I just gave the "no starter ship" challenge a try today, in permadeath mode.

It was … intense. A much more thrilling survival experience than some other survival games, as you cannot just set up a base, craft equipment, etc., as this is all still locked. You have to forage, stay alive, and explore.

I got ridiculously lucky, though. After about two hours – having found several ruins, an observatory, a manufacturing facility I could not get into due to no boltcaster, and a few shelters, I found a minor settlement. Great, finally access to the galactic trade network, I thought. After doing business in the settlement, I stepped outside and activated photo mode to have look around … and spotted something that looked like a crashed ship nearby. It turned out to be a nice A-grade shuttle. I started repairing it and got the quest to pick up the hermetic seal blueprint, unfortunately at a point near the starter ship, which was quite a ways away.

Instead, I bought the hermetic seal from the merchant in the settlement. This cancelled the "get the blueprint" quest … oops. But after taking off with the shuttle, I was able to retrace my path to the manufacturing facility, blew the door open with the ships guns, and got the hermetic seal blueprint first thing.

I think the only things that would make this way of starting the game even more exciting are having aggressive fauna, aggressive sentinels or extreme weather on the planet.

"No starter ship" should be made an official option when starting the game.