Who gets points for destroying and other attacking tips?
Dark Orbit works on a first come first serve basis. If you spot an alien or another player and their name is in red and the credit is red, then this unit is free to fire upon. If you see the name and circle in white that means another player has targeted that unit and if you commence attack on that unit you will not get the points and resources.
This happens to new players all the time before they realized how the system works. If a player is attacking a unit and gets kill, wait a moment until that unit’s name turns red, which means this unit is free to attack.
Another side tip to this is to look at the name of the alien unit, sometime the “boss” looks just like the regular alien, but will pack a lot more hit points and damage per shoot. I have lost a lot of ammo by not looking, just to realized that the alien that would normally take 20 shoots to kill has not die even after 30 shots.
One way to stay safe is to “drag” the aliens closer to the portal. During the initial attack the alien will be on the offensive and will “follow” or “chase” you, so this will when you can lead the alien closer to the portal. The reason why you would want to do this is that enemy players will often wait till you have exhausted your shield trying to kill an alien to attack you. So if you are closer to the portal, this will help you get to the safe zone faster.
And finally, make sure to set one setting to attack by loading it with lasers and one setting to speed by loading it with engines. You will figure this out once you start playing the game.