No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[gospvg]

The patch yesterday took away the Rasta Mama ship I had & gave me the Riasamag I had purchased, I hate it it's a huge beast of a ship. Gonna change it when I get to the next system for something much smaller.

 

Had a good space battle yesterday with some pirate ships, in my panic wasted some Zinc on recharging my shields instead of iron 

 

Also completed all discoveries on one of my planets but now all the other planets are showing 100% complete?

Thankfully I had no crashes

[V3zna]

10 minutes ago, siread said:

Haven't played ED in like six months, but in what way has it evolved beyond trading and upgrading, seeing the same old stations, same old ships etc. (Not being snarky, just want a reason to try it again. I can't bare the thought of those long-ass trips just to get to a point of interest or make a little cash.)

 

I said potentially Elite Dangerous as I think Horizons was a fairly substantial addition. Well, it is if you're into mining on planets I suppose. If further expansions are like this I presume the end product will be pretty damn good. 

 

The same goes for No Man's Sky but right now it's feeling a little shallow and repetive for me personally. 

[Sng]

19 minutes ago, ph0rce said:

Landed on the first planet where someone else had been before me; couldn't name the planet, couldn't discover the animals.

 

If it didn't have Gek words to learn on it, I'd have left straight away, I don't like the idea of following in someone else's footsteps.

Are you near the center? I don't get how so many people are following in other footsteps. How can they be when there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets? Even if 5 million are playing the game that's still... well I'm not good at maths but what's going on there. Surely they can't actively be trying to put players near each other seeing as it means nothing at all. I assumed the huge number of planets was so people wouldn't bump into each other.

[Uncle Mike]

Is it a consequence of following the Atlas path? The only time I've arrived in a pre-discovered system has been when I got to my first Atlas marker. Are they procedural or random per user?

[Goose]

I hadn't played in a week but got 2-3 hours in while off work sick.

 

I don't know what's happened but everything suddenly seems quite Lo-fi and the popup, which wasn't noticeable before (that much to me), was really bad. I saw a bit while flying but today I was even getting it while walking. Odd.

 

I seem to have fell off the atlas path.

 

But the time today was great fun. Managed to get 3-4 upgrade slots and came across two trading posts, which I hadn't found before. Also finally got a new ship with two extra slots for $250k.

 

Got slapped by a Vy'keen for comforting him too.

[siread]

I did love ED for a few weeks, but the grind got me down. (Probably what will happen with NMS, but I've maxed out my suit and multi-tool, now just looking for a nice looking ship to see me out, so it's not so much grind, just endless exploring.) The mining never appealed in ED, although bounty hunting was damn cool, but again, after a while it was just rinse and repeat. As for the political stuff... *yawn*.

 

Meanwhile NMS could add any number of features over the next year or so and it already looks like this straight outta the box:

 

 

 

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

16 minutes ago, Sng said:

Are you near the center? I don't get how so many people are following in other footsteps. How can they be when there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets? Even if 5 million are playing the game that's still... well I'm not good at maths but what's going on there. Surely they can't actively be trying to put players near each other seeing as it means nothing at all. I assumed the huge number of planets was so people wouldn't bump into each other.

 

I've been wondering the same thing. It doesn't make sense to me at all.

[Gorf King]

46 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

Is it a consequence of following the Atlas path? The only time I've arrived in a pre-discovered system has been when I got to my first Atlas marker. Are they procedural or random per user?

 

I'm not sure, and I'm not sure Hello will ever explain how the smoke and mirrors work. I do know that every time I bring up the map to warp and choose to view discoveries, several discovered systems appear that I could warp to. I've never wanted to, but they're there every time, and I'm (usually) on the Atlas path - not that they necessarily are on the same path, but they're reachable. Which seems odd given Hello's insistence that it'd be incredibly rare to run into anyone. I mean, these discoveries are all from the past few days - some are dated the same day I looked for them - so if I'm close enough to jump, the person may still in that system as I'm looking at it. All I'd need to do is jump to the right planet - and then find them on it, of course. I guess it's just the size of the planet that's likely to keep you from seeing each other - as well as the distinct possibility that it's not really in the code at all.

 

It all feels a bit off somehow though, given the number of systems there are alleged to be. Unless lots of us are getting started off really close to each other.

[Floyd]

8 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

I've been wondering the same thing. It doesn't make sense to me at all.

 

maybe people just started the game closer to another player than intended increasing the odds on crossing paths, especially if you're heading in the same direction. I mean it's still very unlikely ( I haven't found anything anyone else has discovered yet)

[jonamok]

Do we actually know there are 18 quint planets in the Euclid galaxy though? Sean said quite clearly it's 18 quint possible planets. Possible. And that was in the game, not necessarily in Euclid.

 

So perhaps we're all starting in a significantly smaller (if still stupidly massive) cluster of systems... and encounters are more likely than imagined.

[siread]

There are a lot less stars than planets don't forget. I guess it averages about 3 planets per star? So that's ONLY 6 quintilian stars. And I can't quite get my head around this, but if we all start on the outer edge of the galaxy then that's a lot less than 6 quintillion stars that are within reach early on. Most of those stars and planets are inside the bubble. So yeah, there's probably like a few trillion stars that we start on. Peanuts really. (Really need a mathematician in here.)

[Pob]

Yesterday I was pondering whether this game was worth continuing with, mainly due to Gorf's tear-down of it in this thread. What's the point of it? I watched Matt Lee's ace video about the contradictory design choices and the undeniable pull the game exerts despite this, and I read the excellent Kotaku review that compared the disappointment he felt when pushing forward, trying to find meaning in the game vs just slowing right down and admiring the worlds created for your pleasure.

 

That all made me want to fire it up again. Boom, another 2.5 hours gone and another late night. There's an undeniable allure to touching down on new planets and getting that sensory rush of emerging into a hot storm or a frozen wasteland or a verdant paradise. It still feels fresh and exhilirating to me, especially interspersed with asteroid mining and space station shopping trips. There's just enough to do to make visiting new planets worthwhile beyond just space-tourism. The little objectives you end up chasing just about justifying the busy-work, and there being just enough buzz from finding a stash of a rare element.

 

I'm still into despite the disappointing lack of any really good game mechanics.

[SqueakyG]

I just finished the Atlas path last night. I was planning to take my time, but I realised that with two warp upgrades I could jump straight from one Atlas system to the next, so I just got it finished quickly.

 

I think everyone who has done the Atlas path knows exactly what I'll say behind the spoiler:

 

What a fucking crock. "The Great Sean Murray God of the Universe fills your body with a feeling of intense self-loathing. Through His scruffy beard He snarls an evil smile and intones: 'How did it feel to carry all those Atlas Stones in your precious inventory space? How did it feeeeeeel?' This prankster god fades to nothing, and you feel £45 lighter."

 

[SpagMasterSwift]

I went back to my second system 'Pearl Jam' because I couldn't get the thought of that one unnamed planet out of my head - Matt Cameron has been added, the line up is complete and now I can get back to moving forwards again. Although I'm sure there was probably a Moon I missed that would need to be named Boom...This game, etc.

 

Also released I have Warp blueprints in my inventory I never knew about - so that's this weekend's mission sorted.

[Cosmic_Guru]

I still think everything outside one's current system is smoke and mirrors.

 

In other news, the cover feature on NMS in Edge #270 (2 years ago) makes very interesting reading today.

 

It's a lengthy feature and, in my opinion, captures the essence of the game as it's currently playable.  Certainly no nonsense about MP.

 

However many things have changed in the interim from the small;

 

- no jet pack initially

- triangle button to exit

 

to features noted in picture captions which aren't really picked up in the text;

 

- wear and tear on the ship being visible

- the ability to call in an AI wingman using the d pad

 

to things which have changed substatially

 

Quote

You will only find rarer more valuable materials as you get close to the centre of the galaxy

 

Planets will only have one type of material.

There is a malevolent force in the galaxy.

A majority of planets are empty and uninhabitable, with little chance of encountering multiple species.

There will be an in-game encyclopaedia of creatures.

There will be 3 different class of ship (arguably these are still present)

There will be ship stealth capability.

Weapon upgrades will be more interesting than reload speeds and damage.

 

There was a strong impression given that the game would continue to be worked on post release.

[ph0rce]

51 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

I've been wondering the same thing. It doesn't make sense to me at all.

 

Yep, planet in the same system as my first Atlas encounter, must have something to do with it.

[macosx]

Finally found the warp reactor Tau so can start to see other types of planet. Yay!

 

Either the distance to centre is wrong or the game is borked. Probably both.

Spoiler

After meeting Nada last night he said that would be last time he would see me as I was near to my journeys end. However he showed up again a few jumps on today and said this is really it you are at the end and opened up a black hole. I loaded up fully on warp power thinking this is it; went through the hole and it's just more systems. 

Next planet is being called Trollface.

 

[Larsen B]

I finally upgraded my ship by one inventory slot last night after 13 hours. When flying back to the space station, I was attacked by pirates and really couldn't be bothered so I went to reload my checkpoint from the planet's surface and saw that it hadn't registered any saves in the previous 45 minutes - before I got the new ship.

 

This is basically my experience with No Man's Sky, a game I wasn't hyped for. Just when I feel I've achieved something, a technical fault cancels out my meagre progress. I was lucky to get that ship in the first place because I needed more Heridium to fix it so had to fly away from the crash site. The site disappeared from my compass and without the ability to mark things on your map, I had to be careful to only fly in a straight line so I could turn around and find my way back.

 

When I found a Heridium shaft, I went to land  and I was flung back into the planet's orbit at negative speed - far away from the unmarked crash site. That I could find my way back is probably a positive. That I still wanted to, more so.

 

It's a weird game. One that improves when not playing it or reading other people's experiences and one that gets worse the more time I spend on it in without a break. One that has lots of small, irritating flaws you can't believe weren't ironed out and one with big flaws I'm mostly happy to ignore.

[gospvg]

7 minutes ago, Larsen B said:

I finally upgraded my ship by one inventory slot last night after 13 hours. When flying back to the space station, I was attacked by pirates and really couldn't be bothered so I went to reload my checkpoint from the planet's surface and saw that it hadn't registered any saves in the previous 45 minutes - before I got the new ship.

 

Did you actually create any saves, from location points or entering/exiting the ship?

[gospvg]

I'm trying to get my head round the upgrades, I'll use the multi-tool as an example for now.

I now have a 24 inventory multi-tool (not my image below, just nicked one off google to use for now)

The image below if we focus on the boltcaster it has all the bonuses with the red squares, if I was to scrap one of the +1 upgrades & install a +3 or +4 instead I'm assuming that will do more damage?

 

 

If yes then this is what I also plan to do with the ship's weapons also ditch all the +1's and go for the more powerful options & link them up to generate bonuses. I was not sure if I would need to keep all of a particular upgrade path +1,+2, +3 etc so I could get the bonus thus forcing me to choose between a mining multi-tool or boltcaster weapon?

[Uncle Mike]

I think (but only think) that you're dead right. +1, +2, +3 grouped will do less than +2, +3, +4 grouped.

[Gorf King]

1 hour ago, SqueakyG said:

I just finished the Atlas path last night. I was planning to take my time, but I realised that with two warp upgrades I could jump straight from one Atlas system to the next, so I just got it finished quickly.

 

I think everyone who has done the Atlas path knows exactly what I'll say behind the spoiler:

 

  Hide contents

What a fucking crock. "The Great Sean Murray God of the Universe fills your body with a feeling of intense self-loathing. Through His scruffy beard He snarls an evil smile and intones: 'How did it feel to carry all those Atlas Stones in your precious inventory space? How did it feeeeeeel?' This prankster god fades to nothing, and you feel £45 lighter."

 

 

I did the same thing after getting the last upgrade to my hyperdrive. End of Atlas path spoilers:

 

Spoiler

 

Regardless of the fact that I didn't expect anything much to come of the 'ending', I was still mildly astonished by how zero-effort it was. To all intents and purposes, almost literally nothing happened. 'There's now a star somewhere you just created.' (There probably isn't. I simply don't believe the game now.) 'Off you go back into space, to... er... travel! But this time, without the excitement of the absorbing storyline you've just concluded!'

 

That's actually more than was said, of course. They could at least have bothered to write something - anything - with some sort of end story. They obviously didn't have a writer as such, but I could knock them up a concluding paragraph quicker than it took to write this post. I mean, just give us... something. Anything.

 

It did give me something though, I suppose. In the next system there was a black hole. I went through it, just to see what would happen. I'd never actually been through one before, so who knows?

 

A few seconds after I entered it, the game crashed.

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

2 hours ago, Pob said:

There's an undeniable allure to touching down on new planets and getting that sensory rush of emerging into a hot storm or a frozen wasteland or a verdant paradise. It still feels fresh and exhilirating to me, especially interspersed with asteroid mining and space station shopping trips. There's just enough to do to make visiting new planets worthwhile beyond just space-tourism. The little objectives you end up chasing just about justifying the busy-work, and there being just enough buzz from finding a stash of a rare element.

 

 

For me, and I know I'm more into this than most, there is always something to do. I think that maybe the key to this, as per the Kotaku piece, is just staying still for a bit. Maybe if I set out to max out my suit or whatever I'd get more burned out, but as it is I never seem to run out of fun things to do or try, because I'm just doing a bit of this, and a bit of that.

 

For example, underwater exploration. I'm still obsessed with this. I just find it really relaxing, although what I really want is to discover is a large sea creature. I saw one pre-patch and nothing since. Well, I've seen these but they're an abomination:

 

 

Not quite my Moby Dick.

 

Incidentally, if you guys aren't playing on headphones you're really missing out, The sound design is incredible, there are lots of nice touches like the sound of the rain hitting your ship's cockpit, and the roar as you enter the atmosphere at top speed really adds to the excitement of landing somewhere new.

[gospvg]

26 minutes ago, Uncle Mike said:

I think (but only think) that you're dead right. +1, +2, +3 grouped will do less than +2, +3, +4 grouped.

 

Obviously going by just those three the higher numbered upgrade would do more damage. I'm just not sure if I need to have the whole upgrade path from +1 up to +5 thus forcing me to focus on either a powerful mining tool or boltcaster weapon.

[Rowan Morrison]

2 hours ago, Goose said:

I don't know what's happened but everything suddenly seems quite Lo-fi and the popup, which wasn't noticeable before (that much to me), was really bad. I saw a bit while flying but today I was even getting it while walking. Odd.

 

 Yeah, my pop-up and pop-in seem to have gotten worse in the last couple of days, but of course that could just be the planets I'm finding. The phantom gold / emeril mounds are a constant now, and my last planet had long grass that would appear at the last moment - if I was jetpacking, it would often appear when I landed, suddenly obscuring animals I'd spotted. But as I say, it's hard to tell if this is a new development or just something I was lucky not to have seen before.

 

Doesn't stop me enjoying the game, but it'd be nice to see it addressed. I've got a nice big ship with a decent drive now, so I'm just waiting for my first Atlas progression - but I'm in no hurry. I know I'll happily be loading up new planets and taking screenshots for a long time yet.

[MrCarrot]

If you add the combat effectiveness upgrade for the mining beam, the boltcaster is completely pointless.

[SpagMasterSwift]

I landed on a planet with loads of giant Cacti everywhere and I swear there was Western music playing...it was late tho

[gospvg]

14 minutes ago, MrCarrot said:

If you add the combat effectiveness upgrade for the mining beam, the boltcaster is completely pointless.

 

Does that actually deal any damage against the sentinels?

[Cosmic_Guru]

6 minutes ago, gospvg said:

 

Does that actually deal any damage against the sentinels?

 

Yep.  It really is all you need (other than grenades).

[Gorf King]

Yes. The bolt caster and its sister, the ship's photon cannon, are a waste of time and inventory space. Upgrade the beams and there's no point in switching out ever.