The Dark Fog

The Dark Fog is the enemy faction added in the “Rise of the Dark Fog” combat update. It seeks matter and energy and targets your facilities, layering tower defense on the ground and space-fleet combat overhead on top of the base factory game. Crucially, its aggression is set at world creation, so you can play it as a survival threat, a passive nuisance, or turn it off entirely and keep the pure factory game.

Setting the aggression

You choose how hostile the Dark Fog is when you create the world, and the choice shapes the whole run.

Setting	Behavior
Aggressive / normal	Expands, raids, and retaliates
Passive	Does not attack unless you start hostilities
Dummy (peaceful)	Does not attack or retaliate at all

If you want the classic build-only experience, “Dummy” removes combat without removing the faction’s loot entirely from the world’s flavor. If you want the tension, leave it on normal and plan your defenses around the threat meter described below.

Bases, hives, and relays

The Dark Fog has a clear structure, and understanding it tells you what to attack and what to leave alone. Ground bases are built on planets. They extract “material” from the planetary core through a core tap and build combat vehicles, drawing their power from space through an orbital relay. Each base carries a threat, or hatred, meter; when it peaks, the base launches a raid toward your nearest power draw. Both your power usage on the planet and any combat you start raise that meter.

Space hives sit above, at least one per contested system. They are heavily defended by hundreds of ships and very tough. Hives gather power directly and beam it down through orbital relays to the ground bases. Destroying the hive starves those bases of power. Relay stations are the link between the two; attacking relays raises threat quickly, so relays are a lever you can pull deliberately depending on whether you want to farm or to clear.

Ground defense

The sustainable planetary defense leans on cheap, low-maintenance turrets backed by reliable power. The turret types each have a role:

• Gauss: cheap kinetic bullets, good in groups.
• Laser: runs on electricity only, no ammo supply line, easy to deploy.
• Missile: strong overall but expensive ammo. Missiles can fire at anything near a Signal Tower on the planet.
• Plasma: excellent anti-space, long range, near-instant hit.
• Implosion Cannon: high-end.

Signal Towers extend missile and turret targeting range across the planet. A common durable setup is laser turrets backed by accumulators, solar, or geothermal power, with some missiles as backup. The Battlefield Analysis Base collects drops and provides combat-related functions.

Keep threat low early. Minimize exposed power draw near Dark Fog bases and lean on cheap laser turrets, which need only electricity rather than an ammo line. Do not pick fights you cannot supply with ammo, because a stalled missile turret is just a target.

Space offense

Clearing the fog overhead means building a fleet. You launch Corvettes and Destroyers from the mecha, and a commonly cited early attack composition is roughly 8 Corvettes to 1 Destroyer. Clearing a hive is a grinding attritional fight that scales into needing hundreds of ships by the late game, so it is an economy test as much as a combat one. Once your production is strong, wiping hives starves the ground bases and quiets a system.

Loot and the Dark Fog Matrix

Killing Dark Fog units drops resources: ores, refined items, and combat components, all scaling with base level. The prize is the Dark Fog Matrix, which drops from units level 12 and above and is used for manual-only research of certain hidden technologies through the Icarus replicator, with the matrices held in inventory.

Farming high-level drops takes a light touch. A small amount of base experience is shared across all planetary bases, so wiping every base at once can suppress the levels you need for high-tier drops. To keep the drops flowing, leave at least one ground base alive to level up. Newer Holo Beacons add a “Dark Fog Beaconing” function that lets hives dispatch relay stations to a beacon location while it is powered and visible at least at “Local Planetary System” scale, which supports controlled farming setups.

Next: build the power and fleets that let you take the fight to space in the Dyson sphere deep guide. For how logistics keeps ammo and turrets supplied, see the logistics deep guide.