Thanks for the tips. I think I'll build only a large enough fleet to provide me with a enough cash to fully upgrade my base ship and to buy components when I reach later in the game and can't be bothered to craft them.
My plan is only to reach the centre of the galaxy (hopefully unravelling the game's deeper mysteries) then to move on to another game. My pile is getting pretty tall now. And, while No Man's Sky is wonderfully low-friction and (largely) stress free, there isn't quite enough here for me to want to stay in its universe once I complete the main storyline.
I say 'low-friction', but the game does have a lot of quirks that irk. For example, I spent some time trying to work out how to fuel my frigates, because the player has to fuel or power everything in this game by fitting 'cards' into slots in the User Interface... Everything except frigates, it appears. They effectively fuel themselves direct from the inventory in the player's freighter!
I know much ink has been spilled about the foibles of the ED economy, but it is deeply strange that the only way for a small business (as I was) to expand was to earn and spend their own money. An entire galaxy to explore, but no potential investors with free capital, no banks willing to make business expansion loans, and no starship manufacturers willing to offer finance on ships sales and upgrades! And my business had a pretty good track record...
Forgive me for mentioning another game but it sounds like you should try X4 series if you never have. I've always loved the ships in ED but never the gameplay. I enjoyed No Man Sky a lot but even with all the updates the core gameplay doesn't work on me. Still have the best docking sequence in all of space games though.
Forgive me for mentioning another game but it sounds like you should try X4 series if you never have. I've always loved the ships in ED but never the gameplay. I enjoyed No Man Sky a lot but even with all the updates the core gameplay doesn't work on me. Still have the best docking sequence in all of space games though.
No, please do mention other games!
I spent 24 hours watching a friend play original Elite on a BBC Micro more than 30 years ago, and since then I've had a hankering to immerse myself fully into a space simulator.
I tried a free trial of Eve Online almost 20 years ago, but found it incredibly opaque and made almost no progress before CCP Games asked me for money. Then I started playing Elite Dangerous in 2016, before falling off it completely after about a year. Now I'm giving No Man's Sky a whirl.
Sadly X4 Foundations appears to be PC-only, so I'll never get to try it. I'm only on PS5.
Yeah one of the odd things is a lot of space sim games are PC only. Someone might know the history as to why better then me but sim games tend to gravitate towards PC.
So after fighting off pirates attacking an imperiled freighter, I appear find myself the owner of capital freighter plus a smaller freighter that forms the basis of my nascent fleet.
I've been playing NMS for maybe 50 hours now, and still don't own a freighter. In fact, today I actually landed on a freighter for the first time, because I finally figured out how to do that. I could have bought a Class B for 10M, but it had less inventory than my little fighter so I didn't.
I had read that you can win a free freighter the way you just did. The one time I encountered that event, I killed off the pirates, then at the very end one of my shots winged one of the freighter's defenders, so they all turned hostile to me and I had to scarper. 
I also have a small fleet of other starships that I've found and repaired. I haven't done much else with them, though, so they're all sitting around until I can figure out whether it's worth the time to repair them as replacements for my starter ship, or sell them as salvage.
It would be good if the game provided the same "comparison tool" between two starships that you get when you first repair & claim a new one.
The ships I have now are:
* Radiant Pillar BC1 (Class B), 13 Tech & 25 Inventory
* The Ashes of Madness (C, 20 Tech, 37 Inventory)
* The Falcon of Dreams (B, 24 Tech, 38 Inventory)
* Imabaraz Singer XVIII (B, 17 Tech, 27 Inventory)
I think the middle two are Haulers, and I don't know what the last one might be:
My only experience with a game (a little) like this is, of course, Elite: Dangerous, a game which I found incredibly parsimonious. Nothing was free... and everything that wasn't free was incredibly expensive. It took me weeks of play to work my way up from the starting Sidewinder to a modestly equipped Asp Explorer.
I always looked upon that parsimony as a feature, not a bug, but I understand why some people don't like it.
I think I'm going to like the fleet system. One of my main gripes about Elite: Dangerous was that the only business model available to the player was that of 'sole trader'. If I wanted, say, to expand my trading business, I couldn't buy another small ship and hire someone to fly it for me. I had to buy a bigger ship, and fly it myself.
I like the exploring & combat much more than the business stuff, so I think that's why I always enjoyed the Elite series and bounced of the X series (that master0 suggested to you). I put a lot of hours into the original X (X: Beyond the Frontier) back when it was originally released, but never played X2, X3, or X4 (although X4 has been tempting TBH).
I've been playing NMS for maybe 50 hours now, and still don't own a freighter. In fact, today I actually landed on a freighter for the first time, because I finally figured out how to do that. I could have bought a Class B for 10M, but it had less inventory than my little fighter so I didn't
The freighter is something you get in addition to, not in place of, your main ship. It is definitely worth buying the next one you can just to have the hangars to see all of your ships at once and the frigate mission system for making money on the side. Also building the freighter base is fun and can make some things more convenient if you lay it out well.
detroit20, Eve Online is good, and deep, and... It's a literal job, once you get into it and hook up with a corporation. You dodged a bullet.
Hrdina wrote:I've been playing NMS for maybe 50 hours now, and still don't own a freighter. In fact, today I actually landed on a freighter for the first time, because I finally figured out how to do that. I could have bought a Class B for 10M, but it had less inventory than my little fighter so I didn't
The freighter is something you get in addition to, not in place of, your main ship. It is definitely worth buying the next one you can just to have the hangars to see all of your ships at once and the frigate mission system for making money on the side. Also building the freighter base is fun and can make some things more convenient if you lay it out well.
Oh, yes, I didn't word that very well. I knew that the freighter is like a mobile base and doesn't replace my main ship. I just meant that for something that is supposed to be some enormous cargo ship, it felt weird that its cargo limit was less than my tiny little fighter.
All that said, within a half-hour or so of writing that message yesterday, I jumped into a new system, rescued a freighter from some pirates, and this time managed not to shoot any friendlies. Now I own DSV-3 Beppusca, a Class B freighter for free, along with one Science frigate. Now I just need to figure out what to do with them. Looks like the first thing I need to do is build a teleport chamber.
In the same system I answered a distress call and found a settlement that apparently wants me to apply to be Overseer. I feel like the only person in the galaxy who works. Who sets up a settlement on a fiery radioactive planet, anyway?
You should have a new side quest that walks you through the frigate systems. Talk to one of the guys in the freighter control room at the round console in the middle.
You should have a new side quest that walks you through the frigate systems. Talk to one of the guys in the freighter control room at the round console in the middle.
Thanks, he had me build a Fleet Control room and send my Science Frigate off on an expedition.
Mixolyde wrote:You should have a new side quest that walks you through the frigate systems. Talk to one of the guys in the freighter control room at the round console in the middle.
Thanks, he had me build a Fleet Control room and send my Science Frigate off on an expedition.
Congratulations, you've taken your first step into a much more lucrative world!
Having a banking terminal in your freighter base, usually close to the teleporter, is also very convenient, and something I try to do as early as I can. It's helpful for selling off the random trade goods that frigates find.
They released a new update this afternoon and a new expedition.
I intend to go fishing in a bit..
They released a new update this afternoon and a new expedition.
I was wondering whether the new expedition was related to the quest I got last night to go talk to the folks back on the Anomaly about something or other. But, I didn't download the update until I got home from work tonight.
The expeditions run separately from your regular save file, unless you specifically sign up for it at the Expeditions portal in the Anomaly.
If you start a new game from the menu screen one of the options will be for the expedition. You can start it from there.
When you are finished you can either carry on that save, or go back to your regular save file and then reclaim all the expedition rewards from the Quicksilver vendor on the anomaly as well.
Man, they just keep on rolling. Love me a new expedition!
They said in a separate comment that they fixed the flickering clouds issue on PSVR2. I'm gonna have to check this out again. When I first tried it in VR I got frustrated when I was surprised in space combat and couldn't figure out aiming.
I've managed a few more hours today, bringing me to around 20 in total. I've reached the point in the Artemis questline where I've found and used my first portal. And now the game feels oddly 'flat'. It's really just an endless loop of solo (and rather lonely) collecting and crafting (or more accurately collecting, refining and crafting).
I think part of the problem is that I don't feel like I'm sharing the universe with anybody. I see other players (I assume they're other players, not bots) running around the Anomaly) and I occasionally 'push square' on a quest-giver. But I'm not actually interacting with anyone. I'm just running around ticking items off of lists.
And the illusion of provided by the procedurally generated planets has started to lose its magic too. As strange as it is to say... all of the planets feel exactly the same.
I will plough on because I know that I'm making progress, but it does feel a lot like chewing gum that's lost its flavour.
I've managed a few more hours today, bringing me to around 20 in total. I've reached the point in the Artemis questline where I've found and used my first portal. And now the game feels oddly 'flat'. It's really just an endless loop of solo (and rather lonely) collecting and crafting (or more accurately collecting, refining and crafting).
I think part of the problem is that I don't feel like I'm sharing the universe with anybody. I see other players (I assume they're other players, not bots) running around the Anomaly) and I occasionally 'push square' on a quest-giver. But I'm not actually interacting with anyone. I'm just running around ticking items off of lists.
And the illusion of provided by the procedurally generated planets has started to lose its magic too. As strange as it is to say... all of the planets feel exactly the same.
I will plough on because I know that I'm making progress, but it does feel a lot like chewing gum that's lost its flavour.
There does come a point in NMS where you realise that whatever it is you want to get out of the game, you need to input most of it yourself.
Be it building amazing bases, exploring and documenting as many planets as you can, to trying to visit all 256 galaxies, the game isn't going to do any of it for you. It's down to you to make it happen.
However if you are really lonely then the expeditions are a good way of seeing other people flying around, or make sure you visit the anomaly as often as you can.
There is a quality to the loneliness that is a big part of the appeal for me.
The universe isn't exactly hostile, or even indifferent. The player is clearly an essential component in the universe.
But still, it conveys a sense that you are a very small part of something very vast.
Another analogy: the player's relationship with the universe in NMS is sort of like the difference between a pet owner's relationship with a cat versus a dog. Most game universes are more like a dog - they demand your attention and are totally focused and reactive to you, the player. NMS's game universe is more like a cat - you are an important component of the cat's world, but it doesn't seek your attention all the time and it has it's own things going on.
Anyway, I'm more of a cat person.
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