October 19 2011 New Gates Announcement

Dark Orbit has announced two new galaxy gates: Epsilon and Zeta. Epsilon requires 99 pieces! There's already a youtube video up here. They claim the LF4s are a possible reward. I wonder if you'd be more likely to get one in a chest or in the gate. It will probably be awhile until you can purchase LF4 with uridium. Dark Orbit is using gambler's psychology: the more chests you open, the more you believe the next one will contain one although the odds have not changed per individual event. If you are trying to get an LF4, expect to purchase at least 200 keys. I've found a lot of chests from boss little lords in X-2.

The zeta gate requires 111 pieces and may award you with the Havoc drone design. Drone designs have been a controversial topic on the suggestions forums. Some people are concerned with "balance," while others are bored of the same drones. I personally believe more powerful drones does create imbalance, but it'd be fun to be able to have colored drones with no special abilities. A white Goli with hot pink drones would be pretty cute ;) "Balance" just means that new players would be able to survive and grow to catch up to more veteran players. The Havoc design makes lasers equiped on the drone 10% more powerful. Announcements like these cause me to envy the wallet warriors for their awesome ships. I have not seen a Havoc drone on anyone's ships yet.

As for an update on the box encryption announcement, I believe I was right. I have been boxing for my second iris (24,000 uri) and still have not encountered an encrypted box. Dark Orbit has recently bragged of their bot detection and bans. I believe the box encryption was a way for Dark Orbit to have more concrete evidence that the suspected botters were away from their keyboards. I'm partially surprised that Dark Orbit hasn't created their own bot to sell as a monthly subscription, but glad that they have taken the stand against cheaters.

Alien Profile: Lordakia

Nicknames
Lords, Little Lords, Small Lords

Locations
X-2, X-3, X-4, X-5, 4-5


Attributes
Hit Points: 2000
Shield: 2000
Damage: 80
Speed: 320

Kill Awards
EP: 800
Credit: 800
Uridium: 2
Honor: 4
P/E/T: 20/20/20
Drone Points: Phoenix - 6 ; Yamato - 5 ; Leonov - 4 ; Defcom - 3 ; Liberator - 2 ; Piranha - 1

Survive Them
Lords are significantly faster and stronger than streuners for new players. Multiple lasers should be able to defeat them easily. They do shoot while chasing after you. A BigBoy will need a few speed generators to run away from them. Circling generally does not help. They run away quickly when their health is low, making finishing them off difficult for new players not fast enough to chase them.

Another Bigpoint Game to Love

Lovers of Dark Orbit who play on Mac OS X or Windows XP should consider playing Battlestar Galactica. Similar to Dark Orbit, choose a side and dominate outer space! Join the cylons or the humans, pick your ship, and customize your character's appearance. Even if you do not like the show that the game is based off of, the graphics and spaceship designs are reason enough to give it a try. Unlike Dark Orbit, Battlestar Galactica is a 3D first person shooter game. It is more difficult to play than Dark Orbit, but is fun if you can multitask on a 3D map. Click on the banner to play!

Galactic Defender Special Offer

This banner pop ups frequently for new pilots, before achieving level 7. 1 Bigboy, 15 B01 shield generators, 1 Clo4k CPU, and 10 repair credits for $1.99. Let's consider the cost of uridium to determine if this newbie special is worth $1.99.

Each B01 is worth 2,500 uridium. A Clo4k CPU sells for 10,000 uridium. You cannot buy repair credits, but the cost of repair without the credits is 500 uridium each. The bigboy is 200,000 credits. In total, this package gives you 52,500 uridium and 200,000 credits worth of material.

Compare that value to what you could purchase uridium for. During Mega Happy Hour, 90,000 uridium can be purchased for $12.99. Considering the cost of uridium, this is an awesome deal. But do you really want 15 B01 shield generators with 4,000 shield strength and 70% less damage? I think they are a good investment. After buying a bigger ship from uridium or auction, having 15 B01 shield generators will allow you to equip drones in addition to your generator slots as you upgrade your shields with B02s. I would not recommend remaining as a Bigboy for long though. They tend to become target practice for high level players.

Repair Without Spending Uridium

Spending 500 uridium to repair your ship is expensive, but often avoidable. Below are some tips and tricks, not necessarily in chronological order. Feel free to comment if you have any other strategies to prevent spending Uridium on repairs.

Ship Profile: Phoenix Starjet

Nickname Peanut
Cost Free
Speed 320
Cargo 200
Lasers 1
Generators 1
Hit Points 4000
Rockets 100
Extras 1

Pros	Cons
Free Fast Fastest drone leveling FEs are highly respected by other players Surprise opponents when strong and skilled	Bullied by company members when small Low HP Small space for cargo and ammo

Pics or It Didn't Happen, with GIMP

You may have noticed my screenshots from other posts. I also use screenshots whenever I "Earn Uridium Cash for Action"

I have observed that the more Uridium you can earn for completing an offer or survey, the more likely you will not earn any Uridium. Taking screenshots of my survey completion page or confirmation email gives me proof that I then upload to imgur.com to quickly link to support. I recommend using GIMP for multiple reasons: free ; works on Windows, Mac and Linux ; easy. If you know how to use Photoshop but cannot afford your own license, you will be very excited about this program. Find the download here.

October 06 2011 Box Encryption Announcement

Dark Orbit has announced a strategy to prevent boxing bots in an attempt to make the game more fair for everyone. If you are unfamiliar with boxing bots, they allow someone to be away from their computer while a program either recognizes the boxes in space or monitors the middle code between bigpoint and the flash game to know exactly where the boxes are. Boxing bots have two advantages. First of all, they can be turned on while the player is doing something besides dark Orbit, like sleeping. Second of all, they are extremely fast compared to a real person. As someone who does not cheat with a bot, cloaked boxing bots are incredibly annoying to compete with while boxing. I am excited that the announcement has deterred the botters, but I am curious about the encryption change. According to the announcement, random boxes will require the user to type in the encrypted words shown in the image. If the pilot or bot cannot get it right, they cannot collect anymore boxes until they are successful. If they get it right, they recieve double the box contents. I have collected at least 100 boxes since this announcement and have not encountered an encrypted box. The announcement has been effective at preventing botters, which I believe is because botters do not want to have their account banned after being stuck on a box for a considerable amount of time.

I do have a few concerns about this change. Are the encrypted boxes honestly random? I wonder if Dark Orbit is able to give a higher ratio of encrypted boxes to members who are reported as botters by fellow space pilots. Also, what happens if a pilot is being attacked while trying to type the encrypted words? Can they fight/run and resume the encryption later, but before they collect another box? Will bot developers find a way to recognize the encrypted image through pixel recognition or being able to avoid boxes that contain the encryption? Artificial Intelligence is a fun area of expertise for computer programmers. Developers love logic, challenges, and video games. I doubt any changes will deter bots for very long.

How to Start Your Skylab

Your skylab has potential to make 6,000,000 credits a day, without ever leaving base. Before it can make you that much credits, you have to invest time, credits, and ore to build it.

Step 1
Your skylab starts with 100 prometium, 100 endurium, and 100 terbium. Your first step is to use those initial ore collections to build your endurium and terbium collectors. It is easier to start building those two first because prometium is easier to collect from NPCs or floating in space. You need to collect 50 of the ore that you did not build.

Flax Farming

This strategy works best for small ships with 5 slots for flax drones (3 or less IRIS). You can make 7 million credits by flying around in a phoenix for a couple hours shooting streuners and lordakia. I prefer using a phoenix with one shield generator on the ship and one on a drone, using the rest of the drones to hold LF-3 lasers, a cargo bay expander, and an armory expander. Flying around in a phoenix is cheap because buying a new one after being popped is free. Any of the first four ships will work. The initial investment is 3,100,000 credits. After a few hours of game play, you can profit over 7,000,000 credits! You can increase your earnings by boxing and selling cargo simultaneously.

Step 1
Buy 5 flax drones from the shop. They double in price each time, beginning at 100,000 credits. The price is determined by how many drones you have, not how many you have ever bought. For example, a flax drone will always be 1,600,000 credits if you are flying with 4 flax drones.

Alien Profile: Streuner

Description
The weakest of enemies, located in X-1 and X-2, it works only as a large bonus box for all as even a single LF-1 can take a streuner down!

Attributes
Hit Points: 800
Shield: 400
Damage: 20
Fire Rate: 3-4 Hits per 5 seconds
Speed: < 300 Kill Awards
EP: 400
Credit: 400
Uridium: 1
Honor: 2
P/E/T: 10/10/0
Drone Points: Phoenix - 4 ; Yamato - 3 ; Leonov - 2 ; Defcom - 1