No Man's Sky - Procedural space game

[NexxCat]

I played through with keyboard and mouse. NMS's flight controls worked fine with that, but when playing Elite Dangerous I had to use a controller.

 

[Frostie1]

The flying aspect is definitely not worthy of using anything more than a controller.

 

[Kautya]

I have managed to get used to the flying with mouse now. And hunting low skilled pirates.

 

[Vimes]

No Man's Sky - Frontiers Update Tease & 5th Anniversary Trailer

.....not heard much of the up and coming Frontiers update, it might mean that I'll try it out no doubt.
From what I have read this will be the games 17th major update, this game just keeps on giving.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

Well they’ve certainly supported it well. Probably much of what was lost in the flood.

 

[SPG]

Mods are your friend. I use quite a few, including 'everything free', which takes the grind away!

Oh so this makes crafting a simple task of clicking build and its done without the idiot gameplay of gathering stuff for decades go away ? If so i may give this a try... I hate gathering and crafting its lame gameplay.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Oh so this makes crafting a simple task of clicking build and its done without the idiot gameplay of gathering stuff for decades go away ? If so i may give this a try... I hate gathering and crafting its lame gameplay.

Yep.

It'll break every time there's a big update though. Often takes a week or two for retrib (the mod maker) to get it working again.

 

[Vimes]

Not played in a while and just going through some old mods I used. Good to see that "Reduced Launch Cost" has been updated, that helps to reduce the grind......

Spoiler

 

[Vimes]

Someone made a post over in the Steam forums noting what they thought that each of the updates released by Hello Games have brought to NMS.......

Foundation:
- New game modes: Normal, Creative and Survival
- Base building/farming
- Deploy equipment in the field like Automated harvesters to gather resources continuously
- freighters
- New ressources and technology
- New UI quick menu
- Small visuals improvements
- Planet generation changes

Pathfinder:
- More visuals improvements
- Online Base building sharing
- Own multiple ships
- Starships specs
- Exocraft vehicles
- Exocraft race tracks
- New shops and traders
- More base building variety
- Multi-tool specs and classes
- New weapon modes
- Permadeath mode
- Photo mode
- Discovery menu improvements
- New music
- Quality of Life improvements

Atlas rises:
- A complete 30 hours story
- Galactic map regeneration
- New planets type and improved biomes
- Significant visuals improvements
- Crashed freighters to loot
- A constantly generated mission system
- More harvesting, farming, trading
- Analysis visor improvements
- More advanced user interface like mission logs, etc
- Terrain voxel editing
- Portals
- Space combat improvements
- Low flight on planets
- Joint exploration (the start of multiplayer, we saw other players as blue orb and that's it)
- New ships
- Quality of Life Improvements

Next:
- Full multiplayer experience
- Weekly content and community events (missions for rewards)
- Galactic Atlas website (https://galacticatlas.nomanssky.com/)
- More base building, can be build anywhere on a planet instead of building spots
- third person flight
- Character customisation
- Freighter enhancements like customise it and buy frigates that you send on missions for loot
- Crafting and resources remake
- Procedurally generated technologies
- Analysis visor improvements again
- Overhaul of the tutorial and story improvements (the game shows you pretty much everything you can do now)
- Huge visuals improvements
- UI overhaul
- Space stations marketplace (more vendors and stuff)
- Exploration, fauna and flora improvements
- Better and more audio/music

The Abyss:
- Underwater overhaul with new creatures/exploration
- Aquatic missions
- New underwater biomes. Huge improvements to underwater
- Submarine and base building underwater with new parts
- New swimming controls
- New products
- New vehicles shops
- Freighters and frigates improvements

Visions:
- New planets biomes
- New creatures
- Lush planets diversity
- Water variation
- Atmosphere and skies improvements
- Exotic trophys
- Archeology
- Salvageable scraps
- Storm crystals
- Varied hazardous flora
- Crashed freighters variation

Beyond:
- Fully fledged Virtual Reality support
- Expended multiplayer lobbies
- Tutorials and missions big improvements
- Full true multiplayer where you see other player's customisation and ships and play with them and build etc like a true multiplayer game
- A social hub with shops, multiplayer missions
- Technology trees to unlock
- Gameplay balance
- Discovery page overhaul
- Buy specific planetary charts
- Galaxy map improvements
- New NPCs, new alien encounters, dynamic NPCs that walk around
- Creature riding and creature harvesting
- Cooking and recipes
- Base power system and base building improvements
- Some optimisation and more graphic options
- Starships improvements
- Vulkan API
- Sitting

ByteBeat:- Full audio creation application in No Man’s Sky called ByteBeat Device (yes you read right)

Synthesis:
- Starships upgrade terminals
- New terrain editing system
- Quality of life improvements
- They added a little bit of everything like new tech, new base building part, etc

Living Ship:
- Living ship you can grow
- Some new organic products
- New series of story missions
- Space encounters
- Quality of life improvements

Exo mech:
- New mech exocraft vehicle
- Exocraft vehicles improvements
- Visuals improvements
- Base building quality of life

Crossplay:
- Crossplay with consoles and PC

Desolation:
- Procedurally generated Abandoned freighters in space to explore and loot
- Some lighting improvements
- Freighter customisation
- Improved multi-tool combat gunplay
- Player titles
- New social hub missions

Origins:
- New planets and planets generation improvements with a huge amount of new stuff on planets and improvements of everything on planets
- Clouds and weather variety
- Photo mode improvements
- New items and crafting
- NPCs encounters on planets
- They added a little bit of everything everywhere

Next Generation:
- brings a graphically enhanced and smoother No Man’s Sky to the next generation of consoles. All enhancements are available to PC players.

Companions:
- Adopt alien creatures and raise them
- Creatures baiting improvements and riding bigger creatures

Expeditions:
- New game mode Expeditions with series of missions and rewards that you bring to your normal save when the expedition ends
- Some missions improvements
- Quality of life improvements

Prisms:
- Huge visuals improvements
- Photo mode improvements
- Share your Bytebeat music
- Movable freigther base to another freighter
- Rideable flying creatures
- Quality of life improvements

.....just shows how much they have added since the rather problematic release.

Not sure how accurate or complete it is, but most impressive.

 

[Buddy]

Updates are impressive but like any sandbox game, I get to a point where I think what do I do now?

Needs some level of pvp, player driven economies and crafting. Persistent rather than procedural worlds (not all). I'm sure this is what they ultimately have planned.

 

[Vimes]

@Buddy To be frank I get somewhat lost in what I am supposed to do. Often I'll just build bases over time and planet hop and fly around. If I happen to do a mission or two, inc quest, then that's how it goes. Planet hopping and fly overs etc are fun.

 

[Spleen Sauce]

I might give this a go this weekend. I remember being excited for this before it originally launched and then when it flopped I completely forgot about it. Having read the list posted above of what they’ve done since, I think now seems like a good time to give it a shot.

 

[Calin Banc]

Well, with all the updates, the flight, fighting, AI, etc., are pretty much the same, so once the grinding is done to some extent, there isn't much left to do... The gameplay itself is very basic, more of concepts than full fledged features.

Also, even though they've switched to Vulkan, it doesn't properly take advantage of it, so the game hammers one thread becoming call draw limited.

 

[chrismscotland]

I keep meaning to give this another go; bought it on PS4 at launch and wasn't impressed and it run pretty poorly; might need to give it a go now I've got a decent gaming PC

 

[Digital X]

https://www.nomanssky.com/frontiers-update/?cli_action=1630504126.936

Frontiers patch notes!

 

[Vimes]

Perhaps this list fully covers the patch.......

3.6 Patch notes

SETTLEMENTS

Procedurally generated planetary settlements can be now found on inhabited planets all across the universe.
Settlements are found naturally via a new mission that occurs after a small amount of post-tutorial progress.
Settlements can also be found with maps purchased from the Space Station Cartographer.
Mission Board missions that involve locating NPCs can also take players to settlements.
Players may submit their credentials to the monument at the heart of the settlement. If accepted by the citizens, they will become Overseer of the settlement and may choose its name.
Every settlement and its layout is unique. Each building is procedurally generated, using only parts available for player base building.
Settlement status can be seen and managed from the central monument. Once players have constructed their Overseer’s Office, they can also manage the settlement from the terminal in their office.
Settlements have five key stats: productivity, population, happiness, upkeep costs, and Sentinel alert level.
Improve their stats by researching new technologies, attracting new settlers to the town, constructing new buildings, setting settlement policies, and more!
Settlements where productivity is higher than its upkeep will generate valuable products for its Overseer to claim for themselves. Higher class settlements will produce more valuable goods.
Settlements can fall into debt, for example after commissioning an expensive new piece of technology. Debt is automatically repaid from surplus production. While settlements are in debt, the Overseer may not claim the extra products.
Key stat bonuses are awarded in the form of settlement features.
Strong features will replace weaker ones. Once the settlement is at the feature limit, weaker features will be awarded as stat bonuses and will not replace a better feature.
Over time, the Overseer will be called upon to make decisions. A new Settlers mission has been added to the log to help keep track of these requests. This mission will alert Overseers whenever they are required.
Every few hours, the Overseer may be requested to make a decision. These range from greeting strangers, to resolving crimes, to setting settlement policies and research goals.
These decisions will help shape your settlement into a thriving town. However, be sure to monitor the Sentinel alert level. This will rise slowly over time, and may trigger an attack on the settlement. The Overseer must be ready to defend their people!
The settlement’s citizens will wander the town according to their routines. Their mood is influenced by the overall happiness of the settlement, as well as their own reactions to your decisions.
Any settler may be inspected to glimpse a view at their current thoughts.
Other settlers will display their thoughts as they wander, allowing the Overseer an insight into the inner lives of their citizens.
Opportunities to choose a new building to construct will arise frequently. Choose which buildings to prioritise and make your settlement unique.
Once a decision has been made at the terminal in the Overseer’s Office, a construction site will be placed in the settlement. Visit the site and supply resources to fuel construction.
Completing the construction of buildings will also award stat bonuses.

BASE BUILDING

The base building menu has been replaced by a new grid of all available parts.
The grid allows a quick and easy preview of all existing parts, as well as offering quick access to part selection.
From the grid, players can select a part to place or go straight to edit mode.
In placement mode, players now have quick access to scale, colour, material and rotation options.
In placement mode, players can quickly cycle between related parts, or can return to the parts grid to choose their next construction module.
A new ‘free placement’ mode has been added. This disables snapping and allows parts to intersect with each other and still be valid to place. It also allows players to freely place parts in mid-air.
From placement mode, or direct from the parts grid, players can enter Edit mode and adjust any existing parts. Simply target the part and select the appropriate option.
From edit mode, parts can be duplicated for rapid construction.
Or, pick up a part to fine tune it before putting it back in place.
Over 250 new base building parts have been added, from decorative to structural.
Three new construction sets have been added – timber, stone, and alloy. While still versatile and easy to snap, these new sets are much higher detail and more visually diverse than the previous basic sets.
These sets replace the old wood, concrete and metal sets. The older sets are no longer available to learn, but will be kept for existing players.
Players who have already researched pieces from the old sets will be awarded parts from the new set for free. The new sets are significantly larger, so be sure to visit the Construction Research Station on the Space Anomaly to browse the full set.
The new sets are context-aware and will automatically adjust their visuals to suit their position within a building. For example, walls placed at the top of a multi-storey building may add extra trim to their tops, while walls placed at the bottom may feature extra support beams.
The Exocraft signal boosters can now locate Trade Outposts.
Fixed an issue that prevented the Galactic Trade Terminal from being placed on basic wall pieces.
The Galactic Trade Terminal no longer needs power to function in player bases.
A number of deprecated and unusable base parts have been removed from the research trees.
Signal Boosters are no longer limited to one per region.

VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS

Space skies have been significantly improved, with all-new visuals for generating nebula effects.
Visual effects across the entire game have been significantly improved – destruction, environmental, combat and much more.
The mode select screen has been updated with a new set of images from the community. Thank you to all the dedicated No Man’s Sky photographers!
Fixed an issue that caused a single black frame during a teleport.
Fixed a number of rendering issues with stars in VR.

SAVE STREAMING

The save/load system has been overhauled.
On console, each save is now treated as its own object, rather than all five save slots being bundled together.
All existing saves have been automatically backed up.
A number of crashes that could occur when saving or loading large and lengthy savegames have been fixed.
The number of possible save slots has been increased from five to fifteen. The save select screen now supports scrolling to see additional slots/start a new game.
The number of discoveries that can be saved locally without uploading has been doubled.
Any non-consumable Quicksilver rewards, such as gestures and base building parts, are no longer save slot specific and can be used across all save slots once purchased.
Cross-save Expedition rewards, Titles, and Catalogue data will now be cloud synced along with other save data.
Multiple users on the same PC and Windows login will no longer share Expedition rewards, Titles, and Catalogue data.

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS

On the Discovery screen, improved the clarity of the button that is used to register completion of all creature discoveries on a planet.
The reward for discovering all creatures on the planet has been significantly increased.
The clarity of the end-of-expedition countdown has been improved.
Season Three will begin soon, and will bring an exciting range of new rewards…

BUG FIXES

Fixed a number of mission issues related to other players discovering the target creatures/plants/minerals.
Fixed a number of issues where matchmaking with players who had adjusted their clocks would cause the Expedition to end prematurely.
Fixed a number of issues that could prevent players from landing despite the location being valid.
Fixed an issue that made it difficult to hover-select the final Expedition patch.
Fixed an issue that caused the text on the expedition start splash screen to overlap in VR.
Fixed an issue that allowed players to start a new Expedition without updating their client to the correct version.
Fixed a number of mix issues with Bytebeat and background music.
Fixed an animation issue that could occur when stroking a companion immediately before mounting them.
Fixed an issue that caused the collision detection for biological horrors to be far too small.
Fixed an issue that prevented jetpack trail names from appearing if they had not been unlocked.
Fixed a number of camera issues that could occur when using a planetary chart while inside an Exocraft.
Fixed an issue that caused some buildings and bases to be labelled incorrectly when entering them.
Fixed an issue that could cause players to take hazard damage if their hazard protection was drained but they were no longer in the active hazard.
Fixed an issue that caused some markers to have a “time to walk here” estimate despite being on another planet.
Fixed a rare crash on Xbox that could prevent players from loading into the game.

 

[james.miller]

Wowsers. Looks like they've gone above and beyond again.

 

[Tom Gidman]

I've not played this game in years, clearly I need to give it another go seeing all the updates!

 

[THX1138]

This is one of a few games that justs gets better

 

[Dup]

I keep coming back to NMS but I've still to get into any of the extra content they've added. I've played 30 odd hours and still not done the Atlas quest line or got the V1 pass

It's certainly a nice relaxing game to play and I'm loving the art style and music but I keep dropping it due to the deep hole of things to do, there's Freighter bases, exploring, base building etc. A lot of it feels too temporary and overwhelming, plus you also want to get about and upgrade your suit, ship and tools. There's so many systems to learn I get put off.

So I'm just sticking to some quest stuff to unlock as much as I can and actually get to some of the newer features and quests without getting indefinitely sidetracked. Anyone got any tips to achieve that?