Darkbattle is a text-based MMO.
The game consists of many groups of players within a futuristic setting who fight for military superiority using fleets of starships.

Gameplay

Darkbattle is played in rounds, each round usually containing 3000 ticks. Each tick is a unit of time lasting 30 minutes. Ships, Planetary Defense Stations (PDS), and other such things are built in units of ticks - that is, it can take up to a full day and a half (or 72 ticks) to build the biggest of ships.

The objective of the game is to gather asteroids (referred to by the Darkbattle community as 'roids') which provide resources, use those resources to build ships and PDS in order to increase a player's overall score, and become first-ranked.

One of the greatest influences on a player's success is his or her relationship with other players. Each player is in a group of up to 5 other planets, and these 6 planets together are collectively known as galaxies. Most galaxies act as one unit, and often the planets within the galaxy are more concerned with the success of the galaxy than their own individual planet. Each galaxy can elect a Galactic Commander by majority vote, who in turn appoints two players to the rank of Minister of War and Minister of Development. He or she also sets the galaxy tax, which takes a portion (up to 30%) of each player's income and donates it to a collective galaxy fund. The Galactic Commander may also make cosmetic changes to the galaxy, such as changing its name, banner, welcome page, etc. The Minister of War has sole control over the galaxy fleet, to which any planet can donate ships. The Minister of Development has control over the galaxy fund, and can donate portions of this fund to individual players within the galaxy.

As a result of this unique structuring of a galaxy's political power, most galaxies are truly oligarchies, with only the Minister of War(MoW) and Minister of Development(MoD) capable of exerting significant amounts of influence over the Galactic Commander. In most galaxies, the Galactic Commander's support from these two Ministers as a result of their appointment is enough to ensure the security of the Galactic Commander's position. Intragalaxy conflict is extremely rare, and revolution almost nonexistent. The most common form of protest against a Galactic Commander's abuse of power is a player's departure from the galaxy itself, though this is also fairly rare in a militarily secure galaxy.

Several galaxies may form friendships or strategic alliances with one another, and work towards a common goal. Alliances tend to be intensely suspicious of one another; consequently, Darkbattle tends to have a heavily political overtone, with wars between multiple alliances erupting regularly.

In recent times, abuse of the alliance function to join several alliances together (thus creating a "superalliance", or SA) has led to an informal ban of these superalliances between alliances not first-ranked. However, due to a lack of strict regulation and enforcement of this rule, superalliances occasionally do form, making it almost impossible to usurp the superalliance's positiom

Community

The community in Darkbattle is primarily composed of a small group of veterans who know each other and have played in previous rounds. The players in the community are generally welcoming towards new members and help them gain experience and become one of the major players in the politics. The community is currently several hundred people in size, so gameplay-related friendships tend to be slightly more intimate than larger-scale MMORPGs.

Portal

The Darkbattle Portal is a current project of which is being made by players of Darkbattle. This project consists of many user submissions such as art, stories, galaxy banners, etc. Players will also be able to show opinions by submitting Reviews of many different medias, including books, movies, and video games. Some official work will be on portal, such as the Official Darkbattle Story, Editorials, and Official Reviews.

The Darkbattle Portal project is had been delayed for an undetermined amount of time.

External links

Darkbattle official site

Official Darkbattle Story