To preface this, I absolutely adore the game. But like most games we play there’s always personal changes you’d make to it to make it your ideal game. This is what I’d love to see in NMS.

-1. I’d love to see a more realistic representation of the size and distance of space within a star system. When you look at planets in our real-life solar system they show up as nothing more than a speck of light given their distance away. A way you could do this in game is planets show up as little highlighted specks of light in space, you use the scanner in your ship which has an attached hyper-advanced telescope, you zoom in on the planet and then you’re able to see what it actually looks like and scan it’s resources. Then you use your pulse engine and that little speck of light quickly expands to the size of a planet considering you’re moving nearly the speed of light to get there. I feel like this would be very satisfying and immersive giving a real sense of scale.

-2. Asteroid landing and construction. There’s already a billion asteroids in each system, I wish that there were always a few large asteroids floating around that you had the ability to land, walk around and base-build on. It would just add a lot more variety to what people build and come up with.

-3. Space station building and space walks. Though you can build on your Freighter. I wish you could literally create a space station in the vacuum of space just like the ISS or wherever your imagination takes you. Then added with that I think the ability to just float in the endless expanse with nothing but your suit and thrusters to keep you from floating away… Frictionless for eternity.

-4. STARS!!! Seriously like we need the ability to pulse to the star in each system. Obviously you can’t land on it, but it would be a great opportunity to find rare items or do dangerous missions. Think, the star gravity could be a constant threat once you get close enough to it where you’ll need to use your engine boost just to get out of its gravity well, once you get close enough it starts destroying your ships technology and if you get sucked in, well game over.

-5. Gas planets. This kind of ties into the stars, obviously you can’t land on it without dying… By getting imploded by gravity…. This would just add another element of variety to each system and with that the gas planets could still have moons you can land on with a gas giant lighting up the sky. Also there could be another cool way to harvest resources from the gas planet… Maybe a starship gas vacuum-harvester 😂.

-6. Planets with multiple biomes and actual rivers.. This is pretty self explanatory. But yeah correct me if I’m wrong but I have yet to ever witness a planet with actual rivers. It’s always just bodies of water.

-7.(This is more of what Hello Games could just add to a simple update) More RNG assets for star ship parts and animals just to add more unique visual variety to the many ships and animals we see. Sometimes the stuff you see feels very “same-y”.

That’s about all! Forgive me for the novel. I’d love to hear what kind of ideas you guys come up with!

Safe travels.

First up is how I’m finding the abandoned crash sites:

I’m using Emergency Charts to force out all 5 location markers and flying to the distress beacon that doesn’t have a pilot walking around. Over time I’ve figured out the easiest way to make sure you’re not flying to the wrong distress beacon every time is to pick a planet, go there, and use the charts one at a time until you get the first distress beacon. Fly to it and make note of which one it is, then go to a different planet to force out the remaining location markers.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you perform any kind of reload in a different system, it will reset your “cleared” locations. So if you’re a couple hours into checking sites in a system, you’re kinda screwed lol. I would suggest not leaving the system at all until you’re comfortable that you’ve done everything you’re going to do.

Ok, crash sites.. I in no way hold any of this to be concrete fact, it’s merely what I’ve observed after checking countless crash sites. I play in normal mode on Switch and have no need for anything from the sites except the ship, so I blow thru them pretty quick lol.

A ship model that is found at C-Class crash sites can occasionally be found at B-Class sites.

A ship model found at B-Class crash sites will only ever ALWAYS be found at B-Class sites.

A ship model found at A-Class sites can very rarely be found at S or B-Class sites.

(I really hope I’m making sense so far lol)

I’ve found exotics in every type of system with any type of economy/race and any number of planets/moons. If it’s in the systems pool, I suspect it can be found abandoned. It’s just a matter of how long your willing to look.

From what I’ve seen, any given system will pull 4, maybe 5, ships+Exotic from it’s pool to place at crash sites. So they repeat a lot.

Augments:

After scrapping.. God knows how many ships, I believe I’ve found the most efficient way to get augments. Either play in custom mode or get your character to the point where I’m at so you’re only at the crash site for a half a second to look at the ship. What you’re after is shuttles, specifically, A-Class shuttles worth about ~$15m and up (and obviously take any S-Classes you find lol.)

Ever since I started taking only those specific shuttles, I’ve been consistently getting 8-9 (sometimes more, most was 14) augments out of every 10 ships that I scrap.

I hope any of this is helpful to at least some of you weary travelers out there 🤗