I will preface this by saying if we had the option between single/multi-biomes and some of you played with and actually liked the multi-biomes, then that’s perfectly fine – it’s all subjective, and just because I know I wouldn’t like it doesn’t mean you wouldn’t, too. My view is from the fact that we DON’T have multi-biomes, and I believe that the majority of people that think they’d want multi-biomes on planets would actually have less enjoyment if they ever got their wish, and here’s why.

Have you ever tried flying around a planet in NMS? I’m not talking about circumnavigating it, I mean flying over rougly every square mile of the planet. And if you actually have, did you ever do it a second time? My guess is that 99% of people are going to say “no” to at least one of those questions. So why is that? Because these planets are large, and doing so would take wayyyy too much time.

I don’t know about you, but I spend more than enough time on individual planets as it is, and if I knew that each planet could have multiple biomes, as an explorer-type gamer, I would want to see each of those biomes because… well, what if one of them is reaalllly cool? That is why most of us go visit a planet, in regular NMS, right? To see what it is offering? After visiting hundreds of planets, I still want to check out almost every planet I come across, even if I only give a planet a few seconds to form my opinion of “eh, this one isn’t very special/new”.

And that’s my main point – with how big planets are, checking out multiple biomes on each one would guarantee adding a bunch of waiting as we pulse over to the next biome. Let’s do some numbers here: Let’s say you have a solar system with 3 planets. In normal NMS, you’d dip into a planet, explore as much as you want, leave, and then pulse to the next planet. That’s gonna be about 3 breaks in between. In the hypothetical multi-biome NMS, if each planet has 2 biomes, then each solar system gets 6 breaks total. 3 biomes would have 9 breaks total, and so on.

TL;DR Abstracting planets into single biomes instead of pursuing realism makes NMS more digestible and fun, because it allows us to immediately judge within seconds of visiting a planet whether we want to spend more time on that planet. If multiple biomes were added, then more than a few minutes of waiting would have to be invested into searching a planet before we even could make the decision that “yep, there’s nothing interesting here, let’s go check the next planet”. And not only would it slow us down in how much time we have to invest in each planet, it would then multiplicatively increase the amount of time spent in each solar system, which is the opposite of the point of the game. They didn’t give us quintillions of planets to explore because they wanted us to spend all our time in each solar system. All that said… if they could give us the option for how many biomes could appear on a planet, then everyone could be happy, and I have no problem if there are some of you that would enjoy what I described above.

I think i am just about done with this game, it was an absolutely glorious game, from start to finish. It made me feel like playing minecraft for the first time ever. From waking up on a planet with a broken ship, to walking around with 500+mil units full s-class ship, tool and freighter. The music, exploration, combat, story, mechanics, graphics and much more are just 10/10. Every moment from finally understanding a language to learning that artemis is dead or the universe is a simulation, all of these moments made me sit back and wonder, how i couldve avoided this masterpiece.

For now.. i think i’ll stop playing till the next update. I think just waiting for the quicksilver quests to appear or looking for upgrade modules, feels too much like a chore.

This game is definetly up with my all time favorite games!

A new planet update may not require anything to change on pre-existing planets. HG could spawn in new planets and systems that coexist alongside what is already there. However, this topic is just meant as thought exorcise for discussion spawned purely out of curiosity.

I love my bases. I’ve spent so many hours designing them, but even more special are their locations. Paradise planets with geography that almost looks hand crafted. Trade Post and Archive within short teleport distance. Runaway Mold farms built to perfection! Some things you find in the game just can’t be replicated.

I would sacrifice it all for a truly next generation update to planets. Refined terrain generation, larger and denser foliage, more base assets to spawn procedural creatures, foliage, etc.., and planets with biome diversity (this could be a rare find. Not every planet).

If it came down to choosing to keep your old bases or sacrificing them for the new world, what would you do? What would you like to see on next gen planets?

Edit: Grammar and getting popcorn