Dark Fog Farming

From the Dyson Sphere Program Wiki

The Dark Fog is the main enemy in Dyson Sphere Program, but it can prove useful to the player. By farming the Dark Fog, it will level up and drop progressively rarer and more valuable items, some of which are used for otherwise-unobtainable Technologies.

General Overview

To effectively farm the Dark Fog, the player must meet several requirements:

  • The farm must have weapons that automatically destroy Dark Fog units without harming the Planetary Bases producing them or the Relay Stations powering them.
  • If the player is not farming the maximum number of Planetary Bases at once, they must prevent the Dark Fog Space Hive from establishing new bases, whose units might destroy the confines of the farm.
  • The Dark Fog should always be in overdrive mode to maximize production of units and therefore maximize the farm's output.
  • The farm must have a system to automatically collect, organize, and store the Dark Fog's drops.

The simplest of these requirements to meet are the last two. Signal Towers will put the Dark Fog into permanent overdrive, and they also draw its attention away from key buildings. They are durable enough to shrug off incidental damage as well. Battlefield Analysis Bases automatically collect all dropped items in a large radius, and the player can construct item management and storage best suited for their own needs.

Cluster Generation

Before the game even begins, the player can adjust the Dark Fog's settings along with the cluster's settings. Some settings worth adjusting are:

  • Initial Level - Farming revolves around having the Dark Fog reach high levels to drop valuable items, so setting their Initial Level to 10 allows them to begin dropping useful items immediately. While this does make its units 100% stronger, the farm will primarily focus on destroying Raiders, which are very weak to begin with.
  • Combat XP Factor - This dictates how quickly the Dark Fog levels up when fighting the player. At the default 100%, the Dark Fog levels up fairly slowly, so increasing this factor saves a lot of time. It can go up to a maximum of 1000%, which may seem daunting, but the Dark Fog's stats increase linearly by 10% per level. By the time they reach level 24 to drop the best items, each level makes very little difference.
  • Power Threat Factor - This determines how quickly Planetary Bases launch attacks on the player's facilities. Once the Dark Fog is corralled into a farm, it can never launch a successful assault, since it requires a certain number of units available at once. By farming with Signal Towers, all units will be deployed and destroyed as quickly as they are produced. This makes both Power Threat Factor and Combat Threat Factor irrelevant to farming, but reducing Power Threat Factor to the minimum 1% largely prevents the Dark Fog from interfering with gameplay outside of the farm.

Power Generation

Like any other facility, a Dark Fog farm requires a lot of energy to stay running. However, the penalty for not meeting a farm's energy demands is far more severe; while a normal facility would just slow down or stop, a Dark Fog farm may wind up completely overrun and destroyed. Luckily, the Dark Fog itself provides a solution to this problem. By destroying Planetary Bases, holes are left behind that can have Geothermal Power Stations placed on them. These provide large amounts of power and have 100% uptime in all conditions, as long as they stay safe from the Dark Fog. Before setting up the farm, allow the Dark Fog to send several Relays to the planet and wipe out each Planetary Base as fast it's built. This will provide a solid power foundation to build the farm upon, and if more power is required at a later point, simply allow more Relays to land.

Additionally, turrets use a lot of power, but only in very short bursts. Having a bank of Accumulators allows power to build up whenever the turrets are not firing and helps prevent overdraw. An energy balancer using Energy Exchangers can provide enormous amounts of emergency power as well.

Weapons and Placement

The next important choice to make is what weapon(s) to use to destroy the Dark Fog's units. Any type of turret can be used in a Dark Fog farm, but if the turrets are placed very close to the Planetary Base (which will likely be the case when farming several Planetary Bases on one planet), the explosive damage from Missile Turrets or Implosion Cannons is liable to damage the bases and their camps. This costs the bases matter and energy that could have gone towards new units. If the farm is positioned very close to a Planetary Base, only use Gauss Turrets or Laser Turrets. Outside of this situation, the choice of turret makes little difference.

Some pointers on notable turrets to consider:

  • Gauss Turrets are very cheap to produce, use little power, and can deal even more damage than Laser Turrets when supplied with Superalloy Ammunition. They are also unlocked the earliest, allowing for simple farms even at the start of the game.
  • Laser Turrets use large amounts of energy but require no ammunition whatsoever to run, significantly cutting down on micromanagement.
  • Implosion Cannons shoot projectiles that travel to the target instantly and deal significant damage in a large blast radius, making them great at dealing with bigger swarms of units. The Dark Fog can also drop Explosive Units and Crystal Explosive Units, making it much easier to produce High-Explosive and Crystal Shell Sets.
    • Although SR Plasma Turrets also deal significant area damage, they require far too much energy to make them worthwhile over Implosion Cannons or Laser Turrets. They also shoot significantly slower.
  • Jammer Towers can greatly hinder the damage dealt by Dark Fog units, which can help protect turrets and buildings. However, Signal Towers are very durable and completely draw the Dark Fog's attention, so Jammer Towers may be unnecessary.
  • Missile Turrets can farm Dark Fog units and also drive off space invasions and unwanted Relay Stations. However, when using Signal Towers to aggro the Dark Fog, Missile Turrets can attack within the Signal Towers' range and are liable to attack the base itself.

Regardless of which turret is used, the placement strategy is the same. Once the Planetary Base is constructed, the Dark Fog will attempt to construct up to 3 each of Raider Camps and Plasma Sentries. These are placed in alternating order around the base, so two given Raider Camps are always separated by 120 degrees, with a spot for a Plasma Sentry between them. While the Raider Camps are the source of the Dark Fog units to farm, Plasma Sentries deal very high damage at a good range, enough to seriously damage or potentially destroy Signal Towers. As such, place turrets so that the Planetary Base is at the very edge of their range, with the Plasma Sentries inside their range but with the Raider Camps outside it. Pay attention to the Guideways constructed at the Planetary Base; Plasma Sentries are built on the short ones, while Raider Camps are built on the longer ones.

Handling Items

Once the player has formed a perimeter of turrets around the Planetary Base, the next step is to handle the item drops. Battlefield Analysis Bases have a lot of storage, but it is not infinite, and slots can be taken up surprisingly quickly if farming a lot of different items. Within the Battlefield Base's inventory is a menu to set the items that the Dark Fog is allowed to drop, so deselect all items that are irrelevant so they do not take up space. Each Battlefield Base also only has nine ports, so keep this in mind when selecting how many types of items should drop. Finally, add some external storage for each desired item. Logistics Distributors are a cheap and effective way to sort and gather Dark Fog drops from multiple Battlefield Bases on a planet.

It is possible to handle more than 9 items at a time from a single Battlefield Base by having an output Sorter with no filter (so it outputs all items indiscriminately). Have it feed a single long Conveyor Belt that feeds back into the Battlefield Base, and place other Sorters along the conveyor that have filters to pick up items as they pass and put them into storage or send them elsewhere. This does take up quite a bit more space, but is worthwhile when farming a lot of items at once.

Controlling the Dark Fog

While it is relatively straightforward to corral a Planetary Base, the Dark Fog will still continuously try to expand throughout the system and establish new Planetary Bases. A single Hive can only deploy a certain number of Relay Stations to a single planet (the specific maximum is currently unknown but appears to be around 7-9). If the player wishes to farm fewer Planetary Bases at once, they must have a way to prevent any new Planetary Bases from being built. Destroying the Hive itself may seem enticing, as this cuts off new Relays at the source. All established Planetary Bases will be too busy using their resources on new units to send any back to reconstruct the Hive, so it will effectively be out of commission permanently. However, the Hive is still a major source of energy for Planetary Bases. Without a Hive supplying them with energy, Planetary Bases will barely be able to produce any units, as the energy required to operate three Raider Camps in overdrive mode is much greater than the amount that the Relay can naturally generate.

Since destroying the Hive is not a viable option, the only way to prevent new bases from being constructed is to drive off Relays that attempt to reach the planet, as the farm will inevitably reach a point where the micromanagement of destroying new bases is undesirable. There are several ways to drive off Relay Stations that are arriving at a planet, with varying requirements:

  • Planetary Shield Generators prevent Relays from reaching their shielded areas, and with enough of them the entire planet can be permanently protected from any new Relays. However, they use enormous amounts of power even when idle, a whopping 12 MW per Shield Generator. Bring along several Artificial Stars and a good supply of Antimatter Fuel Rods when creating a planetary shield.
  • Missile Turrets and Plasma Turrets can attack Space targets, allowing them to destroy Relays before they reach the planet. Relays destroyed this way will also not increase the Hive's threat level. Plasma Turrets also have even longer range than Missile Turrets, and Plasma Capsules and Antimatter Capsules are very simple to produce.
  • Covering the entire planet with structures will leave nowhere for a Relay to establish a base, although this is generally impractical.

To truly eliminate micromanagement, these anti-Relay measures must be put in place on every planet in the system, as the Dark Fog will attempt to settle on each of them. While star systems with only a single planet are few and far between, they are the simplest systems to farm in the late game. It may be beneficial to purposefully allow Seeds to establish Hives in these systems.

The only remaining thing that will require micromanagement no matter what is the production of Seeds. The Hive will inevitably produce these, as farming allows the Dark Fog to continuously harvest matter and energy. To prevent the Dark Fog from spreading to new systems, the player must eliminate Seeds whenever they appear. Alternatively, the player can try to "prune" the Hive by attacking it and partially destroying its fleets and/or structures, forcing it to use its resources on reconstruction instead of Seeds. Luckily, in both cases the player will not need to check up on the system very often. Seeds travel extremely slowly through space and are completely vulnerable, so destroying them is simple as long as the player takes notice, and the Hive takes a long time to get back to the point where it may produce Seeds if it is partially destroyed.

Player Tips and Tricks

  • It may be worth setting up a Dark Fog farm even in the early and mid-game, so that it can level up and progress at the same time as the player to always drop relevant items. The beauty of Dark Fog farming is that the player is always free to alter the Dark Fog's drops to best suit their current needs, and in many cases they can skip building production facilities for complicated high-demand items like Super-Magnetic Rings and Explosive Units.
  • When planning to use the Dark Fog's drops to supply manufacturing facilities, pay attention to the drop rates of each item. Not all items will be required in equal ratios, and the drop rates of items can vary wildly; for instance, Titanium Alloy drops 1.50% of the time, but Deuteron Fuel Rods drop only 0.30% of the time, making them 5 times rarer. Some items also drop in different quantities at a time. For instance, Iron Ingots and Copper Ingots have the same drop rate, but Copper Ingots drop in 20% greater amounts at a time.
    • Organic items like Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes also have varying drop rates based on the type of planet the farm is located on, and will never drop at all on specific planet types.
  • At Lv.15+, the Dark Fog can drop all components required for producing Corvettes, which are required in large quantities to bring down Dark Fog Space Hives.
  • At Lv.21+, a Dark Fog farm can drop every component required to produce all types of Science Matrices, allowing the player to produce Universe Matrices with almost no production infrastructure. This becomes even more convenient thanks to the Self-evolution Labs that become available at Lv.18+. Science Matrices require a total of 11 different components, however, greater than the 9 ports of a Battlefield Base, but the player can still set up conveyor loops to farm more than 9 items at once. Some of the materials can also be easily supplied in other ways:
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