Detection Results & Intelligence

When a probe arrives at a star, the intelligence gathered depends on the probe's sensitivity and the target's signal strength. Significant results automatically create entries in your Intelligence list:

Probe results contain inherent noise, but repeated scans of the same star tend to yield more reliable intelligence over time. A single probe may miss what a second or third probe catches. Conversely, if a previously-detected signal vanishes on a follow-up scan, the silence itself is information.

Confirming Contacts

Temporary contacts can be manually confirmed from the Intelligence screen, promoting them to permanent entries. This is useful when you trust the intelligence but don't want to spend another probe just to upgrade the result.

11. Counter-Espionage

Counter-Espionage research gives you a chance at detecting incoming surveillance and corrupting the data sent back to observers.

Probe Interception

When an enemy probe arrives at your star, your counter-espionage systems may detect and degrade it:

Degradation chain: Confirmed → Suspected Strong → Suspected Moderate → Suspected Weak → Nothing

The spy never knows their probe was intercepted or their data corrupted. They trust their false intelligence. Meanwhile, you receive an alert: "Probe Detected." You know someone is hunting you, but not who.

Decoys: Ghosts Among the Stars

Counter-Espionage also unlocks decoy technology: signal-emitting devices deployed to any star within range. A decoy mimics the electromagnetic signature of a living civilization, creating a phantom where none exists.

Cost: 10,000 resources per decoy. Decoys travel at probe speed.

Decoy Defense

Beyond deception, decoys serve a defensive role. When a photoid strikes a star where a decoy is deployed, the decoy absorbs a portion of the blast before being destroyed. Stronger decoys absorb more energy, reducing the damage that reaches any civilization at the star. However, a decoy alone will not stop a photoid entirely — some of the strike's force always passes through. Multiple decoys at a star offer no additional protection; the photoid engages the strongest one and all are destroyed in the process.

Decoy Anomalies

When a decoy goes offline prematurely — destroyed by a photoid impact or an arriving fleet rather than expiring naturally — the owner receives a temporary anomaly entry in their Intelligence screen. The entry reveals only that something happened at that star, not what caused it. These anomaly contacts last 24 hours, giving you a brief window to investigate before the information fades.

System Sweeps

Foreign decoys placed on your star inflate your signal strength, painting you as a larger target for photoid strikes. Counter-Espionage research gives you the ability to detect and remove them.

Detection: When a foreign decoy arrives at your star, your counter-espionage systems will eventually detect its presence. Higher CE levels detect foreign devices faster. Without any counter-espionage research, foreign decoys remain invisible.

Sweep Action: Once alerted, you can initiate a system sweep from the star map on your own star. A sweep is a timed operation that, upon completion, neutralizes all foreign signal sources currently at your star — decoys and siphon drones as physical devices, and specters as broad-spectrum EM countermeasures collapsing the projection's interference pattern. Only one sweep can run at a time, and migration cancels any active sweep.

Advanced counter-espionage research reduces both detection time and sweep duration, allowing you to respond more quickly to foreign interference.

12. Sophons

Probes give you a snapshot. Sophons give you a window. A sophon is a persistent, long-range surveillance particle that travels to a distant star and remains there indefinitely, sending back periodic intelligence reports on everything it observes.

Requirements

Deployment

Deploy a sophon from the Astronomy star detail panel or from the Intelligence screen. Select a target star and the sophon launches from your current position. It travels at 5x the speed of a migrating fleet. Once it arrives, it activates and begins surveillance.

Intelligence Reports

An active sophon transmits an intel report every 10 minutes. If the target star is occupied, the report includes detailed information about the resident civilization:

If the star is unoccupied, the report confirms it is empty — but will still reveal any decoys or specters present at the star, allowing you to distinguish phantom signals from real civilizations before committing a strike.

Sophon observations are definitive. If you previously probed a star and received an ambiguous result, a sophon arriving at that star will correct your records. A suspected contact may be confirmed or cleared based on what the sophon actually observes on the ground.

Departure Detection

If a civilization departs the monitored star, the sophon detects the migration and reports the destination. You learn not only that they left, but exactly where they are headed.

Probe & Sensor Detection

An active sophon detects incoming probes and listening posts at the star it monitors. When a foreign probe arrives or a listening post is deployed, the sophon sends you an alert. The notifications confirm that someone is watching the star, but do not reveal the sender's identity.

Redirect & Recall

An active sophon can be redirected to a new target star for 15,000 energy. It enters transit from its current position to the new target. This is useful when a target migrates and you want to follow them.

A sophon can also be recalled at no cost. It returns to your current star, freeing you to deploy it elsewhere later.

Anomaly Detection (Paranoia)

Advanced civilizations may sense they are being watched. Each time a sophon generates an intel report, there is a small chance the target receives a vague dimensional anomaly alert. The chance depends on the target's own Counter-Espionage level:

These alerts do not reveal who is watching or confirm that a sophon is present. They are a warning, not a certainty.

13. Scouts: Eyes in the Void

A single probe reveals a single star. A scout maps an entire region. Once your astronomers chart deeper space and your engineers master probe technology, you can deploy autonomous scouts: silent survey drones that travel to a distant star and systematically scan every one of its neighbors before going dark.

Scout Phases

• Transit — Scout travels to the center star
• Scanning — Automatically probes each direct neighbor, one by one

The intelligence returned follows the same rules as any probe: higher espionage yields sharper readings, and counter-espionage on the other end can still corrupt what your scout sees.

14. Precursor Ruins

Scattered across the galaxy are the remains of an ancient civilization that once inhabited these stars. Their ruins lie dormant on dozens of worlds, waiting to be found. Discovery is not a separate activity: you find ruins through normal exploration. A probe sent to map an unknown star may stumble upon something far older than anything your instruments expected.

Discovery

When a probe arrives at a star that harbors ruins, it may detect anomalous structures. Not all ruins are equally visible — some lie on the surface, obvious to any scanner, while others are buried deeper and require more advanced espionage capabilities to distinguish from natural formations.

The deepest ruins are sealed behind mechanisms that resist conventional scanning entirely. A probe will pass over them without registering anything unusual — unless it carries resonance data recovered from a previously explored site. These electromagnetic fingerprints act as a key: they teach the probe's sensors what to look for, revealing structures that would otherwise blend into the star's background noise.

Fragments

Ruins may contain unique fragments — records left behind by the builders. Each fragment is a window into what happened here before your civilization existed. Recovered fragments become a permanent part of your archaeology archive and contribute to your civilization score.

Artifacts

Some ruins contain artifacts — functional remnants of precursor technology. Each artifact type serves a different purpose:

• Resonance Key — Refines the resonance signal from a clue, filtering out noise and dramatically narrowing the list of candidate stars worth investigating.
• Eidolon Cipher — A decryption pattern required to interpret the internal structure of sealed and deep ruins. Without a cipher, probes lack the reference data needed to pinpoint a sealed structure's exact location within the star system.
• Substrate Lens — Temporarily recalibrates probe sensors, allowing detection of buried ruins that would normally require more advanced espionage technology. Activates automatically when probing a buried ruin. Expires after 24 hours if unused.
• Phase Dampener — Temporarily reduces your electromagnetic signal for several hours.

Artifacts are consumable — each one can be used once.

Resonance Clues

Some explored ruins emit residual resonance patterns that correspond to other ruin sites elsewhere in the galaxy. When decoded, a resonance clue identifies a set of candidate stars — one of which harbors the next site in the chain. The clue constrains the search by region and stellar characteristics, but you must still probe the candidates to find the right one.

Resonance targets can be probed even if they lie beyond your normal astronomical range. Stars identified as candidates become valid probe destinations regardless of distance.

Candidate Clusters

Resonance clues, and the ruin hints produced by sector surveys (see Sector Surveys), both present themselves as candidate clusters — small groups of stars within which one holds the target ruin. The cluster keeps track of which candidates you have already examined, so you can focus your probes on the unexplored ones without retreading old ground.

If you work through every candidate in a cluster without finding the ruin, the cluster enters a stalled state. The target is among them, but your current probe capabilities cannot reveal it. A stalled cluster will tell you what kind of capability is missing — a deeper espionage tier, a specific artifact, or another clue from elsewhere. Once you acquire it, you can resume probing the same candidates and the cluster will resolve.

15. Intelligence Dossiers

Every contact in your intelligence database has a dossier: an automatically compiled profile that aggregates everything you've ever observed about that star. You don't build dossiers manually — they build themselves from your ongoing operations.

What Feeds the Dossier

Every interaction with a contact's star contributes intelligence:

• Probes — Each scan adds a timestamped snapshot: detection result and signal reading. Multiple probes over time reveal trends.
• Sophon reports — Detailed surveillance snapshots (colonies, resources, veil, research, deployed assets). Archived even after recalling the sophon.
• Listening posts — Wake detections near the star: object type, direction, and age. Shows what passes through and where it comes from.
• Passive detection — Signal Array readings with approximate signal strength. Adds to signal history over time.
• Decoy anomalies — If your decoy near a contact was destroyed prematurely, that suspicious event is logged.
• Strike history — Photoid and disruption strike outcomes against the contact, including colonies destroyed, veil eroded, and whether the target survived.

Dossier Indicators

The dossier distills accumulated intelligence into three summary indicators:

Any indicator may also show No Data or Unknown when insufficient observations have been gathered.

Staleness

Every dossier shows when its most recent observation was recorded. Intelligence degrades over time — a dossier last updated days ago may no longer reflect reality. Fresh intelligence appears in cyan; aging data fades through amber to muted tones. If your dossier feels unreliable, send another probe or redeploy a listening post.

16. Dark Veil

If you can spy on others, others can spy on you. The Dark Veil is a quantum field that masks your electromagnetic signature, making you appear as natural stellar noise, or invisible entirely.

Veil Research Levels

Dark Veil I and II are universal research available to all civilizations. Deep Veil is a Phantom-exclusive advancement that requires both Dark Veil II and the Phantom specialization. Only Phantoms can achieve total concealment.

Veil Regeneration

Base regeneration: 0.023 per minute (~3 days from 0 to 100%)

Uptime bonus multiplies regeneration:

• < 1 day: 1.0×
• 1-7 days: 1.2×
• 7-30 days: 1.5×
• 30+ days: 2.0×

Veil Cap

You can set a veil cap to limit how high your veil regenerates. Tap the veil display in the header to open the veil panel and adjust the slider. When the cap is set below your current veil, the veil will gradually decay toward the cap at its base rate. Setting a lower cap reduces your veil maintenance costs, freeing energy for other purposes.

This is a strategic lever: if your economy is struggling under veil upkeep, you can voluntarily lower your cap to reduce expenses — trading stealth for income. Set the cap to your tier maximum (or remove it entirely) to resume full regeneration.

Veil Penalties

• Migration: Veil reduced to 30% of current value when departing
• Migration regen: 50% regeneration rate while traveling

Veil in Combat

When defending your star against an invading fleet, your veil provides up to 50% additional damage reduction on top of the 30% home advantage. However, the veil is consumed in the process: you lose 1 veil point per attacking colony. A 40-colony raid costs you 40 veil points. An 80-colony assault nearly strips it entirely. Sustained attacks will shatter even the strongest defenses.

Veil Against Photoids

The Dark Veil also absorbs a significant portion of photoid strike damage. A civilization with high veil will suffer far fewer colony losses and resource destruction than one caught exposed. Additionally, the veil itself erodes on impact — a photoid strike can shatter a substantial amount of your veil in an instant. See the Photoids section for details.

17. Specialization

As your civilization advances, a critical juncture emerges. The galaxy's fundamental forces — observation, concealment, and aggression — cannot all be mastered by one mind. You must choose which philosophy will define your late-game capabilities.

The Choice

Once you have completed the prerequisite research across all major branches (Astronomy II, Espionage II, Dark Veil II, Signal Array, Counter-Espionage I, and Weapons I), three specialization paths become available. The choice is instant, free, and permanent — it cannot be reversed.

Each path unlocks a unique capability immediately upon selection, and gates access to specific advanced research. Some late-game technologies become exclusive to your chosen path; others become permanently foreclosed. If you had active research that is incompatible with your new path, it is automatically cancelled and partially refunded.

The Three Paths

What Each Path Gains

Path Abilities

Bearing Analysis (Watcher) — Your signal array passively accumulates directional data from every passive signal detection of an enemy civilization. When enough bearings converge on a common source, the system triangulates candidate star locations and alerts you. Requires Signal Array research, but no manual action — runs automatically as your sensors gather data.

Disruption Strike (Striker) — A sub-lethal veil erosion weapon that strips concealment without destroying colonies. Travels at photoid speed, generates a signal spike on launch, but has shorter cooldown and lower cost than photoids. Hits any occupied star regardless of signal strength.

Dark Harvest (Phantom) — Passively reclaims radiated emissions captured by your Dark Veil, boosting harvest income. Bonus scales with veil coverage — total concealment produces maximum energy recovery.

Signal Lock (Striker) — Your photoids pierce a significant portion of the target's Dark Veil when calculating colony damage, and the signal spike after launch is shorter. Applies automatically to all strikes.

Resource Salvage (Striker) — Successful photoid strikes recover energy from destroyed colonies. Small targets with few colonies yield no salvage.

Echo Analysis (Striker) — Every disruption strike returns a binary echo readback confirming whether the target star is occupied, turning disruptions into a dual-purpose reconnaissance tool.

Covert Strike (Phantom) — Significantly shortens the signal spike after photoid launch and reduces the cooldown between strikes. Pairs with Deep Veil to make the Phantom's strikes difficult to trace.

18. Siphon Drones

Not all warfare is lethal. A siphon drone is a parasitic device deployed to an occupied star, silently draining a fraction of the victim's energy harvest and funneling it back to the attacker. The victim's economy slowly bleeds while the attacker profits.

Requirements

How They Work

Deploy a siphon drone to any star in your intelligence list. The drone travels to the target and, if the star is occupied, activates and begins draining a percentage of the victim's gross energy harvest every game tick. The stolen energy is added to your reserves. If the star is unoccupied when the drone arrives, it fails and shuts down.

An active siphon operates for several days before its power supply is exhausted. If the victim migrates away, the siphon suspends — extraction pauses until someone else occupies the star, or it eventually expires.

Counter-Espionage Detection

Victims with counter-espionage research will eventually detect the siphon's presence. The detection progresses through stages, similar to how foreign decoys are detected:

• Anomaly — The victim notices unusual energy variance at their star. Something is wrong, but the cause is unclear.
• Drain Confirmed — Higher counter-espionage confirms that energy is being actively siphoned by a foreign device.
• Device Located — The siphon's exact position is identified. A system sweep can now neutralize it.

Civilizations with no counter-espionage research will never detect the siphon. Those with advanced counter-espionage detect it faster.

Removal

A system sweep at the victim's star removes any active siphon drones along with foreign decoys. Photoid impacts at the star also destroy siphon drones as collateral damage.

19. Specters

A specter is a persistent false signal source — the Phantom's answer to the decoy, but fundamentally different in nature. A decoy is a physical deception device: it travels to its target, sits there as matter, expires, and can be shattered by any kinetic event at the star. A specter is not a device at all. It is a remote signal projection sustained by the Phantom from home — no object ever travels to the target, nothing physical exists at the destination. The target star simply appears, to anyone listening, to host a civilization that isn't there.

Requirements

Deployment

Deploy a specter to any visible star within your astronomy range. You choose the signal strength when deploying: weak, moderate, or strong. Because a specter is a signal projection rather than a physical device, there is no travel time — it activates the instant you re-aim your projector. It persists indefinitely until you recall it, reposition it, or it is destroyed. A specter cannot be deployed on your own star.

Your specter can be recalled at any time, freeing you to deploy it elsewhere. Repositioning to a new star is subject to a 24-hour cooldown.

What It Fools

A specter mimics the electromagnetic signature of a living civilization, just like a decoy. It fools:

• Probes — A probe arriving at an empty star with a specter will detect the specter's signal and return a suspected reading, as if a civilization were present.
• Scouts — Scout sweeps that include the specter's star will register the phantom signal.
• Passive detection — Signal array sensors cannot distinguish a specter from a real civilization.

On an occupied star, a specter amplifies the occupant's signal, making them easier to detect — just as a decoy would.

What Sees Through It

A sophon deployed to the specter's star will identify it as a specter in its intel reports. Sophon surveillance sees through the illusion entirely, distinguishing the false signal from reality. The specter's own player is also never fooled by their own specter.

Destruction

Because specters have no physical substrate at the target, only one thing ends them against your will: a system sweep. The broad-spectrum electromagnetic countermeasures of a sweep collapse the fine interference pattern the projection relies on, terminating it at the target. Photoids, being kinetic/radiation strikes against matter, pass through specters entirely — there is nothing physical for a photoid to destroy. This is one of the Phantom's key advantages: a specter cannot be burned off by bombardment the way a decoy can.

20. Galaxy Canvas & Sector Surveys

The star map shows your immediate neighborhood. The galaxy canvas shows the bigger picture — a strategic overview of the entire galaxy, divided into sectors, revealing the shape of the conflict at a scale no individual probe or listening post can capture.

Sectors

The galaxy is divided into approximately 32 sectors, arranged in concentric rings: core, mid, and outer. Each sector contains a cluster of stars. You can see all sectors on the canvas, but most are hidden under a fog of war that lifts only as you gather intelligence. Stars you have probed, contacts you have made, and assets you have deployed all contribute to clearing the fog in their sector.

The Canvas

The galaxy canvas renders sectors as wedge-shaped regions on a radial grid. Your home sector is always visible. Infrastructure markers show where your probes, listening posts, decoys, sophons, and other deployments are positioned at sector level. Contact diamonds mark sectors where known civilizations have been detected. Activity tints shade sectors based on survey results, so hot zones stand out at a glance.

Sector Surveys

A sector survey is a broad sensor sweep of an entire sector. Launch a survey from the sector detail panel — it runs asynchronously for several hours and returns a report on the sector's overall activity level, how many wake signatures were detected, how many occupied stars were found, and whether precursor energy traces suggest a nearby ruin site.

Survey results are based on real player activity within the sector — not random data. A sector with high wake activity likely has civilizations transiting through it. A sector with occupied stars has someone living there. The survey does not tell you who or where exactly — but it tells you where to look next.

If the survey detects precursor energy traces in the sector, it surfaces a candidate cluster of stars — one of which holds a hidden ruin. These clusters track your probing progress and stall when exhausted without resolution, the same lifecycle as resonance clues; see Precursor Ruins for the details.

21. Migration

Sometimes survival means abandoning everything. When your star becomes too dangerous or too visible, migration offers escape. Your colonies detach from orbit and drift through the void toward a new home. During transit, you can only wait.

Migration Cost

1,000 resources per colony. The cost scales with your size. More colonies mean more energy to move. Sometimes the only way to survive is to become small again.

Migration Range

Limited by your Astronomy research:

• Astronomy I: 1 hop (direct neighbors)
• Astronomy II: 2 hops
• Astronomy III: 3 hops

Travel Hazards

Arrival: Empty Stars

If the destination is unoccupied, your fleet settles into orbit. You begin harvesting immediately.

Arrival: Occupied Stars

If someone is already there, a territorial battle unfolds:

Defender Advantage

• Home advantage: 30% base damage reduction
• Veil protection: Up to 50% additional reduction (scales with veil %)
• Veil consumption: 1 veil point consumed per attacking colony. A large fleet will burn through your veil rapidly.

22. Broadcasts

When your probes confirm a civilization at a distant star, you gain leverage. You can share these coordinates with others, painting a target on your enemy's back without firing a shot.

Broadcast Types

Every broadcast you receive adds a new entry to your intelligence list. Someone out there wants you to know about this star. Perhaps they want you to attack it. Perhaps they want you distracted. Perhaps they're testing if you exist.

23. Photoids: Dark Forest Strikes

Every intelligence system in the game — probes, scouts, sophons, broadcasts — exists to answer one question: where are they? The photoid is the answer to the next question: what do you do about it?

Requirements

Targeting

A photoid can only be launched at a star in your intelligence list — confirmed probes, sophon surveillance, broadcast intel, or warnings. You cannot fire blindly into the void; you need coordinates, and coordinates come from intelligence.

Launch a photoid from the attack button on the Intelligence screen. Only one photoid can be in transit to any given star at a time.

A photoid knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The photoid guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive the photoid from a position where it is to a position where it isn't, and arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was, is now the position that it isn't.

Signal Lock

A photoid does not track a civilization — it locks onto the electromagnetic signal emanating from a star at the moment of impact, not at launch. This has critical implications:

• Ghost civilizations — A target with a very low signal is essentially invisible to photoid targeting. The weapon arrives, finds nothing to lock onto, and dissipates harmlessly. Small, veiled civilizations on cold stars can survive strikes entirely.
• Faint signals — Against targets with moderate signal, the photoid achieves only a partial lock. Damage is reduced proportionally — the fainter the target, the weaker the strike.
• Bright signals — A large, exposed civilization on a hot star offers a perfect lock. The photoid delivers its full devastating payload.

Impact

When a photoid achieves signal lock on an occupied star, it inflicts three types of damage:

Special Cases

• Target migrated — If the civilization departed before the photoid arrives, it strikes empty space. Nothing happens.
• Decoy present — If a decoy is deployed at the target star, the photoid engages the decoy, destroying it. However, the decoy only absorbs part of the photoid's energy — the remaining damage passes through to any civilization at the star. A stronger decoy absorbs more of the blast. If multiple decoys are present, the photoid engages the strongest one, but all decoys at the star are destroyed in the impact.
• Signal too faint — If the target's signal has dropped below the lock threshold by the time the photoid arrives, the strike fails entirely.
• Listening posts destroyed — Any active listening posts at the impact star are destroyed. Their owners receive a high-energy signature alert before the posts go offline.
• Collateral destruction — Siphon drones at the impact star are also destroyed in the blast. Their owners are notified. Specters are not affected — they are signal projections with no physical presence at the target, and photoids pass through them harmlessly.

Anonymity & the Fog of War

The photoid is completely anonymous. The victim receives no information about the attacker — only that destruction has arrived from the void.

But the anonymity cuts both ways: the attacker receives no feedback either. You launch a photoid into the darkness and it disappears. Did it hit? Did the target die? Did they move? Was there a decoy? You will never know — unless you have intelligence at the destination.

This creates a natural synergy: sophon first, photoid second. Send your eye before your weapon.

Sophon Detection

If an enemy has an active sophon monitoring your star when you launch a photoid, the sophon detects the launch. The sophon's owner learns the destination star and the estimated time of arrival. The destination is automatically added to their intelligence list.

This means that a civilization under sophon surveillance cannot launch a covert strike. Their target — or anyone watching — may receive advance warning.

Signal Spike

Firing a photoid is not a quiet act. The launch generates a temporary but significant increase in your electromagnetic signal, lasting several hours. During this window, you are more visible to probes and passive detection. Strike from the shadows, but know that the shadows thin when you do.

Warnings

Once you have completed Astronomy I research, you can send warnings to known contacts. A warning is a direct message to a civilization at a star in your intelligence list.

Warnings are a tool of diplomacy and deterrence. You can warn a neighbor that you see them, establishing mutual awareness. You can warn a target before striking, giving them a chance to flee. Or you can warn someone that someone else has their coordinates.

But every warning reveals your own position. To speak is to be seen.

24. Leaderboard

The leaderboard ranks all living civilizations by a composite measure of their endurance, growth, advancement, and discovery. It is not a simple resource count — hoarding energy will not climb the rankings. Instead, the score reflects how much a civilization has done: how long it has survived, how far its research has progressed, how many colonies it has grown, and how many ruin fragments it has recovered.

Your own position is always visible at the top of the leaderboard, regardless of which page you are viewing. Each entry shows the civilization's name, score, total uptime, and whether they are currently online.

Civilizations that endure, expand, and advance will naturally rise. There is no single path to the top — a long-lived explorer with modest colonies can compete with an aggressive empire that expanded rapidly. The ranking rewards commitment over any particular strategy.

25. Web App

Web App

Darkling is a web application at app.godark.cc where you manage your civilization from any browser. Register with an email and password to access the command interface — star map, research tree, intelligence, sophon controls, and more.

Intelligence Briefing

When you return after being away, the command interface presents a briefing of events that occurred during your absence — threats intercepted, intelligence gathered, research completed, deployments arrived. The briefing categorizes events so you can quickly assess what demands attention and what can wait.

26. Glossary