Long ago, NMS only allowed players to own a single ship, making it a major decision on which ship type a traveler should go after. However, realizing this felt clunky, updates have been made over the years, ship slots increased, new tech modules, and new features added. This was a great call, but it did leave one mark: the distinctions between each ship didn’t matter anymore; Haulers don’t even have the benefit of additional cargo space, since all S-class ships can have the same total number of slots.

I was talking ship perks with someone, and it got me thinking that perhaps it would make sense to introduce new strengths to less used ship types. As I was mulling it over, I realized that some of these changes would have to be pretty potent to stand up to current-day standards — poor Shuttles, their only real signature is that their takeoff price is reduced, made obsolete by the auto-recharge modules. So I decided to spitball a few ideas trying to stay true to the ship’s purpose while taking 2024 NMS in mind, and see if the following suggestions are strong enough to make you think “oh yeah, I’d definitely want to own a [ship type].”

Shuttles:

1. 25% faster flight speed than others while in-atmosphere.
2. 100% faster Pulse Drive speed.
3. Takeoffs and landings are quicker and snappier.

Haulers:

1. Cargo slots are double-sized, just like Freighters and storage containers.
2. One storage augmentation slot unlocks two slots when used to unlock cargo slots.
3. When the Teleport Receiver is installed, Hauler item teleport range is unlimited within the same star system.

Living:

1. Increased chance of finding Space Encounters while pulsing. Alien Traders completely removed from encounter pool (Frequency 12 > 0). Odds of Rogue Black Hole and Relic Gate events tripled (Frequency 1 > 3).
2. Eating food while in a ship refuels the ship’s hyper drive, pulse drive, launch thrusters, and damaged shields.

Explorer:

1. Scanning one planet scans every planet in the system.
2. Hyperdrive chain jumps. When setting a waypoint on the galactic map, can directly jump to that waypoint as long as the Explorer would have enough fuel to reach there, or up to 5 jumps (aka 5x listed hyperdrive range).

Let me know if these are along the right lines, and whether you’d fly one of these if they had these perks.