No Man's Sky - Interceptor

[Goose]

Posted in the hype thread by accident - 

 

HUGE patch just released - adds base building amongst others things, and a photo mode.

 

http://www.no-mans-sky.com/foundation-update/

Quote

 

Explorers can now decide to play with different rule sets, across three game modes:

Normal mode is the original chilled exploration experience

Creative mode allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base

Survival mode really changes the game, creating a much more challenging endurance experience

 

Claim your home planet by finding an uninhabited base and creating your own, fully bespoke outpost.

 

Construct your homestead for shelter, using modular structures and decorations, replicated from resources gathered while exploring

 

Recruit alien lifeforms to help research new technology. Farming, engineer, weapons and science specialists are hirable from Space Stations

 

Use Terminus Teleporters in Space Stations to teleport to and from your base at will

 

Expand your base with storage containers to stockpile precious resources and rare products

 

Find an even more beautiful location and you can simply dismantle your previous homestead to refund all of the spent resources

 

Cultivate biome dependent crops outdoors, or inside your base or Freighter using Hydroponic Labs

 

Plants grow over time and offer a steady supply of resources to be harvested

 

Hire a farming specialist to research and grow ten new plant types, and discover new resource elements

 

Players can now build essential equipment in the field on-planet

 

Place save points anywhere in the world, crucial for Survival mode

 

Automated Harvesters gather resources from mineral deposits in your absence

 

Waypoints can be placed and colour-coded to allow explorers to return to discoveries

 

Communications Terminals allow explorers to leave sub-space messages for others to find

 

Discover nearby mineral deposits, uninhabited bases or suit upgrades with the use of a Signal Scanner

 

Purchase huge interstellar Freighters at great expense, and then summon them from anywhere in the galaxy

 

Resources can be teleported to your Freighter while on-planet, ideal for stockpiling goods for trading

 

Customise the inside of your Freighter within the Base Building section

 

Create extended cargo holds to expand your vessel’s capacity, and grow crops of rare resources on board

 

Transport your Freighter and its cargo to different, more economically favourable systems to maximise your earnings

 

Use the new recruitment system to crew your Freighter with Engineer, Farmer, Weapons and Science specialists to help research new technologies

 

The user interface has been improved to accommodate the stress of Survival Mode where a small inconvenience can be the difference between life and death.

 

The intelligent Quick Access Menu streamlines Inventory access.

 

 

 

Full patch notes at the link above. Patch is around 2.8GB.

[Yewone]

I actually missed the fact that it's just been released... and it has a PHOTO MODE!

[Curtis]

[SpagMasterSwift]

"This update will be the first small step in a longer journey. We hope you can join us" - oh go on then

[Yewone]

Fingers crossed this ends up doing a Driveclub in terms of players perceptions.

[JPickford]

I wish there was a way to swap my PS4 version for PC now I have a decent PC.

 

Update sounds pretty damned substantial.

[Gorf King]

As you'd imagine, you get to play each of the three modes separately, so one slot for each per save. 

 

 

Obviously, progress doesn't carry over from one mode to the other, so you have three completely separate experiences and choosing a new mode you haven't played before puts you on a new starter planet. I chose to start a Creative game, and as soon as I spawned, my ship was functional - took off without any repairs.

 

 

That base contains a console from which you can reclaim the resources from your last base, if you had one. Discoveries, assets and milestones are completely reset in a new game mode, so you start from zero.

 

Options include the new motion blur setting, and you get a warning when switching to photo mode about the UI being completely absent (duh).

 

 

With and without UI look exactly as you'd expect really. There aren't any additional photo mode style options other than that.

 

 

 

I did see a plant I couldn't grab resources from without crafting a new item:

 

 

The mode's a bit weird, I think, because it looks like you can't take any damage at all - I tried falling large distances, getting nibbled by a creature, and even crashing my ship into asteroids, and no harm was ever done. Taking off and landing, and using the pulse engine, also consumed no resources at all. Obviously it tells you that before you start, but it seems an odd decision and the compete lack of negative consequence, though deliberate, didn't really engage me.

 

Have to admit, I didn't take it any further than that, so no idea what the resource collection/building's like. But I'd rather they'd have had a way of letting you do the building stuff and still need to farm resources for survival and take damage - I guess there aren't any pirate threats in Creative mode either. The 'chill' mode is actually less chilled because you can fail in that. Maybe they should have had a 'no damage/resource use' version of that, and let the building mode require resources (other than for building) and allow for damage and failure. Better still would have been an option to combine any of the elements of the three modes so you could switch on all the options and have a survival mode that allows building. As in, a 'full' version of everything the game has to offer, with nothing cut out. And an Explorer mode that doesn't want you to do anything but explore and take photos. I guess Creative is really Explorer, but it's also the only way to actually build stuff, which is a strange way to parcel things up, I think.

 

Turns out the above is bollocks, and you can do base building in any mode - I read too much into Hello's intro to the update. See two posts below. Good stuff.

[Yewone]

You sure base building / farming doesn't feature in the other modes? 

Very odd decision if not. 

[Gorf King]

Yeah, I got that completely wrong - you can do the building stuff in any mode, so they have in fact done exactly what I thought they should, and Creative is really Explorer. It's the intro on the NMS site that thew me:

 

Quote

Normal mode is the original chilled exploration experience

 

Creative mode allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base

 

Which implies that building is a Creative mode thing, but it's not - you can do it in any mode. And Creative is the 'chilled' mode, not Normal. 

[cowfields]

This is really confusing though. As I understand it, (having not played the game), it's basically three difficulty modes?

 

Normal -> Normal

Hard - Survival

Cheatmode -> Creative

 

Otherwise the game is the same? I mean it makes sense, perhaps after you're feeling done with Normal you either want challenge or you just want to space out while you're in outer space.

[JPickford]

How is it confusing?

[Yewone]

1 hour ago, cowfields said:

 

Otherwise the game is the same? 

 

Apart from the massive amount of new stuff that's been added

[JPickford]

I think he meant the same across the three modes.

[Gorf King]

Evidently I thought it was confusing. It's this:

 

Quote

Explorers can now decide to play with different rule sets, across three game modes:

• Normal mode is the original chilled exploration experience
• Creative mode allows players to explore the universe without limits, and build a huge base
• Survival mode really changes the game, creating a much more challenging endurance experience

 

To me that says Normal mode is unchanged and remains the 'original' experience (it isn't unchanged - it allows base construction and has all the new minerals and blueprints etc), and implies that Creative is the base-building mode, where base-buidling actually applies to all three. And the 'chilled' epithet should go to it, not Normal.

 

So yeah, cowfields, you're right. That's exactly what it is - three difficulty modes. Other than difficulty the new feature sets apply to all modes.

[Danster]

Haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but I hope survival is really hard.

[cowfields]

55 minutes ago, JPickford said:

How is it confusing?

 

Calling a mode "creative" implies it was, in some way, a different kind of game, when in fact it's actually "unlimited resources so as not to limit creativity", but I appreciate that doesn't have the same ring. I can also appreciate that actually labelling it as "God mode" or something, would imply that it might be shallow or something.

 

There's a language, visual and literal, in video games that this defies. For one, the super easy mode comes after the hard mode, and the normal mode comes first.  I'm fine with that, it's fun to challenge UX paradigms, because I understand the modes aren't about challenge, but technically that's what they also effectively create. I just wanted to understand which mode I would pick as a new player. 

 

The new stuff does look a bit animal crossing, and I'm happy with that. I've been meaning to play this, despite all the whining, it still looks like it'd float my spaceboat, and this update does sweeten the deal. I'll make it my reward for when I finish packing for a flat move.

[Danster]

2 minutes ago, cowfields said:

 

Calling a mode "creative" implies it was, in some way, a different kind of game, when in fact it's actually "unlimited resources so as not to limit creativity", but I appreciate that doesn't have the same ring. I can also appreciate that actually labelling it as "God mode" or something, would imply that it might be shallow or something.

 

The new stuff does look a bit animal crossing, and I'm happy with that. I've been meaning to play this, despite all the whining, it still looks like it'd float my spaceboat, but this update does sweeten the deal. 

 

Anybody who has played minecraft knows what "creative" mode means these days....

[cowfields]

That's a fair point actually. Is it actually called that in Minecraft then?

[Danster]

Yeah, and you get every single thing the game offers, can't be killed and can fly everywhere. The kids love it.

[Scribblor]

Indeed they do. I last about ten minutes before I get bored and want some challenge, but my kids will play on it all day. They actively resist playing survival.

[TehStu]

Survival mode sounds like what it should have been before it was designed by committee. Time to fire it back up.

[Scribblor]

Yeah, I might have to buy it now that I own a ps4.

[TehStu]

1 minute ago, Scribblor said:

Indeed they do. I last about ten minutes before I get bored and want some challenge, but my kids will play on it all day. They actively resist playing survival.

Same, but the baddies in survival mode freak my kids out, so creative it is. Lets my daughter build houses out of emerald.

[Scribblor]

Yeah, my kids love not having the restrictions that survival mode places on them. It's not so much that survival scared them, it's more that they don't want to have to mine for stuff before building with it.

 

Just seen that NMS is on sale on the PlayStation store, so I've bought it. Ready to play in 57 minutes apparently.

[SpagMasterSwift]

Had a quick go building my first base (in creative mode) to get the hang of it then will go over to constructing something suitably awesome for my main game.

 

 

 

It's going to steal my life...

[Eighthours]

Very interested in what survival mode is like.

[Prof Frink]

Patch is up on Steam (1.3 GB).

[milko]

£24 on Steam this weekend, right? I might have to finally jump in. Can I do fancy Flight stick stuff for the ships and pad for running around? It'd be nice to have another game using those. 

[gospvg]

Oh! Man that update looks awesome, bugger just sold it last week. Definitely going to be buying this again.

[Sng]

What is the appeal of building a base on one planet when the aim of the game is to travel to the centre? Or has the aim changed?