No Man's Sky - Waypoint | Switch version out now

[footle]

35 minutes ago, Pob said:

I've been playing with Survival rules since last year's Atlas Rises patch and I find it much more compelling, though to be honest I'm not sure of the differences any more. I think this game works best when you feel the awesome, deadly power of the universe though.

 

I really like the changes to resources and busywork since the NEXT patch. On the first couple of evenings I decided to stock up on launch thruster fuel, and made a full slot (20 cans) of it so I won't have to worry about that for a while. By collecting Oxygen as I pass it, I now have plenty stockpiled and it's really easy to top up. I seem to always have Tritium for the boosters just by shooting asteroids as I whiz past them (or, more likely, smack into them). Mining occasional C+ deposits as a pass them seems to be enough to keep stocked up with Condensed Carbon. Ferrite is more of a pain, so I just buy up 500 units of the stuff from a space station whenever I'm getting low (it's well cheap) and leave a load of it refining into Magnetised Ferrite next to my ship when I'm off exploring.

 

I like the portable refinery too. There's something really satisfying about combining busywork. For example, ducking into cave when a storm moves in, getting the refinery out and setting it going on some copper, then harvesting some humming eggs while all that is going on and my hazard suit is recharging. Being able to compress materials and optimise inventory space is all part of the lonely space explorer vibe. And actually recharging stuff is super quick now due to the shortcuts, but they've been in for a while.

 

I remember when Dead Space first came out a few people, myself included, said they'd like a game when you simply go around these amazing sci-fi environments just fixing stuff without the constant thread of a hideous mutated flesh monster jumping out every two minutes. This is that game, but on a mind-bogglingly epic scale.

 

Also you can do some really awesome time-saving boost jumps down mountains and off ridges now. That never fails to be an exhilarating risk/reward mechanic and is such a lucky bug that found it's way into the original game. It makes tramping across alien landscapes that much more involving. The addition of short jetpack overcharges from the blue plants is genius.

 

Perhaps. I feel I spent far too long yesterday fixing all the slots on a downed ship because my obsessive/compulsive completer-finisher characteristics caused me problems.

[Davros sock drawer]

Is it me or can you no longer get materials back for dismantling tech with R3?

[Talk Show Host]

This is really special. I have been playing this on coop and we lost track of the entire weekend. Jaw dropping stuff.

 

It's not exactly coop, though, as each player must play out his story from what I understand. Also, some weird multiplayer choices, like a player scanning a monolith and then the other player not being able to interact  with it at all. Side missions can't be completed in coop either. So it's more like multiplayer than coop, which is good enough. 

 

Anyways, it's just so much fun and deep and diverse and so easy to do things, change scenery, dive into action. For example, I'm at a space station while my friend is messing around on the planet. Suddenly sentinels are on him. A lot of them. He shouts for help. I immediately jump on the ship and in less than a minute I provide support for him shooting sentinels from above during a fucking storm. As soon as we depart I get scanned by pirates and a space battle ensues with ten or so ships after my valuable pod drop. We enter the asteroid field hoping to gain some advantage - we do. Now we are whizzing in and out of the asteroid field, avoiding rocks and shooting pirates!

 

We take them out but now we are standing in front of a planet we hadn't discovered in the system. It has continets. Wow. Off we go.

 

We go down and we land in a toxic hell hole, totally unprepared. Hazard suits go down very fast, seas are so toxic that green vapor hangs around their shores in small clouds. We share resources to charge our suits and start searching to make fuel for the launchers. Life support needs charging too. 

 

There are only two lifeforms on the planet but nothing we can see on the surface. We turn and look at the toxic sea waters and the green gas clouds over them...

 

Oh shit... We are going in.. 

[Fry Crayola]

45 minutes ago, Pob said:

I've been playing with Survival rules since last year's Atlas Rises patch and I find it much more compelling, though to be honest I'm not sure of the differences any more. I think this game works best when you feel the awesome, deadly power of the universe though.

 

Survival is something I want to love because of that awesome, deadly power of the universe, but it just doesn't feel implemented in the way I'd like it - it feels too restrictive on things that aren't related to being at risk. Restrictions on launch fuel and mining time just mean more busy work doing largely unthreatening things.

 

What I'd prefer is a situation where hazardous environments retained their effectiveness as in current Survival, quickly draining away your protection and life support, but in calmer environments you weren't still penalised just because you decided to run or wanted to launch your ship more than twice without a refuel despite being able to fly infinitely. Make those hazardous environments rewarding in terms of resources, and that'd be more up my street.

[Flub]

Bug fixes:

Fixed a crash in creature routines

Fixed a crash when multiple players put ammunition into a refiner

Fix for occasional crash when receiving mission rewards

Fix for crash when adjusting anisotropic filtering settings in the graphics options menu (PC only)

Fix for potential crash in geometry streaming

Improvements to texture caching for AMD GPUs (PC only)

Fixed an issue where some players still had physical nanites in their inventory that could not be spent at vendors

Granted players nanites when they dismantle their Obsolete Technology – spend nanites on new upgrades in Space Stations

Added a tutorial mission to guide players through the restoration of their old base

Fixed an issue where players were unable to build Frigate Terminals in Creative Mode

Fixed an issue where S-Class ships changed appearance

Fixed an issue where players were unable to build the Base Cache on their freighter to retrieve compensation for the loss of their freighter base

Fixed an issue where some Exosuit technology was not converted to Obsolete Technology. Please note this does not apply retroactively to save games that have already been upgraded.

Improved the mapping of old substances to new substances during the save upgrade. Please note this does not apply retroactively to save games that have already been upgraded.

 

The bolded is what's likely to be causing most of the random PS4 crashed.

[Pob]

2 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

 

Survival is something I want to love because of that awesome, deadly power of the universe, but it just doesn't feel implemented in the way I'd like it - it feels too restrictive on things that aren't related to being at risk. Restrictions on launch fuel and mining time just mean more busy work doing largely unthreatening things.

 

What I'd prefer is a situation where hazardous environments retained their effectiveness as in current Survival, quickly draining away your protection and life support, but in calmer environments you weren't still penalised just because you decided to run or wanted to launch your ship more than twice without a refuel despite being able to fly infinitely. Make those hazardous environments rewarding in terms of resources, and that'd be more up my street.

 

I dunno, after the first evening of NEXT I've not felt the pinch for launch fuel or life support charge at all, though I guess it took an evening of ferrite and di-hydrogen crystal mining to get there. I enjoyed it though. Once I get below 5 cans of launch fuel I'll just mine some more di-hydrogen as I pass it, get it up to 500 units, buy another job lot of ferrite dust when I next visit a space station and then do another mass craft of canisters.

 

I always liked the amount of fuel needed to launch on survival because it encourages you to trek around on foot rather than just hopping between points of interest in your ship. And those lonely, atmospheric treks are the heart of the game. Being away from the safety of your ship is the crux of the survival aspect.

 

Also, lots more places have 'free' landing spots now, signified by green landing arrows - it used to be just installations with landing pads but now it seems to be anywhere with a ship recall beacon. 

[Pob]

2 minutes ago, Flub said:

Granted players nanites when they dismantle their Obsolete Technology – spend nanites on new upgrades in Space Stations

Lol, probably too late for most people!

[Flub]

3 minutes ago, Pob said:

Lol, probably too late for most people!

 

Bit of a shame but I can't say I've ever been super short of nanites. You can get them everywhere.

[Davros sock drawer]

6 minutes ago, Pob said:

 

 

 

Also, lots more places have 'free' landing spots now, signified by green landing arrows - it used to be just installations with landing pads but now it seems to be anywhere with a ship recall beacon. 

 

You could always land and take of "for free" from those recall beacons. It's just that now there's a far more obvious glowing green circle and arrows to show you when you're locked on.

 

 

[Davros sock drawer]

Incredible scenes here:

 

 

[cowfields]

Long waffle post:

 

I can't remember when I last played NMS, I never felt like I fully got into it despite really liking it...I hated the haters, it was a great experiment.  

 

Without any knowledge of Next I had always meant to get back into it. But I feel lucky to have waited and to come back now. I can imagine if you put hours in then all the changes to crafting may or may not make things better, and I can imagine the pain at a 2nd major reboots of how it all works if you have a much longer save game could bring mixed emotions.

 

I think there's something a bit tiresome with the stages of crafting - you have the final recipe but there might be quite a few steps of gathering, assembling or processing, and trying to work out what you need to make and gather and process could be easier to grok somehow. 

 

But on the other hand I remember the last time I played, very early on I would have to gather a lot of different elements and never be able to hold in my head what they were all for. So you'd arrive at a vein, wonder if you needed it, farm it, realise you didn't...have to travel to sell it because you didn't have the inventory space...having no guide either didn't help.

 

But now it's easier and simpler to know what you have to go out and actually collect, at least in the tutorial stages. So I'll forgive a slightly clunky process for the assembling right now.

 

Also money doesn't seem so much of a grind. With the hidden relic treasures, or the horror larvae spawn things there's some way to get to a couple of million quickly. Which at first felt a bit imbalanced but then I see all these ships for 24 million and it's back in perspective. Whereas before, I just felt overwhelmed with what it would take to make any kind of decent money to afford a ship with spare slots. 

 

The core principle of just wandering around discovering things hasn't gone, or the excitement of a new system is still there. But all these little gameplay changes have made it a lot easier to actually enjoy that side of things. 

 

[tobert]

has anyone found a planet with more than one different biomes?  its does feel like you will generally see everything a planet has to offer, e.g. its red, has a certain trees, certain animals and geographical features within a couple of minutes and the rest is random number variation of those incredients

[Pob]

Are friendly planets still quite rare on Survival? Pre NEXT I set up a base on the first planet I found that had a daytime that didn't drain my hazard protection, didn't have lethal wildlife and had relaxed sentinels. It took me a while to find that planet.

 

The first system I warped to in NEXT had two planets, both of which are relatively temperate - one is temperate during the day and night, with only intermittent boiling rainstorms to worry about. It also has a good mixture of land and oceans, and it looks nice. So I think I might set my base up here after the next patch.

[SqueakyG]

The game stole my whole weekend. PS4 Pro, 1.51, surprisingly no crashes.

 

A couple of bugs though. A frigate came back half way through its mission with repairs needed -- but I had trouble locating the repair points while running around the frigate -- it said there were 3 repairs needed, but stopped showing an icon after two of them. Even jumping to a new system hasn't fixed the bug: this frigate is always saying it needs repairs, and now when I land it says "Repairs needed: 0".

 

Another bug is a mission that asks me to look for updates on my base computer... but the mission icon is at my freighter, where I cannot put a base computer. I'd actually forgotten that the tutorial had gotten me to build a base (so many hours ago!) on the starter planet - I built a wooden square and flew off and forgot it existed, and haven't tried base-building since. Apparently this bug won't go away unless I dismantle that base.

 

 

[Danster]

Been playing this with some friends since the update came out.... jus checked Steam 24 hours! lol

 

Anyway, really enjoying the game in Co-Op and absolutely been sucked back into the world. I didn't really click with the last big update, despite playing for 40 hours on PS4 when it first came out (completing the Atlas path and everything). Think it's a great co-op game, passing resources around ("Anybody got any Chromatic Metal?") and sharing kit (refineries and the like). We've all built our bases around a trading post on a paradise planet we found. And last night my mate built me a storage unit, which was nice  Also, same friend, managed to get the free freighter when he jumped into the system, this has missions on board which look like they are co-op, we haven't tried yet - but when I tried to access the computer for them it said I had to wait for him to start the mission. Could be good  

 

Totally watching the clock now (working from home) until I can slip back in and carry on where I left off late last night.

 

 

 

 

[Monkeyboy]

I'm losing lots of time to this. All the additions that have been made since I last played it on PS4 are great (I even like the refinery!). I've started a new game on Xbox, and discoveries seem to come more organically as I play, and I'm grinding stuff far less, just enjoying the slow burn of it more. It feels like there's always something to do.

[Davros sock drawer]

1 hour ago, tobert said:

has anyone found a planet with more than one different biomes?  its does feel like you will generally see everything a planet has to offer, e.g. its red, has a certain trees, certain animals and geographical features within a couple of minutes and the rest is random number variation of those incredients

 

Yes, insofar as the grassy planet I posted shots of last night also had areas of sandy islands. Here I am saying goodbye to one of my dino buddies:

 

 

However, you're right in that it'll only be a localised variation in topography. I don't think it's possible to have a temperate southern hemisphere say, and a frozen north. Or different animals depending on which continent you landed on. Not sure how they'd even go about doing that, although it'd be cool.

 

Ultimately this game can't do everything, nor should it try to IMO.

[Eighthours]

What's the easiest way to get extra Exosuit slots? A few hours into  my new save and I haven't got a single one! Should I construct a signal booster and look for drop pods, or is there a different loop now?

[Davros sock drawer]

Just now, Eighthours said:

What's the easiest way to get extra Exosuit slots? A few hours into  my new save and I haven't got a single one! Should I construct a signal booster and look for drop pods, or is there a different loop now?

 

You can get one per Space Station now. Over at the merchant who sells suit upgrades.

[Eighthours]

14 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

 

You can get one per Space Station now. Over at the merchant who sells suit upgrades.

 

Cool, I'll get a bit of money together and try that!

[Unofficial Who]

7 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

 

Cool, I'll get a bit of money together and try that!

 

Top tip, 5K will get you your first extra slot. 50K will get you a "cargo" slot which gives you more room for stacking mats.

[Lydso76]

Was playing last night, by brother joined me for a bit, just mining in a cave. Then two other unknown players joined my planet. One proceeded to do a makeover on my primitive wooden base, i was only a few hours into a restart since the update so it was just a shack. He added a landing pad and a corridor with about 10 storage containers! These are well beyond my current tech and financial level, but will help me immensely. It was like DIY SOS.  Somebody had also terrain manipulated a giant phallic rock sculpture, I'm not sure if this was my brother or Nick Knowles. Although I didn't ask for help and they did not communicate with me I'm not complaining. But this got me thinking, there must also be some saboteurs out there.

[Pob]

12 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Top tip, 5K will get you your first extra slot. 50K will get you a "cargo" slot which gives you more room for stacking mats.

I noticed that. Cargo slots are a faff anyway so I'm not sure there's worth 10x the price when they only store 2x the amount, and only for certain material!

[Flub]

12 minutes ago, Pob said:

I noticed that. Cargo slots are a faff anyway so I'm not sure there's worth 10x the price when they only store 2x the amount, and only for certain material!

 

If you do find and repair a drop pod in the wild the upgrade is free which makes grabbing those cargo pods super cheap.

[papalazarou]

loving getting back into this on the xbox one (had it when it first came out on ps4) - but just curios apart from a couple of very easy space battle with pirates - are there are large scale space battles that you can get involved in?  ie fleet to fleet battles etc... or its it just random pirates attacks?

[Talk Show Host]

58 minutes ago, Davros sock drawer said:

However, you're right in that it'll only be a localised variation in topography. I don't think it's possible to have a temperate southern hemisphere say, and a frozen north. Or different animals depending on which continent you landed on. Not sure how they'd even go about doing that, although it'd be cool.

 

 

I don't get why it would be such a problem. All the tech for generating everything is in place, right? 

[Davros sock drawer]

7 minutes ago, papalazarou said:

loving getting back into this on the xbox one (had it when it first came out on ps4) - but just curios apart from a couple of very easy space battle with pirates - are there are large scale space battles that you can get involved in?  ie fleet to fleet battles etc... or its it just random pirates attacks?

 

There have been larger scale battles for a while, although I've never seen two sets of capital ships firing at each other.

 

This is from Feb 2017, so Pathfinder Update?

 

 

[catinthehat]

Quick one: how do you use photo mode to take in-flight pics?  As soon as I switch to photo mode, my ship flies off into the distance.

[Trumpets]

2 hours ago, tobert said:

has anyone found a planet with more than one different biomes?  its does feel like you will generally see everything a planet has to offer, e.g. its red, has a certain trees, certain animals and geographical features within a couple of minutes and the rest is random number variation of those incredients

 

Yeah, that's the biggest problem with the planet generation IMO. The planets have continents now, which is a good step in that direction, but it would be nice if there were ice caps and deserts, jungles, mountain ranges etc all on one planet.

[K]

That's kind of my problem with the game, really. Pretty much any part of a planet is the same as every other part, and even the planets themselves are very similar. You get different animals and a different colour, and some superficial differences in terms of scenery, but for the most part you're landing at the same structures and harvesting the same plants and minerals - they might have different names, but they behave and function in the exact same way.

 

I'd like it if the universe felt a bit more structured, so that if a planet was relatively close to its star, it'd be a baking hellhole, or if it was really far away it'd be a frozen ball of ice. Really big worlds with lots of moons would be gas giants. You'd have different types of stars with different types of worlds orbiting them, so that red dwarf stars could only support life if the world orbited extremely closely, and O type stars would be surrounded by sterile rocks, covered in weird minerals created by the extreme radiation.

 

As it is, it feels like everything is pretty random. This planet is a bountiful paradise. The next one in is a frozen waste, even though its closer to the star. This one has 100 degrees Celsius firestorms every five minutes, but is teeming with life. This one  is -60 degrees, but is covered in liquid water. It doesn't feel like there are any underlying rules or structures to why the universe is the way that it is. You get weird situations, like being on a planet looking up at the black sky covered in stars, and then flying up into space to see that space is blue for some reason. Why is space blue in this system? It just is, because it looks pretty. In the next system over, space is yellow.

 

I get the fact that it's procedurally generated and made by a small team, and I totally get the fact that lots of people absolutely love the game and don't want to diminish that, it just annoys the sci-fi part of my mind that there's no reason or structure behind the worlds in the game. I would really love it if every system could be scanned on entry and examined from some kind of orrery view, so you could see rocky planets, habitable planets, asteroid belts and gas giants and their moons, with anomalies standing out and worthy of investigation. I kind of see SF as the search for the anomalies and the exceptions - and in this, there are no anomalies, because everything is an anomaly.